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Does Rift feel small?
MMO.Maverick
Member CommonPosts: 7,619
It's just a question I was wondering about, not intended to troll or such.
A lot of you will be high level around now, and have seen quite a number of areas in Rift. Also a lot of you will have played other MMO's like WoW and Lotro and seen quite a lot of those MMO worlds.
It was already determined that Rift is certainly not as large as a WoW or LotrO or EQ(2). But when you're higher level and have seen a large part of its world, does Rift actually also feel too small? Or does its size feel alright and good enough?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
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Yeah its pretty small. When you get to 50 you just redo all the dungeons you did leveling up, but on Xpert mode lol. There are 11 zones, but 2 of them are enemy starter zones, so for all intents and purposes there are 9 zones.
On top of that, most of the zones are copies of zones in WoW or Warhammer, so you dont really feel like you are exploring a new world.
Nor are any of them memorable in any way. Just your standard plains, mountain, tundra, desert, etc......
Remember when EQ had forests of Mushrooms, Evil forests, castles, undead cities, underwater zones, lairs, ice zones, lava zones, etc etc etc....
It feels like enough, considering how quickly one levels through it, and how you will follow the same leveling path every time you do it. So, sure, it's plenty for one play through. If they wanted to give it more replayability, they'd have to add a lot more.
They seem to think their core playerbase will be happy just sitting at lv.50, though, so replayability isn't an issue. Because it has such a healthy endgame, where you can run the same few raids over and over for better gear to do raids with. So yeah, the gameworld feels plenty big enough for that.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Yes it is very small but you wont' feel it until you are 50 or level up a 2nd character and realize there is no alternative content like most games have.
If you look at the map and start figuring out how far and how fast you travel, you realize the world is physically small. It doesn't seem that small while you're "down in it" though. Especially when you get one of those views of the mountains and such off in the distance.
Can't speak to the end game type thing...doesn't matter how big the world is if you're not in the actual world doing stuff. The largest game in the world would seem small if all you see is one city block and instanced content.
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거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
As many above stated, there are times where you are in the world leveling that it feels bigger, but that is mostly due to how long you are kept in zones(sometimes too long). Once you hit 50 though, I feel more like I'm playing on an island the size of Great Britain.
That being said, it's not horrible as the zones themselves are JAM packed with content and you do tend to go back through them for invasions, achievements, artifacts, etc. unlike other games where you come and go and never really go back(WoW, LOTRO), save a few games that have incentives(EQ2 is good at having you go back to earlier zones).
Personally, I hope they plan to add zones as part of a few of their content patches. I really don't want to wait for an expansion pack to add more zones. I like vistas and exploring too much to wait that long.
The world is relatively small..but it never felt small...it felt huge while leveling. I would say that there is more content jammed into these zones than almost any mmo I've played. I don't think you need a huge world if you have tons to do in the world they give you.
As fast as Trion has shown that they can crank out content, I'm sure we'll see more zones open up in the near future.
ZONE CONTENT > ZONE SIZE
Compare http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkgKX9BOP5g (first couple minutes)
with
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGaGwE3h9Mk
Not the best two examples, but the best I could find at the moment :P
From my time spent on the game i havent had the feeling of it being small yet, but i have yet to experience later lvl's.
Does seem to be a very busy world, so i never get very far exploring before my attention is grabbed by something i have to do!
Feels about the same size to me as Aion. That said, there's so much to do in each zone that I've not sure I'm going to get through everywhere before I reach level 50 (I'm 45.5 atm)
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For me, most zones felt larger than they were, IF you followed the quest progression. However, once you get really familiar with each zone and go out to focus on gathering or other activities, they start to feel fairly small. I think the big problem isn't zone size, but zone size, combined with too few zones. The game really should have provided at least one fully redundant leveling path for each faction, maybe even a full path for each race. The game would be much, much better with twice as many zones and three times as many zones would have been heaven.
Some zones are also much better in design than others. I think the early Guardina zones, up to level 20, feel bigger than the defiant alternatives. Don't even get me started on the first shared zone, Scarlet Gorge. IMO, one of the ugliest, most poorly laid out and populated zones in any AAA MMORPG in at least 5 years! In general, quality is hit or miss and the lack of redundancy means that any alts will have to pass through all the same low points of game play and design on the path to 50.
So, yes, the game world IS too small. You don't always feel it, some zones make better use of the space than others, but once you've seen it all, taken as a whole, it just isn't a sufficiently large world for an MMORPG that plans on holding subscribers for more than a couple of months.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
There is no getting away from it RIFT is a small world mmo and you feel it from the very start. Why do you feel it,well it's because RIFT has only two choice when you start. I said this in beta from the first beta to the last that RIFT should of had a starter area for each race.
Yeah i know the lore,well the lore is what Trion made up and i am sure they could of done it another way. It boils down to TRION doing the bare min to get this game out to the public.
I have to ask where the $50 million went because it sure does not look like a $50 mill mmo.
Vanguard has a vast world and even with the lack of updates it has far more content than RIFT can dream of.
You know, I hate to use WoW as a standard, but it is, in fact, a standard for the genre in many respects. I don't think anyone expects a new game to launch with content comperable to a game that has been out for six years and has three expansions under it's belt.
However, I don't think any MMO developer should even consider launching a fantasy MMORPG with less landmass and fewer zones than WoW had at launch. That redundancy of starting areas and leveling paths is what holds a large portion of the population in place, while you buy time and collect financial resources to put together an expansion.
Most developers tune content and progression rates to maximize the fun factor, while the game is in development. However, when they launch with too small a world and too little content, they have to start making dramatic changes to progression rates and character strength in order to stretch out what content the game does provide. Of course, the first thing that goes out the window is the level of fun and feeling of progress that your testers told you was optimal. You still don't have enough content, but now more people become dissatisfied with playing the game to enjoy what content does exist. You might buy another month from the top 5% of power levelers who already have blown through all the content, but you also drive away a ton of people who would have enjoyed the game at a more casual pace and might have found enough content to keep them happy for six months, or even longer!
So, developers. If you know lack of content and worlds that are too small = failed mid to long term prospects, aren't you just throwing good development money away by developing a product that can't deliver on content and world size?
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
currently Rift is a single contentent say size of europe there is an entire world there and we cant explore it yet. so yes currently its small.
Artorus Giltanus - Ranger EQ1 Retired
Arturien - 90 Deathknight WoW
Rift is "just right" to me. I never feel alone (there are always at least a few people working on similar quest chains and activities), and it is MUCH easier to expand in the future. Expanding the land mass too fast means potentially more travel time, smaller population density, harder to reach major rifts, etc. An increased level cap is a great way to bring in more content/size.