Originally posted by Deleted User

Originally posted by MysterioDark

 You are right Skatty, it is when the Mayan calender indicates the equinox of the universe. The Mayan calendar does not continue beyond this date. Scary huh ?

 

The world will not end just because a 5000 year old calendar or something ends in two years.

Americans are always prone to mass hysteria for some reason.

These days its true.  However I have to point out that a lot of that hysteria has to do with a decrepit tyrannical old Aussie heavily influencing our media.

SOE needs to just step back and evaluate them selves.   They have become the master of cheap graphics.  Ever sense they hooked up with Soga [seriously did somebody in the Sony family marry in with them?] I have seen Soga's ugly muddy pallet and taint all over the place even though they deny it.   SOE needs to just chuck the junk and make a decent game with a new game engine.   I mean seriously all they make is crappy looking stuff now and they think this 3-d hype is going to help?    By 2013 they will be selling their crap for less than $10 if they can even unload it.  Just IMO of course =D

Sounds like they are trying to coax non pvp players into playing open pvp with the promise of control [which is not open pvp].   Oh where have I heard this kind of talk before ... /cough Aion.   

It will be cute, amusing, maybe even fun until the organized PK guilds work the system for their own benefit.  Which should take about 72 hours max from launch.

Oh well.

End game could almost be an ironic term on the tombstone of many games.  It is one of the things most demanded on the forums of games still in development and yet many players, if not most , never make it to that content.  One would think if profit was actually the goal that a desire to keep the majority of players happy and keep them in game long enough to develope attachments would be important.   Instead the lofty goal of pleasing a smaller player base of elitist end gamers takes a priority even though they are not paying any more for their sub than average solo questing and occaional grouping joe, and are likely max level in a week or less and moving on their next conquest in less than 4 months.   I know the idea of keeping average joe scrambling for the big goal is part of it too but I think devs need to realize that the frustration factor leads to looking for a new game at some point.

I get the feeling sometimes that every dev longs to be a part of that elitist group and that some are.   Even if said multi game guild with much influence is really just stringing them along.   No names of course LOL.

The problem is they listened to players in beta and the big guilds.    So here we are in Rift with a lot of new 50s hitting the questing brick wall and finding them selves face to face with exactly what many of them claimed they wanted on the beta forums, progressive gear grinds and most new post 50 content not soloable.  Pre t1 are dailies and a few epic quest, a few crafted from t2 recipe drops and a few class specific drops from the last two regular dungeons.  Ti first two or three expert dungeons, t2 other dungeons on expert mode.   Basically the issue is to progress your limited to doing the same things over and over.   It seems like a lot of people are leaving or looking at other games and they have not even got past the t1 gear phase.

I always cringe when I hear people mockingly call questing and story the grind they hate, cause when its over is when people really get frustrated and move on.   I think people are too concerned with wearing the mental gear of the accepted mmo gamer and are not looking at what they really enjoy.   The other thing that always bothers me is that I see this in every beta I camp and the same result.  I tell the devs to believe in their own vision and not to take to heart too much that players say that isnt constructive on forums but they do it anyway and the same pattern seems to be emerging over and over.... kind of like a grind.   Many readers here might be surprised to learn much of the "just like WoW" stuff  in Rift was insisted upon by beta players. 

Another problem is the group questing auto calculator in the Rift events.  Often times when you die it resets and you dont get credit for your contribution, so its actually better to stay dead and not resurect and get back in there to try to help.  Also the option to zerg a rift with a closed group exist so some are and getting tag for the boss while others have done most of the work getting to it.  They have made some adjustments to the process but its still exploitable and some frustrated players have just given up. 

There are also a few cosmetic issues that are annoying, but hopefully they will fix them after they hopefully realize player types they listened to have already bailed on them.

This isnt new.  That part of their web site has been up for a little while now.

This is a good article and thanks for doing it.  I have noticed with own my personal experence that some fixes that are made in beta test never make it into live.  As hard copy has to be recorded and boxed months before launch dates it makes sense that a lot will be fixed in the launch patch but it doesnt all make it.   Also some things are broken in late beta while making changes and those new problems dont all get fixed.   To us its unfinished but to the publisher it might just be like the cutting room floor of a movie.

Industry is two things always, thrifty and opportunistic.  That being said, it might be too easy for publishers to become apathetic to the player experience in favor of more far reaching profit goals based on skewed and out dated market research [ I almost choked on the reasearch part].   So they may think we are all game hoppers who dont care about the whole game experence beyond the first 20 hours of newbie orientation to the environment, that most of us  just want to zerg to end game and are gold buyers and exploiters.  That being said its reasonable to assume that the best profit approach is to cheap up the new games and pink slip all but a skeleton crew at launch and start working on the next project.   Sounds insulting to the gamer I know, but honestly look at new game forums.  We have brought some of this upon our selves.

My goal is to find a real, whole game, though I realize with the evolution of the gaming industry it may be a pipe dream.  One that I can play for years not 4 to 6 months and one that doesnt use the ugly stick on character models to help make sure I move along as expected.  I know this isnt the game developers intention, their games are their art but they are not running the show. 

Recently a business student told me his marketing professor told him that consumers do not know what they want.  Think about that, they think we dont know what we want.  What happens to industry when this is a premis to build upon?

If they do a nice job of polishing up the player models this could be really fun. 

Oh bother! ... miss post

Anyway ... Im not happy with the animations and feel it might be cut out of the polish phase.  Also doesnt seem to have a lot of dynamic lighting.  /shrug,   I worry about the openess with a mission type system.  One sand box or a bunch if really small ones?

I play Rift full time, no other game ATM and I dissagree with most of the article.  First its written from a wishfull thinking , short sighted perspective.  Most of what is listed they ether still need to tweak [and they are working on it] or are things that they will come to regret.   This is just IMO as a Rift player.

1 Open grouping.  This is a very very good thing for the Rift events but still in its  current state is unbalanced and some people get too much reward and some get too little.   You let people go too long with not enough reward for their effort and they soon move on to another game.  Every choice should be all about the game's health in the long run.  On the positive side they are working on tweaking the system for even more positive experences.

2. Ascended soul system.  This is the games most innovative idea and is honestly what makes it the most unique.  Its a great system but its a bit too complex in that there are too many choices , too many repeated options accross souls per class and you can really mess up your character with wrong choices.   You can correct and this is great but currently it requires a lot of experimenting and competitive players who have found great combinations are not sharing a lot of info.  The typical nerf and buff effort is there for already in full swing with patches for varied souls also, unfortunately mostly due to PVP reports and little to do with PVE.

3. The invasions are wonderful and a great evoluton on the public group type thing we saw in WAR.  They a LOT of fun, however currently they override a lot of content when they occur and they occur too often.   Its at the point now where you usually have two planes invading heavy questing hubs and not having an invasion going on is much more rare than having them.   Its getting to be like a broken record and they are beginning to feel less special  because of it.  People are getting good at dodging invasions and just going about their questing business rather than getting involved.

4.  Leveling though PVP.   Most people are just not doing it , even though the rewards system for it heavily borrows from WoW.  This more than anything else smells of part of the game as WoW clone and I wish they would realize that a lot of people left WoW to play a different game not WoW PVP in another skin.   I expect to see those that appriciate this moving on at the end of the 6 month bargain sub deal and jumping into the next new game if not sooner. PvP instances are repetitive and while I appriciate the effort to cater to varied play styles even its most staunch supporters are going to be bored after a while because they didnt actually need to try varied content.

5.  Mounts at lvl 1.   This was just plain stupid sorry.  It was a late decision in beta and only benefited gold farmer/sellers as people who didnt have the gifted mount for the CE or didnt like it [its ugly] found them selves with a reason to have more cash than a newbie could muster to buy a mount at level 6 [ when your out of the tutorial and have access to a mail box].  Also people who didnt have a mount are often left behind during rift events while the mounted open group system members ride off to the next target leaving them behind.

To game developers: you can not believe a lot of things that people ask for in beta.  There is a reason why you are the professional and they are not.  Believing in the original vision and using common sense and seeing the big picture for the health of the game is the best way to go.  People often ask for things more as part of a brag fest than honest  considerations and many of these same people will not be in your game after a few months if they even bother to sub after launch at all.

I will be playing it.  It may not work out with everything I want but I like the elf modles and the environment and that it has more risk, more options and less grind in normal pve play than your typical current mmorpg.  The beta client is not the finished one.

The problem with ToR is they are not putting out enough imagery and info lately.  When that happens people get worried that the polish they want wont be there.   The MMO players of today have reason enough to be jaded by past hype over delivery dissapointments.

The concern over GW2 many have is the old GW system where most of the world is instanced and you end up feeling like your in a single player if you dont have the social system down and its just different enough from other games to put people off.   Im really interested in GW2 as well but dont know if it will go far enough into open world for it to feel like an honest MMO to me.

This is probably the first year that Im just not sure what Im going to play yet.

Since most players just identity with what they have known and try to impose that on a new game its gona take time to see what last and what doesnt.   If Trion will stick to their guns and not change the game too much when player pressure gets heavy then I think it stands a better chance that listening to people who only think they know what they want.

This is my new game.   I absolutely love it.

We are buying it but I worry .   I worry that the new old world will be a smaller version of the original.  They seem to be focusing a lot on status also and and Im afraid it will become even more of a funnel into E-Sport. 

Then there are heir loom items , they are adding more and its weird cause why are they talking like they want to make the starter gardens more user friendly for newbies and then throw the newbies in with total HL geard grinders.   Its like a huge puzzel piece forced into the totally wrong spot.   At the moment drops pre 75 are pretty much just DE fodder already because of HL gear.

Finally ... the Worgen female model.   Which is pretty much just one model with different fur, ear and hair choices.   Same eyes , same snout.  Thats right .... so far they only finished one and it looks like they might try to pawn it off as the whole set.  I dont get that ether cause 4 months ago the complete set was leaked on Youtube and they were pretty awsome minus the unfinished hair.   Oh well ...

I dont know I just keep scratching my head and asking my self what are they smoking up there?   but then agian like many people when the new games launch in the spring ...I'm gone for the last time.  

I pretty much agree with the article in most ways.  It wont be the best game ever.  I personally think the graphic quality of the models [especially females] needs more polish.  It wont be a game breaker though.  When they decided to add space combat late , I gave up on waiting for them to smooth them out cause I knew they were likely spreading the team a little thin for it.    About that time I moved on to a more polished game also launching in the spring.   Also there are so many games launching next year that I honestly cant see a grand slam for any of them. 

As for the WoW killer , it wont be another game.   It will be Blizzard it self that kills WoW by finally making changes that are just too drastic.   LIke all the fading stars it wont be gone completely but there will come a time in the next fear years i think that most people will speak of WoW in past terms as if it were no more, while a small portion of its population clings on.   We have seen it before and we will see it again.

Great ... PVP focus.   I was gonna buy this too.   Not any more.

So which of the new games is going to be smart and actually not do what all the rest are doing?

In all honesty if the Real ID system stays where it says it will and only effects the forums and those you choose to put on your Real ID friends list I could live with it by avoiding it.   However the fact that already Real ID goes a bit too  far with revealing to people on your friends list other people on your friends list and they were not too obvious about that fact bugs me. 

Once you slip up or a person on your friend's list or a minor child using an account with your name on it does the info is not changable cause your real name is pretty much your real name unless your willing to go to court to change it.  Even then by that time your home, phone number and other personal info about you and your family could already be compromised.

First quarter 2011 is the official release target at the moment.  They have stated that they will be testing in phases probably like Aion did and that with the exception of a few people who are very good at constructive feedback with in a test phase, each new phase will have a new set of testers.

Personally I dont think they are testing this weekend, but they may be getting ready who knows.

Wow how very shallow.   Please dump your gf so she can find someone with a soul.   And do not empregnate anyone for manipulative purposes as one idiot suggested.   The cost that will be in terms of the rest of your life is sooo not worth it.

Maybe she gained weight cause your not fun to go out and do stuff with?