Rift welcomes it's New Community Manager

[pseudodraco]

I think that came from a change in execs at trion. I remember hearing during NMT that one of their old execs was coming back, who'd been very highly opposed to going f2p and it was definitely much worse p2w in 3.0 than in SL. I don't regret the money I spent on the game, my gaming buddy/pocket healer/guy i carry around mmos spent a lot more. he doesn't regret either, just how much he spent lol

[Eleccybubb]

I think that came from a change in execs at trion. I remember hearing during NMT that one of their old execs was coming back, who'd been very highly opposed to going f2p and it was definitely much worse p2w in 3.0 than in SL. I don't regret the money I spent on the game, my gaming buddy/pocket healer/guy i carry around mmos spent a lot more. he doesn't regret either, just how much he spent lol

I honestly don't regret the money I spent in SL. However I regret giving them the benefit of the doubt and watching the model worsen over time.

[pseudodraco]

agreed. and how much they "streamlined" the primalist's souls /gag
i spent literal hours just dicking around making up builds on my mage

[Edge-]

I think that came from a change in execs at trion. I remember hearing during NMT that one of their old execs was coming back, who'd been very highly opposed to going f2p and it was definitely much worse p2w in 3.0 than in SL. I don't regret the money I spent on the game, my gaming buddy/pocket healer/guy i carry around mmos spent a lot more. he doesn't regret either, just how much he spent lol

Much before that, Scott Hartsman came back to Trion in 2013 to run it (rather than just the Rift team), that was smack dab in the middle of SL/NT (a year from either end). He was very much the anti-F2P guy, but he wasn't making design decisions for Rift anymore, rather broader company decisions.

[Eleccybubb]

Much before that, Scott Hartsman came back to Trion in 2013 to run it (rather than just the Rift team), that was smack dab in the middle of SL/NT (a year from either end). He was very much the anti-F2P guy, but he wasn't making design decisions for Rift anymore, rather broader company decisions.

Makes me wonder. Was he told not to speak out against the F2P model or did he choose not to?

[Edge-]

Makes me wonder. Was he told not to speak out against the F2P model or did he choose not to?

He has a long history of it, and while I don't believe he's ever given a full throated endorsement of it even at Trion, he's definitely been far more open/positive about it given Trion's reliance on the model starting around the time he came back (around the time Rift transitioned, Defiance transitioned the next year, F2P Archeage had already been announced...and I think that was it at the time). He's not going to trash the business model that his company relies on : P

I'm actually quite curious about his unfiltered opinions on F2P vs. P2P now, given his years leading Trion as an all but exclusively F2P publisher (outside of the short B2P experiment with Atlas Reactor that didn't go well).

[Eleccybubb]

He has a long history of it, and while I don't believe he's ever given a full throated endorsement of it even at Trion, he's definitely been far more open/positive about it given Trion's reliance on the model starting around the time he came back (around the time Rift transitioned, Defiance transitioned the next year, F2P Archeage had already been announced...and I think that was it at the time). He's not going to trash the business model that his company relies on : P

I'm actually quite curious about his unfiltered opinions on F2P vs. P2P now, given his years leading Trion as an all but exclusively F2P publisher (outside of the short B2P experiment with Atlas Reactor that didn't go well).

I just never understood why they chose F2P. Because well look at the majority of their games. Surely Rift subs couldn't have been that bad?

[Lathais]

Much before that, Scott Hartsman came back to Trion in 2013 to run it (rather than just the Rift team), that was smack dab in the middle of SL/NT (a year from either end). He was very much the anti-F2P guy, but he wasn't making design decisions for Rift anymore, rather broader company decisions.

He was very involved in the decision making of going F2P. He used to be anti-F2P and at one point even said, Rift will never go F2P. But based on what he says in this interview:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danieln.../#6a8ae3d53391

He basically changed his stance on F2P in 2014.

You mentioned free to play coming to the West - our goal is to bring a very refined, high-quality model to that.

The first [element] is that it was a very all hands on deck process. The product teams - those with the most experience of the product, who had the most contact with the audience - led the charge and the technology teams and the traditional marketing and publishing folks were there as their partners. It was very much built around the idea of "how do we continue providing a triple-A quality service for an audience with a very specific idea of what triple-A and what "fair" looks like, while still making enough money for everyone to still have a job, and to be able to invest in products in the future?

It's been received very well by the audience - we've continued to deliver major updates every month and minor updates every week, as if nothing changed with the business model, as well as longer-term planning for things like expansions.

We’ve been busy!

I guess that could be taken as him just describing what those beneath him did with no real involvment from him, but saying "all hands on deck" usually includes the captain giving the orders and saying "we" means he was involved, IMO. I do tend to take things too literally at times, especially in text, but I recall him making the announcement and being excited about it as well.


All that said, I think what he was referring to was when Archonix becoming the Game Director.
http://community.riftgame.com/en/201...meet-archonix/

[Edge-]

I just never understood why they chose F2P. Because well look at the majority of their games. Surely Rift subs couldn't have been that bad?

They probably weren't, but F2P was still red hot at the time (it's still a popular model, but less so than it once was given the maturation and business model over the years) and after Defiance tanked, Red Door publisher platform ended up being a waste of time and money, and End of Nations turned into a burning tarpit of money, it seemed pretty obvious that they were desperate for any way to give their revenue a solid bump.

Remember, at this time their revenue stream was pretty much just Rift and Defiance (well...just Rift, since Defiance wasn't making any money), I think this was when they started to build Glyph as a storefront, which went absolutely nowhere in a hurry. They didn't have anything else to lean on, much less a low cost success like Trove to help prop them up.

[Eleccybubb]

They probably weren't, but F2P was still red hot at the time (it's still a popular model, but less so than it once was given the maturation and business model over the years) and after Defiance tanked, Red Door publisher platform ended up being a waste of time and money, and End of Nations turned into a burning tarpit of money, it seemed pretty obvious that they were desperate for any way to give their revenue a solid bump.

Remember, at this time their revenue stream was pretty much just Rift and Defiance (well...just Rift, since Defiance wasn't making any money), I think this was when they started to build Glyph as a storefront, which went absolutely nowhere in a hurry. They didn't have anything else to lean on, much less a low cost success like Trove to help prop them up.

Well with the quality of Rift recently something tells me money is getting worse for them.

I mean surely they don't have the money to keep 5 games up anymore? Defiance and Devilian have got to be burning a hole in their pocket.

[Lathais]

He has a long history of it, and while I don't believe he's ever given a full throated endorsement of it even at Trion, he's definitely been far more open/positive about it given Trion's reliance on the model starting around the time he came back (around the time Rift transitioned, Defiance transitioned the next year, F2P Archeage had already been announced...and I think that was it at the time). He's not going to trash the business model that his company relies on : P

I'm actually quite curious about his unfiltered opinions on F2P vs. P2P now, given his years leading Trion as an all but exclusively F2P publisher (outside of the short B2P experiment with Atlas Reactor that didn't go well).

I'm pretty sure he has.

From this article:
https://www.polygon.com/2016/8/30/12...s-trion-worlds

When discussing NTs model, which was F2P, his words were:

a little bit clever and more accessible.

That sounds like positive to me.

What we found is that our attempts to be very generous and more convenient were strongly not perceived that way," said Hartsman. "Obviously, it’s one of those things where hindsight is 20/20. Of course if I come in and my friend joins me, and we both do a dungeon, we both get loot from the dungeon, but I bought everything right off the bat, so I can equip it and my friend can’t. That doesn’t exactly feel good. Of course, that doesn’t feel great. So yes, we are very happy to say that because of a lot of the feedback that we got in the last expansion cycle, we are in fact returning to the most palatable way that people are interested in paying for expansions."

talking about how he thinks it generous and convenient sounds like he thought it was a good thing. Of course, it's our fault for not perceiving it that way.

[Eleccybubb]

I'm pretty sure he has.

From this article:
https://www.polygon.com/2016/8/30/12...s-trion-worlds

When discussing NTs model, which was F2P, his words were:

That sounds like positive to me.



talking about how he thinks it generous and convenient sounds like he thought it was a good thing. Of course, it's our fault for not perceiving it that way.

What a shock blaming the players for their own bad decisions again.

They were not generous in Nightmare Tide at all. Nor were they by switching back to a B2P model.

Nightmare Tide was pay to win. Period. It sold a gear slot for real cash with an ingame grind that was so obnoxious you were better off spending the money. It started to sell raid ready gear and in SFP it started to sell bloody bonus rolls.

The biggest failure of SFP though wasn't the model. It was that it did not launch with nearly enough content and has had consistent issues right up until the current patch which is now 4.2.