Originally posted by Tacitus (Source)

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Just to summarize some of the current threads and provide responses…

Teleports - Yes, there appears to be an issue with the teleports sometimes not working when first joining IA. This has been oddly difficult to repro, and we are still investigating.

Rewards at 50 - It appears I misspoke previously. The rewards for a level 50 are supposed to be the same for mentored IA as it is for the previous level 50 IA. Unfortunately, the actual set-up did not quite match that intent. The difference currently is that for all IA, you have a chance for a reward that is constant between both old and new IA. In old IA, this reward is always Sourcestone. In new IA, this reward is split between chances for Sourcestone and a random piece of gear. The gear is intended for leveling characters to replace what they would otherwise get from questing. For a level 50, this gear is not useful – and effectively just cut their reward rate of ISS in half.

That was not and still is not the intent. We have already made changes to this internally that are being tested. This change will make it so that any character level 48+ will get an ISS instead of a random green item whenever that loot roll comes up, effectively returning their ISS reward rate to what it always should have been.

PA Experience - The XP rate for leveling characters is obviously pretty high, but it seems a bit underwhelming for for level 50 characters. Values for bonus PA experience for level 50 characters is being adjusted now, and will be pushed out as soon as we can.

Non-Mentored IA Queuing - This one is a bit more vague because we are still debating how we want to proceed. The top line summary is that we aren’t happy yet with the current system and want to refine it further. It is completely legitimate that a level 50 player would want to play IA and not be mentored for a whole variety of reasons. To force that player to travel out to a specific zone to do so… kind of diminishes the “Instant” part of “Instant Adventure”. So we are still working on this one, but it’ll take a bit longer as we balance against issues like fragmentation of the IA player base across too many zone groups and also the needs of what IA will be like post-expansion.

So, while I sadly don’t have concrete solution to announce yet, I just wanted to acknowledge that the complaint is not just heard, but that I completely agree.

Anyway, I know the above are some of the biggest feedback generators still out there. Auto-Mentor levels have already been raised and went Live. Other minor issues will continue to be polished as time permits (like the FM potato quests involving too much just standing around ). More leveling IA content already in development!

Originally posted from The Blog (Source)
Introducing Conquest – Test the latest in RIFT PvP on Thursday, 5/17

Three faction PvP and the essence of open world combat will soon storm upon the shores of the Public Test Shard!

Welcome to Conquest – choose your side and square off in a no-holds-barred, interdimensional battle royal on Thursday, 5/17 @ 4:00PM PDT (11:00PM GMT). This is the first massive test of this brand new feature!

Conquest at a Glance

• Engage in massive, cross-shard battles capturing the excitement of Open World PvP at its best!
• Align with one of three new factions, the biggest difference is their philosophy. (You will be able to change factions.)
• Earn rewards and bonuses for your team – or supercharge yourself with bonuses that can be used outside of Conquest!
• Everyone can contribute – crafters play a vital role in every Conquest battle.
• This is a brand new feature, details and specifics will likely change based on your feedback and play tests. For the latest info keep an eye on the PTS Forums!

Originally posted by Gersh (Source)

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Afternoon everyone,

As always I want to start out with a big thanks for all the feedback. Planar Attunment is a really big system and we’re expecting to find lots of small issues and concerns with it and plan on iterating on it heavily in the upcoming weeks.

In the meantime lets see if I shed a little bit of light on a couple of items mentioned in this thread

XP and Time to level

As it stands the current XP values have not yet been tuned at all based off activities and rates players can achieve in game. The first round of numbers are completely rough and will be tuned heavily over the next week or so.

• XP rate will be increase on PTS for a week to help people get points to test the system. After which we will revert to more normal rates to finalize the progression speed before release.
• We are looking into the bugs with Daily quests and AA xp and hope to have that resolved soon
• We expect most players to get a single “Ding” in 1 to 3 hours of gameplay
• Gaining XP for the AA system will be alot more casual friendly, it is not our goal to make the best way to “Grind” a group activity that requires 5 people speed grinding mobs
• Almost every peice of endgame content will have its XP values tweaked specifically for PA.

While we work on the rest of the changes in today’s PTS update we wanted to provide the balance change notes first. Thanks for your feedback!

PVP:
* Based on feedback we have removed the mitigation and critical bonus reduction changes to Valor.

Champion:
*Destroyer’s Bearing – No longer increases the damage of only Attack Point consuming abilities, it now affects all ability attacks.
*Two Handed Specialization – Is now called Weapon Specialization and enhances all attacks, ranged attacks receive half the bonus melee does.

Paragon:
*Teaching of the Five Rings – Now enhances all attacks, ranged attacks receive half the bonus melee does.
* Way of the Mountain – The damage increase to follow up attacks has been increased to 30%.
* Way of the Wind – Now deals its damage as Air damage instead of Physical damage.
* Paired Strike – Now deals Air damage instead of Physical damage. The number of follow up attacks that critically hit has increased from 1 to 3.
* Strike Like Iron – The Damage enhancement has been increased to 20/35/50%.
* Deadly Grace – Now deals damage based on how many points have been spent in the Paragon soul tree. The balance is set so that if you take Deadly Grace when it is first available it will give the same bonus that it used to, from there it will go up for every point spent in the Paragon soul.

Beastmaster:
* Fight As One – Now increases the chance to get a critical hit by 5/10/15% and melee damage by 15/30/45%. It has also had its duration increased to 30 seconds and its cooldown reduced to 25 seconds.

Riftblade:
* Avatar of the Rift – Increased the amount that attack power affects Elemental ability attacks.
* Elemental Touch – Now based on a percentage of Attack Power. This percentage is modified by the number of points spent in the Riftblade soul.
* Enhanced Burst – Now 3 points and increases damage by 10/20/30%.
* Empowered Strikes – New Tier 5 talent that enhances Autoattack damage by a percentage of Attack Power. This percentage is modified by the number of points spent in the Riftblade soul.
* Soul Tree points have been reset due to the addition of a new talent.

Originally post by Elrar (Source)

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Hey all,

We wanted to post a quick follow-up to some of the feedback you have been sharing with us.

As you may have seen, we’ve recently expanded one “Wargroup”, or a group of shards who can engage in Warfronts together, to include additional shards. This was done to directly address queue times for Warfronts and to allow for more players to engage in PvP faster.

We’re closely monitoring this change for any issues or bugs that arise as well as to see if it leads to improved queue times. We will keep you updated on our decision to expand additional Wargroups in the future.

Furthermore, we’re also looking at improving match-making between pre-made groups so that, whenever possible, a pre-made will face a pre-made and have less mixing with random pick up groups.

Lastly, starting tonight in Europe and tomorrow in North America (05/27) you’ll see a number of improvements to Warfronts that will encourage more competitive gameplay and coordination, here’s a first look at the notes:

Originally by Archonix (Source)

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Evening!

Continuing with the overall balance updates for PvP in 1.2, we have some additional info on changes that should be hitting PTS over the course of the next few days.

Editor’s Note: There are lots of things to get caught up on. This weekend I got married so I’m just catching up!

Happy Friday all!

As we head into the weekend we wanted to give you an update on what you have to expect to see in the near future.

The team here has put together posts for each of the 4 Archetypes about upcoming changes to their respective souls, in addition to an update on PvP, Crafting and Expert Dungeons.

Please see the links below for all the info – thanks and have fun!

• Soul Updates
• Warriors
• Rogues
• Clerics
• Mages
• PvP Update
• Crafting Update
• Expert Dungeon Updates

Originally posted by Elar (Source)

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Hail Ascended!

We want to thank everyone for coming out today and taking part in the most massive event RIFT has ever seen. Our first run this morning on the European servers was a true test of the platform we have built and a learning experience for us all. With the hold on the final phases in the River of Souls event we have decided to extend Phase 1 an additional week.

This extension will allow everyone more opportunities to earn the event rewards, but we’re not stopping there! Here are a couple of improvements you can look forward to in the next day:

Increasing the amount of Otherworldy Sourcestones you can earn from Death Rifts and Invasions
More new rewards for purchase from the World Event merchant!

We’re working on rolling these changes out and will share the full details when they go live.

In the end, more people will have the opportunity to enjoy the event and all the rewards that come with it. We’re thrilled by how many of you turned up today and your encouragement is why we are committed to providing first-class World Events– anything less is unacceptable.

So enjoy the extra week and brand new rewards – We’ll see you next Saturday (04/16/11) at 12:00PM server time when we push Alsbeth back to her bastion once and for all!

Have a great weekend,
The RIFT Development Team

Originally posted by Sweet (Source)

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I just wanted to jump in and answer a few questions and concerns we’ve been seeing come up over past couple of days.

Saboteurs
Firstly we’re going to roll-back the changes to Charge range; they’ll be back to the same levels as they are on Live at the moment. Regarding damage, put simply some Saboteurs specs are doing far too much damage in both PVP and PVE across multiple level ranges including 50. In part this was due to an armor penetration bug however a significant portion of it is also due to Charge Booster. We’re still not entirely happy with Charge Booster as is it exists on the Test shard and we’ll be updating it further to reward players who invest deeper into the Saboteur tree. We’re not trying to force people to have to spend 51 points in Saboteur we’re just trying to make it a more attractive option than what it currently is.

Originally posted by Udon (Source)

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The crafting forums have been abuzz with a lot of issues and feedback and we wanted to check in and let you know that we are listening. We’re working diligently to get in a slew of fixes and tweaks by our next major patch. Here’s a preview of just a few issues we’re addressing:

• Better Faction Recipes – Any recipes rewarded from factions that used to be Uncommon are now Rare (Blue)!
• Better Potion Cooldown Groups – There was an issue with potions which caused them all to be on the same cooldown. They have now been divided into groups to make them more useable.
• Better Harvesting Rates – Wood, Ore, and Plant resources have gotten a major tweak. There should be more resources with quicker respawns throughout the world.
• Outfitter Supply Bags – These should no longer award Wood and Metal, but Cloth and Leather.
• Parchment & Vellum – These recipes will be available from Artificer Trainers and useable at Looms.