Trion Worlds, the studio behind RIFT has released its summer 2018 producer’s letter. Coming six weeks after their spring letter, the studio appears to be hard at work, tweaking balance issues for souls and content.

For players who like the Warrior class, it has been given some love with its Souls being tuned, so apparently its fun to play again. Other classes did get fixes as well. The letter starts of with these balances as a priority and mentions that it is an on-going process. High on the list of RIFT’s next to do’s are tweak Legendary Abilities and revamp Cleric healing and DPS. As someone who plays a Cleric, I am happy to hear this, especially for the Prime server.

The Live version of the game is also getting some love, and the short term focuses are listed below:

RIFT Live Short Term Focus

• Bring more exciting rewards to the Daily Reward Calendar on Live, more in line with the Prime rewards.
• Add rare mount drops to Expert Dungeons and Raids on Live.  These extra rewards for play have been great on Prime, and this one is an idea that’s definitely worth taking to all servers.
• Revamp and reduce the credit store on Live. We’re looking keenly at player feedback, especially some recent well-presented player discussions, to improve this area. While we view the store as a place for cosmetics, convenience, and some amount of ability for newer players to catch up with their friends, we don’t want it to be perceived as gameplay replacement, so we’ll be making upcoming changes with that in mind.
• Some may have noticed the recent trend on the Rift store to offer the latest mounts without releasing them inside of a lockbox, and you should expect more of that.
• As an advanced Soul Balance topic, revisiting the Eternal Weapons and their impact on builds.
• Planar Fragments, addressing their level of RNG and costs to upgrade.
• Warfront queue level banding is going to be getting a look in an upcoming test.  The more level bands and warfronts there are, the longer queueing takes.  Our goal here is to speed up the queues while keeping gameplay fun.

For more information, check out the full post here.

The post RIFT Discusses Live and Prime Server Updates In Summer Letter appeared first on Mmos World.

Last week I shared many glowing positives about RIFT’s new fresh start progression server, and what it’s doing right that makes it fun to jump in and play again. This week, the negatives are starting to show especially the closer I got to level cap. Majority of my source of disappointment comes from the game’s Class Soul system. The whole unique selling point of the game’s classes is that they can be customized and utilized in a variety of ways to suit your play style.

Unfortunately at level cap, this isn’t the case. Each of the game’s four classes – Mage, Warrior, Cleric and Rogue – can do just about everything via equipping the appropriate souls. Tanking, healing DPS and support. While leveling to the cap, you will definitely queue for as many PUG dungeon runs as possible as the XP gains on the Prime server are slow. And jumping into the different forms of group content like dungeons and Warfronts for PvP will help you get decent XP. It is in those leveling PvE dungeons that players fall into a false sense of class security, thinking that a certain build is acceptable and viable later on.

This is where I was wrong. Class balance gets horribly one sided at levels 40 onward, especially in late game dungeons where the end game community expects you to be playing a ‘cookie cutter’ build. In addition, Mages are so OP right now that if you play anything other than one for roles such as DPS, you are shunted and condemned because you aren’t able to match their numbers. How on earth did it get to this, Trion? RIFT takes pride in its unique soul system, but at end game people only play one or two that the community has deemed the best and the most optimal for end game.

While unfortunate for the casual player who participate in PUG runs, this won’t be everyone’s experience especially if you’re in a guild. You are more than likely safe to play what you want to play, although one suspects that even in guilds, the class meta of the Prime server will still ring true. Most players will have rolled and level one of the OP classes, and others will be shoe-horned into running the conventional or what’s expected of them. So Warriors just stick to tanking, while Clerics stick to tanking and healing. Forget what you want to do DPS-wise, because you’ll never be as a good as a Mage.

Based on that experience, it’s fair to say that Trion Worlds is having a hard time balancing the classes on the Prime server at the moment. There have been buffs and nerfs to several of these classes since the server launch, and it’s clearly an on-going process. What does the studio need to do to keep players on it? Is balance one of them? I sure hope so. Because of how slow progression is on Prime, there is no chance that I’ll be re-rolling my character just to restart as one of the OP ones for the sake of being conventional at the end-game.

The post RIFT Prime: Class Balance At Level Cap Is Broken Beyond Belief appeared first on Mmos World.

As an MMORPG, many prior to 2018 will remember RIFT as the one that got away. It checked all the right boxes; fantasy MMO, excellent class systems, loads of content – it had everything you’d want in a theme park MMORPG. RIFT started out as a subscription only MMORPG during a time when World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic were the big guns on the market. Over the years, it bled players and eventually went free to play, bringing with it a host of micro-transactions in the cash shop that begin the game’s well documented decline.

When Trion Worlds announced a new fresh start progression server called RIFT Prime, many were excited at the prospect. The Prime Vigil server claims to remove 90% of things in the cash shop that offered advantage and keep cosmetics instead. More importantly, it offered players who preferred a fresh start to come back and experience a close to vanilla build of RIFT for a monthly price of $14.99. I’ve been playing on Prime for five weeks now, and here are my thoughts on why this server is doing so well compared to the Live servers.

Population

The most refreshing thing from this experience on Prime is seeing just how many players are on it. At all times of the day, there’s a decent amount of players on to run content with. PvP Warfronts will definitely pop if you’re in queue, and the same goes for the dungeons as well. What helps is that there’s only one shard in NA, and there isn’t dedicated shards for EU or Oceanic. Unfortunate yes, but that simply means that the population is all congregated on one server. Latency isn’t very noticeable although it does exist.

As a result, those massive zone events yields hundreds of players when the boss spawns, which makes it a joy to behold and be a part of. It definitely takes players back to the early days of launch where hundreds of players can be found on the landscape questing and helping each other. Chats are always active, and the community that’s returned to Prime are also positive, being helpful and informative to new players in particular.

Traditional and Challenging

Prime also tweaks its progression systems to differ from what’s available on live. Most notable of these changes are the reduced rate of XP gains and the difficulty of landscape mobs and dungeons. On Live, you could probably breeze through mid-level landscape content, facerolling 6-7 mobs at once. On Prime, you simply can’t do that. It’s a refreshing take on things that challenges the player to experiment with builds and souls that work for different situations. It’s a clever way to make use of the game’s robust soul system, where one can customize the way their class plays.

Also, you’re only afforded two character slots on Prime, which means that you can’t master all crafting professions. While annoying, the reason for doing this according to Trion is for the community to rely on one another for crafting and gear progression. While it sounds impossible on paper, it actually works to a certain degree, and guilds are playing such an important role now. The few guilds I’ve been on have huge amounts of players, and there’s a sense of camaraderie that is very much reminiscent of old school RIFT when the game was at its height.

Cash Shop Shenanigans

Ultimately the biggest draw of Prime for returning players will probably be regarding the cash shop. You can’t buy high level gear or any gear for that matter, and there’s no lootbox nonsense. In addition, level boosts and other advantages are also missing from the store. These things were a big reason for driving loyal and active players away from RIFT, and thus makes Prime more attractive than the live servers at the moment.

Having said all that, Prime does have its issues. It still relies on a build similar to live, and it’s nowhere near the vanilla experience when it comes to systems. Class souls that have been released recently are also found on Prime, which means all the OP souls will eventually make its way over. This does pose a challenge because it creates a balancing issue for certain classes in Prime when factoring in how popular PvP is in this game. Bugs and other issues also exist from time to time, and the ball is definitely in Trion’s court. The small team that oversees RIFT now has the Prime server to content with, which they didn’t expect to be this successful.

Either way, as a new player, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my adventures in Telara. The dungeons are lengthy and have a traditional vibe about them, and when mixed with the harder than usual difficulty, the active player base, and the vibe of a thriving server, it’s hard to say that it’s $14.99 that’s not well spent. I think I got my money’s worth.

The post RIFT Prime 2018: Why RIFT’s Fresh Start Server Is Worth Playing appeared first on Mmos World.

After a highly positive reception from players and media, Trion Worlds is excited to reveal that the first month of RIFT Prime, the subscription-based fresh start progression server for RIFT, has been a massive success. Thousands of players have jumped into the new server, taking in all of the excitement and classic RIFT content on offer.

In the first month of the availability of Vigil, the RIFT Prime server, players completed more than five million quests and tens of thousands of dungeons. The server’s active population has stayed high since its deployment last month, and the first days of the server saw hundreds of players teaming up to conquer some of its biggest challenges in record numbers.

“A dynamic event in Silverwood on day one had the most participants of any event in RIFT history!” said Amanda Fry, producer on RIFT. “Nearly a thousand people were tackling the challenge, and the sheer volume of activity and teamwork there was simply awesome to see. Right then we knew that we made the right call with RIFT Prime.”

“RIFT Prime has been a huge success the first month in, and we can’t thank the RIFT community enough for supporting it,” said Scott Hartsman, CEO of Trion Worlds. “We pride ourselves on being able adapt in ways that make sense for our players and will give them what they want in our games, and RIFT Prime is a great example of that.”

While the first month was a huge success, the team is focused firmly on what the future holds for RIFT Prime. In the coming weeks, players can anticipate the first raid to hit the server, where they will face off against the mighty dragon Greenscale, and even more exciting content.

“We couldn’t be happier with how RIFT Prime is performing, and we’re definitely not resting on our laurels,” said Fry. “We’ve got a ton of content that will be releasing regularly for RIFT Prime players, so if you haven’t taken the plunge yet, now is the perfect time!”

RIFT Prime was made with the goal of offering players an alternative way to experience years of RIFT content and signature dynamic events through a subscription model on a progression-based server. With dozens of updates and content packs available now or on the way included in the base subscription, RIFT Prime is a fantastic choice for players looking to experience what RIFT has to offer.

RIFT Prime is live now. For more information on RIFT Prime, please visit https://www.trionworlds.com/riftprime . For more information on Trion Worlds, please visit https://www.trionworlds.com .

The post RIFT Prime’s First Month Was a Rousing Success appeared first on Mmos World.