The newest instalment of our Things You Would Change with... series is dedicated to Trion World's fantasy MMO RPG RIFT, which was originally launched in 2011 and only just received its latest expansion Nightmare Tide, which is RIFT's 2nd expansion.
When doing this kind of article, we normally have a quite extensive list of issues to pick from, since all MMO RPGs have their problems, and determining which of them are the ones that annoy us the most is at times the hardest part. Upon taking an in-depth look at RIFT, we astonishingly had to struggle a bit to come up with enough aspects that really don’t please us.
All in all, the title as such is quite a good one, counting among the best free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing games out there. It required a closer investigation of some of its features as well as some experience in order to perceive a few uneven parts that we’d like to see levelled.
Performance Issues
Bad optimisation is quite a common problem, as some of our previously done articles of this series have revealed. Usually found with older titles which begin to struggle, it prevents players from getting the most out of the game. With RIFT, it's kind of a catch-all issue that ranges from a permanent set of unstable gameplay issues to lagging low FPS gameplay, and even regular server crashes (which the community generally doesn't receive any explanation for). The visual optimisation is even more harmful; while actually looking stunning at the surface with high attention paid to detail, beautifully rendered special effects and quality textures, the game's poor optimisation results in players regularly complaining about problems when playing the game with the highest settings although this doesn't cause any issues with different visually more superior titles. The core of RIFT is seemingly poorly optimised and given that it's unlikely to be rebuilt from the scratch in the near future, we're afraid that we'll just have to carry on gritting our teeth and dealing with it.
Weighted RNG Item
Loot drops aren't just random but a lottery. Random Number Generators (RNG) are pretty much a staple to most MMORPGs and not exclusive to RIFT. When a creature is defeated, the loot that it drops goes off an RNG table, each item on the table has a % chance of dropping making some items a rarer drop. The biggest issue with RIFT is that it often doesn't feel like there’s a random chance of getting a rare items/resource, it feels like a lottery due to the % drop being so rare and so low. When some of the key resources/items needed in the game e.g. Hearts, are so difficult to acquire, then combined with the fact that you need such a large amount of them to upgrade pretty much everything from weapons and armour to essences it creates a real issue for the majority of players. We can't help the feeling that accomplishments and rewards for time and effort go entirely ignored when everything is so strongly based on chance, which moreover adds to the content grind to artificially extend the lifetime of the game. We would appreciate something like a guaranteed gain system where if after a particular number of unsuccessful attempts to gain a particular item that normally drops by random you acquire it anyway, soothing the feeling of having wasted your time and constantly failing.
Promotional Event Currency
Different currencies for different promotional events are just another contribution to the grind. In a similar way to the above, we sometimes can't help the feeling of RIFT trying to capitalise on making everything way to hard way and too frustrating to acquire to simply force people to give up and just pay real cash. We're not denying the definite fact that it's always a balancing act with a free-to-play business model (albeit there are also optional subscription-based membership options), but we're convinced that there's absolutely no need to have this in each single feature of the game. The different promotional events allow players to perform dailies to acquire a particular event currency to then purchase items and unique mounts that are specific to the event. However, if players don't really want the unique mount for that event then it's almost pointless for them to take part in the event at all, which is wasted content. Instead we'd like to see a consolidated Promotional Event Currency that can be saved and used for any event shop items or mounts when a particular event finally rolls around.
Player versus Player Content
The little PVP that exists is completely imbalanced. Starting with the fact that PVP for the most part feels dead, even on PVP servers, there is very little world PVP that happens in the game and so most players are focused on playing the Warfronts for their PVP fix. Unfortunately, the matchmaking system is dreadful and so teams are often completely imbalanced and make for a one-sided ass kicking that is only appreciated by the ones doing the kicking. The biggest imbalance is due to gear and so even new players with very little high-end gear can be put into matches against veterans with all the best gear... that’s not fun... that's not fun at all. PVP Matchmaking needs to match gear over level; particularly given that world PVP is pretty non-existent.
Dimensions
The Dimensions need some more attention. As is so often the case with MMORPGs they create a unique feature that has a lot of draw to the game, exciting players to try out and creating an initial wow-factor (as in amazing, not as in World of Warcraft), to then seemingly abandoning the feature down the line and stop updating it and improving it and just relying on the fact that what they initially provided is enough. Invariably it isn't. For RIFT it is the Dimensions, the player/Guild-owned instances that players can construct their own adventure locations ranging from beautiful natural glades to towering castles. With a little more attention the feature would feel a lot fresher, starting out with giving players more Dimensions slots (which we freely admit should cost a hell of a lot, but that option would be better than none), new additions to crafting recipes for other professions (Dream weaving seems to get the odd update or even these can be improved), more building blocks, textures, colours and other styles of architecture that are already seen in the game. Basically, players have gone so long without a facelift that they’re tired of seeing the same old Dimensional content.
So that's what we'd change with RIFT, but more importantly what do you believe should be changed? What would you add to your own personal wish list? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
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