The RIFT portion of yesterday’s Trion Friday live stream extravaganza was, unsurprisingly, focused on RIFT’s big move to a free-to-play system beginning on June 12th. Daglar joined Simon and Elrar and explained how some of the systems will work in greater detail as well as updated the RIFT community on some promising changes to the current Patron reward system. The team has been listening to all of our feedback and has made a few changes that, overall, make being a RIFT veteran a little more appealing.

Elrar also showed off the in-game shop in its current state and let Daglar talk a little bit about the different categories of items, the Loyalty tiers, and a whole lot more. To catch a replay of the live stream, you can see it here. Alternatively, keep reading to see our detailed highlights roundup.

Let’s dig right in and talk about the new information Daglar discussed regarding Patron bonuses, veteran rewards, and Storm Chaser edition purchasers:

• Veteran players will be receiving a one-time stipend of Credits based on how long total they have been subscribed for in the past. This amount hasn’t been disclosed yet. They’ll also be receiving a one-time stipend of 7000 Loyalty per month of past subscription time.
• Patron subscribers will receive Loyalty every month as well as access to daily stackable boosts. These boosts will stack up to 7 much like how the current Expert dungeon dailies stack.
• Patrons also receive priority when it comes to any possible login queues.
• Patron subscribers will be getting a discount on all items in the in-game store. Daglar said the team is looking for this to at least represent a 10% discount (possibly up to 15%).
• The Patron pass also, of course, grants players the summon-able banker, guild banker, trainer, etc.
• A monthly Credit stipend for Patrons is still currently not being considered.
• Trion will be giving anyone who purchased the one-year subscription Storm Chaser edition of Storm Legion $50 worth of Credits in the store. This decision was made directly based off player feedback. This is in addition to everything else we’ll be getting.
• Players with an annual or six-month subscription or a subscription that currently extends far past the June 12th date will be receiving a one-time bonus of Credits as well. The exact numbers and details for these bonuses aren’t known yet.
• All players who purchased Storm Chaser editions or hold a one-year or six-month subscription will also be receiving a special Ice Raptor mount for free.
• Trion’s Customer Service department is now willing to uphold refunds from up to 30 days of purchase (was 14 days).

Item Store Details

When the in-game store goes onto the PTS for player testing, the Credit system will actually be the same system that will be used on live. This means that players will be able to buy credits and have them transfer over to live servers. Daglar also mentioned that there will some kind of multiplier bonus for players who choose to do this. Dendrome and all of its content should be on the PTS next week.

The front page of the item store (see above– click to enlarge) will feature recommended items that look at your character’s stats, etc. as well as the standard featured items section and claim items section. The multicolored orbs on the top that we guessed might be connected to Loyalty tiers are exactly that. This section wasn’t finished during the stream, but players will be given certain mounts and items for reaching certain Loyalty tiers. There are also in-between Loyalty levels where small rewards like Experience vials are handed out. Rewards such as mounts work across every character made.

• Loyalty is earned through buying items in the shop, purchasing Credits, past subscription time, and current Patron subscription time.
• Patron Passes will be available in 3-day, 15-day, and 30-day units.
• Some store items can either be purchased with Credits or Plat (or currency marks or Valor). Other items are restricted to just Credits.
• Players will be able to use the store to gift certain items to other players.
• There will be two new bag slots added. Veteran players will have to purchase these if they would like them, but ideally our stipend should be able to cover that.
• We’ll be able to purchase additional role slots and have up to 20 total. These will be purchasable with Credits or Plat. The new role slots, again, will have to be purchased by veteran players. Wardrobe slots have also been extended out to 20 total and will be purchasable in the same fashion.

Transfiguration Baubles are the new weapon appearance customization item coming in RIFT 2.3. They will work kind of similar to Guild Wars 2‘s appearance customization where you essentially use the item, select both the weapon you want to use and the weapon you want to customize it to within the frame that pops up, and your weapon will gain the appearance of the other. Both weapons still remain in you inventory.

As far as gear in the item store goes, there is a way to see which gear is an upgrade for your character as well as a way to buy gear that doesn’t cost Credits. You can’t currently purchase anything above dungeon gear with Credits. In future tiers, this may change, but we will never see top-tier items purchasable for Credits, at least. In the interface is a handy currency counter that lets you see all of your raid/dungeon currencies. You’re able to conveniently purchase raid/dungeon gear requiring marks using the shop interface.

Now, the prices on these mark-purchased items are noticeably higher than in the current game. Trion is adding a multiplier to all mark currencies, currency bonuses, and the costs of raid/dungeon currency items in order to give the new currency/mark boosts more of an effect. The multiplier they used is even with current rewards and requirements, which means we won’t see a negative difference whatsoever. Things will cost more, but we’ll also be receiving more as rewards. Our current marks will also be affected by this multiplier when 2.3 goes live.

The shop has Supply Crates, which contain gear that’s completely randomized. While there’s a chance for the crates to contain blue items and above, the items are still not equal to raid pieces at all. There will also be some new runes in these boxes.

Rank 7 PvP gear is available for Credits (or Favor), but you still need the PvP rank in order to purchase it. Rank 8 gear is not available for Credits and is in the store for convenience only, much like raid gear.

Past world event mounts (at least some of them) are available for purchase in the store through event currency or Credits. Past world event goodies such as pets, food items, and other baubles will also be available.

Race changes, faction changes, name changes, guild name changes, and gender changes will all be available in the store. As Daglar mentioned on the forums, races and factions won’t be tied together when you make changes, which means that a Bahmi can be a Guardian, etc.

For F2P players, they will have to purchase all class slots and bag/bank slots separately for each character. Veteran players– which is essentially anyone who has purchased RIFT and has subscribed at one time– will keep everything they currently have as far as bag/bank slots and character slots across all characters. All players will either have to purchase Storm Legion (before free-to-play launches) or purchase the Storm Legion souls in order to play as those souls. Additional character slots won’t be added to the item store in 2.3, but that’s something the team is hoping to add.

For dimension lovers, there will be a couple of new keys to purchase from the store as well as a couple of keys only available through Loyalty tiers. There are some new dimension items, of course, as well as boxes that contain varieties of items. Trion is also working on letting players have more than one active dimension in the future.
 

Miscellaneous Tidbits
 

One of the new dimensions will be an area of Hailol, which is Atrophinius’ personal party town of sorts, which Elrar also previewed a bit for us. The Life plane will be taking on a new, friendlier approach in 2.3, which both explains this dimension’s origin and some of the interesting additions we previewed during the Dendrome live stream a couple weeks ago.

RIFT 2.3 will be bringing players a new set of Twisted Artifacts in Dendrome including the largest set of artifacts RIFT has seen thus far. Simon also briefly touched on the fact that players have been a little disappointed with Storm Legion‘s lack of achievement rewards and artifact achievement rewards and says that 2.3 will be bringing us a better taste of what we’ve been missing. From the sounds of it, there’s going to be a pretty awesome-looking cape rewarded from the achievement to hunt down every single rare mob in all of RIFT.

More random tidbits:

• Old-world RIFT cities will feature new guide NPCs that will help new players. Eventually, this is the goal for Storm Legion cities as well.
• As far as PvP goes, we’re going to be seeing a new season at some point. The team is not happy with Conquest decay, overall, and wants to eventually change how it works.
• More macro slots and some improvements to the Auction House are being looked at for the future.
• The new souls Daglar hinted at a while ago won’t be added until 3.0.
• If you’re a fan of this lovely outfit, Elrar previewed it in action and also showed off the back side. He also hinted about some kind of jester outfit existing in the shop.

Next week we’ll find out more about the REX and Loyalty systems during Trion’s live stream.

Daglar continued addressing a solid portion of player feedback on the forums yesterday. Among his posts, a few were especially interesting. He commented on what we’ll be seeing as far as race and faction change items in the cash shop as well as the future of server transfers and expansion content.

This first quote was regarding the possibility of additional character slots in the item store:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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Character slots is on the wish list, but we cannot say for certain if it will make the launch date.

Server transfers will remain free for your normal free weekly transfer. We could potentially in the distant future charge for multiple moves per week, but I don’t really like that idea and I’d rather get us to a better place with cross shard / single shard technology.

Faction and race changes are not linked. If you change yourself to a Bahmi as a guardian, you are still a Guardian. If you are a Kelari and change faction, you are still a Kelari.

Bahmi Guardian? Now that’s an interesting change.

Regarding new races appearing in the RIFT in-game store:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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We’d love to do more races some day, but there are huge amounts of work involved with our pipeline to make them function. If they came out they would come out likely at the same time as a major expansion. As the content (quests/landmass/advancement) of the expansion would be free, we’d probably charge a bundle for the classes and the races.

We also received a pretty nifty work-in-progress preview of the item store yesterday if you haven’t already checked it out.

Since this week’s huge bombshell announcement regarding RIFT going free-to-play beginning June 12th, Daglar and the entire Trion RIFT team have been quite diligent in making sure they keep the lines of communication open with the playerbase. Daglar has set a record with the amount of posts he’s made in this official forum thread (hence “Daglar Tracker”) which has been an overall solid source for player feedback.

Keep reading to see a couple of choice quotes that Daglar made yesterday regarding the possibility of additional servers for the F2P transition and thoughts on in-game shop gear, previous raid tiers, and some possible changes we may see to tier mark systems in the future.

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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We’ll have some on standby to bring up as required. There is little we can do about folks clamoring onto Icewatch as it stands now other than lock the server to transfers.

We’ll continue to work at optimizing ability lag which pops up from time to time — we’ve made some pretty big strides there recently.

This quote is an answer regarding whether or not top-tier gear will ever become available in RIFT‘s cash shop:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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Top tier won’t be available. When we do the shifts really depends on when we do the mark shifts we plan on doing in the future.

One of the things we feel we really screwed up on long term was creating to many types of marks – one for each tier. We want to simplify in the future, when T2 is released, we’ll be doing a multiplier on the number of raid marks and converting those into dungeon marks. Raid marks will only be earned then from the top tier raid – and potentially some quests for the non top tier raids.

The previous purchased gear will become available for sale for dungeon marks at new values based on the scale of dungeon marks. Credit pricing will then be based on the dungeon mark values – some of those items will not be cost effective to purchase with credits folks. Tier shifts won’t be happening every patch – just like today.

If you’re interested in helping Trion help us by giving them your feedback on this change, the team has also sent out surveys to subscribers who are signed up to receive RIFT emails. Check out that announcement here. The survey’s quick and gets to the point very quickly, which should help the team quite a bit when it comes to deciding on veteran/Loyalty rewards that are a little better incentive-wise than the currently-announced boosts.

In lieu of hearing a simple announcement regarding an arrival date for Patch 2.3, we received some other big news yesterday along with that patch date announcement. Yep, RIFT’s going free-to-play on June 12th, which is also when 2.3 will be opening its doors (and Dendrome). Most of us saw the hints of this move coming months ago in between the layoffs at Trion, the addition of the in-game shop, and Scott Hartsman’s departure. Yesterday’s news still came as a surprise to many of us, however, especially given the timing of the news.

Bill “Daglar” Fisher mentioned yesterday that the team had been planning this move for more than a year, but despite the fact that the team pushed one-year subscription plans during the launch of Storm Legion, veteran players were only given one month to absorb the F2P news. Many one-year subscribers are understandably feeling a little let down by this move, especially considering the fact that some are paid up with over 300 days remaining on their accounts.

There’s also the fact that Daglar admitted the following in a recent MMORPG.com interview:

“So why now? To be super blunt, if we could have made the transition to this model earlier last year we would have. This has been in the works for quite some time and we wanted to finish Storm Legion before we could really dig into the conversion.”

While Trion Worlds, undeniably, is a business and must think in business-minded terns while making decisions such as the one to delay the announcement of F2P until after players had tossed down one-year subscription plans and purchased Storm Legion, there’s a certain type of trust many players had with the company that they didn’t share with other gaming companies. For many, this trust has been essentially shattered after yesterday.

Trust issues aside, I also personally think that the playerbase should have been given more notice on this massive change to the game we’ve made our home in for these past two years. One month really isn’t a long time for such a bombshell announcement, especially when there are aspects about the F2P move that remain unclear. All in all, RIFT‘s move to F2P has provoked a wide mix of both negative and positive emotions and mixed reactions. Having different pricing options when it comes to choosing how to play a game is always nice, but the fact of the matter is that F2P often carries a stigma that results in one glaring fault– loss of quality.

RIFT‘s frequent content updates, while awesome in the past, have definitely suffered lately. It’s possible that our updates may pick up again once the game goes free-to-play, but the team will always need designers and artists working on new ideas, items, and graphics for the in-game cash shop. Our weekly updates will become cluttered with cash shop deals and sales on top of the bug fixes that may or may not be a bit lacking.

The truth remains to be seen on whether or not this will be what actually happens, of course, but most games that go free-to-play after a certain period of time tend to take on qualities that mirror a giant shopping mall rather than a game that’s simply wide open and ready to explore. F2P games tend to lose a lot of the simplicity that MMORPG fans enjoy about games that feature monthly subscriptions. Monthly subscriptions seem to be slowly becoming a thing of the past, unfortunately, but for some of us, that simple and non-market-y feeling of knowing we pay for what we get upfront was part of the allure of RIFT.

A sizable portion of veteran players also feel that the announced F2P model lacks incentives for veteran players to continue paying a monthly subscription, especially if they are already decked out with level 60 characters who are done with most of Storm Legion‘s current notoriety and currency grinding. The Patron boosts are fairly underwhelming and seem a little more suited toward up-and-coming level 60 characters and players who are still leveling alts.

Now, thanks to Trion not telling us all the details about the system just yet, there may be some worthwhile perks included in the Loyalty/Veteran Rewards crossover (including ways to use the new cosmetic weapon system that is being added to the in-game store) that should be announced soon. For now, we know that we’ll be receiving a one-time compensation of Loyalty and Credits, which is a step in the right direction. Unless something changes, we won’t be receiving a monthly Credits bonus if we choose to keep our subscriptions active, which is something Daglar touched on in a ginormous forum thread yesterday.

In many F2P games, this monthly allowance of credits/coins/tokens is what makes a continued subscription worthwhile. It also allows players who prefer the P2P system to experience a bit of the “pay and forget” simplicity that’s missing from the standard F2P system while still giving them some freedom to pick up random cosmetic shop goodies. While Daglar doesn’t think a monthly Credit allowance is the way to go, he does admit that the team is entirely open to feedback when it comes to improving the veteran Patron system. This is one positive, at least.

Another positive– or negative, depending on how you look at it– is the fact that while Daglar admitted in Reddit yesterday that the in-game store will feature gear with stats on it, he also clarified that the gear being offered will only consist of leveling gear as well as a “variety of dungeon gear” for level 60. No raiding gear or raid crafting components will be offered in the store when the F2P system launches. Presumably, this “dungeon gear” will consist of expert dungeon pieces or equivalents that offer new players and alts a way to grab all of the Hit and/or Toughness necessary to dive right into the raiding foray.

Some players are for this idea, since it will let new players experience RIFT‘s endgame experience quicker, but others feel that any gear offered with stats on it is a slippery slope that edges dangerously close to pay-to-win. If Expert gear is being offered now, what happens two raid tiers later down the road? Will early-tier raid gear also be offered in the shop then? I definitely agree that the ground seems a little slippery when questions like these can even be asked, but unfortunately we won’t know for sure until we see the system for ourselves and take a look at the items in the shop, the costs of the items, and hear Trion’s definitive plans for future additions, Loyalty rewards, and how exactly FEX will be controlled.

From the sounds of it, we’ll be able to preview the in-game shop on the PTS in the weeks to come. That’s when we’ll know more. For now, all we can do is offer our feedback, hope Trion listens, and decide where we stand. It’s a bombshell, all right. Let’s see where the pieces fall.

While we still don’t know exactly when RIFT 2.3 is coming out, Daglar did toss out a hint about one thing we’ll see in RIFT 2.4– a new 20-man raid. He also gave us one bit of reassuring news on the length of time that will go between these next two updates:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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Next question is when is 2.4? Currently scheduled for a shorter amount of time than 2.2 to 2.3.

Daglar wasn’t quite as generous with hints when it came to the PvP front of the game. In this forum thread, he mentioned the following:

“There is no current ETA for another Warfront. There is no need for conspiracy theories that no one plays PvP in RIFT – quite a few folks do. The content of PvP is typically, the PvP itself. New maps are great, and we’d love to provide more when the time is right – but I cannot give you a date and or time when a new Warfront will be delivered.”

One of the features players most commonly request is the ability to alter the appearance of our weapons through RIFT‘s Wardrobe system. Many players had hoped we’d gain the ability to change the appearance of our weapons in Storm Legion. It didn’t happen, unfortunately, but Daglar did have some excellent news yesterday for players who have been faithfully reminding Trion’s RIFT team that this feature is still very much needed:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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Wardrobe will not be available for weapons. However we have another solution coming down the pipe for 2.3 to customize weapon appearances.

Later in the same thread, Pithos added an extra detail and told us that yes, this new system will also affect the appearance of shields and other off-hand items. Hooray!

There are some interesting changes and additions coming in 2.3 including a new chronicle. When will we see new souls though? Hints and more hints.

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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More chronicles are in the works. You should expect one with 2.3.

~Daglar

In response to this question: Even if these new souls are not to be expected within the next weeks, I’m looking forward to that!
Anyway… the one new soul in SL was no reason for Trion to give us another role slot… will the second new soul now finally be reason enough for a few more???
THAT would be nice!

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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2.3

Daglar shared a bit of good news for Warrior players who enjoy using Combat Veteran Warlord specs that also include abilities found in the Paladin soul. The Paladin soul still has a few clunky “flavor” ability requirements that require the use of a shield. This won’t be the case for much longer!

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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The flavor is nice on the Paladin, but at the end of the day the game play and synergy suffers for it. I’ve asked Aillion to remove the shield requirement on a number of Paladin abilities – and to rename the ones that would be silly without it.

Hm, that means a change in name for Shield Charge. ‘Shiny Wings O’ Light Charge’, anyone? Nah, probably not.

…Well, kind of, anyway. Since this week’s Daglar-styled forum hint about our two class devs being hard at work designing brand new souls, the RIFT community’s been abuzz with all sorts of speculation and opinions on what we’ll see as far as new souls go and when exactly we’ll see them added to the game. Daglar tossed out a couple of additional hints yesterday and briefly mentioned the fact that Trion seriously considered adding in another calling for Storm Legion, but decided to go with new souls instead.

This reply was in regards to a question on whether we’ll see specific souls this time around or a completely new calling:

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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New soul yes. New calling no.

We played around with a variety of ideas for a new calling for Storm Legion but felt that the game and our players were actually best served by expanding the class system we have.

Later on in the thread, Dalgar answered a forum poster who asked if we’d see the new souls in a few months time with, “Nope, not a few months. Longer than a few.” He posted one more time to remind players that creating new souls and continually balancing them can be an extremely involved task and tends to take longer than most players realize. “Quite a few tasks that people think are “super fast” are actually the result of multiple months worth of work,” he said. “WTB magic wand that makes things go faster.”

Sadly, we’re lacking that magic wand to help Daglar and his team out. We are left with a larger hint about what type of time frame we’re looking at, however. It definitely sounds like these new souls are nowhere ready to meet the public eye just yet. That just means we have more to look forward to!

You could always guess that new souls were always coming to RIFT, but in the first two years of life they were only hinted at by going into an expansion. With the shake-up with senior management that hit recently, are we going to be getting more souls sooner than the next expansion?

Will we finally see some of the original Telara design where souls are treated as rewards or loot drops? Interesting times ahead.

Originally posted by Daglar (Source)

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There is a difference between being unaware and having to many other tasks on him to address it. His full time job is not to read and respond to the forums and address every issue – though he does an absolutely amazing job of making additional time to do so. I on the other hand can go ask him to re-adjust his priority for the day and modify something.

I hate talking about things that are not close to being ready, but Kervik and Aillion are pretty busy working on brand new souls and other class related features for the future right now.

Daglar
Creative Director: RIFT

Free month of subscription time if someone can guess what those souls are.