Rift 4.1 - Forged In Flame

[Lathais]

I just wish Slipmat realised this fact. We're critical because we care.

Also worth mentioning that, as of typing this, the 4.1 thread here on MMO-C has more activity than the one on the official Rift forums. Things do not bode well for 4.1 being a sucess right now .

Yeah, that was the whole point of that post. I obviously care about the game or there is no way I would have taken a week off work just to level for the expansion in order to be able to write a guide for end-game at the time before most people got there.

Personally, I think Slipmat is like one of those parents who keeps sheltering and making excuses for their screw up child that keeps ending up in the hospital or in jail because of drug issues. He just keeps protecting, sheltering and defending out of love, but all that is doing is enabling. Rift keeps screwing up and doing things that are obviously a bad idea, and he keeps defending and excusing what they are doing, enabling them to keep doing more stupid stuff.

People like that don't realize that their actions are having the opposite affect of what they intend. They want to show love and care, but often times a firm hand is needed. A firm hand does not mean you do not love, in fact, it's quite the opposite. You give the firm hand because you love and don't want to see those mistakes made over and over and over. We are critical because we care and want to see the game do good again.

I was really really hoping, that with the change in model this expansion, we would start seeing some of what made the game great before. Instead, we are seeing it just get further away from that. It's sad.

I also state again, where else are we supposed to talk about our thoughts on the latest expansion/patch/hot-fix if not in the thread about it? Makes no sense that we would go start another thread about the latest expansion/patch/hotfix when there already is one.

Also worth mentioning, that outside of these threads he starts about these, there is little to no other activity in these forums. Used to be a lot more.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh I'm past caring now. Any critique I present is full on. I don't give a rats ass what they do to the game anymore. It's tainted enough. Honestly if this had kept going the way it had been since 2011 and early Storm Legion I'd still be here singing it's praises. But it hasn't and time and time again the incompetence of Trion has been displayed. I'm done giving them the benefit of the doubt. To me this game is the equivalent now of some of the worst rated MMOs and games of all time. I don't mean this out of malice either I mean it out of honesty. If this game gets shut down in the near future in this state then people will look back on for the mess it was. Not the amazing time that was early Rift and Storm Legion was.

A few days ago some friends asked me should they pick this game up? I honestly told them there are better alternatives that are fully F2P. Because there are. Hell considering you need to buy the game to get to 70 anyway there are better B2P alternatives.

Anyway rant over. Yes I want to see Rift improve and if it went back to how it was in 2011 then I would most certainly come back and play. But forgive my lack of hoping that it will happen.

Yeah, the change in model and this expansion were really the last hope. They screwed that up big time though, so I think I am with you. I no longer have hope for this game.

[Eleccybubb]

Yeah, that was the whole point of that post. I obviously care about the game or there is no way I would have taken a week off work just to level for the expansion in order to be able to write a guide for end-game at the time before most people got there.

Personally, I think Slipmat is like one of those parents who keeps sheltering and making excuses for their screw up child that keeps ending up in the hospital or in jail because of drug issues. He just keeps protecting, sheltering and defending out of love, but all that is doing is enabling. Rift keeps screwing up and doing things that are obviously a bad idea, and he keeps defending and excusing what they are doing, enabling them to keep doing more stupid stuff.

People like that don't realize that their actions are having the opposite affect of what they intend. They want to show love and care, but often times a firm hand is needed. A firm hand does not mean you do not love, in fact, it's quite the opposite. You give the firm hand because you love and don't want to see those mistakes made over and over and over. We are critical because we care and want to see the game do good again.

I was really really hoping, that with the change in model this expansion, we would start seeing some of what made the game great before. Instead, we are seeing it just get further away from that. It's sad.

I also state again, where else are we supposed to talk about our thoughts on the latest expansion/patch/hot-fix if not in the thread about it? Makes no sense that we would go start another thread about the latest expansion/patch/hotfix when there already is one.

Also worth mentioning, that outside of these threads he starts about these, there is little to no other activity in these forums. Used to be a lot more.

- - - Updated - - -



Yeah, the change in model and this expansion were really the last hope. They screwed that up big time though, so I think I am with you. I no longer have hope for this game.

It's not the B2P model that irritates me. It's that they have gone to the model and the quality has severely dropped. I don't see anything quality wise at all about this £30 expansion so far. I mean so far there has been disabled content, crashes, lack of content, no actual raid until March and the 70 zone still won't be open in 4.1 and so on. Tell me where the quality is because I've seen Freemium MMOs with better quality.

Makes you wonder how Trions other games are doing. Heard nothing big on Defiance, we all know how Archeage turned out, Atlas Reactor has gone full on F2P a few months after it's launch, Devillian? Can't say I have heard of anything big on the horizon about that and as for Trove well half decent game but still nothing fancy other than the console beta.

[Slipmat]

Wait I just went back and read. FOUR BOSSES? They kept people waiting 3 and a half months for FOUR BOSSES.

Rift 10-mans are almost always just four bosses, Rise of the Phoenix, Drowned Halls, Gilded Prophecy, Grim Awakening etc, all had four bosses.

You'll also notice that those BiS weapons are melee only. Which in itself is an issue for Rogues who have souls that use their Ranged weapons primarily

This was already addressed by the Devs, your Ranged DPS is based now on the stats of any weapon so if you have BiS daggers they boost your ranged DPS, dual wielding Warriors might have issues, saw nothing about Warrior 1H yet.

With SFP, since we knew that Eternal Weapons were coming, we changed MM and Ranger abilities to work off of Main Hand instead of ranged weapons. This also was good for the Rogue calling overall since they no longer had to care about itemizing 3 weapon slots. This puts them inline with the other callings that their ranged weapon slot is merely a stat stick.

Edit and addition: MM and Ranger auto attack damage will still scale off of ranged weapon but that is less than 1% of their total damage.

Source: http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...ml#post5285848

Right, i seem to be all caught up, had a few days off due to a "clerical error" but a PM to one of the big blues got me sorted (thanks Darsithis)

Now onto Rift business, the second boss in Tartaric Depths is open for testing, it's the spider one that was datamined a few weeks back, you can now enter Tartaric Depths through a portal in Alittu just to the left of the stairs up to the second floor.

Went for a snoop and took some screenies, note not all art is fleshed out and finished yet. went as far as the first boss, you can use teleports at the entrance to port to both bosses but like i said, the art isn't finished around boss number two yet.

[Deleted]

This was already addressed by the Devs, your Ranged DPS is based now on the stats of any weapon so if you have BiS daggers they boost your ranged DPS, dual wielding Warriors might have issues, saw nothing about Warrior 1H yet.

I don't know what the situation in Rift is currently, but my experience in MMOs is that most lack people interested in playing a tank or a healer (at the very least compared to those who roll DPS anyway).
This is why i find it very questionable to actually give players more incentive to roll DPS classes.
It most probably sounds like bad design to anyone who ever set foot into any MMO. Or did i miss anything here?

[StrawberryZebra]

This was already addressed by the Devs, your Ranged DPS is based now on the stats of any weapon so if you have BiS daggers they boost your ranged DPS, dual wielding Warriors might have issues, saw nothing about Warrior 1H yet.

I stand corrected .

I don't know what the situation in Rift is currently, but my experience in MMOs is that most lack people interested in playing a tank or a healer (at the very least compared to those who roll DPS anyway).
This is why i find it very questionable to actually give players more incentive to roll DPS classes.
It most probably sounds like bad design to anyone who ever set foot into any MMO. Or did i miss anything here?

Rift gets around some of the bigger objections to rolling a tank or a healer due to how it's souls work. In some MMO's, eastern ones especially, being a tank/healer condemns you to leveling at a snails pace compared to DPS classes. With Rift, you can level however you choose and swap roles freely to suit what content you want to do. You also have the option to play a tank/healer with every calling, so you don't need to choose between the class you like and the role you're interested in.

I'm not really sure how you could go about incentivising players to play tanks more without shifting the problem though. If you offer tanks hugely disproportionate rewards for queueing up, then everyone and their cat queues as a tank and you've created a shortage elsewhere. The existing perks for being a tank, the instant queues, don't seem to be enough on their own. A "truely best in slot" weapon could be one way to go about it, however tanks use their weapons mostly just to scale their threat, so effectively giving them just a weapon is a benefit to the other people in their group, rather than them. For what it's worth, I don't think I've ever seen a tank lose threat in Rift, even with huge gear disparities in play, so it's not as much of an incentive as it sounds.

Just to touch on this, wasn't the whole point of this to actually start off as buying your way into the early version of the game before it was actually released where it would be F2P from the get-go? Or am I thinking of another game?

That was what they were going for with Atlas Reactor initially I believe. You could pay up to get into the Alpha/Beta of the game, but it would be free to play on launch. They changed their minds about it shortly before launch and went with a buy to play model. Now it seems they've reversed that decision and just made it free to play.

[Deleted]

Rift gets around some of the bigger objections to rolling a tank or a healer due to how it's souls work. In some MMO's, eastern ones especially, being a tank/healer condemns you to leveling at a snails pace compared to DPS classes. With Rift, you can level however you choose and swap roles freely to suit what content you want to do. You also have the option to play a tank/healer with every calling, so you don't need to choose between the class you like and the role you're interested in.

I'm not really sure how you could go about incentivising players to play tanks more without shifting the problem though. If you offer tanks hugely disproportionate rewards for queueing up, then everyone and their cat queues as a tank and you've created a shortage elsewhere. The existing perks for being a tank, the instant queues, don't seem to be enough on their own. A "truely best in slot" weapon could be one way to go about it, however tanks use their weapons mostly just to scale their threat, so effectively giving them just a weapon is a benefit to the other people in their group, rather than them. For what it's worth, I don't think I've ever seen a tank lose threat in Rift, even with huge gear disparities in play, so it's not as much of an incentive as it sounds.

So let me get this straight, your opinion is:
Because there is no way to incentivize people to roll tanks, and the dps increase on a tank doesn't matter much, it is actually ok to only offer DPS players means of further progression and thus indirectly incetivize more people to roll dps.

BTW; I didn't mean "give tanks a 1h weapon to work towards",... i meant give them a shield.

[Eleccybubb]

Who's betting this comes out and has to be disabled or is one hell of a mess it gets exploited into next week?

[StrawberryZebra]

So let me get this straight, your opinion is:
Because there is no way to incentivize people to roll tanks, and the dps increase on a tank doesn't matter much, it is actually ok to only offer DPS players means of further progression and thus indirectly incetivize more people to roll dps.

BTW; I didn't mean "give tanks a 1h weapon to work towards",... i meant give them a shield.

I said it's difficult to offer an incentive to be a tank without moving the problem elsewhere. For example, you get 1 Billion Plat, 1 Billion of the Dungeon tokens and a super cool awesome mount for completing LFG as a tank. Everyone is going to queue as a tank for those rewards and you've now got a shortage of DPS and healers. Obviously its an exaggerated example, but hopefully it highlights the point.

Offering something to incentivise people to tank, without it being so good that people feel forced to tank, is a very difficult line to walk. If you undershoot it, everyone ignores your rewards and plays the role they prefer. Overshoot it and you end up with tanks waiting around for DPS to queue up.

There are already a few small incentives built into the system by design. Namely getting extremely fast queues if you're a tank, but they're not enough alone which is why we're in the situation we are.

[ryanmahaffe]

Who's betting this comes out and has to be disabled or is one hell of a mess it gets exploited into next week?

For sire it will be bugged. If it comes out fully polished I will spend 100 dollars on the store


No I wont

[Eleccybubb]

For sire it will be bugged. If it comes out fully polished I will spend 100 dollars on the store


No I wont

Same. Better question is with raiding guilds leaving compared to Comet of Ahnket how many will get this down? Because less than 30 did with Comet while it was current.

As for exploits and bugs since it seems to be a track record with their raiding content I won't be surprised to see them.

[Deleted]

Yea, Atlas Reactor was originally planned as f2p, then suddenly changed into b2p and now f2p again.
I followed Defiance and same thing there, first planned f2p, then changed to b2p and now f2p.
Rift? P2p, then went f2p (with the best model originally, always recommended the game because it's f2p model), now b2p but with restrictions like among the worst f2p games (I like to call it: pure greed model).
Interesting someone mentioned Devillian, can't be many souls playing that game today :P

Anyway, it is sad what happened to Rift. It was a really great game, that could have been awesome but instead went down the drain

[Jtbrig7390]

Am I the only one that finds the name of the patch Ironic?

[Deleted]

Avg. 94 players playing devilian, had to check :P
http://steamcharts.com/app/407510

[Edge-]

This was already addressed by the Devs, your Ranged DPS is based now on the stats of any weapon so if you have BiS daggers they boost your ranged DPS, dual wielding Warriors might have issues, saw nothing about Warrior 1H yet.

That's literally the most unintuitive and confusing way to go about things possible. So it's based off of your highest weapon? So you could have an amazing MH weapon and shit OH/ranged options, but that MH weapon would be the one to determine your weapon based damage stats? Even if you're a ranged class?

Like...seriously, that's an obtuse way to go about things that obviously leads to player confusion, as evidenced in these forums.

[ryanmahaffe]

THIS was taken from the OF RIFT forums, this is from a player who usually gives detailed reports on the livestreams.


"So this won't be my usual in depth / grab everything / timed summary as I just don't have the motivation any more. These are what I felt were the key points.



Experts WERE intended to be that easy to get more people back into the part of the game.

They will never make difficult 5 mans again as there's such a small audience for them

IRoTP +300 hit gear and is the new Tier 1 raid, using classic group loot
TD + 275 hit gear will be on the same difficulty as TQF, so Tier 0 raid, using personal loot and IR charges.

iRoTP and TD will be released at the same time. So like we've said before, whichever guild has the most credits will finish the new raid first. In my eyes this is unacceptable.

Looks like you'll get one free roll at possibly getting loot off each of the 4 bosses per week.


CQ doubled confirmed it's not coming back. CQ guild quests will be removed

New affinity rewards in 4.1

New Guild rewards 'still on the schedule' whether that means 4.1 or not (as originally stated) who knows.

Primalist souls later in the summer
"We have a stream planned in the next few weeks for the new Primalist souls"

On eternal weapon quest: "Jumping puzzle is a loose term that I used to describe a really cool step that Krug added to the eternal weapon quest line. I don't want to spoil it but it is not what you would call a traditional jumping puzzle"

On nerfing the Fortress Siege event" "No plans currently, we're focusing on getting the current issues with the tech for them resolved before more heavy tuning"

The age old question about gear disparity due to planar fragments was actually asked on the livestream thankfully.... but it wasn't answered as it was asked with another question about why greater essences don't have procs. That was the question that was answered.... Pretty annoyed.

On 4.2: "hmm...only treat I have atm is that I've seen some amazing concept art for it"

"Yup, they'll be more opporunities to get Opie later on in the year."

On fortress Siege: "Much easier to nerf than buff"

"Any response to the plight of warrior and cleric tanks and our lack of eternal weapons?"
- We've heard em, definitely in discussion

On Starfall Tokens: " I'd planned to run them for 60 days post launch, but chose to extend it a bit longer due to some heartfelt requests from folks who were traveling, or couldn't hit the original time planned. They'll remain active until 4.1. No plans for new rewards from them"

Any news if planar fragments will apply to gear accessories in the near future?
- "I can only confirm that there is a lot of empty space in that UI"

On Eternal quest: "You will need to participate in group activites to complete the quest line. No PvP requirements. You will need to do LFR and iRoTP for the final steps. No plans yet to continue the saga line, but that isn't to say we haven't ruled it out"

On Warrior and Cleric tanking eternal weapons
"We're weighing all the options at the moment"

How rare are the open world eternal items?
"Super Rare"

Will eternal items get bolstered won in pvp?
- "Yes"
- "There are no PvP Eternals at the moment

On clarifcation of difficulty
"Long story short, LFR is meant to be an intro to raiding for those that ordinarily do not raid or don't have a social group to raid [with], as such the difficulty will not be as hard as what our players have typically expected from a raid in rift.
" LFR will be easier than what normal tiers have been in RIFT in the past. Simple as that.
"Hopefully when we do launch it (the 10 mans), it will be the best thing evar"

On Crafting and how useless it is currently.
"4.1 will actually introduce the new tier of planar crafting and some of those will be best in slot"

ewww planar crafting, will that be using more of those motes? if so will those be more reasonable?
"Yes, more streamlined. Planar Crafting rfits will use personal loot and also only have one planar type as oposed to 6"

"MOM IA will be back in the Intrepid queue next week"

Are you incentivising lower level fields of play at all? (i.e. going into old areas so they're not so ronry
"We do talk about it and would love to find a way to do it, but often other things pull at it""


Overall, what garbage. RIFT is done with this, just look at the responses, the negative backlash is legendary for a small patch.

This is another nail in the coffin.

Any of the valiant defenders want to somehow make this look good?

[Edge-]

Experts WERE intended to be that easy to get more people back into the part of the game.

Holy crap...are they serious? Were they ever unpopular? I remember queues always being pretty quick for them, and folks doing them a lot.

Maybe their change to remove stacking dungeon charges from free accounts killed the engagement numbers? You know, KINDA LIKE EVERYONE FUCKING SAID IT WOULD.

They will never make difficult 5 mans again as there's such a small audience for them

That's fine that they're not going to make the nightmare/whatever it was called modes, though disappointing. But nobody was asking for them. We'd like reasonable challenges like most experts were in chocolate/SL/NT, not sure why that's complicated for them.

iRoTP and TD will be released at the same time. So like we've said before, whichever guild has the most credits will finish the new raid first. In my eyes this is unacceptable.

Oh, are we talking about the paid loot rerolls? The things that were always a terrible idea to the extreme? : 3

Looks like you'll get one free roll at possibly getting loot off each of the 4 bosses per week.

This is a terrible, terrible ideal and is likely their attempt to get players used to rerolling in the hopes that it will ease them into spending money on rerolls.

Gross.

CQ doubled confirmed it's not coming back. CQ guild quests will be removed

Welp, I can't say that's a bad thing. Conquest was always kinda a half baked, shitty experience IMO. Interesting premise, just never really worked too well, especially with how ludicrously unbalanced PvP has been forever.

Primalist souls later in the summer
"We have a stream planned in the next few weeks for the new Primalist souls"

Oh yeah, I forgot that they still haven't released the rest of the talent trees for this class. They still don't even have a proper support spec, right? Or did that get added in and I totally missed it.

On nerfing the Fortress Siege event" "No plans currently, we're focusing on getting the current issues with the tech for them resolved before more heavy tuning"

"We're still fixing our broken content that we pushed live anyways, so continue dealing with a poor, unbalanced experience." is how this reads to me, but I guess I'm a cynic.

I mean, it's good that they're prioritizing tech fixes and all, but they shouldn't be needing to. Fucking hell, this whole expansion was launched so broken, and their updates so far are no better.

The age old question about gear disparity due to planar fragments was actually asked on the livestream thankfully.... but it wasn't answered as it was asked with another question about why greater essences don't have procs. That was the question that was answered.... Pretty annoyed.

They don't want to talk about a painfully unpopular system that was a very transparent cash grab? I'm shocked. SHOCKED I SAY.

On 4.2: "hmm...only treat I have atm is that I've seen some amazing concept art for it"

"We haven't even started on 4.2 because we're inanely behind schedule." is how this reads to me. But again, I'm a cynic and Trion have been amazingly awful as of late.

"Any response to the plight of warrior and cleric tanks and our lack of eternal weapons?"
- We've heard em, definitely in discussion

Wait...do they...not...have eternal weapons? Just shields? How does shit like this actually happen? I mean, I know how it happens, they're rushing to push content out and don't have time to stop and think for a second, but like...still...how?

"Hopefully when we do launch it (the 10 mans), it will be the best thing evar"

*snorts loudly*

On Crafting and how useless it is currently.
"4.1 will actually introduce the new tier of planar crafting and some of those will be best in slot"

I suppose that's good, but I have no faith in Trion successfully implementing this at the moment.



That summary is heartbreaking to read.

[theWocky]

In case people don't "get" what's happening with that wall of text. (original forum thread HERE)

A "new" raid was promised for RIFT:Starfall Prophecy in this 4.1 patch, but it seems the dev team are incapable of doing any decent mechanics, so the NEW 4 main "raid" is going to be LFR type difficulty - a raid that is basically built for 10 man PuGs with the "pay to roll for additional loot feature"

5 man Experts have also been declared "not for people with skills", but for people who are new to the game - as they obviously don't intend on fixing the fact that some bosses can be done without a healer.
~ Heck the "new" LFR system is apparently still not even working properly - forget getting the raid mechanics working.

Then, they're taking a 10-man raid from years ago and simply up-scaling it to the new official "progression".

Hence the backlash and "I quit" threads all over the forums (well, there were before mods purged and deleted)

RIFT:Starfall Prophecy - BUYER BEWARE
Trion's T&C DENY ALL refunds.



RIFTRAIDS.com has been shut down after this livestream/patch 4.1 clarification as well - link here


READ BELOW IF BORED - it does indirectly relate to the topic / this patch as people were hoping this would be Rift's saviour:
I posted a photo of the activity on discord of MWM (a "used to be" large) NA guild displaying pretty much everyone playing WoW, and was promptly kicked from the Discord - the Discord Admins are quite tight with the Devs on discord, but I managed to snatch their GM's long letter bemoaning the hardships and end of Rift:

How's this for a doomsday letter?

State of the Guild January 31st, 2017
Good morning,

As we are all aware by now, Rift is entering a dark chapter of its legacy. It’s a chapter that is mired in doubt, anxiety, mistrust and even fear. Optimistic, bright-eyed hope has been swiftly replaced by the crushing disappointment of a long anticipated expansion that failed to deliver what it promised. What was once a devoutly loyal following is now a catastrophic void of both faith and interest in a company that we have dedicated countless hours to over the course of the last five years. All of this has become prominently evident in the drastic and as of yet uncurtailed decline in game population across all guilds, servers, and even other Trion platforms.

Lack of content. Missing raids. Embryonic questing areas that have been cordoned off. Broken class specializations leading to a gravely unbalanced PVP system. Abandonment of crafting rifts and raid rifts. Under normal conditions I would do my best to portray the current events surrounding both the game and its effect on this Guild in a more positive light. However the truth is quite simply that Rift is broken. A game once acclaimed “The Best MMO in Years” is now a hollow shell of it’s former award winning glory. And it is gasping for air.


and it goes on... to essentially give hope that the guild will go on to live in other games...and many have formed a new community in WoW and that patch 4.1 was the thing they were hoping to restore the people's faith in the game - which obviously patch 4.1 will fail at - for the reasons mentioned above.

[Lathais]

Gross.

That summary is heartbreaking to read.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the whole thing as well.

[Edge-]

*snip

Wow, I didn't even notice that the proper T1 raid is literally just an upscaled version of an RotP and that the actual "new" raid is only for LFR. That's even fucking worse, holy hell it's like they're trying to kill the game. The GM letter, if authentic, is pretty crushing as well : (

Sauce for the updated ToS you reference though?

[theWocky]

Sauce for the updated ToS you reference though?

That was done WAAAAY back at the beginning of the F2P expansion - it applies to all products. They "were" giving refunds as recently as 2014, but they've put their foot down with SP. It's in the TOS when you log in. It was part of a huge thread "Can I have my money back" on the forums.