Rift MMO

[Tharp Daddy]

So, like people had said this game did not "click" until i did one of the massive Rifts. I found the puny 3 stage rifts to be quite boring, but when a region-wide invasion happened, along with 7 stage rifts everything really came together. I love this game.

[Lexcyn]

So far I'm level 17... can't wait to try out a mount. The one thing I absolutely HATE HATE HATE is let's say you are questing in a zone to kill X amount of mobs, then all of a sudden a rift appears or these random attacks come... mobs will spawn and completely overtake you and then you die (unless a group is there to fight the rift). But they can also take over the quest NPCs until you retake the area, which on the Shard I am playing on took ages. Literally I had to log out and back on about 4 hours later to complete a quest. I'm all for world events but when they start interfering with questing that is uber lame. They should have a zone specifically for rifts/invasions.

[Emn1ty]

So far I'm level 17... can't wait to try out a mount. The one thing I absolutely HATE HATE HATE is let's say you are questing in a zone to kill X amount of mobs, then all of a sudden a rift appears or these random attacks come... mobs will spawn and completely overtake you and then you die (unless a group is there to fight the rift). But they can also take over the quest NPCs until you retake the area, which on the Shard I am playing on took ages. Literally I had to log out and back on about 4 hours later to complete a quest. I'm all for world events but when they start interfering with questing that is uber lame. They should have a zone specifically for rifts/invasions.

It isn't too difficult to escape those mobs. So long as you aren't directly adjacent to a Rift you can usually get around or hide from the big guys. Still, so far my only complaint with the game has been my inability to keep the frame rate up with high graphics but I may eventually settle for just below ultra. The game is extremely fun and has me on the verge of purchasing a subscription. I would have done so already if my funds weren't tight as it is.

[treemonster]

i tried a rift blade tonight and at level 3 it's pretty cool. i can pew pew from range or i can charge in thanks to my champion soul.

pretty sure i'm going to buy this now.

[Tharp Daddy]

So far I'm level 17... can't wait to try out a mount. The one thing I absolutely HATE HATE HATE is let's say you are questing in a zone to kill X amount of mobs, then all of a sudden a rift appears or these random attacks come... mobs will spawn and completely overtake you and then you die (unless a group is there to fight the rift). But they can also take over the quest NPCs until you retake the area, which on the Shard I am playing on took ages. Literally I had to log out and back on about 4 hours later to complete a quest. I'm all for world events but when they start interfering with questing that is uber lame. They should have a zone specifically for rifts/invasions.

It can be a pain, but that's part of the danger of the game. I feel it really adds a sense of community knowing that the Rifts actually do add a danger to the world, and are not just a gimmick. If you play on a higher population server it should not be a problem.

It isn't too difficult to escape those mobs. So long as you aren't directly adjacent to a Rift you can usually get around or hide from the big guys. Still, so far my only complaint with the game has been my inability to keep the frame rate up with high graphics but I may eventually settle for just below ultra. The game is extremely fun and has me on the verge of purchasing a subscription. I would have done so already if my funds weren't tight as it is.

People on the beta forums are mentioning that it's having problems running even on high end systems, give it a bit and i imagine they will optimize it more.

So, i changed out the Shaman in my Shaman/Justicar/Druid spec into a Cabalist/Justicar/Druid, and DAMN i love Cabalist. The moves have great synergy, and i can do some insane AoE damage. We had a huge invasion on Freemarch today, 3 large death rifts opened next to each other and started overflowing into Knight's Stand (i think that's the name) and then sent groups to Elium, Kelari Refuge, and others. It was great, the raids were getting organized with different teams sent to take back towns, and others to kill the source. I gotta say, they pulled off the Rift system damn well.

[Lexcyn]

It isn't too difficult to escape those mobs. So long as you aren't directly adjacent to a Rift you can usually get around or hide from the big guys. Still, so far my only complaint with the game has been my inability to keep the frame rate up with high graphics but I may eventually settle for just below ultra. The game is extremely fun and has me on the verge of purchasing a subscription. I would have done so already if my funds weren't tight as it is.

Yeah the frame rates have been an issue for me too. I've found I have to live with no AA since as soon as it's enabled, my frames half themselves. Normally I can play on Ultra with 40-60FPS with vsync on... I have a feeling though as the Beta goes on, they will optimize the engine a bit more. I mean, I've heard of people with i7's and GTX 580s with 8GB of RAM to lag ... so yeah something is amiss.

[HawkMan]

I like the game the graphics are good.

I'm no 100% psyched abotu the art direction though, some of it is good, some of it is stupid.

and the animations are a real letdown, they're NCSoft quality animations here. the characters just doesn't feel like people, too stiff and to sudden. jumping, there's no... well they never actually jump they're just suddenly in the air, and when they land there's no "weight" to them. and simple stuff like turning in place, most games, will correctly move and rotate the feet, these guys just magically spin in place.

I just hate bad animations, but the game is fine outside of that and the semi class system is nice, though I did like the SWG system better, in some ways it game more freedom, but in some ways this gives more freedom to, so...

[Xilo]

So far I'm level 17... can't wait to try out a mount. The one thing I absolutely HATE HATE HATE is let's say you are questing in a zone to kill X amount of mobs, then all of a sudden a rift appears or these random attacks come... mobs will spawn and completely overtake you and then you die (unless a group is there to fight the rift). But they can also take over the quest NPCs until you retake the area, which on the Shard I am playing on took ages. Literally I had to log out and back on about 4 hours later to complete a quest. I'm all for world events but when they start interfering with questing that is uber lame. They should have a zone specifically for rifts/invasions.

I'm playing on Tearfall and there's never been a time when rifts and strongholds didn't have people at them. We successfully defeated 2 full invasions just yesterday.

[treemonster]

i'll copy pasta my early thoughts on teh game from another forum:

anyways i tested to about level 5 or so just to see a few basic things. played a pyromancer and then added a dominator soul because it said something about a cool refelctive shield(think disc priest shields)

the animations for pyro mancer weren't as bad as the all the other class videos i'd seen in combat. you get this tiny fireball for your hard cast spell and your first instant does this big flame thing on top of the mob and the aoe you get early on has this tiny kind ofhigh rez version of fire mage's breath of flames or w/e it's called.

graphics technically wise about on par with wow at mid-high settings. but nothing compred to wow at ultra which my pc runs easily. this is with rift maxed out. ui art kind reminds me of warhammer. not the worst ui i've seen, probably better than wow's default ui.

gameplay wasn't too bad for what i played. controls were responsive it wasn't too hard to adjust my rotations for new spells. nothing too fancy here, better than the average wow clone though imho(so far) my big caveats here is that i'd like to see better animations that stand out better beyond 1vsingle mob pve, and floating text that uses a bigger font size and mayb ea the colour red or something that stand out instead of blending in witht eh environment. i was watchign some other classes fight mobs and they were all pretty generic animations. the quests were basically classic wow quests, go here click this shiny thing, kill these 5 mobs, collect these 5 items. nothing new here. quest givers gave some tl;dr flavour text and then what you actually do for the quest.

i saw lot so of compalints about lag in 1-9 chat but i didn't notice any myself, except for the only mob that aggroed me spawned directly on top of me. running right next to red named mobs did not get me any aggro all other times though.

overall it's not bad at all so far. i've certainly played worse betas and even games after launch than this at this point of progression. i think tonight i am going to push forward to check out the rifts. the people else where who are commenting and testing the game didn't like it at all until they did a certain level of rift and then they were sold on buying it.

i forget wha tlevel my rift blade is now but i've warmed up to the animations.

riftblade is a little less rotation style and more situational skill usage than the pyro.

basically i pew pew at range(i think the spell is even called lance or something, maybe spear?) then use my riftblade charged dot thing then spam my champion dps skill at melee.

i have 2 hour long self buffs. one is som ekind of anti magic thing that refelcts spells at 5% chance or something and the other one gives me a chance to do extra damage on melee skills.

the damage numbers i'm pulling are increasing decently i suppose and unlike the pyro my kill speed seems to be increasing as i level a bit(not much).

so i did some more rifts today, low level ones and they're ok. these ones as pointed ou tby others get zerged down quickly. boss mob dies in like 5 seconds or less, i get maybe 2 pew pews off and they're dead. wish you could target them before they went invulnerable so you could max out dps in the short time they're up.

after maybe 4 rifts i started ignoring them since they were popping every 2-3 minutes or so in the general area i was questing in. and the mobs they were popping on top of i didn't need for my quests by that point.

i'd say defiant is a nice break from the usual evil/dark/ugly race of typical wow clones because they're not all that ugly and their early areas aren't the typical overly dark and black/grey/brown themed nyerk i'm used to for them.

i keep seeing these big shadows appear on the ground and when i look up there's nothing to cast them. it's really weird. idk.

i did play around with graphics settings and setting it to absolute max was laggy just turning my camera so i turned it down a bit. forget what settings i turned down, aa to 2x and something else to 76. shadows i kept on 1 because in wow those are the hardest eye candy on my pc that i don't notice 90% of the time anyway anymore.

i have to say the videos make the game look like nyerk, but actually playing it looks alot better. i'd say the environment is on par overall with wow cata's deepholme zone, which is really nice on the eyes to play in, especially in some key areas of the zone.

i'll say antother thing about animations though, i tried to watch some different classes fight like the hunter clones(gun+ pet) and they look really boring to watch them fight. except for the gun and pet sounds you can barely tell they're in combat. some mobs have better animations than others, some mobs are just downright nyerking ugly(in a not creepy way but an omg did your 5 year old make that model and skin? kinda way).

i'm still early in teh soul trees but basically it just seems too obvious what talents or w/e you want to call them to pick for both the main classes i've played. basically spend as many points on teh obvious choices at each level and spend your off points in your second soul. so far i haven't even bothered looking at my void soul because champion gives +3% str per point in the first level.

after the starter zone the world really starts to open up even if you end up doing alot of quest sin the same area right after you get out of that nyerk. unlike the starter area which i slike w inding hall made to appear outdoors, the next area is like a soccer field with a big rock thing in the middle and some water.

speaking of the water the swimming need some work. to swim up you actually have to look up and move or spam jump. worse than wow in vanilla at this point. not sure why people need to have swimming quests in these mmo's other than because they just have to have swimmable water because if they don't people will whine about invisible walls so you might as well put quests and mobs in that nyerk, but if you're going to do it you mightas well make swimming work half decently. oh well at least it doesn't have flying pvp combat bullnyerk right?

that's my thoughts so far tonight from teh second quest area and second toon.

[Nagisan]

I must say, I have been enjoying the hell out of this game lately. My friend and I decided to give it another try (we both played the very first closed beta event, and haven't touched it since). He went ranger/saboteur (can't remember his 3rd soul) and is loving the ranged damage and kite abilities (from the saboteur traps). I originally went bard/ranger (ranger for a tanking pet) and love the healing while attacking, but it just isn't much damage output. I instead went justicar/shaman/druid, apart from having like 6 1-hour long self-buffs that I have to recast if I die (luckily I can cast them while moving), I have much higher damage output than my bard, and similar.....actually, better, healing abilities (I heal my entire raid for about 16 each time I use an attack skill, as opposed to only about 8-10 every second as bard). Plus, I'm a melee class (which I typically enjoy more than casters), on top of all that, I have higher armor (though I am more likely to get hit, no pet tank), but my pet from the druid side can actually heal me as well.

So far, the only times I have died as this combination have been when I was trying to fight lvl 9-13 rifts with very few people around, in a large group though I never die and I actually heal the entire public raid group while I fight.

I need to re-do my talents (or whatever they are called in Rift), I have a few that have 1 or 2 points in them because I wasn't sure if I wanted them, then decided I didn't.

That being said, I'm having a blast with the rifts, you can jump in a public group, destroy a rift and gain half a level (or more) in like 4 minutes, then go on to the next rift and do the same.

Unfortunately, as much fun as I'm having with Rift, I will never play it after release unless it goes Free-to-play, or private servers pop up. It's ton's better than WoW IMHO (much better class choices and customization, and public groups for rifts are just awesome being in a huge 30 person fight out in the open that you can jump into or leave at any time), but I don't feel any games are worth a monthly subscription.

[fusi0n]

First MMO i actually like..

[Tharp Daddy]

People are mentioning the mediocre animations, and i agree. But one thing I've seen is that Trion is honestly attempting to fix the game for player's demands, they already changed a few sounds because people complained (made gun noises have more pop, etc), so I'm optimistic they will tweak the animations some.

Also, I've seen people talk about the slow run speed - but after looking at some tests people did on the Beta forums the conclusion has been made that we actually run at the same run speed as other MMOs. The thing that make it feel slow is the fact that our characters take longer strides (slower run animation), so while we move at the same speed at other games, it just feels slower. I'm pretty sure this game will not go the way of the Warhammer, or AoC. Both of those games, during beta, had people saying "it's not ready to release" or "fix this, it's broken", but this game is in a VERY playable state. There is content all the way to max, and even end game content. So while others have released and had to work on fixing what was not working, Trion can immediately get to work on new content/features.

[HawkMan]

graphics technically wise about on par with wow at mid-high settings. but nothing compred to wow at ultra which my pc runs easily. this is with rift maxed out. ui art kind reminds me of warhammer. not the worst ui i've seen, probably better than wow's default ui.

o_O

where you running the game at the lowest possible settings ?

I run WoW at ultra and this game at Ultra, and WoW doesn't compare on ANY level

[ylcard]

Is there any latency issue to any of you ? I have 4k-30k latency every time I try to login, I haven't played the game at all ><

I tried opening the ports mentioned on their forums but it didn't do anything.

[Xilo]

Is there any latency issue to any of you ? I have 4k-30k latency every time I try to login, I haven't played the game at all ><

I tried opening the ports mentioned on their forums but it didn't do anything.

The only lag I had was the first day with Rifts. They seem to have cleared it up though.

[treemonster]

o_O

where you running the game at the lowest possible settings ?

I run WoW at ultra and this game at Ultra, and WoW doesn't compare on ANY level

what kinda of computer do you have that you get smooth settings on ultra full aa?

let's see wow has in game:

sunshafts

reflective water

shiny textures

just the first two things that stand out rift doesn't have in game.

the textures are about on par in terms of resolution.

number of polys seems to be about on par barring vanilla wow races that haven't gotten model updates in 6 years when naked.

the difference between them by and large is art direction alone. and i'm not talking about that.

on the basis of art direction alone yes i think rift looks better overall so far.

oh and ofc the few decent spell animations i've seen in rift are high resolution vs wow's relatively low resolution spell effects.

btw i'm going to try and turn up some other settings again and maybe lower aa down to 1x or w/e it's called but people with i7 950s and 580s are saying the game is unplayable totally maxed out at 1080p, which i tried last night myself on a my i7 920/ 480 and have to agree with. seems the game doesn't handle aa well.= from what i'm hearing.

Is there any latency issue to any of you ? I have 4k-30k latency every time I try to login, I haven't played the game at all ><

I tried opening the ports mentioned on their forums but it didn't do anything.

people were complaining about lag early in this beta, but after a few hours and a small patch everyone said it was fixed. i had no lag at any time myself.

[Xilo]

oh and ofc the few decent spell animations i've seen in rift are high resolution vs wow's relatively low resolution spell effects.

btw i'm going to try and turn up some other settings again and maybe lower aa down to 1x or w/e it's called but people with i7 950s and 580s are saying the game is unplayable totally maxed out at 1080p, which i tried last night myself on a my i7 920/ 480 and have to agree with. seems the game doesn't handle aa well.= from what i'm hearing.

You do realize this game is still in Beta?

[Joseph B]

Reminds me way too much of Warhammer Online. I won't be touching this with a 50 foot pole.

FF4.0 has forever scarred me, from MMOs in general.

[HawkMan]

what kinda of computer do you have that you get smooth settings on ultra full aa?

let's see wow has in game:

sunshafts

reflective water

shiny textures

It does have Shiny textures, but not fake and overused. and it's called specularity. reflective water, I don't know, but the water I have seen does look a lot more realistic than the fake WoW water anyway. Sun shafts (god rays) I dunno. they're kind of stupid anyway since they would only exist in a modern smog filled town, not everywhere as in WoW.

I can't check anyway as I'm not home.

but I have a nice new Phenom II X6 T1090, and a 5870. and I run at ultra just fine with edge AA.

[Nagisan]

It does have Shiny textures, but not fake and overused. and it's called specularity. reflective water, I don't know, but the water I have seen does look a lot more realistic than the fake WoW water anyway. Sun shafts (god rays) I dunno. they're kind of stupid anyway since they would only exist in a modern smog filled town, not everywhere as in WoW.

I can't check anyway as I'm not home.

but I have a nice new Phenom II X6 T1090, and a 5870. and I run at ultra just fine with edge AA.

What resolution though? I run at 1920x1200 with a 4890 and an i7 overclocked to 3.7Ghz, and I had to turn shadows virtually off, and lighting almost down to nothing just to get over 30 FPS during rifts.

That being said, the main concept behind Rift (the rifts) alone make it more fun than any other MMO I have played. You can just jump in huge battles with random people against NPCs without having to plan and pre-determine everything, and the visuals are awesome. The rifts are IMO very well done in terms of overall look. Every time I see one it becomes the focus of my attention before I get into battle in it. The particle effects and ground textures are just very well done.

That being said, I agree in saying that WoW doesn't even compare to Rift. They use two completely different art styles, it's like comparing TF2 to CoD. Both are great looking games, neither one looks better than the other due to different styles of rendering, it's all personal preference.

WoW may use good/new/advanced lighting/shadows and other graphical techniques, but it doesn't mean it's on par with another game that doesn't (or uses them but not as obviously). Rift is too different from WoW to compare the graphics, Rift IMHO has much higher poly models and much higher quality textures though, WoW's art style lets it get away with less without being obvious.

If you think WoW compares to Rift beyond art direction, then you obviously have not played Rift on it's highest settings, there's simply no comparison.

[treemonster]

i actually turned everything up to max except aa and it runs fine at 2x aa at 1080p now. fps wise at least.

i had to turn down shadows after because they caused flickering in text.

i notice some graphical anomolies like shadows flickering in certain areas and short cut offs for some stuff like certain shadows.

look i'm not saying it doesn't look great for an mmo, it does. but technically speaking, which isn't art, imho it definitely beats wow. art wise though i think it beats wow for sure.

idk people say aion looks better than rift and i think aion is ugly as **** for several reasons not the least of which is low rez textures all over the environment in aion.

maybe i'll try updating to latest drivers to see if the flickering and other anomalies go away tomorrow.

gives my graphics card a good work out. like 98% constnat usage with not many spikes or valleys on the graph. hitting 81c at 61% fan speed. checked that stuff because of the flickering to make sure it wasn't my card overheating or anything. well within tolerances.

[Tharp Daddy]

Reminds me way too much of Warhammer Online. I won't be touching this with a 50 foot pole.

FF4.0 has forever scarred me, from MMOs in general.

What exactly in Rift makes it like Warhammer? It's not fair to judge a game because you think it's like another game, when you have yet to play it. I'm not looking forward to this beta ending, Feb. 24th can't come soon enough!

[treemonster]

the only part of rift that reminds me of warhammer besides the almost copypasta'ed targetting circle thing is the public quests idea and rift does this really well imho.

unliek war's PQ's that no one touched past the first couple days these are pretty random and pop up right on top of your normal questing area and hubs so you don't have to go out of your way to do it. unlike war's they don't gives rewards of basically nothing and rep for a vendor that gives gear you'll replace in your first fort run(at launch).

instead you get some special currency(think justice points in wow) and some loot bag things that give random items that ar elike pots or artifact things(you collect thes ein sets then turn them in for rewards).

i did a half hour or so of back to back invasions at one spot tonight and got a level out of it a full inventory to vendor, and some decent gear upgrades. there was a bout 20-30 people there by half way through.

[G_0]

I don't have many real life friends who play and I absolutely love Neowin. So for anyone that doesn't have a key, there should be 23 activations left on this key:

JDMC-WNKY-9QXP-TEK7-YXGM

Please don't share it outside of Neowin and when it's gone it's gone.

I've had a lot of fun playing this game and it reminded me of when I got WoW for the first time and experienced it. I'm having a ton of fun so please join in. Key is for the remaining Beta's.

Cheers!

edit: aww no birthday sparkles =(

[Nagisan]

Hmmmm, earlier I posted about liking Justicar/Shaman/Druid better than Bard/Ranger/<insert other random class>.....I found out I was dead wrong. I respecced my bard, changed my talents slightly, and got saboteur as my third soul (for the 15% dex increase talent), and I am doing as much damage as my justicar while being 4-5 levels lower. On top of that, my healing has shot through the roof (I have a motif which heals, plus my primary attack heals for my output damage, which is 20 damage 3 times in 2 seconds, total of 30 damage AND healing per second), then my finisher is hitting for over 100, harder than my justicars skills hit period, plus it's all ranged and cannot be blocked, dodged or parried (I can still miss with it though).

Kinda odd, I started with bard, didn't like it due to low damage (compared to my friends ranger at the time), changed class, liked it because if its damage, then changed back to bard and found it to have higher damage......

I really wish this game wasn't P2P, I love the game so far, but I will never pay a subscription to play any online game. I honestly hope the game does bad enough that they convert it to F2P with a microtransaction store, but from what I've seen, it won't do that bad...