I really love RIFT and I've supported this game in many ways since 2011. There have been some really bad decisions in the past years, but I still put trust into Trion to get on the right track again with the game. When we got the last dev letter and the dev stream with Amary, where they talked about bringing the game in shape again, fixing old bugs, removing rng and p2w from the store and reworking broken systems together with class balance, I was very happy to hear that. Even tho, that meant we have to wait even longer for new content, especially for live servers. There have been some active changes with class balance and some old issues have been fixed with 4.5. That rebuilt some trust, at least for me, that Trion learned from their previous mistakes. There is still much to do, but the direction was the right.
This week again, as so often in the past, so much went wrong. The Grim Remembrance event ended too early, not allowing players to finish their grind and spend their currency. The recent hotfix broke zone event and harvesting loot, quests were missing and plenty of players reported various new problems. The patch notes however only stated the release of River of Souls for Prime and a new premium mount for live. Talking River of Souls, I heard from friends who play on Prime, that the endboss is unkillable, the reported bugs and exploits aren't fixed and there aren't even achievements available yet.
I honestly feel like whenever Trion does a step in the right direction, it is soon to be followed by 2 steps backwards. Why does it have to be like that? I love this game so much, and it succeeding again, bringing in new players and returners again, enjoying new content together in a polished environment is really what I wish for. I don't want to play another game. I don't want to drop the game. But you're making me think about this more and more. Where are the concrete plans for the future? What will happen to Prime when (if) they reach live content? What will be next for live, when the balance changes are done? Will there be a new expansion next year? What is your vision for the future?
I feel like many players, even old veterans who play since the beginning, are feeling this way. If you care as much about the game as we do, why do you release unfinished raids, even if you knew what was wrong with them, istead of saying "sorry, we didn't make it in time (again) but we want to provide you a great raid experience so we need more time"? Why don't you let events run 1-2 days longer than in the announcement, to proactively avoid salt from the playerbase? If you are working in / overhauling old code that can cause problems, why don't you just say "hey guys, we are trying to optimize the engine to improve performance and reduce crashes, that might cause some unforseeable problems"?
As always, communication is key. We need a leader with a high passion for the game, who also SHOWS this passion by keeping the community involved, discussion ideas, teasing future improvements and content. And we need better QA to avoid horrible hotfixes like this week. If the community can help, let us know, we have many passionate players. But if we help and give feedback, like those raiders that tested RoS on PTS, at least DO SOMETHING with our feedback. You don't have to reward players for testing with free stuff (even tho it would be nice) but collecting their feedback and then ignore it completely is the best you can do to disencourage players to test for you ever again.
TL;DR: I love this game, please make it great again.
Bookmarks