Rift: Random Complaint Thread

[Meko]

I finally see what all the fuss is about for Riftblade. Did a little PvP last night and it's pretty silly honestly. I was able to handle 2-3 people at a time (in some cases without a healer), especially rogues. A few more levels and I can reduce my Riftwalk cooldown and I'll be set. Also, Earthburst or whatever seems broke as it seems to hit heavy most of the time.

[Crizto]

At higher gear levels, Riftblade becomes really deadly because even if people are using a Sword and Shield, they have such a high Crit% that the CD on Riftwalk resets consistently. Earth Burst is also broken because it is the only Snare (that I know of) that can't be cleansed; it makes going Marksman in an arena that isn't Whitefall incredibly difficult. Riftblades become impossible to kite if they get the jump on you in a skirmish. It's funny, on any other class I can go Marksman and only have to use 1 CD whether it be Retreat, On the Double, Repelling Shot or Static Shot to get to 30 - 35m away and start a counter, but for Riftblades I need to use 3 and On the Double is negated by Earth Burst...

The whole mechanic that Warriors have with their OGCD abilities is insane if they have decent Crit%; you can string in so many abilities together in under 1 second by simply pressing one button. I wish Rogue had some OGCD abilities other than Serpent Strike that proced off any Crit; and infinite Energy restoration too would be nice. I love that Warriors w/ Planar Blade, Grim Satisfaction and the low level trait in RB are never energy starved and have so many options. Rogues are constantly energy starved which is a huge problem. Even in raids; if I use one extra ability (say Incriminate) my energy will stay in the 0-30 range the entire fight even with a Tablet being used.

[Alderaan]

The damage warriors can do while wearing a shield and mitigating most of mine is beyond stupid. There's no tradeoff for them right now.

Warriors should not have a fucking teleport/blink.

[Meko]

I was able to handle a few warriors that were carrying a shield. I'm dual wielding and seem to hold my own without a shield and I feel 'stronger' that way. With the 'lay on hands' ability, I can usually weed through 3-4 people before they kill me.

[Raen Ryong]

The damage warriors can do while wearing a shield and mitigating most of mine is beyond stupid. There's no tradeoff for them right now.

Warriors should not have a fucking teleport/blink.

Agreed, especially one that requires like zero sacrifice to get. Compare it to Riftstalker blinks which require a specific (often non-beneficial) soul crossover with cooldowns and ... lol.

[nekura]

I laughed when I saw "We're generally happy with the state of warriors" in the 1.4 (I think it was 1.4) patch notes.

[Meko]

I hope they don't touch the Warriors!

[Neoscrilla]

Ended up cancelling my account today . I got the 6 month package, love the game but my guild sucks balls, I'm at the point where I'm good, but not good enough to get in very top level guilds, and the only time I logged on was to do raids, everything else seemed pointless. Sad day for me, I dunno what I'm going to play nows. I still have 43 days left and I will check out the 6 month celebration Trion has in store. After that, I guess I will be waiting on Star Wars (And I cant stand the Star Wars IP, lol). I swear, no matter what game I play, nothing can hold my attention and dedication the way XI did. Hopefully TOR tanks and Rift gets a gigantic expansion to lure me back!

[Meko]

Well, if XI was your virgin MMO experience, I understand. It was my first MMO and I still sometimes think nothing will ever matter as much or hook me like XI did. RIFT is a lot of fun but it certainly doesn't have a lasting appeal to me as far as me playing 5 years or more goes. It could be that I'm just not sure what I want from a MMO anymore (or maybe I'm too spoiled to be able to take the good with the bad). I hope Guild Wars 2 is good but I have my doubts that it won't live up to the hype because let's face it, all MMO's on paper sound amazing but how they launch and actually run is usually another story.

Side note: I think instances have really sunk MMO's for me. For whatever reason, the competition of world spawns or open world things seems to hold more value. That and the raid > raid > raid > raid > loot > reset > start over system has gotten old. In XI, while I was never camping kings or anything, there were so many things to do and a lot of things to do for 'casuals' and those players that wanted to camp. A lot of force pop or mini-instanced bosses that broke up the game. I'm just over the WoW system of faction grind > crafted gear/rep gear/heroic grind > raid 3-4 nights a week > win loot/badges > repeat.

[Aidin]

XI was my first also, and I don't see RIFT hooking me for years like it did.

All I do is log on for raids now, mostly because I have nothing to do. HK is fun, but its not enough to hold me in for long.

[Neoscrilla]

Meko, you echo my feelings exactly. XI was my first MMO, and I have dabbled in WoW, EVE, LoTR, XIV, and Eden Eternal since I quit my 5+ year FFXI run. At this point I have no idea what I am looking for in a MMO either, but it sure as hell isnt Star Wars.......Unfortunately, I will be playing this because of friends, and I am not a PvP person AT ALL, so Guild Wars 2 isnt even on my radar despite how good it looks. To be quite honest, everything fell apart for me when XIV sucked as bad as it did. After I quit that piece of shit, I stumbled upon RIFT, did the beta and loved it aside from the fact that the similarities to WoW were almost creepy (the crafting and menus really glared this to me), but it played very solid. It was a chance to start a MMO at launch at ground level with everyone else, which is what I wanted. The thing that I hate about all the other MMOs I have played is that nobody has any identity. In XI, the moment I left my Mog House I saw 15-20 people I knew or that knew me immediately, whether it be for good or bad, lol. A friend list of 200 people, and actual friends outside my Linkshell. I had a friend list of about 10 people in Rift, everyone else was in my guild. I guess it is just the community that makes it boring for me. Getting a T3 body or a relic weapon and nobody gives a shit, even the people in your guild, is very upsetting, lol.

[Meko]

Yea, well in the 'loot pinata' games, gear means a lot less in terms of accomplishment. Tier gear in WoW and I'm assuming in RIFT too, is far too normalized. In WoW's case, they just keep pushing the tiers and having bigger numbers BIGGGGGGER NUMBERS RAWR! I guess they are trying to compete with the shoulder pads they added in the game. WoW has done a lot right, though, but it's just boring after a while. I think people are tired of it and that's why they are seeing the decline now after almost 7 years. People got bored with XI too but the work/effort you put into your character in XI is what made it so special, imo. Not to mention, community and I stress that. Guild Wars 2 can be the tits but if the community blows, a la "GTFO nubsauce" "L2play" "You need this spec to be the best" "You're HPS were too low" then it won't matter. MMO's are all about the community and I miss that more than anything in the modern MMO's. I can't even list the number of random dungeons I did in WoW where people didn't say a single thing the entire time. If I want to play solo, I can play a solo game. I enjoy the community aspect of the MMO's and I feel like unless any game brings that back, it won't matter how good the mechanics are.

[Crizto]

I don't think a game will ever have the type of community that FFXI had.

[Viq]

As you mentioned before, instances do a lot to kill a community. Even if you never won (botted) a pull in DA back in the day, you would still get to know to other campers. If another LS won claim then you got to actually see how they played. You could learn from other players in the field, and you could also heckle those that made mistakes. When something crazy happens in a raid in WoW or Rift, no one knows about it other than the people that were there. When something crazy happened on an NM in FFXI, the whole server knew about it. That kind of large-scale shared experience is lost to the world of instanced dungeons and raids.

Something that I almost never see mentioned is that FFXI let you play just one character the entire time. No redoing missions and quests just to try a new job. No being stuck on your warrior for a progression fight only to have the item your rogue really wanted drop. Most importantly, the reputation that you built doing years of endgame followed you to when you were bringing up another subjob through the dunes. While Rift comes close by allowing you to go between different roles within the same calling, you can never tank on your mage or heal on your warrior. If another calling is the new flavor of the month, you are forced to either stick it out or reroll. I really can not believe that not a single company that I know of outside of SE has made a game that allowed for this. Well, at least not recently or relevantly (no one gives a shit about Saga of Ryzom, for instance).

[Meko]

No doubt, Viq. I agree 100%! What's the matter with allowing role switching in-game with one character? I'd love to be able to play all roles with my single character. It also adds some social restraints to you because you can't just up and be an asshole to people one day because people remember. I remember so many people from Midgard. I knew their shells, races, jobs etc - it was awesome looking back. It's a way to build a character and not a 'job' or 'class' in a MMO. Community drives MMO's and it's lacked since 2006 sadly.

[Raen Ryong]

While I feel Rift is far superior to FFXI mechanically and in terms of gameplay in every aspect, I agree that the community is far weaker. I attribute it to a number of factors, including the very cynical idea that MMO players as a whole hate to interact until they realise it's not all that bad, and FFXI's forced partying system did ensure that happened. The whole "instances" thing is very interesting as well... I would never want to go back to a world spawn type of scenario (unless handled well, which it could be under the Rift system... ie all participants rewarded in some way) but it's true that you don't get to see other people play that much.

The inclusion of PvP, somewhat unbalanced although it is I greatly appreciate however, and you get to know familiar faces after awhile, both in world and in warfronts. The community as a whole is definitely more ... acidic though. I find a lot less people I want to talk to and a lot of people are largely silent outside of trash talking, as well as getting a lot of kiddies who just try to troll all of the time. My ignore list is like 50x longer than my FFXI one after only a few months of play.

[Alderaan]

I think the days of playing one mmo for 4-5 years at a time are over.

[Viq]

The inclusion of PvP, somewhat unbalanced although it is I greatly appreciate however, and you get to know familiar faces after awhile, both in world and in warfronts. The community as a whole is definitely more ... acidic though. I find a lot less people I want to talk to and a lot of people are largely silent outside of trash talking, as well as getting a lot of kiddies who just try to troll all of the time. My ignore list is like 50x longer than my FFXI one after only a few months of play.

I actually think the WF/BG style of PvP, largely a result of the faction system that is so rampant lately, negatively affects the community. Games with real world PvP with objectives that take place on the normal maps have no need for factions. They let the players make their own factions. A big part of the evolution of a game's community is player politics and people "changing sides" from one guild to another. Factions limit this and restrict the players' ability to develop their own community around the game.

tl;dr If L2 came out during the modern era of more forgiving grinds it would be the best MMO of all time.

[Meko]

Another thing the faction thing does is cause issues when sending gear/money/items between your accounts a la WoW. I say, do away with factions all together, let every race be every class/job, make your main character have the option of being ANY class/job by simply changing to them. Need tank, go warrior. Need healer, go cleric....etc.

[Raen Ryong]

I actually think the WF/BG style of PvP, largely a result of the faction system that is so rampant lately, negatively affects the community. Games with real world PvP with objectives that take place on the normal maps have no need for factions. They let the players make their own factions. A big part of the evolution of a game's community is player politics and people "changing sides" from one guild to another. Factions limit this and restrict the players' ability to develop their own community around the game.

Thinking about it, I think you might be right. I enjoy warfronts but they shouldn't be the only form of real pvp (world pvp largely being a joke though there have been some good battles). I think the faction system as a whole in Rift has to become more lenient especially since on most servers Defiants are noticeably dominant. I think someone mentioned it here or I read it somewhere else, but limiting you to only playing with half or less than half of the players on a server greatly reduces the social side of the game. I'd like to be able to talk to people on the other side (and do when I see them outside Sanctum or are stealthed near them etc), and although I'm sure it would result in a lot of trash talk, it would still feel like I'm competing with real players with personalities etc, not mobs who shout obscenities when you kill them.