RIFT Reddit AMA Summary

Have any questions you’d like to ask the RIFT team? Community Manager Eric “Ocho” Cleaver has started an AMA (‘Ask Me Anything’) on /r/MMORPG over at Reddit. He is joined by Lead Engineer Snedhepl, Lead Systems Designer Vladd and Senior Systems Designer (Mage/Cleric dev) Red Hawk!

Check out the AMA here!

Summary of Key Points

Mind of Madness Livestream

• Possible Livestream this Friday at 3:30PM PDT previewing the Tier 3 20-man raid Mind of Madness. Might talk about release schedule on the livestream. [r]

[Update: Confirmed!] [r]

Rewards For Days Played

• CM Ocho mentioned that Trion is “strongly considering” adding a new reward system that rewards players for days played. [r] [r] [If it’s anything like Trove’s badge system, you might want to start building up your consecutive login days!]

Class-related Info

• Vladd mentions that there are 4 new Primalist souls that the team is starting work on. Also, Vladd wants to look at changes for Rangar, Beastmaster, Archon and Dominator. [r]

• Warrior Warlord soul is getting a buff. No details. [r]

• On Warrior Reaver changes: Vladd explains that Reaver “is intended to be an AoE soul” and that its ST damage was never supposed to be as high as it was pre-3.4. Also, further nerfs might be incoming: “honestly, it might need to come down some more to be on par with other AoE souls.” [r]

• Cleric Healers might be getting an easing of resource management (i.e. less mana-intensive), similar to recent changes to Harbinger, Pyromancer and Shman mana resource management. [r]

• Cleric Defiler changes: Long-term, Red Hawk would like to push Defiler to more of a proper DPS soul and change links to be cooldowns. [r]

• Red Hawk might be looking to improve Cleric Cabalist and make Druids function without a pet in raids. [r]

PvP-related Info

• Looking to make Melee souls more viable in PvP.

• Looking at possibly adding some static damage reduction effects to Dodge and Block. [r] Would also help Tanks in general. [r]

• Taking a look at “moment to moment decision making, CC in general, and closing the gap…on melee vs. ranged combat”. – Vladd.

• Possibly looking to “help promote/host a PvP dimension tournament in the nearish future”. – CM Ocho.

Other Tidbits

• Last month’s Greathound Promo to promote the GREY2K USA Worldwide advocacy group was able to raise ~400% more donations in the first 72hrs of the promotion’s start compared to the entire month-long Doctors Without Borders promotion that was held last year. [r] [r]

• No new stuff for minions right now as Trion had been concentrating on the release of the Primalist. “We’re only now looking at things we can do for the minion system, and it’ll likely be done over the course of several updates”. – Snedhepl.

• Might remove faction restriction on mail/feasts. [r]

• Looking at preventing undergeared players from being random queued into harder dungeons meant for more geared players (like Rhaza’de Canyons). Will be a big change that requires a lot of engineering work, so won’t be happening anytime soon, but “very much still on the table for a future release” – CM Ocho.

• Trion uses 19 different executables on the server side just to properly run a single shard on one cluster. More technical information here, including some technical system-side stuff about the Minions System.