Not enough Raiders in Trion Rift - Raids nerfed 50% ???

[dudurududu]

1: Log into WoW - WoD char select screen -- oh look, shiny WoW store button with an emphasised yellow border to make it stand out from the other buttons

2: Nothing on main screen as it's not F2P but what's this?

3: Cash shop button on my row of mini buttons?

Two can play this game you know and you're perfectly aware that you can log in to Rift and play from level 1 to 65 absolutely for free, all the game play content is there, heck if i dropped Patron right now i lose access to......nothing, nada, zilch, the whole game World is still there to me, stop paying your WoW sub and you lose....oh everything, can't even get to your char select screen.

At least my raids are not nerfed 50% because noone plays that crappy game of yours.
And yes, I CAN get to char screen without sub.

[theWocky]

At least my raids are not nerfed 50% because noone plays that crappy game of yours.
And yes, I CAN get to char screen without sub.

Not to mention, most raids work at launch?
Pets drop in the game, toys, quest gear, heirlooms, etc...

No gear with stats on the cash store? because, you know - Tanaan Jungle is a thing (not been there yet - level 98 and collecting 51/250 treasures so far with gear, toys, trinkets, FREE STUFF) and multiple other avenues for gear.

Rift has no easy way to get raid-ready. Hence the raiding crisis.
PuGs are few and far between. What do you expect with a game with less than 30 final end-game raiding guilds?

WoW? As for cost? people who are bored unsub and come back with the new expansion.
The rest of us score with discounts - as can see, in my pic - in 2010, I paid 20 bucks for upgrade, then 2013, 10 bucks, in 2016, paid ZILCH for expansion (20 bucks if I had no WoW).

Everything unlocked. No tricks. No traps.

[Eleccybubb]

Not to mention, most raids work at launch?
Pets drop in the game, toys, quest gear, heirlooms, etc...

No gear with stats on the cash store? because, you know - Tanaan Jungle is a thing (not been there yet - level 98 and collecting 51/250 treasures so far with gear, toys, trinkets, FREE STUFF) and multiple other avenues for gear.

Rift has no easy way to get raid-ready. Hence the raiding crisis.
PuGs are few and far between. What do you expect with a game with less than 30 final end-game raiding guilds?

WoW? As for cost? people who are bored unsub and come back with the new expansion.
The rest of us score with discounts - as can see, in my pic - in 2010, I paid 20 bucks for upgrade, then 2013, 10 bucks, in 2016, paid ZILCH for expansion (20 bucks if I had no WoW).

Everything unlocked. No tricks. No traps.

Wasn't that Rift's initial approach to f2p? If so they have fallen so fucking far from that.

[theWocky]

Wasn't that Rift's initial approach to f2p? If so they have fallen so fucking far from that.

Oh, yes - lets not even get me started on Lore and EasterEggs. In "chocolate", it was going somewhere, questing in Storm Legion was amazing... till they climbed on the re-use bandwagon - not in a good way, either.

RIFT: Celestial / Cosmic Fucking Rhinoceros? Seriously?

I thought Pandas were bad. At least they make the lore fit and most characters have a back-story and I was the most Anti-Panda guy there was - till i tried it - and actually really enjoyed it. That's good story-telling.

[Slipmat]

Pets drop in the game, toys, quest gear, heirlooms, etc...

No gear with stats on the cash store? because, you know - Tanaan Jungle is a thing (not been there yet - level 98 and collecting 51/250 treasures so far with gear, toys, trinkets, FREE STUFF) and multiple other avenues for gear.

I'm glad you're enjoying the single player game, no need to even leave your garrison soon, your followers will bring you back all the loot you'll ever need, yes even epics from LFR raids so why even group up? i'm sure you'll have great fun in Tanaan Jungle trying to "tag" mobs with other players around stealing them from you, only quest mobs and some bosses are even shared, wait until you get the dailies to fill up the bar 100% when each kill is worth 1% or the odd mobs worth 3-5%, now do that every day for your Apexis Crystals, hours of fun to get you out of your garrison

[Eleccybubb]

I'm glad you're enjoying the single player game, no need to even leave your garrison soon, your followers will bring you back all the loot you'll ever need, yes even epics from LFR raids so why even group up? i'm sure you'll have great fun in Tanaan Jungle trying to "tag" mobs with other players around stealing them from you, only quest mobs and some bosses are even shared, wait until you get the dailies to fill up the bar 100% when each kill is worth 1% or the odd mobs worth 3-5%, now do that every day for your Apexis Crystals, hours of fun to get you out of your garrison

Still better than buying gear on a fucking store. Like I said Trion could throw a black screen and nothing at your face and call it Rift and you would still be ok with that. But no point arguing with someone who defends the game like it is their life and see's no wrong in Trion is there?

[StrawberryZebra]

I'm glad you're enjoying the single player game, no need to even leave your garrison soon, your followers will bring you back all the loot you'll ever need, yes even epics from LFR raids so why even group up? i'm sure you'll have great fun in Tanaan Jungle trying to "tag" mobs with other players around stealing them from you, only quest mobs and some bosses are even shared, wait until you get the dailies to fill up the bar 100% when each kill is worth 1% or the odd mobs worth 3-5%, now do that every day for your Apexis Crystals, hours of fun to get you out of your garrison

How are Garisons providing you with free stuff for little effort any different to Rifts Minions, that provide you free stuff for little effort? Serious question, by the way. From what I can tell their functions are more or less identical. And I have seen people go to some extreme lengths to complete their Minion collections.

In all honesty, you've painted WoW's daily quests in a way that makes them look like a utopia compared to the horrible slog it is getting through dailies and weeklies in Rift. Having a Daily Quest Island where everythings all in one place so you can blast through it in short measure is far less busy work than having to run all over the Plane of Water doing the odd one or two quests here and there. It would also solve some of the problems with other areas of the game too, it creates a zone that is going to be well populated outside of cities allowing easy forming of groups for Rifts and bosses, makes for a natural World PvP setting without having to have outside objectives to force it to happen, and could allow for rapid catch-up mechanics to be in place by offering an alternate way to get gear. From what I've gathered talking to people in game, the only reason Rift doesn't have something like this already is because, "We can't have nice things if WoW has them!".

[Slipmat]

Still better than buying gear on a fucking store. Like I said Trion could throw a black screen and nothing at your face and call it Rift and you would still be ok with that. But no point arguing with someone who defends the game like it is their life and see's no wrong in Trion is there?

You mean the way you're defending WoW? oh right, forgot that this site is 99.99% WoW players anyway, who's buying gear in the Store? i know i'm not, i get my T3 Raid gear for free from, you know, actually playing the game and not logging on every few hours to see what my followers have brought me back, talk about getting spoon fed gear.

So how would you defend a game where you pay a sub but then have to pay extra to server transfer? faction change? race change? per char mind you, not account, funny how Rift allows you to freely transfer to any server once a week, every week, you'd think Blizzard would have that service also for free included as part of your sub.

Like i already wrote, i could cancel my Patron right now and continue to play the game without losing anything except a few perks and QoL boosts, stop paying your WoW sub? enjoy your F2P to level 20 game.

How are Garisons providing you with free stuff for little effort any different to Rifts Minions, that provide you free stuff for little effort? Serious question

Last time i checked my Minions or anyone else's Minions don't bring you back raid gear, all they bring back are crafting mats and artifacts, never, ever saw a piece of even green gear, let alone a raid piece, brought back by a Minion.

[Eleccybubb]

You mean the way you're defending WoW? oh right, forgot that this site is 99.99% WoW players anyway, who's buying gear in the Store? i know i'm not, i get my T3 Raid gear for free from, you know, actually playing the game and not logging on every few hours to see what my followers have brought me back, talk about getting spoon fed gear.

So how would you defend a game where you pay a sub but then have to pay extra to server transfer? faction change? race change? per char mind you, not account, funny how Rift allows you to freely transfer to any server once a week, every week, you'd think Blizzard would have that service also for free included as part of your sub.

Like i already wrote, i could cancel my Patron right now and continue to play the game without losing anything except a few perks and QoL boosts, stop paying your WoW sub? enjoy your F2P to level 20 game.




Last time i checked my Minions or anyone else's Minions don't bring you back raid gear, all they bring back are crafting mats and artifacts, never, ever saw a piece of even green gear, let alone a raid piece, brought back by a Minion.

I think wow is a piece of crap in it's current form actually. But comparing it to the shitfest that is Rift is just laughable. I will give credit to Rift that not charging for transfers is ok but on a cooldown but that doesn't wash away the glaring issues it has. F2P with no tricks is total bullshit and you know it because there is stuff locked behind paywalls now. Jesus like I said Trion could literally throw a black screen at you and you would not complain.

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How are Garisons providing you with free stuff for little effort any different to Rifts Minions, that provide you free stuff for little effort? Serious question, by the way. From what I can tell their functions are more or less identical. And I have seen people go to some extreme lengths to complete their Minion collections.

In all honesty, you've painted WoW's daily quests in a way that makes them look like a utopia compared to the horrible slog it is getting through dailies and weeklies in Rift. Having a Daily Quest Island where everythings all in one place so you can blast through it in short measure is far less busy work than having to run all over the Plane of Water doing the odd one or two quests here and there. It would also solve some of the problems with other areas of the game too, it creates a zone that is going to be well populated outside of cities allowing easy forming of groups for Rifts and bosses, makes for a natural World PvP setting without having to have outside objectives to force it to happen, and could allow for rapid catch-up mechanics to be in place by offering an alternate way to get gear. From what I've gathered talking to people in game, the only reason Rift doesn't have something like this already is because, "We can't have nice things if WoW has them!".

Just remember who you are arguing with here. Trion can do no wrong in his eyes even if they started putting more gear slots behind a paywall and started charging people to unlock a raid.

[Segus1992]

Why do people still play Rift? Honestly, is it still fun to play with this company running it?

[Wryn]

Woah, what's going on here?
Either way, I love both games. *shrugs*

[StrawberryZebra]

Last time i checked my Minions or anyone else's Minions don't bring you back raid gear, all they bring back are crafting mats and artifacts, never, ever saw a piece of even green gear, let alone a raid piece, brought back by a Minion.

So your issue is with the quality of items rather than the mini-games themselves. Would you feel differently about it Rift offered raid gear, but WoW didn't? How about if both rewarded raid gear, or if neither awarded raid gear? Loot quality aside, the underlying systems are very similar for both it seems, therefore you can't realistically criticise one while praising the other without being a hypocrite.

Just remember who you are arguing with here. Trion can do no wrong in his eyes even if they started putting more gear slots behind a paywall and started charging people to unlock a raid.

Dismising what Slipmat is saying because it's Slipmat that's saying it is a very biased stance to take. I may not often agree with him (or her), but that's not a reason to avoid discussing any points raised.

[alturic]

This sort of stuff is sadly what happens when a game goes FTP. I don't trust anyone with F2P, There's only 2 MMO's I've played that are F2P (Rift and Black Desert) both are incredibly Pay to Win, I stopped playing Rift upon the announcement of F2P. Not that I played it much anyway, I tend to stick to 1 game for weeks and weeks before swapping to another.

I'm just gonna stick with trusty old WoW, until it inevitably goes F2P.

It's hard when WoW loses it's luster though and you do have to go searching for something else close to what made you like WoW. For me, at least when I got my warrior to 50 in rift when that was the cap, Rift was that game. I'm not saying Rift still isn't a good game, I think it's really the only WoW-STYLE (raids are all I care about) game that's got the holy trinity and can hold my (or again, used to, when I last played) attention.

I personally have no problem paying for a subscription (you do for WoW) and buying the "expansions" (DLC) for the $149, but to know (see: read in this thread) that there might be more than simply buying those "expansions" and subscribing in order to get "everything", that's when I start second-guessing.

Just to confirm, if I bought the "expansions" for $149 and subscribed, what else would I still need to "buy" (earrings and planewater at the minimum?) in order to have "everything".

The other thing that really made me take a second guess was when I finally logged back in and see you can actually buy gear, level 60 boosts, crafting materials(?), currency(?), etc. THAT is when a game goes beyond what I, personally, deem "acceptable" for a cash shop that's not SCREAMING "pay to win". I have absolutely no problem with F2P games, but they do tend to inevitably go beyond simple cosmetic/xp boosts/rep boost/mounts items when the company starts seeing the allure of money. If anything though, you kinda have to say people are clearing using the shop other-wise they wouldn't see the point in putting more and more pay to win into it, or perhaps that's why they ARE putting more and more into it, because no-one is buying. ha

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1: Log into WoW - WoD char select screen -- oh look, shiny WoW store button with an emphasised yellow border to make it stand out from the other buttons

2: Nothing on main screen as it's not F2P but what's this?

3: Cash shop button on my row of mini buttons?

Two can play this game you know and you're perfectly aware that you can log in to Rift and play from level 1 to 65 absolutely for free, all the game play content is there, heck if i dropped Patron right now i lose access to......nothing, nada, zilch, the whole game World is still there to me, stop paying your WoW sub and you lose....oh everything, can't even get to your char select screen.

I believe this is wrong. I swear all accounts can now be logged into and played up to level 20 chars.

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I think this is far more telling than than perhaps anything else in the article. One third of the playerbase are committed, long term fans. The other two thirds are people who "rotate" back in and out. It would suggest that the majority of players at any one time are those same long term fans, and that Rift is struggling to keep other newer players engaged long term. I'm going out on a limb saying that these people are the same ones who "celebrate" Trion selling things for $40 or $50.

I do think its funny reading Hartsman praise the soul system though. I'd consider it one of the worst aspects of Rift, and one that is desperately in need of a serious overhaul. The vast majority of the talents are bland, and completely uninteresting. The root abilities are clogged up with filler skills just to make up the numbers and practically every tooltip could read "does damage". Then you have a whole host of almost completely useless souls, (Necromancer, Elementalist, Ranger etc) which are used almost exclusively as off trees for the low hanging damage talents. Don't even get me started on the way most one of my Mage trees have a functionaly identical Primary Bolt ability.

Yea, that's exactly the part I read into and thought "whoa, a company is completely content with having 1/3 of their players be long-term, probably subscribed, players and the rest just come and go". Either the cash-shop is making them buckets of money or it's worse than I thought.

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At least my raids are not nerfed 50% because noone plays that crappy game of yours.
And yes, I CAN get to char screen without sub.

Was it actually said they nerfed the raids because people weren't playing? WoW does the same things with nerfing raids sometimes. See: WotLK.

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Not to mention, most raids work at launch?
Pets drop in the game, toys, quest gear, heirlooms, etc...

No gear with stats on the cash store? because, you know - Tanaan Jungle is a thing (not been there yet - level 98 and collecting 51/250 treasures so far with gear, toys, trinkets, FREE STUFF) and multiple other avenues for gear.

Rift has no easy way to get raid-ready. Hence the raiding crisis.
PuGs are few and far between. What do you expect with a game with less than 30 final end-game raiding guilds?

WoW? As for cost? people who are bored unsub and come back with the new expansion.
The rest of us score with discounts - as can see, in my pic - in 2010, I paid 20 bucks for upgrade, then 2013, 10 bucks, in 2016, paid ZILCH for expansion (20 bucks if I had no WoW).

Everything unlocked. No tricks. No traps.

41 I believe it is, :P I THINK this site only records the kills/guilds that actually submit, right? If not, this is really making me re-think trying it out again.

http://www.topofrift.com/standings/world/into_the_wilds/the_mind_of_madness

[Ahovv]

[I][COLOR="#FF0000"]1. PR, alleged DEV Politics, interference, preferential treatment and quality control so bad that Rift's #1 "world first guild" quit for WoW, made scathing attacks, accusations and Trion CM's banned people in-game and out-of-game for even mentioning the incident. Even linked screenshots of player/dev conversations, youtube clips backing claims.

2. It is alleged (and widely accepted) that a DEV allowed another guild to use an exploit and the players were reprimanded for it by bans and extreme censorship.

3. allegedly, a DEV called a whole guild exploiters on the forums after they notified him of a bug during testing(and didn't seem to care about at the time), later took their world 1st away from them?

4. Raids were released as a bug-ridden mess. So bad, they were completely unplayable and unfinished - after allegedly being warned they weren't ready, but rushed out anyway - adding credibility to the "put out raid, so we can sell gear on store" theory.

1) Apotheosys members wouldn't get banned in-game for bypassing forum bans only because they were Trion's primary testing guild at the time. Members of Addiction were permanently banned in 2014 for creating new forum accounts. Why weren't Apoth members? The real concern shouldn't be that members of Apoth got banned; it should be how long it took Trion to do so, and the circumstances preventing it. They allowed Apotheosys privileges far beyond other guilds including ongoing harassment of Vendetta members. This inconsistency is spineless.

2) No comment as this occurred after I quit

3) I assume this is a reference to Jinoscoth. To summarize Jinoscoth is quite simple; Apotheosys knew of a bug on PTS, the dev acknowledged the bug, and the fight was released accidentally without the bug being fixed. Apotheosys abused this and their excuse was "Devs knew about it, must be intended." Obviously that logic is horseshit for many reasons. All Apotheosys had to do here was ask one of the devs on skype if they were allowed to run this strategy. A dev would have responded within a matter of seconds or minutes. Instead they chose to keep quiet and abuse the bug. The world first was justifiably stripped away, and there should be no controversy here.

4) This one is spot-on. The team of raid developers has been essentially a skeleton crew since F2P. Granted, some of the best and most challenging raid content has released since then, including Grim Awakening, Planebreaker Bastion and (for the most part) Bindings of Blood. GA and PB were primarily crafted by a team of two designers - Colin Krausnick and Larry Boles. So it's not impossible for good raid content to be produced by a small crew, but since their departure from Rift the team handling raid content has shifted around substantially, with the only consistent member Haley Chivers (Anony). I'm going to assume the scheduling is handled as it was in April 2015 when I left - raid content demanding to be released for the sole purpose of advancing tiers and releasing the previous armor sets for cash. Raiding in Rift is no longer about releasing epic experiences, even if the designers intend for such things. Their bosses do not care about the spirit of progression raiding. They merely look for methods of squeezing money before their game dies.

[Lathais]

On F2P, one of their spokesman assured players that they would never remove features from veterans. They did.

I do remember them saying this. I am pretty sure I am considered a veteran, as I played vanilla Rift. I no longer have the ability to que for specific dungeons, so they have taken something away from me. However, if you buy the most recent DLCs and pay for Patron, how is it any different from how it was before the F2P transition? I am genuinely curious here as I am sure there are multiple differences I am just not seeing yet.

I can actually think of a few, like being able to buy gear with credits, something else I am pretty sure they said they would never do at one point. They skirted around that for a long time saying it's not the best gear in the game, but you can still buy damn near current gear with cash.

Lockboxes, oh the lockboxes. I really can not stand these things. They just plain suck IMO.

What else is there, that if you buy the all the DLCs+Patron is different from before, where if you bough Rift+SL and subbed you had everything?

[thurizas]

How are Garisons providing you with free stuff for little effort any different to Rifts Minions, that provide you free stuff for little effort? Serious question, by the way. From what I can tell their functions are more or less identical. And I have seen people go to some extreme lengths to complete their Minion collections.

For me, it is the quality of what is obtained.

With Rift, you get crafting mats, notoriety, artifacts, and some money..that is about it.

Now with Wow, you get money, other currency (eg. apexis crystals), follower gear tokens (tokens to upgrade your followers armor and weapons), and you get raid quality gear (the level depends on what level of the raid you have done -- for example, if you have killed 15 bosses in normal HIghmaul, the mission that give Highmaul loot would now give heroic Highmaul gear). Also, with garrisons if you have the salvage yard, your missions will also grant bags or crates of salvage. Most times these items will have grey level items in them (although hey sell quite nicely), you can get green, blue and on occasion purple items from the crates.

Also another difference is where you can interact with your minions (or followers). In WoW you need to be at your garrison, so if you have follower missions that are completed, you need to go back to your garrison. With Rift, you can interact anywhere in the world with your minions, no need to be at a specific location.

For me, I much prefer Rift's system of minions then Wow's.

In all honesty, you've painted WoW's daily quests in a way that makes them look like a utopia compared to the horrible slog it is getting through dailies and weeklies in Rift. Having a Daily Quest Island where everythings all in one place so you can blast through it in short measure is far less busy work than having to run all over the Plane of Water doing the odd one or two quests here and there. It would also solve some of the problems with other areas of the game too, it creates a zone that is going to be well populated outside of cities allowing easy forming of groups for Rifts and bosses, makes for a natural World PvP setting without having to have outside objectives to force it to happen, and could allow for rapid catch-up mechanics to be in place by offering an alternate way to get gear. From what I've gathered talking to people in game, the only reason Rift doesn't have something like this already is because, "We can't have nice things if WoW has them!".

Lets see, you can pick up most of Rift's daily and weekly quests in one place, and yea, with WoW you get all of your daily and weekly quests either in your garrison or your Tanaan Jungle outpost. However, I have never been frustrated to the point of dropping a daily in Rift like I have been in WoW. In particular the "fill the completion bar to 100%" style quests that are ever so prevalent in Warlords these days. Remember that WoW still has mob tagging, so for a kill to count, you need to tag the mob first. Couple that with these "completion quests" are isolated to very small regions (for example a section of a river valley), with a small number of mobs. Early on, I've been in areas where there have been more people trying to get these quests done then there were mobs -- guess how that worked out. Same with all of the daily quests in Tanaan Jungle; when that zone launched it was not unusual to see plays standing around just waiting for a mob to respawn in the hopes that they could tag it before any of the other players around.

[alturic]

Lets see, you can pick up most of Rift's daily and weekly quests in one place, and yea, with WoW you get all of your daily and weekly quests either in your garrison or your Tanaan Jungle outpost. However, I have never been frustrated to the point of dropping a daily in Rift like I have been in WoW. In particular the "fill the completion bar to 100%" style quests that are ever so prevalent in Warlords these days. Remember that WoW still has mob tagging, so for a kill to count, you need to tag the mob first. Couple that with these "completion quests" are isolated to very small regions (for example a section of a river valley), with a small number of mobs. Early on, I've been in areas where there have been more people trying to get these quests done then there were mobs -- guess how that worked out. Same with all of the daily quests in Tanaan Jungle; when that zone launched it was not unusual to see plays standing around just waiting for a mob to respawn in the hopes that they could tag it before any of the other players around.

Two points:

1.) The mob tagging is changing in Legion so that won't be an issue any longer.
2.) You mean how Rifts invasions (or whatever they are called) are also "fill the completion bar to 100%"?

[thurizas]

Two points:

1.) The mob tagging is changing in Legion so that won't be an issue any longer.
2.) You mean how Rifts invasions (or whatever they are called) are also "fill the completion bar to 100%"?

I am using "fill the completion bar to 100%" to refer to the style of quest you get from the war table in your garrison (or from orders that you purchase with Garrison resources), for example Assault on Magnarok.

I've found these quests to be particularly annoying for the reasons stated, Blizzards archaic tagging system, quest area being fairly small, everyone max-level character getting the same quest ... these factors, when combined together can lead to total frustration trying to get the quest done.

Granted, players coming to the game late probably will not see the frustration of attempting these quests a few weeks after launch due to dramatic drop in people doing these quests.

[Edge-]

Alright folks, I know I'm partially to blame on this but let's keep discussion on Rift and not turn this into a WoW vs. Rift thread anymore than it already is.

[theWocky]

Never fear, folks, Trion have introduced the ultimate Raid Gear "catch-up" mechanism:

Six guilds (worldwide) have cleared T3, time to sell T3 gear!

Only US$300! Discount for Patrons, only US$270!

* Tier 3 weapons and armor can now be purchased for credits, along with armor and weapon bundles!
* Credit and token prices for Tier 2, Tier 1, and Expert armor and weapons have been reduced.
* Credit price for World Tier armor has been reduced.