Rift MMORPG

[Huw the Poo]

A role is a specific combination of souls and assigned skill points.  So you have up to three souls active, amongst which you distribute your skill points to make a particular build, perhaps a healing build for example.  But then you decide you want to deal damage instead of being primarily a healer, so you switch roles to a different combination of three souls and their associated skill points.  By default you already have one role, but you can purchase more to enable you to switch builds at will.  Bear in mind that roles are confined to your general calling (cleric, mage, rogue or warrior).

All of the souls of your chosen calling are available to you as soon as you can get to a trainer to learn them.  If I recall correctly that means getting to the capital, which should happen around level 13 or so.

Obviously you can customise your role as you wish, but what most people do is distribute their skills in a roughly 3:1 ratio between two souls, with the third being a "zero point" soul, i.e. no points put into it at all.  That zero point soul is chosen for its base skills that don't require any points invested to be able to use them.

[Tpek]

After playing for a few days, I have to see I'm rather unimpressed.
I've played so many MMORPGs before, and yet this one is just plain boring.

It's one of those games where you don't really get excited to see your character develops.

I mean I didn't expect it to reach things like Champions Online, Star Trek Online or even DC Universe Online, in terms of character development.
But still.
As little character development there is in Guild Wars 2, I still feel it has more than in Rift.
Even Star Wars The Old Republic is far more interesting than this.

[Huw the Poo]

Weird.  I'm strongly considering ditching GW2 for Rift, for precisely the same reason: character advancement.  I hate it in GW2 but love it in Rift.

[Nefaro]

Weird.  I'm strongly considering ditching GW2 for Rift, for precisely the same reason: character advancement.  I hate it in GW2 but love it in Rift.

The character system, and being able to hot switch your mixture of classes, is the best thing about Rift.

[Yskonyn]

I agree. If anything, character progression and builds are the big selling point for Rift IMHO.
If it wasn't for the low population and the old quest hub questing system, I would still be playing it.

[Nefaro]

If it wasn't for the low population and the old quest hub questing system, I would still be playing it.

The low population in the levelling areas is pretty depressing, indeed. 

At release, the whole place was hoppin' with rift invasions and it was like one massive skirmish with all the people in the early zones.  Great fun.   Then the last time I jumped in and tried it, the zones past the very first one were dead.   You'd see an occasional rift open and nobody would be around to help.  :'(   

While I tend to grind most of my levels solo, it is nice running into the "Open Quest" stuff that Warhammer brought to MMOs (called Rifts here, obviously).  It's a great way to avoid the usual annoyances of constantly waiting on party members to arrive/go to town/resurrect/whatevah with your thumb up your butt.  You just jump right into the mini-boss battle fray and get rewarded for your contribution without have to ask/invite for parties and all the other junk. 

I'm kinda debating checking it out, again, now that you guys have brought it up.  I fully intended to once I heard they now have big open PvP cap zones to war over but it would still be a long lonely grind on the way and I'm not sure if I could get that far without getting apathetic about it.  I guess that's what the free-to-level20 thing is good for.  So maybe I'll check it out soon.

>
What server are you guys on?

[Huw the Poo]

I'm not playing at the moment but I'm on Icewatch which is a Euro server.

I think that people in the low-mid level zones are mainly doing instant adventures.  I always found myself in large groups when doing those.  Many people seem to think they're a good substitute for questing if you want to level fast.

[Tpek]

I'm on the Shatterbone server (American I think).

I do however see a lot of people around.

That's not the game's problem. It might not be sometimes as overly crowded as some MMORPGs I play, but still a lot of players around (Brought back by the expansion mayhap?).

Its problems are boring characters, lack of any coherent story, multiple problematic bugs that you can't believe how they haven't been ironed out yet,
and generally really having any special oomph to it.

[Nefaro]

I'm on the Shatterbone server (American I think).

I do however see a lot of people around.

That's not the game's problem. It might not be sometimes as overly crowded as some MMORPGs I play, but still a lot of players around (Brought back by the expansion mayhap?).

Its problems are boring characters, lack of any coherent story, multiple problematic bugs that you can't believe how they haven't been ironed out yet,
and generally really having any special oomph to it.

There are still annoying bugs in it??  :o

I suppose that up until about level 20, the zones probably have a few people since it's free up to that point.  I'd expect the mid-range population to be dysmal, though.  I'm positive the expansion has brought some people back to check it out.  MMO pops always go up for a bit even after big updates, so an expansion likely does it even more so.

[Huw the Poo]

Bugs?  I can't remember a single bug in Rift.  They must be new or I just never noticed them.

The more Rift is mentioned the more I want to play it again.  Once ye olde financial situation improves I'm going to sub again I think.  GW2 can wait, particularly since it has no subscription fee.

Nefaro, what kind of character do you prefer to play as?

[Yskonyn]

I agree with Nefaro's sentiment about population.
I enjoy seeing other people around as well. It makes me feel I am actually in a virtual world where countless of others are living 'their lives' while I am living mine, regardless of playing together or not.
As the story is not as important in most MMO's I feel I need this feeling of living in an actual world to keep my interest.
In every MMO I've played, I've come to the dreaded invisible wall, where levelling began to feel like a grind. If you are all alone in a zone or only with a handful of others while feeling like this, it quickly kills the game enjoyment for me.
Not so in SP RPG's where the story is always interesting enough to push me further to find out what happens next.

GW2, for example, does a fair try with the personal story. It feels kinda like your own SP RPG inside an MMO, but the story parts are so darn widely spaced apart (level wise) that the quest grind can wear me down sometimes.
Luckily there are other fun things to do in the game. Rift, however, for me at least, lacks other things to do (which I find fun) until you can play with the big boys on the higher levels.
The desolate zones also make the events stale, as pointed out above; my experience (from about 2 months ago rechecking the game for a month) was the same; rifts aren't being fought and invasions are just left to rampage...

I am thinking of picking up Age of Conan again.
It has the most interesting combat system I've come across in any MMO, really makes you feel like a badass character. It has a gorgeous soundtrack and beautiful graphics. Exciting PvP and dungeons. And I am a Conan fan (and have the CE edition of the game and the hardcopy expansion) ;)
Funcom now have a consolidated server technology (with TSW) which is slated to be imported into AoC as well.
This will make the population unified into one glorious server!

[Nefaro]

Nefaro, what kind of character do you prefer to play as?

In MMOs?  I'm very much an alt-aholic.  But in the past few years I've preferred ranged classes, to start with.  Generally a mage or archer type, and probably a healer if they're not some one trick pony that can't get along very well on their own.  I choose ranged ones mainly because I don't wanna have to literally chase people around all the time in order to be in range for my big attacks.  "Sit in the back and push buttons" is my motto, especially in PvP (which ends up being "run away run away!" at some point).  Being able to buff, and especially heal in the case of the healer option, makes you a valuable group member.

But after a dose of that, I tend to envy the survivability of a tank so I end up trying one of those out.  Being hard to kill is a big advantage.  Even though you may not be able to kill anybody in reasonable time, you can still cause a good amount of panic and dictate when & where the fight's gonna be by being the first to charge in (in PvP anyway).  Every PvE group needs a tank so you're also not some filler class for groups.  The big advantage of melee classes, overall, is more survivability and that means that they're easier to PvE with solo, too.

[Huw the Poo]

Yeah same here really.  Having to remain in melee range of your target all the time is a massive pain in the arse.  I'm almost never a melee class.

That's something I love about Rift.  Playing as a cleric I can switch effortlessly between ranged DPS and healing/support, depending on the situation and whether I'm doing PvE or PvP.  Oh christ I love Rift.  There's a reason it's the only MMORPG I've ever achieved max level in. :)

[Nefaro]

I played Rift a few minutes tonight, and decided to re-sub.  What the hell.  I've been indecisive with all my singleplayer games so switching back to an MMO for a bit will probably get my decision making restarted after a bit.  I actually find levelling in MMOs a bit relaxing.

My main characters were Guardians on the Shatterbone server.  IIRC, I have a Cleric that used to be getting to the final stretch to level cap, along with some other spread downward in level. 


I tried to get into Age Of Conan and have attempted it a few months worth.  But it had a ridiculous amount of bugs at first, and later on it still ran like crap.  All the melee people get the interesting combo stuff while the casters got the usual button-pushing (and not terribly wonderful abilities at that!).  I just wasn't impressed with the condition of AOC, even after I came back to try it out a year or two later.  The only Funcom game I'd go back to is The Secret World and that's just because of the interesting setting & content.