Is Rift dead?

Deleted · 2016-01-27, 09:29 PM

Originally Posted by Ahovv

1) You seem to contradict yourself by claiming gear for sale allows for already-geared replacements, because you follow this up by listing a scenario limited to one item such as a necklace or essence. Please be consistent. Which is it?

except I never did, it wasn't me who said "non-raiders should not have access to the most powerful gear via less challenging content." - challenging content are store bought items now? or are you unable to understand what you wrote yourself?

but if you wanna talk about it: how they acquire said items is irrelevant, especially when you look at what items they actually have access to (wooo, essences from world events and ONE item from the sparkle chests), the rest is locked after weeks of grind or grinding plat/mats for some PC gear.

so do you *really* want to say the current situation makes it easier to get replacements?

Originally Posted by Ahovv

2) There is no evidence supporting the claim that non-raiders spend much more than raiders. Most of the credit sellers grinding for loyalty I encountered during Rift were also raiders in scheduled, 12-20 hour guilds. Additionally focusing on the monetary aspect too much will miss many important points. If you dismiss the desires of the raiding community, you lose your most-skilled and dedicated players. This results in lower quality guides, less testing for content (raiders have consistently been the best overall content testers in Rift, not just for raids) and many more harmful outcomes.

ah, yes, a small fraction of the already single-digit percentage of players raidlogging spend enough to sustain the other 90+ percent of the playerbase. you know who spends the most money on f2p games, right? protip: it's not raiders.

which also leads to those points being moot if those people aren't bleeding edge raiders or don't raid in the first place and such have no need of those "awesome services", even less considering the state the content is released in anyway.

as an ex-progression raider myself, you wildly overstate the "value" you bring to the table. but if it makes you feel better...

**justinhalfout** · 2016-02-07, 02:39 PM

Logged in around 3 hours between 7.30-10.30 pm on EU side to see for myself how things are:

LV65 chat was very quiet,aside from the usual zone event spam (they haven't changed at all since i last logged in summer) someone recruiting for crafting rifts and conquest premade spam i noticed no guild recruitment messages whatsoever or anything else notable to suggest the community is thriving like some of the zealots will tell you,i tried to initiate conversation but was faced with sheer silence.

I joined Conquest twice and both times matches were over withing 10 minutes,you either have 1400 hit+ and join the cool kids in a premade or you may as well not even bother leaving the base,this shit has been going on for months as it is,both times there was only one or two of us on my faction and around 15 on the winning team,this alone put me off the thought of doing any warfronts.

Tried looking up some old friends but found none,their guilds probably folded and they have since moved onto greener pastures,found one person on my friends list but got no reply,he was in a lower level zone all the time doing what who can say.

Joined in the Hammerknell IA and was pleasantly surprised there were actually around 12 people doing these so i stuck around a while,had my fill and eventually left.

It suddenly dawned on me Trion added a new zone so i eagerly went off to check it out,nothing much was going on here at all,i explored it all and it honestly felt like "all quantity and no quality",a vast open zone with nothing but carnage quests scattered around,i stuck around here for just over an hour before logging off and in that whole time i never came across another single player.

That's what i personally experienced in that time frame,is the game dead? I can't answer that since times of day may differ,i'll leave you to make up your own mind.

**Exerionx** · 2016-02-18, 03:29 PM

On NA side it's far from dead. Chat is always lively and queues are not that long for the most part.

And you will always see others while leveling.

**Morgaith** · 2016-02-18, 06:17 PM

it's about as dead as it can get before Trion pulls the plug.

Trion is forcing people away from the game with the changes they have made both recently and over a long time.

**Exerionx** · 2016-02-19, 01:40 AM

Originally Posted by Morgaith

it's about as dead as it can get before Trion pulls the plug.

Trion is forcing people away from the game with the changes they have made both recently and over a long time.

While Trion is making some pretty questionable changes lately to the game, I think people are exaggerating about the game dying.

**Morgaith** · 2016-02-19, 12:02 PM

Trion is squeezing people of the last potential revenue by cashgrabs and that doesn't ring a bell?
People are leaving the game in droves and they are doing everything in their power to drive away new players.

I give them 6 months tops.

**Kuja** · 2016-02-19, 12:04 PM

What are these questionable changes? Charging $$ from more services?

**Eleccybubb** · 2016-02-19, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by Kuja

What are these questionable changes? Charging $$ from more services?

One of them is putting character power directly behind a paywall (equipment slots). Absolutely imbecilic decision.

**ChamberDown** · 2016-02-19, 02:36 PM

Originally Posted by Neglesh

While Trion is making some pretty questionable changes lately to the game, I think people are exaggerating about the game dying.

If you think about this from a business perspective, Trion will probably provide new content coming up here probably in October-December timeframe, based loosely on previous releases. If I had to guess, I would say they are likely bolstering the bank account to be able to achieve this. The earring slots being locked behind credits is not ideal, same thing with the cosmic fragments for credit only minion adventures, that are needed for lockboxes, that are needed for +235 main stat essences. But if they aren't bringing in what they need to meet their needs, they have to do something about it.

I personally know a lot of people who haven't spent a dime in Telara. That's great, that was the whole idea behind the free to play model, is that people who can't afford to play, can also play this game. A while ago Trion reported that only 7-15% of it's players actually use real money on Rift. I don't know the accuracy of those numbers, but if that's true, putting that into perspective, if Rift has 100,000 players, that means 7,000-15,000 are spending money on Rift, and a staggering 85,000 - 93,000 are playing 100% free and can play the entire game (Which by the way, with Rex, they can still do even after the changes, although somebody has to first purchase the Rex for you to buy which doesn't seem to be an issue).

So, although I'm not super excited about the changes much like the community, I'm trying to keep an open mind here, especially because I love this game, and cost/entertainment value is still MUCH lower than typical things people do to entertain themselves. (For instance, going to a 2 hour movie for $15)

Also, it may seem like Rift is dwindling in population, but look at the timeline. This happens in almost every MMO during this part of the development life cycle. Watch what happens to WoW's 5mil subs (previously like 11+) when Legion comes out. We are about 1 year 5 months or so into Nightmare Tide, and Tier 3 has been out for a few months now, which is inherently more difficult than prior tiers, often times limiting the content to the more hardcore playerbase. People start getting bored, have mostly maxed out characters, etc. Trion puts out fantastic content most of the time, I'm confident the next expansion is going to be great. I would say just have some patience, and judge based on the final result, not the actions that were required to get there. I for one, want this game to succeed.

Just some thoughts. =)

**StrawberryZebra** · 2016-02-19, 06:32 PM

Originally Posted by ChamberDown

I personally know a lot of people who haven't spent a dime in Telara. That's great, that was the whole idea behind the free to play model, is that people who can't afford to play, can also play this game. A while ago Trion reported that only 7-15% of it's players actually use real money on Rift. I don't know the accuracy of those numbers, but if that's true, putting that into perspective, if Rift has 100,000 players, that means 7,000-15,000 are spending money on Rift, and a staggering 85,000 - 93,000 are playing 100% free and can play the entire game (Which by the way, with Rex, they can still do even after the changes, although somebody has to first purchase the Rex for you to buy which doesn't seem to be an issue).

Hearthstone hit the nail on the head when it comes to microtransactions by making them, well, Micro. I buy games all the time anyway, I can easilly spend a bit here and there buying Arena tickets and cardpacks. Hell, I have enough loose change in my pocket right now to buy 2 packs of cards and an Arena ticket. I can buy them without even batting an eyelid. Its set up in a way that they're, most likely, getting small amounts of cash here and there from a significantly larger percentage of their playerbase. Its a model that doesn't exclude Whales who want to drop thousands at once, but has price points which are good for the average player too. Hearthstone, last I checked, brought in upwards of $20 million a month so its clearly working for them.

Valve's model for Dota and TF2 is similar too. With the community market, I could buy a couple of full sets of cosmetic items for my favorite heroes and have enough left over to buy an anouncer pack with the same pocket change from my above example.

Rifts model has moved to cater for whales more and more, which has pushed out those who just don't want to spend as much at once on a game. Rather than looking at how companies like Valve or Blizzard or even Riot are doing free to play well, Rift has gone down the route most mobile free to play games take and lent heavilly on the bigger spenders to foot the bills. Its an unsustainable business model long term.

Most of the stuff in the Rift store involves RNG to get the items I'd want, so those are a no go. These are designed almost exclusively to part whales from their cash rather than to be a good idea for the average player. Its fine them stating that they make more from Lockboxes than they would selling the mounts wholesale, but they gloss over that its by design. They've priced out many potential customers by trying to lure in more whales, and thats coming back to hurt them.

The Elephant in the room here is that the changes to Earring and Planewalker is going to indirectly shrink their whale population too. Whales thrive on having other players as content, with new players being turned away by paywalls there are less people for the whale to interact with, leading to said Whales to go elsewhere. Some might get caught in the sunk cost fallacy, but most will move on sooner rather than later. Its fine saying that REX will fix it, it cost over 4000 Plat in the Gelidra AH and is harder to come by than gold dust.

Also, it may seem like Rift is dwindling in population, but look at the timeline. This happens in almost every MMO during this part of the development life cycle. Watch what happens to WoW's 5mil subs (previously like 11+) when Legion comes out. We are about 1 year 5 months or so into Nightmare Tide, and Tier 3 has been out for a few months now, which is inherently more difficult than prior tiers, often times limiting the content to the more hardcore playerbase. People start getting bored, have mostly maxed out characters, etc. Trion puts out fantastic content most of the time, I'm confident the next expansion is going to be great. I would say just have some patience, and judge based on the final result, not the actions that were required to get there. I for one, want this game to succeed.

I'm not sure dwindling is the right word. Steam Stats show that theres almost 10% less people playing Rift than this time last month. My guild, of around 40 or so active players, is down to 5-6 since the changes (Though that could be because most were reasonably close to unlocking the Earrings with Void Stones, they were not happy about that at all.) As of posting this, there are just 19 people in Tempest Bay on Gelidra EU. I frequently experienced 10 minute + LFD queues even when I queued with a tank friend. The queues alone are outright unbearable. Whenever I do IA, groups are frequently under 10 people. Even the AH on Gelidra is dangerously understocked with certain items. All the signs point to a rapidly shrinking population for EU servers.

Leveling up now you're probably lucky to see another player outside of a city or zone event, that also pushes players away. The ones that do make it all the way to 65 are put off by the huge barriers to entry. Rift is not in a good place right now for the average player, and that is a huge problem. The game is going to end up in a death spiral where its got too small a player base to sustain its active players, and its too small to attract and keep new players, leading to even more people leaving. Its not what I want to happen to Rift at all, but it seems to be the way its going right now.

**CrazyAnimal8** · 2016-02-23, 04:37 AM

I doubt it. It's not dead.

**Knaar** · 2016-02-23, 04:43 AM

Of course compared to wow, every single mmo on the market right now is "dead".

On a more realistic way, no, Rift is not dead (side note : it's kinda funny, people more then 2 years ago were already saying the game was dead, yet theres more content coming to the game then ever before

). There is plenty of active guild. There is alot of raiding. Multiple shows/podcasts/community event going on.
Is there millions of people on Rift? Nop. Doesnt mean the game is dead.

**CrazyAnimal8** · 2016-02-23, 06:13 AM

Originally Posted by Knaar

Of course compared to wow, every single mmo on the market right now is "dead".

On a more realistic way, no, Rift is not dead (side note : it's kinda funny, people more then 2 years ago were already saying the game was dead, yet theres more content coming to the game then ever before

). There is plenty of active guild. There is alot of raiding. Multiple shows/podcasts/community event going on.
Is there millions of people on Rift? Nop. Doesnt mean the game is dead.

Yeah that's what I was referring to. There are plenty of users playing and no one can dismiss that as a fact. Thanks for the clarification.

**Ahovv** · 2016-02-23, 06:17 PM

Originally Posted by Knaar

Of course compared to wow, every single mmo on the market right now is "dead".

On a more realistic way, no, Rift is not dead (side note : it's kinda funny, people more then 2 years ago were already saying the game was dead, yet theres more content coming to the game then ever before

). There is plenty of active guild. There is alot of raiding. Multiple shows/podcasts/community event going on.
Is there millions of people on Rift? Nop. Doesnt mean the game is dead.

It's dead depending on what you mean by that. Can you join a guild to run dated, easier raid content? You bet. Can you find a guild that does some casual pvp? Sure. Dimensions, even? Yes.

Can you find many guilds actually raiding at a high level any more? No. And the trend has always been downward for hardcore raiders in Rift. Even during times where the content was actually getting better, other stupid decisions by Trion pushed them away.

**blankfaced** · 2016-02-25, 11:52 AM

They're just very far behind in the times, especially in comparison to wow. Mounts, pets, artifacts, bag slot unlocks, bank tab unlocks, all should be account wide by now. I can't stomach spending money on something that's only good for one character, eventually i'll get bored of it and all that money goes *fwooop* right out with window. But they choose instead to make it a per character thing in the hopes of duping people into spending more and it doesn't work. When was the last time they made a mount and put it in the store and not in a lotto box, or allowed you to pay for it with plat? Having to spend hundreds of thousands of plat to allow my mounts to swim, again in the hopes of squeezing more money out of you is just despicable. The game has fallen far and fast.

I can tell the game is in a much worse place than when i quit playing a year or so ago just from the lowbie WF queues. When i quit they were maybe 10 minutes long in peak time, now they're 45-120 minutes long (yes i sat in a wf queue for 2 hrs while leveling). The game is like a gimp deer at this point, it's not an if but a when.

What are these questionable changes? Charging $$ from more services?

Except you aren't getting more, instead you're just paying for what players have gotten for free for years now.

And while chat is "lively", if you notice it's almost always the same few people being chatty cathy's every day.

**Edge-** · 2016-02-25, 07:14 PM