Nothing for the little guy? or "Why should I keep playing?"

[Ming]

Enter into rifts.. all gear stays behind in Telara.... must find/craft all new gear ... PA's stay put.... All gear obtained stays in the according world until you return. With earth air fire water and death... each with it's own progression path without mudflation the game would have so much room to grow. Hardcore raiders could continue to be as hardcore as they like on Telara while the casuals could get their 1-50 fix so to speak in each world. Later they could start adding raid and pvp content. Death could be a PvP world.

[Galibier]

Actual shard count does not. Losing almost 75% of your shards with only a small increase in capacity? That means a lot.

Actually this shows you know little to nothing about how Rift is configured. Now I do not claim that Rift has some awesomely 1 million plus number of subs but shard counts means a lot here. Rift is NOT configured via geography but rather via process. This means that they can dynamically take computing reasources and move them where needed. Now of course we have no idea what their limit for shard capacity is BUT going to fewer shards enables them to enlarge the capacity of the remaining shards by a fair amount.

This game in theory could be one big giant server if they wanted to. The shards are simply a construct designed to do two things primarily. First give the sense of server community. 2nd to still allow people to have convenient access to harvesting reasources, quest mobs etc in the world. Imagine the problems with harvesting, quest updates etc if they were to do this. You can actually see this in practice when you instantly transfer servers. The reason this is possible is because all they do is change the shard identification of your toon. Most other games take far longer because they actually have to copy your character to the server you are transferring too.

Again I am not making any claims to subscription numbers. All I can say is they are profitable enough to keep private equity investment coming in in large amounts AND that the number of shards has much less meaning here than in most other MMO's due to the server configuration.

because before people claimed I am full of junk and no MMO can be configured that way I figured I would beat people to the punch and post the quotes and links I have before in advance.

http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/The-Nex...ers/ba-p/61333

The Blades themselves are broken up per action across the entire game. Let’s take in-game chat in general. One cluster handles communications. If one blade fails, another in that cluster will take its place. So, you’re never experiencing downtime or running into some digital version of the tower of Babel. There are clusters handling everything from game physics and graphics to NPC (non-player character) A.I. and...you get the idea.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06...ver-transfers/

The way our architecture works, we can allocate more hardware to one shard over here and less hardware to another shard over there as needed.

There are others but you get the idea. So really shard count doesn't mean here what it does elsewhere.

If you can say with a straight face that when someone announces $100 million in revenue in their first year (especially when Rift was said to have cost 50 million) and in the beginning of your second year you get $85 million in private investment, lead by as conservative an investment group as the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan is not a success I have no clue what to say because you are on a different planet than most people who actually watch the business end of things.

http://news.techfinance.ca/ontario-t...-trion-worlds/

[Noaani]

Err... you do realize that many of us have stated, with examples, that we were doing content that was both scaling and challenging nearly a decade ago?

I'm trying to figure out how something that's been done for years is impossible.

I've already addressed this.

What was challenging years ago no longer is. In comparison to modern encounters, encounters in games like EQ and DAoC are simplistic. Many games now have base population (ie, trash mobs) that are more complex than those encounters.

Players now have different expectations of what an encounter should be, how it should be designed, and what players should have to do to defeat it. The idea back then was that developers would put abilities on an encounter, and players would figure out how to kill it. Now, the expectation is that the developer figures out how they want players to kill the encounter, and then add mechanics and a script that forces players to do exactly that.

I am not saying I like the way it is now, I am merely saying it is the way it is.

From memory though, DAoC wasn't really that challenging (PvP aside, obviously). The closest thing to a challenge was organizing people, which was compounded by the fact that there was no set number required. EQ2 is the only MMO I have played with raid content that truly challenges players.

[Noaani]

Im not trying to say Rift hasnt done a good job with content, I just object to people thinking what they have done is historic. It was for the first 9 months or so, but ever since EI the pace has slowed enough that other games have caught up mainly due to other games focusing their resources towards and expansion.

There is a simple reason for this.

Everything up to EI was started before release. RoS was supposed to be ready for release, and HK was supposed to be ready in 1.1.

Fact is, the post EI speed is Trions actual development speed.

[Bheale]

I like to see ID level world mobs that dropped ID level gear and see the QQ.

The reality is for open world content to be of any real progression, it must be balanced at the lowest tier available ..... greens and blues.

This will not be progression based content , because if it was progression based content then 90 % of the casuals will die to it on the spot.

That is the biggest issue we have , its not the type of content its the risk vs rewards lets be honest.

What you are suggesting is will not work due to simply for it to be viable it has to have risk for the rewards you are asking for and a majority of the casuals to form the pug you are suggesting shouldn't be able to complete it , even more so if there not capable of raiding ID. IF this not you're suggestion or concept then how do you intend on creating ID level content that has equal gear and challenge , otherwise the players should be in ID.

The other option is EQ2 world contested style content , and that will play out one of two ways ... either it WILL be locked down by 1 guild per server or see above.

I'm a non raider, and would like to see open world content this difficult.

Just don't put a gear check in it that requires gear I can't get in the open world or 5-mans

And don't structure it for a fixed number of people, or put in mechanics that set a floor on the number of players attempting it, or structure it from the mindset of a fixed headcount instance raid. It's an open world encounter.

Personally I'd rather see open world progress on different stats so there was no interference with raiding, and so the gear inflation put in the world to let people step into (current tier - 2) raiding didn't obliterate the open world progression

[Goldenwing]

I've already addressed this.

What was challenging years ago no longer is. In comparison to modern encounters, encounters in games like EQ and DAoC are simplistic. Many games now have base population (ie, trash mobs) that are more complex than those encounters.

Players now have different expectations of what an encounter should be, how it should be designed, and what players should have to do to defeat it. The idea back then was that developers would put abilities on an encounter, and players would figure out how to kill it. Now, the expectation is that the developer figures out how they want players to kill the encounter, and then add mechanics and a script that forces players to do exactly that.

I am not saying I like the way it is now, I am merely saying it is the way it is.

From memory though, DAoC wasn't really that challenging (PvP aside, obviously). The closest thing to a challenge was organizing people, which was compounded by the fact that there was no set number required. EQ2 is the only MMO I have played with raid content that truly challenges players.

Players now apparently have different expectations because this is what developers have designed to be able to eliminate "exploits".

Apparently, if the encounter does NOT proceed exactly as the developer has scripted it, then
apparently the players have exploited, because, supposedly, there is no other way the encounter can possibly occur.

I agree, this "new" generation of Simon Says meets Chorus Line is what is now called "challenging".

That does not mean it is, nor should be the standard. Nor does everyone find it challenging.

Again: see the game design books that have become the cornerstone of MMO design. Personal assertions are not facts, no matter how many times they are asserted. Especially when the assertions have no direct one-to-one correlation.

As a former EQ2 player, I didn't find EQ2 raids particularly problematic as long as I paid attention, while I was playing 2 characters at the same time.

I will be sticking to posts that are either presented as pure opinion or have credibility as facts, so I wish you good luck on the forums and in game.

[MatipzieuKyA]

The problem is number II is largely based on a myth. You do not have to have 3+ hours at a sitting, 3 or more days a week to raid and the guild or alliance does not need to be one that only has 20 raiders. There are guilds clearing raid content that raid one of two days a week for as little as 2 to 4 hours that have 25-30 raiders and a sit rotation so everyone gets to raid the same amount over a period of time. All it takes is putting some thought into what as a player you want to accomplish and then looking for a like minded guild rather than simply taking the first guild invite that flies your way.

I honestly think number II is perpetuated for lots of what could be seen as negative reasons. The first is by people who simply wish to trash raiding. The second are by some who do not want to put even the amount of effort necessary to find a guild. Over time a trend has been growing in MMO's. Rather than logging in being the first step in a pattern of growth both for the self and the community, logging in should be the arrival at those destinations. Log in and DING you are in a group that can complete the content. Log in and DING you have this and DONG you have that. What used to make MMOs different than other games was that they were about the journey as much as the destination. I personally believe if that ever goes away then the raison detre of the genre will be gone and with that the genre itself. The game will stop being an MMORPG and will instead be a COOPrpg. The two are fundamentally different.

Hmm, okay. Thanks for the post! Two quick points here.

Firstoff, I've seen way too many threads and way too much support on these threads with folks coming back and saying that they're facing this exact situation. That's not really a "myth" so much as it is a "market segment with valid concerns who have a right to address them." What Trion decides to do with that is their call, I'll agree, but I don't think the data here matches the conclusion that players in this boat don't exist.

Second, I think that there are two distinct segments that are being confused here. I like Bheale's three-part segmentation of players who (A) want outdoor challenges again, (B) like picking flowers, and (C) want welfare epics.

The second paragraph here was a pretty brutal evisceration of segment (C) "I want welfare epics." I agree with this, and to be honest share your concern. There are definitely some people who for partisan reasons want to trash raiding, which is just as nonconstructive and unhelpful as the folks who for partisan reasons want to trash non-raiding.

The thread here is about segment (A). It is not about segment (C). This is about people who want more challenge, not less.

In other words: Hi. I'm a player who wants more journey. If the above post was rewritten in a context that acknowledged a difference between players voicing legitimate concerns and players who just want everything handed to them on a plate, I'd put a like on it and quote it with full support in a heartbeat.

Given the conflation of (A) and (C) presented in the above post, though, we're not talking about the same segment of the playerbase. Not really sure how to address this post, since it's not addressing what most of us on the thread are talking about.

I've already addressed this.

What was challenging years ago no longer is. In comparison to modern encounters, encounters in games like EQ and DAoC are simplistic. Many games now have base population (ie, trash mobs) that are more complex than those encounters.

Players now have different expectations of what an encounter should be, how it should be designed, and what players should have to do to defeat it. The idea back then was that developers would put abilities on an encounter, and players would figure out how to kill it. Now, the expectation is that the developer figures out how they want players to kill the encounter, and then add mechanics and a script that forces players to do exactly that.

I am not saying I like the way it is now, I am merely saying it is the way it is.

From memory though, DAoC wasn't really that challenging (PvP aside, obviously). The closest thing to a challenge was organizing people, which was compounded by the fact that there was no set number required. EQ2 is the only MMO I have played with raid content that truly challenges players.

Hey Noaani, thanks for your post. I think at this point we're probably getting very close to speaking past each other, and might need to agree that we're disagreeing on how we're approaching this issue. I'd just like to hit a couple quick points here.

First, I'm struggling to follow the logic of the comparison presented here. I was making a temporally consistent argument (ten years ago, there existed encounters that for the time were scalar, public, and challenging). I was then going on to say, fast forward ten years, here are a list of concrete suggestions with examples and specific explanations backed by detailed analysis for how you can recreate that same challenge in a modern context, acknowledging quite clearly and explicitly on many occasions how MMO development and MMO play has evolved in the intervening decade.

What I'm saying is along these lines: Hey, back in the late 1980s, cell phones had this one particular functionality that was really cool. Over the course of how cell phones have evolved to 2012, that particular neat functionality got lost. I'm now saying, hey, can't we add that narrow specific functionality that's being specifically talked about at a technical level back into current smartphones in a way that doesn't impact or compromise any of the functionality that current smartphone users know and love, and is completely optional for those who don't enjoy or wish to use that feature, but is then available for a substantial portion of the cell phone user market whose interests are not being met and who would enjoy having that functionality?

Noaani, your post reads my argument as the following: Hey, back in the 1980s, cell phones rocked. I think we should use bricks that weigh twenty pounds, require lugging a briefcase around, and have a 20 minute battery life. That would be awesome!

This reading is a very long way from my original posts, and I'm struggling quite a bit to see how that interpretation was possible given an objective reading. Apologies if I wasn't clear about that in my posts, had figured I was pretty explicit about that.

Regarding EQ2, I think it's possible that we have different ideas of "challenge" and "fun", which is great! I think one of the best things about MMOs is that they give you a chance to see that differences exist between players, people, and things they like and don't like. Personally I played through quite a bit of EQ2 raid content and found it (forgive me, I know that Hartsman worked on the game!) pretty uninspiring compared to DAoC raiding.

But I'm fine acknowledging, respecting, understanding, and supporting the fact that there may well be players who have different tastes and experiences than I do, and think that that's fine.

Either way, great discussion that we've got going on here!

[MatipzieuKyA]

morning. ^^

but that still does not reflect the problem: what do you do when the raiders don't or can't help out? or at 5 am? for that events/bosses had to scale on a very complex level, and even THEN you could still end up with a failed event - which makes people complain (annoying consequences when it fails, to hard to complete it etc). trion nerfed events for a reason. so from trion's POV, why bother developing the best scalable solution when you can make it easy enough for everybody, which means the you get more people who receive a reward and whine less plus the benefit of lower development costs?

it also assumes people want to play together to accomplish something and not just run in the same direction to make farming rewards easier.

regarding the drop in/drop out of raids, that's a problem as old as raiding. to beat difficult content you have to be part of a closed group, which requires dedication (=willing to spend a certain amount of time repeatedly). I've raided with parents before, or people that had to log out for one reason or another - it's absolutely possible. it's all about finding the right group of people. for that however, you have to look for that group first - and how many people are willing to do that?

the only way to make it more "accessibly" is to remove the obstacle of difficult content, which puts pressure on the group, and scale the rewards to time only, not time&challenge.

And evening again! Great post, and these are really strong questions. I love posts like this.

Firstoff, absolutely all of these would need to be addressed, but I think there's a pretty straightforward way of tackling it. These were questions that were flying around my guild within five minutes after one of us realized that we needed to find a way to step up outdoor content from EI.

The trick here is to treat these questions like facets of an engineering problem that can be worked on and solved--because they can. So let's get to it and see if I'm crazy or not!

P1: Does the gameplay structure of outdoor encounters mandate that raiders be present? I.e., if HK people aren't around to carry everyone else, should the encounters be doomed to failure?

(This implies that there's a caste system/hierarchy being supported, yet again, that basically just perpetuates the same problems leading to frustrated players starting threads like this one. My use of "caste system" here can be as simple as folks who have the requisite schedule flexibility and those who don't have it -- and I acknowledge Galibier's post and others who have voiced similar points on "families can raid too", but there's clearly a difference between outdoor contexts where organic groups can occur, grow, merge, shrink, and the rigid requirements of ID/GSB/HK/GP/RotP/DRR/IET2RR raids--hence the market segment difference here.)

P2: If the zone events fail, people get inconvenienced. That sucks. The encounters then aren't available again, people can't do them, and that renders the encounters pretty stupid. People call for nerfs, they get nerfed. Fact of life!

P3: You need dedication to lead to victory doing hard stuff.

P4: You can't have "difficulty" checks in the same way that they exist for raiding; you have to use "time" as the main form of progression.

Okay! So here's my answer. P1 and P2 are engineering problems that need to be addressed. P3 and P4 are conclusions. I'm gonna tackle P1 and P2 first, and then let's see about P3 and P4.

Here's the thing. If I were to approach Rift's current outdoor game, and assume that this new form of endgame had to rigidly structurally follow Rift's current outdoor game precisely, I'd run into these exact same problems and conclude it's not possible. This is what my guildmates and I realized about a month ago within five minutes of talking about how to put the Rift back in Rift in a serious way.

The trick here is that in order to have difficult content exist, you have to have that content set up in a way that it's possible for players to struggle against it without Alt-F4'ing and deleting the game.

Hmm, where's an example of content that invovles players being able to struggle against it--i.e., it's actually hard--without killing interest in it?

Case 1: Hard outdoor content that's persistently available
Case 2: Instanced raiding
Case 3: Outdoor content with progressive and scalar battlefield objectives

Let's structurally look at how current Rift outdoor zone invasions, etc, are set up. They're random. They pop up, and you can't plan or prepare for them. Groups have to organically respond to them. They're always on the offense; the Ascended are always on the defensive. There are no substantial persistent battlefield objectives to work on, or "fronts" to advance.

In a context where difficulty is presented randomly like that, players don't get to choose what kind of challenge they're going up against, it's chosen for them. This means that if you're going to try to scale the content for size or difficulty, it's going to be a horrific mess, and you, Noaani, and everyone else on the thread are completely right in saying I sound like a raving lunatic.

'Kay. Let's flip the tables here to illustrate the point that Bheale, Anu, Seebs, and I are trying to make. Feel free to jump in an correct me, guys, if I slip here.

Let's say there's a second game called Tifr, which is like Rift, except everything's backwards (/em dodges tomato) in that the instanced raid game has some elements of Rift's outdoor structure, and the outdoor game has some elements of instanced raid structure.

Let's say you want to go raid HK. You now have to wait in Moonshade highlands with the group of people you want to raid HK with. Randomly, everyone standing in Moonshade will be offered the chance to zone into HK and begin to work on the first boss. Anyone walking into Moonshade will be offered the same "port to instance" message. Now, for the truly hardcore, they're willing to camp out in Moonshade until it spawns, in which case we have (pardon me while I go bang my head through a plate glass window and ingest the shattered remnants of said window) contested raiding, which is the unholy hellspawn of stupidity, brutality, and unpleasantness. But let's say we're now way past the dark age of contested raiding. People just aren't willing to put up with that kind of play experience anymore, so whoever is in the zone is who will be working on HK.

Now, here's the deal. When that happens, there is one HK. The devs tried to make that one HK scale a little bit, so when there's 50 players, they hit harder and have more HP, but it's incredibly difficult to create encounters that dynamically scale in real time to present equal challenge to all players via dynamic tuning systems, but basically there is one raid that's really (bottom line) tuned for a particular size group, hard below that, easy above that, and it doesn't really scale that well. You do it or you don't. Eventually, people got sick of wiping midway through--what's the point of playing it if you just keep wiping constantly?--so Trion swoops in, magic DevCape fluttering in the wind, and waves the Magic Nerf Wand, and suddenly players are getting through the content, and serious players are now contemplating three-manning lower HK, because that's the only way it might even remotely begin to approach being interesting.

That's about what the outdoor world looks like right now.

Now, let's see the flip side of this world. What does the instanced raid game in Rift actually look like?

Well, the thing is, you actually believe it or not have some degree of progression and scaling.

Imagine this: suppose we have guilds A, B, C, D, and E.

1. Guild A has people that are barely at the skill and gear stage where they can consistently do Expert 5-mans.
2. Guild B has people that are ready to start working DH and GP.
3. Guild C has people who can pretty consistently work through GSB, DH, and GP.
4. Guild D is rocking 5/11.
5. Guild E is rocking 11/11 on farm status and is in the process of painting the walls of their character listings bright traffic cone orange.

If the instance raid game worked the way the outdoor game worked, then there's just one place people can go: HK. That's it. There's no DH. There's no GP. There's no GSB. There's no ID. There's just HK.

That instantly means that the vast majority of players are going to take one look at this content and go, "How the @#$! am I supposed to do it? NEEEEEEERRRRRRRF!" and it'll get nerfed.

This is what's happened outdoors. We have one level of difficulty. With EI, we now have a slightly harder step up, but that's about it.

But let's go back to Tfir, our imaginary world where everything is backwards, and check in on the outdoor game there.

Here, we've taken the principle of differentiation by size and difficulty (10 DH, 10 GP, 10 RotP, 20 GSB, 20 HK, 20 ID) and applied it to an outdoor context.

Let's say in this game world where the outdoor zone works like raid instances do, we have a new island added called Aralet, about the size of EI, that consists of four little sub-zones called Silverglade, Gloamzone, Scarlet Area, and Scarplace. Let's say there's some numerical indicator, like Toughness, Valor, or Hit, that shows up on a character's portrait that indicates their place in a progression curve. For players with a very low stat, they'll need to stick to an entry-level outdoor zone, like Silverwood. Let's make this new stat called "Ascended Fury", and it gives you a bonus like a passive holy champion that also affects healing when in combat with Rift mobs.

Let's say you need somewhere between 0 and 200 Ascended Fury to play in Silverglade. Let's say you further need 200 to 400 Ascended Fury to play in Gloamzone, 400 to 600 to play in Scarlet Area, and 600 to 800 to play in Scarplace. Let's say that each of these zones uses a unique currency, like Plaques + T1/T2/T3 raid tokens, specific to this kind of endgame. Like raiding, each subzone feeds you the currency necessary to let you advance to the next subzone up.

Let's say you have guilds A, B, C, D, and E.

1. Guild A has people that are barely at the skill and gear stage where they can consistently do Silverglade.
2. Guild B has people that are ready to start working Gloamzone.
3. Guild C has people who can pretty consistently work through Silverglade, Gloamzone, and Scarlet Area.
4. Guild D is about halfway through Scarplace.
5. Guild E is rocking all the way through Scarplace on farm status and is in the process of painting the walls of their character listings bright traffic cone orange.

Now let's further say that the way outdoor content works out here is that there are four different size pieces of content you can run: minor rifts, major rifts, rift outposts, and rift towers/citadels/fortresses.

Minor rifts generally take 1-3 people to close all the way, major rifts take 3-5, rift outposts you can generally do with a full group if you're good, citadels take a good solid 10-20, and Fortresses take 20-40.

Let's say that arranged across this zone are clusters of things you can go do that range from minor rifts (at the outskirts of a major objective) moving up towards major rifts, moving up towards rift outposts, moving finally towards a rift tower/citadel, moving towards a rift Fortress in the middle, like a gigantic starfish, where the content is arranged in concentric circles that become increasingly more difficult the closer to the center you get. These clusters of content exist in each of these four subzones, tuned for the gear and reward level of that particular subzone. Within each subzone, let's say there are six of these clusters: one for each of the six planar types. So each subzone would then have, for each element:

• One fortress designed for 20-40 people
• surrounded by 3-4 Towers/Citadels, designed for 10
• each surrounded by 2-3 Outposts, designed for 5
• each surrounded by 2-3 major rifts, designed for 3-4
• each surrounded by 1-2 minor rifts, designed for 1-3

Let's say that you need to close Rifts to collect a particular currency, bomb, quest item, etc, that's used to fuel some ability that can take down the shields around outposts, and that you need to farm outposts to pick up a currency that's used to take down the shields on citadels/towers to make them accessible, citadels/towers drop them used to take down Fortress shields, etc. Let's also say that you can use higher-powered currency to take down equal or lower level shields as well (i.e. you can use outpost currency to drop outpost shields, or tower currency to drop tower shields, so that you can continue to progress laterally if you like).

Now, you can have each different size and progression path guild walk out into this zone and pick the size and difficulty content they want to do. Let's say enemies flood from the center out, so that to progress, you'll need to be combating the harder horde emerging from within and push through it to capture the harder content coming up next.

This choice can occur either as organized groups (a guild group forms in Sanctum saying "Hey, it's Rift night, let's go!" and if 5 people show up, go rock outposts. If 2 people show up, go for minor rifts. If 10 people show up, you can probably take a citadel or two) or out in the field. For example:

Three players all start working on minor rifts on the outskirts of a Death cluster. The map lights up, the way it does now (...do I detect... foreshadowing?!) telling everyone which objectives are under attack. These three players decide to move towards each other (hey, there's an organization check here!) and merge together. They then begin going after major rifts deeper which are now spawning invasions as a result of the minor rifts having been closed.

While they're working majors, a guild group of 4 players that wants to go take outposts (mini towers) spawns in, and finds that there are three people already working major rifts on the Death cluster. Hey, there's a chance we can band together and do some cooler, harder stuff! Let's roll! And the guild group zips over, plows into the major rifts, and the groups merge into a 7-man raid. They decide to take an outpost first, and then, since they're feeling great, they decide to take a shot at the citadel in the middle. Maybe they make it, maybe they don't, there's just seven of them. Maybe they keep oscillating between defending and taking their new outposts. While they're going laterally from outpost to outpost, they bump into a handful of additional players who have followed the carnage into the raid, and now have 11. They decide to go for a citadel and take it. The guild group of four has to log for the night, and they're back down to 7. They downshift back to working outposts. A few more spawn in, they shift up to work citadels. Hey, a group of 12 folks who were working the Fire cluster decide to come over and party. They group up and drop the last two citadels and pop the Fortress open and bust up inside.

Now, remember how long you spent in GSB learning, gaining experience, and gearing up?

Okay, after that amount of time has passed smashing down this outdoor content, you're now ready to tackle the clusters one sub-zone up.

Voila, we have progression, scaling, and difficulty in an open-world context where grouping and ungrouping can happen on a dime, difficulty forged in progression is preserved. (I present the following proof difficulty exists in Telara: take a level 17 warrior out and try to do rifts solo in Scarwood. I guarantee that you'll die. Take that level 17 warrior into the starting area full of level 7 rifts. I guarantee you have it on farm status. Take that warrior out into Gloamwood and start working level 20-21 rifts. You just found your challenge that rewards better than the Silverwood rifts did. Grab 10 people and you can work on Major rifts, which still exist at that same level. Scaling is independent of progression because different size content exists at each progression level.)

Basically, I've just shown the work and the logic behind the second post in my sig. If you have a system like this set up -- and it needs to be its own separate series of subzones like Telara, and it needs to be offensive to allow players to organically and quickly shift between sizes and difficulties you're all set.

What did I miss here?

[MatipzieuKyA]

I love the five minute edit timers.

The first line of the above post should read, "Firstoff, I absolutely agree all of these would need to be addressed..."

Second, regarding loot in the above system, because I have a hunch many of the folks on this thread will ask about that first:

We can have fortresses, citadels, outposts, major, and minor rifts drop either different armor set pieces, quantities of currency, straight up drops, etc. Tons of flexibility's present in this system to allow for organic loot progression with an "ascended fury" like stat that's necessary and helpful in this particular kind of subzone but useless elsewhere, like Toughness is useless in PVP, and Valor is useless in PvE. Lots of room for working out loot so that given the fact that you can spend a ton of time out here, just like you can spend a ton of time in PVP, we'll need to have loot and currency acquired very, very, very slowly and drop in tiny amounts from given size content. Have larger battles drop either a higher form of currency within that subzone's currency level (that you can use, for example, for trinkets or weapons) from citadels and fortresses, meaning there's always a good incentive for players to always want to merge together when possible, but you can also still do things in smaller groups. Have the return on time invested scale exponentially given larger content, also incentivizing going after bigger and harder stuff.

Example: generic tier token, generic "uber planarite", tokens for weapons, tokens for trinkets, tokens for armor. Fortresses drop all of the above, lots of tokens and uberplanarite. Citadels/towers drop less, and no trinket tokens. Outposts drop still less, but no weapon tokens. Major rifts occasionally drop armor tokens (random chance). Minor rifts have a chance to drop items, forty of which can be stitched together with a ton of planarite to create an armor token. All of this occurs within a given tier.

For example:

• Fortress (20-40): Planarite, many Armor Tokens, many Weapon Tokens, some Trinket Tokens
• Citadel (10-20): Planarite, many Armor Tokens, Weapon Tokens
• Outpost (5-10): Planarite, Armor Tokens
• Major Rift (4-5): Planarite, rare Armor Tokens
• Minor Rift (1-3): Planarite, Armor Fragments (40-->1 Armor Token)

T3 Fortress drops T3 Planarite, T3 Armor Tokens, T3 Weapon Tokens, T3 Trinket Tokens.
T4 Minor Rift drops T4 Planarite, T4 Armor Fragments.
T1 Outpost drops T1 Planarite, T1 Armor Tokens.
T2 Citadel drops T2 Planarite, T2 Armor Tokens, T2 Weapon Tokens.

P.S. Major credit to Goldenwing for the "organic" grouping idea above!

[Bheale]

The problem is number II is largely based on a myth. You do not have to have 3+ hours at a sitting, 3 or more days a week to raid and the guild or alliance does not need to be one that only has 20 raiders. There are guilds clearing raid content that raid one of two days a week for as little as 2 to 4 hours that have 25-30 raiders and a sit rotation so everyone gets to raid the same amount over a period of time. All it takes is putting some thought into what as a player you want to accomplish and then looking for a like minded guild rather than simply taking the first guild invite that flies your way.

Then I'm mythological, because I have that problem.

Given my job, my family, and a couple of other issues, the reality is I could probably commit to a 3 hour window Saturday around lunch, and actually show up perhaps 2/3 of the time, and continue uninterrupted through the 3 hour block maybe half the times I showed up. That's not the level of commitment any sane guild would accept, and it's not the level of commitment it takes to progress, only to be slotted in as a substitute and trained (that's a polite word for carried) by other folks who have long since mastered the content. I decline to be carried, except when power leveling a special-teams alt in support of my guild.

I've been with the same small (4 people) guild for 12 years through 6 games. I wouldn't dissolve or merge that guild for Jeff Kaplan, and I won't for anyone else. If Trion wants to make the endgame accessible only to large guilds, then I won't participate. Alliance mechanics would help, but the level of commitment it takes to keep consistent attendance at raids to progress, especially to progress leading edge content, is likely beyond what you could get in an alliance.

I also do not choose to make fixed commitments of my schedule. I'm probably out in RIFT 10-15 hours a week on average, but it could be zero, and occasionally has been much higher. This is not an issue of hours, and only somewhat an issue of contiguous hours. There is a very real issue of not knowing until it happens when these times will be. This is just a constraint of real life, go find my recent posts to see a few details. But there's more to it. Time I've committed in advance is just not as fun as spontaneous time.

I honestly think number II is perpetuated for lots of what could be seen as negative reasons. The first is by people who simply wish to trash raiding. The second are by some who do not want to put even the amount of effort necessary to find a guild. Over time a trend has been growing in MMO's. Rather than logging in being the first step in a pattern of growth both for the self and the community, logging in should be the arrival at those destinations. Log in and DING you are in a group that can complete the content. Log in and DING you have this and DONG you have that. What used to make MMOs different than other games was that they were about the journey as much as the destination. I personally believe if that ever goes away then the raison detre of the genre will be gone and with that the genre itself. The game will stop being an MMORPG and will instead be a COOPrpg. The two are fundamentally different.

I don't want to trash raiding. Have fun.

I have a guild and won't disband or merge it. Have fun.

Welfare epics are a dumb idea. They trivialize what non raid content the game has.

Making the 1-50 journey a few weeks instead of a year was a dumb idea. Yes, I know there are impatient people. But when the only endgame you have duplicates WoW's (albeit implemented better), and you know two thirds of WoW players didn't buy into those endgames, why make a choice to attrit two thirds of your player base a few months after release, instead of attritting the impatient whiners? But during that 1-50 journey I can log on, spend an hour, progress a little bit. Or I can log on with my guild, blow through a 5-man or attack the next one up, and progress a lot more.

Yes, I want to be able to log on and within a few minutes be doing something fun / challenging / toward objectives. I know that won't be instanced raiding. I'm an adult. I don't do 100 mile bike rides like some of my colleagues at work. I don't run marathons like others. And I don't do WoW format raiding. I congratulate and support those colleagues after their (bike) death rides, and after those marathons. And I congratulate my fellow realm mates on server firsts, guild firsts, and even personal firsts in the raid progression.

This is important: I like exploring. I like seeing new things. I like approaching tough encounters in new and different ways, mixing up a group comp, taking a different strategy. I hate approaching encounters that have exactly one solution, and somebody else already figured it out, and I've been given a script to follow. It's just not fun...for me. If I were retired and my family grown it might be fun to be in a bleeding edge raid team finding the path through leading edge encounters, that is, writing the script for those who follow (to the extent the devs didn't code the encounter to have a singular solution). But RIFT will be long forgotten by then . And besides, running the weekly after that first few successes stops being fun. I remember an old friend 7 years ago, after he left WoW we ran into him in EQ2, commenting that he had found himself "in hell before his time", referring to farming Molten Core.

Even though I like challenging encounters, the fixed-size instance raiding which came into vogue 8 years ago simply isn't for me. Especially not in a game where advancement is by loot so you have to run the content over and over until the random number generator favors you 8 or 10 times. Sorry.

If it's your thing, have fun. No problem if you have the highest stats in the game.

When Jeff Kaplan realized that most WoW players weren't playing his raid endgame, and a lot of them had nothing to do as a result so were leaving, he started praising and building up the egos of those who did raid, and shaming and putting down those who did not (example: the infamous New York Times interview). He didn't understand, and the people for whom his raid format didn't understand.

As a snow skier decades ago, I liked downhill, and didn't particularly care for nordic.

When I eat pizza, I prefer regular, and am not into deep dish.

When I buy a car, I want it solid and stable first, room for family and groceries second, and performance and handling just need to be OK. My days of driving a BMW were decades ago. It's a preference, and a deference to practical reality, and a choice I make as an adult.

In an MMO, I prefer an endgame progression which is open and inclusive, and quite frankly I do not like the instanced raid format. I don't like it enough that if instanced raiding is the only progression available, I will not progress. This is a preference, and it is a choice which I make as an adult. I respect your choice, and hope that you as an adult can and will respect mine.

[Goldenwing]

double post. it's late

[Goldenwing]

I remember an old friend 7 years ago, after he left WoW we ran into him in EQ2, commenting that he had found himself "in hell before his time", referring to farming Molten Core.

That's a direct quote from a retired game developer.

It still makes me smile.

In an MMO, I prefer an endgame progression which is open and inclusive, and quite frankly I do not like the instanced raid format. I don't like it enough that if instanced raiding is the only progression available, I will not progress. This is a preference, and it is a choice which I make as an adult. I respect your choice, and hope that you as an adult can and will respect mine.

Well said.

Now, if you take my last post, I clearly state I don't like the current form of 10- and 20-man raiding that has been prevelant the last 8 years. I personally do not like it. (I thought Simon Says was boring when I was 5. I dutifully played in class as my teachers instructed over the years. I did boring things as part of my career over the years, that's a given.) I am no longer in a classroom being told what to do, nor am I at work. I'm here to relax, have fun, explore, kill, achieve and be social. In which ever order works for my needs on a given night.

I have never in any post ever said, nor have my guildmates ever said that the current form of instanced raiding is wrong for anyone else or for the game.

I have actually advocated for more raiding in a 5-man swat team style.

You will find my previous posts where I have said that instanced raiding needs to be in the game. And have come out multiple times and agreed that the new ID content for raiders was absolutely needed and needed now!


And have made it extremely clear, multiple times, that we don't want handouts.

THAT is an integrity issue. Case closed.


There are others on this thread that have also taken the same approach and feel the same way. I salute them all.

As well as saluting all of those who understand there are different playstyles and all of them have worth.

We're even trying to advocate for something that will help outdoor PvP occur, because we acknowledge there's a hole there as well. We think, from our experience with RvR, that something built on the concept we have started might actually help in that direction.

/broken record off


Once again, looking for something back in the game that was present in the 1-49 experience and is missing at endgame.

Without Rifts in endgame, the game feels a lot like WoW.

I would like to believe I'm not in Azeroth anymore.

[MatipzieuKyA]

Once again, looking for something back in the game that was present in the 1-49 experience and is missing at endgame.

Without Rifts in endgame, the game feels a lot like WoW.

I would like to believe I'm not in Azeroth anymore.

Precisely. Hole in one. This is exactly what I'm feeling too.

[Goldenwing]

PS:

Because it's late and my brain is foggy:


Thank you very much to everyone who comes back and analyzes and questions the concept and our motives. Almost feels like old times again, sitting in a room full of design engineers who are very good at finding flaws and poking holes... an important process for testing the validity of a new concept.

Also, there are a lot of good ideas that could help the "casual" segment out here, more options are always good.


Which is easy to say, since I'm not Trion and I don't have to deal with folks (my fingers tried to type "fools") like me, pestering for new content on multiple threads when there's enough work to do already. (Much love for Trion! )


And a last acknowledgement, again, that all of this, great discussion as it is, in the end, may have nothing to do with reality, as Trion owns their game and their vision for what it could be!

/salute

[Caydin]

I love the five minute edit timers.

The first line of the above post should read, "Firstoff, I absolutely agree all of these would need to be addressed..."

Second, regarding loot in the above system, because I have a hunch many of the folks on this thread will ask about that first:

We can have fortresses, citadels, outposts, major, and minor rifts drop either different armor set pieces, quantities of currency, straight up drops, etc. Tons of flexibility's present in this system to allow for organic loot progression with an "ascended fury" like stat that's necessary and helpful in this particular kind of subzone but useless elsewhere, like Toughness is useless in PVP, and Valor is useless in PvE. Lots of room for working out loot so that given the fact that you can spend a ton of time out here, just like you can spend a ton of time in PVP, we'll need to have loot and currency acquired very, very, very slowly and drop in tiny amounts from given size content. Have larger battles drop either a higher form of currency within that subzone's currency level (that you can use, for example, for trinkets or weapons) from citadels and fortresses, meaning there's always a good incentive for players to always want to merge together when possible, but you can also still do things in smaller groups. Have the return on time invested scale exponentially given larger content, also incentivizing going after bigger and harder stuff.

Example: generic tier token, generic "uber planarite", tokens for weapons, tokens for trinkets, tokens for armor. Fortresses drop all of the above, lots of tokens and uberplanarite. Citadels/towers drop less, and no trinket tokens. Outposts drop still less, but no weapon tokens. Major rifts occasionally drop armor tokens (random chance). Minor rifts have a chance to drop items, forty of which can be stitched together with a ton of planarite to create an armor token. All of this occurs within a given tier.

For example:

• Fortress (20-40): Planarite, many Armor Tokens, many Weapon Tokens, some Trinket Tokens
• Citadel (10-20): Planarite, many Armor Tokens, Weapon Tokens
• Outpost (5-10): Planarite, Armor Tokens
• Major Rift (4-5): Planarite, rare Armor Tokens
• Minor Rift (1-3): Planarite, Armor Fragments (40-->1 Armor Token)

T3 Fortress drops T3 Planarite, T3 Armor Tokens, T3 Weapon Tokens, T3 Trinket Tokens.
T4 Minor Rift drops T4 Planarite, T4 Armor Fragments.
T1 Outpost drops T1 Planarite, T1 Armor Tokens.
T2 Citadel drops T2 Planarite, T2 Armor Tokens, T2 Weapon Tokens.

P.S. Major credit to Goldenwing for the "organic" grouping idea above!

Would it drop for everyone who participated, or randomly?