Rift Junkies got a chance to ask a few questions of RIFT Senior Designer and Raid-Designing Wizard, Berenger Fish and we’re happy to share with you what we found out. We were eager to ask Berenger about Greenscale and how expectations met reality as the raid game matured over the first month of release. The raid game has changed quite a bit lately with the introduction of River of Souls and the soon-to-be updated raid gear; and this interview gives us an peak at how they are steering the game in the future.
Rift Junkies: One month after release, a number of guilds have killed Lord Greenscale relatively soon after release. How long did you expect world firsts to happen? Did the speed in which the zone was cleared surprise you?
Berenger Fish: We weren’t really sure when we’d see the first of the raid kills. We thought it could be theoretically possible as early as 2 weeks and were pretty sure that it would happen before 4 weeks. It actually happened in a little over 3 weeks with the head start so it wasn’t completely surprising.
Ever since Greenscale has died, you’ve been tweaking the encounters constantly. For example, after the first kill you increased Greenscale’s hitpoints by almost 3x the amount. After that, you’ve tweaked the different fights in other ways. Are these in response to the player’s ingenuity that you didn’t foresee or are the in response to slowing down advancement in the instance? Can you comment on why these decisions were made?
One of the biggest challenges we faced leading up to the release of the game was trying to keep our dungeons and raids balanced with the ever changing classes and ways that they can interact with eachother. We ended up severely underestimating the total DPS capability of a raid based on the testing we had on the alpha server. The actual speed at which Greenscale himself could die was basically breaking the encounter because he would barely stay on the ground.
While most of the changes have been bug fixes, we chose to adjust the challenge of the encounters so that they were more in line with what we envisioned, and had a proper progression within the dungeon. While we do care about progression speed, the thing we care most is how much fun they actually are.
After defeating Greenscale, the quest to kill all the bosses rewards you with xp (why xp?) and 50 gold. Is this a place holder for other rewards or is the quest just there to give the players something to keep track of.
In this particular case the zone quest is mainly used for tracking. We feel like there are plenty of rewards to be had from the bosses directly. The XP reward is merely a small oversight as that’s tied into the quest system. In the future we may look into giving a “proper” reward for clearing a raid zone but its currently not a high priority.
Each of GSB’s boss encounters, except Greenscale himself, drops two items. For a raid guild of the minimum size of 20, this would require many runs for everyone to get the loot they need. Is this a reflection that GSB used to be on a 3 day timer?
Greenscale was originally on a 3-day timer because it was going to be the only Raid dungeon at our lowest tier. When we decided to add River of Souls we changed it to a weekly lockout.
Regarding itemization: What would be your response to all warriors wearing leather gear for maximized dps rather than plate as is the case right now?
I don’t wish to speak for the itemization fella’s, however I do know that particular issue is something that they are looking into. (Editor’s Note: Check out the Alpha Shard in regards to upcoming gear changes.)
Can you discuss how you plan on having both GSB and RoS raids work with each other. It’s been discussed that both raids are entry level. Are these the primary raids players will need to work in prior to heading into the next tier of raiding, assumed to be Hammerknell?
GSB and RoS are both in what we would call our “Raid 1” tier of difficulty and itemization. We fully expect (and basically require) that raids are pretty well geared from these raids to have a reasonable chance at success in the following tier.
What has surprised you the most in the last month when it comes to players and raid dungeons? What is your biggest lesson learned over all?
As I mentioned before, the biggest surprise to us was the tremendous difference in raid power between our alpha testing and live. What we’ve taken away is that we shouldn’t be so conservative when it comes to the difficulty of the encounters. In the future we’d rather have something that is too difficult that must be nerfed a bit rather than something that is too easy.
Anything else you’d like to share with the Community on this topic?
Overall all we’re extremely pleased with the feedback we’ve had from the community regarding the raids and the dungeons. We think we’ve got some great content to deliver in the upcoming months that we think players will be even more excited about.
Thanks for your time!
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