Just shy of two months ago, I wrote up a preview for RIFT, an ambitious upcoming MMORPG. I detailed the soul system as well as the dynamic content system in that preview, as those were a couple things about RIFT that were particularly exciting from a group or cooperative perspective. Now, close to a month and a half after its release, I wanted to highlight some additional co-opportunities of the game that I didn’t have a chance to see during the game’s beta. These include expert dungeons, expert rifts, and world events (not to be confused with zone events).
The road the max level in RIFT (level 50) is not necessarily a particularly arduous one. Heck, some people were actually max level within three of four days of playing. That’s by no means the standard, but after just a month and a half, there are lots and lots of level 50s running around in the game - there’s no grinding for days or weeks to get a level here. Due to their friendly leveling system, Trion wanted to ensure there was a good amount of endgame content available when people rather rapidly hit the level cap. For PVE, there’s a dungeon progression which is strictly for the level 50s.
RIFT has 10 dungeons scattered throughout the different zones as players level up. Every three to five levels after level 15 offers a new dungeon where players can adventure and gain experience and loot. All of these dungeons have “Expert” modes which are strictly for a 5-person party of all max-level characters where the enemies are scaled up to level 50 difficulty. Five of these expert modes are considered “Tier 1” expert dungeons. These are the ones you can start attempting right when you hit 50. The other five expert dungeons are considered “Tier 2.” Tier 2 dungeons are a good deal harder than Tier 1 dungeons - the enemies and bosses hit harder and your party is expected to be pretty decked out in gear they got from Tier 1 dungeons.
While much is similar between the dungeons’ expert and normal modes (e.g. you’ll see the same bosses in expert as you did in normal, the layout will be much the same), there are some key differences: bosses that also existed in normal often get some new, nasty abilities; often additional areas of the instance are opened up for exploration; and each expert dungeon offers at least a couple of bosses specific to the expert mode. And, of course, there’s epic loot to be had in the expert difficulty mode! Well, this is all well and good, but where’s the co-opportunity here? It’s really quite simple: expert dungeons are much more difficult than any of the normal dungeons. Lack of communication and coordination can easily end in a party wipe, and the better your party members work together (not just simply performing well, but being flexible about changing roles when it’s beneficial), the smoother and quicker the dungeon will go.
Also, no matter what the dungeon drops, everyone is able to walk away with something. Each expert dungeon boss drops “plaques of achievement” (tier 1 bosses drop one each, tier 2 bosses drop two) which can traded for epic gear from vendors in the main cities. There are tier 1 and tier 2 armor pieces for plaques (20-50 plaques for tier 1 gear, 100-200 for tier 2 gear), so even if you are exceedingly unlucky, you can eventually save up for gear just by collecting plaques. There are also daily expert dungeon quests for both tier 1 and tier 2 dungeons which award 10 and 20 plaques respectively. While other games certainly have similar systems, I always appreciate the system anew when I encounter it in an MMO, as it cuts down on competition between grouping players to “win the gear roll” when a piece they want drops.
Rifts, the dynamic content I’ve detailed before, have a similar system. There are expert raids your party can open (with the right materials) where you also have the chance to get epic loot. Expert raids recommend at least 5 people and are more difficult than the minor and major rifts that require no reagents to open. The group that opens the expert rift receives a chest after completing critical stages of the rift. This chest contains a rare or epic item for players to roll on. Players that are not part of that group can also participate in these expert rifts, but they will only receive standard rift rewards and no have access to the item chests.
Beyond expert difficultly, there is also raid difficulty. Raid dungeons are 20-person dungeons where all participants are expected to be suitably geared out in mostly tier 2 dungeon equipment. Raid rifts are 10-person rifts with the same kind of gear requirement. At this time, I haven’t had the chance to try out any of the raid content, since I’m not yet geared out in tier 2 expert dungeon equipment. There is certainly plenty to do endgame in RIFT, and most of it is group-oriented!
One last thing I wanted to give a mention is world events. To promote a new raid dungeon being put into the game soon, Trion’s kicking it off with a world event. For almost a week now, death rifts have been opening across the world that are story-related to the raid being added in (the River of Souls raid). Players of all levels can participate to progress the event and, in doing so, gain special event currency which can be used for unique loot (of both functional and cosmic kinds). It’s pretty cool to see players of all levels working together for an event, and I’m looking forward to seeing the world event progress through future stages.
Are any of you folks out there playing RIFT? What co-opportunities are you liking the most? What do you think of the world event and expert and raid dungeons/rifts?