The RIFT

Many thanks to Katabri of Tank Telara for helping out with these notes!

Shyntyrr fills in for Desikis, and today’s guests are: Cindy “Abigale” Bowens and James “Elrar” Nichols.
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Many thanks to Katabriof Tank Telara for helping out with this week’s notes!

Adam Gershowitz is our interview today, but the interview was done before the delay of Phase 2 of the World Event, so some mention will be made to the event going live on the original date.

These notes give a synopsis of the interview. To hear the full answers, please listen to our podcast!
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[1:08] So you wanted to talk to us a little bit about the community and the lead up to launch?

• “Drive by trolls” have been effectively removed.
• Once head start begins, you must have an active account and pre-order to post.
• After head start you must have an active account to post.
• 2/23/11 Paypal for preorders
• Forum change is driven by making sure the paying customers give the feedback, not those just viewing the game.

[8:20] When can we expect to see the new forums with the server forums and bigger breakdown of the categories?

• Definitely by launch.
• Still waiting on the final list of servers.
• Server specific forums are coming, as well as a few new categories – such as the fansite category!

[9:30] Is there going to be a way to tie your character to your forum account?

Possibly.
• Its something they’re looking at, but haven’t really looked into it too much yet.

[11:35] About the fansite forums?

• They want to establish a better relationship with the newer sites that have been created.
• Updates have been slow due to work load, but they are working extremely hard to get things running.
• Fansite section will only allow fansite operators to create topics in the forum, allowing the sites to have a bit more exposure.

[14:30] What are you guys doing to prepare for launch?

• No podcast on February 28th, March 7th is the tentative date for next release.

[18:39] What about the hot topic of customization?

• Skin tone range is being expanded.
• “Boob” slider and other similar systems would directly impact performance.
• It would be detrimental to PC performance in large events to have larger customization.
• Game play comes over character customization.
• The artists want to do more.
• Make up and eye selection are directly related due to performance.

[24:17] Open PvP, is there anything you guys can talk about such as sieges, objective based, ancient wardstones?

• When you put a large amount of people together, you almost instantly create open world PvP.
• Shared zones will be available all the way up to 50.

[25:39] What about Port Sion? Not the warfront, but the zone.

• A key part of the story.
• They want to expand upon it when its time, and when they have enough time to do it well.
• The warfront will be in on launch.

[26:51] What about the puzzles? Who’s idea was that?

• Simon.

[27:50] When can we sit in chairs?

• One of those questions that the developers cringe at.
• They will add it in the future, and its not a game breaker for them.

[29:20] What about content consumption at the end game? Do you have any type of timing projections of how long it will take players to complete the current end-game?

• Yes, but they will never give that number out.
• Said number is built into the design.
• They don’t design around a time goal, they design and then ask themselves if the time taken is reasonable.

[31:15] Any thought about a persistent, contested dungeon such as Darkness Falls from Dark Age of Camelot?

• They’ve discussed it, but its not on the horizon.
• Future content will be mostly decided by what the community is asking for.

[31:48] What about server names? What are the names going to be for release?

• Some servers will be the same as in beta, while others will change.
• Tentatively will be announced just before head start.

[32:33] How are you going to balance the number of servers?

• Its extremely dangerous to open too many servers at launch.

[33:14] How many people can be online before a queue starts?

• It depends.
• Sometimes its based on population, server performance, and other factors.
• Hard cap for server capacity has not been reached yet.

[34:08] Do you guys have more plans for dynamic quests?

• Yes.
• Making a game that is 100% dynamic becomes not fun.
• Making a game that has some static and some dynamic becomes extremely entertaining.
• People like to have things that they can fall back on to do.
• The game engine cannot do those mechanics in a “fun” way.
• They tested 100% dynamic world, and found it frustrating to play.
• There needs to be some amount of permanence for the world to make sense to the players.
• They will add more dynamic content over time.

[36:50] Are the newbie zones going to be instanced?

• Yes.
• You can join your friends in other instances.

[37:10] On the technical side, is Rift going to fully support SLI?

• It currently supports crossfire.
• SLI is a work in progress, as well as other video matters.

[38:24] Will the game make full use of the new six core CPUs?

• A game not using all the cores evenly is not a bad thing.
• http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?7579-Frame-Rate-Hardware-Technical-FAQ&p=215258#post215258

[39:10] Is running to the newbie dungeons and dying, then respawning in a friendly zone going to be looked at?

• This is a bug.
• You should respawn in the same zone that you died in.

[40:24] In one of the betas you had consumables that would teleport you into the opposing faction’s zone, when you swapped to ascended powers are those still in the game?

• No, those were beta items only.

[40:56] In regards to low level content, you can enter the first warfront at level 10 but you can’t get rewards until level 25. Is this being looked at?

• Yes.

[2:14] The Pet systems – will we ever see a training system, or a way to differentiate your pet from other pets?

• Definitely not something they are looking at for launch.

[2:59] Are titles going to be anything other than bragging rights, or will they add something like stats later on?

• They will be purely cosmetic.

[4:00] Since you’ve come on board, what is the single largest change you’ve made to the game?

• They can’t pick any specific instance.
• Exposing the whole story to everyone.

[5:14] Are you happy where the game is for release? Is it where you thought it would be?

• It’s farther ahead than they thought.

[5:57] What’s the biggest surprise that you thought was going to work but ended up having to turn around?

• Nothing that changed 180 degrees (completely around).
• Some changes they’ve had to make – maybe 20-40 degrees – but nothing major.
• They originally thought the class system to complex, but after the Betas decided that players were doing fine.

[8:08] Do you think it’s possible to listen to the fan/player base too much?

• Yes, definitely.

[8:15] How do you balance that line?

• You cannot read the forums and look for ‘volume of screaming’, or ultimatums.
• You can look at the volume of people that are concerned. If a lot of people are concerned, they will look at it.
• They apply their own wisdom/smarts and make their own decisions.
• Looking at the heart of the concern – not necessarily the specific feature being talked about.

[9:28] Are there suggestions that you see in the forums that you are tired of seeing?

• There are some topics that cause them *physical pain* to see appear.
• One of their personal issues is: Player Housing. (Note: Opinion of one developer, not the indicative of the company as a whole. Several other developers seem to love player housing!)
• They like these topics because it keeps the developers honest.
• The entire team reads the forums.

[11:29] How do you balance convenience with building a living world?

• Time it takes to get to max level isn’t a concern because they’re happy with how well done their end-game is, and they want people to enjoy the levelling game.
• The amount of time something takes and the fun you have while doing it are not tied together.
• They’re “creating market” for this type of game play.

[13:01] Are you looking to make a looking for dungeon finder?

• Yes.

[13:08] Is it going to be cross server?

• Possibly.
• The problem that occurs with non-group creating dungeon finders is the lack of use after release, effectively a waste of development time.

[13:56] Are you concerned about how it would affect the server community if it is cross server?

• They still don’t know if that’s how they’re going to go about implementing a dungeon finder.
• People don’t like to be the guy that shouts in a channel for 45 minutes and then the group fails.
• There is one dungeon finder so far; basing how the only system out there has done it to a possible implementation in Rift would be a huge mistake.
• People are falling into the trap that MMO does not mean WoW.

[15:55] There is more raid content now than you had planned, what happened that made you have so much more now?

• The team did a great job pushing and polishing the content they had prepped for release so much that they were able to create more content.
• The fact that the servers have been stable has allowed the team to start on future content.

[17:48] On the topic of Raid UI, are we going to see any future features such as a calendar or something similar?

• Yes, you can assume that things people have been asking for is being looked at.

[18:21] What is your release schedule looking like? Are we looking at two content patches and then an expansion, or something different?

• Right now they’re focused on launch.
• They have a road map of how they want things to go, but that is subject to change given how things actually happen.

[18:55] Are the current racials the racial abilities we’re going to see on launch?

• Yes.
• The stats per race are being looked at.
• The original racials were too powerful in the beginning, but they wanted the racials to stay impactful.

[21:22] Do you have a projection on how you want to go, particularly with raids, solo, five man, ten man, and rift content?

• Over time you can expect all of these, but initially the focus is on expanding raid content – both in zones and rifts.
• It’s more of a question of keeping the quality high, rather than pushing the content out quickly.

[22:30] Are you guys looking to do vertical progression (level cap increases per expansion) or more horizontal progression (staying the same level at each expansion)?

• Right now it’s not something they’ve focused on; all resources are mainly focused on launch.
• Horizontal progression runs into some unique problems than vertical, particularly when it comes to knowing how far other characters have progressed compared to others.

[23:50] Do you have a prediction on how quickly content will be deployed, from development to implementation on live servers?

• It depends on how complex the content is, ranging from an hour to over a month.
• They have the capabilities to push out content live while players are doing content.

[25:05] The raid and rift guys have a plan laid out for future content, correct?

• Yes.
• They’ve been in post-launch development mode for awhile now.

[25:28] Do you have any plans for GM launched events?

• Yes.
• Both GMs and the system have the ability to launch any event at any given time.
• GM launched content doesn’t scale nearly as well as the system being able to do it.

[26:50] How easy or hard is it to implement a new soul?

• It’s completely dependent on how complex the soul is.
• Balance makes new soul implementation much more difficult than actually creating the soul.
• They want to make things that are fun, not just something that feels like an add-on.

[28:50] Is there a possibility of more roles?

• Yes.
• They’re not going to add more until they see how everything spreads out and works.
• Adding more roles would need to have a monetary value, but balancing the point where respecs cost more than the roles is something they’re watching.

[30:45] Can you track the number of times people respec in game?

• Yes.
• They can track anything that interacts with characters and NPCs.

[31:07] Has there been discussion about allowing your PvP soul to have its own points?

• Yes.
• You should not have to get remove one of your PvE souls to play PvP.
• The reason that the PvP souls only have 21 points is to help balance the point distribution within the PvE souls.

[31:56] How are you planning on building out the world for future expansions?

• They have some ideas planned, but they’re not giving anything away just yet.

[32:19] Are you going to include an auto face feature?

• No.
• Anything that makes botting easier is not something they will want to add.

[32:55] On introducing new content

• Always want to make sure the new content is cooler than the previous content
• The goal is to give people more and more quality.
• They don’t want to “jump the shark”.

[33:38] Will there be any support for guild hierarchies, or anything that allows for other players to see guild achievements?

• Yes.
• There is content in development that will send out broadcasts based on guild level, world firsts, and other “cornerstone” achievements.
• 20 guild levels

[34:34] Will there be Armoury style features?

• Possibly.
• They want to focus on making the game a success first before adding more side features such as an armoury.

[35:26] On crafting, are there plans for rare materials, rare recipes, or raid drops?

• Recipes are created, just haven’t been turned on yet.
• They are intentionally not adding rare materials to help balance the server markets.
• The augment system is intended to help with the lack of this.

[36:32] What plans are in place to help curb gold farmers?

• The game has an in-game filter based off of player reports.
• They track hackers, and have already banned beta accounts and cancelled pre-orders.

[37:31] Do you plan on encrypting the games data stream?

• Yes.

[2:30] In level 50 standard and expert dungeons there are tier one and tier two dungeons for gear progression. How is the group set up balanced for tier one or tier two dungeons? Is it balanced around a tank, a healer, and three dps, or are they going to require multiple healers and tanks?

• Dungeon balance is based around one tank and one healer.
• Some fights may require some off healing/half healing from another class.
• They expect most groups to have one to one and a half healers.

[3:55] On the subject of other tanking souls, such as Riftstalker and Justicar, are we going to see these souls utilized in raids? Are there going to be fights tailored to certain tanks?

• They will not tailor any one encounter to a certain type of tank, but some tanks may have an easier time than others depending on the encounter.

[4:42] How do hit, spell focus, valor, and toughness work for mitigation and damage in dungeons and raids?

• Hit and spell focus will be a major stat in dungeons and raids, not so much in regular dungeons.
• Each tier of dungeons will have an increasing hit requirement for dps souls.
• Valor is purely a PvP stat, players will gain no benefits against NPCs by stacking valor.
• Toughness is a tanking stat used to reduce the amount of extra damage from being crit.

[6:28] Will toughness be present in Justicar and Riftstalker itemization?

• Should be available to Justicar and Rifstalker, either by items or by a talent that will convert another stat into toughness.

[6:50] Will all the buffs and debuffs available to players, are raids designed to utilize every single buff and debuff available or will there be situations where buffing or debuffing to the max would be more detrimental to dps?

• They balance around all long term buffs being active, as well as all debuffs being present.

[7:26] How many boss encounters will be in Hammerknell and Greenscale?

• Greenscale is launching with the game, and will contain 5 bosses.
• Hammerknell will be a few months after launch, and will contain at least 10 boss encounters.
• A third raid will be released between Greenscale and Hammerknell, shortly after launch.

[8:28] We’ve been told before that instances are 10 and 20 man, and loot will be the same for each. Can you clear the confusion up some?

• Originally it was planned to do both 10 and 20 man versions for each raid. It was decided that for launch only 20 man raid zones will be available.
• Most raid rifts are tailored for 10 players.
• They did not want there to be an “easy” path and a “hard” path for progression.
• There will be plenty of content for 10 man groups, as well as 20 man groups.

[11:28] As far as progression goes, will the raid zones all be tiered?

• Greenscale and the unnamed zone will be on the same progression level, and you will need gear from these zones to start Hammerknell.

[12:02] With progression in mind, will there be “expert” or “hard modes” of the raid instances?

• This is not something they’re planning for launch.
• They’re discussing them internally, but haven’t decided whether or not there is a need for them.

[12:59] What will the lockout timers be for normal dungeons, expert dungeons, and raid instances?

• No lockouts for normal dungeons.
• Expert dungeons have a one day lockout.
• Raid instances have two lockout timers: Smaller raids have 3 day lockouts, larger raids will be on a one week timer.

[13:25] On the dungeon tiers, is it intended that you hit level 50 and then proceed to gear out from those dungeons and crafting and then move onto the first tier of expert dungeons?

• Yes.
• Rifts and other possible locations will be available to assist players in gearing up.
• You are expected to run the level 50 dungeons before you move into the expert dungeons, but if you have a group of people that are somewhat geared you may be able to jump right into expert dungeons.

[14:50] How long do you estimate dungeons will take to complete, particularly the expert versions?

• Originally estimated to be approximately an hour.
• After internal testing it took them significantly longer, and they are tuning it.
• Goal is to make sure expert dungeons only take about one hour.

[15:47] Are there any plans to work on the raid UI? For example, to let it show health, mana, and energy status to help support classes time their regen abilities.

• Raid UI is a constant work in progress.
• There will be improvements over time, before and after launch.

[16:30] What thought process went into the dungeon achievements, and will there be raid and expert achievements as well?

• Achievements are one of the last things added to any encounter.
• Some achievements hint at mechanics that bosses use and how to avoid them.
• Normal dungeons will only have a basic achievement for completing them.
• Expert dungeons and raids may have multiple achievements on a per boss basis.

[18:31] Are there any questlines that extend into the raid instances? Are there any questlines that will result in rare quest gear or a rare dropped item in a raid zone?

• Currently there are minimal amounts of quests in game that point into raid zones.
• They would like to add more quests like these in the future.
• There is a possibility of an item quality beyond epic.

[21:55] Is there anything you’d like to share with us today?

• Server forums are coming up
• Guild section of official forums are being revamped
• Gamer Day 3 is inviting Telarapedia, Horriftic Intentions, Rift Junkies, The Rift Podcast, and members of the press.