Defiance - Defiance 2050 Shutting Down / Is Rift Next ?

[Wrastion]

There has been a lot of "general uproar" for years and not much has happened.

The extreme negativity I've seen lately may have the effect of killing Rift sooner by scaring away new players under false pretenses. For a new player, Rift has plenty to keep them interested for a long time.

Probably the worst example I've seen of extreme, and dishonest, negativity toward Rift is a recent video where the reviewer uses nothing but auto attacks and complains that it takes his character forever to kill a monster in the starter zone. In the Defiant starter zone, he starts the fight against the big two-headed Ogre boss and then goes off for a drink while his character just auto attacks It. He speeds up the video 20 times to emphasize how long it takes to kill it.

Rift puts the special attack skills on the action bar automatically, and it is obvious the player is supposed to click them to attack, not just rely on auto attacks.

Im not sure why you changed subjects but Im talking about the game as-is for the stable player-base, not someone new trying the game out.

Games survive and thrive off of a healthy, STABLE playerbase. Talking about new players is like discussing the low point of your business when your main cash flow is in jeapordy-that being your stable vets. IF we had a large, stable base (longterm players), new players would be a big thing because the core of your game is solid. Rift’s gameplay is solid, sure, but its base core number of players is so low the game itself is not solid.

So instead of a flood of new players you have a trickle of water with a dying core base. In other words, who cares if new players have a wondrous single player experience leveling ( thats what is mostly is) your main playerbase (and your main cash flow) is dying. One incorrect video isnt causing Rift’s death. Gamigo’s handling of it is its death.

General uproar needed to happen early on when they acquired the game, and with cash boycotting. For every naysayer there was someone (like you) popping in to tell us the positive outlook on everything. At some early point on the car crashed and you were there to tell us to be happy the horn still worked. All the while people handed over the real bargaining chip-$$$-so any negative words were just ignored.

They nodded their heads, took your money, and did nothing but continue to nod their heads.

Trion was like being in a decent relationship. Nothing great, but hey they kept really trying. Gamigo is like moving on to a pimp from that decent relationship. You now get used, pimped out, and given no attention whatsoever save for only that which can gain the pimp money. Before you know it your thanking the pimp for totally using you and for handing you a horrible meal just to keep you alive (and continued to be used), and a bed to sleep at night. One is a far cry from the other.

Now we have a thread asking seriously where Rift stands on the chopping block and articles questioning its continuation. Really?

You should have followed my advised method long ago.

[Omerr]

Im not sure why you changed subjects but Im talking about the game as-is for the stable player-base, not someone new trying the game out.

Games survive and thrive off of a healthy, STABLE playerbase. Talking about new players is like discussing the low point of your business when your main cash flow is in jeapordy-that being your stable vets. IF we had a large, stable base (longterm players), new players would be a big thing because the core of your game is solid. Rift’s gameplay is solid, sure, but its base core number of players is so low the game itself is not solid.

So instead of a flood of new players you have a trickle of water with a dying core base. In other words, who cares if new players have a wondrous single player experience leveling ( thats what is mostly is) your main playerbase (and your main cash flow) is dying. One incorrect video isnt causing Rift’s death. Gamigo’s handling of it is its death.

General uproar needed to happen early on when they acquired the game, and with cash boycotting. For every naysayer there was someone (like you) popping in to tell us the positive outlook on everything. At some early point on the car crashed and you were there to tell us to be happy the horn still worked. All the while people handed over the real bargaining chip-$$$-so any negative words were just ignored.

They nodded their heads, took your money, and did nothing but continue to nod their heads.

Trion was like being in a decent relationship. Nothing great, but hey they kept really trying. Gamigo is like moving on to a pimp from that decent relationship. You now get used, pimped out, and given no attention whatsoever save for only that which can gain the pimp money. Before you know it your thanking the pimp for totally using you and for handing you a horrible meal just to keep you alive (and continued to be used), and a bed to sleep at night. One is a far cry from the other.

Now we have a thread asking seriously where Rift stands on the chopping block and articles questioning its continuation. Really?

You should have followed my advised method long ago.

Even if you just prove them some evidence and such they still not gonna believe you man. Believe me I tried many times and eventually now I gave up and just let them believe whatever they want. For them making gamigo happy bring tons of content and new playerbase thats what they thought.

If you want to see some kinda new players flow you have to add some enticing xpac or content to your game also a solid trailer works at some point. Pampering them will bring to your favorite '' Rift '' game nothing....

[Zornar]

I've been thinking about doing an unbiased "New Player Experience" video where I simply go over everything introduced to you through the tutorial and Freemarch, without going on so much about Trion and Gamigo themselves.

That sounds like it could be very helpful. Someone who knows Rift would seem better qualified to point out its strengths and weaknesses. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Rift review video discuss many of Rift's greatest strengths, such as the wardrobe and dye system. dimensions, artifacts, minions, World Events, rare mob hunting, achievements, puzzles, etc.

[Zornar]

You should have followed my advised method long ago.

I don't see how you can seriously believe that boycotting cash payments to Rift would force Gamigo to immediately add new content. It would be impossible anyway because Gamigo doesn't have new content ready to add. They would just shut Rift down when the cash flow stopped.

You said it yourself above - "Businesses have no emotions and are pure number crunching machines."
.
So much of what you say is just speculation. You don't know how much money Rift makes from veteran players versus new players. You don't know how much Rift brings in from Battle Passes vs. Patron fees vs. store purchases.

[Wrastion]

I don't see how you can seriously believe that boycotting cash payments to Rift would force Gamigo to immediately add new content. It would be impossible anyway because Gamigo doesn't have new content ready to add. They would just shut Rift down when the cash flow stopped.

You said it yourself above - "Businesses have no emotions and are pure number crunching machines."
.
So much of what you say is just speculation. You don't know how much money Rift makes from veteran players versus new players. You don't know how much Rift brings in from Battle Passes vs. Patron fees vs. store purchases.

I explained to you how a healthy system works-off its stable playerbase. You replied ignoring that whole explanation. It also explains pretty much that I dont need to know what % of Rifts income comes from what. Without a stable, healthy sized stable playerbase the revenue from new players/patrons etc.., will be so small that, well, you’ll have threads from people honestly asking if the game is next and legit game reporting sources writing articles about the uncertainty of the games future. I didnt make this thread.

You would have had to have a group uproar closer to acquisition or at any point the game was bringing in decent revenue. At that tipping point if you knew you could make $$$ off of the game, but had a drastic decline in sales with people clearly telling you no effort no dice, they would have been a heck of a lot more likely to put effort into the game. Instead the general attitude was allowing no effort and a slowly bleeding out effect to this point...

[Zornar]

I explained to you how a healthy system works-off its stable playerbase. You replied ignoring that whole explanation. It also explains pretty much that I dont need to know what % of Rifts income comes from what. Without a stable, healthy sized stable playerbase the revenue from new players/patrons etc.., will be so small that, well, you’ll have threads from people honestly asking if the game is next and legit game reporting sources writing articles about the uncertainty of the games future. I didnt make this thread.

That's only one kind of healthy system.

For all we know the majority of Rift income may come from new players rather than the "stable playerbase." You claim you haven't spent a dime on Rift since Gamigo took control, and aren't you part of that "stable playerbase?"

Rift players know almost nothing about Rift finances except the tiny bit revealed in their financial reports, i.e. Rift produced 5% of game revenues in 2019 versus 2% for Defiance, which is now being shut down.

You would have had to have a group uproar closer to acquisition or at any point the game was bringing in decent revenue..

Rift hadn't been making decent revenue for a long time before Trion went bankrupt otherwise they wouldn't have tried desperate measures like Rift Prime.

At that tipping point if you knew you could make $$$ off of the game, but had a drastic decline in sales with people clearly telling you no effort no dice, they would have been a heck of a lot more likely to put effort into the game. Instead the general attitude was allowing no effort and a slowly bleeding out effect to this point...

That's a fantasy. As I said previously, even if every Rift player agreed to stop paying anything for Rift to pressure Gamigo for new content, it would not work because Gamigo has no new content available that they could quickly add to the game.

Gamigo is not going to hire new Rift developers to work months making new content all the while getting zero revenue from Rift.

Your proposals are illogical and unworkable.

[Ambrodel]

Gamigo is not going to hire new Rift developers to work months making new content all the while getting zero revenue from Rift.

That is usually how a business works. You buy something with the intention to resell it and then you wait for a buyer. Or you create something new and then you wait for a buyer. Most business-models doesn't work by commission, they work by supply and demand. However, you and many others defending Gamigo seems to forget something:

Gamigo has owned this game for 2½ years now, give or take. During that time, they have literally had millions in income from Rift alone, not to mention whatever the other Trion games brought, and still brings, in. In exchange for that we have gotten very little new content. Gamigo didn't bother to "hire new Rift developers to work months making new content" during all this time, where money clearly has been rolling in, with no real effort from their side. So basically, it is possible to argue that the Rift players have been paying for nothing. So whenever you and whoever else brings up the other argument, that Gamigo won't give us new content if we don't give them money, it's just not doing anything good. They've clearly not given us any new worthwhile content so far, so why keep paying them? Why should I spend money on something and get nothing in return? All I've seen in these past 2½ years, give or take, is a lot of "Please Wait Some More™" and not a lot of "The Wait Is Over".

[munchies24]

Gamigo has owned this game for 2½ years now, give or take. During that time, they have literally had millions in income from Rift alone, not to mention whatever the other Trion games brought, and still brings, in. In exchange for that we have gotten very little new content. Gamigo didn't bother to "hire new Rift developers to work months making new content" during all this time, where money clearly has been rolling in, with no real effort from their side. So basically, it is possible to argue that the Rift players have been paying for nothing. So whenever you and whoever else brings up the other argument, that Gamigo won't give us new content if we don't give them money, it's just not doing anything good. They've clearly not given us any new worthwhile content so far, so why keep paying them? Why should I spend money on something and get nothing in return? All I've seen in these past 2½ years, give or take, is a lot of "Please Wait Some More™" and not a lot of "The Wait Is Over".

Unfortunately, there is really no clear cut way to view this entire situation. My view is if the game brings money, it won't thrive, but it will live. If the game doesn't bring money, it will get chopped like the others. Gamigo clearly has no love for this IP and likely wanted to acquire Trove and a partnership with ArcheAge first and foremost with the Trion acquisition.

It really comes down to this:

Do you hate Gamigo's treatment of Rift enough to risk them finally putting it out of its misery due to a lack of income from their playerbase?

or

Do you enjoy what exists now enough to support the game financially so you can at least play Rift at all, despite its relatively awful state (aka maintenance mode), and accept that this is about as good as it will get?

I fall into the latter, and I will support the game with patron. Until recently I had only played the Storm Legion expansion up to completion in 2013. There is still a lot of content I have to catch up on, and I am enjoying replaying the game from scratch again too. That is my reasoning, but it is as sound as really anyone else's at this point. Gamigo is the one who can help Rift but they refuse to take it off the back burner, and we are irrelevant one way or another in its overall success, so anyone can really deal with this information how they want and in the end it won't matter much either way.

[Ambrodel]

Do you hate Gamigo's treatment of Rift enough to risk them finally putting it out of its misery due to a lack of income from their playerbase?

Honest answer here: Yes. Hate is a strong word, I would rather say I dislike it, but yes. Shut it down instead of milking the players, that's my opinion. Others may disagree, I know, but I don't want this. Better to move on to greener pastures for good.

Do you enjoy what exists now enough to support the game financially so you can at least play Rift at all, despite its relatively awful state (aka maintenance mode), and accept that this is about as good as it will get?

No. And this is mostly because of the next answer.

I fall into the latter, and I will support the game with patron. Until recently I had only played the Storm Legion expansion up to completion in 2013. There is still a lot of content I have to catch up on, and I am enjoying replaying the game from scratch again too.

I'm a veteran of this game. Not only the joindate here on the forums proves that, my Loyalty tier does as well. I've supported the games with tons of money, I've seen and done pretty much any aspect of this game inside and out, left to right, forwards and backwards, in my dreams as well as my waking hours. There's not much left for me to do or buy, that I want to do or buy.

Starting a new character comes with the benefits of lots of goodies that sure as hell helps making it go faster through the game, like bags, mounts, teleports and, of course, knowledge of the game. I've spent hundreds of hours farming materials for crafting on other characters, so I don't need to waste time doing that on a new one. I don't have to go exploring what's in that haunted house over there, I already know and I'll get the quest to kill it later. That means I can actually enjoy the content that I think is the most fun. Until I get to certain break points in the levelling process. Because I know what's coming there and I don't like doing it, because it takes forever and is just boring as hell. But at some point I get determined enough to power through it and get it done. And then.... it happens again. And of course, there's the endgame grind as well. Been there, done that, numerous times. Dreading going through the same old stuff over and over and over again. It's not fun, it's a pain.

Because I'm a veteran, there's no excitement in it for me. I've said it before and I'll gladly repeat myself here: For a NEW player, this game has years worth of gameplay, there's just so much to see and do if you do not go full tunnelvision towards the endgame. But I've been through it all on more characters than I care to remember. I've done it. I don't want to keep doing it for 10 years. New content is needed to keep me interested in having this game stay alive. Yeah, we're back to that first answer now. And I could move on to greener pastures myself. I have, mostly, but my love for Rift keeps dragging me back. My love for Rift keeps making me sad and annoyed that Gamigo is treating this game like it's worth less than the money it brings in. My love for Rift would make me pay for Patron again, on a long-term subscription like in the past, not just month-by-month, to show my desire to engage with the game once more. If there was anything worth paying for. That part can only come from Gamigo and if they don't want to do their part in keeping both new AND old players interested, then I would rather see them shut it down entirely. I will miss it, but I will at least not be able to come back and get disappointed over and over again.

[Zornar]

However, you and many others defending Gamigo seems to forget something:

Gamigo has owned this game for 2½ years now, give or take. During that time, they have literally had millions in income from Rift alone,

None of us players really know the details of Rift finances. I'm not defending Gamigo just looking at the available facts. I wish Gamigo would add more new content and fix more bugs too.

What the Gamigo critics seem to forget is that Gamigo has also spent millions keeping Rift running and have made efforts to improve the game, for example Gamigo

1. Added an Enclave of Ahnket Expert dungeon.
2. Added 3 Raid World Bosses. (They might not have worked out as intended but they did try)
3. Added 6 Battle Passes,
4. Added new items for the 4 annual World Events
5. Put the new Planar Incursions gear grind on the PTS for player feedback.
6. Fixed some bugs.
7. Activated the 4 World Events, the 4, twice-monthly Call-to-Action events, the periodic Shiny Shenanigans event and many Bonus Weekends.
8. Transferred servers to the Cloud.
9. Merged EU servers
10. Kept the servers running, did weekly maintenance and a lot of emergency maintenance.
11. Paid employees and office overhead.
12. Maintained these Forums and various Rift websites.
13. Provided customer service.
14. Kept the store stocked and had numerous sales.
15. Had Gamigo 20th anniversary events for Rift players, some of whom won prizes.
16. Updated Rift Facebook and Twitter accounts and recently added a Rift Discord server.
17. Had numerous Forum screenshot contests and two Dimension contests.
18. Provided prizes for some player-run contests.
19. Had 3 account-wide mount giveaways and a Flame Squirrel pet giveaway through gaming websites.

So basically, it is possible to argue that the Rift players have been paying for nothing.

That's an absurd argument because Rift is free-to-play! Any player purchases are for specific items or services and solely voluntary. Plus, Rift has spent millions to keep Rift going, as detailed above.

A sounder approach than having a spending boycott and unrelenting, often unfair, criticism is just the opposite. Spend more and attract new players who spend more.

If Rift moves up into Gamigo's top 3 games for revenue generation, it's likely to get more developer attention.

[Ambrodel]

If Rift moves up into Gamigo's top 3 games for revenue generation, it's likely to get more developer attention.

I'm not gonna go into an argument about your long list of absurd arguments for praising Gamigo, but this one I can easily debunk very fast.

Imaginary scenario!

A company has 5 games. Those games give the company 100 units of profit every month. A fair assumption would be that all 5 give 20% each, but not in this scenario. Here, one game brings in 50% while the other 4 gives 20, 15, 10 and 5%, just for the sake of making this easy to understand.




Now the company decides to close one game, for whatever reason. In this scenario, it's the 20% game. At the end of next month, the remaining 4 games will have a bigger cut of the units when looking at the percentage, but the actual amount of units being generated, remains the same.


The total units of profit per month is now only 80, but the 3 lesser games moved up one rank each, from 3-4-5 to 2-3-4. None of them generate any more money, so none of them will get any more attention from this imaginary company we can, for the sake of argument, not call Gamigo because that would be totally unrealistic and ruin your desire to make them appear godlike in their handling of this game by pretending every single action they take is awesome beyond measure. So let's call this imaginary company Trion instead. I just made that one up.

[ThreadSafe]

The truth is that all smart people left the Rift long ago, only those who were stuck remained. I returned because i have baggage here and it's easier to play Rift for me. There is definitely better ways to spend my time than playing dead game.

[derpfx]

I would more suspect since they got money from the SyFy channel to make Defiance as a cross screen experience they stole funds to build Rift.

Nope. It was investors who sank $85m in and it all went to Defiance (the game and TV Show). Both flopped because they were bad. Rift was thriving at the time and didn't get any extra investment.. and here we are.

[Vektoral]

The truth is that all smart people left the Rift long ago, only those who were stuck remained. I returned because i have baggage here and it's easier to play Rift for me.

BBM

I respectfully disagree.

[ThreadSafe]

To make the game alive they have to make:
-new legendary weapon
-new armor set
-T3 raids (not 1 or 2, it's normally 3+)
-new 5 man dungeons
-new rifts
-new factions
-new storyline
...
this list is endless, but it will remain incomplete

Also, smart people pays nothing while playing Free to Play game.