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General: What if... A Rifts MMO
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
Recent lawsuits have given way to MMORPG.com's Jon Wood waxing poetic about what an MMO based in the Rifts universe might be like.
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On May 12th, we learned that the game formerly known as Heroes of Telara and later re-named Rift: Planes of Telara had run into a spot of legal trouble over the name change. It seems as though Palladium Books is suing Trion Worlds over the use of the name. You see, Palladium is responsible for a sci-fi IP known as Rifts.
Now I'm not going to get into the whole legal mess and whether or not the charges are merited. That's not my strength and really, it doesn't matter a lick to MMO fans. The charges however were enough to get some people thinking: What if they were to make an MMORPG based on the Rifts universe?
With sci-fi MMOs beginning to take a larger and larger share of the traditionally fantasy-based genre, many have asked the question why no studio has stepped up and claimed the well known pen and paper IP. Today, we wanted to take some time to consider that possibility and think about what a Rifts game might look like.
Read What if... A Rifts MMO.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Man i loved me some good ol' pnp Rifts back in the day.
As an MMO it would make a great ultra-sandbox game. An open ended class system would work nicely if done in an EVE style of "leveling". Give it an open-world ala Fallen Earth, and a corp/guild domination like Global Agenda... Oh the deliciousness. Put neutral hubs near contested areas that would work like bazaars and recruiting centers, then let the guild/corp alliances have more in-depth trading/AH functions.
Damn my brain is buzzing...
Nice work Jon. I think it's time we talked about this. Rifts is my faveorite pnp system of all time. There are far better writen and balanced pnp systems out there. But I feel nothing has ever really captured the scope of what is possible in Rifts. To make it work in todays market though....thats a tall order. Don't think there is anyway you could ever get all the character classes in there for starters....how many is it now? I think you have to go with the unbalance but I think you have to have gameplay mechanics and game situations that will make people depend on the weaker classes like scholars, just as in the pnp setting. One of my favorite Rifts characters of all time was a mechanic. Trying to fix things while Dragons and Godlings and Juicers where fighting all around me was a great experiance. Just that feeling that any of them could swatt you as an afterthought and there would be nothing I could do about it, but there I was doing my job. As for the setting, the possibilitys are litteraly endless. So much lore to trall through and expansion packs for ever. More than anything I would like to see a development company take this on. But how you would implement it. I couldn't really tell you.
Sure, I'd like to see the setting as an MMO. Just not made in today's AAA method of MMO making. CCP is about the only company right now I'd trust to pull it off. Everyone else would want to "monetize" it to high hell.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Imbalanced as all hell but so worth it. I remember looking up the highest costing spell in the game and wondering if a level 1 character could cast it. Imagine my surprise to find out that he could. It just took such an exact sequence of circumstances to do it (Something like a new moon during a solar eclipse, in the middle of a ritual while on the nexus of several major ley lines...) that it would epic just to try to pull it off. Because of that versatility the magic system in Rifts alone would be great to see in an MMO. The other portions of combat would be so worth it too. Mmmm, Glitterboy armor....
Not just another pretty color.
As much as Rifts is an enjoyable premise, Jon, there's one big stumbling block that you overlooked. A Rifts MMO would likely never get very far into the development stage because Siembieda would want to micro-manage everything and refuse to yield creative control to anyone else. That would mean a whole mess of "awesome concepts" and very little actual mechanics developed, much like David Allen's initial vision for Horizons. Frankly, I'd prefer to see a whole new cross-genre sci-fantasy IP created than try to license anything from Palladium.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!
Unbalanced classes, a massive power creep every expansion, and KEVIN'S GIANT FREAKING EGO KILLING OFF ALL THE FUN EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK!
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!
Rifts is a trainwreck in progress for the last twenty years!
I to forgot about "Big" Kev Siembieda. But he has been trying to keep Palladium afloat for years now. He must see that this i.p in an mmo format would be like a license to print money? If not we could tie him up and lock him in the cupboard for a few years.
I would buy it and play nonstop until my eyes bled or exploded!
WTF podded again?
Yeah me too.. I remember when it first came out.. My friends and I already played every other Palladium rpg available, so we already had every single book to incorporate into the universe.. Oh what fun!!!! Unless whoever wrote the game completely hozed it up, I too would probably play until my untimely demise.
"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." - Henry Ford
I think it'd get the Champions work over sadly.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
I would gladly donate one of my testicles (and perhaps one of YOURS) to make this a reality. But, sad to say, I really don't know how a development company could produce the game and stay true to the IP.
Limitless possibilities are awesome in a pnp game, but border on impossible to port into a computer game. For example, how do you allow for players to play as:
Glitterboy
Juicer
Vampire
Werewolf
Celestial Entity
Dragon
Cyborg
Mech Pilot
Mechanic
Inter-dimensional demon
Techno-Wizard
Alchemist
And any other manner of creature / being / entity / etc etc etc
The beauty of Rifts was that you could literally bring over or create ANY type of character you wanted in the game. I'd almost rather see it not be made into an MMO than to see it be made into an MMO that completely loses the beauty of the system in the process.
I don't know if there's a way to bring this type of game to life with current technologies. I'm a sad panda.
No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions
in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem.
-Glen Cook
I think my mind exploded when I read "balance issues" listed under quirks.
NO!
Rifts was terrible, the background was OK, but the actual rules, an utter utter utter pile of dog doo.
A better game world would be Spacemaster or Talisman, not Rifts.
Wow. This really brings back some memories. RPG's are why I got into MMOs. WIthout the RPG in my opinion the MMO would not exist --- instead the online market would be dominated by Halo type games.
This being said, The Secret World may take things in this direction -- and depending on how well Funcom pulls it off may open the doors for these types of games to start emerging. As for balance --- who gives a rats ass! A naked Atlantean could beat the snot out of a fully armored Glitterboy or fully tweaked out Juicer, and that was the fun thing about the game. Its also a great reason to go out and get that next expansion pack!
Actually this makes me nostalgic. Would be nice to have all my favorite RPG worlds done into MMOs. Dark Sun Online done as a modern sandbox (literally and figuratively) mmo would be killer.
Laudanum - Romance. Revenge. Revolution.
Crappy, petty people breed and raise crappy, petty kids.
Dark sun would be fantastic, imagine a defiler destroying the plants around them. Big battles being sites of total destruction for ages.
Bald dwarves with problems...canibal haflings!
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but I couldn't disagree more. The ruleset for Rifts was well-implemented and open enough for just about endless scaling and tweaking. How can you say it was a pile of crap?
No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions
in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem.
-Glen Cook
ROFL... If you had THAT many problems with the Rifts pnp game, I'd lay the blame on your GM, not the game system itself.. It's a damn pnp game for crying out loud.. Not sure about you but GM's I played with ALWAYS had a way to keep things playable.. It's called "I'm the damn GM and this is what is happening"..
"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." - Henry Ford
That was the problem.
Not only was the ruleset... odd, to say the least, but there really was NO existing balance (the more stuff from later books you added, the more this become evident ). Far more than in any other RPG, in RIFTS GM was your balance and you better pray to God that your GM was at least competent enough to tweak things (Cosmo Knights, anyone?). Needless to say, everyone played homebrew version of rules, in one form or another.
Balance shouldn't be a problem in MMOs anyway. People should know their roles, have reasons gameplay wise for their roles, and enjoy it.
Should a rampaging barbarian be able to kill a clothie chanting to cast some uber spell in one or two hits if coming undetected from behind? Yes, that should be the balance and that should be the reason you play with friends to keep situtions like that from happening.
It's one of the reasons why also a good pnp RPG will always be superior to a mmorpg.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
That was the problem.
Not only was the ruleset... odd, to say the least, but there really was NO existing balance (the more stuff from later books you added, the more this become evident ). Far more than in any other RPG, in RIFTS GM was your balance and you better pray to God that your GM was at least competent enough to tweak things (Cosmo Knights, anyone?). Needless to say, everyone played homebrew version of rules, in one form or another.
YES!
Just let me play a Cyber Knight!
A fun "what if" idea Jon, but as you said all the "I wanna be L3373$7 0Ph 7|-|3 L337" kids would piss and moan that their Archivist couldn't take on a Glitterboy.
Now that you have thought about the possibility of Rifts as a MMORPG, how about Torg?
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I think if developped by the right company it would be well worth developing. All the material is there. I doubt they would allow glitterboy's and other Mechs what would be pretty over powered. but the regular SDC classes would be great. Love to play my al time fav Layline Walker again or Juicer.
Dude, the whole point of a world like RIFTS is that there's going to be MASSIVE imbalances. That's the frikkin' idea! The thing that keeps you looking over your shoulder is knowing that no matter how bad-a$$ you think you are, something could step out of a nexus point at any moment and smash you into jelly.
Cosmo Knights?! Hell yeah! I played one. But the GM (and the guys I played with) were smart enough to not let it get outta hand. We all decided to play pretty beefy characters to make it easier on our GM to balance encounters around our group strengths / weaknesses. This obviously can't be done in a computerized version of the game, which means that balance will be done away with in favor of open progression in whatever way you choose. If you choose to play an SDC class who runs into the middle of a mega-damage firefight, you freakin' deserve to get annihilated. Plain and simple. On the other hand, you could play a techno-wizard who stays the hell outta the way of those firefights and do some significant damage from afar.
It's about playing a ROLE in a game like Rifts. You simply cannot (and should not) expect the game to be balanced so that everyone has the same survivability / DPS / transportation modes, etc. If they made a Rifts game, I think it would foster a solid community on each server due to the fact that each person will not be balanced against the others, but will instead be playing something they really enjoy playing.
Geez... I remember when people played characters because they enjoyed them instead of keeping score against everyone else. I remember back in the days of EQ1 warriors and enchanters were totally useless w/o a solid group, but we played them because we enjoyed the role. WTF has happened to this genre?
No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions
in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem.
-Glen Cook
I tried to GM the game once, we had a great background for the characters, great area set up, I had a great overall plot for the game...then we got to the rules...2 a4 sides of drivel and if I remember rightly, roll a d20 if you get over 12 you do whatever you are trying to do.........the group I was playing with went wtf and we never touched the game again...
Maybe its got better from the mid 90's but I doubt it :P