Rift: Planes of Telera Beta

dmcg said:
I feel like I missed out on something everyone is saying Rift is good but I found it pretty dull :confused:
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It all depends on what your expectations are I suppose, Rift is nothing revolutionary but its fun. I had no interest in it prior to obtaining a beta key but went in with two mates and we couldn't put it down. We were all big Warhammer online fans so with this basically being WAR Mk II I think we naturally took to it in a big way.

Since playing Rift I've tried logging into Lotro my main MMo but I can only last maybe 10mins before logging out and silently wishing I could immediately boot up Rift !! each to their own I guess..
 
Did not do anything for me.

Nothing much original, too many class combos, too many tree options - it will never balance and having 3 versions of the same skill on multiple levels of a skill tree is not only confusing, but annoying. You ding and get an upgrade for one of the duplicates which temporarily makes it better than the other....total bull.

I find the game quite clumsy in it's approach, I cannot quite put my finger on it but it is miles away from WoW polish. It just feels awkward.

Also, the game is literally a carbon WoW copy in parts, which is not necessarily a bad thing but it's stagnates the originality. I mean skills, their effects, way it works...even the damn names in some instances are just WoW.

The GUI is WoW all over, you could overlay the Rift AH with WoW's and I think only 2 elements would be different.

I will not be buying it having played in the beta.
 
Sin_Chase said:
Did not do anything for me.

Nothing much original, too many class combos, too many tree options - it will never balance and having 3 versions of the same skill on multiple levels of a skill tree is not only confusing, but annoying. You ding and get an upgrade for one of the duplicates which temporarily makes it better than the other....total bull.

I find the game quite clumsy in it's approach, I cannot quite put my finger on it but it is miles away from WoW polish. It just feels awkward.

Also, the game is literally a carbon WoW copy in parts, which is not necessarily a bad thing but it's stagnates the originality. I mean skills, their effects, way it works...even the damn names in some instances are just WoW.

The GUI is WoW all over, you could overlay the Rift AH with WoW's and I think only 2 elements would be different.

I will not be buying it having played in the beta.
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I always thought that all the class combos would be a hinderence rather than a positive thing. Look at WOW, not many classes/trees and yet every patch they are changing them about. It will be utter madness on this game.
 
About the soul system, what people don't realise is although you can trait three different souls for each class the majority of players will throw the max points into one soul and use the remaining 15 for some useful skills from the other two soul paths.

But your not stuck with that setup, for example you might want to slot Ranger+Assasin+Bard meaning you have ranged DPS, a melee stealth and a group buffer/healer. Now your never going to be great at all three at one time so what you do is create different stored setup's of which you can switch to on the fly.

This is were the system shines, if I'm with a group of mates and they all want to go DPS crazy I can change to the Bard setup and play as support without having to ride back to a town and go through the rigmorale of chatting to an NPC to do it. If we are looking for PvP we can all switch to stealth and go ganking!!

Again, this is nothing revolutionary in MMO's but it works perfectly and means you can just get on with the job of playing without hinderance.
 
I honestly don't see where all this "WoW copy" is coming from. I didn't think it was copying anything from WoW, other than it's fluid gameplay, which surely can't be something that is being complained about?

I'm struggling to see all these things they have copied, after playing WoW for near enough7 years. :S
 
kola said:
Yet again wow wasnt the first mmo for the love of god lol ,
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Does it matter? There are only so many core concepts in an MMO yes, but spell and ability names/functions, UI arrangements etc are the things you should at least TRY to be original with.

Otherwise what's the point? It's WoW with different graphics and rifts. (With none of the Blizzard polish)

I have tried many MMOs, Rift has been the only one where on Skype with 2 mates every 5 minutes one of us was saying "Really Rift, Really? Just like WoW."

It has some good things about it, like UI scaling/customisation out of the box. But the profession system needs HUGE work. As a Butcher (Skinner) I had maybe 6x as much Soft Leather as I needed, was already well into the next resource type and the mobs I was killing were STILL giving Soft leather. That for example is ridiculous.
 
I played through this beta round and admittedly didn't feel like I had scratched the surface as I only got to Lvl 10.

I did feel the gameplay was a little generic and didn't ever reach a point where grouping seemed needed and so I never felt like I was playing an mmorpg, rather a single player rpg with multiplayer allies who came & went without any chat - therefore I never really felt part of a player driven world.

I did take part in a few rift events - was able to join the other players in a group but never figured out who to support, what to target. The whole encounter was little more than a chaotic 'whack-a-mole' and no one seemed to notice if players went down. I used to be a harcore raider in EQ and am used to players having some kind of plan evident.

Overall the game was enjoyable enough but it didn't grab my attention or demand I go further. Could be something to do with my Minecraft addiction though ;)
 
Taziir said:
I did take part in a few rift events - was able to join the other players in a group but never figured out who to support, what to target. The whole encounter was little more than a chaotic 'whack-a-mole' and no one seemed to notice if players went down. I used to be a harcore raider in EQ and am used to players having some kind of plan evident.
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But that's kind of the point - it's open world, public stuff, so what's the point of making a convoluted event with lots of strategy and tactics required when you're doing it with a load of random people? It would never work.

If you listen to some of the official Rift podcasts, there's an interview with the developers about instances and raid dungeons where they clearly state that the encounters in there require strategies and tactics in order to beat, not just raw dps and healing power.

Rift is not a WoW beater and it's not trying to be. In fact, it's deliberately like it in many ways because it means that WoW players (and the vast majority of paying customers will have been or still are WoW players) will understand how the game works from the get go.

Why reinvent the wheel? I'm particularly pleased that the console commands are practically the same as WoW because I don't have to turn to some reference manual to join a party, or speak to someone.

Rift differentiates itself from WoW through the use of it's public quest system (rifts, invasions) and the possibility that enemies can conquer towns and cities and you have to liberate them. WoW currently has nothing like these, although given time, Blizzard will no doubt incorporate these features if they think they will work.

Ultimately, I think Rift's strength is that it IS so familiar, yet it does just enough things differently to make people play it. I played for a few days in the latest beta and was impressed enough to want to play it at launch :)

It doesn't mean I'm going to stop playing WoW, but I think this will certainly be something nice to play in tandem :)
 
kkbigal you make good points - I guess it means that this isn't the game I'm looking for. I don't have an issue with public quests, I really like the concept, I just didn't gel with the implimentation.

During my admittedly few low level rift encounters, i got the feeling that all the participants might as well have been monkeys with laptops for all the cohesion or mutual interdependence that I've come to expect in a multiplayer game of this type.

Added to this, I would have liked to have known how to assist target through other players, or have a more constructive way for public questers to at least focus on the same mob togather. Hell, a tank skill to place a massive glowing arrow on their target so dps and healers could know wtf was going on would be great.

I had a particular issue under the Fire Rifts as I couldn't see my own target indicator too as it was almost the same shade of red as the floor...

As you point out, there are higher level and instanced encounters that would probably be more to my liking. It's a shame I didn't get that far to experience these.

Fair play to everyone that likes it, the game just never really grabbed me.
 
Taziir said:
During my admittedly few low level rift encounters, i got the feeling that all the participants might as well have been monkeys with laptops for all the cohesion or mutual interdependence that I've come to expect in a multiplayer game of this type.
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I think for the first few rits, that certainly is true because most people are knew to their class type, and discrete class roles are not properly established so your healers can nuke and your tanks can deal damage etc. Once you get your head around the chaos it makes allot more sense. Certainly, i played a cleric but for levels 1 - 18 i mostly did channeled DoT spells on mobs with a couple of heals. It was only after I reached sanctum and learned about roles i started speccing as a proper healer.

Roles are awesome. They allow you to on the fly change to better suit your situation. My first role primary Sentinel, the DoT, light healer, good for soloing. My second role being a pure healer, heal over time Warden great for groups and raiding.

When you walk into a rift or wandering mob group, if there are any other players near by you can click 'join public group' at the top of the screen, which establishes a raid party. From there, you can see health bars, etc. On the right hand side bellow the mini-map is a bar where you can see how much you are 'contributing' to the fight. The more you contribute the more loot you get.
 
spengos said:
A question for those posting about the Alpha. What is the Alpha? :)

I thought Alpha testing came before Beta testing. So surely Alpha should have finished by now. Is it old or new code you're playing? I'll understand if you can't tell me, but was just interested to know what it was. :p
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The beta events are little more than a publicity stunt, much of the real testing has been taking place in alpha, which is running inbetween and during the betas. We have had access to the whole game (just about) for quite a while (I have a level 50) We get patches earlier as well to test them before they go to beta.

The reason the 'beta' is so smooth is because there is a whole other beta (called alpha) doing all the real testing so that the betas are already polished, so that everyone goes 'oh wow these are so polished' some of the stuff we have had in alpha has been no where near the same quality.
 
Oizu said:
The beta events are little more than a publicity stunt, much of the real testing has been taking place in alpha, which is running inbetween and during the betas. We have had access to the whole game (just about) for quite a while (I have a level 50) We get patches earlier as well to test them before they go to beta.

The reason the 'beta' is so smooth is because there is a whole other beta (called alpha) doing all the real testing so that the betas are already polished, so that everyone goes 'oh wow these are so polished' some of the stuff we have had in alpha has been no where near the same quality.
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Of course the real testing has been done prior, and along side the 'beta'.

Beta's these days are not about testing, they're not actually beta's either, just pre-release hype machines to get people talking about & wanting the game.

To say that the beta's a 'publicity stunt' is a bit silly, that's a very good thing, marketing is crucial to mmorpg's, if the customer base isn't there at the start, games die on their behinds.

It's worked on me. I hadn't heard of Rift until this thread. I downloaded it saturday morning and spent a good few hours messing about until the 'beta' closed. I'll be doing the same for the next one, and then deciding whether to buy or not.
 
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