Rift

Rift Beta #5 #Rift

stargrace January 25, 2011 2 Comments

A huge number of changes have gone in since Beta #4, and I’m curious as to how it will play. On one hand I’m incredibly happy to find that Trion seems to be listening very well to the feedback – but on the other hand I’m wondering if the “majority” of those feedback comments include making the game “easier” – because that is not the game that I want (as was mentioned in twitter this morning). There’s still a few hours before Beta 5 goes live, so we’ll just have to wait and see. If you’re interested in the notes I’ve posted them below, and I’ll make a few comments in bold afterward. Be sure to leave your own questions and comments below! Also remember you can find me on the Guardian side of Faeblight as Stargrace, and the Defiant side of Wolfsbane as Ellithia.

Beta 5
1/24/2011

=== FEATURED ===
* Public Groups are now in! See below under PUBLIC GROUPS for details. [INCREDIBLY glad to see this implemented, it was my main concern in previous betas]
* Discovery system is in progress! See under DISCOVERY for more details.
* Added a Currency panel to the character sheet that replaces currency tokens previously taking up inventory space. [Another game that doesn’t believe that currency includes money?]
* Updates to tab targeting system below under TARGETING.
* Added a toggled PvP Auto Flag option to help with accidental flagging. See under PVP AUTO-FLAGGING.
* The Raid Manager and Raidframes now colorize player names based on Role, instead of Calling.
* Apothecary crafting skill has gotten a complete makeover! See below under CRAFTING for details.
* Rogues now regenerate Energy during the global cooldown. Using abilities will no longer pause energy regeneration. Energy Regeneration rate is now consistent at 20/second.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY
* Completing Artifact collections now awards Lucky Coins. Turn these in to Artifact Collectors in Sanctum and Meridian for new rewards!
* Many meta-collections now have unique rewards!
* Pets now keep their custom names after you increase the rank of the ability that summons them.
* Nameplates for companion pets now say ‘(Yourname)’s Companion’. These are 50% smaller than regular nameplates.
* Added additional filtering for pet names.
* Players can no longer hide from /target with a cleverly named pet.
* Failed area quests (such as zone events) can now be abandoned from the quest log, and are also auto-removed from the log when the player logs out. [Very happy to see this, it was something I specifically sent in feedback about]
* Quests that remove their quest items when deleted or abandoned now also check your bank.
* Questgivers should not have icons over their heads when they are dead or in combat.
* Guild quests now added for guild levels 11-20.
* Rest experience is only gained in friendly hubs.
* If a teleport fails, you now get a message indicating it didn’t work.
* Random name generator should now spit out a wider variety of names.
* You can no longer equip or unequip items while dead.
* Corpse tooltips no longer show ‘level 0’.
* Minimum character name length has been set to 2 characters.
* You will now be disconnected if you are AFK at the character selection screen for 1 hour.

PUBLIC GROUPS
* A new ‘Join Public Group’ button will appear on-screen when fighting an event (Rift, Invasion, etc.) with someone willing to group.
* You can toggle your availability for public groups by right-clicking your character portrait. Your setting will persist through logout.
* Group or Raid leaders gain an option in their character’s context menu that sets whether the group/raid is Public or Private. This option is not available in Warfronts. Changing this setting sends a message to current group/raid members with the updated status.
* If a targeted player is available for public grouping, there will be a button above their portrait. Mousing over the button will show current grouping information and click the button to join them.
* If a group is full, you will see the same button with an appropriate X mark across it.
* If you are a group/raid leader and your group will fit, clicking the button to join someone’s public group will disband your group/raid and act as though all members just joined the selected person’s.
* If your group/raid won’t fit in the selected person’s open slots, you get an error message.
* Destination groups will convert to raids as needed.

DISCOVERY
* We now call out in Say and Guild chat channels when the following occurs on a server:
– The first time an Elite or special loot-dropping NPC is killed,
– The first time a Rare or higher Item is looted,
– The first time a specific Quest has been completed,
– The first time a particular Achievement is earned,
– The first time an individual Collection is turned in,
– Including the person who did it.
* Additional milestones that are called out in Say chat only:
– Server-first for items of less than Rare quality.
– Server-first kills for general NPCs.
* Some special server-firsts may even be broadcast to everyone!
* This system doesn’t give retroactive credit – so everything is going to be considered ‘new’ on Beta for this.

TARGETING
* Tab Target ordering is now based on a cone in front of the character first, then everything else.
* Tab order is reset if you select a target with the mouse, or a target is selected for you (aggro).
* Target selection distances now use a more sensitive calculation based on the closest ‘edge’ of a potential target, rather than a centerpoint.
* Pressing tab during combat will no longer select “Yellow” mobs.
* Enemy Players will only be included in Tab targeting if that player is currently attackable.
* Tab will now only allow one target change per keypress, instead of zooming through different targets if held down.

PVP AUTO-FLAGGING
* Added a PvP Auto Flagging option that defaults to ON – turn this off to restrict auto flagging of any kind. Keep in mind that, while disabled, you cannot take any PvP action until you flag yourself – so be careful around enemy guards! While this is disabled:
– AoE cast by non-flagged players will not damage a flagged player.
– Pets of non-flagged players should not be able to attack flagged players or their pets.
– You will not be able to fight back against a flagged NPC (Guards) until you flag yourself.
– Moving into an area that *should* flag you for PvP – such as Warfronts – will still flag you.
– You should not be able to heal a PvP flagged player.
– You should still be able to buff a PvP flagged NPC if they are out of combat and have no players on their aggro list.
* Turning on auto-attack will no longer flag you for PvP if you are too far away to actually hit your target.

CHARACTER SHEET UPDATES
* Implemented a new character sheet layout. It’s shiny!
* New character sheet includes a Planar Focus UI, so you no longer need to shift-right click your Focus to see what you have equipped.
* Two additional stats are now displayed on the Character sheet. Valor affects damage received from other players – the more you have, the less damage you take. Toughness is a high-level tanking stat that mitigates critical damage from NPCs.
* Pet stat displays only have Valor.

CURRENCY
* Added a Currency panel to the character sheet.
* All tokens that were converted to currency type items will be auto-converted on login.
* Motes of Sourcestone are now referred to in-game as Planarite. Sourcestone items will no longer drop, and existing Sourcestone in your bank or inventory will be converted into Planarite.
* All future currency obtained will automatically go to the Currency tab instead of taking up inventory space.
* All Sourcestone-bought items have had their costs converted to appropriate Planarite costs, and Rift events now drop Planarite in appropriate amounts.
* Updated Sourcestone collecting Achievements to reference Planarite instead.

LOOTING (aka SHINY THINGS)
* All loot rolls go to Party chat if you are partied, and Raid chat if raided.
* When in a party or raid, you will only see loot roll results if you participated in the roll.
* Roll results are no longer displayed as system messages.
* /roll no longer displays the channel name to make it more visually distinct from chat messages on the same channel.
* We now display the items in the loot window that are being rolled on for group loot. If everyone passes and the item is still there after rolling, you can click on it to loot it.
* Fixed an issue with area quest loot not being rewarded when your inventory was full, and then disappearing.
* Fixed another pesky loot-sparkling corpse bug where there wasn’t actually loot to obtain.

MAIL
* Mail with attached items now bounces back to the sender when it expires.
* Adjusted mail expiration: 7 days for CoD mail, 30 days for regular mail, and 90 days for returned mail.
* Increased mailbox size limits.
* We have temporarily disabled the ability to send COD mail until a technical issue is resolved.

RIFTS AND INVASIONS
* Experience and money rewards have been removed from zone-wide event completions. Other event rewards remain. [Hrms. What is supposed to entice people to complete these.. if rewards are being removed ]
* The amount of health granted to Rift NPCs when there is high population in the area has gained some additional granularity and smarts when it comes to actually affecting the NPCs.
* Non-event based Wardstones no longer regenerate health.
* Defiant Invasions should now scare the more timid Guardian hub NPCs.
* And Guardian Invasions should scare the more timid Defiant hub NPCs.
* Invasions summoned by player flares will now despawn 60 seconds after winning or losing regardless of their combat state. This solves a bug where these Invaders were getting stuck hanging out in the world.
* Each Wardstone or Idol can only be attacked by a player spawned invasion once every 2 minutes.
* Invasions which succeed will now despawn after 10 minutes, or 3 minutes if left out of combat.
* Invasions will place ‘Invader’s Barrier’ on any Idol they spawn, preventing all damage to it for the next 10 minutes or until that invader is defeated.
* Invasions no longer aggro as a group and can be split.
* If an Invasion general is despawned, rather than killed, it will not count as a ‘kill’ for rewards or quests. Same with Footholds and despawning versus defeating them.
* The large Rift Invaders – colossi – should be more visible from a distance.
* Wandering mobs should no longer wander on top of upgraded wardstones.
* Enemy footholds now show on the map.
* Foothold NPCs have their leashing length increased, preventing players from attacking an idol outside of the effective range of its defenders.

So You Want to Be a Healer #Rift

stargrace January 11, 2011 6 Comments

I’m one of many who have been playing along in the Rift beta events and I have been sticking to just one character for the most part because I find it incredibly fun. No surprise, the character is a cleric. To be specific I’ve gone down the Sentinel / Warden / Purifier soul lines with a heavy focus on Group / Raid heals (Sentinel). This weekend was beta 4 and I tried out Warfronts, many invasions, and a few rifts. After a twitter conversation this morning I thought I would post a few helpful hints on healing outside of your group in Rift.

A lot of the neat things that happen in the world involve these giant planar creatures coming and ripping apart your quest hub. There are also rifts which is what the screen shot above is showing, and they’re quite small and can be taken down with relatively few people. In fact the one pictured above only had myself and another player there, and I noticed some gravestones that I could click on, so I clicked them and it spawned some Fallen Wardens who helped out in the fight. Awesome.

A down side to these awesome invasions is that you are (unless you’re playing with friends) more than likely soloing your way through all of this so when an invasion shows up you’re not in a group and don’t have the slightest idea what to do or who to heal. The default UI set up for Rift is NOT going to help you out as a healer. If you want to become a better “out side of group” healer as I’m going to term it for now there are a few key things you will have to do.

Number one – TURN ON TARGET OF TARGET. This is in your UI options. It is far easier to target one of the mobs and click on the person the mob is targeting (which will cause you to target them) than it is to try to cycle through all of the good guys in front of you. In fact if you notice one person is actually (gasp) tanking the mob more than anyone else you can hit control + T and set them as the focus. /Focus will clear it. Your focus will always remain on your screen and you can click their portrait easily and keep an eye on them while you work through other people to heal. Basically what I did was target the main boss of the encounter, find out who was tanking it (once it stopped switching targets) and set them as a focus. Kept them up with my big heals and buffs, and moved on cycling through other targets for spot healing.I think target of target is essential to game play as a healer and there’s no reason to over look it. I also found the icons really big for default, so I shrunk them down a bit.

Number two – RE-BIND THE CYCLE THROUGH FRIENDLY TARGETS KEY. Right now this is set to control tab which is really annoying to press in the heat of battle. I bound mine to Q which is a strafe key I never use. I ignored the mobs once I had tagged them once (you need to, in order to get kill credit for quests) and then concentrated on cycling through all players with the Q key and healing them all. I also made sure to put my buffs on anyone who didn’t have the bright yellow sunshine icon.

As soon as I figured out these two simple things healing became much easier, and my rewards from participating in invasions went way up. I was mistaken in thinking that DPS characters earn more than healers by their actions. Remember during an invasion you can actually heal the .. I forget technical term. The stone that your invasion is trying to smush. You can heal it and buff it while the tanks and DPS are trying to work down the mobs.

I also have two specs, one for healing out of group invasions (also my solo spec for now) and another for healing warfronts. When you’re not in a group your group / raid heals are useless. You can’t cast them on other groups (at this point in time at least, please note that this is beta and subject to change). I moved these heals to another side of my hotbar as a note to myself not to use them. You CAN still put death prevention and wards outside of group and I make sure to use them every single time they’re up. As far as warfronts go – so far I haven’t lost one. I’ve stuck with whomever has the fang, the fang does damage to the player and I tend to heal them through it until it gets to the point where there is no use they’re going to die. Then I can quickly pick up the fang and keep myself healed until that person runs back to me. I switched off between myself and another healer for the majority of the warfronts, keeping each other alive and hidden behind a tree while the dps and tanks did their thing in front of us, keeping the opposing team away. I don’t know if this is how everyone runs warfronts, but that’s what I’ve done so far.

I feel that healers (at the moment) are incredibly over powered. Unless I cast my group heal I can pretty much chain cast for 20 minutes without running out of power. My group heal takes a lot of power and I can only cast that a few times before I need to gain more back. I found this amusing when I compared to my mage who ran out of power so very quickly.

I am still hoping that some sort of “auto group” option gets in place for when you approach an active invasion and rift. This would at least make it easier to monitor who needs healing and when but with a few tweaks, it’s at least no longer impossible to tell who needs to be kept alive. Feel free to post other tricks of the trade as you encounter them! The more information we can get out about how to play a good ‘out of group’ healer the better.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Soul Combinations #Riftgame

stargrace January 1, 2011 5 Comments

I didn’t intend on playing beta 3 of Rift that much because I’ve already determined that I want to purchase the game. Playing it a lot now means I have less surprises to look forward to when it goes live, and I don’t want to experience burn out before I’ve even started. On that same note there was really nothing I wanted to play this weekend except Rift, so I did find myself in game more often than not.

I started beta 1 with a sentinel warden combination. Basically a pure healer combined with a druid who used elemental attacks and heals over time. I had a lot of fun, the warden has a few attacks that push mobs away from you, and the casting of the sentinel was quite fast. With a few buffs under my belt I actually never died while playing. I created on the defiant side since it was beta 1. Beta 2 I did not participate in, being caught up in WoW and – I forget what else. Looking back I wish I had of played more, but I don’t feel like it was that bad of a thing that I missed it.

Beta 3 I decided I would create a different class, and I would play the Guardian faction instead of Defiant. I instantly fell in love with the dwarf race, enough so that I think it’s what I’ll be playing at release, on the PvE-RP server. I really miss role playing. I created a Beastmaster, which is one of the tank classes. Much like the Beastlord of EQ they come with a pet, and you have the ability to wield a number of weapons right from the start including dual wielding, sword and board, and 2 handed. Unlike beastlords (from what I saw in any case) the pets are mostly for dps and not for tanking purposes since you are a tank class and you generate a lot of threat. It was nice to have the added dps. Once I had quested along enough I added a second soul to the combination, and I picked a paladin. It wasn’t one of the suggested soul pairings, but I figured being able to use heals and magic attacks along with my pet attacks could only lead to more awesomeness. Having such a gigantic amount of choice when it comes to character customization (via souls) is really what is sucking me in to Rift.

The tank was fun. I mean, really fun. Considering I rarely play tanks and they’re always my 4th (or 10th) choice in a game I was pretty happy that the idea appealed to me at all.

Before I go too far I decided to try another character combination. This time I went dwarf (guardian) rogue, and picked bard to start. Things were a little slow until I got my second skill which allowed me to use my points (much like a rogue has points in WoW or a paladin has holy points) and expel them all at once in a big attack. For my second soul I decided to try a ranger and was given a pet. This pet (unlike the beastmaster) tanks, has a charge, and holds agro very well – at least from what I saw. I never had it lose agro once, although I did find that it tended to pull mobs that had not agro’d me, as though it’s on it’s own agro leash. Fine but I’ll have to keep that in mind as I go running around. The ranger and bard combination was working fantastic. I could heal a little, buff a little, had a pet to tank while I pelted the mob with arrows. Things were good. I did die once because some how my pet gained agro on .. well. A lot of creatures that bee-lined for me but aside from that it was pretty smooth sailing.

I was going to log back in and play my healer some more, but alas, all good things must come to an end and beta 3 was one of those things. I’m pretty excited about this game (as you can probably tell) even if it doesn’t stick, I’m looking forward to beta 4 and whatever it brings.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!