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[Column] Rift: Five Ideas Rift Needs to Borrow for Its Next Expansion
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Welcome back to Tripping the Rift, MMORPG's bi-weekly foray into the dimensionally-torn world of Telara. It's been three years since RIFT hit store shelves and a lot has changed since then. Games are richer than they've ever been. New mechanics and systems have risen to the forefront and become expectations of any new game vying for our attention. Join us as we look forward to 2.0 and the Five Ideas RIFT Should Crib for its Next Expansion.
Read more of Christopher Coke's Tripping the Rift: Five Ideas Rift Needs to Borrow for Its Next Expansion.
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Comments
I dont think Rift's engine can handle open world building or large scale PvP.
And if Trion spends too much time on PvP, then they risk losing their current customers. The PvP crowd has already moved on, and they are not coming back. Rifts class system does not mesh well with PvP, no matter what Rift does there will always be better options.
Better storytelling would be a huge plus, but it just needs better writing and more personality. Cutscenes are distracting (they would be ok for the saga type quests but should be used extremely rarely). Focus on well written storylines, NPCs with personality, and branching dialog that may change future quests and your reputation. You can do bioware style without the excessive cutscenes and voice over. that stuff takes resources trion doesnt have at the moment.
Naval combat would seem more like "me too" (which Trion does like to do) and probably doesnt have a fit in Rift.
Here is my five:
Make the talent tree system more flexible and compelling. Hybrid builds should be just as good as 61 point builds. Make synergy talents: x points in tree a and tree b grants an ability that makes sense for that combo. So maybe your choice is to go all in on one tree for tis 61 point talent, or halfway on two trees for their synergy talent.
Better storytelling. I agree with you here
New races. Rift's racial selection is awful. No reason a few new species cant come from another plane.
Crafting overhaul. Rift's crafting mostly sucks, but it doesnt have too. Everquest 2 added crafter AAs Give crafters some way to distinguish themselves and their products.
Open world dungeons and randomized instances. Give a sense of exploration and dungeon crawling that has mostly been missing from the MMORPG landscape
I agree with 4 out of 5 points. I have no desire to deal with water/naval combat content, as 99% of the time the implementation is cumbersome and annoying.
Better story telling is a plus, large scale PvP is always a win in my book.
Instead of naval combat which really doesn't fit Rift or MMO's in general minus a few outlying games, I'd like to see a larger race selection and more talent tree options being viable, as well as more optimizations for the game engine itself.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Most developers seem to regret adding flight to their games. Several from WoW, for example, have mentioned it really bottlenecks how things are designed because players can skip content at will. It's why they have to resort to stupid "flight licenses" for new expansions, just to force people to play the game normally at least once.
And naval combat? Sorry, but that doesn't sound very fun. It might be cool 5% of the time when you're engaging in ship to ship combat, but what happens the other 95% of the time? Does everyone have their own ship, or do you have a bunch of people sitting around doing nothing while the captain has his fun piloting?
Large scale PVP? Rift can barely handle more than 10 people on at the same time. Not to mention PVP has never been it's strong point. So just because every new MMO out has zerg PVP going on, you think Rift needs to also create zerg PVP?
One thing that I noticed is you keep mentioning various examples of how other games do something specific, and how Rift needs to include that. But all of those games are fairly focused on one or two of your designs. So just because you like the zerging in GW2, and the Storyline in TESO, and the world building in EQL, you think that Rift needs to include all of that sutff? Even though the games you list don't do more than one or two individually?
OK, so Rift isn't your game. That's fine. Just don't pretend that this list isn't anything other than your own personal wish list of features for any MMO. Don't drag Rift into it.
You make me like charity
Any quest driven game needs good storytelling. Or at least some kind of engagement. Rift lacks that and its one of its biggest issues. At the very least it needs good lore, and Rift lacks that too. And with Rifts very anti-immersive nature (tacky things like corgis and hellbugs that dont belong are a constant focus) it needs to have compelling characters and stories to compensate. And they need to be delivered in an engaging matter.
I think people need to connect with your game world to stay long term. People didn't connect to Telera, and now Rift is f2p because of it. For some it connects and there are some players that dont care, but it didnt connect for the masses and they do care, even if they dont realize it.
You are right about the other stuff. Trion added 3 faction PvP into a 2 faction game just because the big new MMO was adding it. It made no sense for the game to have it at all.
OP made the connection to Blizzard-Blizzard would NEVER 'conquest' WoW. They are finally adding a form of housing now, but they are doing it in a way that makes sense with the game hey have created. They dont add an idea without seeing if it makes sense. Naval combat would probably never fit Telara. I could agree about airships, but not individual flight. And sandbox elements would always be welcome, but there is no way the engine could handle EQN style building. AA even has some engine problems with player created content, Rift couldn't pull it off.
Their best plan is to tweak what they have to make it more engaging.
i hope RIFT never adds flight
EQ2 fan sites
To be fair, OP wasnt talking about flying mounts necessarily. Things like airships and sky castles and such could fit in with the steampunkish setting. I agree with it, but Rift has bigger fish to fry imo.
Better storytelling is the main one IMO. The presentation of Rift is terrible. I have no idea what's going on with the overall story and I READ everything. I've put a couple 1000 hours into this game and I've no clue, no drive. The lore, while good if you seek out all the outside sources, is meaningless in game. A lot of games suffer from this. Wildstar is next one to have this problem from what I've seen so far. Good lore overall.. bad lore 'in' game.
MAIN reason a lot of people didn't get into this game. The reason people say it's got no soul. WoW shames other games in this regard. You can skip all the quest text in WoW and you still know exactly what's going on with the zone stories and the overall story.
http://jamesykai.hubpages.com/hub/my-top-5-mmorpgs
"mmorpg.com forum admins are all TROLLS and losers in real life"
My opinion
how to improve rift: scrap everything and start again. this time try to make a game with SOME integrity and personality
Smile
So basically minus the story telling idea, turn Rift into Archeage? Why would they put Rift in direct competition with Archeage thus competing with themselves? The only chance Rift has to survive the Archeage release is remaining a pure themepark.
I also find it depressing that the creator of this column states these ideas but should know better that most of them aren't remotely possible. Naval combat in a Rift engine would no work not to mention OW-Building. All these things must be part of a game's design from the ground up, if you try tacking these features on, it will play exactly like that, feel like a tacked on features that were never meant to be there.
Uh, what? Rift has already been through tons of higher profile releases than AA. SWTOR, GW2, FFXIV, ESO...these games are all bigger competition than a korean PvP game. yes, a partial sandbox but you are vastly overrating AA's long term appeal.
Besides, the people still playing Rift are mostly lifers.
I think you missed my point. I.e let Rift do what it does well and not try and turn it into whatever the "newest trend" is. Granted I am a huge AA fan but I have no hate for Rift and it is not my intention to bash it.
Rift is a themepark game, and does some things very well. Invasions, events, raiding, dungeons,etc is what Rift excels at. The player base are fans of these features. Rift was never meant to be a sandbox and if they tried to add these kinds of features, it will fail miserably.
I am sure Trion knows this well and will keep both games from competing with each other.
Article should be called "Five things to make rift into an entirely different game" Especially the "Large scale PvP" since when has this been the driving audience of Rift or the market of it?
Sounds to me like this "column" wants an entirely different game....
As for "Heck you have elder scrolls fans talking about how PVP is the best part of the game" does not advocate for us "All" loving RvR, what it advocates is how lackluster TESO's PvE content is, now dont get me wrong, I hit rank 50+ in Rift PvP a long time ago, but it wasnt conquest that I enjoyed, I actually liked the medium sized matches, where one or two people could make a difference but could not carry a team.
Large Scale PvP is not the "new hotness" its a feature that is fun for some people.
Now as for Flying, even wow Dev's have gone on record saying flying was a big mistake, and for Rift Flying mounts would be a stupid idea, the world is simply too small for them, Telara especially Mathosia is a tiny world that is made to feel bigger through the fact you cant get stupidly fast mounts and the clever use of portals rather than flight paths (Which actually hide how small the world is). Flying would kill any semblance of the illusion of a world that this game has and would be a terrible idea for Rift, again unless the whole game was re-invented.
Boats I can kind of agree with that would be fun, but again the world would need to be enlarged existing areas reinvented and I don't foresee that happening any time soon. The Alternative would be to allow us to sail out into the open sea and make that its own "continent" that we can then explore around find lost islands and such. But that would only last so long before everything was found.
Open world housing, for the same space concerns as above wont happen soon. While I would love to see a continent of open world dimensions where players who could be trusted not to make dick statues could work.
All in all it sounds to me like you want to change rift from the Dungeon running, dimension building with a side of instanced PVP game that it is into something totally different.
One final thing, you cite "Rift 2.0" as your name for this imaginary expansion but 2.0 has come and gone, 3.0 is on its way soon and so your Rift : ARR edition would be Rift 4.0. Its only a little thing but it makes me feel you have not even researched the article you are writing and just spun a wheel with a big list of game names on and it landed on Rift so you put that as the name of the game you were discussing.
Try again with a more realistic article thats actually about the game you are covering, not a totally different game that you invented in your head captain ideas person.
Look at Wildstar? For quests? ROFLMAO. Quests have been, through closed Beta and to this day, one of the hottest reasons in the feedback for "why Wildstar should fail miserably". They have arguably one of the worst quest systems for the last 15 years of Western MMOs. Terrible storytelling, tweet-like, meaningless information that DOESN'T cover meaningless grinds, and story as deep and meaningful as anything written by your average 8 year old. "Ya blew up mah wahf an' kid-- now yer entahr species has gotta dah. Fer 50 levels."
Wildstar does some things very well, but quests and backstory is NOT one of them.
I agree with the naval, story and open world ideas however as Rift is a game based on defending thhe world from Rifts I do not see the need for large scale PVP. Flightis also a bad idea for the game as previously pointed out y othhers. The Flying mounts in other games have damaged the exploration model of several games. WoW took a massive hit after implementing flying mounts they lost devs and players who felt the game lacked the feel of an open world exploration value.
As for PVp..... Well as the story line is based on the Rift Events I dont see a need for large scale PVP.. sure there are two factions and sure they dont see eye to eye, however they have the same goals. Its not like WoW where the humans are racist bastards and all the other races love or hate them for it.
Though with the rewrite that came withh Cataclysm I havent played alliance and hellscream is a complete arse.
Rifts has been called a WoW clone for a few years but reality is that its more akin to Vanilla WoW than the current WoW. If one were to compare the two now Rifts is far more difficult than World of Warcraft and far as I can see thats what makes so many still play it after these last few years. So is Rifts trully a WoW Clone? No... and those who still call it that are fools.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
Rift has grown out of being a WoW clone, I agree. But Rift at launch was a near direct clone of WOTLK era WoW in almost all of its major game systems. 3 tree system (yes they let you choose the trees but clearly based off of WoW), gather/click/combine/nofail/automaticskillup crafting, UI, battleground PvP, end game currency grind, repeated dungeons at max level...much of this seems standard now, but none of this existed in MMOs before WoW.
Of course it completely lacks the personality and soul that WoW oozes, and the combat just doesnt click quite as well, particularly the PvP. the world was tiny and leveling was super fast (the fastest leveling time before BC was over 6 days played, and thats with tons and tons of planning optimal routes. People reached 50 in Rift by day 3). they mostly copied the bad from WoW and had no idea of what made WoW a hit in the first place. they arent alone in this either.
Then they went through a year of throwing shit against the wall to see what stuck. Planar Attunement, Chronicles, instant Adventures, Master Dungeons, Conquest, etc. For some reason IAs stuck (I dont know why, worst MMO mechanic in years IMO but players seem to like it), master dungeons were abandoned, chronicles are rarely added, PA is still pretty half assed, and theyve tried hard to get people to like conquest.
Then they decided to use EQ2's housing system, and that was their best decision. Fishing is a nice touch as well and Dreamweaver was a little outside the box thinking. but the problem is that the content that seemed so promising with Ember Isle (one of MMORPG history's greatest patches) just isnt quite there. the game remains soulless. They reuse characters even more than WoW does. And there still is no connection to the game world.
I had a thought recently that maybe this lack of connect has to do with Rift being very colorful, but serious. games like the EQ franchise and LOTRO are realistic with a normal color palette, and are engaging. WoW and Wildstar (from what ive been told) are stylized and colorful..and the games personality reflects that with a more lighthearted approach. Rift is pretty colorful and at times super tacky (crossover events like hellbugs, corgi rifts, etc) but the tone of the game and its world is super serious. not sure if this contributes to the feeling of soullessness, but it may.
Its a shame, because Rift is so close to being great. As you said its a harder game on the solo and group level (WoW heroics are on average tougher than Rift raids though, Rift just lacks easy mode and n00b mode like WoW has). the two soul expansion sets have addressed some glaring issues with the class system (lack of plate healers or battlemages). the combat still doesnt quite click like WoW, but its better than it was. the right expansion could make Rift go from mediocre to great.
But naval battles and open world PvP arent going to do it.