Fundamentals Trion need to change in Xpac?

[Ashina]

SUGGESTION & fondest wish: Make there be a petspam ability or abilities in various souls for the Mage (8-10 or more pet summons that attack or provide buffs etc.). Sort of like the DAOC Theurgist... let us have a few different types of pets we summon that target one person or monster . A ranged pet, a melee pet, a cc pet, and a buffer/healer type pet or turret: DO IT! Chloros summon heal/buffing turrets that are stationary... elementalists cast fire melee pets that dot and ice pets that snare and ranged nuke... etc.!

A turret caster is a great idea. Would be great for the new cleric soul for sure, but id prefer a battle mage for the mage soul. can add some in as new skills though. Maybe the warrior soul could be a play off of a geomancer and have some turret abilities.

[Ravenevar]

They don't need to change anything, but they do need to add variety to the entry level questing zones. Example, racial quest chains that reveal that race's history and lore (looking at the Bahmi annd Eth here ).
Add more entry level zones to choose from so you don't get stuck in the same grindfest every time you want to make a new alt. Make new grindfests please!
Frankly sick to death of the top level getting all the love...

With 2 new continents, lets hope new low level zones DO get added.

[Lightborne]

I can think of a few things they can revisit and refine. I'll generalize them here :

1. Improved Soul System
   One of Rift's defining features, but not very well done. The soul system at first seems flexible, but turns out rigid (especially in terms of efficient roles). Many of the souls need more, direct "definition" to their strengths, weaknesses and style.
   
   This is not very likely to happen anytime soon (if at all), but there needs to be a more complex soul synergy system in place that actually adds direct synergy between and across souls. For example, if Ability X from Soul A is used in conjunction with Ability Y from Soul B, it should produce a very specific effect. The same Abilities used with another soul should produce another distinct effect. Chaining such synergy will add yet another twist to such a setup. The "Abilities" here can be actives, passives or buffs; lots of mix-n-match to make things interesting.
   
   
2. Improved Visuals
   The first thing that comes to my mind are the uncomfortable, rigid and somewhat weird looking animations that some races show while casting or attacking. They could use a lot more grace and variety to their movements. NPC animations don't necessarily need this treatment, but playable characters definitely do. This is not referring to spell or visual effects, but that could use an improvement as well.
   
   Some equipment look dull. They could look a lot more "cool", "heroic" and polished.
   
   The capitol cities. A lot of players spend most of their time here, but they look quite uninteresting. Meridian looks somewhat okay, but the NPC mapping is odd. Sanctum is much worse. Both these hubs require a more vibrant and majestic-looking design, layout and mapping! They're the faction HQs, ffs! They need to invoke a sense of glory when you enter the area.
   
   
3. Improved Performance
   This is an important one. Rift needs to work more efficiently when it comes to present-day mid/high-end systems. It seems to use far more resources than it actually should. Sacrificing some background visuals to make the game run better sounds like a good deal to me.

That's it for now. I'll avoid repeating what others have already suggested here.

[Ashina]

I can think of a few things they can revisit and refine. I'll generalize them here :
[LIST=1][*]Improved Soul System
One of Rift's defining features, but not very well done. The soul system at first seems flexible, but turns out rigid (especially in terms of efficient roles). Many of the souls need more, direct "definition" to their strengths, weaknesses and style.

This is not very likely to happen anytime soon (if at all), but there needs to be a more complex soul synergy system in place that actually adds direct synergy between and across souls. For example, if Ability X from Soul A is used in conjunction with Ability Y from Soul B, it should produce a very specific effect. The same Abilities used with another soul should produce another distinct effect. The "Abilities" here can be actives, passives or buffs; lots of mix-n-match to make things interesting.

My suggestion would be to have unique cross soul abilities, where x points in one soul and y points in another would give an ability with flavor of both souls. For example, an ele/pyro being able to blow up his pet for aoe fire damage or a ranger/bard being able to fire an arrow at a friendly target that would give them a temporary big buff

[Lightborne]

My suggestion would be to have unique cross soul abilities, where x points in one soul and y points in another would give an ability with flavor of both souls. For example, an ele/pyro being able to blow up his pet for aoe fire damage or a ranger/bard being able to fire an arrow at a friendly target that would give them a temporary big buff

Ultimately, what I suggested will lead to something of that sort. Yes, the synergy should produce effects with —as you say, a "flavour of both souls". Otherwise, it's not only going to look odd, but it'll defeat the purpose of such a setup. Again, the souls themselves need to be a lot more defined in their style before any actual synergic combinations can emerge.

Who am I kidding? This is too much effort, too much planning. This is probably never going to happen, heck, it's probably not even going to be discussed. With what Trion has to work with atm, I can only foresee more bandaids and silly changes coming.

[Gray]

The capitol cities. A lot of players spend most of their time here, but they look quite uninteresting. Meridian looks somewhat okay, but the NPC mapping is odd. Sanctum is much worse. Both these hubs require a more vibrant and majestic-looking design, layout and mapping! They're the faction HQs, ffs! They need to invoke a sense of glory when you enter the area.

Make your move to the island city of Tempest Bay, a new stronghold for both Guardians and Defiant

http://stormlegion.riftgame.com/en/

[Ashina]

Make your move to the island city of Tempest Bay, a new stronghold for both Guardians and Defiant

http://stormlegion.riftgame.com/en/

cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria

[Bivrington]

I read "battle mage" in here somewhere, and I said YES! to myself.

I would LOVE to have a true battle mage, a la Skyrim, AD&D. I would drop my main in a heartbeat for this.

Also, more storage space. Im a virtual horder, i dont like to throw anything away.

Bring the LORE back into Rift. How many new players know the story behind the souls of their calling?

Ability to have a ONE TIME PER CHARACTER faction change, via an epic questline in where either
A) Something major happens and you reject the vigil and lose your faith, turning to the defiance or
B) You find your faith, and embrace the Vigil becoming a Guardian.

For the love of god, race changes.

[Zengar Zombolt]

1. More of everything they've already done (IAs, Chronicles, Rifts, Zone Events, exploration goodies, warfronts, etc.)

2. Amp up the dynamic content to whole new levels of awesomeness. Imo make zones really change when stuff happens to it, like with what they're doing with at least one Colossi battle in the upcoming expansion.

3. Don't trivialize or make the old end-game completely pointless imo. Somehow make it so that players can still do it at the level cap yet still get worthwhile rewards out of it. That's something a lot of MMOs don't do with expansions to where that old content is mostly ignored... which is sad, especially since I usually don't get to the end content until an expansion/level cap raise is on its way x.x

4. Make zone invasions more meaningful in that if you fail an event it can have real consequences for the zone.

5. Overall just really make us feel like we -need- to get rid of the threats to our factions/Telara/zones.

6. More variety to races imo. Maybe add in a fourth race or something. Right now the Kelari and High Elves are basically mirror images and so are the Eth and Mathosians. At the least try to make their models or such unique.

7. Maybe take the Conquest stuff and apply it to an open world PvP zone that players can hop in/out of at will?

[Maelystra]

I really do think that with the expansion low level characters are going to get a new avenue to explore when it comes to leveling. they're adding 2 new continents that are supposed to more the tripple the size of the world. I mean I can't see them dedicating all of that added game space to the entire high end of the game. and if they do... I think that will seriously kill the game for a lot of players.

A couple of weeks ago on the PTS, if you hit your H button and clicked on the zones tab and on the dungeons tab, you could see the names of all the new areas and instances. Every last one was level 50+, unless for some reason they've STOPPED listing in order of level. They were all at the end of the lists.
So not a thing appears to be planned for the 'little people' who apparently do not matter.

As I've said before, I know hundreds of people who refuse to create any more alts because leveling in from 6-49 never varies...ever. IAs are not the answer we were hoping for...
IAs are just going to be used so alts never have to do the zone quests, which means they miss so much content that TRION slaved over. (but they're still gonna have to go back and do the storylines if they want to complete the faction saga quests. lol)

[GoldChrish]

Ninja moved to suggestions folder, where threads go to die.
Nice 1