Rift MMO

[HawkMan]

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.

1920x1080, I even run windowed full screen which has a bit of a performanc ehit over regular full screen (dual monitors), and shadows are on. no problem at ultra

[Nagisan]

1920x1080, I even run windowed full screen which has a bit of a performanc ehit over regular full screen (dual monitors), and shadows are on. no problem at ultra

I too run Windowed full screen mode with dual monitors, I didn't think the 5870 was that much of an increase over the 4890 that it would go from my performance to your performance levels despite you having the settings turned much higher...

[HawkMan]

I dunno. I didn't expect it to do as well as it did but figured I'd try, and it runs awesome. dissapointing to play on my laptops 9800GT in comparison, but it runs fairly good on high there too, drops a bit in high population and rifts though, but still playable, though I did turn character shadows back on while I was in the starting area, so I should probably drop that one back off. at least it handles the high res textures just fine.

[treemonster]

i had to turn the shadows to low due to flickering text but i like how the textures look 3dish from a distance(such as rocky hill textures) even though when you get up close they're flat.

i've had no problems with performance during rifts or invasions, but i haven't done pvp yet or what i would really considered a crowded area(i think most people i've seen in one spot is 30-50 so far)

i'm thinking of putting this on my ssd to see if the couple load screens i've seen wo8uld go faster, but i'm not sure it worth the time and hassle.

[(Spork)]

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.

sorry just don't see it what in this game reminds you of warhammer ?

i have to say this game runs perfect on my laptop with ultra settings

for being beta its pretty damn good

[treemonster]

if anyone is looking for a guild to play rift with a couple friends and i are forming a small guild for rift that will be rolling on a server with some guilds/people we know from our aion fansite.

we're still in the early stages of discussion and planning, but i can tell you we will be rolling on a pvp server and the general atmosphere of the guild will be casual and adult language in voice chat(not like sailors talking but...).

if you're interested or not sure what you're doing or simply looking for people to hang out with in voice chat during beta, let me know via PM.

[Tharp Daddy]

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...

Honestly, if you think about it for $15 a month you get much more replayability, and (opinion) entertainment then you would any other form of entertainment. Movies are easily $20, games are $60 and offer ~20 hours usually, but MMOs are only $15 a month and as much entertainment as you want.

if anyone is looking for a guild to play rift with a couple friends and i are forming a small guild for rift that will be rolling on a server with some guilds/people we know from our aion fansite.

we're still in the early stages of discussion and planning, but i can tell you we will be rolling on a pvp server and the general atmosphere of the guild will be casual and adult language in voice chat(not like sailors talking but...).

if you're interested or not sure what you're doing or simply looking for people to hang out with in voice chat during beta, let me know via PM.

Aye, to second that our guild United Chaos is Defiant side on Belmont. We are going to be a more casual raiding guild, with PvP on the side. 18+ only.

[Tharp Daddy]

Hate to double post, but i missed my edit timeout.

Some screenshots to present..

The Defiant leader and I

Absolutely huge invasion earlier, here's one of the bosses we had to take down (he had 175k health, it was absolute chaos)

And here is the invasion map from said invasion

[Nagisan]

Honestly, if you think about it for $15 a month you get much more replayability, and (opinion) entertainment then you would any other form of entertainment. Movies are easily $20, games are $60 and offer ~20 hours usually, but MMOs are only $15 a month and as much entertainment as you want.

I understand that, but I don't like the feeling of being forced to play, when you pay for a subscription, you either pay and play the game, or your pay and don't play. Obivously if you want to get your monies worth, you must play it however much you value $15 worth of entertainment each month or you lose money that could have went towards something else. For example, let's take TF2, I play it at most a few hours a week, sometimes I go weeks without playing, sometimes I play a few hours a day for a week straight. Granted it's a different style of game, but my play style stays the same for almost every game out there. I played Guild Wars for hours a day for the first few months I got it, then that play time quickly died down, to the point I quit over 2 years ago. A few months ago, my friend and I decided to install it and have some fun, we did so for about a month, and now neither of us have played it since.

The problem I have with games, is once I get through the story, they lose a large amount of value to me, even most RPGs, despite the fun of trying out different things I just get bored once I get through the story (I either get bored and quit before I finish a game, or get bored once I have finished a game). That being said, if I was to buy Rift and pay a subscription, it would last maybe 2 months before I got bored (unless they continued adding content constantly), and I would want to cancel my subscription. I just don't think the cost of the game plus a few months worth of subscription fees are worth the overall entertainment value I get out of it.

Long-term, it would lead to me either wanting to play only a few hours a week (or month even) while still spending $15 a month, or simply quitting all together. Canceling and restarting a subscription, while likely easy to do, is just too much of a hassle for me to bother with. I would much rather buy the game, then play it when I want to and don't play it when I don't want to without feeling like I am losing money.

Ruran - Your screenshots remind me of a few days ago when my friend (who I was on Skype with at the time), said "Wow, major invasion starting up"....I asked him "Where are the rifts at? (without looking at the map myself)", to which he promptly responded "Rifts are f&%^ing everywhere man".

That's what I like so much about this game, just the sheer number of enemies that can randomly appear and attack. It's pretty annoying when questing, but it's fun to be able to jump in a group of random people and join together on a moments notice to take out an invasion.

[Emn1ty]

The problem with a subcription based game is that the value of your time is limted and it fluctuates depending on how much time you put into your subscription's worth. It is like the difference between a Year pass at Disneyland and two day park hopper ticket. Sure, you don't have to pay for the ticket every other day but if you do you feel obligated to go both days for as long as possible to get your $90+ worth of entertainment. But, if you shell out for the $300+ yearly Premium pass with minimal black out dates you can go whenever and whenever you want and the value of that ticket per-day can only shrink for the year. You go two days, its $150, five days it becomes $60 per day, 30 days it becomes $10 a day and so on and so forth.

While a game may be $60 to buy without a subcription, if it is a game which has an active community of players in the online world it will quickly be worth the money in a couple months and be far less of an investment than an MMO game.

Subscriptions serve a different purpose, however. They aren't there to offer a cheaper month of interest but to continually supply the game with a steady income that allows for the developers to fund and pay for constant improvement. It almost makes them obligated to do so (although even free MMO's without any real cash shops still tend to do this fairly well). But even now, despite subscriptions the bigger MMO's expect you to shell out $40 for every major expansion (here's looking at you WoW) and honestly I feel that this is overboard. EVE barely has 300K subscribers and yet their company seems well funded enough to release massive expansions every 7-8 months. I'm pretty certain that Blizzard has accumulated enough subcriptions within their game to do the same. Although you could easily argue the price tag is merely for the Blizzard name premium but I doubt anyone truly feels that is acceptable.

Anyways, this is a tangent for another time and another thread. That being said, in terms of paying for this game I would easily argue that this is slowly stealing my appeal for Guild Wars 2 in terms of my search for a worthy P2P MMO experience. Not only is the game extremely fun, have unique features and a unique approach to open world events but the game is very refined.

[Tharp Daddy]

Good god, it seems Trion added guards who have no underwear, and made them.. anatomically correct.

Here's the thread on it (NSFW?)

"Pantyless guards Shame on you Trion."

[treemonster]

yeah i read about that yesterday. hilarious.

one guy on the aion fansite commented that most of the players seeing the screenshot would not know what it was because it would be the first time seeing one of those. :laugh:

[Prosidius]

Tried this game but for some reason the size of the text and the font style make my eyes want to bleed, it's horrible. Otherwise it's decent.

[HawkMan]

Good god, it seems Trion added guards who have no underwear, and made them.. anatomically correct.

Here's the thread on it (NSFW?)

"Pantyless guards Shame on you Trion."

pretty sure they actually have it, just hard to tell from the blue skin color that matches the underwear color. the "crack" I believe comes from an unfortunate event we 3D modelers would refer to as unwelded vertices.

anyway the animations seem to have slightly improved or the females have better animations than the males. didn't get to test much from the short test cycle, and in case I end up buying it, I want to save the game until then.

it does have some very nice particle and spell effects though.

[Nagisan]

How do you guys feel Rift stands up to other MMOs? I have played WoW, LOTRO (free), Runes of Magic, and many others.

In short, I feel Rift is better than them all. It has much better class customization and choices than all of them (even more-so than RoM), and it has large fun events constantly (it's like WoW raids without the need to get 20 friends who can work together).

LOTRO was disappointing though after playing Rift, the core game doesn't seem that bad, but the combat feels unnaturally slow. Not that it takes too long to kill something, you just hit a skill and it takes forever to activate (it seems like attack skills happen on your next attack instead of how every other MMO works, where they are instant). Sure it may help preserve the story-driven gameplay for LOTRO (in that your character can use all their skills in a moments notice), but it just makes it feel really sluggish and crappy.

I really wish Rift had some for of free-to-play when it is released. The game is great and I would definitely buy it, but the subscription part drives me away.

[Tharp Daddy]

How do you guys feel Rift stands up to other MMOs? I have played WoW, LOTRO (free), Runes of Magic, and many others.

In short, I feel Rift is better than them all. It has much better class customization and choices than all of them (even more-so than RoM), and it has large fun events constantly (it's like WoW raids without the need to get 20 friends who can work together).

LOTRO was disappointing though after playing Rift, the core game doesn't seem that bad, but the combat feels unnaturally slow. Not that it takes too long to kill something, you just hit a skill and it takes forever to activate (it seems like attack skills happen on your next attack instead of how every other MMO works, where they are instant). Sure it may help preserve the story-driven gameplay for LOTRO (in that your character can use all their skills in a moments notice), but it just makes it feel really sluggish and crappy.

I really wish Rift had some for of free-to-play when it is released. The game is great and I would definitely buy it, but the subscription part drives me away.

Well, it drove me (a 5 year player of WoW) to cancel my WoW subscription and pre-order Rift. I feel it holds up QUITE well. There are a few things that need improvements (animations), but the developers are very responsive to the community and i am confident they will fix any prominent issues. The combat is smooth, the Rifts are a blast and are VERY dynamic and have the opportunity to be expanded upon, i love the lore, all in all it's a solid game. It's by no means an innovative game in the genre, but not all games need to always innovate. I'm just glad there is a game out there that has the "Blizzard Polish" and can offer a contendor to the game on all fronts, PvE, PvP, etc. I never enjoyed Lotro, i found the graphics to be bland, i hated the UI, and the combat felt sluggish to me.

I hope they include a ton of engine optimization in the next beta's patch notes, i find it vexing i can run Just Cause 2 at ultra settings and pull 40+ fps, but this game in Ultra brings me down to 15-25 fps average.

[Nagisan]

I never enjoyed Lotro, i found the graphics to be bland, i hated the UI, and the combat felt sluggish to me.

I thought LOTRO had better graphics than Rift in general, better lighting and shadows at the very least. But yes, the UI was tiny (luckily both text size and UI size could be increased) and as you and I both mentioned, the combat did feel sluggish.

I hope they include a ton of engine optimization in the next beta's patch notes, i find it vexing i can run Just Cause 2 at ultra settings and pull 40+ fps, but this game in Ultra brings me down to 15-25 fps average.

I feel the same, even with lighting and shadows disabled/on the lowest settings, action in rifts bring my FPS down to around 30-40 at best, which is still quite laggy/annoying.

When is the next Beta anyway? Someone during the last beta says it starts tomorrow, but we haven't heard anything official yet so I doubt that.

Can't wait for the next beta though, going to try out a combination of Nightblade/Riftstalker/bladedancer so I can have a melee DPS-style class I want that pulls its damage from Nightblade (the way I plan to run it, it should take basically 3 attacks to get full combo points, and the attack cycle uses 2 ranged skills that build 3 points and snares the target, then a melee range skill that builds another 2, for 120 energy, then a cheap/free finisher that hits hard, then Riftstalker skills for survivability). Basically just looking over the skill layouts, I'll have mobility, ranged/melee damage, and survivability (both damage reduction and actual healing when an enemy dies).

So far the best thing about Rift has been it's class system and how open you are to play how you want. There may be optimized talents to get for max damage or whatever, but if you just want to have fun and focus on PvE or PvP, you can do so. I think I have had more fun figuring out what is effective in Rift than I have had actually questing and doing Rifts.....

[treemonster]

How do you guys feel Rift stands up to other MMOs? I have played WoW, LOTRO (free), Runes of Magic, and many others.

In short, I feel Rift is better than them all. It has much better class customization and choices than all of them (even more-so than RoM), and it has large fun events constantly (it's like WoW raids without the need to get 20 friends who can work together).

LOTRO was disappointing though after playing Rift, the core game doesn't seem that bad, but the combat feels unnaturally slow. Not that it takes too long to kill something, you just hit a skill and it takes forever to activate (it seems like attack skills happen on your next attack instead of how every other MMO works, where they are instant). Sure it may help preserve the story-driven gameplay for LOTRO (in that your character can use all their skills in a moments notice), but it just makes it feel really sluggish and crappy.

I really wish Rift had some for of free-to-play when it is released. The game is great and I would definitely buy it, but the subscription part drives me away.

it's basically a wow clone that takes some ideas from other wow clones and executes them pretty damn decently from what i've seen so far.

i thought lotro was just awful. wow art without the great combat even at early levels.

for me the biggest things that can be improved in rift is performance and an add on LUA API added for different things that is about on par with wow's LUA API for being useful without being OP.

the default ui is pretty damn good, but it can always be better.

Well, it drove me (a 5 year player of WoW) to cancel my WoW subscription and pre-order Rift. I feel it holds up QUITE well. There are a few things that need improvements (animations), but the developers are very responsive to the community and i am confident they will fix any prominent issues. The combat is smooth, the Rifts are a blast and are VERY dynamic and have the opportunity to be expanded upon, i love the lore, all in all it's a solid game. It's by no means an innovative game in the genre, but not all games need to always innovate. I'm just glad there is a game out there that has the "Blizzard Polish" and can offer a contendor to the game on all fronts, PvE, PvP, etc. I never enjoyed Lotro, i found the graphics to be bland, i hated the UI, and the combat felt sluggish to me.

I hope they include a ton of engine optimization in the next beta's patch notes, i find it vexing i can run Just Cause 2 at ultra settings and pull 40+ fps, but this game in Ultra brings me down to 15-25 fps average.

+1

i pretty much agree.

the forums were hilarious this morning and the fanboys went all out trolling everyone with a different opinion or actual feedback or suggestions for a few hours. returned to sanity a couple hours after the kitten spam threads though.

[HawkMan]

You can never compare a regular game to an MMO. a regular game has most enemies using the same models and textures. and MMO has possibly hundreds of players visible with different models and textures.

[treemonster]

You can never compare a regular game to an MMO. a regular game has most enemies using the same models and textures. and MMO has possibly hundreds of players visible with different models and textures.

i personally am comparing it to other mmo's like usual and seeing people's feedback in regards to performance. since i generally spend most of my gaming time on mmo's... :whistle:

unless the people with c2q/gts 250s are lying it doesn't scale worth **** on higher end hardware on the same settings. BUT other people with similar hardware to mine have said every beta has seen good performance increases. as well i have a few tweaks to settings to try in the next beta.

[HawkMan]

I was replying to th eguy comparing to Just Cause 2.

And I wouldn't know, I play it on my desktop at ultra with edge smoothing, and on my gamign laptop with a 9800GT at high with some slowdown. seems a bout normal for scaling.

[treemonster]

i thought it was pretty smooth and good fps until mumble overlay started working after the patch on friday and it showed 36 fps tops after "tricking" it into that.

anyways misdirected reply - yes i have spent all day on rift forums...

[Beyond Godlike]

as much research ive done on this, i cant see this game lasting long. People are tired of fail-mmo's dying and this wont even be given a chance by most ppl who are in the MMO market since its just a wow wannabe

[HawkMan]

it is ? how ?

it plays different, lot more customization, nicer graphics, skill trees not locked classes. and son on. and not nearly as much hand holding.

moreover, people seem to think that an MMO needs 10 Million subscribers to succeed or survive, yet, there are a LOT of MMO's surviving and succeeding with 200-500k subscribers.

yes, this game probably won't get 10 million, but I's going to do more than well enough.

[Tharp Daddy]

as much research ive done on this, i cant see this game lasting long. People are tired of fail-mmo's dying and this wont even be given a chance by most ppl who are in the MMO market since its just a wow wannabe

Happen to know why all those other games failed? Because they were released broken and incomplete. Look at AoC, War, etc. Rift is a polished, and complete game. It has content from level 1 through end game, including 2 raids ready to go off the bat. This game will launch and immediatly begin working on new content because they are getting all the fixing (what little there needs to be) done during beta.

Also, WoW clone? That's like saying that Battlefield can never do well because Call of Duty has been released, and the differences between Rift and WoW are about as large as those between CoD and battlefield, you get to choose which flavor of game you want to play. There is more than enough room in grenres for two good games. It's not always going to be WoW alone on top with a host of smaller games below.

When is the next Beta anyway? Someone during the last beta says it starts tomorrow, but we haven't heard anything official yet so I doubt that.

It begins this Friday.