If there was any doubt about Rift being P2W, the debate is now over.

[Ahovv]

http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...oidstones.html

For anyone who doesn't know, Planewalker: Water allows many different equipment items to be equipped, and Earring Slots are their own unique slot entirely. This gear adds direct power to each character. From the release of Nightmare Tide they could be bought with credits (cash shop) or grinded out over the course of many weeks. This was bad enough as important gear was being gated behind a long grind or your credit card.

However, even the already-bad grind option is being removed completely now. This means that these essential unlocks on equipment are being fully restricted to the cash shop. Trion is creating a new precedent where their idea of being able to earn items in-game is grinding enough platinum to trade for credits.

It just keeps getting worse.

[Deleted]

Not the longest notice on the change either :P
Well, Trion started out so good with one of the best f2p models on the market for Rift... but as it seems, good times don't last

[cwowtbang]

Ocho posted it late in the evening Pacific Time meaning everyone else (other time zones) would either be going to bed or already asleep. Seems like they were trying to let that news just slip on by. Shitbags.

[Luxeley]

Rift could've been and should've been such a truly incredible game. Initially, the absolutely horrendous spell/ability animations turned me off to the game. Since then, going on a few years now, they've baby-stepped their way into a P2W business model. They've crossed yet another line. Not sure if they are desperate for $$$ or they believe people are very stupid. Neither answer is a good one.

[Drungan]

Sounds pretty bad tbh. i got no idea how much money Rift is generating but the F2P model did clearly not make enough. The player base is surely gonna be pretty unhappy about this.

[Deleted]

Now how many posts until Slipmat or some other white knight comes here defending Trion :P

[Edge-]

Yeah, I'm glad I ended my sub a while ago and haven't given them any money since then that I remember (I can't remember if I purchased the new calling with rex alone or supplemented with a bit of money).

Trion is now officially as far away from the company that I once loved and promoted during the days of chocolate Rift as possible. I'll likely keep Rift installed on my computer and poke around from time to time, but their other games that I don't play but kept around "just cause" are going straight into the trash.

Totally gross, do not like in the slightest.

[StrawberryZebra]

Its going to be 2250 credits for the ear ring slots and 1500 for Planewalker: Water. Seems a little bit extortionate, given that its going to be 3 REX for them. Coughing up and just outright buying them would be £18, or your regional equivelent, which isn't a lot but its a lot more than what they're worth. At least with the Typhoon Edition you got bag slots and a couple of perks included for what would essentially be the same price. I really, really hope that these are account wide unlocks and not just for one character like the individual unlocks currently are, having to pay up per character is just outright disgusting business practice.

Its all good and well pointing out that REX is an item you can acquire in game by trading. The added complication is that REX is already well over the Plat cap on EU servers. Being completely unable to get anywhere unless you cough up cash is extremely off-putting for most. Even buying it with REX means that someone had handed over money to Trion somewhere along the line, and after a move like this I don't think its something that should really be encouraged anymore.

I have the sneeky suspicion that Rift might be on its way into maintainance mode for Trion to focus on Atlas Reactor. It could just be my inner cynic, but time will tell I guess.

[BiggestNoob]

When Rift originally went F2P, we were all assured that it would only be cosmetic things, and some really bad gear to help people along.

I was extremely concerned given I've watched F2P turn decent mobile games into steaming piles of shit. I watched that happen.. when I first bought an Android phone, I was pretty happy to have lots of nice games to play. Try installing a single free game today that isn't riddled with IAP and built so that you can play the game for an hour or two before you hit a giant wall that basically forces you to spend money to continue playing. And before you claim "well buy the real game and that's not a problem", at least 90% of them DO NOT HAVE PAID VERSIONS. Needless to say, watching that happen to mobile gaming made me extremely wary of Trion. Very few companies have done F2P well.

The first thing they did? Took everything we had complained about for years and let you pay for convenience. I mean that's fine, more bags, more spec slots, more character slots, we've always complained about those things. But because they grandfathered most of us in, we also got tons of unlocks for free. If you created a new account, you quickly realized that they actually went and made the game even more inconvenient for new players to encourage them to buy those unlocks. You thought it was bad only having 5 bag slots? Play with 2. That was the first huge red flag. I remember complaining quite loudly in Addiction that this was indicative that Trion is willing to damage their own game for financial gain. That's the slippery slope, and I was pretty convinced at that point that the game would continue in that direction.

Little by little you watched the game go P2W. Bigger and bigger grinds even for customers who paid a subscription. Incredibly broken souls locked behind a pay wall. An entire calling that's insanely overpowered and locked behind a pay wall. This game has been P2W for a long time, and this is yet another damning move by Trion.

It's sad, too. Rift always had incredible potential. It had a really nice system that allowed for innovative and creative hybrids. But those turned out to be difficult to balance, so the good shit was moved way up in trees and 51/61 point skills were buffed to become mandatory. It had a huge potential to be better than WoW in most aspects in terms of raiding, but Trion stopped focusing on quality and pushed out buggy messes in every tier. It had huge potential in its PvP but balance was soon obliterated and open world PvP discouraged, and the concept of progression diminished to the point of meaninglessness. I remember back when R8 was a worthy grind, because when you finished it, not only did you have items that were good fill-in pieces for raid (they were never BiS, but they had a ton of end on them which made them godly for progression) but you were seen as a god in warfronts because realistically only other R8s could take you down. That made it a lot more fun for a team of R3s or R5s to try and beat you in a 1v2 or 1v3. I remember fondly spending hours and hours doing 1v4s against R1s in WFs. Instead of encouraging good play like coordination, CC, and healing debuffs, people complained and heals got substantially nerfed in PvP. Rather than listening to math (like my exhaustive explanation of how to fix healing in PvP for R8 players), they just nerfed abilities. Eventually PvP in Rift became some of the worst PvP I've ever experienced.

It's sad how a game with so much potential was ruined by 0 focus on quality, by not catering to the most devoted players and making sure the game was fun to play, and later on by focusing so heavily on monetization at the expense of player morale.

Rift is dead, and Trion has ruined their reputation, so as a company I don't see them lasting much longer.

[justinhalfout]

So much for "No Trials. No Tricks. No Traps",glad I haven't given Trion any of my hard earned money,greedy feckers.

[StrawberryZebra]

Lol who cares, no one plays Rift anymore anyway.

The EU population seems to have been dwindling for a while. While its far from being a ghost town, I have noticed my AH being understocked for months now and the time taken to form a group rapidly creeping upwards too. I often queue up with a tank buddy for Experts and we're sometimes waiting for upwards of 15 minutes for the rest of the group. It does point to a less than ideal cluster population.

A change like this might well be what pushes Rift into a complete death spiral, especially when people are pointing it out being a Pay to Win game and the only real response is "Well, yeah. But...". Its reached the point where its almost totaly indefensable.

[bmjclark]

Not even surprising after archeage tbh

[Fencers]

Oh that's kind of a shitty thing to do. There is hardly any time before the in-game option is taken away form players. It's not announced very loudly either. Perhaps there is a new voidstone sink which supersedes the plane of water slots. But on it's own, this change seems rather underhanded and mean spirited to be honest.

I am slightly in shock- not sure if I ever played a game where the developer removed an in-game option for a cash shop only alternative of the same item or feature.

Personally speaking, I am more convinced than ever that Rift is really struggling financially.

[Deleted]

Now how many posts until Slipmat or some other white knight comes here defending Trion :P

As much as I loved the game I can't defend this, it's stupid af

[justinhalfout]

I would hate to be a new or returning player who wants to raid badly and has diligently done his upmost best to grind out his voidstones to get the slots he needs only to find out suddenly he either has to dump cash in the shop or grind a load of plat,i'd suspect many in that position will probably just say "fuck it" and uninstall.

At a time when the game appears to be struggling and loosing much of it's raiding community you'd think perhaps Trion might want to encourage people instead of alienating them and veterans alike with their blatant penny pinching,as if the gear/rng/forced content grind isn't bad enough for a new or returning player compared to many other titles on the market.

This reeks of sheer greed or utter stupidity,either way they've made their bed,they have to lay in it.

[Segus1992]

Lol who cares, no one plays Rift anymore anyway.

This. Trion is doing what they can to suck money from the last morons still playing the long-dead game. They know it's dead. They're giving up.

[Slipmat]

Now how many posts until Slipmat or some other white knight comes here defending Trion

I've no interest in "debating" Rift on MMO Champion as it's mostly drive by posters, this is after all a 99.9% WoW site so i just post some news about Rift, sorry to disappoint you

[justinhalfout]

With all due respeect you never "debate" the game anyway,most of it is blatant shilling.

[Deleted]

I will always remember Rift in the old days, the huge support for the game during vanilla days, the f2p relaunch of the game with such a great f2p-model. I really liked Trion, I did.

I was also happy that Trion would be handling Archeage in the west. With a company having one of the best f2p-models for an mmo out there, what can go wrong? Well, we can all take a look at Archeage and see that very little Rift-model ended up in Archeage. Trion didn't respond to the critics and kept holding on to Archeage crappy f2p-model. We thought perhaps it was because they had little say in the matter, that it wasn't really Trions fault. Looking at how things now turn out in Rift, it's pretty clear that Trion doesn't think it's that important to have a great f2p-model, to maintain the good reputation they once had. Which means they probably never bothered anything with the Archeage f2p-model.
Trove seems to be their big game now, seeing it's on front page among most popular f2p-games on steam. I don't know how the f2p-model works in that game?

However, I read the thread about Firefall that is counting its last days, developers have problems getting paid and company acted on that by removing items from f2p and adding them as p2win items in the store. I get the similar feeling when reading about the changes to Rift. However I haven't heard about Trion employees not getting paid, and I don't really get the impression that Trion as a company is doing bad? So it's hard to understand why they are doing this. But they are, and they are not going to change their decision from what it seems. It's a shame though, Rift will be added to the company of Swtor and Archeage that's good games on paper but so crappy f2p-models you can't support it (at least I can't).

[Deleted]

I know I've only been playing rift a while now, but that's kinda put me off the game.
Been splitting my time between rift and swtor, but rift seems too end gamed focus, and locking something as this behind a cash shop has total killed any love.
Patron status cancelled, sorry trion, I wish you all the best but bailing to swtor full time