- After seeing how Blizzard did Cataclysm, I'm really glad to have the exp curve set in a way that allows me to do stuff like Rifts without outleveling the zone I'm in. I might skip the last hub or two of Gloamwood when I get that far, but that's more because the zone somehow hasn't caught my attention - it's pretty, but I've seen dark and gloomy many times before.
- As I noted in my first launch impressions, getting all the souls for a class in the extremely low levels feels like an odd progression choice. By the mid 20's, my pure soul builds are already nearing the top "branches" of their soul trees. There are still a few more abilities to be gained from the "roots" (and many abilities scale with the total points spent in that soul, up to 51 if you go back and take everything including the stuff you didn't want the first time).
The good news is that I can now look at a 10-12 point base in another tree without doing too much damage to my intended main focus, so this opens up options, but it is starting to feel like progress is slowing down. - Of all the Cleric builds I've tried, the 20+ Shaman/10 Justicar build seems to be the most effective. I don't have much for ranged, which can be a problem in Rifts with bouncing aggro, but I do good damage and I can solo a single elite mob (or multiple non-elites) through self-healing. On the downside, it's starting to bore me because it's getting a bit easy (which is part of why I'm trying the other classes suddenly).
Rift Progression Curve Notes
My Rift Cleric hit level 24 over the weekend, but I've side-tracked a bit working on some alts (a level 12 Mage with Outfitter and a brand new level 7 Rogue). A few observations:
Crafting For NPC's In Rift
In Rift's case, though, there were so many stacks of soft leather on my local auction house that it was a borderline call whether to risk the deposit fee for the chance at selling marginally over vendor price. So, I took my mage alt and turned them into an outfitter.
Basics of Rift Crafting
Outfitters, like EQ2 Tailors, do cloth and leather armor, along with bags. Cloth drops from humanoids and leather is skinned from mobs using butchering (also sometimes yields bones, which I haven't needed yet). This leaves you with an empty third slot, which I'm using for mining on the alt, while my main remains a triple gatherer. (Runecrafting, Rift's equivalent of WoW's enchanting profession, is another common choice since it does not require a gathering profession.)
Once you get the materials, the actual making of items is like we have in WoW or LOTRO - stand by the tool (e.g. a loom), click the button, watch the progress bar. There are optional enhancement items, which drop from rifts, and are used to add an additional stat to the item you're crafting. Crafting the base item cannot fail, but the attempt to add the enhancement might - if this happens, the enhancement item is destroyed but you do not lose the other materials, so you'll always be able to make the base gear if you run out of enhancement items or give up.
Sinking the skillup items
Interestingly, Rift offers two ways to dispose of the crafted items you make for skill points.
First, my outfitter can salvage armor, including stuff I just crafted, for some crafting materials (and a special "salvaged cloth/leather" that is used in some side recipes).
Second, there is a daily quest for each tier of crafting, where you turn in some number of a basic crafted item in exchange for small amounts of exp and special tokens that are used at recipe vendors in your capital city. These crafting quests appear to be the only way to earn these tokens, and the higher level recipes cost hundreds of them, so dedicated crafters are going to want to do these as often as possible.
In principle, this should create a natural sink of these materials out of the economy. (In fact, that might be the problem with the soft leather - the outfitter dailies don't use any of it.) You might even be able to craft these items for skill points and sell them on the auction house (if you don't want the tokens for yourself) to high level crafters who want to get their tokens quickly.
Unfortunately, I don't see a huge reason why it's important for me to do my own crafting. It's useful to have a low level outfitter on my account just so my future alts (well, 1-2 more since I now already have two of the four callings) can ship their cloth over in exchange for bags. That convenience aside, it doesn't look like there are self-only perks or significant amounts of crafter-only content (as in EQ2). I'm not convinced that it's worth the trouble compared to farming for the auction house.
Building Blocks For Classes
For example, six points in the Elementalist tree gives a fledgling mage a tanking pet, a damage shield, and an ability that basically removes out of combat mana regen downtime by draining your charge bar (built up as you cast spells, sort of like a Warrior's rage bar in other games). You can stick these types of capabilities into your character like building blocks, ensuring that you have the basics that you need to play before advancing into a tree that you really wanted to focus on.
The results can be remarkable. I was not so impressed with the caster Clerics initially. Then I respecced and added some points in the Justicar soul. Justicars get low levels of self healing to begin with, but investing 10 points enhances that baseline self-healing to significant levels. Suddenly, my caster priest was noticeably more durable than any caster I've ever played before, combining medium-heavy armor with significant amounts of self-healing just from my DPS spells.
Rift is not the only game to offer customization options. Building a multi-class DDO character feels slightly similar - for example, many players start their characters with a level of rogue to pick up some sneak attack damage, the "use magic device" skill for self-healing, and some other goodies. However, respecing that DDO character later is rare or costly (in the cash shop). Rift characters can pick up their second role basically immediately, and my cleric has her third slot (out of four) by the early 20's. Respecs are completely free until level 14, and seem cheap thereafter (with the cost scaling as you level, a sensible plan that still wasn't in WoW when last I checked).
All that said, I am leveling the mage now in part because I want to see whether it even makes sense to do so. In addition to having the most healing options in the game, my Cleric can melee, cast DPS spells, and even off-tank. By contrast, the mage gets only a single healing soul (which may or may not be the best choice for certain purposes) and is compensated with a variety of ways to nuke and buff/debuff. Does one character really need half a dozen different variations on DPS casting, especially when many will include a common core of skills (like the six points in Elementalist)? I don't know the answer, but I'm working on it.
Lessons From Launch Queues
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| Rift Server Status Page, 9:15 PM EST, March 2nd 2011 |
Chris has a post up on Rift Watchers comparing the game's queues, and addition of servers, to other game launches. I was present for the launches of WoW and Warhammer, and can attest to the fact that they did indeed feature queues. Blizzard, Mythic, and Trion all chose to launch with conservative numbers of servers and plans to expand rapidly if demand called for it. The jury remains out on Rift, but I maintain that this tactic is a mistake.
The problem is that players who plan to show up in these games with their guilds are going to pick their server from the list that's available the night before launch, not the expanded list that's available after the queues hit. The players who are able to change their server plans when they see a launch day queue are probably showing up on their own.
This means that the game's most dedicated players are going to end up stuck on a server with queues that may not get any better anytime soon. Back in 2004, my guild opted to remain on one of the original 40 WoW servers, and we paid for that call many times over with multi-hour queues that persisted on and off for around three years.
Meanwhile, the servers that are added later fill up with players who have no social ties, making them more likely to change servers again or even leave the game outright (as Mythic discovered with Warhammer). Either way, I'd argue that having to double the number of servers after the fact is far more damaging than launching with a few servers too many.
LOTRO aside
The one launch that seems to have gotten this question right is LOTRO. The game had eleven servers during its open beta/headstart period, and it did not add or remove a single server until the free to play relaunch in 2010 (which added three new servers to the mix). I was horrified when Turbine announced that they were not adding any new servers for the official retail launch, but they had gotten very reliable pre-order numbers and were able to make the correct call.
(The way the LOTRO headstart worked was that you could keep your characters from open beta, but ONLY if you pre-ordered by launch day. By contrast, Trion's open beta was wiped before the headstart, so I'm guessing that players opted to wait for the final servers to arrive before submitting their pre-orders.)
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