A Discussion of Infernal Dawn with three of Trion's Best!

Question: Can you give us an overview of new goals in the new Instant Adventures? Any new rewards?

Hal: Instant Adventure is one of those we can experiment with: we can drop an experimental IA in and it really floats to the top or sinks to the bottom and gets cut. We’ve got a long list of things that are another step beyond “Hey, go kill that bunch of EXP bags.” One of the things we’ve been talking about is just giving the players a moment to take a break, and giving them a reason to stand around or a merchant to talk to. We’re constantly evolving that.

Scott: The designers who are working on the content itself have basically leveled up the types of content available to play. The stuff we have out there is pretty cool right now and is definitely fun and it became one of our most popular features almost immediately, but we looked at it and thought we could make this even better.  One of the more fun ones in Ember Isle that we have coming right now is a player trying to make it across a bridge as a rolling ball. It is an interesting, non-combat interlude in something that has generally been “Hey kill this, hey kill that.”

Hal: The people who are doing it get really excited about the piece they are working on and that particular case we had a designer who got really excited about something he heard and programmer say and he decided to take it down this track. And so we got a new piece of content that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Adam: Back to your question about rewards. One of the things we want to do is to make sure people keep doing this. The standard reward that we’ve been handing out (planar attunement experience and planar currency) will continue to be the bread and butter. But we’re broadening the areas you can go; you don’t need to keep doing the same four quests over and over. You can go to Shimmersand, or Freemarch, or Silverwood. And our team is trying to do the best they can to put more interesting stuff in each area’s instant adventure. For example with Ember Isle we’ve recycled and returned some of the rewards we had when we opened Ember Isle. In a lot of cases we have places we have players who weren’t around when Ember Isle went up and now have a chance to get all the event rewards. Now they kind of have a shot at getting those.

Question: Guild finder: is there any way to contact leaders through the interface if they’re offline?

Hal: Right now it’s a clearing house for information and it starts a conversation, but it’s not going to send an e-mail to someone offline, if that’s what you were thinking.

Scott: One of the things we notice these days are that even when people are offline, more of them are staying online with the mobile app anyway. And all tells do direct to mobile devices anyway.

Question: Is there any content in the near future geared toward the leveling experience?

Hal: We try to do something for everyone. Sometimes we do a deeper dive, like with Infernal Dawn. Before we were talking about the mentoring system; that serves both ends of the spectrum because it helps the people at the lower end have more people in the zones they’re in, and they join in an instant adventure. But it also helps folks on the higher end because they just want more square footage to play on. We are introducing new things through community; for example, fishing will have new community events.

Scott: We’ve been working on our streaming clients for the past 4 months or so and it’s on the PTS. That is something that really is targeting new user adoption; the ability to get into the game and play after only downloading a couple hundred Megs. There is still some polishing going on with that but it was come out during 1.8 as a feature before 1.9. And the big push we did with Rift Lite earlier this year was squarely aimed at new users and the ability for players to get their friends into the game.

Adam: The new soul presets let you figure out how to play your calling and your class. A lot of the new user experience is smoothing out incredibly fast but in kind of an unspoken way. Just keep reading the release notes and you’ll see where we fix things. You add all of those up and it’s like a novel and a half of release notes!

Question: What kind of companions can fishermen catch?

Hal: At the moment the two most closely tied to fishing right now are these fantastic, brightly colored frogs. So frogs are kind of the new thing; these crazy-colored tropical frogs and creatures. There are also a variety of other small, exotic creatures you can get as well. A lot of these are tied to things specifically to completing achievements or objectives so they’re more self-focused. But a few, like the things you can get from tackle boxes, are definitely tradable. And we also have a long list of additional pets we’d love to get in!

Question: So… how about an expansion? There are rumors going around online about some plans on a whiteboard….

Scott: … I will tell you this. We covered anything up on the whiteboard that we didn’t want anybody to see. And that’s all I’m saying! (Laughter) Feel free to draw your own conclusions from that!

Question: The callings in the most recent patches have gone through a lot of changes. Do you think the callings are coming to a “final” position or are they going to remain in a state of flux?

Adam: Our classes are always in a state of observation and flux! In terms of making some more dramatic and large changes, I think it’s safe to say we’re coming to a pretty good location where we’re happy with the classes that we’ve released. The warrior changes recently are probably the last big ones.

Question: Since Ember Isle has tougher enemies, will its Instant Adventures give better rewards?

Hal: You have to remember, like any other content in Ember Isle, there is an exp reward bonus. So while Instant Adventures in Ember Isle won’t play out dramatically different than the old world (because we don’t want people to only play in Ember Isle), they will be more in line with the difficulty of the content you’re completing.

Question: Besides Chloromancer, any big changes for PvP?

Scott: In 1.8 we don’t have a very big push going on because we have all our people tied up in the stuff you’re going to start hearing about toward the next update and the one after that. We are definitely looking into things that are a bit more open world, which breaks away from the classic two factions. And that’s still going on internally. One of the things I’m pleasantly surprised has turned into a PvP boost is the zone event out there with the current world event. Even on PvE servers, the amount of enjoyable PvP activity has gone up. PvP rifts are coming back in, flash points are coming back up in the world following the event, and it’s just really cool! Expect to start seeing some bigger stuff as well.

Adam: We’re always trying to fine-tune our classes for PvP as well as our maps. We’ve been working on a hopefully well-received, improved version of Whitefall Steppes. PvP players should also look for a variety of new items and rewards to come in new patches as well.

Question: Will fishing’s events give useful items in Rift?

Hal: We already have some planned, and I’m not going to spoil the parameters of them now. We’re definitely going to make great use of this to develop the community, because everybody who’s a fisherman knows that one of the best things about fishing is sitting around and talking to people and enjoying it –

Scott: And drinking!

Hal: - and drinking! But the answer is, yes, we have great plans.

Adam: Another great thing about fishing is that it’s grown in popularity on our test server and we embrace that and will continue to embrace it. Like Hal said, we have one or two things coming up in the next patch and we plan on growing that even more, integrating it into world events and IA.

Question: Will the future hypothetically bring a fifth calling?

Adam: Doing another calling is definitely something we’d love to do in the future. It’s also a massive project, trying to figure out a fifth calling with eight souls and all the other things that make it interesting and unique will take some time to embrace. Right now we’re happy with the four callings we have, and the flexibility they offer, and we want to expand on that before we introduce a new calling.

Question: So… Maelforge and Laethys are making babies? Will the offspring play a role in the future?

Adam: Our lead dungeon designer’s quote of “makin’ babies up in here’ is always going to haunt him… kind of like my ‘pitching a tent!’ But from a lore perspective: a lot of that lore is based just on what’s going on in Infernal Dawn itself. That’s not to say that the repercussions of two dragons making an army of babies won’t affect where the storyline goes for the rest of the game!

Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland, Staff Writer