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Why is Rift so quiet?
Like, having played in the zone of lvl 10 to 20 for some hours, and it's dead silent. I sometimes checked how many people are in that zone, and it said something like 20 or so. But... noone is talking. Maybe once every two hours or so someone asks for help and gets no reply, that's it. Once I got curious and asked how everyone is doing, and I got a single reply.
Even in groups, like to do a rift or something, noone utters a single word.
I went to the sanctum, which I suppose is the capital or something. And despite it beeing crowded and peak time: nothing. I asked why that is the case, and someone said it's because people use lvl 50 chat channels or the guild chat. But still... It's weird to get into the capital, full of people, and it's dead silent.
I then once needed help for some epic group quest, first asked in the area and noone replied. Went to the capital and asked there. I got no single reply (despite it beeing peak time). Someone invited me to a group and helped, which was nice, but still... no single word, ever, by anyone. That's so weird for an MMORPG imho.
Now, just as a comparison... when I play Fallen Earth, a (still for a short time) subscription based indie game, then even in sector 2 you can hear people talk, or at least get a reply. And sector 2 is basically way behind any newbie or trial zone, so only subscription people should be there, and not the endgame either, so if it would be dead silent that wouldn't be surprising. But there is stuff going on. And in sector 1 the chat keeps scrolling through. Sure, on the one hand because the "no classes" stuff and complex crafting confuses newbies, but it makes them communicate, and that is important imho.
I don't need people to flood my screen with text, but it made the game alive. In WoW you could argue with people about all kind of nonsense while grinding your way through the quests. You could follow discussions, join it, get to know people and maybe join a clan or something. There was interaction between players going on. And in the worst case you can still disable chat channels.
But in Rift? It's so far dead silent.
This is no thread to bash Rift or anything. But I just didn't expect it. I mean, it's supposed to be an AAA MMORPG, aiming at the masses with it's themepark setting, and I assumed that especially the early areas would be full of chatter. But instead... noone there. Well players are there, you just don't notice them. They don't talk, and they don't join up for stuff except maybe a rift. It's so far like a singleplayer game.
Edit: Oh, and then I went into my first dungeon. I was playing a Reaver (or something) and thus signed up as a tank. I greeted the group, mentioning "never been in a dungeon in rift before", I get no reply. We get to a boss, and I ask "anything I got to know?", no reply. I say "I guess that's a 'no'" and charge in. It was like playing with bots.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Comments
My server is not quiet at all. It is filled with helpful biographical information about Chuck Norris 24/7.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Most chat channels are broken up by lvl. Get to 50 and see how your lvl 50 chat is considering most of the population is 50 by now. And the people who are not 50 usually are alts who are guilded and don't need to converse with the mass population at that lvl to begin with.
Im on byriel, no population issues, DRR's running consistantly on a daily basis, plenty of rifting goin on in stillmoor, IPP and Shimmersand. Plenty of PVP rifts being ran in those zones as well.
When is it someone elses responsibility to teach you how to play?
Open up google.com
Ventrilo. Teamspeak. Mumble. /blist general channel
That's what I see a lot of people claiming they do because they don't want to see the goldspam anymore, so they block the main channel and talk on headphones.
Heck, you won't even see people typing in Guild chats much anymore. They'll say "Get on Vent" pretty much right away if you want to ask something or chat around. They don't feel like typing or reading these days.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Seeing how utterly charming the chatfield is in games where it's utilized a lot, I think a quiet chat in Rift is actually something that speaks in favor for the game. (Pun to be excused)
I played it a month ago to try it out and it looked pretty active. was in a large helpful guild at one point. Didnt care for the game much.
***Dances with high elf ladies in telara!***
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
The game is really pretty. The soul system is very well done.
The story is pretty good.
The game is just not fun after about a month.
Can't think of how else to put it.
Never violate a woman, nor harm a child. Do not lie, cheat or steal. These things are for lesser men. Protect the weak against the evil strong. And never allow thoughts of gain to lead you into the pursuit of evil. Never back away from an enemy. Either fight or surrender. It is not enough to say I will not be evil. Evil must be fought wherever it is found.The Iron Code"
On my server (Laethys - Oceanic), there are 3-6 people usually saying some rubbish in Meridian. I guess somehow the talk is focused on the game when I find it. For example, I found it very easy to talk in parties, even in dungeon pugs. There are occasionally some dead groups, but that is very rare. Usually at least 2-3 of the other group members seem pretty social. Often, after a good run, you can chain run some instances if you like. PUG groups seem to be a bit more sociable at this point than in some other big games I've played, but I have seen a couple of idiots, more so than just after launch as more players migrate into this game (I don't know how long they stay or what the retention rate is).
As I said, the talk tends to be focused on the game, not other stuff like what's on TV these days, politics, etc. like you might seen in Stormwind- or Orgrimmar trade channels. If you like to chat and socialize, it seems that guild chat is the most active place. There are lots of guilds, some for leveling, some for raiding, and I always see large guilds still recruiting.
Yes, the general chats are more quiet. Probably it filters out mostly rubbish. If you want any sense of community, you need to find it in a guild in this game.
In my opinion, The chatter you see in open chat are usually immature chat. Most everyone joins a Guild and ask there questions there. As I stated in another post, most all Guilds I find are unless your max level. Very few have others to play with at any given level.....But Guilds are good for asking QUESTION'S.
For me at least, I could never really see saying anything in open chat, unless I would like to talk trash ( I don't ). or below level 10, no Guild yet, and new to the game.
Now this is just for me but :
1) That guy questing next to me ?...I would send him a /tell .
2) If I need help and I'm all alone ?...I would use the Social Panel, and find someone in my local area and send him a /tell .
3) If I sign in just to sit in Gloamwood Pines for the purpose of standing there doing nothing but watching open chat ?....I would shoot myself instead. I would much rather be doing something else other than playing a video game, like going to the gym.
4) I sign in to Rift or any mmo with a purpose.
There is two VERY simple answers...
One this is what everyone has been asking for in mmo's to play alone and keep to themselves,sad really.This is not a Rift thing,i see this in all games now.
Two the only things i ever see in ANY games chat anyhow is total nonsense or the usual spam of WTS or WTb or LFW.
If games were designed the way FFXI originally was this changes bigtime.I went several years of seeing very good chat in that game because it was people looking for groups to do things together.Those groups then had people talking to each other and this all forms a great community,something that game was the best at.That has all changed now ,everyone asking to weaken this genre into a single player type game.i think most miss the point of a MMO.
I am curious,what exactly the OP was hoping to see in Rift chat?I noticed the op menioned |Rifs,there is no reason to form groups for Rifts,it is an automatic popup that allows you to join the goup.If i remember right they scale anyhow,so having more means nothing.
The only thing i noticed that might require chat asking for help would be invasions,but again they are random,so it's not like you form a group for that either.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
For me, such chats simply give a game life. You learn stuff about the game through such chats, and you can teach people stuff too. And just seeing a discussion going on... well, as said, it just stresses for me that it's a multiplayer game. When I can play for hours and see no life of other players (excep sometimes another player rushing past me on a mount) then I could as well play a singleplayer game.
Well, maybe it gets better later.
Yesterday was rather odd too. I was working on that epic story questline for level 20 with cinderon and gnarladon. I had enough of those thingies to buy a lure, and was standing in the sanctum asking for help to kill cinderon. It didn't take long and a lvl 50 joined: neat. We went to a rif, lured out cinderon. I tried to support a bit with dots and buffs but couldn't do that much.
The lvl 50 player died quite quickly, after like 15 or 20 seconds. I kept asking around, and inivited a lvl 21 player. The lvl 50 player then said that this makes no sense and left the group. So I stood there with the other low level guy next to me, in front of the boss I spent all my shard thingies for to lure out, and we couldn't kill him.
So I went back into the sanctum, and asked for help. No reply. I asked some more: no reply. I said "if you help, you get half of all my gold". No reply. Then about five minutes later people finally replied and helped us killing him.
In short: we found people who helped, that was nice. But it was quite a struggle.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
I personally don't like tallking in general chat and consider most people that do as trolls. Might sound harsh, but that's how i feel. Now if someone asks a question, then i'll try and help them, but conversations are for Guild channels.
It's a shame it's like this but i've gotten more reserved. I learned long ago not to even bother looking at general chat even to go as far as deleting my general chat log.
My server seems to be made up of older players so that may be why.
There are two main reasons and some of you are going way to deep on this:
1. I am too busy to talk. The chat channels are set-up differently so the only time a lowbie see's 50's talking is if we talk in /3 which is trade chat and can only be seen in the city. As a 50 only time I am in a city is to queue for a war front and that ussually is not too long.
2. People in Rift atleast do not seem to casually use trade chat to talk like they did in WoW or Aion. If you saw WoW or Aions trade chat I am not sure why you would want that. I do not know if this is because people in Rift has zero to no patience for trolling and will ignore extremely fast. You have to understand who makes up the Rift community. A lot of these people are the ones who put "community being bad" on their survey when they left WoW.
Also if you know anything about Rift or played in the first month the lowbie zones were the most unbearable troll fest ever and was almost 100% WoW vs Rift clone talk non stop for like a month straight. It is no surprise honestly that people only use the 50 chat for LFG.
No chat costhe game is dead.
Not any more complicated than that despite all these other replies trying to justify it.
Caveat Emptor
Spamming in open chat yields close to nothing in any mmo.
A better Idea would use the Social panel and ask people questing in your area directly using /tell. If the quest was that hard like you say, you could have asked someone of high level in your Guild with a /tell, or again ask a higher level using the Social panel.
I do the above method in every mmo.
Everything you tried is the traditional methods of finding help, it's what everyone does. That almost never works in ANY MMO. You can copy and past your above replay in every mmo on the list of 200 games here on mmorpg.com and it would fit there too.
right , but there are games people or major poppulation helps and aion comes to mind , and you really need to social if you want to enjoy the game , at least those sieges, i forgot aion its a awfull game..................
Well said.
WoW syndrome. Majority of the active population piled up at the cap.
Makes nearly any game relatively quiet in the lowbie zones after the first few months.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Two starting zones in this day and age for a "AAA mmo" is simply unnacceptable and even FTP games have more than that nowadays.
"TO MICHAEL!"
The leveling zones are empty now. Even prime time, the events just go by without any group getting involved with them. Oh well cancelled my sub some time ago and waiting for it to expire so i can uninstall
WOW,eq2,Vanguard,WAR,LOTRO,AOC,Rift Aion, SWTOR, TERA.
Currently playing GW2.
You talking about Aion or Rift? I think you got them mixed up.
This is the correct answer.
I agree with this also but my server is far from quiet and have no problem getting in dungeons at lower levels with the cross server finder tool.
Problem is it took years for Blizzard to develop this. It took RIFT all of less than half a year to do the same, because replayability (alts) in this game aren't needed and rerolling them bores you because you've been in the same two starting zones.
Two starting zones in this day and age for a "AAA mmo" is simply unnacceptable and even FTP games have more than that nowadays.
This is the correct answer.
I agree with this also but my server is far from quiet and have no problem getting in dungeons at lower levels with the cross server finder tool.
I'm thinking the important thing is how all servers are overall, not just "my server", which is usually the rebuttal given when people talk about low pops.
If I had a dollar for everytime someone in Warhammer online used to say "Yadda yadda.. server pop, schmerver pop.. all I know is MY server is good so WAR looks like it's doing great."
I remember that was the Dark Crag mantra.. "WAR is fine.. Dark Crag is great!". It's not how one or two servers do.. it's how most of them do.
"TO MICHAEL!"
because there is nothing to do on rift, power level to max lvl n go afk in your factions base and farm pvp bg's....