Comments on: Not getting Rift yet

By: flosch

flosch — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:44:48 +0000

@Rohan: Maybe it’s just that the first zone seems very full. Most of the areas are used for quest mobs. I found a few collectibles already, but I think that hardly counts as “exploring”.
So I’ll see what will happen soon when I leave Freemarch. Or I’ll try a less populated server for a change (for some reason, I feel more like exploring if I’m more or less alone).

@pkudude: Yeah, I read your blog, so I see your posts about Rift every now and then. And it’s good to hear that the tone might change a bit after you leave the starter areas. Come to think of it, I’m not a big fan of starter areas in most games…. many of them are quite heavily scripted and very “on rails” to ease you into the game, but that takes a lot of charm out of it. Unless all hell breaks lose at work or something similar, I should easily make it out of Freemarch before my game time runs out, so I’ll check for myself.
And thanks for the offer on soul build questions. If I have any, I’ll ask. I’ll probably try a dungeon soon, and then we’ll see whether I found a way to play a heal/support mage well enough to survive that. 🙂

By: pkudude99

pkudude99 — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:43:36 +0000

@Flosch — After hitting 50 there’s a nice ceremony you can participate in in the new solo “chronicle” where they basically say something along the lines of “Wow, you’ve become so powerful and done so much that we’re going to reward you with even more power!” And the you unlock the Planar Attunement. At least, that’s how it goes down on the Guardian side. I haven’t played my level 50 on the Defiant side in some time nor tried out the PA unlock Chronicle there yet, so I don’t know how it will work there with their steampunk style vs the angel of the gods coming down like on the Guardian side. There’s also a lot less of the whole “OMG you’re an ascended!” once you get out of the starter areas.

Also, Rift locations are static so they’re easy to either look for them or to avoid. Invasions add a ton of spawn points to the “regular few” but even then they’re still static locations. Some zones have them right on top of each other, though, so you can be fighting 2 rifts simultaneously. It used to be if the 2 close rifts were of differing planes the NPC’s would fight each other too, but that got taken out, though it’s rumored it might be coming back “soon.”

I post a bit about Rift at nomadicgamer.com, but I don’t get a whole lot into nitty-gritty details like soul builds, though, so while I’m happy to answer questions if you’ve got them, you may not find a whole lot of help in my posts 🙁

By: Rohan

Rohan — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:38:12 +0000

The game doesn’t “push” you to explore. If you just follow the quest lines, it will feel very straightforward.

You have to strike out on your own to see the exploration stuff. RIFT doesn’t really tell you that it exists (well, I guess you could look at the achievements and guess at some of them).

By: flosch

flosch — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:23:59 +0000

I actually went by google to find out whether it was “great sun” or “great son” – both seemed to make equally little sense to me.
And when it comes to Alec Guinness, I have to profess I’m probably the wrong generation. I think I can only name one movie he is in right away, and that’s the first Star Wars movie*. I like the way potshot put the point though.

* OK, I just looked him up on wikipedia, and there’s _still_ only one other movie I recognized right away, and that’s Lawrence of Arabia. And I sure wouldn’t have recognized Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal.

By: Wilhelm Arcturus

Wilhelm Arcturus — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:56:15 +0000

“Great sun, an ascended!”

Potshot said at some point there every other NPC he talked to sounded like Alec Guinness intoning some momentous announcement. I get that they want to make you special, so you seem the hero, but even I can see half a dozen ascended from where I am standing at any given moment.

It seemed to me that by this point in the game that the average NPC should be saying, “Oh hey look, another ascended. Take a number, we’ll call you when it is your turn.”

The whole soul thing is… diversity beyond me ability to absorb right now. But at least you seem to be able to reset your spent points for cheap. I expect I will end up doing that a lot early on.