Rift Re-Trial At 40

I made good use of the Rift Re-trial week, advancing my Cleric from 36 to 40 with most of the quests of Moonshade Highlands as well as the portions of the world event I could get at.  Overall, it was a good experience that leaves me reasonably convinced that I could enjoy another month or more in Telara... but not in a huge hurry to take that trip right this minute. 

Soul Survival
At Magson's suggestion, I respeced the Cabalist build I'd been experimenting with into the famous AOE-grinding Inquisitor/Justicar.  I agree that the Inquisitor is obviously more powerful and effective - I pulled multiple mobs, somehow failed to Vex enough, died, ran back, and still leveled way faster in this build than any other I've tried because the build literally kills four mobs as fast as it kills one.  I actually had a lot more fun playing the less powerful Cabalist, perhaps precisely because it felt weaker.  This is the downside to the highly flexible soul system - some builds will simply be objectively better than others, leaving the player to choose between interesting and effective. 

Aside: part of the increased leveling speed may have been due to the encouragement to kill more mobs just because I could.  At my level, a mob kill with rested exp was awarding around 800 XP, while a quest completion was worth upper 3000's.  Where I previously tried to pull carefully to minimize time spent in combat with extraneous mobs, with this build they were simply free exp and cash. 

I did finally pick up the cash to purchase my fourth role slot, which means that I can now tank, heal, nuke-DPS or stab-DPS on the same single character, if I ever wanted to.  I don't know that I'll ever want to tank, but I suppose it's good to have the option.  My guess is that my four specs after my next round of respecs will end up being:
- Nuke: Cabalist/12 Justicar/ remainder Sentinel
- Melee: Druid/12 Justicar/remainder Shaman (or possibly 31+ Druid/12 Justicar/14+ Shaman)
- Healer: 31+ Purifier/12 Inquisitor/Warden (amount of Warden TBD, I like to have either 12 Inq or 8 Cab for mana regen abilities, and the other stuff I get for Inq feels more interesting)
- Tank: Full Justicar, most off-tree points to Shaman, undecided on a third soul

Unfortunately, the soul system has left me feeling that I'd happily trade in eight reasonably well implemented, versatile and effective options that I'm not that excited about for one option that I really get excited to play, as I have in LOTRO, WoW (twice over), ROM, and EQ2.  If Rift's 32 souls were instead 32 classes and I had to pick just one, it likely would not be any of the eight Cleric souls.  Because I chose a calling, rather than a class, I've ended up in an odd situation in which the healer is probably the most interesting of my four roles; not the best fit when my schedule keeps me primarily confined to solo play, with only the occasional zone invasion where it is actually useful to switch over from a hybrid DPS role that can off-heal into a real healer. 

Four Roles: I can has them.

Roads Diverge
The challenge for Trion is that it's a crowded marketplace.  The month of WoW I picked up to finish the proto-drake and my second level 85 lasts for another day or so.  I've got some more Vanguard trial time, which will likely determine whether I sub up for EQ2 alone or pay for the Station upgrade to juggle both games.  I'm in no huge hurry to LOTRO right now, but there is an expansion arriving at some point in the fall, and there are other games that I'm also not paying a sub for. 

Then there's Rift, a high quality, well-polished game that's quietly getting better with more features almost every month, but somehow always seems to come up number 2 or 3 in my queue.  Ironically, the steady stream of patches encourages me to wait - if I'm going to pay for just one more month of Rift this year, it might as well be December when they've added the most updates, such as the possibly ill-advised AA system. 

That said, I am reasonably impressed with what I'm seeing.  The world event seems well implemented, and I was able to celebrate my new level with an epic level 40 necklace that has passive water-breathing as a side perk - this souvenir will probably stay in my bags for the life of the character to deal with those pesky swimming quests.  I got to hang out with Ferrel and Iniquity for a few days, and I got to see some pretty sights.  One of these days, I'll be in the mood for more Rift, and I don't expect to be disappointed when that day comes. 

A crossroads for now, and a quick peek at the next zone on my tour wishlist.

Rift Alternate Advancement For Advancement's Sake?

Part of Scott Hartsman's Rift State of the Game is a plan to introduce alternate advancement at the game's level cap.  While I am a non-raider who does enjoy continued progression - the theoretical target audience for this system - I am not convinced that this is a good idea. 

I'm curious what Scott thinks of the AA system over in his old game, EQ2, where players arrive at level 90 with less than half of the current AA cap and can expect a lengthy grind to obtain class-defining abilities in their AA trees.  Unlike gear, there is no short-cut involving plat or guildmates willing to hand you loot - your AA will remain substandard until you've played "enough" to fix the problem.  This is fine if you're happy with what you're doing while you play and less fine if having a minimum number of AA is a balance requirement for your friends to be allowed to bring you on raids. 

Meanwhile, the balance implications are significant.  In the short term, this is yet another form of vertical progression that will make the repeatable content that is intended to keep players in the game easier and easier with each passing day.  In the long term, it's not just group players who face content balanced around the assumption that players have AA - either all future content will assume some baseline level of AA or all future content will be easier than intended for current players.  The former is a problem for new players (who would have to stop and grind AA before continuing to grind levels so they can get to the cap and grind more AA).  The latter is a problem for current players (who will find each new expansion's difficulty ruined by their efforts in the previous one). 

I understand the appeal of the alternate advancement - it's a way to give players permanent progression in chunks that are much smaller than additional levels (which would have an especially big effect on an open ended class system like Rift's).  It is possible that the system could even be used for something unique and interesting, though it's equally possible that it will be reduced to boring but mandatory stat bonuses.  In either case it is unlikely that the game will break on the day the system comes out.  In the long run, though, Trion might end up regretting the decision to add more vertical progression solely for the sake of progression.

Rift Retrial Thoughts

With Rift running about five months after the game's headstart kicked off, Trion apparently felt that it was time to offer a free retrial.  If your account has been inactive for a month or so, you're automagically back online through July 19th.  (Note that clicking the re-subscribe button on the page Trion put together to promote this event forfeits the retrial time and charges you immediately.)  I didn't uninstall the client, but I had 1.3 GB in patches to download, but after that I was immediately back in game.

What's new

 
The latest world event is up and running with a bunch of daily quests to go close death and water rifts.  (At level 37, I've yet to encounter a water rift, but the death ones are pretty prevalent.)  The easily completed daily quests are good for about 150 tokens, with minipets in the 250-500 range along with some cosmetic armor and gear with actual stats.  These quests are also worth a hefty chunk of exp - I gained about half a level during two days worth of them.  This is definitely a good thing if you're coming back to the game after stalling out on the leveling curve, or if you want an alt to skip content you did on your first character, though I am starting to wonder if I'm going to outlevel the Moonshade Highlands before I get through the local quests.

I respecced the Cleric yet again, shifting into the Cabalist caster DPS class (one of the last souls I have never used as a primary in a build).  I wasn't expecting much because the class uses a fair amount of AOE and channeled spells, which is not necessarily the best bet for soloing.  The difference here is that the Cabalist's main channeled spell is cheap and spammable.  I threw in some Justicar and Sentinel for durability (passive healing from all my heals, and two instant cast life nukes that give me convictions for the self-healing doctrine), and at a minimum I've come up with yet another build that isn't exactly like anything I've tried in other games.  (Current spec link if you're curious.)

Perspective on a return trip
Looking back after spending a few months away from the game, two points stand out.

The first is that the actual rifts are a completely different experience than they were at launch.  Between massive crowds, mob scaling, and since-nerfed AOE healing mechanics, I found that rifts and especially zone invasion events frequently felt under-challenging.  This may or may not still be true in areas with newbies or level 50's, but the scene in Moonshade Highlands was scattered minor rifts with 1-3 players per.  The encounters definitely feel more balanced, and I haven't really missed the zone events - maybe I'll be glad to see one if one finally does pop up, rather than being tired of having them over-run the zone every hour on the hour. 

On the flipside, I'm 37 levels into the game, I've tried just about every Cleric soul at some point, and I'm still changing my primary role almost every level.  On the plus side, I do enjoy making new builds, and the soul system allows me to do so without losing my progress and starting over.  It's also a lot harder to pick a "wrong" calling, because you have so many options. 

That said, I identify far more closely with my less flexible characters from other games - or even my WoW and ROM characters who can swap to two very different roles via their respective systems - than my Rift Cleric, who changes so often that I don't really have an identity for her.  Also, I chose the Cleric specifically because I wanted versatility, and because I wanted to make sure that I could be willing to use at least some of the non-DPS roles in groups.  It seemed like a safe bet because Clerics can do everything, where my experience with Mages and Rogues has been that I like one or two builds but am not that interested in many of the other options, including the group-friendly ones.  Perhaps I would have been better off picking a less flexible character with one role I really like for solo play and other utility where I can find it. 

Overall, it's not a bad time in the game's life for Trion to host a retrial.  Whether I come back for a longer stay remains to be seen. 

Early Vanguard Trial Impressions

Vanguard - despite its reputation as a harsh, old-school game with a dwindling population - has been vaguely on my list of things to try someday for a while now.  I'd been hoping for a free-to-play relaunch, but SOE has taken that option off the table, and honestly I may be better off with the $20 Station Pass offer anyway; if it's not worth paying $5 more than I'm already paying for EQ2 many months, it's not worth my time, and this way the game doesn't get hit with all of EQ2X's cash shop antics.

The game's free trial is back online now that the dust has settles from the SOE hack, so I decided to take it for a spin. 

Searching for character

The refreshingly varied list of character races include cat, wolf, and fox people, along with goblins, giants, and other fantasy staples. 

I wanted to try out a class with a good reputation for soloing to mitigate the difficulty, since I don't expect to be grouping much more than I do in other games (read: not all the time).  My first attempt was a Necromancer, your typical ranged DPS with pet.  I somehow keep forgetting that I hate to play ranged classes with pets because I end up feeling like my job is to watch the NPC do the work of actually fighting mobs, and this lasted about four levels. 

My next attempt is Disciple - a melee healer, with normal mana-based heals supplemented by heals on a melee combo point-like mechanic.  This is going much better, and it's moderately likely that this second character will stick, if for no other reason than because I'm not prepared to spend the time it takes to test drive all of the game's classes.  (Many classes don't get key abilities until a good way through the game's level curve.) 

It's worth nothing that Vanguard classes appear to be ahead of their time - DPS healer archetypes like the Disciple and the Blood Mage are increasingly popular in more recent games like Warhammer and Rift. 

Complexity for its own sake?

The character sheet has six panels, half of which have multiple tabs, and some of which aren't where I expect to find them

On the one hand, I can definitely see what appeals to players who miss the old school days.  Vanguard has a crafting system like EQ2's, only this version features more steps, components and subcombines.  There's also a "diplomacy" minigame in which a number-based card system is used to model players negotiating with NPC's.  Adventurers can expect a group dungeon before they hit level 10.  On the other hand, some of the complexity feels redundant. 

Almost anything the player does advances multiple skills, factions, diplomacy standings, etc.  Characters have four separate sets of gear, stats and exp (adventuring, harvesting, crafting, and diplomacy, with an extra tab for your mount and appearance gear), each of which can be further equipped with containers of varying types.  I failed a crafting combine early because I got an error message saying that I needed a "rigging tool" to fix something that had happened, and I made the mistake of buying a second toolbelt to put the missing device into.  Apparently you can have more than one belt, but you can only use the tools from one belt in a single crafting effort per combine, - I ended up losing my materials because a tool I needed was in a belt I didn't realize was inactive. 

Some of this stuff isn't more challenging or more strategic, just complex for the sake of complexity.  One wonders if the game's notoriously rough launch might have gone a bit smoother if someone had asked whether some of these stats and tabs and mechanics were really adding to the game. 

Does the trial play to the game's strengths?

A familiar looking quest system

On his new Vanguard podcast, Ardwulf suggests that the game's "Isle of Dawn" free trial area demonstrates how the game plays, but fails to capture how the game feels.  Having started the trial, I definitely see what he means.  The starter quest series (one each for adventurers, crafters, and diplomats) are linear and just like every other quest-based MMO out there these days.  The confined trial approach locks players out of the open sandbox world that Ardwulf and Quert claim is the game's best feature, instead putting a generic questing experience with somewhat generic lore (all of the game's races, which have lore of their own in their subscriber-only starting areas, have to be willing to take these quests) front and center. 

I'm probably going to spend a bit more time with the trial before making any decisions, but it looks like players need to upgrade to a real account to get a real view of Telon.  That's an unfortunate situation for a game that is looking to attract more players.

An early quest calls for players to loot a toolbox.  If you were there in the real world, it would be easy to see (and you'd also be free to mistakenly bring the questgiver any of the other abandoned tools in the area).  In your standard 3rd person MMO interface, the primary challenge in this quest is figuring out which small part of the landscape will accept a mouse click.