RIFT Game Director Bill “Daglar” Fisher hanged out and chatted with players over in Tempest Bay @ Deepwood today and answered a few questions thrown his way about classes, 2.7 release date, pvp, optimization and progression.
Big thanks to forbiddenlake on the Rift Forums for providing screenshots of Daglar’s responses!
Summary:
- Patch 2.7 coming in ‘early May’. [Update 04.11.14 – Confirmed for first week of May, so likely 7th May 2014]
- 3.0 progression will “work somewhat differently”. No details yet.
- Mages – Pyro (PvP) getting a few buffs and some old nerfs removed.
- PvP – Zero plans for new pvp-specific runes; cannot do points for kills in CQ; 2- or 4-team CQ would be too time intensive to implement.
- Double-dip DPS is “on the radar”.
- 64-bit Optimisation “not currently on the roadmap”.
- Currency Caps – still discussing internally.
Patch 2.7 Release Information
UPDATE 04.11.14: Daglar has confirmed on the 11th April Livestream that Patch 2.7 will come out in the first week of May (so likely to be 7th May 2014 as patch days are usually Wednesday outside of emergency hotfixes).
Daglar inferred that RIFT Patch 2.7 release would be in early May. He did not provide an exact date, but since patches are almost always on Wednesdays, this means the Patch 2.7 release date is either:
- May 7th 2014; or
- May 14th 2014.
Intim on the forums suggests it’ll likely be May 14th as that is when the Air Saga World Event ends. That does seem like a good date to release a new patch.
3.0 Progression
When asked about hybrids in 3.0, Daglar stated that 3.0 progression would “work somewhat differently” but that it was too early to provide us with any details.
Whether this is in reference to Zerofate mentioning a “61-20” hybrid or if he is talking about progression through the soul tree as a whole compared to what it currently looks like is uncertain at this point – although he has mentioned before on the Rift Forums about 3.0 progression being different.
Class Information
Mages
Mages will be getting more focus on them from the Mage & Cleric Class Dev Kervik in the “not to distant future”. His current priority however is on the new souls coming out in Patch 2.7.
Daglar also mentioned that:
- Pyromancers will be getting a few buffs for PvP as well as some old nerfs removed.
- He’d love to see Elementalists being more viable in PvP but there are higher priorities right now.
Other Class Stuff
Daglar reiterated that it is intended that Melee would do more damage than Ranged specs.
Daglar also stated that the ‘Double-Dip’ ‘feature’ of Warriors (and other souls) would be looked at but it isn’t a priority at this stage.
PvP Information
Daglar mentioned a few things about PvP/CQ:
- There are no plans for new PvP-specific-earned Runes.
- Trion cannot implement a ‘Points-for-Kills’ system in Conquest due to technical issues. Daglar tried a few weeks ago and it didn’t work as the Conquest system does not know which faction a killed player is on.
- In terms of even-numbered teams, Daglar stated it would be very time-intensive (and thus unlikely to be implemented).
Optimization
When queried about 64-bit Client Optimization, Daglar stated it was “not currently on the roadmap” and that their focus is on alleviating performance issues for as many people as possible.
They are, however, still actively working on additional performance upgrades.
Currency Caps
In response to the issue of raising currency caps, Daglar stated that Trion were still having internal discussions about the caps.
He also stated that the reason why the weekly cap was not raised for Empyreal Slayer’s Marks and Frozen Eclipse Stones during last reset week’s Bonus Loot/Currency event was because they hadn’t considered it when they implemented the bonuses.
Thanks to forbiddenlake on the Rift Forums for providing these screenshots and thanks to Daglar for spending the time answering some of the community’s questions.
Look forward to Patch 2.7 in ‘early May’!
Daglar also gave a Q&A on Zaviel (EU) with other information tidbits. Check it out here.
RiftGrate 
I think Daglar miss Interpeted my Question, right now a Hybrid of two melee souls does more damage at RANGED then a full ranged Soul.
I don’t think he misinterpreted your question, I think you asked the wrong question. You said that a melee hybrid did more DPS than a ranged build, but did not mention that the melee build could do it from range.
Ugh, I wish I could have been there to ask some questions. But, you know, real life and such… =/ I love that Daglar will take the time to interact with the community within the game and outside, even in Reddit. There is a man that takes pride in his job.
“Trion cannot implement a ‘Points-for-Kills’ system in Conquest due to technical issues. Daglar tried a few weeks ago and it didn’t work as the Conquest system does not know which faction a killed player is on.”
Wait… what?! :DDDDD Nice implementation.
“He also stated that the reason why the weekly cap was not raised for Empyreal Slayer’s Marks and Frozen Eclipse Stones during last reset week’s Bonus Loot/Currency event was because they hadn’t considered it when they implemented the bonuses.”
This is sure scam to cap the currencies and allow players to buy pots for tokens for REAL money. They’re almost useless when you can easily reach cap with patron pot and T1 content + some experts.
I agree with you on the first point; but the second – I wouldn’t call it a ‘scam’ since they aren’t ‘really’ making money out of not raising the cap. If they were really after money, they’d release the limit so players could actually benefit from pots (and thus buy them) and benefit from Dungeon Charges.
However, I definitely think they really should give us a way to track how close we are to weekly cap on currencies and raise it a bit. It’s a real shame they haven’t done that already by now.