I think that Trion does a great job adding all this stuff to the game. But then, the state the game was released in, they had little choice and Rift would have been gone down the WAR path if Trion would have been any slower adding stuff. However, it's a good thing and if they keep this pace in about a year Rift could be a heavyweight.

The question is does Trion have this year? I don't know. It's obvious that no matter how fast content is being added and no matter how good the game may be by now -it just does not sell well to the folks.

If people would buy it for 39,99 or 29,99 we wouldn't see it for 4.99 just every other day. In fact, Trion has something to "celebrate with us" e-v-e-r-y weekend, so in the end this supposed to be discount is just the same obscuring move as "trial servers" and "CE upgrade" were. Trion's trying to cloud the fact that the game is basicly down to a 4,99 market value by leaving it at the obligatory standard price of 29,99 for a couple of days a week. It's not that anyone buys it anyway - but it looks better and they can sell you the discounts as such, while -being honest- this is the regular price already.

On a sidenote: I may also hesitate to buy a future addon for 39,99+ when they hand it out for say 9,99 three month after. Same goes for the addon as a CE-box, when it's content will be available ingame later on anyway.

So, back to the question: Does Trion have another year at the rate the game loses value on the mmorpg market? Or will they have to turn it freemium before (and therefore rightfully lose another good chunk of alienated subscribers)?

One thing about Rift's future i am shure of: a big stunt like F2P will again come with an obfuscating spin, as did server closings and the cash shop.

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Originally posted by VoIgore
I think that Trion does a great job adding all this stuff to the game. But then, the state the game was released in, they had little choice and Rift would have been gone down the WAR path if Trion would have been any slower adding stuff.

However, it's a good thing and if they keep this pace in about a year Rift could be a heavyweight.The question is does Trion have this year? I don't know. It's obvious that no matter how fast content is being added and no matter how good the game may be by now -it just does not sell well to the folks.

---

I agree with most of your point, though. A lot of people in Rift are simply going through the motions. They are doing a LOT of repeat stuff as they've done since launch. All events are the same, buggy, predictable and generally lose interest after Phase Two. People log in, do those things and log out. They run several alts so they can stack up and send the coins to one toon.. it's just for loot.. not fun.

You are 100% correct about Trion not having a choice as far as pushing out a lot of content. Everything they've done has been lightweight overall which can be done in two weeks before boredom sets in.

RIFT is kinda like a cook who says "I can make more types of sandwiches than any other cook around due to our system of competence and speed." What it actually ends up being (at least the way I saw it) was like this:

Monday: Bologna sandwich on White bread, tomatoes with American cheese.

Tuesday: Bologna sandwich with pickles and Romaine lettuce on White bread.

Wednesday: Bologna sandwich with Swiss cheese, Iceberg lettuce, mayo on Wheat bread.

Thurday: Bologna sandwich with Shard lettuce, bacon and mayo on Pumpernickel.

Friday: Bologna Surprise Special! (on toasted bread)

Week Two the same, just with Liverwurst. Week three the same just with Ham. Etc etc.

Where the other cooks (games) are like this:

Monday-Friday: Five sandwiches: Bologna, Ham, Roast Beef, Chicken breast, and Turkey. Your choice of bread and fixings.

This way for a month, then they change the menu.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by VoIgore
I think that Trion does a great job adding all this stuff to the game. But then, the state the game was released in, they had little choice and Rift would have been gone down the WAR path if Trion would have been any slower adding stuff.

 

However, it's a good thing and if they keep this pace in about a year Rift could be a heavyweight.The question is does Trion have this year? I don't know. It's obvious that no matter how fast content is being added and no matter how good the game may be by now -it just does not sell well to the folks.

---

I think it sells well enough to those that like the game though. Some of the players I played with in Rift aren't even that in love with the game. You know what makes them tingle down below? The actual company, lol. They are more fixated on what "Scott says" or "Scott does" or "Scott wore" than the actual game of Rift. So regardless they will have those people; those are FANS.

 

 

I agree with most of your point, though. A lot of people in Rift are simply going through the motions. They are doing a LOT of repeat stuff as they've done since launch. All events are the same, buggy, predictable and generally lose interest after Phase Two. People log in, do those things and log out. They run several alts so they can stack up and send the coins to one toon.. it's just for loot.. not fun.

 

 

You are 100% correct about Trion not having a choice as far as pushing out a lot of content. Everything they've done has been lightweight overall which can be done in two weeks before boredom sets in.

 

 

RIFT is kinda like a cook who says "I can make more types of sandwiches than any other cook around due to our system of competence and speed." What it actually ends up being (at least the way I saw it) was like this:

 

Monday: Bologna sandwich on White bread, tomatoes with American cheese.

Tuesday: Bologna sandwich with pickles and Romaine lettuce on White bread.

Wednesday: Bologna sandwich with Swiss cheese, Iceberg lettuce, mayo on Wheat bread.

Thurday: Bologna sandwich with Shard lettuce, bacon and mayo on Pumpernickel.

Friday: Bologna Surprise Special! (on toasted bread)

Week Two the same, just with Liverwurst. Week three the same just with Ham. Etc etc.

 

 

Where the other cooks (games) are like this:

 

Monday-Friday: Five sandwiches: Bologna, Ham, Roast Beef, Chicken breast, and Turkey. Your choice of bread and fixings.

This way for a month, then they change the menu.

The mmo-food metaphor has always been a good one. Trion and Rift need an "eat fresh campaign" something different to suggest the game is more than just a WoW clone/ cheap hamburger if they want to get over more than a hundred K subs right now.

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Originally posted by Illyssia

The mmo-food metaphor has always been a good one. Trion and Rift need an "eat fresh campaign" something different to suggest the game is more than just a WoW clone/ cheap hamburger if they want to get over more than a hundred K subs right now.

---

The problem is the way they present their content. It's a lot of the same stuff like their world events. They change one or two things and voila!.. they call it "new content". They change a dungeon from normal to "elite" and that's content. They have souls that look pretty much the same with all identical skills but different names/icons and that's called "flexibility". It really isn't original at all as a whole. The rifts and invasions are by far the most interesting thing about the game and they don't even know how to use those properly.. they use them as giant loot pinatas.

It's the same with their maint schedule: They do two or three times every other day then at the end of the week it amounts to hours. Then compare that to other games who do one day shutdown for four hours at a time and you have the same exact thing, but they insist it's better. You don't know annoying until you log in, get something going and then right after you start "Hi everyone. In ten minutes, we'll be taking down the servers briefly for 30 minutes so find someplace safe to log" constantly.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by Illyssia



The mmo-food metaphor has always been a good one. Trion and Rift need an "eat fresh campaign" something different to suggest the game is more than just a WoW clone/ cheap hamburger if they want to get over more than a hundred K subs right now.

---

Well, it's not the "WoW clone" part. I actually don't think it's a clone so much as uses a lot of things they do like the LFG cross server, the reputation grind, 3,000 different currencies, the PvP style, that kind of stuff. All games do that to some extent so that doesn't bother me too much.

 

The problem is the way they present their content. It's a lot of the same stuff like their world events. They change one or two things and voila!.. they call it "new content". They change a dungeon from normal to "elite" and that's content. They have souls that look pretty much the same with all identical skills but different names/icons and that's called "flexibility". It really isn't original at all as a whole. The rifts and invasions are by far the most interesting thing about the game and they don't even know how to use those properly.. they use them as giant loot pinatas.

 

 

 

It's the same with their maint schedule: They do two or three times every other day then at the end of the week it amounts to hours. Then compare that to other games who do one day shutdown for four hours at a time and you have the same exact thing, but they insist it's better. You don't know annoying until you log in, get something going and then right after you start "Hi everyone. In ten minutes, we'll be taking down the servers briefly for 30 minutes so find someplace safe to log" constantly.

 

what game are you playing again??? I don't see too much downtime at all these days with rift and is certainly less downtime than what wow does on a tuesday night even if you combine all the downtime.

I rather they fix bugs than to play a buggy game

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Originally posted by sancher36
 what game are you playing again??? I don't see too much downtime at all these days with rift...

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Rift Patch Notes

Sorry to confuse you, thought it was understood by the title of the thread. :(

P.S. In before the obligatory "Well, look at other games and you'll see blah bleh blah".

Originally posted by Rogosh

They do, their foundation is end game, not leveling.

 

The end game needs a foundation.  They keep stacking and stacking and stacking without reinforcing any of the floors beneath it and its showing signs of crumbling.  And its way more than just 'leveling'.  The soulless world hurts endgame just as much as levelling.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by sancher36

 what game are you playing again??? I don't see too much downtime at all these days with rift...

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Pretty sure we were talking about this game:

 

Rift Patch Notes

 

 

Sorry to confuse you, thought it was understood by the title of the thread. :(

 

 

P.S. In before the obligatory "Well, look at other games and you'll see blah bleh blah".

 

maybe I just play at the best times of the day considering I'm in australia

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Originally posted by sancher36
maybe I just play at the best times of the day considering I'm in australia

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I remember them doing a lot of fixes during the regular times East Coast wise... morning, afternoon, primetime, didn't matter.. anytime really they'd just shut the things down to fix something. Good they would do that, but it showed a lot of QC problems that they had to do it so often.

It also made a lot of things you'd want to do unpredictable which got irritating... and then there was almost always some respec after a class fix where you had to redo ALL your skills every time if they fixed one skill in one soul, lol. That got old fast.

You used to get a lot of people complaining but the response from fanbois was always "Well, what time would you have them do it? They can't have their employees up late at night doing it at 4 am!"

Sometimes the update schedule is a pain.  It's pretty much always 8:00am Pacific time which can interfere if I'm trying to get a little crafting done or run an event daily.  Overall it works out pretty good for my time zone though.

They do patch a lot which is okay for me since I don't really have a bandwidth cap.  Mostly I'm happy with more frequent patches and fixes than less frequent.  Comng from LotRO with Turbine's glacial development pace more frequent fixes and content updates are better than fewer and further between.

I guess it's all how you look at it, but RIFT feels like the developers pay attention to it.  That's nice for a change.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by sancher36

maybe I just play at the best times of the day considering I'm in australia

---

Very possible, friend.

 

I remember them doing a lot of fixes during the regular times East Coast wise... morning, afternoon, primetime, didn't matter.. anytime really they'd just shut the things down to fix something. Good they would do that, but it showed a lot of QC problems that they had to do it so often.

 

It also made a lot of things you'd want to do unpredictable which got irritating... and then there was almost always some respec after a class fix where you had to redo ALL your skills every time if they fixed one skill in one soul, lol. That got old fast.

 

You used to get a lot of people complaining but the response from fanbois was always "Well, what time would you have them do it? They can't have their employees up late at night doing it at 4 am!"

 

Another thing too is how fast they are pushing out content, its not possible to always catch every bug before release. Overall I still think trion are doing a great job considering how fast they are working to try and keep the game constantly fresh with new things to do.

My main complaint with rift is they need more variety in questing, something to make them more enjoyable and interesting. Not the same ol rinse and repeat like it is now for most.

i love reading the Rift bashing lot on here, i've been playing rift since beta now, havent unsubbed once,  the rift playerbase is generally of higher calibre and older more mature than most mmo's, what made people leave rift and go back to wow was the fact that things are stepped up, dungeons are harder, mobs hit harder, Wow proves people dont like a challenge they like it handed to them,yeah it's quick to level but the journey is fantastic, the story that unfolds is brilliant, the twists and turns, pvp maybe unbalanced, but hey it's fun, people saying servers are dead really need brains testing, most are alive and well, so far they are doing everything right, content, keeping players informed, tech support, bug smashing, i agree there should be more than one leveling path for each faction, a few extra starting villages would be brilliant, but hey, theyve added more end game content in 6 months than wow did in a year. i reserve judgement on ToR and GW2 as i was never a GW fan, played for a month got bored.

Originally posted by tsprincess

what made people leave rift and go back to wow was the fact that things are stepped up, dungeons are harder, mobs hit harder, 

 

Not even close.  While there may have been a little of this, this isnt even in the top 25 reasons of why people stopped playing Rift.

Also:

1.  Not every one that tried Rift came from WoW

2.  Not everyone that leaves Rift goes to WoW

But then you think Rift has a brilliant story with twist and turns...

Originally posted by tsprincess

i love reading the Rift bashing lot on here, i've been playing rift since beta now, havent unsubbed once,  the rift playerbase is generally of higher calibre and older more mature than most mmo's, what made people leave rift and go back to wow was the fact that things are stepped up, dungeons are harder, mobs hit harder, Wow proves people dont like a challenge they like it handed to them,yeah it's quick to level but the journey is fantastic, the story that unfolds is brilliant, the twists and turns, pvp maybe unbalanced, but hey it's fun, people saying servers are dead really need brains testing, most are alive and well, so far they are doing everything right, content, keeping players informed, tech support, bug smashing, i agree there should be more than one leveling path for each faction, a few extra starting villages would be brilliant, but hey, theyve added more end game content in 6 months than wow did in a year. i reserve judgement on ToR and GW2 as i was never a GW fan, played for a month got bored.

 

You seem to forget a lot of lower areas in WoW were toned down over the years. All MMo's seem to do that over time, I assume to try and encourage more players to pick the game up, it's not a "WoW thing" it's an aging MMO thing.

I will agree that Rift is pretty bug free (minus the balance issues) but sadly for me, it was horribly bland. There was just nothing to grab me. The story (or lack there of) really turned me off. The races and lack of any real depth to what makes each tick was a turn off as well.

Overall it's a well polished game mechanically but it just doesn't draw me in. I was able to play it for a month or two and moved on. I think both EQ2 and WoW do the same things Rift does, but with the added lore and style that make them better games imo.

People keep saying "best of all, it's free".

If that's the best thing there is about new content for a game, then the new content must be worth what you paid for it, nothing.

;)

Originally posted by Strap

 

I had loads of fun in Rift until my laptop broke... I may play again when I have a new pc.

I think some of the people here are a bit peeved they don't like the game more... and it really isn't for everyone... but if you do like it then the pace of development is amazing.

Basically, patch 1.6 is adding content that the game should have started with at its initial release.  Fans of the game can gesticulate wildly all they want, but from what I've seen of Trion's content so far, RIFT feels like an Open Beta that subscribers (like myself) were duped into paying for.  

Content comes trickling in via small "world event" patches filled with limited and repetitive content to tide hangers-on until the next "world content" patch.  Meanwhile, Trion uses this time to fine tune the "new" content.  People flip out over these new "world events" like Trion has done them some favor, when really it's spoonfed minute increments of end-game content that should have been ready and available at launch so that people would have actually had something to do once they reached level 50.

There is constant shifting around of class "balance", driving players to readjust playstyles over and over again, rearranging skill points and rebuilding skill trees over and over again, terribly reminiscent of Blizzard's constant class changes in World of Warcraft.  I was sick of it in WoW, and I'm definitely sick of it here.

In other MMO's, once I reached the level cap, I felt like my journey had just begun.  With RIFT, I feel like I have to sit tight and hope for another PR-driven "Patch 1.x" to attain some sort of momentary satisfaction with the game.

I won't deny that Trion offers up some very polished content with minimal bugs, and they DO address gamebreaking issues in a prompt manner, but I've seen a lot of lazy fixes to certain important class issues that go overlooked for far too long, or get swept under the rug via deactivation until they can fix the issue at a later date.

All in all, I am disappointed that Trion felt the need to rush RIFT out the door when it obviously needs so much more content to make it a viable MMO for people that want to immerse themselves into the world of Telara after reaching the level cap.  The game wasn't done yet.  All patch 1.6 does is give it something that should have already been in place:  More end-game content.

3- 20 man raid zones, 2-10  man raid zones, 10 level 50 dungeons and 5 pvp warfronts.. Then add 3  solo instances.. "AA" advancement post 50, achievements with rewards,  8-10 various raid rifts and zone invasions.   This is what we have now (and more)  -within the first 9 months-  all polished and before tommorow's 1.6 release.  I am having a blast and looking forward for more to come.

Originally posted by Rave_n_rose

 

3- 20 man raid zones, 2-10  man raid zones, 10 level 50 dungeons and 5 pvp warfronts.. Then add 3  solo instances.. "AA" advancement post 50, achievements with rewards,  8-10 various raid rifts and zone invasions.   This is what we have now (and more)  -within the first 9 months-  all polished and before tommorow's 1.6 release.  I am having a blast and looking forward for more to come.

 

 

Well i am glad i saw the  game design in my first month and quit the game.

I detest RAIDING,i have no interest what so ever in hanging out on a level cap player doing dungeon runs.I also do not care  about pvp.

My interest in a game stems from level 1> to cap.I do not want any hand holding along the way,no quest markers or map markers or easy handouts.I got my game in early years of FFXI,but it has gone south badly.Rift does not offer what i look for in a game which funny thing actually is a challenge.

In FFXI i was challenged from level1 and yes i did die at level 1 several times along the noob levels.That is because race/class mattered a lot and fights were challenging,the way i like a game to be made.

The attraction to Rift was when i heard it was using a sub class sytem.Well they didn't do a very good job,it was too many easy handouts and the point system left it being no better than a regular leveling game.Also when i play a RPG character ,i like to identify with my player,i like to say "I am playing a White MAge" and it actually feels like a whm.

When i was playing Rift i had all sorts of access to way too many ridiculous abilites/spells that didn't fit into any particular role playing,it was just a mish mashg of ideas.I had healing ,i was nuking,i had knockbacks a pet,just crazy,what could I actually say i was playing?A morphling?What made it worse was the easy handouts,i had all of these abilites and tons more all by level 8,just too many  easy handouts for my liking.

Also the zones seemed very small and i didn't like the WOW type starting area.I enjoyed starting in EQ2 inside a city  [Freeport ]or FFXI[Windurst] i started in massive sized towns.In Rift i started in a abandoned building,go figure they had all this tech around the area but only one broken down building.

I will show you why i don't like large battles or get into Raiding,it is nothing but an incredible SPAM fest. >>> SPAM not my idea of fun.

How come these guys are freakin bringing out update after update and DCUO has had only 6th so far. Or have the updates been same for the two games?