weregamer

Another area where, so far, RIFT has kept things "casual" is the warfronts. Because the additon of PvP stats absolutely destroyed casual PvP in WoW, I was really scared when Trion added them to RIFT.

So far, at least, Trion has not had to resort to the exponential gear explosion that Blizzard uses to drive sales of paid expansions, and PvP stats on gear are staying low enough that a casual player in good PvE gear is still able to fight effectively. PvP gear does make a difference, but most warfront battles are decided by which side is more organized and cooperative first, by who has the best role balance next, and by who has the better gear only if all else is equal.

Now if only I could stop getting dumped in WFs with juvenile e-peen wavers who don't understand this. I had my worst experience ever in a WF this past weekend. In the Codex, where I found myself with an entire raid of e-peen waving children. One even started /yelling how it was unmanly of the Guardians to "gank 11 on 1".

Of course, even on that horrible "team", I just did what I could, accepted that I'd be dying a lot, and allowed the children to send me a flow of favor and prestige while I waited for their rapid failure and the favor bonus for losing.

The #1 best feature on any MMO forum is the "dev tracker" or equivalent. I can generally count on paid forum staff and game developers to have adequate grammar and linguitic skills and a reasonable attitude about the game. Once in a long while, a developer comment implies that its immediate vicinity in its thread is worth my lifespan and blood pressure to read.

I am much more of a fan of the sound in RIFT than even you. I am a primarily aural person, and as gorgeous as computer games have gotten in the last decade or so, the sound is all too often an afterthought. Playing RIFT with headphones on is an amazing experience. There are many layers of appropriate environmental sound. Even with only 2 channels, the positional audio is particularly excellent. I have stood below the crest of a hilll in the Droughtlands and, just by listening, determined that there were two centaurs over to my left and a hunting cat to my right. I have clambered around on the mountains above Granite Falls and *really heard* the waterfalls' roar grow appropriately as I approached them.

2. The *tasteful* mix of humor, especially fourth-wall-breaking puns. With each expansion, WoW has gotten more and more full of in jokes, to the point that even if the pastiche of a backstory and stupid RvR justification didn't destroy immersive roleplaying, the funny-but-ill-fitting NPC names would. I love how in RIFT, I can get a belly laugh from a particularly punny quest title, or appreciate a visual homage to a pop culture reference, but I won't be jerked out of the fantasy world by the prominence of these things.

3. The many rewards for exploration for its own sake. The puzzles and cairns are the top of the list, but also the achievements for going places or doing things far out of the path from quest/exp/loot A to quest/loot/exp B. Nor are all the rewards game-mechanical - sometimes just a gorgeous view, or a moment of peace just over a hilltop from strife, complete with sylvan music and birdsong, makes my evening brighter.

4. Artifact collecting. Another area that is tuned "just right". Collecting artifacts has far too little payoff for a power gamer to do it. A smidgeon of exp, and if you are really really committed, a fast mount for "free". But it's another excuse to go out of the way and see the hidden corners of the world, and another break in the hectic pace of constant battle.

5. Ancient Wardstones. Actually, this is one of the few areas where I don't think they got the tuning right, shutting non-PvPers out of seeing all that can be seen here. At least on PvE servers, it's a damned shame that my Defiants will never see what the ancient stones at the Guardian end of many disputed zones do. But beyond that flaw, I love the fun, slightly bizarre quests that these inject. My favorites are the scavenger hunt in Lantern Hook (which is not repeatable) and the manhunt in Scarwood (which is - why is one repeatable and one not?). "Boarpedo" in Scarwood is a bit odd and sometimes annoying, but I like it. Somehow the idea that these weird things are anachronistically injected by triggering the wardstone makes their odd nature refreshing instead of jarring to me.

Another factor is confidence. Since I've actually played a Chloro, I know both that they are completely first-class healers for 5-mans (though they've been nerfed in 1.1 for raids) and that, most importantly, even more than bards they heal by DPSing. Possibly the most fun run I've ever had through the Iron Tomb was the one where I tanked and guided a party where I was the only one who'd been in there before, and the healer was a mage who went and bought a role and built it as Chloro for that run, asking my advice.

After the run, they all were very complimentary to me for guiding, but the mage had an interesting comment. With target-of-target and cast-on-target-of-target on, they commented that healing was incredibly non-challenging compared to other games and other healing souls - they really could do a great job by leaving me as their target and throwing their attack spells through target-of-target.

Of course, it does turn out that the tank has to know what he/she is doing for this to work too. If the tank doesn't remember that his target is going to be the focus of damage, or if his soul is one that requires him to change targets constantly to tank, he needs to communicate that. One of my worst dungeon runs in Rift was one where I told the tank I'd be targeting through him with my Chloro and he managed to consistently arrange that I pulled aggro if I did that. I had to do my own guessing of how to spread the targeting around. Once I did that things went better, but I was also spending more of my time on that than on choosing the best way to use my healing, and there was at least one wipe caused by that.

@preciousj: The PvP is full of awful, foul-mouthed children

Sadly, I feel that's been true too often in too many games but I found it disappointing this time. I chose an RP-PvE shard as much for the demographics (RP tends to move the median maturity level up a notch) as because I like to play in character, and I was looking forward to dabbling in PvP with more mature and less asinine players. It was quite a shock to find out that battlefronts are cross-shard and I ended up in a map full of hyperactive misbehaving children.

On private grouping:

I have started leaving it on when not with a fixed group of friends, primarily after reading what you wrote a few days ago. It's a turnabout in thinking from "leeching my kills" (which was my initial impression) to "spontaneous cooperation".

But right now, if I'm with my friends and we get anywhere near a rift, invasion, or foothold, SPANG, our group just got smushed into the big public raid. Our quest XP is raid-penalized, our party chat channel is now useless for the three of us, and there is no way we can undo this damage except by dropping group and reforming, out of range of the public group black hole.

I think I saw something in a recent Trion interview suggesting that they understand this problem, but right now it's pretty annoying.

The worst choice Trion could make would be to slavishly "balance" all the souls so that any combination was as good as any other in PvP ... or PvE. The joy and glory of this system is that you can mix and match *to your taste*. If you are all about lolz l77t pwn PvP, go to it, find those "optimal" soul combinations, and enjoy it. Total equivalency is only possible with total equality. Even Blizzard, who IMO spend too much time balancing PvP at the cost of PvE fun, don't try to make every tree for each class equally viable there.

You can't have it both ways. If you want variety, you will have inequality. Any meaningful variation will necessarily mean situations in which one or another choice is more powerful. And in ultra-competitive PvP, that means that the "optimal" builds will prevail.

For the PvE game where most people have more casual fun, it's important that any given soul is viable as a primary and that there are useful choice for combinations on each primary, but trying to make them "balanced" too carefully is a losing proposition.

@oxlar I don't need more than 4 toons ever, which is a downfall for us altaholics.

I feel just the opposite. As an altaholic, I don't need to repeat the beginning quests a zillion times to the point of total boredom. If I want to try out a different build as an experiment, I can just respec my spare role and try it out. If I like it, I can keep it and pick or buy another role to be my experimental slot.

Also don't forget that you have multiple roles. For my Rogues, I tend to have at least one Role with at least 0pt in Riftstalker so I can use that when running around town. The crafting (and PvP) areas in Meridian are indoors so you are dismounted on the way into and out of them. A Plane Shift takes almost exactly half the time off that trip.

For soloing a ranged Rogue in the teens to twenties when the pet is getting useless, I recommend taking Bladedancer as your secondary soul so you get the 50% dodge cooldown and can spend 5 points on increasing dodge, and Riftstalker as the 0pt for the teleport. Now you have one cooldown for staying in a fight when you are slightly outnumbered, and another to help run away if things are worse.

@(Unverified) I would agree. Justicar really doesn't even work as a secondary soul, because the heal is irrelevant unless you use a Justicar attack.

For a Shaman primary at higher levels, good 0pt choices would be Purifier for the shield or Warden for the HOT. I presume you already have Druid as your secondary for the extra melee abilities and the faerie's HOT, even if at high level you turn off its attack spell.