Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Rifts & Invasion

So, last time I briefly mentioned that Rift has two different uniques features, one of which are souls. 

The other feature you might want to know about, are invasions and rifts. Invasions are a small group of enemies that spawn, either at a Rift or at a planar Foothold (which are created by invasions that destroy the guards in a given area). A single invasion is rarely much of a challenge and can be soloed by any reasonably competent player without too much fuss. Multiple invasions converging on the same location, however, is an entirely different thing. 

The goal of an invasion is to kill NPCs in a quest hub and then create a Foothold, a structure that continually spawns defenders and, rarely, more invasions. Once this is done, all quest NPCs, traders as well as most of the guards either despawn, or are killed so fast that they can't really do anything helpful. 
In the really big areas, a foothold is not a big deal because NPCs are spread out enough that most players can move about without getting into trouble. In a minor camp with a couple of guards and 2-3 quest givers... well, hope you brought your sword along.

Rfits, are an entirely different idea and is part of the core gameplay concept of the game. Rifts are holes in reality, or in MMO-slang, a public quest. Each spawns through a tear in reality and will send out invasion forces on a regular basis. If lots of rifts are open, you get lots of invasions. 
A single Rift is no big deal, and minor ones can be closed by 1-2 players in perhaps 10min or so. A major one however, needs a strong group to finish it and get the best rewards. 
Raid and Expert level rifts are even more difficult, for obvious reasons.

One thing that is interesting, is that tears are damn near impossible to predict and the invasions they send out are all too happy to gank any and all players that get in their way. While not a big deal usually, it's not uncommon to log out in a camp and then log in the next day, only to find a dozen or more mobs ready to cut you into pieces when you finally load into the zone. 

It takes some getting used to, and since players aren't really allowed to escape from fights in Rift (you get a pretty severe runspeed debuff if a mob hits you in the back), it will guarantee that you log in and then spend the first minute corpse-running and getting clear of the enemies, at least once in a while. For some, that is not really a fun way to spend their time. I personally love it though, makes even logging in a gamble.

Whether or not these 2 (or maybe 3) features are enough to keep Rift going is something we will just have to wait and see. For now though, I can only recommend it if you are looking for a new hotbar-style fantasy MMO.

That's me done for now, see ya all on the far side!

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