Examining the 2018 Rift Dev Letters (so far)

A few discussions recently on Discord and live streams have revolved around the promises, features, and deliverables made by the dev letters we have received in 2018 for Rift.  In light of this discussion, I want to take a moment to look over the 2 letters we have gotten this year (despite a 3rd being on the way later in October) and see what has been proposed, and delivered, not yet implemented, or half-implemented so far in 2018.

Remember while reading this that a new Dev Letter is set to arrive by the end of October, which is expected to change expectations going into the end of the year and 2019.  I encourage everyone to reserve final judgement until the October dev letter has arrived.

If you believe something was missed in this report, please leave a comment below!

Dev Letter Links

First, let’s look at the features proposed by the Rift On letter

  • RIFT Prime
  • New warfront
  • Intrepid: Greenscale’s Blight T3 raid
  • “it was high time PvP crowd had a turn, so we are putting some focus there this year”
  • New Instant Adventures set in the Droughtlands and Moonshade Highlands
  • New mounts for Carnival of the Ascended

And the features proposed by the Summerfest 2018 letter:

  • More frequent bonus events
  • New art and dimension items are rolling in [for Summerfest]
  • Prelude event for River of Souls on Prime
  • More rewards to the Daily Reward Calendar on Live
  • Add rare mount drops to Expert Dungeons and Raids on Live
  • Revamp and reduce the credit store on Live.
  • Latest mounts for credits, not lockboxes.
  • Revisiting the Eternal Weapons and their impact on builds.
  • Planar Fragments, addressing their level of RNG and costs to upgrade.
  • Warfront queue level banding changes

Let’s look at each of these objectively one at a time.  Keep in mind, we are evaluating ONLY the dev letters, and not statements made on livestreams or the forums.

Rift Prime

Launched this year, with a huge population surge that has since tapered off to a much smaller core group of player and raiders.

New warfront

Tenebrean Prison launched alongside Prime, though to very little fanfare.  There was a stream dedicated stream to this warfront (https://www.trionworlds.com/rift/en/2018/03/14/riftstream-0316-new-warfront/ and VOD at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/239424880), but I am unable to find any official post detailing the warfront or its mechanics.  A guide was put together for it by nixia here: http://forums.riftgame.com/game-discussions/rift-guides-strategies/pvp-guides/504000-guide-tenebrean-prison.html)

Intrepid: Greenscale’s Blight T3 raid

This has not happened yet, and no ETA has been provided.

“it was high time PvP crowd had a turn, so we are putting some focus there this year”

Honestly, there does not appear to be anything that has been added to extend or improve PvP this year on Live servers aside from the new Tenebrean Prison warfront.  With nothing else known in the current pipeline for 2018, it sounds unlikely that PvP is really going to get the attention they were expecting from this statement this year.

New Instant Adventures set in the Droughtlands and Moonshade Highlands

While some strings related to these appeared in Datamining prior to 4.3, it does not appear that these are coming to Live anytime soon.  Their fate is currently unknown, this content is either postponed or canceled.

New mounts for Carnival of the Ascended

Delivered.  On to the summer letter content.

More frequent bonus events

The Call to Action events have started back in August, and the team reintroduced a new seasonal event in the form of “Grim Rememberance”.  So far we have 2 revamped Call to Action events, and CtA has run 3 times so far, with a 4th presumably around the corner.

New art and dimension items are rolling in [for Summerfest]

This was delivered to much appreciation by the dimension community.  Sounds like they are very happy campers… er… luau goers.

Prelude event for River of Souls on Prime

We got this for both Live and Prime in the form of “Grim Rememberance”.

More rewards to the Daily Reward Calendar on Live

We got a fairly light revamp to this, as only the new 21-day mount box reward is really new.  Everything else is shifted from different times.  Personally, I was expecting more from this one, but it is technically delivered.

Add rare mount drops to Expert Dungeons and Raids on Live

This has not happened yet, and no ETA has been provided.

Revamp and reduce the credit store on Live.

Only the Dimensions section of the store has seen a revamp and price changes.  No other sections have been modified yet.  Since this bullet point sounds like the ENTIRE store, consider this one only partially done, with no ETA for completion.

Latest mounts for credits, not lockboxes.

This has been the case for every event in 2018.  Old lockboxes are still available, but the new seasonal event mounts are available through direct credit purchases.

Revisiting the Eternal Weapons and their impact on builds.

This has not happened yet, and no ETA has been provided.

Planar Fragments, addressing their level of RNG and costs to upgrade.

This has not happened yet, and no ETA has been provided.

Warfront queue level banding changes

This has somewhat happened on Prime, but not on Live.  On Prime, the Black Garden warfront has a level 10-50 mode, reducing things down to 1 level band.  No other warfronts on live or prime have been impacted, and this change was introduced without a patch note and with next to no fanfare.

 

Summary

Of 16 deliverables/features mentioned between the two dev letters, I would consider 5 not yet implemented, 3 half-implemented, and 8 completely delivered.

Not Yet Implemented:

  • Intrepid: Greenscale’s Blight T3 raid
  • Droughtlands & Moonshade Highlands IAs
  • Rare Mount Drops from Experts Dungeons on Live
  • A revisit of Eternal Weapon procs
  • Changes to the Planar Fragment system

Half-Implemented:

  • Additional PvP focus in 2018 (Got a warfront and an experiment with level banding on Prime… not much else)
  • Credit Store Revamp (Only dimensions so far)
  • Warfront Queue Banding changes (Only for one warfront on Prime)

Delivered:

  • RIFT Prime
  • Tenebrean Prison Warfront
  • New Carnival of the Ascended mounts
  • Call to Action events
  • New Summerfest Dimension content
  • Grim Awakening seasonal event
  • Changes to the Daily rewards calendar on Live
  • Latest seasonal event mounts for credits, not lockboxes

 

Final Verdict

Taking this at face value, it certainly seems like only half of what was proposed was delivered.  There are still 2 months left in 2018, and an upcoming dev letter in October to detail what is coming next, and what plan changes have occurred.

The biggest disappointment comes from the Not Implemented features above.  All of these are non-seasonal PvE content, or changes/balance tweaks to that content.  While they were proposed features in dev letters, they have not arrived yet, and there is no word on when or if these features are still in the works.

Rift has gone a solid year now without any new non-seasonal content for Live servers.  This is incredibly concerning.

Now, we do know that there are several things currently in the works right now.  No ETA has been provided for any of this.  Hopefully we will get an answer to some of these new features, in addition to the  in the October dev letter, and updates on the not yet implemented features from the past dev letters.

Known additional features coming to Rift:

  • Intrepid: GSB (T3)
  • Planar Disciples
  • Planar Dungeons (we have no details on these)
  • Tenebrean Troubles puzzle dungeon
  • Potential New raid (that isn’t igsb) has neither been confirmed nor denied.
  • Battle Pass: Devil’s Fire (Unconfirmed by Trion, but datamined a while ago, see Rift Datamining – September 13, 2018 patch)
  • Tenebrean Pocket Plane Dimension (Also datamined a while ago, formerly known as Pandora’s Box)
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