RIFT news tidbits for 3rd-6th April 2015.
General
- RIFT 3.2 Echoes of Madness Preview: Hammerknell. Trion has posted up a new article about the upcoming Tier 2 20-man raid: Return to Hammerknell. Mainly touching briefly on which bosses have different or new mechanics and the new raid testing policy. You can check out the article here.
- Livestream Summary: 4th April 2015. During the Easter weekend, Senior Game Devs Morticus and Vladd sat down with Feendish and Dimension Diva over at The Dimension Touring Company to talk about dimensions. They went over quite a few additions to 3.2 and 3.3. Check out the video here (begins 37min in) and text summary here.
- Conquest Playtest. Trion is holding a Conquest Playtest for upcoming Conquest changes. This will be held on the PTS on 8th April at 3PM PDT. The following experimental changes will be tested, slated for 3.2 or shortly afterwards:
- Limit CQ Premade queue size to 5.
- Prevent players from joining CQ when 5min timer starts.
- More info can be found here.
- PvP: How ELO Works in RIFT. CM Ocho has posted up information on how the Elo Rating works in RIFT. Briefly:
- If your team wins your Elo rating goes up, if your team loses your Elo rating goes down.
- If you win against a team with higher total Elo rating than your team, your Elo rating goes up more. Reverse also true.
- However, if one team is expected to dominate another based on total team Elo rating, your final Elo rating adjustments will only adjust slightly.
- When matches form, the creation of two teams is based on team size and relative total Elo rating. The matchmaker will try to place the same amount of healers and dps on each team and if possible, the same amount of premades.
- Check out CM Ocho’s full post here for a better understanding of this system. I have added this to the Reference List for future reference.
- IA Achievement Info. Existing IA achieves are being moved to Legacy. Tacitus has revealed that faction requirements are being unlocked – so if you happen to have completed 500 IAs in Freemarch as a Guardian, you’ll get the Defiant’s 500-IAs-complete achievement for Freemarch (and thus also the “Free” surname title). [r]
- Note that you can still do the achievements to get the zone titles post 3.2, but it will be extremely tedious to do so (due to the random zone queues), and they were be in the Legacy category. [r]
- PTS Update. The PTS was updated again. Quick summary: New ‘Wardrobe’ achieves category; some Wardrobe fixes; RIFT Store has new Attractor Minion cards and interactive dimension books. Also T1 weapons in RIFT Store. I’ll have more info in the usual PTS Update article tomorrow.
- PTS Datamining for 31st March 2015 – Part 2. Part 2 of the PTS Datamining for that large 4.79GB PTS Update last month is now up. There’s a whole bunch of Planetouched Wilds models and skins, as well as mini-map compilations for what looks to be the top-right portion of the zone. Check it all out here!
- Additional Crafted Trinket Procs. Some crafted trinkets were missing an upgrade path for healing procs. Morticus has posted screenshots for Nightmare Fractal, Remnant of Aedraxis and Consecrated Dog Tag healing proc upgrades you can check out here. Slated for 3.2.
Community Content
Below is a list of content created recently by the RIFT community!
- Mars Attacks Dimension Building Contest [Dimension][Contest]. Mirt over on the RIFT Forums has begun a new Dimension Contest! Theme is an alien attack. There are two categories and a 6 REX + dimension items prize pool! Contest begins April 30th and ends June 15th. Check out details here.
- How to Gear a Fresh Level 65 for PvP [Video][Guide]. Grim has posted up a new video guide for fresh Level 65 players looking to gear up for PvP. Check it out here!
- The Iron Throne [Dimension]. Check out this amazing building created by Atri@Seastone called “The Iron Throne”. Awesome morphs abound, including lovely stained glass windows. Check out a preview over at DTC here.
- The White Castle [Dimension]. Coniri@Hailol has created a stunning “White Castle” dimension with lavish hallways and rooms. Check it out here!
Missed out on some news? Check out the full list of RIFT News Tidbits here or check out the PTS/Live Comparison Page for a summary of upcoming changes. Patch Notes, PTS Updates, Datamining and Livestream Summaries are also available.
If you’re interested in the latest RIFT contests or upcoming events, check out RiftGrate’s ‘Upcoming RIFT Events‘ page and calendar.
RiftGrate 
It would be better to say “How ELO does not work in Rift”. Out of 10 random WF that i do, 9 are totally owned by one team. There simply is no balance.
I am not completely blaming Trion for this. One part of the problem is the fact that a lot of the WF have an “all or nothing” design. One team will always be slightly stronger than the other and in a lot of the WF that team will get a much bigger points reward. But a lot of the players will also just give up as soon as they are a bit behind in points. I guess the idea is: “OK we wont win this one so lets get it over with as fast as possible so we can join another and get a new chance for a win.”
That attitude comes from the fact that winning a random WF gives marks that most players want to upgrade their gear. This seriously deteriorated the PVP spirit of these WF matches and turned them into marks farming events.
The match-making system in RIFT definitely has a lot of room for improvement. As you mentioned there’s numerous players who will give up at the first sign of opposition. I see some players soul recall out if their team gets wiped once, refusing to even bother. And yet often times it’s just a matter of adding or dropping a healer or grouping up properly. There’s warfronts where you’re miles behind but turn things around. As long as there’s any reason to pvp outside of simply enjoying pvping, there will always be players who will just soul recall or give up. However, pvp with no rewards won’t survive for long.
As for amount of wins/losses, it probably also depends on the time of day you queue up. If you end up constantly fighting premades, it will usually result in a much higher percentage of win/loss. I generally find I win more often than I lose, but that’s probably because I rarely meet premades in warfronts at the times I queue up.
There’s other issues with the system though. Raiders coming in and having better gear than sole-PvPers is an issue that has only gotten worse with the removal of PvP-specific stats. Compared to the current system, the pvp gear we had in Storm Legion where PvE gear was bolstered to the lowest un-runed pvp gear was a good system.
At this point “it is what it is” is how I see it. Any significant improvements players can come up with will probably be twisted/abused by the player base, or Trion will implemented them in a half-arsed fashion (like ranked PvP) to prove it doesn’t work.