Unappreciated Dev Team!!

[Challengere]

we by far take for granted what the current four man team, I thinks thats all they have left now, is doing

they are being forced by the corporate entity that is Trion to do far more than they are capable of in attempts to keep up with demands that are mounting faster than they are capable of keeping up

we need to applaud them for fighting as hard as they do and not running away in disgust as have so many before them

we need to push and fight Trion as a community to start doing what is right for our gaming future and demand they increase the labor available to tend to us, our team needs more hands

while being as capable as they are they are simply not enough bodies for the amount of work that they are being demanded of

[ConcreteDonkies]

What action are you proposing people take exactly? It's literally been years of players begging Trion to give Rift the resources it needs to thrive. Continuing to beg them for that support on the forums isn't going to suddenly garnering a response now. By any reasonable estimation, it seems that Trion is content to stay the course on this one.

[smellwhat]

If there are only four left, they should open source it and it open it up to the community to create content with an appropriate vetting process.

[Seshatar]

I am pretty sure there is more than 4 devs working on RIFT and even more people at Trion involved in RIFT.

According to LinkedIn Trion currently has 241 employees that maintain 5 games and maybe (probably) also develop a new game or two. ArcheAge probably has the smallest "dedicated" team, as it is only published, while all other titles are Trion's own games. I am also sure that many teams/departments work for all Trion games and are not assigned to single games:

• Localization
• Marketing
• Finance
• Customer Service
• Infrastructure/Server/IT
• ...

Also Trion said that the devs get shifted between the projects. We know some devs (i. e. Kerilar, Morticus) were assigned to Defiance 1-2 years ago, probably for the DEFIANCE 2050 project. Maybe we'll see them back after it has launched.

In addition to that, here is who we know who is currently working on RIFT, as they are posting regularly or show themselves on stream:

Archonix - Game Director
Amary - Producer
Yaviey - Community Manager
RoughRaptors - Rift Team Dev
Tacitus - Rift Team Dev
CaptainCursor - Rift Team Dev
Dead Simon - Rift Team Dev

As you can see there is 2 management positions already, which would not be necessary for only a handful of people. So there is for sure a good chunk of more RIFT devs "behind the scenes".

Regarding "maintenance mode", I am not sure if you have ever seen a game in real maintenance mode. RIFT got many problems, yes, but in maintenance mode those wouldn't really be addressed at all. A few reasons why RIFT is not in maintenance mode:

• RIFT got major engine updates not too long ago
• RIFT Prime Project
• "Back to fair F2P" announcement in recent dev letter (revising RIFT Store, no lockboxes, etc.)
• Major balance changes done and to come
• ...

Okay, but what about NEW CONTENT?! Well, noone really knows, but I have 3 theories:

1. Trion already developed new content for RIFT Live, but wants to "fix" the game first (balance, fragments, eternal procs, bugs) before they release new content in a half-baked state again. They decided not to announce it, because then people annoy them all the time to release it faster.
2. Trion is currently in development of new content for Live (partially finished), but the fixes and RIFT Prime problems pushed back the development for now.
3. Trion doesn't have anything short-term for Live, as they are only working on a new Expansion that will launch soon after the Prime/Live merge at the end of the Prime cycle. They see the current expansion as failed and don't invest time and recources on it anymore and instead take the time to fix systems so the next expansion (probably in 2019) can have an awesome launch with actual content.

I too am very hungry for new content, but I also appreciate their approach to "fix the game" first. If they remove the shady ("P2W") stuff from the store, move away from lockboxes, fix the balance, do some engine improvements, add value to old content (Prime mentoring systems etc.) and THEN launch either a huge content update or a new expansion they'll have a much better chance to bring back old players and draw in new, instead of pushing out good content in a bad game state again. Let's face it, the player base is so low at the moment, that they would only hold a few hundred players from leaving if they release some half-baked raid now. The few that are left are either busy with Prime, raidlog now and then, are newcomers that still have stuff to do or are altoholics/achievement hunters/etc.

I'm at least very curious if, and mainly how fast, they manage to get rid of RIFT's major problems, because that will probably determine when the next content will come. The next hotfixes and 4.5 patch notes should be very interesting in that regard.

[BMX]

we by far take for granted what the current four man team, I thinks thats all they have left now, is doing

they are being forced by the corporate entity that is Trion to do far more than they are capable of in attempts to keep up with demands that are mounting faster than they are capable of keeping up

we need to applaud them for fighting as hard as they do and not running away in disgust as have so many before them

we need to push and fight Trion as a community to start doing what is right for our gaming future and demand they increase the labor available to tend to us, our team needs more hands

while being as capable as they are they are simply not enough bodies for the amount of work that they are being demanded of

What would be interesting is if Trion could come up with a business plan and outline the upcoming expansion. Present this to the community and move forward with a crowd funding campaign to make it come to fruition.

Business plan shall have the personnel requirement within. The expansion outline shall have a list of instances planned along with the zone map. 20 man content is required. Multiple raids are required in all formats, be it Tier Zero, Tier One, Tier Two etc. with a delivery deadline for each tier. Tier Zero shall be deployed on day one of said expansion to invigorate the playerbase. Experts shall be based on each state of the expansion zones and one expert for each state of the onion!. PvP, CQ etc. shall be properly done! Soul Sytem shall be scaled properly and entirely. No more of crappy, lazy you get a tank, heal and one dps role BS! That is simply lazy and careless!
This expansion MUST be on par in terms of size with SL.

Now on to the dev team... I feel for these folks as they are tasked with a responsibility that is far too daunting for the number of devs present. I know that the team members are highly talented and should be appreciated by the top management with enough people to achieve the best output possible. They deserve a break from every day being a double shift!

Prime should and shall stand on its own merit with its own dedicated team to take care of it apart from Live. If it cannot pass muster, c'est la vie, it goes dark. It in no way shall be bankrolled by Rift Live.

[Challengere]

I like the feed back so far, I had no real ideas on how to implement what I talked about, I wanted to see how others felt and or knew about all of this to see if the devs might take notice of how we view their situation and either correct our misgivings or address what we see wrong with anything we have right

[Elayara]

Okay, but what about NEW CONTENT?! Well, noone really knows, but I have 3 theories:

1. Trion already developed new content for RIFT Live, but wants to "fix" the game first (balance, fragments, eternal procs, bugs) before they release new content in a half-baked state again. They decided not to announce it, because then people annoy them all the time to release it faster.
2. Trion is currently in development of new content for Live (partially finished), but the fixes and RIFT Prime problems pushed back the development for now.
3. Trion doesn't have anything short-term for Live, as they are only working on a new Expansion that will launch soon after the Prime/Live merge at the end of the Prime cycle. They see the current expansion as failed and don't invest time and recources on it anymore and instead take the time to fix systems so the next expansion (probably in 2019) can have an awesome launch with actual content.

There's another option for the above list:

4. They see the whole game as FUBAR and don't invest any more time and recources on it. All we will see from now on are some vague plans and statements ("we plan to look into it", "we'ld love to implement that", "that's on our list for sure", "we're finalizing the new raid... no wait, we haven't even started yet - but we would love to start for sure", and so on).

I don't say that it is that way, as I have no insight into Trion's plans. But when people start to believe the above, they will leave what they perceive as a sinking ship, and never look back.

So IMO if they have any plans for Rift, they need to release them to their customers as early and as detailed as possible. Radio silence or vague plans are not the way to go, as it will only make more people believe that Trion gave up on Rift.

[aileen]

According to LinkedIn Trion currently has 241 employees that maintain 5 games and maybe (probably) also develop a new game or two. .

Publicly known devs currently: Eps, Tacitus, Dakkon, Icarus (looks like he left), Deadsimon, CaptainCursor. This are designers working on game while RR is an engineer and also publicly known dev. I do not think Archonix or Amary active on game development, they are looking like just supervising the current team.

Once a while before BoS released on the livestream Icarus, who apperantly is raid lead for 4.x content mentioned this we have limited, I know, you guys are sick and tired of hearing that we have limited resources by resources I don't mean money but manpower and time those are biggest two factors that factor into what we can do

I always appreciated those great guys effort with that limited man power they have on very tight schedule but let's face it even private WoW mmo servers has more staff members on their teams than actual RIFT right now.

While I said publicly known faces above that people who doesn't know publicly around 2 to 3 max, all we know since last year we lost many devs lately Keyens and Vladd but before that Kervik, Redhawk, Darkmoon, Kerilar, Morticus, Gingers, ZorbathuT also the ones we know on forums and some other people you can find on linkedin sadly their positions didn't get new people.

We lost our lead designer like 6 months ago and didn't get new appointment there, it looks like RIFT is like training game for devs to other trion projects. We were hyped when some people left for other trion projects coming but now we can be sure about Redhawk won't make this return because he joined to Blizzard on this christmas.

So RIFT has active player crisis and suffering low team member count, prime gave Trion good opportunity to revive game but instead of listening players they did it like always disregarded most feedbacks resulted prime to turn into ghost town. I know devs are not in position to prioritize stuff so it's clearly fault of management.

I will give my appreciate to Eps, Tacitus, Icarus, Dakkon, CaptainCursor, Deadsimon and RoughRaptors once again but management takes big 0 from me and day by day I'm losing my faith and respect to them.

[simpa1988]

If there are only 5-6 ppl working on RIFT dont expect anytime to see new content or expansion

[Slaybae]

While I said publicly known faces above that people who doesn't know publicly around 2 to 3 max, all we know since last year we lost many devs lately Keyens and Vladd but before that Kervik, Redhawk, Darkmoon, Kerilar, Morticus, Gingers, ZorbathuT also the ones we know on forums and some other people you can find on linkedin sadly their positions didn't get new people.

Vladd left? when was this?

[aileen]

Vladd left? when was this?

Well you could find it on news section but here is forum thread done by Archonix for you.

What we know Vladd is also working for Trove right now.

[Skiye]

Do I appreciate the effort of the devs who are left to continue working on my favorite game. Yeah... Definitely.

But if I go to a restaurant and pay for a high quality dinner and all that came of it were a few moldy dinner rolls and a flat soda I'd demand better. (And a refund)

I paid full price when the xpac hit and have maintained patron the whole time as well. It's not like all this doesn't cost the same as other AAA games out there.

We deserve and should expect better.

[Balidin]

ZorbathuT left? damn he was the hardware guy and looked after the Addon API if I remember. Very knowledgeable dude.

Also Krug who created the Minion system and was an engineer left as well.

So we essentially have 5 people working on 2 versions of an MMO at once. Trion/Hartsman you have to recruit a lot more people for this team. This is a terrible situation for those that care about Rift.

If Trion announced they had recruit like 5+ more devs that worked 100% of the time on Rift and needed time to get them trained up and then content would be coming quicker, that might make me resub again to support them.

[Holyroller12]

I am pretty sure there is more than 4 devs working on RIFT and even more people at Trion involved in RIFT.

According to LinkedIn Trion currently has 241 employees that maintain 5 games and maybe (probably) also develop a new game or two. ArcheAge probably has the smallest "dedicated" team, as it is only published, while all other titles are Trion's own games. I am also sure that many teams/departments work for all Trion games and are not assigned to single games:

• Localization
• Marketing
• Finance
• Customer Service
• Infrastructure/Server/IT
• ...

Also Trion said that the devs get shifted between the projects. We know some devs (i. e. Kerilar, Morticus) were assigned to Defiance 1-2 years ago, probably for the DEFIANCE 2050 project. Maybe we'll see them back after it has launched.

In addition to that, here is who we know who is currently working on RIFT, as they are posting regularly or show themselves on stream:

Archonix - Game Director
Amary - Producer
Yaviey - Community Manager
RoughRaptors - Rift Team Dev
Tacitus - Rift Team Dev
CaptainCursor - Rift Team Dev
Dead Simon - Rift Team Dev

As you can see there is 2 management positions already, which would not be necessary for only a handful of people. So there is for sure a good chunk of more RIFT devs "behind the scenes".

So that's about 48 people split between each team, but that's not including splitting up people into those positions you listed out above vs people actually involved in each individual games development process. Archage mainly being published, they only have community, CS and translation to deal with so that team would be significantly smaller or I would assume so anyway. I'm sure many of you can narrow it down from there.

On a side note, When i browse through artstation, it seems like Trion uses quite a few freelance work in some concept designs. I know a lot of games also do this though.

[Nogardgib]

they'll have a much better chance to bring back old players and draw in new, instead of pushing out good content in a bad game state again.

Sorry, that ship sailed. Trion had their chance with Prime. We had over 1200 individual members (no alts) within the first week or two of Prime launch. Once people realized Trion was going to manage things the way they always have, those members left. Unfortunately, most of those people will not come back to be burned a 3rd time. Fool me once ..... you know how it goes.

So RIFT has active player crisis and suffering low team member count, prime gave Trion good opportunity to revive game but instead of listening players they did it like always disregarded most feedbacks resulted prime to turn into ghost town. I know devs are not in position to prioritize stuff so it's clearly fault of management.

I will give my appreciate to Eps, Tacitus, Icarus, Dakkon, CaptainCursor, Deadsimon and RoughRaptors once again but management takes big 0 from me and day by day I'm losing my faith and respect to them.

I am saddened by lossing all those people that came back to support Trion / Rift and now are gone. They gave it another shot and got nothing but troubles in return.

Do I appreciate the effort of the devs who are left to continue working on my favorite game. Yeah... Definitely.

But if I go to a restaurant and pay for a high quality dinner and all that came of it were a few moldy dinner rolls and a flat soda I'd demand better. (And a refund)

I paid full price when the xpac hit and have maintained patron the whole time as well. It's not like all this doesn't cost the same as other AAA games out there.

We deserve and should expect better.

Yes, this exactly.