Wolff
2001
Alot of the gear still requires planarite + some other currency at the end. I don’t really understand complaints about grinds at max level. Its an MMO afterall if you got to 50 and could instantly buy all the best gear there wouldn’t be anymore carrots on the end of the proverbial stick. If the “grind” isn’t for you I can’t think of a single MMO’s endgame that would appeal to the anti-grinder.
That being said I think Rift is an exceptional value (as most MMOs are) even if you weren’t gonna play at max level. The joy of leveling (gasp!) has really returned after being jaded for so many years.
Not trying to be snarky but if people don’t want to grind (or whatever you want to call it) for gear at the endgame, what do they want to be doing? Running dungeons? Yeah, you can do that. Raids? You can do that. PVP? You can do that. What else is there?
Has anyone figured out how to customize the raid frames? When I heal I tend to use a lot of hots, and I can see which hots I have going on the regular 5 man interface. But when the UI changes to raid frames, I have to manually click on each person to see my hots… which makes them kinda impractical in a raid setting.
From a PvP point of view, some kind of zone capture mechanics would be good and that doesn’t involve grinding. As far as I know that is completely missing from Rift at this point and the only persistent zone that you can fight over is not yet implemented (instead they threw it in as a WF only for now).
I completely understand your points, so let me elaborate. Due to having gone through so much gear grinding in WoW I was looking for a game where the fun was ‘the journey’ and the game does not begin at max level, but according to some posts on the official forum people reach max level in Rift in 4-5 days /played easily. I have also read criticism regarding the lack of multiple quest paths of progression (barring defiant vs. guardian), as opposed to say WoW in which the early levelling from 1-60 has been so absolutely brilliantly crafted by Blizzard. There are at least two paths of levelling (one per faction and again one per continent), but due to heirloom items and other changes one probably skips a lot of content which leads to replayability in the way of levelling more alts. This could be seen as an alternative to the gear grind end-game, simply having the levelling itself be a wonderful and diverse game of several paths of progression.
The slogan ‘you’re not in azeroth anymore’ also suggests some change from the status quo. I could for example think of some pve/pvp ‘challenge room’ content where players are given some standardized equipment and then either duke it out against each other or fight some pve content…
Or how about some capturable areas in the overworld for some real world pvp, instead of only instanced combat.
You can reach 50 quickly if you so desire. You don’t have to, nor do most players rocket to the cap either. If you do it that way you miss out on a lot of stuff. Hell, there are people in every MMO who pride themselves on hitting the cap ASAP. Rift is less grindy and more forgiving than some, but I’ve been playing steady since early start and my highest character level is 41. I like alts, crafting, dorking around with people, and a life outside of the game, so I’m in no hurry. But unlike, say, EQ or DAOC, or even EQ2 at launch, it doesn’t seem like I’m on some Long March either, which is good.
Once you get a character to the level cap, you have a lot of options. With four roles to play with, and 8 souls plus the PvP soul, you can finally ditch the “I need this for leveling” builds and go hog wild with fun stuff just because you can. You can level up your alts, and you’ll want to, to try out different things. On a PvP server, you could even start an anti-gank squad (or form a gank squad, either/or or both) and roam the world with malice aforethought.
Me, I’ll probably just level alts then get bored and do something else. I rarely have fun at the end game for very long, though I did raid in EQ2 and WoW and DAOC. PvP keeps my interest more long term, but I’m a terrible (as in, I don’t do it well) min-maxer.
Wish they would have had that, I prob still playing right now. They fixed alot of the balance stuff, but I really dont like dungeons at all, I fall asleep doing them. Give something to pvp for and im all in.
Hey Charls you still playing?
In a recent interview (sorry, can’t find a link atm), Scott Hartsman mentioned they are working on providing a zone capture mechanic of some kind. They already have some bits in place (the various wardstones that can be captured by either side).
Lum
2010
I also play on Estrael and I assure you there is a surplus of juvenile zone chat, the same as any other server. It probably dies down once you get higher level and reputation is mildly important.
Plus someone was recruiting in open chat for an ERP guild, which is a form of juvenilia unique to RP servers!
Have you played WAR? WAR had zone capture mechanics and everyone was complaining how there is no point to it, the rewards are not there, etc. No one is going to do something “just for fun”.
Everything in MMO’s revolves around rewards, which means grinding. Maybe some day some game comes up with some brilliant idea and breaks this rule but so far I don’t see it happening. Even worse, genres that generally never had any grind (online FPS’s like Battlefield and COD) are starting to introduce it.
I have also read criticism regarding the lack of multiple quest paths of progression (barring defiant vs. guardian), as opposed to say WoW in which the early levelling from 1-60 has been so absolutely brilliantly crafted by Blizzard. There are at least two paths of levelling (one per faction and again one per continent), but due to heirloom items and other changes one probably skips a lot of content which leads to replayability in the way of levelling more alts.
Yes, a 6 (7?) year old game has more content than the 1 month old one. However, if you look back at WoW 6 (7?) years ago, one had to complete 90% of the content on the way to lvl 60. But yes, they’ve relaxed the grind a lot since then because they introduced a lot of lvl 60+ content so that it still takes you 4-5 days /played to get to the level cap.
I am not really arguing with you here - yes, it would be nice for a new game to have so much content, you could complete it twice without ever doing the same stuff. But it’s not a realistic expectation.
Khoram
2012
Kind of curious about this, because I wasn’t trying to exaggerate for effect, I really have not seen overly juvenile zone chat: are you playing Guardian or Defiant on Estrael?
Jape
2013
Have you played daoc? Quite a lot of people played Realm vs Realm because it was fun (RvR was the endgame and the game was going strong until stupid PvE expansion basically killed it).
I wonder about the demographics. DAoC was pre-WoW and WAR was post-WoW. That might mean something about the expectations of the players.
The rewards were there in WAR (they added lots of ways to upgrade gear while capping zones). It’s probably even better now but unfortunately it’s a little late. Also it didn’t help that back around launch the fort battles were just slideshows.
You don’t need a brilliant idea, it’s already been done. There were games like Shadowbane where the end game is about politics rather than grinding. Even a game like Guild Wars is not grindy by my standards since you only grind for “looks” if you want.
Like Piperfan said, different times, different people. What used to be “quite a lot” during the DAoC times is a tiny number in today’s MMO environment.
Besides, “quite a lot” of people also thought it was fun to camp stuff in EQ for days back then. It doesn’t mean “let’s bring that mechanic over, because if it worked for EQ, it will certainly work for a modern game”.
Jape
2018
IMO, there’s still nothing wrong with RvR mechanic. So no reason why it wouldnt work in modern game (other EQ/DAOC -era game mechanics are completely different story though).
Wolff
2019
Please correct me if I’m wrong but RvR (Realm vs Realm) is really better stated as FvF (Faction vs Faction). Its like alliance vs horde, good aion vs bad aion, etc. I guess true RvR is supposed to have some shiny dodad in the middle of a zone somewhere that one side always dominates due to server imbalances.
To me RvR always sounded something like my server fights other servers for some specific server awesome bonus for a time. That would be cool. I really like PvP but never understood the demand for more open world PvP. Guess I like real competition instead of rolling up, out numbering, and ganking solo questers.
Sorry for the snark but have been reading Rift official forums, they make me want to reach through the monitor and slap some people.
RvR is the preferred nomenclature for DAoC veterans, of whom there are many here, because that’s what it was called in that game.
From your descriptions, it’s clear your experience with that game was limited at best, so the confusion is understandable.
