RIFT 2.5 on PTS!

[CptEgo]

It is very likely performance updates to Rift will be small incremental improvement over the life span of the game. Expecting a "big" update that solves performance across the board is an.. unrealistic reality, I think. Expecting even a portion of performance woes of the game to be fixed in a similar sweep is also, unlikely.

I asked because Trion announced that the 2.5 update specifically would bring extensive performance updates.

[theWocky]

I asked because Trion announced that the 2.5 update specifically would bring extensive performance updates.

Yup - you are correct - it was mentioned in a live stream.

[Angarin]

Yup - you are correct - it was mentioned in a live stream.

Ah, no wonder I couldnt find the source.

Awesome.

Yeah I was actually just doing some performance tweaks. On the lowest of low settings I was pulling the same fps I was with ultra except for shadows in tempest bay. Its sad really.

[Calliso]

They mentioned performance improvements such as multi threading I think in the last livestream. Unfortunately right now these are causing lots of crashes on their servers so they don't think these improvements will come out right when 2.5 comes out. Hopefully though they will come out sometime during 2.5. As for the 2 month patch cycle I hope it stays as well but its too early to say. I would not be surprised for instance if 2.6 takes 3 months. But of course I am hoping for 2!

[Khelendros]

Yea they said they were having major issues with the performance upgrades for high end machines (multithreading I assume). Hopefully they come out sometime in 2.5 but that's not something you want to rush. The last thing you want to do is make the game unstable.

As for scaling. I think some raids are more suited to scaling. For instance many bosses in HK have mechanics that don't deal true damage but rather percent health or other things. If you design future content with that in mind (percentage based damage vs true damage) it makes raids more or less with built in scaling. I suspect based on how DH does it will determine if they do any others. Many newer players never experienced HK which is IMO a crying shame.

[Lathais]

Scaling can be a large system that encompasses several concepts. Scaling doesn't only apply to having content scale to a number of people. It can be everything from downscaling your character and thus their gear and spell, to upscaling for pvp similarly, to encounter scaling based on level and also amount of people, and everything in between. In Rift, mentoring was overtuned for a while but I thought they fixed it on World Events at least?

Other games utilize it in all capacities, but if a game is using it to just increase HP and nothing else then they are being lazy programmers/devs. That's not what scaling is. So in Rift it might be subpar, but other games use it effectively. I guess I'm expressing that Rift should be using it effectively.

So not to compare games, but recent use of scaling included:
Challenge Mode Dungeons which were effectively time trials at a default item level for gear.

Flex Raiding which scaled raids from 10-25 people. This included mob health, mechanics, damage output, etc. Pretty much there is a tuning for every amount of people on a linear grade. This way the challenge is effectively the same provided you aren't bringing people to carry you. At no point do you cross a threshold where it is easier or harder just because of the number of people.

People have tried to say there is, but the devs gave the math to prove otherwise.
GW2 uses it to scale you up for PvP and World Events, so you can take place in activities even if you are just starting a character. It also keeps the zones relevant to an extent.

Rift has all the ones you mentioned and they are activities that are used pretty regularly. I've just personally always wanted to see them do more with the Chronicle system. But anyways, I didn't mean to derail the thread about 2.5...it just came up with the Chronicle reference. I believe it's about to be used in WoW to make all old content relevant again by allowing downscaling similar to Rift, so that's a good thing. Scaling just seems like one of those mechanics that is started to be integrated in every MMO, then borrowed and improved in another, and so on. I don't see it going away.

I guess I have just never seen good scaling. The mentoring in Rift is still not all that great either, at least IMO. If it was, why are they retuning DH instead of just updating the loot and putting in a weekly raid quest? Seems like a lot less work, unless you have to fix an entire system that just does not work well. Instead of working on and fixing scaling, they just re-tuned the whole thing for 60. Now they are re-doing the loot which would have had to be done either way. Maybe it's just me though, I just have never seen scaling work well and keep content challenging enough.

Yes, Rift has all the ones I mentioned and they are used pretty regularly, but how are they used? Not by bringing different amounts of people all the time, which is why I say the scaling kinda failed. People pretty much always bring a full raid to make it easier. Except in IA, which people do with whoever else happens to be there, but nothing scales except for the number of objectives. I mean I guess that is one "good" example of scaling, but all it really does is speed up XP/PA gains when there are more people, since everyone gets some every time the counter goes up.

You bring up that many newer players never experienced HK, which is a shame, well why don;t they just mentor and go do it? The scaling system is already in place. Because scaling sucks, that's why. They need to re-tune the whole thing instead of working with scaling,

- - - Updated - - -

I'm just happy that Rift seems to be back on track with a 2 month patch cycle. Hope it holds up.

Hopefully it does, but we'll see.