A Quick Look at Rift (Pros and Cons)

I decided to write up a quick review of the game in the form of pros and cons for players who are unsure whether or not they want to purchase the game or anyone look for a different opinion on the game.  Keep in mind this is strictly opinion.

 

My perspective:  I'm a hardcore raider currently in a guild at #1 progress on the server.  I've cleared all the current raid content in Rift and we are preparing for the new raid content (Hammerknell) coming soon.  I have a full set of raid level gear (Tier 3 + relic weapon).  My main role is a Justicar, but I also switch to healing roles often and DPS rarely.  I've played too many MMOs to list here starting from MUDs, Ultima, and Everquest to modern MMOs (such as Rift) and everything in between including sandbox and F2P.

 

I'll list all pros and cons in a simple bullet point format:

/ is a note, or a feature/mechanic I had neither a positive or negative opinion about

++ is a critical feature/mechanic I found extremely well done and should be a selling point of the game.

+ is a feature/mechanic that I feel was well done.

- a feature that is poorly done or a negative of the game.

-- a reason you may not want to play the game, an extremely poor aspect of the game.

 

Gameplay (General):

/  PvE includes 5 man dungeons in both a Normal and "Expert" Mode, raiding for 10 and 20 people, rifts, and standard linear questing

/  PvP includes some optional PvP servers, PvP flagging on PvE servers, and Battlegrounds with formats such as Capture the Flag and a larger Warfront with a mix of PvE and PvP.

-- Overall the game is very similar to WoW.  Players who played WoW will be instantly familiar with the combat, battlegrounds PvP, scripted raiding, linear questing, and dungeons being divided into both a normal and hard mode.

Patches/Updates/Customer Service:

++ High level of polish.  Few bugs for a game that has only been released for a few months.  Probably one of the best launches in a long time.

++ Excellent delivery and frequent patches which fix multiple problems and balance issues.

+ Good customer service.

+ Frequent world events

Classes/Leveling:

/  When I refer to a "class" it will be one of 4 you initially pick at character creation and souls are the 8 trees per class you can branch into to specialize.

++ Lots of freedom here allowing you to swap out between roles and customize up to 3 different "souls" with 51 points.  You unlock class specific skills and spells as you invest more and more points (think talent points in other similar MMOs) into talent trees through both the classes root and branching trees.  You can swap between up to 5 roles you've created at any time you are out of combat and you can also reallocate points into your old roles or new ones in town.

+ Most classes can play as multiple roles, for instance a cleric can play as a Healer, a Tank, or a DPS.  A rogue can play as a DPS, a Tank, or a Support.

+ Not very grindy, with options leveling up for both party play and solo play.

+  In general all souls are fairly unique, with only a few having some overlaps in how skills work (mainly rogue and warrior DPS).

-  Some souls are extremely repetitive and boring (Bard, I'm looking at you) with way too simple rotations that can be macroed so a class is essentially one button (Shaman).

-  Classes can't play all role archetypes, for instance a Warrior cannot play as a Healer.  You can't choose souls from another class.

-  Balance is generally very poor, with only certain souls and combinations being raid viable.

-  Similar to WoW's talent trees, albeit with a much more options and a bit more freedom of swapping.

-  50 levels.  Reaching max level can be done in roughly 40-100 hours of play.  The journey to max level is way too short.

Questing:

-- Extremely linear cookie cutter questing.

-- Basically unforgetable, no real outstanding or fun quests.  Typical kill x number of creatures, kill x, gather x number of items, etc.

- Solo leveling requires mostly playing through questing.

UI/Controls:

++ Everything is well polished and easy to find.  Hotkeys make sense.

+ Can rebind hotkeys.

+ Can queue attacks.  Combat controls well.

+ Can auto-sell vendor items with a single hotkey.

-  No auto-sort feature in inventory, bank, or guild bank.

-  Has a currency tab, but some currencies from special world events for some odd reason do not go into the currency tab and take up unneeded inventory space.

Graphics/Theme/Environment: 

+ Defiants have a somewhat sci-fi atmosphere using magic in a scientific way to create futuristic things like robots and time travel.

+ Graphics are an improvement over World of Warcraft's, but by no means pushing the limits of your graphics card.

-  Mostly generic environments.  You have your typical forest, desert, mountainous area.  Nothing too spectular.

-  Some animations could use some work.  None of the spell or ability animations stand out.

-  Small maps, not much to explore.

-  Story isn't worth following, coupled with poor voice acting.

PvP:

/  2 Faction PvP

-- Poor balance.  You'll have 1 or 2 soul options if you want to PvP on a competitive level.  Forget it if you aren't flavor of the month.

- Abilities can one shot you.  (Fulimate, Rapid Shot)

- You can be killed before you come out of CC, even with diminishing returns on CC.

- Mana drains and purges can make playing certain classes an exercise in frustration.

- Battlegrounds aren't particularly good, with some small imbalances on certain maps favoring one side and mostly standard game modes with no interesting twists.

- Rewards for PvP take far longer than PvE rewards and often aren't as powerful as PvE rewards, even though there is a specific stat for PvP called Valor, sometimes gear without it is still better.

Raiding:

+ Raids are generally fun and challenging.

+ Each instance is neither too short nor too long.

+ Players get marks from bosses which can be exchanged for tier sets as well as standard loot dropping from the bosses.

+ The 10 man Gilded Prophecy raid has some particular fun mechanics.

+ Includes Raid Rifts too, which add some short additional raid content designed for 10 man groups, but can be completed with more people.

-  Raid Rifts are highly griefable, as they are public and some mechanics can allow for a single player to wipe your raid.

-  Raid Rifts feel poorly tuned (the raid dungeons are well tuned; however).

- Requirements of "toughness", "hit", and focus for each tier of raiding.

- Enrage timers.  (Lazy mechanic to prevent you from stacking healers and tanks)

- Some boss mechanics are directly ripped from other games, in particular WoW's catacylsm expansion.

- Several bugs with raid mechanics that will result in a raid wiping due to a bug, and not actually based on how well the players are playing.  (Greenscale has several for example has one where a mechanic will not trigger that is required to negate unsurvivable AoE damage, which results in an instant wipe to the raid)

Rifts:

/  Similar to Warhammer's public quests these are quests that spawn in areas of the world at random times and scale with players.  There are several types of Rifts and they trigger other events such as invasions and footholds.

++ Unique feature to Rift.

+ Good variety of them.

+ Mass invasions can be fun, and cause lots of chaos throughout the zone.

- Not actually dynamic.  They have several places they can trigger, but will only trigger in a few spots.  They are always exactly the same from a pool of about 10 Rifts per zone (not even the numbers you kill per phase vary).

- After you complete your sourcecore, there is little incentive to do Rifts (except for the occassional World Event daily quest).

-- Aside from mass invasions which trigger rarely, has very little impact on the environment.  Rifts will rarely balloon into invasions which will gather enough strength to take over a quest hub and form a foothold.  They rarely spawn elite varieties (except during a mass invasion) which means they can easily be cleared by a single player with little interruption to their normal quests.  There is no reason to pursue Rifts outside aside from for loot and achievements as they can easily be ignored and won't cause any major issues.

Dungeons:

+ About 10 dungeons, with both a normal mode and an expert mode, which unlocks new areas of the dungeon and bosses as well as improves the difficulty.

+ Good variety of bosses with a good variety of mechanics.

- Boss dialogue can slow dungeon runs down, which can get annoying if you are having to do the dungeon multiple times.

- Can be grindy if you are preparing for a jump between raiding.  Loot isn't rewarded in a good quantity.  It takes way too many runs to complete a full Tier 2 set and epics rarely drop anymore from bosses.

- Requirements for "toughness", "hit", and "focus" for doing dungeons and joining public groups.

-- Extremely easy.  Will pose almost no challenge after the initial run through.  Nerfed way too heavily.  Does not appropiately prepare the player for raiding.

Achievements and Progression:

/  Tiered progression system.  Normal mode dungeons -> Expert mode "T1" dungeons -> T2 dungeons -> Expert Rifts -> Raid Rifts ->  Raiding (Tier 1) -> Raiding (Tier 2)

++ Lots and lots of achievements, from artifact finding, dungeon speed runs, to doing specific things on bosses, etc.

++ Artifact collection gives you another activity to do outside of combat.

+ Titles and special rewards such as companions for completing various achievements.

+ Some of the dungeon achievements can be interesting to do and can increase the difficulty and provide extra challenge to the player.

+ Encourage exploration of areas you normally wouldn't go to such as high seemingly inaccessible mountaintops.

+ Puzzles in each zone.

- Some achievements are just tedious and not actually challenging.

 

Recommended for:  First time MMOers, people who enjoyed WoW (but aren't playing it for whatever reason), raiders, achievers, and/or as a second MMO

Not Recommended for:  Players looking for something really unique, themepark haters, PvPers, roleplayers, people who hate fantasy MMOs, critter lovers, people looking for challenging solo and/or single group content, and/or as the only MMO for a hardcore player (will burn through the content in less than a month).