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Rift community
TLDR: From your experience as a current or recent Rift player, how is the community of Rift?
How is pugging and grouping? What is the overall maturity level of the community, based on your experience?
I'm coming to have a greater appreciation of community. I want to play the game with the general community for a while before I join a guild. I play at Oceanic times, so if you have any information relevant to that, I would appreciate it, too.
Background:
I just unsubscribed to a game about 10 minutes ago and I'm looking for another one to take it's place. I'm really not bothered by much, but though this game is very crowded, I have never felt more alone in a game or had worse experiences -- recently. My guild left that game and moved on to another, which I also play from time to time. I don't want to name the game. This thread isn't about that.
I play TSW and I like the community I've played with there a lot , but the last couple of weeks the server has seemed very dead when I play (Oceanic times, Dragon faction, I like to pvp). I'm still in Valley of the Sun God. I also liked the community I met in Darkfall, though there has been a lot of negative stuff written about that game. Yes, there are jerks in every game, but I met some really nice people and great players there.
I play GW2, as well. But I have room for one sub game with a decent population. I have played Rift in the past, and while feeling it was a solid game, never got involved in a guild or met a lot of friends in game. I'm ready to revisit Rift, but I *think* I've matured as an mmorpg player to the point where I have an better appreciation of community.
Comments
I've actually been thinking about coming back also, after hitting 55 in GW2 then i just lost steam and totally interest. The lack of progression for your character is nill. Ive got a lvl 20 warrior and a lvl 28 mage souls and im looking to resub. But my only problem is the populations are a bit low right now..maybe once SL comes out then they'll rise.
I love the community though, met nothing but really nice people...but i just have no friends in-game that play which sucks. I find it alot of fun to get a buddy and maybe go do dungeons or something even PvP.. i find that stuff fun.
Its a guild driven game. Rift has a TON of great people that play it, and youll find them in just about any guild. outside of guilds though, the community is typical MMORPG rubbish. No one talks during groups or events. instance groups want to finish as fast as humanly possible (not quite as bad as go go go mentality of WoW, but definitely not patient....I have seen people berated for wanting to practe their support role). And the level 50 chat channel is a complete cesspool.
But again, Rift is FILLED with great people, but guild is essential. Pretty much every game is like this now though.
Im on Faeblight an RP-PVE server, and community is great, no issues, and very helpful,
and I'm not in a guild.
This reminds me of what happened to me. I wasn't even given the human blessing of being berated. I was just summarily kicked without warning on the last boss. Now, I feel like this has been a long time coming, as I have felt the change in the community over the years and read other people talking about it. It finally happend to me -- the final straw.
I have played for a lot of years and only been kicked from a group twice. Most recently, it was last night when I was healing a pug in a dungeon finder group racing to lvl cap. It was an instance that we had all run till our eyes were bleeding. It was my first run with this particular pug. It wasn't fun anymore, but we were all doing it -- together but alone.
The tank kept racing through withougt stopping at all, so I was continually rushing to keep up. I had plenty of mana, sp, etc to do the job, but if I even stopped to loot, he could be out of range. He died twice because of this. I rezzed him and we moved on. I even said, "sorry, I was looting" as a kind of hint to slow down just a bit. I stopped looting after that, sadly because I love my loots, it's a hard habit to break.
Well, the hint came back to me on the last boss when I was kicked. There wasn't even a word, like "noob healer -- why do you need to loot?" etc.
It just made me ask myself "why am I playing this game?" I realized it was just compulsion and that it was a totally empty experience. The great experiences I've had all involved other people. Friends I had met online. None of those people were playing this game now. None.
I told my wife about the experience and she just laughed, when I told her I was looting. She said, "that's old fashioned. People don't play like that anymore."
Seriously? Sometimes, it's hard to accept change. I still remember days when the tank would say is everyone alright on mana? or when support players would buff up the party before the dungeon. I even remember when people used to say "hi" when they joined an LFD group. I haven't seen those days for a while. I usually say "hi" but more and more often, it is unreturned. I felt really old. It's kind of funny -- now that I look back at it.
I have friends in RL. I don't think I'm asking for too much. I expect there to be jerks in every community, just like in RL. I'm just asking for a minimal degree of decency and civility.
/rant off
Finding a guild in a stable game to play for a couple hours in the evening sounds great right now.
I play on Wolfsbane and there are always PuGs going for T1 and T2 raids especially right after the lockout reset on Wednesday. There are many guilds that have regular raid schedules, and some that are in the T3 raids. I just got enough hit to get into the T1 raids today, and was able to get into two raids tonight (Running experts, IAs, and crafting while paying attention to level 50 chat for PuG announcements) which got me almost enough upgrades to move straight into T2. The groups I played with were very helpful and informative which including teaching the newbies the fights and not getting frusturated when a wipe happened.
Overall, I very much like the community Rift has. There are always raids looking for new people to fill them up, and with the role system you can very easily fill at least three of the roles (Tank, DPS, Heal, Support). If you're planning on starting I would recommend joining a medium population server. I don't think anyone would find them too crowded and they're never quiet; especially level 50 chat. The chats are somewhat mature, although they have the usual trolls and with the political debate much of the chat seems to be republican vs. democrat and we get the occassional WoW player on the trial looking to start an argument about which game is better.
In my experience, the Rift community is definitely one of the better out there. I played on Wolfsbane and for the most part, people are very often helpful and supportive both in chat and in open world. Even in the PUG groups brought together by the random dungeon finder, people will tend to chat back and forth...something very few and far between in other games. The guild I was in was constantly hosting PUG raids, and a good many of the people we grouped with became close friends and frequent party members.
If I had to recommend an MMO community, Rift would certain be near the top of my list.
two things:
1. the usual rift community is nice unless you derp or more importantly are a derp.
2. as for support in dungeons, they aint needed and you slow down and punish the group by running them as is. This will change quite dramatically in SL tho i reccon if dungeons stay as they are.
Clicky for Rift trial
1. People that use words like 'derp' and 'baddie' tend to be tremendous negative influences on a community. For instance I did a WoW dungeon yesterday, with a Druid tank. We had two wipes on the last boss, both times got him down under 20%. Healer died both times, one time due to being caught in the bosses's special ability (happens first time doing these fights) and the second time was because of adds wreaking havoc. Tank went on about how the healer was a baddie and vote kicked him.
Now there are a few things here...If the healer really was bad, kicking him before the final loot isnt going to make him better. How about helping him? And here is the kicker. The boss's special ability leaves the tank with 5 seconds or so time where he s doing nothing. On neither wipe did the Druid battle rez the healer, and with the boss below 20% both times a battle rez would have almost definitely secured a win. And the battle rez was not on cooldown, so it was an option. So the guy going off about how bad someone else is, and kicking them, was just as at fault, if not more so, for the two wipes.
2. How are they punishing the group? Maybe it takes an extra couple minutes to complete the dungeon, but thats about it. If doing dungeons is fun, then why worry about an insignificant amount of time added on?
1. I think this is just the MMO community as a whole. There is very little patience in the MMO crowd nowadays with "learning your role". It is an unspoken expectation that you magically be the best at your class the moment you hit max level. I have found that in Rift, the occasional mess up will not warrant too much flame, but consistent "derps" (as the above poster so ineloquently put it) will get you in some trouble while grouping. However, this is just the state of the games we play. I find the Rift community to be more forgiving than most.
2. Support roles in dungeons are for the better part unused, except for in the situation that someone is having some trouble pulling their weight. As a Mage, I find that having my roles (Chloro, DPS, Archon) easily available for switch makes it easy for me to pull the party through some tough runs in a situation where the healer or DPS aren't cutting it. Support roles aren't necessarily a waste, they are just more situational. Having a player who can easily run support in a tough fight is much better than an extra DPS anyday.
Clicky for Rift trial
All content short of raids isn't trivial.
1. Story. Content inside of dungeons/chronicles as well as rifts plays into the lore of the world AND the higher tier raid instances.
2. Mechanics. Players learn mechanics FOR the raids inside dungeons and rift content.
3. Gear. Some of the gear (not much but a few choice items) are actually best in slot until you reach the ultra-high raid content. Hell, some of it is better even then.
4. Difficulty. Some of the fights are tough.
It depends. If you are using support to hide behind a lack of skill, you will get berated. You are better off going as an undergeared DPS. Problem is, as a support role, you can really mess up group dymanics if you don't know what you are doing. If you want to role in an Expert as a Bard and you are in the group with a Chloro healer, and you don't know BOTH classes, you WILL piss him off. You need to know every buff you cast as a buffer, you also need to know every buff every one else casts, what they are for, when they cast it and why, It's more important to know when to NOT cast a buff, then when to cast it.
Very true.
1. You punish the group for playing support. You don't learn anything that you couldn't do by yourself by playing support in 5-mans
2. Looting should only take 1 click from any of the party members. One click loots loots multiple mobs at the same tme. You don't have to stop anything for looting. On the chance a blue or purple drops, it does not take more than 5s to hit Need or Greed
Non-sense. Bunch of baloney. I hate people like you who post this sensationalism. There is literally nothing a bard can do that is detrimental to the chloromancer. NOTHING. Now if you were doing a 10-man or 20-man, the bard might get a little agitated, every minute, on a boss fight (emphasize on the "little"), because one of the chloromancers cooldown abilities does overwrite a bard's spamming debuff. That's all! There are no several abilities; it's just one that you can setup an add-on to remind you. Finally, support can not mess up any group dynamics. All they can do is make a boss fight easier, and some boss fights require support to take care of special mechanics.
No, just no. It's optional -- not important. It's the icing on the cake. Personally, I don't care how a few debuffs interact with eachother. I use Karuul to let me know if I can use a debuff. You don't even have to pay attention at all; one debuff won't make or break a boss fight. If you were a truely hardcore player, you could go research and waste a headache on figuring out all the interactions. I'm a reasonably hardcore player, and I just use the add-on to let me know if I should cast a debuff.
Not really, if you have the hit/focus required you won't get fucked with in raids because of low dps or something like that, which I find different from World of Warcraft.
The community in Rift is pretty good in my opinion. There are a few bad apples but not nearly as much as other mmo's I've played.
Rift
I wasn't talking about which buff does what or what one is better. I am talking about Chloro's getting pissed at bards for canceling out their Living Energy buff with Anthem of Fervor. I've done it as a Bard, and I've pissed off a Chloro doing it. (Granted it was a while ago) This is the standard expectation in the game. If you tell someone they can roll as a Bard and they can go into any group content and do whatever the hell they want without consideration to the group, they will get kicked.
It's all in here:
http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/classes-telara/class-guides/rogue-guides/326986-how-bard.html
(The guide has an error about this very issue that is addressed in the 1st follow-up post)
It tells you not to use Anthem of Fervor if there is a Chloro.
By the way, posting "I hate people like you....." pretty much invalidates anything you'd have to say after that.
Unless its been changed, the dungeon finder lets you roll as support. So the group really has no right to tell you what you should or should not play...provided that you are doing your job competently.
A good support does improve the group's efficiency to mostly counteract the personal dps drop.
I don't understand what you are saying here. Could you expand on your idea a bit? I don't know what your point is for either 1 or 2.
But if you're just going to hate on people in the thread, don't bother.
No dps meters?
"...provided that you are doing your job competently."
Yes, My whole point was in response the the earlier poster who said that players in support roles get berated. Saying that you need to know what you are doing. It's not just a "fall back" role to take if you are in doubt or are undergeared. IMO, you'd be better rolling as DPS
I tried to Bard. It wasn't easy. For me, the personal game play was to close to that of a healer. Alwasy watching what's running, keeping track of timers and icons etc. In many ways, it's probably one of the harder. Though I've never tried the other support roles such as Archon etc.