Why Don't More People Play This?

dreamer05

Seriously. I played back at launch and it was huge. I just got back into since there are no other decent MMOs out. It has aged well in terms of graphics, the souls system allows for so much unique customization, and the costume/dye system is very accessible and well done. The support role is unique, just a lot of good things I see but nobody is interested. Very sad, especially given the lackluster competition.

Belgaraath

I can only speak for myself, but for me it was because it was too generic compared to what was already out..especially the story/ feel of the world. Be it WOW, Lord of the RIngs Online, Guild Wars 2, ESO, even SWTOR...there was really no reason to play it....but everybody is different so if you like it, keep at it.

BrotherMaynard

Because it was always a pretty mediocre game with an awful company behind it. With time, the mediocrity of the game got bundled with loads of disgusting practices so typical of Trion and Scott Hartsman.

Some excellent features that set Rift apart from the competition were nerfed completely to the ground shortly after launch. Afterwards it managed to offer a good deal to the players until about 2013 I think and then Trion's unique combination of desperation, greed and incompetence prevailed. Good thing that Trion is gone now - not that the new owner is any better, of course - but at least the sands of time (and causality in a market economy) give us this little satisfaction...

It's not like there is some kind of injustice happening here. The game (and the way it has been managed) deserves exactly the number of players it has.

Phry

When Rift launched it was pretty amazing, and it wasn't the buggy mess that other games seemed to be plagued by at the time, maybe if the game had 'evolved' then it would have retained some of its initial popularity, its a shame but perhaps its present state was inevitable.

Albatroes

Gamigo. Before them, Trion was just being lazy with the game while expecting loads of money for it. Hell, there's still some bugs in the game to this day that have existed since the game was p2p (Yeah, I'm looking at you Bugforge).

Gilcroix

I quit playing shortly after release because , at that time you couldn't turn off other peoples spell effects. So when you raided the boss would just turn into a giant ball of light. It was just too rough on my PC which wasn't the greatest at that time.

I never returned because now it would cost more than 100$ to catch up with expansions.

Galadourn

well, it felt generic, although it played without any major issues iirc...

MightyUnclean

Because it had about as much soul as Albion Online.

alakram

I played it alot when it came out, it was fun. But at one point I moved to another game. Maybe it's old and people moved to other games.

Nasa

Scot

Rift is certainly one of the better MMOS out there but it is not exactly in a hotly contested race, there just are not that many decent MMOs. Also I am not sure about the monetarisation that has been bought in after I left, check that out if you are thinking of returning.

Xatsh

It was a game I played at launch. I felt it was a solid mmo, but it also came out in the period where WoW was still massively growing and lets be honest no new mmos in the west really did well at this time. WoW was just killing them all off.

When I started I felt that Rift was basically a less cartoony WoW clone with a much better class system and some other neat features added. But outside the class system and graphics WoW was just a much more massive and more solid game for a themepark style mmo at the time.

That combined with the F2P conversion (Horrible move how they did it) and lets be honest TRION's horrific greed and bad management sorta killed it off.

In the beginning Trion cared about their game and the quality but overtime Trion started to care more and more about money and making as much as possible. The Shareholders and making quick returns became more important then a good experience for the player. $$$ per quarter targets became more important then growth and sustaining the playerbase. The cash shop was added and  the constant nickle and diming everyone became the company primary focus. Seriously paying to unlock gear slots, buying endgame gear, and $100 mount RNG boxes.... just LMFAO LVL STUPID.

Less development and more focus on cashshop additions, pvp more and more becoming an after thought and external competition more or less killed off the game over time in my opinion.

In today mmo world. There are just much better options. BDO, ESO, FFXIV, WoW, GW2 at least in my opinion all slaughter it in terms of a game and what they offer. So why would you play it over them. It is sorta sad cause the soul system was awsome, and at the time the rift system was a decent concept open world activities that brought ppl together.

dreamer05

When it came out it was amazing. Tons of players getting together, unique PvP, and the soul system was completely original. I agree with above I was never a fan of the WoW cartoony graphics, but there is no other game out there with a class system like the soul system. People should also keep in mind that many games have added mechanics almost identical to rifts. Rifts were completely unique and the idea has been copied by many modern MMOs. I played very strongly at launch and for quite a while, but I guess I wasn't around when Trion started to go dirty.

I've played all other modern MMOs. ESO is actually pretty good, FFXIV locks too much content behind quests, WoW went to shit a while ago, GW2 I like for the PvP but I never really saw much to keep you going long-term, and BDO.... I don't even know what that game is trying to be. If BDO had any grouping it may be more interesting.

I'm looking forward to Camelot Unchained and Pantheon, but I'll certainly play WoW classic, as I was playing EQ during the time WoW was in its begining. Otherwise I just feel sad that a game with such unique mechanics has been killed off.

Kyleran

Like most theme parks of the day, I bought it at launch, even paid a 6 month sub.

I recall getting a character to max level after about 3 months in and realized the "endgame" (rerunning dungeons and gear grinding) really was of no interest,  it lacked any sense of purpose so I went back to EVE.

For what it's worth, it's why I don't play any other MMORPGs, most don't offer what I'm looking for in a virtual world.

Octagon7711

Pretty much the same for me.  I played it at release and it was a lot of fun for awhile but all the zones were pretty much the same instead of other MMOs that took you through a variety of ecosystems.  Then it seemed to get super expensive to buy anything.  I still check in about once a year.

nastilon

Rift was my favorite MMO. Basically Trion made a series of bad decisions and monetization and did not keep up with content. There was also some other drama, etc. In general, I think Rift really has some awesome features such as the soul system, and absolutely fantastic art style.

After the first expansion, it's my belief that every $ put into Rift went to a different IP and Rift became #2, despite being the cash-cow for all the other games. I do not think Gamigo will invest in development for Rift. If you play it, you are basically hopping on the lifeboat to get back on the ship as it is going down. Yeah you might have fun for a bit but there is no future. Very sad

dreamer05

nastilon said:

Rift was my favorite MMO. Basically Trion made a series of bad decisions and monetization and did not keep up with content. There was also some other drama, etc. In general, I think Rift really has some awesome features such as the soul system, and absolutely fantastic art style.

After the first expansion, it's my belief that every $ put into Rift went to a different IP and Rift became #2, despite being the cash-cow for all the other games. I do not think Gamigo will invest in development for Rift. If you play it, you are basically hopping on the lifeboat to get back on the ship as it is going down. Yeah you might have fun for a bit but there is no future. Very sad

We sure they won't invest in it? It's a long shot but they added a couple of things.

Panther2103

Rift launched in a great state. One of the few MMORPG's that didn't have massive problems on release. It was a WoW clone that was done correctly and had enough unique features to make it stand out on it's own. I loved the game until the F2P transition.

Sure the population was not going great anymore, but at that point the game still wasn't bad. Trion was still in a decent state that wasn't showing the signs of greed. Once F2P happened it all went downhill. They started offering dungeon sets of gear in the cash shop, locking powers behind payments, the monthly fee / patron status didn't do much for you other than some boosts. It would have been fine if they could have managed the shop better. But then after that the whole Archeage debacle happened and Trion had tarnished their name and had a pretty large portion of the players leave their games.

I honestly would love to play Rift again but I am afraid Gamigo isn't going to do anything for it in the long run.

Ungood

Pity to hear about Trove.

Xasapis

Archeage killed Rift ... somehow ...

Viper482

Was great, but Trion started getting arrogant like Blizzard has lately and thinking they know what players want more than players do. Ignoring your player base is a good way to lose it.

BrotherMaynard

dreamer05 said:

When it came out it was amazing. Tons of players getting together, unique PvP, and the soul system was completely original. I agree with above I was never a fan of the WoW cartoony graphics, but there is no other game out there with a class system like the soul system. People should also keep in mind that many games have added mechanics almost identical to rifts. Rifts were completely unique and the idea has been copied by many modern MMOs. I played very strongly at launch and for quite a while, but I guess I wasn't around when Trion started to go dirty.

I've played all other modern MMOs. ESO is actually pretty good, FFXIV locks too much content behind quests, WoW went to shit a while ago, GW2 I like for the PvP but I never really saw much to keep you going long-term, and BDO.... I don't even know what that game is trying to be. If BDO had any grouping it may be more interesting.

I'm looking forward to Camelot Unchained and Pantheon, but I'll certainly play WoW classic, as I was playing EQ during the time WoW was in its begining. Otherwise I just feel sad that a game with such unique mechanics has been killed off.

I'm not sure I would agree with your view of the soul system. It was an enhanced talent system that had been already present in many other games. Even combining different souls wasn't that innovative (just think of the original WoW talents, you could also have created all kinds of hybrid combinations) - what was slightly different was the distillation of all of it into only four archetypes / callings (where other games had many more) and dividing the souls among them. You thus had more options in each calling, which led to possibly interesting combinations - but again it wasn't anything groundbreaking. However, I do agree it was a much welcome news when classes and systems in games like WoW were being cut and homogenised left and right.

The souls were also prone to fundamental problems that Trion was never really able to fix (I'm pretty sure they more or less gave up around the end of Storm Legion). Also, a good 1/4 - 1/3 of the abilities across different souls of the same calling were pretty much duplicates: you could decide for a spell X from soul Z or its duplicate from the same calling with a slightly different name and visual effect. And in the end, you ended up macroing everything into one or two buttons anyway.

Rift was pretty schizophrenic from before its release, it's like there were two games that were developed in parallel and then dumped together in the same world. On one side you had the dynamic system, events, rifts, invasions (they were not completely new, other games had done similar stuff before) and then there were the most traditional static game systems and quests.

The clash between the two approaches came immediately after release and that's also when it became apparent that the game lacked proper direction. WoW was at its peak, with WotlK population of 12m, no other game could beat the behemoth on its own turf (classic theme park). Trion didn't realise that people complaining about not being able to do traditional static quests in Rift due to dynamic events overrunning zones were not their target audience. The company was too obsessed with their absurd "you're not in Azeroth anymore" mantra to see what was happening. They ruined the main feature that set the game apart, in order to please players who would regardless go back to WoW sooner or later, because WoW does that stuff better.

Instead of developing the major feature identifying the game (which even was in the name of the game!), Trion butchered it - and never recovered from the change. Instead of adapting the quest system to also change and evolve dynamically with the events, they turned towards static world and quests, thus becoming a cheap B-movie to the Hollywood blockbuster that was WoW.

They could have had the game generate all kinds of dynamic NPCs, war camps / forward outposts for players to hand in random quests in areas where quest givers were killed by the invasions and to hand out missions in dynamic campaigns to retake the settlements and zones, integrating it all with crafting to build up resources, arm the resistance and help repel the invaders - Trion did none of that, leaving the dynamic system forever stunted, bland and ultimately pointless.

In addition to this schizophrenic game design, Rift's development was heavily front-loaded - there were very few major new systems added or developed more deeply after the launch. Instant adventures, planar attunement - while not too bad - were pretty shallow additions intended to prolong the grind, while at the same time making it easier to jump in and start grinding at a moment's notice. The only truly great major feature that Trion added post-launch were the dimensions; and to some extent mentoring (but that was also mostly meant to cover up the thinning player population).

There could be a whole chapter written about their game engine, which shows how little the pre-release dev leads knew what the game was supposed to be - but this is getting way too long already, so I'll stop here.

It's no wonder the game went downhill, to be honest I'm surprised it lasted this long. It probably says more about the state of the MMO scene than it does about Rift, though.

centkin

Once bitten twice shy.  More like 4 times bitten.  Each time I got a soul combination I liked they nerfed it into the ground, getting rid of what made it work together.  After I had been ground into the dust by game changes 4 times -- it was like all vanilla -- what good is having choices when all the choices are the same?  And forbid you find something that synergizes well -- for it shall be removed.

Darksworm

dreamer05 said:

Seriously. I played back at launch and it was huge. I just got back into since there are no other decent MMOs out. It has aged well in terms of graphics, the souls system allows for so much unique customization, and the costume/dye system is very accessible and well done. The support role is unique, just a lot of good things I see but nobody is interested. Very sad, especially given the lackluster competition.

Played at release.  The PvP wasn't even close to balanced, and it was annoying running around the world when any elpy that hit you for 1 damage would dismount you - or interrupt your casts.  The game just felt like it was trolling me.  Quit before my first month was over (probably after the first week).  Never went back.

Also, "Rifts" got annoying really quickly.

blamo2000

I play it still in my game rotation.  But, I played the same games too much and just get burned out on them all.  

I think its a solid game - my biggest faults is the class system is too formulaic, and I've never been a fan of AA systems.  I like hard caps on character progression.  

Shaigh

I enjoyed the game but it fell hard into the wow-style themepark trap with dungeon grinding, raiding and PvP grinding at cap. They pretty much ruined the expert dungeon experience when they introduced dungeon finder and subsequently had to nerf their dungeons to crap making the experience feeling like what people had already played to death during wow wotlk.

Since I was already tired of raiding I dropped out when I got my PvP and expert dungeon gear within a few months.