Rift PRIME launching March the 7th

[Slipmat]

Also isn't that white tiger mount just one of the original rewards for veteran loyalty (pre f2p) and as such people that already have it are getting nothing?

If you already pay Patron in Rift the Pack doesn't give you anything, unless you didn't already have the mount, it just gives a few cosmetic stuff like title, cape, portrait frame and said mount, plus 2 months of Patron to add onto your existing Patron time and/or give away 15-day codes to friends.

However if you're checking out Rift Prime the Pack will give you two mounts of Patron time which you'd have to get anyway if you wanted to play Prime so somebody starting Prime fresh gets 2 months, the mount, cape, title and portrait frame, hope that clears things up, the misinformation and "concerns" some posters express here is hilarious.

[Eleccybubb]

However if you're checking out Rift Prime the Pack will give you two mounts of Patron time which you'd have to get anyway if you wanted to play Prime so somebody starting Prime fresh gets 2 months, the mount, cape, title and portrait frame, hope that clears things up, the misinformation and "concerns" some posters express here is hilarious.

And this ladies and gentleman is a community ambassador for the game. Would like to apologize since what he thinks is doing is healthy for the game. There are actually community ambassadors for Trion who interact with the community and are capable of discussion. Not ones who have clearly been taking community management/interaction lessons from Brasse.

Literally making shit up now to suit his agenda when nobody once said anything incorrect about the pack. Other than that the mount looked similar to a loyalty reward one. How is that a good community ambassador when he literally mud slings at other posters and then tries to act as though he has the moral high ground?

And yeah I'm wasting my time here because he will just post some usual boilerplate response and it's my own fault for even taking the low quality bait. I'm the idiot for even quoting him and I'm not denying it.

I mean I'm no better and I'm the first to admit that but well I'm not someone who is heavily embedded within the community. Ambassadors are supposed to interact with the community and relay information/critique to devs. They are essentially the equivalent of MVPs. Tell me what is the point of a CA program when they can just go around being snarky on forums to anyone who dares criticize the game?

[Mendzia]

Is it still whole Rift map? I mean in current patch not this new cash grab thing?

[Eleccybubb]

Is it still whole Rift map? I mean in current patch not this new cash grab thing?

No that's just the 1-50 zones. Sure not as zone heavy as most games on launch but it had some awesome variety of zones. Stillmoor was an absolutely amazing zone back then.

Storm Legion brought in 11 new zones if I recall? Been a while but it was around 10 or 11 I think. Was a hefty amount and all pretty decent.

Nightmare Tide was around 4 zones.

Starfall Prophecy brought in 4 zones at launch and one that was supposed to be open for launch but remained closed until 4.2.

It's funny because after Storm Legion we lost over half the zones.

[Puupi]

Literally making shit up now to suit his agenda when nobody once said anything incorrect about the pack.

Goddamn, i Was gonna play, then i saw that "play ahead of time" and all the bonus stuff... can't they ffs remove all that crap... and march 7th is too early.

And he wasn't the first one......just the latest.

[Slipmat]

Literally making shit up now to suit his agenda when nobody once said anything incorrect about the pack.

Haha, coming from you and your post history regarding other MMOs that's pretty hilarious, so people crying about the pack been a 'cash grab' wasn't incorrect? i already pointed out a few times the Pack gives you two months of Patron time so in essence you're getting all the items included for free. You do realise you have to be a Patron to even play Rift Prime, right? might be hard for you seeing in between your tears of false indignation and 'outrage'.

So somebody explain to us all how buying this Pack is a cash grab when it gives you items for free because you have to buy Patron anyway?

Also all the tears about "it's not Vanilla Rift waaaah" nowhere was it stated it was going to be an exact return to vanilla, the whole concept started as a Challenge server rule set, this was talked about back in March 2017, almost one full year ago.

One of the threads that pops up pretty regularly in our forums runs along the lines of, “I remember when RIFT was actually a challenge, and wasn’t that cool.” Funny thing is, we have been feeling nostalgic too, so we started playing around with the logistics of a “Hard Mode” server. We set one up internally, and guess what? It is a heck of a lot of fun! Damn, that Jakub hits hard! OW!

We were not sure exactly how long this experience would remain fun, though. Would this be something that players would pursue for a long time or would it become boring once the novelty and nostalgia wore off?

Then someone suggested that perhaps this sort of server should be a limited time thing. That is, after a set period of time, it would be replaced with something different. The lights came on for everyone and the ideas came thick and fast: some crazy, some cool, some doable, some we only wish we could implement!
For instance, after Hard Mode, maybe next time you are buffed off the charts on an easy mode server, enabling you to take on some of the content you never even got a chance to see the first time through.

After much discussion, the concept of special rule set servers called “RIFT Challenges” was born.

Now, as I said, this is still very much in the experimental stages and we have no idea in what form, if any, this will eventually be taken LIVE, but the initial idea is that you play on the challenge server to reach a specific goal, which then awards you something truly awesome for your main live server character. Amazing new armor, weapons, new *cough* race *cough*… there are many details yet to be worked out and again, NO promises. No dates. This is a HUGE project that may or may not work.

Source: http://www.trionworlds.com/rift/en/2...cers-letter-2/

[Eleccybubb]

And he wasn't the first one......just the latest.

Who else posted incorrect information then? Don't even bring cash grab up. That's still debatable.

Tell me where someone incorrectly posted the state of Prime. It's a client downgraded and the shoddy advertising gives an initial impression that it's Classic rather than an older game with current systems.

I linked quite a few threads that helps my debate point of people wanting Classic.

Also that's really grasping at straws. The way they were initially advertising stuff really was debatable at best.

So I'll repeat what I said. A so called pillar of the community is posting incorrect information and false accusations to suit his own discussion points because it's not praising the game or Trion.

Now here's a good question. Who the hell is going to do soul/class balance? Did we ever get a replacement for Keyens?

Or are we just going to get the poorly balanced souls as they are now?

- - - Updated - - -

-usual boilerplate copypasted Brasse inspired response-

Point proven. I'll not waste any further time giving you the benefit of the doubt. A personal weakness of mine admittedly. I'm too forgiving.

When you want to actually have a conversation do feel free to send me a PM. I've always offered you the chance for discussion in the past but not if it's one sided and I've offered to present you my points on Rift both good and bad. You know perfectly well where I've said Rifts strengths lie but well if they didn't bring so much criticism on themselves the focus wouldn't be there.

[Slipmat]

Who the hell is going to do soul/class balance? Did we ever get a replacement for Keyens?

Or are we just going to get the poorly balanced souls as they are now?

Who are these "we?", according to yourself you have no intention of playing Rift Prime, are not even playing Rift now so why are you showing all this "concern" about a game you don't have any intent to play?

The soul trees are capped to level 50 at the start, there's no souls like Primalist or Mystic Archer, all the Expansion souls wouldn't be there at the start, they'll have to be unlocked through gameplay, all mobs/encounters/dungeons/raids have been retuned to current soul trees, if you checked out Clowd's website you'd have seen he datamined the new values. Will it work? will it be a mess? guess we'll know next week when it all fires off.

Expert dungeons will be there in their original form as separate Tier One and Tier Two formats, i remember some runs of Deepstrike Mines, a T2, could take upwards to three hours, not sure they can/will tune around that now as today's gamers are the instant gratification "i want it all and i want it now!" mentality but that's why Rift Live will still be running.

[StrawberryZebra]

Lol wow this is impressive, charging you to play a limited version of something you already have access to, trion has no shame?

This is the biggest issue I have with Rift Prime. You're paying for a worse version of something you can already get for free. You could recreate the same experience on Live servers were there a way to stop your XP gain like WoW has.

People are critical because of the direction Trion have taken. And because of how Prime is being handled. They really aren't advertising it well. Let me bring up the points people are critical of just so you can see.

The advertising is worded in such a way as to lead people to believe that Prime is a faithful recreation of classic Rift, while at the same time avoiding out right stating that it is. They're not blatently crossing the line into false advertising, but they are trying to paint it as something that it is not. There are going absolutely going to be disapointed players who find out that Prime isn't what they thought it was and have immediate cases of buyers remorse. I don't think it's fair at all to place the blame squarely on their shoulders for not doing their research when Trion are doing their best to tip-toe around the issue.

Had Trion advertised Prime as being an extra perk you get for being a Patron, then I would have had little issue with it. As it stands Patron doesn't really offer much value for money in my opinion, so perk like this would be an extra incentive to help convince people to buy it.

Also all the tears about "it's not Vanilla Rift waaaah" nowhere was it stated it was going to be an exact return to vanilla, the whole concept started as a Challenge server rule set, this was talked about back in March 2017, almost one full year ago.

One of the threads that pops up pretty regularly in our forums runs along the lines of, “I remember when RIFT was actually a challenge, and wasn’t that cool.” Funny thing is, we have been feeling nostalgic too, so we started playing around with the logistics of a “Hard Mode” server.

Rift Prime isn't a "hard mode" server. Trying to claim it as such is disengenuous in the extreme. A group of people wanted challenging content in Rift. A separate group of people wanted the chance to play older versions of Rift. They are not the same group of players at all.

If Trion really wanted to deliver on nostalgic challenges they could have done so much easier than by creating a whole new server. Creating an optional, level appropriate upper stat cap for Expert dungeons where they're appropriately challenging would accomplish the same thing. Expand it to all expert dungeons and raids, maybe add in a couple of weekly quests to incentivise people to run them and you've both created the difficult content people want, while also dramatically expanding your relevent end game content. You've even made it impossible to outgear, so they'd even still be relevent until the game is switched off.

Players who want it get the hard modes they want. Trion get an easy way to keep old content relevent without having to rehash it all every expansion. Everyone involved comes out ahead.

Rift Prime on the other hand doesn't really appeal to those looking for challenging content. It also doesn't appeal to those who wanted the classic Rift experience. I ask you @Slipmat, who exactly wanted Rift Prime? It doesn't cater to either of the groups you alluded to.

[clowd]

Rift Prime features

• IMPORTANT! Rift Prime brings little to no changes to current Live souls!*
• You are auto-mentored to every zone and dungeon's level
• Gear drops are supposedly going to be for your current level, not your auto-mentored level
• Enemy health and damage is modified compared to live
• To gain an appearance on an item, it must be soulbound, either by being obtained as soulbound, or equipping it to make it soulbound
• A number of gear items that were previously soulbound are now tradeable
• Heavily reduce Rift Store - only cosmetic and service items available for credits
• Special mounts/costumes as new world/dungeon/raid drops
• Focus on purchasing items from store NPCs over pop up Rift store
• You start with access to the 8 base souls of your calling
• You unlock the remaining souls through gameplay
• No Instant Adventures
• No minions
• 2 character slots per account
• 3 professions max
• Primalist is not available

Rift Prime launch content

• Level cap of 50
• No Ember Isle
• No Master Mode
• Original 10 Expert Dungeons, broken up into 2 tiers
• LFG will be active to match to these dungeons
• No Raids or Raid Rifts will be available on Launch day, though these are planned to arrive later.

Mob health and damage is modified from live. We saw this during the live stream and I have datamined a table that appears to match what we saw there. (though I cannot place links in messages here right now)

I hope this helps people understand the exacts and what might be a bit harder about Rift Prime compared to live, at least initially.

[zito]

A bit harder or a lot more boring. It's currently the same game minus content and you can't go past 50, with a sub.

This is not what anyone asked for

[Eleccybubb]

@clowd

Thank you for actually coming in and listening to what we are saying. As well as providing us with the info and not dismissing us as just rambling.

Surely you get the people here who are critical (even I've admitted I can be a bit over the top) are not critical out of spite yes?

They just want the game to get back to a similar quality that it used to be.

But after reading your list of features it seems to be focusing more on changing the content to be challenging which I'm all for but I'd rather have the classic experience because I remember that itself being quite challenging. I respect that you came here and posted them though and kudos for doing so.

One big thing is the whole store. Sure it's removing things people hated on live. But now they need to do that for live. If the live store was purely cosmetic people would buy the hell out of stuff. Especially if they put a ton of new dimension items in there.

[clowd]

Surely you get the people here who are critical (even I've admitted I can be a bit over the top) are not critical out of spite yes?

They just want the game to get back to a similar quality that it used to be.

I get that, and I completely understand where they are coming from. However, I find that all too often the players who are being critical come across more as "whining" (eh, can't think of a better term right now, need more caffeine) that they are not getting what they want, instead of trying to find a constructive way to provide constructive feedback and reaction about what they DO want. I've seen posts that some players think are constructive, and claim are constructive, but that are just summed up as "I do not like this. Fix it!" without really elaborating WHY they do not like something, or WHY it impacts them negatively from experience.

I won't nitpick examples, but speaking generally to everyone here - please think through the tone you are using when you both reply to others, or you provide critique and feedback on the features and content that Trion creates. Don't dismiss or attack others, even if they do the same to you, respond positively. Consider the "sandwich method" for how best to provide feedback and positive responses where you want to be critical (again, I can't post links yet here, google it).

One big thing is the whole store. Sure it's removing things people hated on live. But now they need to do that for live. If the live store was purely cosmetic people would buy the hell out of stuff. Especially if they put a ton of new dimension items in there.

I'd agree with you if I haven't talked to devs about their overall sales data. Everything I've read, heard, and discussed with both Trion devs and dev in several other games suggests that the income from lootboxes far exceeds the income from cosmetics. Yes, part of it is due to gambling, and the high of getting lucky and winning something rare, I understand the concerns there. However, the income they generate is an order of magnitude or more higher than what purely cosmetic options are able to provide.

That being said, I am against things that might make Rift Pay to Win, such as this past December's sale of Captured Intel for credits that also bypasses the weekly limits. I get why it needed to bypass the limits, and that it was expensive, but stuff like that shouldn't be there in the first place, especially when it can be used to obtain Best in Slot gear. (I've written some Op-eds on this, look those up on The Ghar Station if you want more details).

I hope that Trion is able to keep the Rift Prime store clean from gear and lootboxes, it will be key in maintaining one of the larger draws for that server.

[Eleccybubb]

I get that, and I completely understand where they are coming from. However, I find that all too often the players who are being critical come across more as "whining" (eh, can't think of a better term right now, need more caffeine) that they are not getting what they want, instead of trying to find a constructive way to provide constructive feedback and reaction about what they DO want. I've seen posts that some players think are constructive, and claim are constructive, but that are just summed up as "I do not like this. Fix it!" without really elaborating WHY they do not like something, or WHY it impacts them negatively from experience.

I won't nitpick examples, but speaking generally to everyone here - please think through the tone you are using when you both reply to others, or you provide critique and feedback on the features and content that Trion creates. Don't dismiss or attack others, even if they do the same to you, respond positively. Consider the "sandwich method" for how best to provide feedback and positive responses where you want to be critical (again, I can't post links yet here, google it).



I'd agree with you if I haven't talked to devs about their overall sales data. Everything I've read, heard, and discussed with both Trion devs and dev in several other games suggests that the income from lootboxes far exceeds the income from cosmetics. Yes, part of it is due to gambling, and the high of getting lucky and winning something rare, I understand the concerns there. However, the income they generate is an order of magnitude or more higher than what purely cosmetic options are able to provide.

That being said, I am against things that might make Rift Pay to Win, such as this past December's sale of Captured Intel for credits that also bypasses the weekly limits. I get why it needed to bypass the limits, and that it was expensive, but stuff like that shouldn't be there in the first place, especially when it can be used to obtain Best in Slot gear. (I've written some Op-eds on this, look those up on The Ghar Station if you want more details).

I hope that Trion is able to keep the Rift Prime store clean from gear and lootboxes, it will be key in maintaining one of the larger draws for that server.

On the 2nd set of points I completely agree. Lootboxes will generate revenue because it's easy but I'm personally not fond of the practice but eh that's another matter. And see you agree on the Captured Intel issue. There were literally people defending that trying to claim it wasn't pay to win. If that wasn't P2W then I don't know what is.

First point and forgive me for trying to make this sound one sided here it's unintentional on my part but the only way to get my discussion point across. But if certain posters didn't mud sling and try to claim everything we present is "concerned" or bashing then there would be less mud slinging.

However as I said above I'll happily admit I'm overly critical sometimes. Is it wrong? Personally I don't think so. Critique needs to be tough but fair imo otherwise what's the point?

[clowd]

On the 2nd set of points I completely agree. Lootboxes will generate revenue because it's easy but I'm personally not fond of the practice but eh that's another matter. And see you agree on the Captured Intel issue. There were literally people defending that trying to claim it wasn't pay to win. If that wasn't P2W then I don't know what is.

First point and forgive me for trying to make this sound one sided here it's unintentional on my part but the only way to get my discussion point across. But if certain posters didn't mud sling and try to claim everything we present is "concerned" or bashing then there would be less mud slinging.

However as I said above I'll happily admit I'm overly critical sometimes. Is it wrong? Personally I don't think so. Critique needs to be tough but fair imo otherwise what's the point?

Being critical is never wrong, IMHO. Critique is necessary for anything to grow. The key is to find the right way to be critical. I admit that it can be difficult to do, but it's worth it if you want something to change.

[Eleccybubb]

Being critical is never wrong, IMHO. Critique is necessary for anything to grow. The key is to find the right way to be critical. I admit that it can be difficult to do, but it's worth it if you want something to change.

Which I do. Hence why I'm critical. But it doesn't help when big community names come in and tell us we are doing it for the sake of bashing the game.

Anywho back to the topic at hand.

While the idea on paper looks good I just think Classic would have been the better path. Plus the advertising is just iffy on the sites at the moment which doesn't help.

[clowd]

Anywho back to the topic at hand.

While the idea on paper looks good I just think Classic would have been the better path. Plus the advertising is just iffy on the sites at the moment which doesn't help.

While I agree, there is no way that the team could have gone back to the Classic server and client. Too much has changed between now and then for both the client, Trion's overall server and game build systems, and even Trion's account management system, to make reverting to Classic possible. Combine this with the fact that they wanted to make it so that the Prime server unlocked expansion content up through present, and there is no way they could have reverted everything in the timeframe they had to work with, and with the team they currently have.

In my opinion, the path they chose is a smarter use of their resources than attempting to bring back the classic client and server and account system to work with their current hardware and the way things are integrated.

[Kyanion]

Combine this with the fact that they wanted to make it so that the Prime server unlocked expansion content up through present, and there is no way they could have reverted everything in the timeframe they had to work with, and with the team they currently have.

In my opinion, the path they chose is a smarter use of their resources than attempting to bring back the classic client and server and account system to work with their current hardware and the way things are integrated.

All it looks like to me is a rush job to try and jump on the 'classic' hype train that games like WoW have generated. Instead of taking the time to get it right and put out the actual stuff we played with on day 1 when Rift launched it is just a rush job to slap a vanilla covered paint on what the current game is. I'm not interested in a version of Rift that spiraled out of control and if I wanted to be nostalgic for when Rift was a fun play I'd want to play what I did when Rift launched...not whatever this is supposed to be.

I don't know what 'timeframe' they had to work with but they could have given something worth playing, instead they took the quick way out and have been shady in presenting what it is.

[clowd]

All it looks like to me is a rush job to try and jump on the 'classic' hype train that games like WoW have generated. Instead of taking the time to get it right and put out the actual stuff we played with on day 1 when Rift launched it is just a rush job to slap a vanilla covered paint on what the current game is. I'm not interested in a version of Rift that spiraled out of control and if I wanted to be nostalgic for when Rift was a fun play I'd want to play what I did when Rift launched...not whatever this is supposed to be.

I don't know what 'timeframe' they had to work with but they could have given something worth playing, instead they took the quick way out and have been shady in presenting what it is.

While I understand your desire for a truly classic Rift server, I think it's difficult to justify bringing back the old client-server-database systems and updating it to work with their modern hardware and account systems for a locked in time server such as this. It, unfortunately, comes down to time and money.

As for the 'classic' hype train, I can understand how you would see that as well, but there have been hints that this was coming for over a year now, even before WoW announced that they were committing to classic servers. The first official talk of challenge servers was back in March 2017, and even before that there was discussions on Discord at the time regarding a challenge/progression server. To top things off, what Rift Prime is doing is not a time-locked server, but a true progression server where content is unlocked over time.

Rift Prime is similar in concept to the progression and special ruleset servers in Everquest 1 and 2. If anything, this is inspired by and based off of that concept over what WoW is planning to do. Which makes sense, since a chunk of Trion and Rift's original dev team originally worked on both of those games.

From what I can tell, Rift Prime has been in some state of development since last Fall, shortly after 4.2 landed and development continued through 4.3 to the present.

[Magicon]

There is no "play ahead of time". It's just "get your account flagged ahead of time". So your account is ready to activate as patron when prime launches.

The bonus stuff is just a mount, nothing else.

Jesus christ at people with their ignorant unfounded hate.

I have No hate against Trion Quite the opposite. RIFT was a fun game to play. I hate their "nightmare tide" expension though =p