This HD video is narrated PVP footage of my level 50 Rank 1 Warrior in the MMORPG Rift in Patch 1.11. The opening clip is World PVP in Stillmoor and the rest of the video is a Port Scion warfront (queued solo).
As discussed in the video, fresh level 50 players (i.e. Rank 1) need to adjust to fighting higher-Ranked opponents who have epic PVP gear. Your opponents will be significantly less squishy than you are as a new 50, so don’t be discouraged if the initial experience @ 50 feels “rough” – it’s par for the course in most games and Rift is no different until you get geared up a bit
If you feel too squishy and are not using Vindicator as your 3rd tree, I highly recommend you switch to it and invest 5 points in Resilient. The -15% crittable noticeably improves survivability. I initially was playing a 38 RB / 16 Pally / 12 WL spec, and even though that spec has more avoidance and health, I found having 5/5 Resilient and Break Free to be significant difference makers in improving survivability
I was told that my Riftblade/Pally spec would tail off in performance in the 30-39 bracket, then in 40-49 bracket, then in Patch 1.1/1.11, then at level 50. My experience thus far is that the spec has been viable through the leveling experience and now at endgame. Keep in mind that I reached 50 several weeks after the “hardcore” PVP players did, so I am evenly-geared or under-geared relative to other players in 50 warfronts. While I hope that Riftblade damage scaling is addressed in an upcoming patch, my damage at Rank 1 with the easily-obtainable Legionnaire’s Longsword (Tactician’s Longsword for Guardians) is still enough to apply meaningful pressure
The most noticeable different in PVP at 50 is the strength of AOE healing. Some fights, especially at the Bridge flag in Port Scion, can last minutes with very few players dying. You just have to pick the right target(s) and hope other friendly players do the same as well
Re-work (balance) Pyro Mage’s Ground of Strength. It its current incarnation GoS provides total CC immunity indefinitely for the Mage plus the ability for their spells to stun, and this is rather imbalanced in PVP
Increase Rogue melee and Marksman damage
The timing of the balance update makes sense – there has been sufficient time since 1.1 went live for the community to get its arms around the changes and to identify problem areas.
To date, players have often framed their feedback quite negatively. E.g. some players have been equating Trion to “Failcom” (aka Funcom, the maker of Age of Conan) and to Electronic Arts / Mythic Entertainment (the maker of Warhammer Online).
Both are unfair comparisons, but players have been badly burned since 2008 by games that were over-hyped but under-delivered, and Trion is experiencing the backlash from players who are now understandably wary of game developers.
Hopefully over time the majority of Rift’s players will perceive that as well.
As I have stated previously, Rift has been by far and away the best MMORPG launch I’ve seen in over 2.5 years, including Warhammer Online, Aion, and Allods Online. What has made Trion’s launch of Rift successful? Multiple, synergistic actions:
Trion has been unusually communicative about upcoming changes with the community. Examples: the Dev Tracker forum functionality to track all posts by Trion employees, Trion’s participation in 3rd-party fan podcasts, and their honesty in answering my questions in person
Trion is willing to make the tough calls to bring classes and specs into balance, even if the decisions are unpopular in the short term. I’m not going to tell you the balance in 1.11 is perfect. It’s not. Balance is an iterative process, and considering that we are ~7 weeks from launch, balance is reasonably good, even better than what I experienced as a 2k Arena Protection Paladin in World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion Patch 4.0.6
Class / spec changes for the sake of balance can be hard on the community, but they are absolutely essential for the long-term health of a game.
UPDATE (2011/04/22): OK, maybe I spoke too soon. On the Alpha 1.2, the CC immunity and 30% stun proc for Ground of Strength have not been touched. /sigh
UPDATE (2011/04/29): before I forget, the stun proc was removed from GoS in the first update to 1.2 notes published on 4/26. I think the indefinite full CC immunity is still an issue.
When Patch 1.1 went live, the forums were flooded with threads by players claiming that their class had been unfairly nerfed, especially players of my Warrior spec Riftblade. I have been skimming or ignoring the whine-oriented threads on the Warrior forums, as most of the negative viewpoints are not grounded on actual game mechanics and are narrow in their perspective.
I listened to the entire podcast, and it’s well worth your time if you want to hear Trion’s perspective on the current state of the game. The interviewer asked a lot of sharp, perceptive questions – and keep in mind the podcast hosts are players and not Trion employees. One particularly interesting comment from Gersh was that once certain specs were brought into balance in 1.1 (e.g. Saboteur), it made issues with other specs much more visible. Gersh said they are looking at Rogues and that they will look at abilities such as Pyro’s Ground of Strength.
I’m pleasantly surprised how much material Trion has been providing on Rift – I haven’t seen this level of interaction with the community from any major game developer, ever. While some people say that Trion hasn’t innovated with Rift, I disagree. Just thinking in terms of community, Trion provides
Highly visible developer-to-community communication, e.g. via the Dev Tracker forum and fan site podcasts
Social media integration for player-to-player communication – e.g. you can record and upload videos while playing straight to YouTube
These are clearly differentiated, intentional distinctions in the current market.
I am going to continue to check out The RIFT podcast and blog when I have time as the content is high quality. If you see other interesting news or insightful material, please post links to it.
P.S. I am level 50 now, and IMO Riftblade is still viable @ 50 in PVP, and I have really good footage from Rank 1 (beginner) 50 World PVP and warfronts. I haven’t had time to work on my next video yet. I’ll get there, stay tuned.
The default keybinds for every MMORPG do not support skillful play.
Consider this illustrative keybinding diagram from the game RIFT (this is not a knock on RIFT, which is a good game):What we see is that the vast majority of useful keybinds for your left hand are being used for:
a common movement setup – WSAD and QE – that is inherently awkward. You either have to move your hand to the left one set of keys, in which case your left hand is not in the natural typing location, or you have to train your left hand to move forward/backward with your ring finger, which is counter-intuitive
UI functions that have no relevance to actual combat, e.g. “G” for Guild panel, “B” for Bags, etc
All you have to work with are the number keys, and unless you have the reach of Liberacci, that leaves you with only 6 keybinds (“1” through “6”) to work with for your abilities. This entire approach makes no sense.
Many players accept it as-is and work around it, either by adding modifiers (i.e. Shift/Control/Alt) to trigger abilities or getting hardware that helps to address the lack of available keybinds.
However, most players don’t address the root issue – by not fixing the default keybindings you are placing an artificial handicap on your skill level. It’s like trying to run but with your feet chained together. Yes, you can do it, but no, you’ll never hit your potential stride, and that’s what this is all about. Raising your gameplay.
By comparison, here are the keybinds that I used for WildStar:
I have over 20 keybinds to activate abilities / macros with a single keypress, which enables me to to fluidly circle-strafe and kite-strafe while activating abilities.
Notice that by using EDWR instead of WSQE for forward/backward/left strafe/right strafe:
My forward and backward movement is controlled by my middle finger, which is intuitive
My strafe left is controlled by my ring finger, which is intuitive
My strafe right is controlled by my index finger, which is intuitive
My left hand is in the natural typing position, in case I need to type in chat
So I’ve provided a couple examples of my keybinds. Before you start re-mapping your keybinds, there is something you must understand first…
Before You Keybind, You Must Understand What Proper Movement Looks Like
Real life combat is all about good movement. Flanking your opponent. Taking angles to set up your punches and kicks. The same principles apply to combat in MMORPGs.
Any keybindings setup should
provide the ability to circle-strafe and kite-strafe to keep a target in your facing as much as possible, and
enable high fidelity / accuracy for using abilities quickly, and
minimize keystrokes with your pinky, which is the finger most likely to get aggravated due to high usage, and
allow you to type in chat for communication with other players
Let’s look at these concepts #1 and #2 applied in the following video:
As discussed in the video, the setup I have landed on after years of iteration and tweaking is:
right hand on the mouse for character facing, aiming, and camera rotation
left hand for left strafe, right strafe, forward, backward, and all abilities
Here’s another illustrative video of how to strafe-kite properly, with footage from the game RIFT:
Moreover, modern games such as GW2 and WildStar are continuing the trend towards action combat with limited number of abilities, so there are fewer abilities to keybind. That said, if you feel you perform better with gaming hardware, great, stick with what works for you.
Keybinding is a sensitive topic, so keep in mind that the intention of the above video is to show “one way of thinking about it.” The way that you feel comfortable setting up your keybinds may be very different from mine – that’s fine – what matters is that you are able to execute the r numbered points above. I’ve had many gamers adopt my setup or its philosophy and they have reported good success. YMMV.
How to Learn New Keybindings
Realize that rebinding your keys is one of the most disruptive things you can do. It’s like learning to walk all over again. Therefore, you have to be patient. It typically takes a week of playing to get the muscle memory down for a new setup.
Do not remap your keybinds and then queue up for PVP or join a PVE raid. You will find yourself struggling and getting frustrated, because your natural reactions are to use your old keybinds. And then you’ll come blame me, and I’ll have to quote this section.
The easiest way to learn a new set of keybinds is to roll a new character, experiment, and by the time you hit level 10 or so, you’ll be well on your way to feeling much more comfortable with it. At that point you can try your new keybinds on higher-level characters.
Let me know how it goes!
Gaming Peripheral Reviews
In recent years I’ve begun to test and use gaming keyboards – here are my reviews:
Per reader request, I have created keybinding maps and guides for specific games, given that each game has particular mechanics that should be accounted for:
It was awesome to hear the perspective of the panelists on my question. On the panel (in order of speaking):
– Scott Hartsman, Exec Producer, Rift
– Dirk Metzger, VP Publishing, Zentia
– Nick Huggett, Customer Experience Manager, Runes of Magic
I am encouraged by the launch of Rift thus far – Trion has shown that it *is* possible to deliver a high-polish, content-rich game at launch and that the industry is learning from recent spectacular failures.
Taugrim's MMO Blog 