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Today, Arithion of Riftpodcast.com posted a recorded interview she had with Berender Fish, Adam Heteny, and Billy Shaughnessy of the Instance and Raid team. The interview detailed what we as players should expect from instances and more importantly, what to expect for the end game and how progression works. We already know that we should expect dungeons and their expert versions, and we have also been told that raids do exist, but what we don’t know is how they work together. What we’ve learned is that there is a steady character progression, i.e. gearing up, that all characters will go through.
Dungeons and Five Man Content
We’ve known for quite some time that this game will have plenty of dungeons, and hopefully you’ve watched and read about all the reveals so far. What we found out today that there will be ten different dungeons in total at release. Almost every zone, if not all of them, will have a dungeon associated with it, tied into the story line the drives the zone. Each one of these zones has an Expert Mode associated with it. All Expert Modes are meant for level 50 players that have their difficulty toggled up.
The main difference between Normal and Expert, outside of difficulty, is the content and layout. Experts will contain different boss mechanics, additional bosses, new areas to explore and new story plots. An example was given that in a Normal Mode you may see a group of miners working on a section of the dungeon and when you come back at 50, those miners have finished their work and you’ll find an additional tunnel to explore.
Experts also carry a lockout timer that resets daily much like Warcraft’s Heroic Dungeons. Before you start thinking about how this might limit your gameplay, you have to remember that there will be 10 dungeons that you will have access to. Each dungeon also has a daily quest associated with it; every time you enter the dungeon you receive a quest (in normal and expert) to kill all the bosses and gives the player a reward at the end.
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Endgame Progression: Gear, Grinds, Reputations and Content
Every player who loves the “endgame” play in MMOGs is always concerned about progression. How do you go from first hitting level 50 to getting ready to finishing the current raid tier? Well in Rift, not only do they have tiered raid progression, but you have expert dungeon progression. What was left out of the previous description of dungeons is that Rift plans on having two different tiers of expert dungeons. Once you hit level 50 and complete the level 50 dungeons you will then have to move on to the first tier of Expert Dungeons. All Expert Dungeons are accessible right away, as there is no “keying” necessary, however the developers proclaimed that you would most likely die right away without the gear from the first tier. The same thing goes for raids as well. Don’t expect to be able to raid right away until you are significantly geared up from the second tier of Expert Dungeons.
The higher tiered Expert Dungeons also differ more from their normal counterparts in terms of extra bosses, bigger story elements, extended layouts and additional content.
We are now beginning to grasp the big picture on what we will be doing once we ding 50. So now we have two tiers of Expert Dungeons, we have Raids (at least two for release) and it doesn’t end there. You will also have Group Rated Rifts, and Raid Rated Rifts and faction grinds to help supplement gear.
RAIDS!1!: Composition, Sizes and Difficulty
There was limited discussion on the actual raids themselves, but we did manage to get some information on how things will work out and how the difficulty will be ramped up. Raids come in two different sizes, 10 and 20 man versions. The difficulty of each will be similar, or at least the developers are aiming for that metric. There was no mention if the gear from the two sizes will be different or the same however it doesn’t look like there will be any difference. The developers were discussing the sizes of each raid and they were saying that the difficulty was being tuned so that, and I’m paraphrasing, “If you want to bring 10, you can bring 10. If you want to bring 20, then you can.” Which to me sounds like they will not penalize those players who chose to play with less people.
Raid composition was also brought up and we got to learn how the developers designed content. What kind of specs would they expect groups to bring. They mentioned that in normal five man dungeons that they expect players to bring a tank and a healer. In Expert Dungeons they expect a bit more flexibility in roles and expect players to have access to CC and offhealing. This is only extended into the raid environment. One example given was that for one encounter, it was designed that one player had to have a mobility spec, whether that was run speed, blinking or teleporting, they expect one player to be able to get around real fast.
That’s it for now, but hopefully we get a better look at some details, and maybe some preview videos in the near future. I know all you Rift Junkies out there can’t wait for the NDA to drop.
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