RIFT loses another dev

[shimcham]

RIFT Team Update

Howdy folks!

RIFT is well loved and well supported at Trion. It was our first major release and we expect it to carry on for a long while yet. We mentioned our new team-wide collaborative approach in the recent Development letter; as RIFT matures and approaches a comfortable middle age, we find the team works best with multiple people reviewing, designing, planning and executing on the ongoing development of Telara. Most of the RIFT team has been together for a long time, and they are well experienced in what it takes to produce updates, improve quality of life issues and ongoing bug fixes.

Trion is a very close-knit, multi-game studio. Rotating people to different projects is important, to ensure that people can enjoy a fresh challenge, avoid burnout, find new inspiration and ensure that our games all get the support they need. This is a very normal and healthy process in multi-game companies, and brings experienced and new developers together to grow together in cycles.

We've had a number of inquiries about our beloved Vladd recently - it's pretty obvious that he is not as visible in the RIFT circles these days. Vladd is still here at Trion and working on another title that needed his expertise, and we've moved his responsibilities across the RIFT Dev group as a whole.

We look forward to sharing more about RIFT Prime and other upcoming content updates over the year.

-Chris

so another one bites the dust. any hope of any class balance for live is pretty much gone as this was the person most would have thought would have taken up the mantle in interim at least. another interesting note in that this person was the creator of the much hated fragment system. after many complaints he was supposed to be reworking the system for several months now. no rework has happened period.

interesting how their other games seem to always need people but yet this game in its current state seems to only lose people. i feel sorry for anyone who pays for this game, because that money sure isnt being reinvested into rift.

[Ahovv]

As far as I know none of the devs solely focused on class balance; it's a guessing game to determine how much of his time was spent on it compared to other developers.

I suspect the class development will continue in its (painfully slow and inadequate) state until the servers shut down.

[potis]

What class balance, cant you let dead games be what they are?

Rift no matter how good or bad it was the first 2 years, maybe 3, has proven that for the last year at least there is nothing going on for it other than milking the players.

Let it be what it is, a housing simulator now apparently!

[Selah]

What's that? Our third dev to leave the team without any replacements? I know Amary is back on board but she was replacing Archonix who has been suspiciously quiet since the announcement.

[Projectmars]

They aren't saying that he quit, they're saying that they moved him to a team working on a different game, which is what they said about the last guy.

Rotating people away from Rift without replacing it does seem like they may be slowly abandoning it though.

[Eleccybubb]

Probably moved to Trove. It's the only game Trion have that's somewhat succesful or has a playerbase at the moment.

[zito]

Probably moved to Trove. It's the only game Trion have that's somewhat succesful or has a playerbase at the moment.

It's the only thing keeping Trion alive at this point.

You know how many people are playing devilian right now? 7

lol

[Slipmat]

You know how many people are playing devilian right now? 7

The Company who own Devilian, Bluehole Gino, are closing the game to focus on their newest baby, you might have heard of this small game called PlayerUnknown's Battle Grounds (PUBG)

Trove is Trion's golden game right now, over 10 million players, launching in Japan later this month, no surprise they're pulling Devs from all sides to boost it, we'll see what happens when the dust settles.

[shimcham]

They aren't saying that he quit, they're saying that they moved him to a team working on a different game, which is what they said about the last guy.

Rotating people away from Rift without replacing it does seem like they may be slowly abandoning it though.

no the last guy quit trion as in went to work somewhere else.

[Eleccybubb]

It's the only thing keeping Trion alive at this point.

You know how many people are playing devilian right now? 7

lol

To be fair not that many actively playing Trove.

http://steamcharts.com/app/304050

Under 5k on Steam. I'll guess 20k on the official client. I know it's a had a sizeable amount of accounts created but that means absolutely nothing if they aren't being played.

FF14 and GW2 do that marketing gimmick. GW2 with 7 million and FF14 with 10 million. The better question is how many accounts of those 7 and 10 are active?

- - - Updated - - -

They aren't saying that he quit, they're saying that they moved him to a team working on a different game, which is what they said about the last guy.

Rotating people away from Rift without replacing it does seem like they may be slowly abandoning it though.

They already tarnished the game and their repuation as a video game company when Nightmare Tide started and they were selling gear slots for real money.

Gear slots should never be gated by a huge ingame grind like those void stones or your wallet.

[Vakna]

Remember when people were swearing by their firstborn that Rift would be the big WoW killer LOL

[Eleccybubb]

Remember when people were swearing by their firstborn that Rift would be the big WoW killer LOL

To be fair Rift never would have. However had it retained it's 2011-2013 quality it would have been still doing well.

Devs have nobody but themselves to blame for the state of Rift.

[xenogear3]

What is the point of this "update"?

I don't see any new content.