IAmA RIFT Development Team - We are Bill Fisher, Creative Director & too many others to name! AMA

I have some reservations about going F2P, but I'm taking a wait and see approach. I want more people to play and appreciate Rift, so I hope that this move encourages a lot of people to return or to join for the first time.

That said, the Patron bonuses feel VERY underwhelming at this stage. I know you're still developing it, but at this point, what's listed on the website (getting experience/movement/money/etc. boosts and being able to call a banker/mail anywhere) is very, very lackluster, and I feel very little incentive to continue subbing once my subscription ends. I'm sure I'm not the only subscriber whose reaction to the initial Patron offerings is disappointment. I'm hoping Trion can come up with something that makes maintaining a subscription worthwhile.

We'll continue to evaluate our offering, but its really important to understand that we want Patron status to be a nice bonus, not a complete requirement to play the game. If we made it a requirement, we wouldn't really be upholding the ideal of offering an amazing game for free. We don't want to trick you into paying, we dont want to force you to pay. We'll continue to look at feedback, adapt, and adjust - thats what we do here on the RIFT team! - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Can you elaborate on what Gear will be for sale? Or not for sale? Will the gear not up for grabs be the stuff that's bought with dungeon marks/raid marks? What about crafted weaponry that is on-par with raid material?

The best gear in the game won't have a price tag on it. Raid mark gear is typically the best in the game - we don't have any level 60 raid mark gear on the store for credits. A variety of the dungeon gear is available. We are not currently planning on selling any of the top end raid crafting components either.

I noticed you specifically said raid +mark+ gear won't appear in the store. Does that mean we can expect to gear that is dropped from raid bosses to appear in it?

Nope you won't find the gear drops on the merchant either. I'm not trying to be trixy with my words folks. I'm to blunt for that. - Bill "Daglar" Fisher, Creative Director

Thank you. I don't mean any harm, it's just our job as internet superheroes to pick apart everything you say.

No worries - thank you for upholding your sworn duties! James "Elrar" Nichols, Community Manager

Will the dungeon gear upgrade items be for sale as well? The Empyreal Cells?

Yes, the cells are available for marks or Credits. -Bill Fisher, Creative Director

To offer an alternative view on this, end game is more than the top end raids or raiding in general. Part of end game is having to go through the regular dungeons and then through experts to gear up. Personally I feel that allowing players to buy their way past the 'previous tiers' of endgame undermines the integrity of the Rift's endgame as a whole.

I don't expect every user or even many users to buy dungeon gear from the store. You are still going to find plenty of people working their way through the progression that the game has to offer. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

What will happen to my 2 year sub?

You will be converted to Patron status and enjoy all the benefits it offers. Check out the website (www.riftgame.com/free) for more details. - Bill "Daglar" Fisher, Creative Director

Will you guys look at the incentives for a subscription again? As it looks currently, they are only useful for leveling a twink (except the mount speed buff) and I see no reason to renew my sub. You should actually give incentives for a subscription that would appeal to everyone and not only ones that still have low level chars. Other games for example give you currency for the ingame store or other useful stuff

We'll keep an eye on the feedback - however the line to draw here is insuring that Patron status is not viewed as "required". If we make Patron status overwhelmingly amazing, then its required, and we really failed at making a good free to play model. There are benefits for max level characters in Patron status - currency/tokens, convenience features, as well as boosts to notoriety, prestige, favor, etc. Keep the feedback coming, but try to balance in your mind "good value" vs "required to play the game". - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

2.3 was the slowest content release patch in the history of Rift. The only small hint of hope you gave us between 2.3 and 2.4 was the time between would be shorter than 2.2 and 2.3. Well, with 2.3 launching June 12th and 2.2 live on Feb 12th - that's a huge gap of time. Even if 2.4 came out 1 month sooner than 2.3 - still a massive gap of time.

I only play this game to raid content and I'm sure others are very similar to me - post 2.3 are we looking at getting the speedy updates we're used to getting pre-stormlegion? I'm not sure a new 10 man will be enough to keep many people in my guild interested for another 3-4 months, and we're seeing raiding guilds lose player after player after player that it's almost impossible to recruit.

I'm not going to hate on F2P since it's a business model that works, though, I just really hope it doesn't effect the content release in terms of PVE raiding. Or if it does, effects it in a more positive light. The only downfall I could see coming from F2P is that with more players (casual) you may want to make content more accessible and therefor easier, no?

Our goal is to make sure that our updates are faster than 2.2 to 2.3 - we unfortunately can't make stuff instantly - I wish we could! There is no grand plan to make RIFT more "casual" - we feel that the game is at about the right difficulty level. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Will loyalty rewards be explained at some point? I have 36+ months already purchased on my account and would like to know what further loyalty rewards are available.

The SL $99 pre-order is now a big letdown in retrospect.

We'll be going into more detail on whats available through Loyalty in the upcoming weeks. You'll be able to take a look at everything when its on PTS as well. There are some exclusive costumes, as well as mounts, dimensions, and account benefits. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

I think the biggest concern us raiders have is how this will affect the end game of Rift. I've been playing since about a month after launch and have enjoyed raiding in this game. It's why I play MMOs. All the rest of the stuff is just fluff to me.

The largest negative backlash from this announcement has been from the raiding community that has seen other games go F2P and have their end game destroyed.

Will F2P conversion mean a slow down or death of end-game, PVE content for Rift? Will it become just a casual home for players? Help alleviate our concerns!

Raiders shouldn't be worried, we have two new 20 player raids coming out in patch 2.4.

RIFT is still the same game - its just free now.

When new players come into the game look at them like you do every other potential raider -- someone that might be helping you fight off the planes and kill internet dragons! Bill "Daglar" Fisher, Creative Director

The patron bonuses seem a bit lacking in benefit in the long run aside from the token bonuses. Has any thought been given to giving patron players a stipend of points to spend in the cash shop as per what other MMOs with a hybrid F2P/subscriber model have adopted?

edited out the first question since it was already answered.

As with everything in RIFT - our plans could change at some point in time, but we wanted to go out the door with the current plan in place. Feedback, and good old fashioned data will help guide the future :) - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

I played RIFT a lot at launch but unsubscribed after about 5 or 6 months, just before my first daughter was born. With this new free-to-play model will I still have access to my original characters and gear or will I need to create an all-new character and start the grind over?

Also, not a question but thanks a lot for embracing the F2P model. From what I've read you guys are doing it right, and with the increased expenses of being a dad I'm glad I'll be able to delve back into the RIFT without worrying about where that $15/month could have gone instead.

No your characters are still there waiting for you in Telara! - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

A huge thanks to everyone for coming out for the AMA today - we'll keep an eye out for any stragglers but for now it's time to get back to work!

We're excited for RIFT 2.3: Empyreal Assault arriving June 12 - for all the details you can read more at www.riftgame.com/free

We're doing another Q&A and going over the details of the Free-to-Play system for this Friday's LIVE Stream - tune in @ 1:30PM Pacific (8:30PM GMT) www.twitch.tv/trionworlds

Cheers!

RiftDevTeam -

I know the population is small, but historically your RP community has been some of your staunchest supporters; and have done much to maintain a good game community. With only one server tagged "RP" remaining, and the high number of non-rp players on it, it is already beleaguered by non-rpers, many of whom make an ongoing effort to ruin the enjoyment of people on the RP server doing RP.

You already have shown a very lax attitude towards supporting them, and somewhere have it stated that beyond some general name enforcement (which you don't do, by the way) there is no additional consideration to rp players.

With the way F2P brings an even higher level of lowbrow players, will there be any attempt at all to support the rp community? And if so, can you comment on the level of support. Maybe actually doing name-enforcement? Not that I don't love characters named testicularcancer running around... Or will you provide an higher level of segregation for the RP server?

We love the creativity and enthusiasm many of you on Faeblight & Argent have for RIFT and the world of Telara, but we are not going to do any additional segregation of our players. I would highly suggest that you don't think of new players as "low brow" - it takes the community to make the community. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

I am a current subscriber. If I stay as a "patron", what happens if I skip paying for a month or two. Obviously I can still play the game. But do I lose the patron extras during that time? Or do I get to keep them since I purchased both Rift original and Storm legion, and have been a subscriber for almost a year?

Patron benefits are primarily boosts you can activate daily and convenience features, you will not be able to activate them while you are not a Patron. We are not adding anything to Patron status that would be detrimental if removed such as bag space. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

I just got a code from raptr, should I activate it before the change to f2p? Or can I wait and still activate it after the switch and get 30 days of subscriber?

You can wait, but you'll get more bang for-your-buck (so to speak) if you claim it now!

What do you have in mind to put in the shops? I've heard/seen the following mentioned anything to add?

• Dungeon Quality Gear
• Race/Class/Cosmetic Changes
• Dimension Zones & Items
• Aesthetic Items
• Collectible Items (Pets for ex.)
• Unlockable Classes

Will you charge (in the future) to unlock new Dungeons, Raids, Content or will it be purely service items and aesthetic items that will be purchased?

We don't plan on putting any dungeons, raids, or content behind paywalls. We want more people playing together, not a few folks playing in a walled garden. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

I am a big fan of the "fluff" items. Wardrobe items, companion pets, sheeping wands, hairstyles, etc. Are all or most of these type of things going to be put in the cash shop?

We'll have a variety of new wardrobe items, pets, and mounts up there. We'd love to do additional hairstyles some day, but that isn't in the cards today. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

(1) Under the Rift Store, you guys mentioned that we can also buy 'gear'.. What do you mean by this?

(2) Will there be 'premium items' in the game like XP boosts that are sellable in the AH?

(3) Are there any other rewards or benefits for being a subscriber after F2P launch being planned?

(4) Was exploiting Raptr rewards a reason why Rift went F2P?

1. We mean that there are equipable items for sale on the RIFT store - these are not the top end items in the game however.
   
2. Most things purchased from the store are not tradable - though you can gift them to a friend at the time of purchase. There will be exp boosts.
   
3. When the conversion happens you'll become a Patron and enjoy all those benefits. Check out the website (www.riftgame.com/free) :)
   

In addition to that we'll be giving folks a stipend of credits based on their past subscription time.

So Patrons are NOT going to get some REX each month as part of their subscription? I know we will get a set amount for previous subscription time, but any after that will have to be purchased on top of a subscription?

If so, please consider adding a REX stipend to the subscription like some other F2P games use.

REX is a single item that enables the exchange of Cash for Credits - a stipend of Credits is worthwhile feedback though, so thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Our goal is to make sure that it doesn't feel like a requirement to be a Patron - just a super awesome bonus! We're spending the next 30 days and beyond fine-tuning what that means for RIFT :)

Perhaps I missed this, but I still would like to know what the benefit to a Patron would be once all characters are maxxed on all? What would be the benefit of continuing to pay funds, if there is no longer anything to be gained?

Well, your currency/token gain rate is increased, you can activate daily notoriety boosts, and you have access to a variety of convenience features (Like Mount Speed bonus). I don't expect everyone playing RIFT to be a Patron - if we did then we wouldn't be changing our model :) - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

if it's not too late, i have a few questions..

• will update details become more frequent to maintain free to play players' interest?

• how do you feel about the negative reaction from current players?

• have you thought about a buy to play option like other games out there?

• how will you maintain a friendly game environment with potentially careless free to play players with paying players?

• will the difficulty change to accommodate free to play players?

• Updates will come out as often as we can. Doing a major game update isnt trivial, and I'm not a big fan of doing a major game update without either a major feature or a major piece of content.
  
• As for reactions from existing players - change is scary, some folks think this is the death of something they love. Its my job to try to make sure they realize that this isnt. It is just another step on the journey.
  
• Thought about a buy to play option, thought it was a terrible idea for RIFT :)
  
• The community has to help manage the community - as for careless free players - the ban hammer exists still - just because its free doesn't mean we can't remove you or your progress from our world.
  
• The difficulty of the game is not changing - free player does not have to mean "bad player" - that's a pretty terrible stereotype folks! - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

What does "Buying boost" means? Can you buy lets say a level 60 char?

Buying boosts such as potions that grant you additional experience, increased favor gain, etc. Things that increase your rate of gain - but not your power. - Bill "Daglar" Fisher, Creative Director

I am a bit confused about what is happening to the current subscribers. My current subscription still has some 250 days left on it. What will happen on the 12th? What does this 'credit' mean?

You will have 250 days of patron time. Credits are purchased with real money, and can be spent on the RIFT store.

Purchasing credits, and spending credits also grants Loyalty, which is a new system to reward folks that choose to pay - similar to our Veteran Rewards program.

You'll also receive a one-time bonus of Credits based on how long you've been a subscriber on June 12. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

For those keeping the subscription: Will subscription prices change?.

Also I see you planning on 5, 15 days "subscriptions/patron passes", how will they be priced?

Can you give more info on the REX (Rift Exchange)? What sort of things can be bought with REX?

Subscription pricing won't be changing. As for the short term patron passes, those are priced in credits in game.

They are not as good a deal as going with a recurring sub - but we wanted to offer the option to allow folks to easily try out the benefits of being a Patron!

REX is used in game to grant your account credits - basically its a tradeable bag of credits that you can sell, trade, or give away. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Will there be money to fix existing prevalent bugs?

And hopefully everyone realizes many bugs are insanely difficult to narrow down and may take a lot of time.

We hotfix every week and fix issues as quickly as we can. That isn't changing! - Bill "Daglar" Fisher, Creative Director

It looks like we'll be able to buy more bag slots.

Will we purchase those with credits or loyalty?

Will we be able to get more bank bag slots too?

Yes, we are adding an additional 2 bag slots that can be unlocked. We are expanding bank space as well. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Will these be the same 2 bag slots that get you from free account to Storm Legion for a total of 5 or can my 5 bag Storm Legion account go to 7?

With bag space going up any plans to make them more manageable so the bags don't block the whole screen when open?

Seven total if you unlock them. We are getting near the point where we start polishing things, so we'll be taking a look at the "screen full of bags" issue hopefully before we push it out :) - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Will Free-to-Play introduce player race changes/faction changes?

Yep! - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

I see that there will be many boosts added with the patron status. You claim that everything will remain just as it was originally. I am curious however - will future updates bring higher costs in for new gear as to offer a better incentive for people to subscribe?

You can expect costs to stay pretty similar to what they are today. Again we are not trying to force a subscription down your throat, we want to make sure its a good offering not a requirement. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Will you guys invest in PvP? As a F2P game you will need the Emergent Gameplay PvP creates, but that will ask for the soul system to be simplified and for less, catchier, simpler abilities.

So?

We've invested in PvP from the begining and continue to do so - not at the rate that the PvP community wants, but sadly I can't work magic. No, souls are not going to be simplified, and no - were still not adding arenas any time soon. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

RIFT has always had a fairly fast cadence in terms of releases. I've always felt you guys tried to give players as much as you can for the subscription money we give you. Thank you.

While you mention upcoming roadmaps, are there timeframes that we can expect each update to happen? For example, SWTOR mentioned they are on a 6 week content cycle. Can we be assured, with a public timeline, of the content that's coming down the pipeline?

Sorry guys, I won't give specific timelines for anything. I don't announce stuff before its ready or more set.

The thing about game development (much like life is) stuff happens. Stuff gets in the way, dates change.

You'd be surprised how many dates have changed over the development of all of the patches of RIFT. Features cut, or shuffled to the next patch.

2.3 has taken more time than we'd otherwise want, and we are going to make sure that 2.4 does not take as long as 2.3. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Have you considered combining the real money currency with Defiance's real money currency into like a Trion bucks thing?

A lot of other companies do this, like all of Perfect World's multiple MMOs use the "Zen" system and they can be spent in any game like Neverwinter and Blacklight: Retribution. Similarly, Sony has "Station Cash" that can be used across all of their games like Planetside 2 and DC Universe Online.

As a player of Defiance, I'm considering getting into Rift and it would be really encouraging if the two real money currencies in the games were combined!

We might investigate it some day, but the decision was made early on to ship these products as separate wallet entities. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Do you have any plans for correcting the issues with rift's horrible engine perhaps a patch that allows rift to utilize gpu more efficiently or allow multi-core processor support?

Check out the post on our forums about RIFT and optimization. We've got an engineer looking at major optemizations full time right now, and more will spin up to help with that as they come online. Thanks Vknit for posting the link below! - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

In an interview on Massively, you talked about being able to buy more role slots in the store. Is there going to be a limit on how many you can get? If so, how many?

20 total role slots (more than enough!) will be available in 2.3. Currently slated to give out a few of those via Loyalty as well. (more on that next week) - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Have you considered the possibility that the existing (or new) P2P community will alienate or subjugate the new F2P crowd? I could very easily see guilds discriminating against F2P players and offering spots for only P2P. After all, why shouldn't they? By your own model no F2P player will be able to progress as fast as any P2P, and a raiding guild can't be expected to wait up on a hand full of people.

I can imagine players doing quite a few things. But those things are up to the players. I can't enforce a policy on the users - there are guilds out there that require maxed CQ power, there are guilds that raid 7 days a week, and there are guilds that don't care about the progression race and just have fun. How people run their guilds is up to them. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

So why now for the change to F2P? What is the real focus for the change? I know from reading from the forums that "it was what the players wanted" but there seems to be some backlash on the rift forums about it.

I love our community, I really do, but with a community of our size, I could offer everyone $100.00 and there would be backlash about it. Note: I am not offering anyone $100.00. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Being someone that has played since beta and has always kept up their sub I am wondering .. The Patron status is all well and good I guess but then I see it can be purchased in the store as well. So really the veteran items are all we will have to distinguish the truly loyal players. Are those items going to be for sale as well? Is there going to be anything left that will really distinguish your loyal players who have been with you from the start?

Veteran rewards are going to be mixed into the Loyalty system. Those rewards wont be for sale. Every month of subscription time gives you Loyalty - so folks that have been with us since the start will have a huge head start on the loyalty system. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

What will the status of returning accounts with multiple character slots be? Will we keep our mules and stuff? I raided in RIFT for about a year and it was the best MMO experience I've ever had, I'm curious to see how you implement this and whether returning subs will get boned.

If you have ever purchased RIFT you are not losing anything. You wont lose character slots, you wont lose role slots, you wont lose bag slots. We are not taking away. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

BoA cores, please tell me that these will be available. And having been a subscriber for over two years, I'm going to be very disappointed if I will have to fork over more cash for one. Please elaborate.

Right now we a number of the previous event rewards up for sale out of season on the RIFT Store. Adding an additional one at a high token price has been on our list of things to do - in fact, I'll see about doing that after this AMA. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Will there still be Carnivals, and other annual events? Still support the Mobile App?

Were not stopping with our world events. The mobile app isn't going away, but right now we are not focusing resources on it. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Was this decision influenced by the fact Trion only want to have one Flagship Subscription MMO in its ranks? And by that I assume Archeage will be Subscription based.

This decision has zero to do with any other products at Trion. ArcheAge news will be forthcoming over the year - but I don't work on it :) - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

With recent games like Neverwinter having features like the Foundry where players can create there own maps, Does RIFT have plans to move dimensions towards player made PVE and PVP content?

We have lots of ideas on how to expand dimensions, its all about finding the right time to do it. The Foundry is neat, but you won't see player created PvE levels any time soon in RIFT. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

Hey Rift team!

First, I want to thank you for making such a high-quality game, and for pushing content so fast. I have made a lot of friends in this game, and love raiding with the group.

Here are a few questions for you.

1) You mention being able to buy gear, but not best-in-slot. This is concerning to many people, and some more information would be lovely. On what level of gear are we talking? Are we talking gear that would get you the hit required to run experts, or gear that would give you the hit for the raids?

2) Is the current veteran reward system staying or is it going to be completely replaced with a new system? On a similar, vein, are the current Favour, Prestige, XP, etc. vials going to be unnerfed for 51+?

3) Regarding the game itself, how are efforts coming to track down the cause of the flickering landscape, and the colour-changing faces that happen?

4) New conquest map anytime soon? Stillmoor is getting very stale.

I may have more questions later :)

~Felyna, mage of Dirty Deeds on Faeblight (US)

1. This should be covered above in some other posts :). (Short answer, no raid gear)
   
2. The veteran reward system will be rolled into the Loyalty system. Certain things may not make it across in the transition like the old potions - the old potions won't be un-nerfed for sure.
   
3. Its been quite hard to reproduce reliably internally, I wish I had better news there. Without a consistent reproduction case its very hard to fix.
   
4. I'd love to put in another map, its been on the wish list for a while now. We'd been looking at the twin fort area in Steppes of Infinity for the next one. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director

My biggest question: Is the intent to make the Patron boosts stack on top of the current leveling speed of Rift? Or are we going to see XP nerfs for quests and mobs to stretch things out for non-Patrons?

I love Rift, but Storm Legion already felt so slow, and the only other F2P game I have much experience with - LotRO - has the most excruciatingly slow leveling curve I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

We are not nerfing the gain rate on anything to make Patron status required. We feel that would be doing a disservice to everyone - and it wasn't the right choice for RIFT. - Bill Fisher, Creative Director