For a game that’s been out for only a little over a year, RIFT has a solid assortment of quality-of-life features. These are the little things that often go unnoticed, but really make a difference when to comes to our enjoyment within the game: smooth, built-in UI features, and the ability to customize those UIs further. A polished AH, the guild perk system, being able to flip between souls on the fly, the dungeon finder, achievement system, and the wardrobe system. Oh, yeah, and AoE looting. Other games have since added it, but RIFT was among the first big MMOs that added the feature.

Among the latest added 1.8 features, we’ve seen even more great quality-of-life features. The guild finder, the fishing and survival additions, and the new fishing dailies. The NPCs for which that are in actual convenient spots. Convenience? Come on– how often does that appear in an MMO? And last but not least, we can’t forget about leaderboards. They’re convenient in the sense that they display information that’s normally quite difficult to obtain, and what’s more– leaderboards are fun, and profit all kinds of players.

The beginning stages of RIFT’s Patch 1.7 are now on the PTS for player testing, and with the patch come some interesting changes to endgame. The PTS patch notes can be found here if you haven’t had a chance to check them out yet. The changes are an attempt to smooth out endgame progression in general and the gear obtained during the various phases of endgame. What does this mean, exactly? For starters, it’s a step in the right direction.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an editorial summing up the current state of RIFT’s endgame. In it, I basically discuss a gap that seems to be increasing in size between RIFT’s casual/social population and its raider population. The world of Telara is a great place to relax and enjoy small group content, but it also supports a thriving raiding community that’s eager to get back into action when Infernal Dawn is released. The problem is, there aren’t a lot of players in between these two groups. Thus, a gap is created. This makes it difficult for Hammerknell guilds to recruit and for players to obtain the gear necessary to become recruited.

RIFT has now had some time to settle into its cozy endgame state. The majority of players have had plenty of time to explore and decide on an endgame playstyle. Some players enjoy RIFT for its raiding content, others enjoy the casual and social aspects of the game’s solo, small group, and collection/achievement features. Most players know exactly what they want to achieve while they’re level 50, and this is a good thing, because it means that the game is stable.

One issue with this stability is the fact that there’s currently a sort of gap between the two largest groups of endgame players. RIFT, in general, has a split focus. Trion has been marketing the game toward raiders and toward casual solo/small group players. This is an excellent marketing strategy, but as a result, players are seeing a sort of a dichotomy between the two groups. RIFT has a large number of Hammerknell raiders, a large number of players who enjoy small group content, Chronicles, events, and achievements, and not a lot of players in between. This makes it difficult for raiding guilds to recruit.

In my last article, I focused on the continued enjoyment of the artifact system and what types of updates would need to occur for it to stay fun and fresh. But RIFT’s many pastimes need more than one article to fully discuss future possibilities; especially those hinted at by Scott Hartsman in his July 14th RIFT Into the Future! post. There he presents short and long-term goals Trion has for bringing changes to how players can spend their time.

Lets take a look at his comments on uses for experience at level 50 and the idea of Instant Adventures. Both seem to be logical progressions of how game content works currently within Telara and it will be great to see how Trion implements these ideas.

This week on Rift Podcast…

Hal Hanlin is our guest today. He is Rift’s Design Producer and tells us a bit about himself, and what he likes to play. He also goes over a lot of things directly Rift related and gives us some clarification on a few, and some new tidbits on others. Some of the content he covers includes:

* Soul system and its diversity
* Soul acquirement
* Rifts and all their forms
* Rewards from Rifts
* Endgame from Day 1
* Adding content after launch