Rift: Planes of Telara

[Alderaan]

There's just a shit ton to do and keep busy, which is what i'm enjoying more than anything.

* You can do nothing but quest which seems to be balanced out so you're technically never grinding mobs for no reason.

* You can participate in Rifts which are public quests just like Warhammer or a more updated and fun Campaign, that give exp and tokens you can exchange for gear. You don't have to queue for them or activate them from an npc, just show up and participate.

* You can do instances for gear and exp obviously.

* There's also Guild quests that unlock perks for completion such as reducing purchase prices of items and skills at npc's, summoning a banner that increases buffs of nearby party members and so forth. The guild options are pretty extensive.

Here's a nice 1080p vid of beta.

* There's achievements you can work on also.

* There's Battleground and Warfronts for PVP nuts (which obviously can't be tested yet since only Defiant are available this phase)

[Purrrfect]

Also there is the gathering for people that like that too. There is crafting too, but it is definitely the weakest attraction in the game.

[Katlan]

Rifts are nearly the same thing as "Public Quests" in Warhammer with a little more invasion added to them. Basically the rift opens and then anybody can attack the mobs that spawn then once the stages are complete, bosses spawn and if you win, the rift is sealed. You also get loot and such based on the amount of interaction you had during the rift.

But do you get rated for your performance like in WAR, and does that rating determine what you get? Thought that shit was so lame, you could do everything in your power and still get jack shit.

[Alderaan]

Ah yes, completely skipped my mind, as i normally don't enjoy those things, but there's that too!

[Gryffes]

But do you get rated for your performance like in WAR? Thought that shit was so lame, you could do everything in your power and still get jack shit.

There was no performance rating, it was a random + modifier everytime you zoned - so if you were winning every item w/ like 999 rolls you stay in the zone and farm to shit, if you were doing badly just rezone try again until you get a good modifier. Shit was so ridiculously badly done.

[Katlan]

There was no performance rating, it was a random + modifier everytime you zoned - so if you were winning every item w/ like 999 rolls you stay in the zone and farm to shit, if you were doing badly just rezone try again until you get a good modifier. Shit was so ridiculously badly done.

that sounds like the worst idea ever. I'm sure it will be adjusted, but seriously, wtf were they thinking

[Alderaan]

But do you get rated for your performance like in WAR, and does that rating determine what you get? Thought that shit was so lame, you could do everything in your power and still get jack shit.

It's not random, it's based on your damage + healing + how many mobs you hit i believe. That's why right now clerics are always at the top of the point lists.

[Meko]

In Warhammer the public quests rewards/incentives were basically a loot pull of treasure that you got die rolls for based on your performance in the public quests. In WAR its based on healing done, damage done and damage taken. It's a pretty neat thing but it also wasn't the focus at all in WAR and I think it's too early to tell in RIFT. Usually the items that drop are some what common and nothing too "epic" ever seemed to drop in WAR.

Overall, RIFT is a solid game. It's just like they looked at WoW and grabbed some things, then they looked at WAR and grabbed some things and then a little bit of EQ2 (based on Scott Hartsman being a senior producer etc). It is a combat system based on cool downs and from what I can tell, it acts a little like WoW/WAR in that sense. It's a quest grinder with some instances (so far). They are supposedly going to phase in PvP in either the next beta installment or the one following. The gathering and crafting doesn't seem to be too much different than any other game as you can mine, forage etc.

[Gryffes]

My earlier post referred to Warhammer not rift, sorry for any confusion.

There was a random zone bonus in warhammer - thats what I'm talking about:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/for...d.php?t=190135
Check pics for proof.


It was fact - several times I rolled up to a keep hitting nothing and winning the contrib roll and getting the highest performance bonus and taking the loot.
It was total and utter bullshit that your performance in anyway affected your rolls ( at least for the first 6 months of the games life ) perhaps they changed it later.

[Purrrfect]

Just tweeted, beta2 on the 17th. http://cot.ag/h4hwxl Guardians this time.

[Lucavi]

God it looks like Dungeon Siege 2.5...Craft. I want!

[Grey Jorildyn]

Hooray for more beta. If anyone else is looking for a small group to join for partying and stuff in the beta, PM me for info! Gonna have a few more this phase it looks like BG'ers always welcome!

[Grey Jorildyn]

Girlfriend pointed out how similar the defiant logo (Rift) and the galactic republic logo (SW:TOR) look....

Defiant:
http://ftp.5thedition.net/images/rift_defiant.png

Galactic Republic
http://ftp.5thedition.net/images/galactic_republic.png

Someone should tell Trion they're ripoff artists lol

[Alderaan]

Beta 1 Wrap Up

Scott Hartsman the Executive Producer of Rift has posted a Beta 1 Wrap Up!

Hi, everyone! On behalf of all of us on the RIFT team, and at Trion as a whole, I wanted to say thank you very much for participating in our first beta test.

We’ve been incredibly busy both through the event and in the hours since it ended, poring over all of the feedback and data and making plans for the next one. Between forum posts and in-game reports, you submitted over 20,000 individual pieces of feedback.

We’ve had developers, community, and QA folks looking over it constantly since the event began. Please do realize that your feedback here absolutely does matter.

We learned a lot this weekend. Most notably, we got answers to some critical questions.

What happens when you put the full population of a server on a single side, and effectively keep them in one or two zones for a whole weekend?

Could we patch all of those people? How well would the game hold up technically? How well would it play? How would the rifts and invasions play out?

Patching

The pre-patch that started a few days before the event was immediately extremely loaded. Many people were getting the files just fine, but a good number of you had to restart the patcher a few times to get them all.

You helped us figure out the biggest issues with this, and we updated the patcher a few times during the event. By the time the event began, the vast majority of people were seeing successful updates on the first try.

We still have a couple more improvements to make that should make the update experience even better in time for the next beta.

The Servers

Before the event officially began started, it became obvious that a lot more people took us up on our invitation than we had originally anticipated. Within the first hour of the event, we had to double the available number of servers. Those servers all remained highly active throughout the weekend.

The population of Freemarch never dipped below “more than we’ll need to support in the long term,” and the servers stayed responsive and stable throughout the overload.

Gameplay

The starting area of Terminus held up really well. People started slamming in to the point where we got a solid test of the server queues. (Thanks for putting up with that.)

During the first day, it was obvious that the quest targets in Freemarch weren’t nearly plentiful enough, and we made sure to get an update out for that as soon as we could – Based on people’s comments, it looked to have reduced quest blockages by about 95%.


By Saturday, it became obvious that our “wildly crazy active” tuning numbers for rifts, invasions, footholds and the like weren’t getting the result they were supposed to. For the first half of beta, very little of the dynamic game layer was seen or heard from.

Where we had hoped and expected to see invasions rampaging across the countryside, instead the population density had become far too high, such that invasions weren’t even getting off the ground.

We updated the game with even more insanely active tuning on Saturday night to give the invaders a chance to come out and play too, and the response in chat and submitted feedbacks was overwhelmingly positive once that started.

By the time it worked, it was a hell of a sight -- Huge invasions finally freed up, setting up footholds, wiping out the local populace, and eventually being repelled by defenders.

Expect a whole lot more iterations and improvements here in the future, both to rifts and invasions. More types, more activities, and a much better tuned frequency.

We’ve spent a large part of the day today working on our plans to make sure people see obvious improvements to the dynamic layer, both in terms of frequency and diversity in time for the next beta.


From here, we’re going to continue going over everyone’s feedback, and seeing what kinds of adjustments and improvements people really want to see in the game.

We have dozens of other improvements in store, largely thanks to your comments.

Thanks again, and we’ll see you in a couple weeks!

We couldn’t have gotten here without you.

Scott Hartsman
Executive Producer, RIFT

[Lucavi]

I'm genuinely sorry I missed the action. Sounded like a great time.

[Kupo]

Are any of you Beta testers able to list the classes that are on the Defiant side? And are there some shared classes or are all classes one side or the other?

Also, it would be great if anyone can describe the crafting system.

Thanks!

[Grey Jorildyn]

Crafting system sucks. It's basically WoW.

[Hyan]

It's basically WoW.

No you didn't.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Would you prefer "it's basically shit"? Cuz it is! No thought was put into their crafting system.

[Insanecyclone]

Vanguard has the best crafting system