Rift
I had a really great time this weekend trying out the Rift beta. It's under an NDA but everything I'm going to talk about is public knowledge on their website at this point. If you like fantasy games in the spirit of FFXI and WoW you should seriously look into this game.
First, the best thing is that the game is really polished. It's ready to go, the system works, the auction house is live, the classes and skills and mounts and quests and zone events are all in there and seem to be working just great. The beta was primarily a stress test and there were a lot of people on and I had no problems with lag. I have a GeForce 9800GT video card at this point. I didn't have everything cranked up but I had the settings fairly high and I felt like I was getting a great visual experience, and also almost 50 FPS. I fiddled a bit, with shadows and antialiasing on it looks like it was more around 35 FPS but as 24+ is what registers as "smooth" to people it's all good.
Rifts is what Final Fantasy XIV should have been. There's a lot about it that feels familiar. They didn't break anything that didn't need fixing. They innovated where they could. I think Chris summarized it as WoW and LoTR and Guild Wars had a baby and that is pretty accurate. Let's start with character.
There are 4 class categories, Warrior, Cleric, Mage, Rogue. Within each there's like 8 or so subclasses. All the player characters were slain in a great war and have been revived by the gods (or the technomages of the rival faction) as champions, and to do this you get to Equip the Souls of Fallen Heroes to use their abilities. Perhaps you remember how in Final Fantasy V you equipped Crystals Containing the Souls of Ancient Heroes that let you use their abilities? What this means in play is that you get to pick a starting class, and then add 2 more subclasses to your character. So, you're triple-classed as 3 variations of your main class. Later, you'll be able to unlock additional subclasses with a quest and change them. So you might start out as a Druid, add Shaman and then add Purifier. When you level up you can spend your point(s) in the skill/ability try of any of the 3 souls you have. You can specialize or generalize, it's completely up to you. Seriously FF XIV could have used this system and just populated the class list with the FFXI classes and a few new ones and it would have been a great tweak to the entire job/subjob system.
For instance, on my Rogue I started as a Nightblade, which is categorized as an offensive rogue, who gets stealth powers and weapon buffs. I added Riftstalker, which is considered a defensive type and has passives that boost armor, and some extra attack skills that I can combo with. I also added BladeDancer which is another offensive type. I didn't put any points into it but I got a "super dodge" power just for linking it. I could have selected the trap-using Saboteur, the poison-using Assassin, or even a support-buff-casting Bard. On my Cleric, I started as a Warder, which is categorized as a healer; warders are specialist in water magic, and have a few water elemental attacks and a lot of mana-efficient healing over time spells. I added Druid (support-type) for the ability to summon a faerie pet and have some defensive buffs, and finally I added a third class that was more of a traditional holy smiting damage/spike heal cleric. So that character will have decent combat, self and party buffs, the ability to attack using water, physical, or holy damage. I specifically envision her as being a support healer during zone events, sticking regen on everyone then wading in and spot healing in a pinch. There are 6 races to choose from. You guys surely know that I am not a big fan of races in fantasy games but in this case it was pretty well done. There's a little bit of aptitude favoring going on but nothing gear and smart choices can't make a non-issue.
The story is interesting. The gist of it is that a Generic Idyllic Fantasy World created at a nexus of elemental planes is under attack by the evil dragons who rule the planes. The gods created a barrier to protect the world but someone in a deathcult worshipping the head dragon managed to punch a hole through it and now wacky hijinks ensue. Chris described it as being reminiscent of the Rularuu invasion early on in city. Randomly, but with some forewarning, portals to the elemental planes spawn and foes come out. It becomes a spontaneous raid event. And here's a great innovation: when you enter the area of a zone event/raid, a big button appears on your screen "join public group." You hit that button and bam, instant random party. Imagine how nice that would be in City for the various invasion zone events? The zone events are amazing. I can't emphasize that enough. They happen fairly frequently and provide a nice break from local quests. Sometimes there are huge zone events that go on. We had almost 2 dozen rifts open in one zone and unleash roaming hordes of monsters. It really felt like being at war. I got some nice loot that way too. The quest reward gear is actually very good, but the rare planar armor I bought using my zone event drops blew it away.
Death is not a big deal in the game. It's very similar to Wow's death system except gear does not become damaged. Over time, YOU get damaged at a spiritual level and it ends up having a penalty similar to Guild Wars' death penalty/morale system, but it doesn't kick in until you've died a few times. Also, once an hour you can just opt to rez where you die without a ghostly run back to your corpse. You get to move for about 15 seconds so you can get somewhere safe first. I had trouble getting to this one boss so I just charged him, training half the town's monsters, and died in front of him; then soul walked around the corner from him and rezzed, coming back when it was just him again.
I haven't had this much fun playing a game in a very long time. It was enough that I pre-ordered (bought) the game at the conclusion of the beta last night. What should really get your attention is that I subscribed to a 6 month subscription plan (getting charter member pricing of $10/month instead of $15). I went for the digital collector's edition to get a larger than normal starting pack as well as some little perks like an extra mount and a cute minipet, and I believe the CE also entitled me to that discount rate. The boxed edition was tempting, it has a soundtrack, USB drive, mouse pad, and comic. But I decided to not screw around with pre-ordering and shipping from anywhere and just bought the digital edition from the makers.
When Rift goes live, expect me to vanish from all the other games except for occasional appearances, like Wednesday nights in City. ETA: OPEN BETA NOW ANNOUNCED for Feb 15: http://www.riftgame.com/betasignup
First, the best thing is that the game is really polished. It's ready to go, the system works, the auction house is live, the classes and skills and mounts and quests and zone events are all in there and seem to be working just great. The beta was primarily a stress test and there were a lot of people on and I had no problems with lag. I have a GeForce 9800GT video card at this point. I didn't have everything cranked up but I had the settings fairly high and I felt like I was getting a great visual experience, and also almost 50 FPS. I fiddled a bit, with shadows and antialiasing on it looks like it was more around 35 FPS but as 24+ is what registers as "smooth" to people it's all good.
Rifts is what Final Fantasy XIV should have been. There's a lot about it that feels familiar. They didn't break anything that didn't need fixing. They innovated where they could. I think Chris summarized it as WoW and LoTR and Guild Wars had a baby and that is pretty accurate. Let's start with character.
There are 4 class categories, Warrior, Cleric, Mage, Rogue. Within each there's like 8 or so subclasses. All the player characters were slain in a great war and have been revived by the gods (or the technomages of the rival faction) as champions, and to do this you get to Equip the Souls of Fallen Heroes to use their abilities. Perhaps you remember how in Final Fantasy V you equipped Crystals Containing the Souls of Ancient Heroes that let you use their abilities? What this means in play is that you get to pick a starting class, and then add 2 more subclasses to your character. So, you're triple-classed as 3 variations of your main class. Later, you'll be able to unlock additional subclasses with a quest and change them. So you might start out as a Druid, add Shaman and then add Purifier. When you level up you can spend your point(s) in the skill/ability try of any of the 3 souls you have. You can specialize or generalize, it's completely up to you. Seriously FF XIV could have used this system and just populated the class list with the FFXI classes and a few new ones and it would have been a great tweak to the entire job/subjob system.
For instance, on my Rogue I started as a Nightblade, which is categorized as an offensive rogue, who gets stealth powers and weapon buffs. I added Riftstalker, which is considered a defensive type and has passives that boost armor, and some extra attack skills that I can combo with. I also added BladeDancer which is another offensive type. I didn't put any points into it but I got a "super dodge" power just for linking it. I could have selected the trap-using Saboteur, the poison-using Assassin, or even a support-buff-casting Bard. On my Cleric, I started as a Warder, which is categorized as a healer; warders are specialist in water magic, and have a few water elemental attacks and a lot of mana-efficient healing over time spells. I added Druid (support-type) for the ability to summon a faerie pet and have some defensive buffs, and finally I added a third class that was more of a traditional holy smiting damage/spike heal cleric. So that character will have decent combat, self and party buffs, the ability to attack using water, physical, or holy damage. I specifically envision her as being a support healer during zone events, sticking regen on everyone then wading in and spot healing in a pinch. There are 6 races to choose from. You guys surely know that I am not a big fan of races in fantasy games but in this case it was pretty well done. There's a little bit of aptitude favoring going on but nothing gear and smart choices can't make a non-issue.
The story is interesting. The gist of it is that a Generic Idyllic Fantasy World created at a nexus of elemental planes is under attack by the evil dragons who rule the planes. The gods created a barrier to protect the world but someone in a deathcult worshipping the head dragon managed to punch a hole through it and now wacky hijinks ensue. Chris described it as being reminiscent of the Rularuu invasion early on in city. Randomly, but with some forewarning, portals to the elemental planes spawn and foes come out. It becomes a spontaneous raid event. And here's a great innovation: when you enter the area of a zone event/raid, a big button appears on your screen "join public group." You hit that button and bam, instant random party. Imagine how nice that would be in City for the various invasion zone events? The zone events are amazing. I can't emphasize that enough. They happen fairly frequently and provide a nice break from local quests. Sometimes there are huge zone events that go on. We had almost 2 dozen rifts open in one zone and unleash roaming hordes of monsters. It really felt like being at war. I got some nice loot that way too. The quest reward gear is actually very good, but the rare planar armor I bought using my zone event drops blew it away.
Death is not a big deal in the game. It's very similar to Wow's death system except gear does not become damaged. Over time, YOU get damaged at a spiritual level and it ends up having a penalty similar to Guild Wars' death penalty/morale system, but it doesn't kick in until you've died a few times. Also, once an hour you can just opt to rez where you die without a ghostly run back to your corpse. You get to move for about 15 seconds so you can get somewhere safe first. I had trouble getting to this one boss so I just charged him, training half the town's monsters, and died in front of him; then soul walked around the corner from him and rezzed, coming back when it was just him again.
I haven't had this much fun playing a game in a very long time. It was enough that I pre-ordered (bought) the game at the conclusion of the beta last night. What should really get your attention is that I subscribed to a 6 month subscription plan (getting charter member pricing of $10/month instead of $15). I went for the digital collector's edition to get a larger than normal starting pack as well as some little perks like an extra mount and a cute minipet, and I believe the CE also entitled me to that discount rate. The boxed edition was tempting, it has a soundtrack, USB drive, mouse pad, and comic. But I decided to not screw around with pre-ordering and shipping from anywhere and just bought the digital edition from the makers.
When Rift goes live, expect me to vanish from all the other games except for occasional appearances, like Wednesday nights in City. ETA: OPEN BETA NOW ANNOUNCED for Feb 15: http://www.riftgame.com/betasignup