My first two weeks in Rift

Whitefall is full.

Well apart from that which has already had more than enough time being talked about how is my gaming in Rift going? Overall I'm still enjoying it, yes it's only two weeks but I'm finding enough to do, especially the achievements and collections which keep me occupied far more than it probably should do (much to the detriment of my level). I'll give it it's due though, I've found only a handful of bugs which I've reported and it does play very smooth.

I've done a fair chunk of warfronts (hard to stop when your faction is on a winning roll) as well as a whole one dungeon (I'm potentially one of the most introverted MMO players in the history of ever) which I tanked with no problems. Deepstrike Mines was quite fun as well, a nice level of time needed without it taking forever. Think it was maybe 30 minutes or so even though we were on the high end of the level requirements for it. It was completely pugged and everyone was very polite. Grimnir did a good post about it just now http://grimnir.mmofansites.com/posts/1949-mining-for-alien-gem-boss-things which pretty much sums up the same thing, only without wipes or anyone dying (we just nuked the unliving shit out of everything as I aoe tanked)

Which brings me onto something else. I've noticed that the community does seem very pleasant, helping out and offering advice when folks ask. Admittedly some people always give the sarcastic response or the rant in chat but certainly it seems less frequent than expected. Thumbs up!

The events which happen in zones were fun as well but they do get a bit repetitive after a while and I've only been to two zones, it's basically the same thing, kill xx invasions, close yy rifts and zerg a boss forgetting about tactics. On top of that it's very easy to get high contribution simply by spamming one button over and over. I've seen clerics just spam a 1.5 second heal on me over and over again despite taking no damage for the simple fact that if you don't do anything then contribution drops, fastest way is to simply spam one key... Disappointing I have to admit but I suppose everyone can do the same.

Looking at the quests there was a time in my mid 20's (level wise) where most quests were basically "kill xx mobs" which was a disappointment as there was some brilliant quests which kept me reading the text, I'm not sure if this is Defiant mainly but there does seem to be a high proportion of kill quests, maybe the fact that you get decent xp for killing mobs makes it not seem as bad and the xp noticeably moves makes it less troublesome for most but I'd like to see more variety.

Overall though the game is still holding my attention well and I'm fairly enjoying it, if I had more time to mess around in game I'd be trying out more specs though. I'm not rushing ahead (I can't.. I'm still 87th in the queue at 9pm after already being here 30 minutes) so I fully expect that by the time I'm even starting to look at level 50 content more stuff will be out.

Rifts dynamic events... Not so dynamic?

I recently rolled a new character on a shard that doesn't involve multi hour queues to actually get some play time in. I have to admit, having quests and mobs to myself is quite appealing and there's not been a single bit of bad mouthing on the region chat and people have been very nice and helpful. It's also weird being the first to complete a soul quest 4 days after the server went live but never the less I'm actually getting through the levels quicker than I was on a busier server.

All of last night while I was on I didn't see a single event happen which I figured was fair as there wasn't many on the server however about 30 minutes before the servers went down for the release of live an event started. Now what I noticed to start with compared to my previous server was that only one or two invasions got taken down before the first wardstone was destroyed. I actually took a second look as I went solo against a minor rift and noticed that the victory conditions were exactly the same for part one on a server with very low population as they were on a server that's reached capacity.

I thought that the actual events were dynamic in that they adjusted themselves to the number and level of players but apparently it doesn't seem to be that way. I did a quick /who freemarch and this was the result (keep in mind that as far as I know there's no /anon)....

Really not enough players on to combat an invasion and we didn't, the server took down two or three invasions and a rift before the event failed. Now while I'm not overly bothered it does give me subtle hints that the events aren't as dynamic as believed. Whether they're also on a timer for spawning rather than pure population in areas I'm not sure but there certainly wasn't enough folk in the zone to successfully run the event since it's the same one that 10x the number of folks have to do on a busy server. It's interesting to see though just how events will occur when the population starts maturing on the server to the stage that there's little to no new players running through the early zones.

Rifts biggest flaw right now

And while it may not be a game breaker it's certainly impacting the level of enjoyment of the game...

Server Queues

I had this discussion on twitter a couple of days back but I fail to understand why Trion aren't cloning the busiest servers thus giving the players and guilds who are now established a choice of server (Whitefull) to play on without a huge upheaval process. For example right now the guild I'm in (and have been in since early days of Warhammer) is sitting multiple high 40's that will ding 50 today and many folks now 20 and above. That is a lot of time and effort especially for people like myself that aren't very grindy players (I have played three days and got to 22 due to my habit of running off and doing rifts, events and just exploring). I've seen Freemarch countless times already from beta and I am not sure I can face seeing it all over again, trying to collect artifacts and complete achievements.

Now I know getting to 22 isn't the hardest but I'm also tied in with the guild who are loathe to move now we have a high level core that will be jumping into the experts very shortly and as each day passes the chance of the guild rerolling lessens.

I don't understand why Trion don't just clone say Whitefall and let the players make the choice. The newest server that opened remained on low population all day for EN PVP for the reason that people don't want to reroll. I know people that are now onto the third server. Opening empty servers doesn't solve the queue problem if guilds/players have established themselves. Giving players a choice of server with the same characters and guilds on would do more to lessen the queues than anything else.

Sorry stun locks, we should just be friends now...

It's not you, it's me... I just don't think I'm compatible with you anymore. I understand that you appeal to some people with your ability to nullify skill by turning a player into basically an AFK kill but that attitude means you'll never have a place in my heart when you don't realise that you are potentially the worst PvP mechanic to ever feature in a game where you get player against player combat...

/breakup

Seriously though, as I've gotten up the levels in Rift (still no higher than 20 though, I don't want to ruin too much) I have had the misfortune of coming up against more and more stun lock classes. I honestly thought I'd given this shit up in WoW. Does ANYONE apart from the guy doing it at that moment actually enjoy this mechanic and feel it presents a decent form of play? How about take some of the big FPS games like Call of Duty or Quake and see how much players would react to a gun that if it hits you once in the back you can't do anything for 4-6 seconds.. Would it be fun? Fuck no. So why do MMO developers constantly feel the need to add what's known as stun locks into a game? It shows no sense of skill to perform since it requires basic memory to remember the combination to press and if they fuck it up then 9 times out of 10 the stunlock class has a form of quick get away so you can't even teach the little bastard a lesson since they run away depriving you of achievement you got in avoiding his combo-cooldownpop-stunlocks only for him to wait until everything is off cooldown and do the same shit again to you or someone else.

For the love of sanity though, get rid of this shit and stop taking the game out of players hands, let them fight and defend with skill rather than locking a player out.

(Yes I am bitter, yes I am getting more and more pissed off with this in MMO's and in Rift and yes I will be looking at this PvP soul more now...)

Keeping my feet on the ground for Rift

It's no surprise I'm waiting on Rift being launched however I'm waiting for it with a sense of caution. Not that it's a bad game, I'm sure it will do well but I'm not getting carried away in the hype that's being carried by the players and media. I'm keeping both feet firmly on the ground and even though I'm pre ordered the game, I'm not expecting miracles, I'm not expecting the most fabulous MMO since Sliced Bread Online but what I will do is play it under my own terms. I feel sorry for Trion in some regards, the MMO community have now managed to hype the game up without much poking from Trion themselves and yet should it not turn out to be what the community thinks who will get lambasted for it? Not the players.

I'm already reading and hearing about folks in the guild looking for world firsts (not even server firsts) and I'm sitting here thinking "Y'know.. How about playing the game first?". Obviously my main concern is that I fully intend to take my time and not rush the game but with the risk I'll be left way behind and abandoned for any raids (meh). Added to that I'm very much aware that if people are intending to burn through to level 50 within a couple of weeks or so and then gear up for raids and burn through them could we see people having run through most of the game within the first two months or so? If people have will Trion be able to react to make sure there's content for players or can they slow down progression for the people racing ahead?

Ach, going off on a bit of a tangent there but even though I limited myself to level 20 in beta (I don't want to ruin the game completely) and purposely didn't read the quests so I could enjoy the storyline when I play for real I still found myself sitting a few times going "Meh...." and logging out because there wasn't a whole lot there other than a standard grind to 50. Now this will change when it's live but there's a few things that niggle me about Rift that I can't quite put my finger on. So far we've seen from alpha patch notes that have been leaked that Trion are quick to react and make changes but as I've said in the past this is all fine in a beta development phase, wait until live and it's a whole different kettle of fish (where the hell does that saying come from anyway..seriously.. fish.. kettle... wtf). We also have to keep in mind that as a game matures in time people find more and more potent and the easiest ways forward, see the optimum raid setups in WoW or the bomb squads in WAR, once these things are found the developers have to be very quick to make sure it's well within the balance of the game.

We'll see how things go anyway, though as the title of the post goes I'm going to keep my feet firmly on the ground. Maybe I just have 'experience' in being an MMOldie and seeing a lot of launches and watching as the community over hypes a game only to fall upon it with daggers when it's not living up to the expectations the very same players decided on. Either way, come November when the first batch of 6 month subs run out we'll get a better picture of how the game will be doing. It's wrong to judge a game not only in Beta but the first couple of months of live, but after then the studio needs to be very quick to keep momentum going.

It's a beta...

So I got back from work, a quick bite to eat and catch up on Keaven and Steven in the Morning and I figured it's time to check what's happening in the world, in particular the Rift beta. The girlfriend let me know she couldn't log in and sent me some links to check out and the number of people that are bitching and complaining that they can't login is unbelievable, add to this a few folks saying the races are completely imbalanced due to broken racials (hmmm, see below post) and I wonder what on earth people actually expect from a beta...

To give the population complainers a bit of credit, Trion have invited the Internet and its dog into the closed beta and while it might be used as a stress test this is the sort of thing that will make 50/50 players actually turn away from the game. It's a double edged sword as you get things smoother for launch but at the potential of losing players who may have otherwise wanted to get a 'free demo' of the game. But lets give Trion something back here and as the title says.. It's a beta. What the heck do people honestly think they are doing? If they think it's a way to give the game a free test then sadly it's not. There is a sense of responsibility to give constructive feedback and if all you can do is bitch about not being able to log into a stress test or complain that shit is imbalanced and then not offer constructive feedback (I know most will though) then please don't bother signing up for a beta.

Is this though what being a beta tester means to folks though? Is it a epeen brag "Oh I beta tested it and it was shit" or a way for people to trial the game first in an untested state. I'd like to know what % of beta testers actually offer constructive feedback in an average game beta. I actually liked the closed beta test in Warhammer Online. We got pop up surveys after some combats and quests and before we logged out and after we had logged in asking us specific questions. Yes we could ignore them but I wonder if people who did would find themselves out the beta... Who knows and I know the Rift Alpha testers are held to much more focused feedback requirements.

Well it all stems back to one thing though.

It's a beta.

Racial discrimination in MMO's

So I've been browsing the Rift forums recently with an eye on what's happening and there's talk about changing the racial abilities of some of the errr.. well races (as a side note, the people already crying that they have been nerfed on a beta is highly amusing). So it got me thinking, why do we have multiple races with abilities in an MMO?

Now keep in mind my first MMO experience was Ultima Online where (at that time) you could be a human and that was it but as MMO's have progressed there almost seems to  be an arms race where you can have the most number of classes and/or races available.. Hell how difficult is it to try and balance them not only against each other race but then the potential broken class/race combos?  For that matter, why do they even have racial abilities or is it just now so ingrained into the MMO culture that a race must have a special ability and that it's odd not to have one? Do the developers not sit there thinking "Hmmmm, it'd make our lives easier if we didn't have racials."It's probably a marketing thing...

I know if I'd develop an MMO it'd be without racial abilities and potentially even multiple races.. The assets required for changing armour for multiple races must be high, even if it's just sizes you still need people to sit there and change it when the same time could be spent having more uniquely coloured or designed armour to differentiate sides? One pair of boots needs to have its size changed 11 times or add skulls on the toe caps and darken them to indicate an evil version?

OK, so in all fairness variety is the spice of life (or is that just the Indian down the road from me) so different races can be fine, it can add to the lore of the game and give it a more unique feel to other MMO's but the more I think about racial abilities the more I just see them as potential pit falls for MMO's, especially since balance changes later in the game always runs the risk of a broken combo.

So racial abilities and multiple races in MMO's.. Are they a recipe for a developers headache?

(Side note.. Highly amusing to my childish and immature mind, the spell checker recommended I change racials to 'facials'.. it made the following part so much more amusing... "Do the developers not sit there thinking "Hmmmm, it'd make our lives easier if we didn't have facials."It's probably a marketing thing..."")

Rift alpha patch notes released/leaked

http://bit.ly/hcfbN1

Some very interesting things in it, I especially like the anti aliasing changes, public groups, premade scenario errr warfront matchmaking and the currency bag. I don't know enough about the classes in my time in beta to understand the changes so I'm making no judgement on that. I also noticed that world events no longer grant experience. This might slow down the rate of XP gain a bit but does seem odd as it promoted being involved in them a bit more, oh well those guys are devs and going on feedback from the beta and alpha teams.

Artifact collections get a reward boost and apothecary gets a total remake. It's quite exciting seeing changes take place for the game even though it's not even released yet, the big thing happens post launch when they have to cut down on the dev and QA team as most studios do, can they keep pace with the changes or will they slow down and be ponderous in reacting to problems.

Another interesting thing is the more you look at it, the more aspects of Warhammer Online you see in Rift. Public Quests and Public Groups seem to be the two lasting legacies on the genre that WAR has made, I'll be waiting to see Blizzard implement the same sort of thing soon then!