Some deep thoughts about RIFT

[Seshatar]

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.

[Elayara]

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?

Simple: saying "we're gonna fix it" on a livestream costs them nothing at all. Actually fixing all the stuff that broke in the last years, will cost them a lot - more than they are willing or able to spend.

One example for this problem are the recent balancing changes, which seem to have hit the average DPS hard, and bosses once on farm got difficult again for lots of groups. Obviously, when the average DPS gets reduced due to bug fixes, boss HP and/or enrage timers need to be adjusted accordingly. Why did this not happen? Because the few people still working on Rift cannot do all at once.

I too would love to see Rift return to its former glory, that's why I still linger around here - but I doubt that will ever happen. And honestly: It will take much more than saying "we're fixing it" or "the addon will be highly polished" to make me come back. Actions speak louder than words, and after all those broken promises some massive actions are required to convince people that Trion is willing to bring Rift back to where it belongs.

[notawaifu]

As an apology from Trion can we get Utilia rep to drop from BoS bosses. I'll forgive a many sin for this one bless.

[May Contain Nuts]

If you still need that rep you shouldn't be in bos
....

[Bamul]

If you still need that rep you shouldn't be in bos
....

I cleared BoS with a level 65 trinket, if I could have gotten the reputation for the ommnox trinket in BoS I would have welcomed it. More possibilities is always a good thing. The daily tasks are not really fun for anyone after the second time.

[Magat]

Haven't logged in since last month but I try to make sense first of all I have plat yes it took years of grinding and I invested on fragments when I couldn't sell old materials. Well most of fragments aren't great because fragments are not so good when you have more characters sometimes you don't wanna invest to tank if that's like not a option I do like having to play multiple roles except being only plane for one. The real issue is having to do a quest line for each individual character the real question is not making a bind on account that benifits for people that stock on one character.

Back when rift was actually fun when in my opinion was with the pve to pvp model or nightmare tide. The gear drops were pretty good and there were good pop specs it was easy to get cp piece with hit so you could do some raiding my only complaint was t2 pve gear and t3 should not have been bolstered to bis.
Why do fragments have a marginal effect on specs when they are somewhat costly not consistent not dropping in inventory as independent from a table.

So this expansion has lost all the old elements that made it good and implemented a risky and unfun mechanics. I don't like this game when you have to do rift raids in order to do it everyday in hopes you are lucky do it everyday not once but on all existing characters. TD is the worst thing to happen and introduction of individual charge which is more like to me expendable to obtain fragments and very well designed gear it's the too similar and bland to think of it.

Conquest didn't really hold with rifts player base the pvp community there really isn't one.
Port Scion because they couldn't level the npcs.
Prefix gear is recycled nothing is unique.
When the gear was based on main stat and terrirties.
I guess if the gear had more stats then people wouldn't care.
I wish that the irotp and to normal weren't even released save for lfr to.
Even I full cleared Bos in crit gear on my seven alt that had eternals.

When the game is good you should not earn your bis on notoriety but on well designed content.
Individual rewards charges ruined dungeons unless everyone was greedy which isn't far from piece based on class so need.

Active upgrades on gear isn't stimulating/engaging delete it became bad when you had to rerun the same dungeon from the lfd lfrd. Dungeons are meant to prepare for t1 not lfr based content.
T1 challenging t2 challenging t3 more challenge. My thoughts on raiding are t1 is good for casual and someone who wants to do mechanical t2 should be a little more spec reliant but sutible to both player types while it may take a few runs from t1. T3 for the more well rounded players I guess that's my opinion. Stop trying to make people do raid rift content that doesn't have good phrases the reward decided by opener and a weekly at high level. That's the way it should have been.

If all the classes need to get all their main stat essences from rr in the past I would be very dumbfounded this design is for people that want to make their classes whether Mage cleric rogue or warrior maybe you like a full bis cleric focus on your Mage but the point is if you can make players be able to get into content which may seem like a big deal IA practically people can close rifts/objectives get an essence based on their bonus charge then the incentive to do them would be quite active any IA just good implementation.
Probability is a bad thing so any of essences be just as good at level and not bound on account so they could be auctioned.
I'm guessing the most popular thing people say in every expansions are alts are dead I believe this to be true because of the unfun nature of the feeling of the game that is unloved.

Tdlr: Scrap lfr, individual charge, drr. This expansion
Dungeon gear from standard>expert>t1>t whatever
Rift raid should be a weekly max level and be an actual raid event not pushover.

[Skiye]

Haven't logged in since last month but I try to make sense first of all I have plat yes it took years of grinding and I invested on fragments when I couldn't sell old materials. Well most of fragments aren't great because fragments are not so good when you have more characters sometimes you don't wanna invest to tank if that's like not a option I do like having to play multiple roles except being only plane for one. The real issue is having to do a quest line for each individual character the real question is not making a bind on account that benifits for people that stock on one character.

Back when rift was actually fun when in my opinion was with the pve to pvp model or nightmare tide. The gear drops were pretty good and there were good pop specs it was easy to get cp piece with hit so you could do some raiding my only complaint was t2 pve gear and t3 should not have been bolstered to bis.
Why do fragments have a marginal effect on specs when they are somewhat costly not consistent not dropping in inventory as independent from a table.

So this expansion has lost all the old elements that made it good and implemented a risky and unfun mechanics. I don't like this game when you have to do rift raids in order to do it everyday in hopes you are lucky do it everyday not once but on all existing characters. TD is the worst thing to happen and introduction of individual charge which is more like to me expendable to obtain fragments and very well designed gear it's the too similar and bland to think of it.

Conquest didn't really hold with rifts player base the pvp community there really isn't one.
Port Scion because they couldn't level the npcs.
Prefix gear is recycled nothing is unique.
When the gear was based on main stat and terrirties.
I guess if the gear had more stats then people wouldn't care.
I wish that the irotp and to normal weren't even released save for lfr to.
Even I full cleared Bos in crit gear on my seven alt that had eternals.

When the game is good you should not earn your bis on notoriety but on well designed content.
Individual rewards charges ruined dungeons unless everyone was greedy which isn't far from piece based on class so need.

Active upgrades on gear isn't stimulating/engaging delete it became bad when you had to rerun the same dungeon from the lfd lfrd. Dungeons are meant to prepare for t1 not lfr based content.
T1 challenging t2 challenging t3 more challenge. My thoughts on raiding are t1 is good for casual and someone who wants to do mechanical t2 should be a little more spec reliant but sutible to both player types while it may take a few runs from t1. T3 for the more well rounded players I guess that's my opinion. Stop trying to make people do raid rift content that doesn't have good phrases the reward decided by opener and a weekly at high level. That's the way it should have been.

If all the classes need to get all their main stat essences from rr in the past I would be very dumbfounded this design is for people that want to make their classes whether Mage cleric rogue or warrior maybe you like a full bis cleric focus on your Mage but the point is if you can make players be able to get into content which may seem like a big deal IA practically people can close rifts/objectives get an essence based on their bonus charge then the incentive to do them would be quite active any IA just good implementation.
Probability is a bad thing so any of essences be just as good at level and not bound on account so they could be auctioned.
I'm guessing the most popular thing people say in every expansions are alts are dead I believe this to be true because of the unfun nature of the feeling of the game that is unloved.

Tdlr: Scrap lfr, individual charge, drr. This expansion
Dungeon gear from standard>expert>t1>t whatever
Rift raid should be a weekly max level and be an actual raid event not pushover.

Raid rifts back in Vanilla did seem more epic and fun than the current daily ones. Mechanics were more unique, overall design seemed like less of an afterthought. Expert rifts were pretty fun too.

I don't mind the LFR raids except for the fact there is just a single one. And if not for the Eternal weapon grind, allows for dungeons to be skipped entirely. (The hit requirements for LFR can be bypassed entirely with crafted gear and quest rewards).

I'm in complete agreement on IR charges and suffixed gear. I miss the days of uniquely named gear that didn't require grinding to upgrade. You killed whatever boss and got your reward. Now you got to slap a rune on it and feel a sense of accomplishment. And the gear was unique to the boss so it felt a bit like you were a tad more immersed in the story.

Now it's kill boss, and get loaner loot...then kill him another 10 times so that you can finish receiving your gear. Oh btw, lockout so wait a few months. Darn it...it's hero suffixed so you'll probably eventually replace it. Guess I'm technically still waiting on my drop.

It honestly kills the fun.

Truly unique special items like eternal items I don't mind upgrade paths...but raid loot should come already completed.

[Omerr]

Sad news they dont share the same thoughts as you do. If they, rift will be great game again trust me. Dont expect too much from trion btw. Currently 6-7 peoples working on rift so new expansion or new dungeons thing kinda hard at this point. They dont even answering questions on forum. ( Only white knights are getting answer their idiotic questions) I've lost faith already. We are doing the same things about 7 months. For me rift is like a just finish bos and go offline, nothing more.
They lost their interest in rift. They gain huge money from this game and they are failing non stop. ( Re-creating Defaince 2050 ) Wow has a epic expansion coming soon, they know what quailty is and they know what their playerbase want.

I know its hard to create something new with a few man but they can change that whenever they want.

Even streams are like a happy, laugh show. If you guys want to see fake smiles, fake laughs and empty promises you should watch it. I suggest highly!

Whatever

[AtoningUnifex]

This is a commonly echoed theme in the last few years...communication....communication...communica tion.

Communication in the form of information on forums to the players about upcoming events, patches and progress with issues....this is all, though nowhere near as comprehensive and rapid as it was in the early days of Rift, still happening, and recently has been improving a little.

This represents the minimum communication required to keep a consumer/supplier relationship maintained.


Communication with players on progress with "planned" future activity has fallen off a little, we really do not know quite what we are getting in terms of content on Live...and have not for some time..

Is this an example of a supplier stopping communicating with a consumer because they are scared to communicate bad news?


Communication from players on issues around upcoming activity or their fears about the lack thereof are whilst not being entirely ignored, are not responded to in as effective a manner as was once the case.

5 years ago, there would not be a need for multiple forum threads pleading for some form of communication about the direction the game is taking, about the content that we are ALREADY paying for being drip-fed (as was the case with PoA) and the team would have been addressing these before it ever got to the stage where multiple guilds were walking off into the sunset to play other titles, but this is where we find ourselves now.

I have posted about this before, about the need for a more open and transparent customer/supplier relationship, after all we are the ones that are quite literally "keeping the lights on".


Seeing information in other media about layoffs is concerning, it is especially worrying that this comes immediately alongside fears that the latest shiny from Trion is not performing quite as well as hoped.

Hopefully this will strike a chord with community managers and will maybe give them the ammunition they need to persuade the financial side of the game that ...in project terms..."doing nothing" is no longer an option.

You have an awesome game, you have awesome fans and supporters of said game, perhaps it's time to take to say "sorry we know we have not got the mix quite right this time around, we are working to improve our communications, we are striving to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past"...and mean it...this last event is prime example...no content for ages then all of a sudden all the content at once...Rift of old never used to do that...it was slow and steady and managed.

hopefully this is seen as the constructive critique it is meant as.
Unifex.

[aileen]

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.

You know what I kept saying this for almost everytime since I returned to game back, most of our feedbacks and bug reports etc are discarded mostly the ones on forums and about raiding.

As I said many times most of our feedbacks on Storm Legion alpha discarded and denied with response like you are 1% of the game while we have many casuals we can't redirect stuff like you said and guess what? When SL launched most feedback we gave about classes and raid encounters mentioned by all other players and in the end it took them almost 2.3 to make all this changes we mentioned on alpha.

While many thinking SL was greatest era of RIFT, I can say SL is what destroyed original RIFT playerbase and quality even F2P brought back some old and new players but it's actually a big indicator of how much that expansion is failed plus we saw very big and first layoff on Trion after SL launched while they claim this kind of stuff is normal after launches we saw many veteran designers like Atrius (original warrior dev who also designed base of all classes), Zinbik (original cleric dev) left company on that time even Morticus too but after few months they hired him back.

Now we have a disaster called Prime, after first month many left the game, after second month due to lack off content many raiding guild left the game, we kept saying do not directly launch this but we got responses like we have internal QA team who tested even many of our devs actively played on local server, we enjoyed but apperantly most of this wasn't true, QA didn't try to level up beyond mid 40s, so they didn't know about issues on levelling, didn't know about normal AP/CC is being hardest encounters ever, they were even harder than so called experts and 10mans.

I can't deny few direct reports I did to devs or Hartsman himself fixed but most other feedback I give most time discarded, I can't thank enough to Salvatrix and RR thou, whenever I reported crucial or not stuff to both they cared and fixed still RIFT is AAA MMORPG and we can't have few people caring with feedback.

I'm not saying team is not trying their best but like I kept saying most times we are seriously lacking manpower and Icarus who left trion like 2 months ago kept mentioning this internal issues even on livestreams.

So we need a better management and better QA team with increased manpower on development itself otherwise with this state of the game on both live and prime RIFT will surely close it's doors on mid or early 2019.

And yes we need COMMUNICATION and not just from team but upper management itself should communicate with us more properly but with even not doing official livestreams every week I can easily say they do not care for community at all.

[AtoningUnifex]

Hopefully the message is getting across here, these are passionate people who care very deeply about the entertainment they have been paying for all these years.

If we did not care...we would not bother posting...we would already be playing something else somewhere else.

Your community is one of the strongest assets you have, know sometimes it may not "feel" that way, but they care, they REALLY care about RIFT, about the friendships that have been made, about the competitions and content that they run to make sure that everyone continues to have fun and to keep everything fresh.

The comments about testing...providing incentives are a great idea, however the simple issue is numbers.

Rift is a numbers game...it takes N hours to grind X planarite, it takes N hours to grind Y intel, if you have a limited number of N hours available to you there would need to be some significant incentive to leaving that grind for a period of a few hours per week, given that doing so may add a week to your overall time to reach Goal Z (shiny upgrade or new gear items etc.) Soooooo perhaps an incentive scaled to the level of the toon you port across to PTS...e.g. a copy of 70 main generates incentive reward for your level 70 toons...and if a lower level toon its a lower level or amount of currency type.

We all love tables... so here is a quick table of how it "could" work:

No of accumulated hours of testing from start date of incentive program / Level of character transferred and used / Reward
1 20 -70 1 bundle of notoriety – at level appropriate range
2 20 -70 1 bundle of notoriety as above + title “1”
3 20 -70 Title “2” + 1 currency bundle of level appropriate currency
4 20 -70 1 currency bundle of level appropriate currency, and 1 bundle of Intel (regardless of level)
5 20 -70 Title “3”, +1 notoriety bundle, +1 currency bundle, +1 Datagrams bundle (regardless of level)
10 20 -70 Title “4” and one of each of the above again, +1 crate (e.g harvest levitation etc.)
20 20 -70 Title “5”, 5 notoriety bundles, 5 currency bundles, 3 Intel bundles, 2 datagram bundles of each of the above again, +2 crates (e.g harvest levitation etc.)

Argh not quite how I wanted it to display but you get the idea...all rewards could be delivered by mail to the character that was used as transfer, or if a new character created on test then rewards emailed to your account and you select which character to activate them on?

This way people would feel that they were still able to progress their main toons whilst helping you all get a better quality experience, and getting a wee bonus too!

[dundare]

I think it is pretty much over for rift. There is no new content supposedly for Rift Live coming any time soon. The balance changes seem more driven by Prime than live. Most of the patch changes seem more driven by Prime than live.

Does anyone think they have what it takes to turn GSB from a 20 man to a 10 man for live? If not will they release it as a 20 despite the fact that they basically told 20 man guilds it was over in Rift and so many people left.

Is there any new content planned for live raiding wise? I find it hard to understand how they could really be working on anything when they are struggling just to keep up w re-releases on prime.

Is there a team actually working on live? The lack of updates and content there is depressing. I bought this expac and there has been precious little in it. Are there any plans for another expac in the next two years? What about those fixes to fragments, updates to PA, updates to guild quests, new dungeons, etc etc? Its been a couple years now of nothing burgers. The last good thing released was arguably CoA.

I was in RoS on Prime last night and every trash mob pack dropped at least one boe t2 weapon. How can that even happen? No matter the excitement of players in there, it is pretty clear the played base on prime has dropped by at least 75% since its launch. Its the same people looking for raids or guilds partnering, the same people trolling etc. It is a small community there now. Whatever gamble they made only worked as a short term cash infusion.

I dont know what the future holds, but after running a guild here for 7 years I just dont see it anymore. We have a discord, an active website, a lot of friends to chat with but most everyone has finally had it w rift.

It will stumble on, but I actually think the Rift we all know and love is dead and gone and never coming back.

[Flashmemory]

Live itemization could use a big overhaul after the significant nerfs. Ideally you can just nerf the content which is probably the easiest approach but I also don't see a reason for them to take this opportunity to evaluate the concat system. Such as allowing overlord/preserver gear to be something everyone can work towards in a reasonable time frame. Currently it is heavily restricted by RNG. Right now RNG can be as good as getting the pieces you want in a few months to as bad as a few years.

The current nerfs to classes have created a new highend for players to work towards but that high end is still based off this very harsh RNG. Even though we can accumulate storm cells now, the top gear for those are still mostly unobtainable.

If the intent is to balance classes around this new requirement where players have to be within 5%-10% of max gear scores for content how do you expect players to get involved with the new or current end game content with this stacking RNG? Right now we are relying on a small minority of very lucky players to carry those who have been SOL for sometime now. There are many highend geared players who are offering charity to complete content but it is not enough. Consider this as the state of the game atm. Those players already worked their *** off for themselves and others, they shouldn't be expect to continue to do so forever especially with barely obtainable incentives and a more difficult scenario in place after the nerfs.

The concat system needs to be flushed as a result. In replace of this you can make the general raid gear upgrade a 2nd time to the best upgraded concats for tanking or dps/support/healing such as Preserver/Overlord. Something similarly done for CoA in the last expansion which was the most acceptable way of loot distributing back then. Leave the raid drops of Hero/Vindicator/Conqueror as interim gear for those left behind or those going between earning their currency to upgrade BIS pieces.

By doing this you give a purpose to continue to play the same content for many players. . By doing this you will eliminate gear disparity from the balancing equations and it would be a lot easier to determine scaling problems and fix them and to eliminate bias where you have some awesome parse being promoted at a top dps for class meanwhile we later find out that their raid used more raid buffs, the player abused the CoA trinket and they are decked out in mostly overlord and conqueror pieces upgraded which is unreachable by the masses. And ultimately by doing this you will find that when you do balance classes it would not be based off an artificially inflated high end (like it is now) that is only reachable by top 10% of players who had lucked out on RNG or was lucky enough to get in early on the "gold rush" while everyone else was doing the content.

This is a win, win, win situation for everyone and should be considered in the very immediate future. Look at the current raid situation. Players are struggling with max level 15 fragments, near max CP, and Crit chance, many pieces of T2 gear some upgraded or mostly upgraded. Even with those maxed they are relying more on imbalanced classes to perform the same or better with lower or similar gear score to complete content because although classes were nerfed in a "balancing attempt patch" classes are still noticeably imbalanced in practical use. There are players who are talking about IROTP TDNM struggles again which means that scaling was impacted by the changes not just the end game.

And a side note. Some things I remember about PoA was a promise of individual loot rewards where we didn't have to rely on some sort of DKP system or threatened by bias favoritism. Also, a promise of no tank gear. Why were these problems exasperated in this expansion? I feel the current approach is the most divisive approach implemented toward the community in the total life span of the game.

[Raptor7]

We recently discovered that Trion let 15 people go (not just from Rift, but also from their other games).

Yet, they had enough money to purchase all that equipment from another company who went out of business.

Something doesn't make sense here.

As a longtime player, I echo everyone's comments and hope that they will turn this around.

I'm also wondering if Trion is preparing to change to a publishing only company.

Maybe it's cheaper to host games from another company than making your own.

[BMX]

Well said, Seshatar and all.
Will anything positive come from any of this?