Rift: Planes of Telara

[Katlan]

I'm in again, I'll give the game more time this weekend, since I barely touched it during the week last time. Wasn't thrilled w/ the game, but everyone talks so highly about it so I'm pretty sure it's just because I haven barely gotten anywhere

[Alderaan]

I'm in again, I'll give the game more time this weekend, since I barely touched it during the week last time. Wasn't thrilled w/ the game, but everyone talks so highly about it so I'm pretty sure it's just because I haven barely gotten anywhere

I think it's all in how you look at the game. If you're still raiding hardcore in WoW for example, you're probably not going to enjoy Rift as much as someone like myself that has no current MMO.

Or i could be completely off base i suppose.

[Jintu]

Beta 4 Preview: Ready to Rumble?

Hey, everyone! Thanks a lot for being patient with us this week on the VIP invites for those who preordered. We've been making sure to get people covered almost as quickly as they can ask for help, and you've gone above and beyond in your compliments to the folks doing the helping.

In fact, I can't think of another time I've ever seen this level of concentrated compliments aimed at a CS group. Thanks for posting and mailing them in – You guys rock. We’re working with all of our sales partners to smooth this flow out for the rest of the preorder period, and should have some good news to share here in the next day or two.

On the development side: In the short week since returning from the holidays, a lot of our focus has been on launching presales, a store, and an entire ordering and billing framework. While making sure that the Warfronts, new zones, and events were going to be ready for beta.

I’m going to be extra honest about this one: Stressing Warfronts is going to make for a very interesting day tomorrow. It may go perfectly, or there may be issues due to the massive crush that our instancing system is about to take for the first time ever.

Either way, we’re here for the entirety of the event, and we’ll be reacting as quickly as we can to anything that comes up.

Even with all of that going on, we still did manage to hit up a few things that were on people’s minds. Apologies if this is more of a bullet list and less of a well-written piece of prose. It’s been a hell of a week around here.


IN FOR BETA 4: (like you haven’t seen the patch notes already)

* Ten, count them, TEN hotbars you can turn on and map hotkeys to and move around anywhere you want.

* Huge polish pass on the Raid frames – These got their first workout in the big events, and with Warfronts they’re even more important.

* More polish on the Reactives UI.

* More polish on pet naming.


ON THE HORIZON:

* PvP Autoflagging Toggle – With our unique world and event style, and with good reason, people really want to be able to be protected from autoflagging in the chaos. We agree – That’ll make for better gameplay.

* Target Nearest Friendly, Target Nearest Enemy, and a better Next Enemy cycle. Yes, we should add those.

* Rogues: We hear you. The pacing forced by energy regen and cooldown interaction isn’t getting the fun gameplay result we were aiming for. This isn’t something we could rush out in a day, but we’re on it. Needs to be fun and feel right first and foremost. That’s the goal. We should have something you’ll be able to call much better for Beta 5.

* When you’re in an Event (whether it’s a Zone Event, an Invasion, or a Rift, or so on), you actually don’t need to be grouped to get credit, loot, and experience for completing stages or the event itself. That said, people still want to be able to group and raid up more easily, and many have even requested automatically. We’ve been thinking about this for a while internally, and we’ve decided that we have to take on trying to get something that’s solid, fun, and helpful in place here.

* Rift Vessels, Zone Currencies, Sourcestone Currencies, Wardstone upgrades, and other Ascended Powers – This whole system isn’t coming off as cleanly as it should. We’re going to be putting some effort into making this look and play a lot more like the cohesive system it is behind the hood. People only care about a feature when a game can present it cleanly, and we’re going to step up on this.

* Story and notable character development: It’s all well and good to have a bunch of great lore written down here on the team, but it doesn’t count at all unless it’s presented in a way that it makes it across. I’ve mentioned this in one forum post, but story polish is to designers the same way that optimization is to engineers. It’s an ongoing process, and one that we’re going to be making constant improvements on from now until launch. Some will be subtle tweaks where areas just feel more memorable, others will be a bit more drastic.

Thanks, and we’ll see you in Telara,

- The entire team at Trion, including the engineers and operators who brought you the store, the awesome support folks who’ve been answering your help requests, and some people on a game team, too.

[Katlan]

I think it's all in how you look at the game. If you're still raiding hardcore in WoW for example, you're probably not going to enjoy Rift as much as someone like myself that has no current MMO.

Or i could be completely off base i suppose.

I didn't even play long enough to get to the first rift lol, I was just turned off by the animations immediately. What's a better area (from people's perspectives).. defiant or Guardians?

[Doombear]

No invite for me on this one it looks like. Got the previous 3, but they got sick of me it looks like =P

[Insanecyclone]

I didn't even play long enough to get to the first rift lol, I was just turned off by the animations immediately. What's a better area (from people's perspectives).. defiant or Guardians?

If animations bothered you that much then I wouldn't even play it. I personally like the Guardians side.

[Katlan]

Meh.. there is more to a game then animations. It's just one of those things that immediately struck me as ugly from the moment i logged into the actual game. But they can also get better / more fluid as you get higher and learn new stuff. And thanks, Ill try guardian side out this weekend.. I'm sure it will give me a different impression since it will be a bit more colorful and less dirt and mortar

[Purrrfect]

No invite for me on this one it looks like. Got the previous 3, but they got sick of me it looks like =P

Go to the rift website and log in on the front page (not the forums) and see. I had my invite email blocked as spam but saw the accept on my account page. I think once you've been picked for an even you are auto selected for the rest following it, haven't seen anyone that was in one beta but not a subsequent one.

Katlan, if you like a sorta 'possessed by undead' scenery go defiant. If you'd rather run around a forest with elves/faeries/satyrs go guardian. The guardian side is typically life/fire rifts and the defiant side is death/water rifts. I've heard much better reviews about the guardian instance also, but haven't seen either personally. I just suck at fast grinding...

[Doombear]

That was my thought too, and I did indeed head to the site to check. Sadly it is just the first three Betas that show in my account. Guess I get to be an exception =(

[Rysa]

I wish I was more excited about this game. It just all feels like the same old MMO with better graphics. Since I have a VIP pass, I feel a little obligated to give the game its best shot and to help Trion make the game better because they do feel like they really care and want players to enjoy it. I am impressed by their polish and their community involvement, I just wish they had some more innovation. I hope they have a successful MMO, but I will probably only buy the game if a bunch of my friends decide to play.

Katlan, if you like a sorta 'possessed by undead' scenery go defiant. If you'd rather run around a forest with elves/faeries/satyrs go guardian. The guardian side is typically life/fire rifts and the defiant side is death/water rifts. I've heard much better reviews about the guardian instance also, but haven't seen either personally. I just suck at fast grinding...

I have played both sides to 20, and I prefer the Defiant side, though it is mostly because I enjoy their lore more than the Guardians; besides that, it all really comes down to aesthetics.

[Gryffes]

Graphics are not great.
Graphically more realistic than warhammer/wow, but worse than Aion, combat doesn't feel good at all , no feeling oh oh awesome this new ability is sick! feels very AOC generic smushing stuff.

UI seems decent, customisation is good, plethora of abilities/talent trees is nice ( and the fact that it doesn't lock you in to x/y/z ).

Need to play it a bit more to get to some group content/etc to see what the real deal is though.

[Eanae]

I'm kind of upset they seem to be addressing everything except the god awful animations which I'm sure are brought up more than just here. Watching videos, character movement just looks so lacking. I doubt I'll play if they don't spice it up any.

[Lucavi]

Probably because that's the absolute hardest thing to address. Its easy to tweak a few numbers here and there, or add a new graphic adjustment for a UI or something. Adding in a bunch of new animations, or redesigning the animations themselves is a truly massive endeavor. I can't think of many MMOs at all that did an overhaul on animations. Its a reoccuring problem for most on the market. XI still re-uses the same fast blade and double thrust animations in many "new" ones, though they do try to put in effort behind the visual graphics that go along with them (as again, graphics are easier to implement than motions). XIV has terrible animations to the point where a max-rank lancer ability is simply the same wheeling thrust animation (ripped from XI) seen on most of the earlier animations. WoW hasn't really added new animations since modifying the old AOE cast animation (blizzard), although they did adjust volley and make it look a bit better by adding the rapid-fire animation.

I know how you feel and I relate to what you're saying, but you're basically asking why Trion hasn't adjusted quite possibly the single hardest thing to "freely" adjust in a MMO. Its no surprise why they haven't done anything about it. I doubt they can do much about it at all, really.

[Gryffes]

So played it a bit more, got to battlegrounds.
urgh.
plays like early AOC pvp, melees gtfo bring your ranged.

Constantly out of range trying to catch someone just backing up kiting you, because no snares early on any of the tanks.

Feels horribly like a cross between AOC ( combat ) and warhammer, and yet it does everything worse than either.

[Lucavi]

Melee need more snares, dashes or knockback/draw-ins, I'll agree. I was surprised at how survivable ranged are in this game. My hunter shrugs hits off like a prof. I'm used to the three-shots-and-yer-out WoW PVP.

[Hyan]

I know how you feel and I relate to what you're saying, but you're basically asking why Trion hasn't adjusted quite possibly the single hardest thing to "freely" adjust in a MMO. Its no surprise why they haven't done anything about it. I doubt they can do much about it at all, really.

Excuses. SE did it twice, Trion can do it once if they want to. Especially when they don't have to care about existing characters getting corrupted.

But even if they're planning to do it, it'll probably take quite some time. Especially if they don't have the expertise required. It can be costly as well, which is probably the reason if they don't do anything about it.

[Cichy]

I agree with Lucavi that most weaponskills look same in 14 but other than that I think abilities look cool. Sentinel, rampart, etc all have good animations and atleast when I use actions in 14 I feel I have some kind of control over my character. I think SE has done very well giving us control over all actions, this is aside lack of content, no need strategy, all that pile of crap I dont want to get into.
I got my invite for RIFT today and as much as I wanted to like it, there is no way. I do think that things constantly happening around you is cool but other than that I really fuckin hate this game. Graphically I think that the game is just horrible and I cant get past the shitty design, boring abilities, and overall hectic gameplay.

[Lucavi]

Excuses. SE did it twice, Trion can do it once if they want to. Especially when they don't have to care about existing characters getting corrupted.

But even if they're planning to do it, it'll probably take quite some time. Especially if they don't have the expertise required. It can be costly as well, which is probably the reason if they don't do anything about it.

No one has ever done it, Hyan. I know you want to implement your perfect dream MMO but I'm a realist. It hasn't happened before and with the rule of deadlines, I can't see it happening in this instance either. You were the first one to bring up the precious deadlines excuse for SE. At least these guys are actually working on things.

I went ahead and rolled a warrior, and am currently running champion/beastmaster/mage-guy. I don't know what all the fuss is in terms of the weight criticism. I feel a lot more weight behind my 2-hander in this game than in just about any other one out there. If anything, its the one-handed weapons that feel far too light. I wish companies would stop lumping all forms of one-handed swords into the same category; a longsword looks, swings, and feels far differently then a fleuret or degen. I'm still waiting for a fencing class in a MMO, or at least fencing-esque skills.

Cichy, you feel that weight behind your character in XI because your character is nailed to the floor, because of the lock on system, and because of the extremely slow pace of combat. Rift is another of those "Free-floating" control MMOs that let you run all over the place while attacking, that end up having your character feel weightless and looks akward when you wind up running through the mobs. GW2 looks to be the only MMO that strikes a balance between the weight of your character vs. the world and the freedom that a player should have to manipulate his character in combat without feeling like he can never get away from an enemy attack. Positioning in XI was nearly pointless aside from sneak attack and cover positioning (I still love cover mechanics) and avoiding certain abilities. I'd like to see the middleground, and it looks like GW or possibly Tera is our best bet.

I'm having a lot of fun in Rift, namely for the same reasons I had fun in WoW, but this soul system just seriously blows everything that I've played so far out of the water. Even when you account for the fact that the souls have similar types of abilities (low levels are going to give point-stacking moves, point-utilziing moves, reactionary moves and the occasional knockback), the fact that I can mix a stealth archer with a bard legitmately is just crazy.

The rift events are fun as hell as well. We spent about an hour cleaning out a single town this afternoon as the GMs threw everything at us but the kitchen sink. There were at least 5 rifts open, 5 warbands set up around the town, and no less than 15 war parties beseiging everything. I'm surprised the entire server didn't explode, as there were at least 300 people out there. Trion's got a hell of a way of stress testing their shit.

[Hyan]

No one has ever done it, Hyan.

I already said SE did it twice, for some odd reason but they did. Your excuse doesn't fly.

I can't see it happening either, but not because it is somehow impossible for them to do if they wanted to.

[Gryffes]

Played some more, this game is more DOA than AOC, if I'd pre-ordered it would be cancelled.

Character animations make combat unfun, there just isnt any.

In wow it feels slick, in aion it feels pretty and shiny, warhammer was ok, this just feels like generic character animation 5 go!
It's even worse on combat monsters, eg wolves just have 1 looped paw animation and you're fighting it thinking how awful the animation is rather than anything else.

PVP: The Black Garden Scenario is a ripoff of Mourkain mountain, but allows for really bad turtling and is too expansive.


Race Balance: LOL.

Guardian Racials:

Mathosian:

5 min CD 50% healing on damage taken for 30s. ( up to half your max health ).
1% damage buff
random resist


High Elf:

5 min CD: Increased mana/energy/power/etc regen for 20s
3% bonus on healing recieved
random elemental resist bonus

Dwarf:

5 min CD: 30% life restored over 6 seconds.
5% endurance stat buff
random elemental resist


Defiant racials

Ethian:

5 min cd: 25% of max health damage shield for 20s
2% str, dex, int, wisdom, endurance buff
random resist

Kelari:

5 min cd 100% crit bonus for 20s, decreases by 20% per successful attack.
10% more damage on crit, 10% more healed on crit heals.
random resist


Bahmi:

5 min cd: 40% Spell and Attack Power boost for 10s.
2% less damage taken
random resist



It locks you in for certain races harder than FFXI unless you want to be gimped to hell for endgame/instancing.



Already in beta, <5s queue time for guardian into the "Warfront" available, Defiance queue time > 15 mins.