Massively's hands-on with Rift: Planes of Telara's dynamic content

[Faelor]

"Will players be willing to do that next year when Rift sidles up to not just WoW: Cataclysm, but Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR too? I really hope so, because if Rift were releasing today, it'd probably be the smash hit of the last few years, WotLK notwithstanding. This is the game Warhammer should have been. I don't want to see it elbowed aside by sequels and star-power from teams with deeper pockets."

Source (http://www.massively.com/2010/08/18/massivelys-hands-on-with-rift-planes-of-telaras-dynamic-conte/).




http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2010/08/orphsl01.jpg (http://www.riftgame.com/en/)
Just a few weeks ago, I was invited to attend Trion Worlds' (http://www.massively.com/tag/trion-worlds/) Gamer's Day in San Francisco to get some hands-on time with a couple of the company's upcoming titles, including Rift: Planes of Telara (http://www.riftgame.com/en/). If Rift (http://www.massively.com/category/rift-planes-of-telara/) seems to have come out of nowhere, that might be due both to the acquisition of EverQuest II (http://everquest2.com/) veteran Scott Hartsman (http://www.massively.com/tag/scott-hartsman) to head the project as chief creative manager, and to a clever name change (http://www.massively.com/2010/04/26/trion-names-upcoming-mmorts-renames-heroes/) meant to reflect the team's shift in development focus.

In fact, that shift in development focus is precisely what I was at Trion's studio to test -- I got to check out the Rifts (http://www.massively.com/tag/rift/) themselves in all their glory, in the context of the greater dynamic content system that the developers are so excited about. Massively's writers have been able to play and report on character creation and the starting areas of Rift several (http://www.massively.com/2009/06/08/e3-2009-impressions-of-heroes-of-telara/) times (http://www.massively.com/2010/04/26/massivelys-hands-on-look-at-rift-planes-of-telara/) over the last year or so, including earlier this summer at E3 (http://www.massively.com/2010/06/16/e3-2010-hands-on-with-rift-planes-of-telara/). But until today's embargo lift (coinciding with the reveal at Gamescom (http://www.massively.com/tag/gamescom-2010/)), no one had quite seen the fabled planar invasions and takeovers in action.

Now we have.
The very first thing I got to do was roll up a new character. I kinda knew what to expect, since our previous demos of Rift all started this way too. What I wasn't expecting were the new classes not yet revealed or only hinted at in earlier articles. Paladins, assassins, sentinels (http://www.massively.com/2010/08/16/rift-planes-of-telara-announces-sentinel-soul/), and pyromancers (http://www.massively.com/2010/08/14/die-in-a-fire-a-look-at-rifts-pyromancers/) (the last two since revealed officially) were among the new classes I spied; I also caught a glimpse of the Kelari and the Dwarves (http://www.massively.com/2010/08/11/exclusive-rift-dev-diary-unveils-the-lives-and-times-of-dwarves/), who were also announced in the interim (we were assured that female Dwarves are en route and will not, in all likelihood, have beards). I must say that the Eth are hardly done justice by their portrayal on the official site. Characters of all genders seemed more or less well-proportioned and realistic (no one looked ready to keel over due to being, shall we say, top-heavy). I saw a good mix of eye colors, hair styles, and skin tones (important to me after all too many games sporting a hundred shades of pasty). It's no Star Wars Galaxies (http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/index.vm) when it comes to character customization, but it doesn't have to be.

Eye-candy

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2010/08/races-left-bahmi.pngI was particularly impressed at how lovely all of the characters were at creation. It seems to me that Trion has found the sweet-spot between so-few-options-that-everyone-looks-the-same and so-many-options-that-there's-a-million-ways-to-make-an-ugly-character. And I don't just say that because I'm obsessed with my character having just the right shade of lilac eyes. The game is split into two extremely interesting philosophical factions -- the faithy Guardians hand-picked by the gods to save the world, and the anti-theist Defiants who decide to bypass those useless gods and save the world themselves using technomagery. And if you know anything about games with two factions, you know that no amount of deep philosophizing and backstory about the lore of these two sides will ever, ever convince the players that one side isn't good and the other isn't evil. That dichotomy is inevitable. Players can't resist taking shortcuts to conclusions like these. So it's especially important that the "obviously evil" side not also be loaded down with a grotesque sideshow of freakish and unappealing races or species, or players will look only at that and sort themselves accordingly, just as in World of Warcraft (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/) and EverQuest II (http://www.massively.com/category/everquest-ii) and Warhammer Online (http://www.warhammeronline.com/): goodie-two-shoes on one side, hardcore thuggin' on the other. Sure, the noble, holy Guardian faction gets the High Elves and sure I saw some angel-wing spell effects floating around, but the Defiants' humanoids are exotic and beautiful too. The team's goal is to banish those cheap storyline cliches and make the players' choices more about philosophy than about whose butt you want to stare at all the way to 50.

In any case, it's not just the characters who are appealing -- everything is exceptionally beautiful. The game is clearly employing clever tricks to reduce the strain of all the eye-candy (low polygon counts on things like foliage and reduced landscape textures when your attention is elsewhere), but the world is nevertheless gorgeous, and the devs are sparing no expense when it comes to the stuff players look at all the time. The particle effects are splashy and fun; the level-up effects are compelling; and the NPCs are ridiculously detailed and appealing. Heck, in some places, the terrain was so lush and the grass so thick that I could hardly see the LotRO (http://www.lotro.com/)-style targeting circle at the mobs' feet. It was fun to hear some of the Trion employees (who hadn't yet seen all of the characters we were running into) gasp with surprise at how amazing it all looked as the sum of its parts. They almost seemed shocked at their own handiwork. And maybe they should be -- I was similarly unprepared for the shock of seeing an NPC in game who looked identical to the impressive concept art on the site. Not since Guild Wars (http://www.guildwars.com/) have I seen something like that! I was also gratified to see that female NPCs had a nice mix of clothing and armor both chaste and racy, unlike characters in some games I could note (http://www.massively.com/category/tera/).

Pew pew and pets

I decided, in the end, to roll up a Defiant elementalist, complete with her "charge" bar -- every class has a unique mechanic, and the mage classes get a fun little bar that improves their boom factor. I don't usually go for mages straightaway in MMOs because I find fire spells a bit on the dull side, but I do love earth and water and air magic. The elementalist begins life with an earth elemental pet, crystalline earth shards, an earth ward, and... lightning comin' outta the sky? Yes please. I haven't really seen a good magician class since EverQuest (http://everquest.station.sony.com/everquest.vm), and I've been jonesing for my earth controller in City of Heroes (http://www.cityofheroes.com/en.html).

Let me rephrase here. I shouldn't say my character begins life -- I ought to say she was reborn, as that is the chosen game mechanic. Every player character has died and is returning to the land of the living to save the world via sheer will. I jumped into the Shadowlands newbie area and proceeded to carve a path through the lowbie mobs -- rather, my pet did. Pet controls were lined up just like LotRO's (http://www.massively.com/category/lord-of-the-rings-online) or WoW's (http://www.massively.com/category/world-of-warcraft/), and my pet was chomping down on mobs with barely any input from me, which is exactly the reason pet classes are so much fun -- laziness! The earthie was surprisingly well-animated and put to shame such pets in other games (I'm sorry, Mister Poo (http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Earth_Control#Animate_Stone)). I discovered that I would later get an air elemental pet too, along with an arsenal including fire to round out the elementalist. Earthie and I smashed our way through the now-expected assortment of kill, click, travel, possession, and gather quests, cackling gleefully at the iconic death squeal of the newbie mobs (will those be so adorable after a thousand squeals?).


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Your roots are showing

Since I keep comparing Rift to other games, I should get something out of the way. I'm a WoW fangirl. In fact I've played so much WoW that when I take a break to sample other games, I suffer a strange readjustment period. WoW makes me forget how much clunk there is in gaming. There's something about WoW's combat and movement system that's so smooth; there's a brilliant, intuitive intersection of animation and effects at play. Most games -- even those I love (hi LotRO!) -- just don't have that. They have funky skidding feet and pauses and jerking, and nothing ever works quite like you expect. WoW just works in a comfortable and organic way without any fuss, and you never notice how polished it is until you try to play something else.

So please understand that I mean it as a high compliment when I say that Rift: Planes of Telara has borrowed many of WoW's very best assets, including a distinct lack of movement clunk. I kept hearing caveats like "it's still in alpha" -- and indeed, the other media folks and I were playing on the alpha server along with alpha testers and internal testers, and every time we found a bug, someone would call upstairs and add it to some poor programmer's to-do list -- but I'll be frank and say I've seen releases from top-tier companies that were far less polished than this. Granted, we were a bit on rails during the Rift testing, but we got to play for several hours across several zones and instances. What I saw was polished and playable, and I was feeling completely comfortable with the game within about 15 minutes. If this is alpha, and content implementation continues at this pace and quality, I have high hopes for launch.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2010/08/01hedgemaze08.jpgBut Rift has significantly more in common with WoW and the preceding generation of games than just fluid movement and animations. Mobs and quest objects glitter to catch your attention. Inventory bags pop up like WoW's old standard. Merchants sell food and water to restore health and mana, along with familiar scrolls and potions to restore the same. Combat text scrolls along overhead. A resting mechanic rewards you for time offline. Emotes weren't quite finished yet (no /spit? what!?) but /wave worked just fine. Rift is even eschewing ammo for its ranged classes just like Cataclysm (http://www.massively.com/tag/cataclysm/) will. Stylistically, of course, it probably leans more heavily on newer games like Allods Online (http://allods.gpotato.com/) or Warhammer Online (http://www.massively.com/category/warhammer-online), whose updated graphics and interesting melds of fantasy and steampunk-lite make for strangely gritty cartoon settings. Scott Hartsman told us that the game will ship with a full complement of crafting professions, as well, from which players can choose three per character. In fact, three is precisely what I saw in the early areas; there were NPCs willing to train butchering, mining, and foraging. Rift will do away with crafting tools altogether, leaving your bag space open for the good stuff.

It also seems as though Trion has grand plans for PvP akin to WoW's and WAR's. Although I did not get to participate in any PvP at the event (unless you count the /kill cheat!), I did flip my way to a game panel sporting several joinable PvP battlegrounds, called Warfronts. I saw several lower-level battlegrounds tiered for levels 8-10, 16-20, and 10-19, marked as capture-the-flag events. We know Rift will offer both PvP and PvE servers, and the Trion team assured us that a PvP-flagging mechanic would be in place even on PvE servers, allowing for both consensual PvP and PvP during city raids (yes, city raids!). In fact, Scott told us that the team is considering allowing experience to be gained during PvP sessions, if that doesn't prove too unbalancing to the world-experience and dungeon-experience formulae.

[Faelor]

Source (http://www.massively.com/2010/08/18/massivelys-hands-on-with-rift-planes-of-telaras-dynamic-p2/).




Massively's hands-on with Rift: Planes of Telara's dynamic content, page two


by Brianna Royce (http://www.halcyonaffinity.org/bloggers/brianna-royce/) http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/writer_rss.gif (http://www.massively.com/bloggers/brianna-royce/rss.xml) Aug 18th 2010 at 9:00AM

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2010/08/04autumnterrace22.jpg
Interface and mods

Rift has a standard, modern interface that's easy on the eyes and simple to learn. Players of the major MMOs of the last few years will be right at home with button bars, minimaps, party windows, and so on. The map includes a quest tracker, quest pointers, quest pop-ups, and quest map-highlighting (something that's becoming more and more standard for the genre). I found the UI a bit clunky for healing (more on that later) but honestly that's because I'm spoiled by games like WoWwith their huge array of addons. Healing in almost every MMO is an awkward flurry of clicking at UI elements and inefficient eye-movement as you try to monitor too many bars set just too far apart. It just seems out of place in a game like Rift -- a game in which the designers are intentionally attempting to focus player attention on the center of the screen, not the periphery. Being the mod-junkie I am, I asked Scott Hartsman specifically about Rift's future insofar as addons and was told that the team is currently planning for basics like resizing, rescaling, transparency, and possibly even skinning, but that we shouldn't expect full-scale modding at launch. Scott suggested that the framework for such addons might be a post-launch project. I pouted, but I can understand the decision to polish first and pile on later.

Different strokes

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2010/08/deathplanecreature01.jpgSome of the genre staples Rift has borrowed have been vastly improved. For example, Rift features an elaborate achievements and collections system that rewards the player with various cosmetic bonuses like pets, mounts, and titles, without bogging him down with tedious grind. Several of these items dropped for me in the lowbie zone and I had only to click them to add them to my collections panel. Interestingly, Trion has chosen to tally your achievement points (though not achievements themselves) across your entire account, meaning that you haven't got to be a completionist on every character -- unless you really want to be.

I hardly had time to peek at my character's talent pane let alone play with respecs, but my glimpses showed talent trees very similar to WoW's -- with a multi-classing twist. Much has been said on (http://www.massively.com/2010/07/19/exclusive-video-diary-of-the-souls-of-rift-planes-of-telara/)Rift's (http://www.massively.com/2010/07/19/exclusive-video-diary-of-the-souls-of-rift-planes-of-telara/)elaborate build system (http://www.massively.com/2010/07/19/exclusive-video-diary-of-the-souls-of-rift-planes-of-telara/), and for good reason -- few MMOs give players so many options to build their characters just the way they like. While we'll not be able to change our initial calling (i.e., class), players will be able to pick and choose skills and talents from all of the possible callings to craft their own hybrids -- ideally, players can choose to spec wide or spec deep. Scott told us that he estimated there would be over 270 combos at launch. And you'll get to try many of those out -- each character can have up to four loadouts at a time, so you can have your normal adventuring build, a build for when the guild needs you to tank, a farming setup, and maybe a build for PvP. Not every combo will work for every situation, and the team believes that by allowing everyone to do everything, balance issues will be mitigated. Easy respecialization built right into primary gameplay will help too -- respecs can be performed on the fly anywhere when not in combat. You can actually swap in a different build for trash mobs vs. bosses!

So how dynamic is dynamic?

I should have been prepared for Rifts and yet I wasn't. Public quests aren't new; several Mythic games like Ultima Online (http://www.uoherald.com/news/index.php) and Warhammer Online have them, and Champions Online (http://www.champions-online.com/) polished them into a quality MMO concept. But Rifts... Rifts are even better. When you see one pop up on your map or minimap, you can gather up your friends and charge on in, forcing the Rift to open on its own if it's being pokey. Entering the area will provoke a pop-up with instructions for completing the encounter. The Rift will transform the landscape and spawn waves of mobs, scaled to the folks in the area. Solo? No problem. Twenty of your best friends? Rift can handle big. You needn't even be grouped up; your contribution is tallied individually, and even if you should perish, a convenient pop-up loot panel will ensure that you're properly rewarded for your efforts (and everyone is rewarded with something -- no losers here!). I found the Rifts to be pretty spooky and entertaining, if over a little too fast for my over-eager groupmates. Presumably, higher-level public quests will be more difficult, and they seemed to be propagating fairly consistently since so many of us were in the zone.

<table style="border-collapse: collapse; margin-bottom: 1.4em;" width="225" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="12" cellspacing="12" height="111"><tbody><tr><td>"An enemy planar boss and his minions had spawned, and they were steadily marching toward the nearest town, intent on laying waste to my allies."

</td></tr></tbody></table>Past the newbie zone, the map widened considerably and became dotted with the multi-colored warning symbols of enemy footholds. These enemy base camps are generated randomly based on zone participation, and can be attacked and subdued for fortune and glory just as Rifts can. In fact, if two opposing footholds spawn too close to each other, they are very likely to begin fighting each other (since the planes are all at war, too). I really loved that I could see the enemy's position on the large map, as if I were some general plotting out my campaign. But what really got everyone interested was a funny little arrow slicing its way across the map. That arrow, we were told, was the first sign of an enemy invasion. An enemy planar boss and his minions had spawned, and they were steadily marching toward the nearest town, intent on laying waste to my allies. Players could choose to tackle the invading army immediately, or proceed with a bit more strategery -- a bit of patience might allow the players to ambush the army while it was busy skirmishing with an enemy foothold along the way. Why not let the other NPCs do some of your dirty work, after all? And all of this is going on amidst normal questing endeavors. On a PvP server, this mechanic could get even more interesting!

Should the invaders make it to their destination unharried, they will carve a wide path through NPCs, including quest-givers in the hub towns, so everyone has a vested interest in stopping invasions quickly, although Trion has made clear that this system won't create more burden than it's worth for players who just want to carry on with their questing. Given the experience and loot rewarded by these types of encounters, I am hard-pressed to understand why players wouldn't leap at the chance to hunt down invasion NPCs! I can hardly imagine what Heroes of Telara would have been like if the team hadn't added in Rifts and these other dynamic aspects. Except for these unique features, Riftis actually fairly standard fantasy. It really needs a stand-out mechanic, a hook to bring in the crowds, and the invasion system delivers. Literally!


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High elves can't jump

Yes, you can jump in Telara. As we all know, the ability to jump is a critical gameplay feature! Really -- while jumping really won't reduce your aggro, it does instill the player with a sense that the world is truly 3-D. It helps sell the space and suspend disbelief. In fact, several Trion folks made a point of showing us that we could jump up into places other games would forbid, including up and over mountains and into zones that might be a tad out of our level range -- your life is yours to risk in the name of exploration. Of course, you can die when falling, so it's best not to climb too high. In Gloamwood (the recently released werewolf-ridden zone (http://www.massively.com/2010/07/28/rift-planes-of-telara-unveils-gloamwood/) where the attendees were grouping up for adventure) I took it upon myself to climb up one of the bizarre, Gothic, Ewok-treehouse towers and throw myself off in an emo tribute to the gloom, but alas, I never did manage to kill myself, although I did come pretty close to drowning while taking notes. While most of the other writers were busy gaming up the levels, I was happily swimming (and fighting!) in greenish waters and thinking how fluid (forgive the pun) the animations were. Anyone can create a monster-bashing level grind; a great team manipulates the little things to convince us that the world is more than just a nicely painted hamster wheel.

I continued my adventure off the rails after getting separated from my team. Mounting up on the free epic mount I was given -- some sort of woolly-rhino thing -- I bounded around for a bit, enjoying the speed and smoothness of the ride. (I've spent too long in SWG (http://www.massively.com/category/star-wars-galaxies/), I fear, where the creature mounts are annoyingly slow.) I ran east toward what looked like a castle and was greeted with the gleaming spires of the Holy City of Sanctum. I treated myself to a tour, being primarily impressed with the quality and quantity of the NPCs stationed in Tavril Plaza and inside the keep itself. I could only wonder whether those NPCs would be victims of -- or victorious allies in -- the next invasion.

Fighting and dying (mostly dying) in the Realm of the Fae

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2010/08/02summerterrace12-1281927295.jpgAfter my excursion to the city, my level-18 group re-coalesced just in time to plunge (literally) into the depths of the Realm of the Fae instance. (The zone entrance was a watery hole in the ground!) Our five-person team (complete with an overleveled rogue tank -- yes, this is a game that really doesn't want you pigeon-holed too much into just one role) set about mopping up ents and fairies and dionysian satyrs wielding wine cups, all of whom seemed quite offended that we were crashing their festivities. The instance was divided up into several seasonally themed areas (greenery for summer; dead leaves for fall; snowstorm for winter), and it was a bit guided, to be sure -- hedges often marked out our path, and they didn't always look placed to perfection. And yet we still managed to get lost a few times. Nothing out of the ordinary for our first trip in a new dungeon, and at least the encounters appeared functional and playable (a far cry above the pathetic dungeons with which Warhammer launched).

I was quite pleased with how my premade cleric held up. He was pretty cute for a High Elf (we'd switched to Guardian faction for the afternoon), but I was wary -- while I like to play healers, I usually avoid holy-based healers. Strangely, my cleric's spells reminded me a whole lot more of my LotROminstrel than my long-abandoned EQ (http://www.massively.com/category/everquest) cleric or WoW priest. I love that he sort of dipped to the side and behind to call forth his shimmering light. I certainly wished for a better healing UI, but I think we did all right with the default, barring a few deaths when we got split up or overextended. Not to worry; death in Rift seems fairly trivial. Once per hour, you can "soul walk" -- that is, resurrect right at your corpse, similarly to the revive/retreat system in LotRO, although in Rift you're given several seconds of impunity to scurry away from any lingering danger. After my second death, I resurrected inside the entrance to the dungeon, just as in Champions Online (http://www.massively.com/category/champions-online). A small health debuff was applied to my character until I ate a bit of food, and then we were off and en route to the final boss, whose death triggered yet another convenient pop-up that distributed loot to everyone on the team.

Over lunch, one of the other participants noted that she found the early game a bit too easy for her tastes, and most of the writers agreed. But the instance seemed appropriately challenging for mid-level characters, especially given our unfamiliarity with the premade characters we were playing. The Trion reps said that the scaling difficulty was intentional -- they want the starting areas to be accessible for newcomers to the genre; the later game will ramp up in challenge if you seek it out. Indeed, Scott told us that they particularly aim to ensure that no Rifts murder any newbies in the area, EverQuest-style. And no hell levels! Ever!

Closing my Rift

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2010/08/trionworldswht.jpgYou know you've got something special when you're genuinely sorry to log out of the alpha client to go play more games, and yet that's exactly how I felt. I was skeptical about the game, going in. Among gamers, there's a feeling that MMOs made by "indie" companies -- at least companies not counted among The Big Three -- will forever be doomed to second-tier status. I have concerns about Trion's insistence that Rift: Planes of Telara will function under a traditional subscription model, not because I don't think the game is worthy (it is), but because I'm worried that the industry will have moved even further from that model by the time the game releases. We see the signs already in other (http://www.massively.com/2010/07/27/eqii-jumps-on-the-f2p-bandwagon/) top-tier (http://www.massively.com/2010/06/04/lord-of-the-rings-online-going-free-to-play-this-fall/) MMOs (http://www.massively.com/2009/06/09/ddo-adds-free-to-play-with-eberron-unlimited/), and players have begun to rebel against both extremes of the F2P/P2P spectrum. In some ways, Trion is asking people to risk a lot of money on an untried, untested dev team and an unknown, original IP. Will players be willing to do that next year when Rift sidles up to not just WoW: Cataclysm, but Guild Wars 2 (http://www.guildwars2.com/en/) and SWTOR (http://www.swtor.com/) too? I really hope so, because if Rift were releasing today, it'd probably be the smash hit of the last few years,WotLK (http://www.massively.com/tag/wrath-of-the-lich-king/) notwithstanding. This is the game Warhammer should have been. I don't want to see it elbowed aside by sequels and star-power from teams with deeper pockets.

In the meantime, I've seen enough to know I'm looking forward to it anyway.

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