The Rift community has been an interesting beast.
When Patch 1.1 went live, the forums were flooded with threads by players claiming that their class had been unfairly nerfed, especially players of my Warrior spec Riftblade. I have been skimming or ignoring the whine-oriented threads on the Warrior forums, as most of the negative viewpoints are not grounded on actual game mechanics and are narrow in their perspective.
That said, there was one thread that caught my attention today: Get your flame hats on. The creator of this thread complained about a podcast from a fan site, and the topic of this podcast was Producer Adam Gershowitz on Class Balance & Patch 1.1.
I listened to the entire podcast, and it’s well worth your time if you want to hear Trion’s perspective on the current state of the game. The interviewer asked a lot of sharp, perceptive questions – and keep in mind the podcast hosts are players and not Trion employees. One particularly interesting comment from Gersh was that once certain specs were brought into balance in 1.1 (e.g. Saboteur), it made issues with other specs much more visible. Gersh said they are looking at Rogues and that they will look at abilities such as Pyro’s Ground of Strength.
I’m pleasantly surprised how much material Trion has been providing on Rift – I haven’t seen this level of interaction with the community from any major game developer, ever. While some people say that Trion hasn’t innovated with Rift, I disagree. Just thinking in terms of community, Trion provides
- Highly visible developer-to-community communication, e.g. via the Dev Tracker forum and fan site podcasts
- Social media integration for player-to-player communication – e.g. you can record and upload videos while playing straight to YouTube
These are clearly differentiated, intentional distinctions in the current market.
I am going to continue to check out The RIFT podcast and blog when I have time as the content is high quality. If you see other interesting news or insightful material, please post links to it.
P.S. I am level 50 now, and IMO Riftblade is still viable @ 50 in PVP, and I have really good footage from Rank 1 (beginner) 50 World PVP and warfronts. I haven’t had time to work on my next video yet. I’ll get there, stay tuned.
Taugrim's MMO Blog 
Grats on 50!
Hi could you comment on stats and crafted/reward gear, maby make a mini review on how to go about that after hitting 40-50level as this is where you are now and can remember all the steps you took, just to make leveling and right out the level 50 hole a better exp for those trying out this guide, im thinking its needs a gear guide too………..:P so please make that happen.
I cover stats in my Riftblade PVP Guide.
There are already databases on Rift that provide information on gear. Here’s one I recommend:
http://rift.zam.com/en/itemlist.html?1
I have no personal interest in writing a leveling guide. You can find tons of those if you look around.
Hey Taugrim,
First of all, gratz on 50! :)
I have to agree with you about the Rift forum community. The reactions across all the boards after 1.1 were highly over dramatic, especially on the warrior and rogue forums. From a rogue perspective everything feels much better overall, sab feels exactly were it should be with good, on-demand burst and strong AoE as opposed to the 1 shot monster it was previously. Warrior specs feel much better too, Champ still puttong out high front-loaded burst, but feeling much less the killing machine it once was.
Post 1.1 Rift (-pyros) feels pretty well balanced imo. While I feel rogue damage could use a small upward tweak, we are by no means dead last as some forum-goers would have you believe.
I can’t understand why people on the forums are being so negative about the podcasts. The few measured responses are drowned out by people purposefully blindly whining and incorrectly paraphrasing to make it seem as if the devs have no idea. I suppose the dissastisfied are always the most vocal part of the community :/
I can understand some peoples worries with Gersh about his part in the balancing fiasco that was the WAR Bright Wizard. There are some disturbing similarities between the BW and the current rift Pyro. Having said that, based on the the changes the devsa have made so far – which imo have been right on the mark – I think we’re in safe hands balance-wise.
To summarise :P
From this pod-cast it sounds like Trion definitely have their finger on the pulse balance-wise. If they continue this high level of activity with hot-fixes and patches, and maintain their high customer-developer interaction, Rift is sure to continue to evolve into a great game. Despite the doom and gloom on the forums.
I do have a question for you Taugrim:
Having hit 50 do you feel there is enough content to keep you interested? The same 4 warfronts could become tiresome over time, do you think there is enough fun to be had to keep you subscribed in the long run?
Sorry for the long post.
Cheers!
Having hit 50 do you feel there is enough content to keep you interested? The same 4 warfronts could become tiresome over time, do you think there is enough fun to be had to keep you subscribed in the long run?
The World PVP in Stillmoor is highly entertaining for me, and I enjoy warfronts.
I’m in the process of ranking up, still only Rank 2 so far.
Sorry for the long post.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, especially from a Rogue perspective.
I’m thinking about rolling a Rogue and playing MM, partly because there are so many complaints about non-Bard Rogues being underpowered.
I hit 50 a few days ago and still finding the RB/Pal a viable build. Though I do get rolled in some Port Scion matches against some really well geared mages and clerics, I usually more than hold my own.
I have been fooling with using less in Paladin, as most of the CC I encounter come in the from of Saps from rogues, Transmogrify, and snares and roots. Im not getting much milage out of Paldin’s Dev. Looking to relocate maybe 5 points into Vindi. I’ve am really liking 51 RB/ 15 Pal. The 65% Dmg increase from Avatar of the Rift puts Fiery Burst ahead of Rift Surge, and I dont seem to lose a lot of defense.
One thing I do feel is that we dont stand up well in the swirling melee of Port Scion’s bridge battles. A lot of that has to do with the guardian player base on my server having extreme deficiences concering healers. We have tons of bards, very few clerics and chloros. But putting healer blame aside, that is the one part of the Warfront im doign poorly at. What is your take on Port Scion?
One thing I do feel is that we dont stand up well in the swirling melee of Port Scion’s bridge battles. A lot of that has to do with the guardian player base on my server having extreme deficiences concering healers. We have tons of bards, very few clerics and chloros. But putting healer blame aside, that is the one part of the Warfront im doign poorly at. What is your take on Port Scion?
Port Scion – in particular the bridge – is an AOEfest both in terms of healing and damage. Riftblade does not have the kind of spammable AOE that, say, Mages have.
In general I try to keep people from capping the flag or pressuring Casters / Healers until the pack things out a bit, at which point I can burn down individual players.
I seem to be struggling lately hey Taugrim. Levelling is getting slow (46 atm) and um just not finding that “build”. I have a good dps build, champ/para/vind that does savage single target dmg but no defence at all, and RB has lost oat shine for me.
Not cause it was nerfed, just didn’t scale well for me in my inept hands. I might try a pally/para build, see how that goes.
I might try a pally/para build, see how that goes.
One of these days I am going to try a 1H Champ/Pally and 1H Para/Pally specs. If/when I do, I’ll post how they work.
I think Pally makes great sense as a secondary tree but not primary because 21 talent points is a good stopping point.
Article posted on TechCrunch today, basically agrees with my assessment that Trion has innovated in terms of Rift’s in-game integration with social media:
http://t.co/uF8uX4V