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Rift mob feedback

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You've fought them on the land

You've fought them on the sea

You've even fought them on the edge of your deed while they couldn't attack you. 

 

This thread is for feedback on the Rift and Jackal mob AI update and general feel of the new rifts in general. So leave your feedback below! 

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4 waves are virtually impossible to do by yourself and the only way i can solo a rift is with an alt adding in the dps
there is no way i will go close to a rift unless its in the end of the 3rd wave or into the 4th because the worst thing about the rift system as it is now is that there is zero point in participating if you can't be online for the end of it to earn the points and credit for finishing a rift. If it ends up taking to long and you can't be there for the end you get no rewards.
The game tracks your points/participation but its coded so it only gives credit for whoever is there in the rift at the end

Quote from player who cannot post themselves

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So a lot of people know I absolutely hated rifts as they were before. They were long, boring and really just kinda not fun.

I went into the Indy rift not really knowing what to expect, though hearing about a fourth wave really killed my buzz. It was like I remembered rifts. Retro mentioned that the scaling didn't really totally work for the kind of numbers hitting that rift, so I guess it was an outlier?

 

I went to another rift on Celebration with around 6-7 other people. The experience I had was a lot better. Mobs being a bit more squishy meant it was easier to work as a group and made the act of someone pulling a load of them really not an issue since the mobs will dart around and can be managed a lot easier. It's really a great example of how making a mechanic deeper rather than just slapping a high CR number on a mob, makes for a much better experience.

 

My only issues are that for some reason, my horse died to one single trap, but before horses would lose maybe 30% of their health from a single trap. Seems a bit strange and really a bit extreme since there's no indication a tile could be trapped. I'd also increase the CR a touch of the rift mobs that scout an area, as they're low numbers anyway so they really don't pose much of a threat to anyone. Only a little bit of a buff though.

Otherwise great change all around. I would like to ask for information on how rifts are tracked for the journal now, if the above post is true about you needing to be in the rift area at the end now. I think some forumwide clarity we can point to would really help players open up to the 100 rifts journal goal.

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Agreed on the rift reward offline. I gave my best shot and helped Release get through waves 1-2 and most of 3. I had to go to bed so I lost out on the reward (I managed to get lucky on coin inspirations though). 

 

Caster/Summoner teleporting is a bit annoying. Maybe keep on caster since they're more squishy but find something else on summoner? 

 

The reduced around of area cold spells is great (they were a bit too rough previously). 

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I think wave 4 is a bit much. I understand it's staggered but I feel like rifts in general are still too long. I think making removing the 4th wave but making wave 3 just a little bit longer would only serve to make them more accessible and appealing to players. Asking people to sacrifice about 2-3 hours of their time is a big thing really.

I'd say drop wave 1 entirely, as it's pretty much just a quick pushover round. Then I'd be happy with the length of the rest of the waves.

 

Also please make rift mobs a bit more aggressive.

Edited by Madnath
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the ones that randomly teleport away from you add nothing to gameplay or excitement and is just a bother

 

the taunting is also a bother.  its not very exciting when you are trying to kill something and a random beast taunts you, you retarget, then you get retaunted again immediately, and repeat this a few times until what you're killing is dead.

 

these two don't make the combat feel more polished or better.  its like putting black licorice with red licorice and saying look, the red licorice is improved because there's variety but no one likes black licorice

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My impression is not that casters and summoners teleport away just randomly. Rather their behaviour is more like fog spiders: when seriously hurt they tp out of combat, not much different from us retreating when too much wounded. It is possible to locate and corner them though, shield bashing, or low rider, or blunt weapons to stun them helps a lot. So I feel this adds variety.

 

The taunting may be bothering, that is what it is for ;) . It is mainly the hounds trying to distract us from the mightier foes, offering themselves as sacrifice, a valid tactic. Ok I am happy that no caster on their side has something as powerful as LoF.

 

I agree to those who do not see the 4 rounds being such a good idea. It makes things harder and more exhausting for smaller teams in particular. What I miss, in contrast, are the AoE waves during the last round. This devaluates elemental immunity to some extent, but non PoPers may see that differently. And the concentration of all rifts at less than 1.5 days would make elemental immunity no viable anyway.

 

As to the traps, there seem to be different ones. At the first Xanadu rift after Jackal launch (still with the non damage dealing mobs) a trap killed one of my cart horses few tiles from the safe encampment. But since, my battle horse has been wounded by traps three or four times, each time non fatally with about 30-60% health loss. I do not know whether this was by chance or a real improvement. Those damned 1 strike horse killing traps have been around before Jackal too, I hope they are nerfed a bit.

 

Edit: If you keep traps that way, at least turn their dmg from AoE to direct damage so that bardings may protect.

Edited by Ekcin
addendum

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honestly yeah, I'd take out one of the waves, taunting (or at least put it on a much higher cooldown) and the teleporting mobs... adding random mechanics and 'interactivity' doesn't make the content more interesting

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Single-target damage from mobs is pitiful.  I've seen a champion rift beast struggle to bring down a troll, and saw a rift jackal fighting a spider up on some cliffs for a wave and a half.  The constant cleaving and other AOEs going on seems to stack up and bring the damage closer to what it was before the overhaul, but it still feels strange:  on Noizhead I'm in even less danger than before, while my priest seems to regularly fall below 50% HP from catching random hits.  If we're wanting rift mobs to act "smarter" then maybe they should consider the number of nearby foes when choosing to AOE or use single-target attacks.

 

Mobs do not pull at range now.  I've tried with both shafts and bona fide war arrows, and in both cases the rift mobs just stand there and take it.  This is bad because it forces small rift groups to potentially pull tons of mobs at once, and opens the door to weird tricks--could I solo a rift in safety with a giant pile of war arrows and a murderbow?

 

The warmaster's post-invulnerability shield leaves him with so much damage reduction that it can approach impossible for small groups to kill him, which has led to a number of recent rifts ending with the warmaster still alive but ignored while everyone burns hearts.  I'd suggest making the invulnerability drop down to the Oakshell lookalike once the turrets are all defeated, and scaling the warband/turret spawns to the number of players at the rift so that he's not a pushover for big groups or impossible for small groups.

 

Waves 1 and 2 can be merged.  They are boring speedbumps and the heart-burning downtime between them just makes the new rifts drag on that much longer.

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P.S.  Champion rift mobs of all types do AOE taunts now.  These taunts will pull even not-tamed ridden creatures into combat, which presumably can get them taunted off the champion by nearby rift beasts.  It's not caused any major problems for me, but given how unbarded horses burst like blood sausages it seems like this can cause lots of grief in short order.  It also doesn't seem like intended behavior.

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haven't managed to make a rift since the update due to RL commitments but  I did come across one of those stray lil' parties once. They seemed a lot easier than I expected them to be, and I could happily get one or two on their own to kill then go back for the others. Took maybe 5 minute. Tbh I expected more but I get if it's intentional to be this way so they don't end up killing lower skilled players :P

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To add that: Having had a first fight with a fully functional and fully fought through warmaster I retract my statement about AoE. In the final fight, warmaster is using AoE extensively, giving the attackers a hard time. Yet what was said about his shielding remains true, only larger teams are able to over come that. This should be reworked, maybe scaling his protection down for smaller numbers of rift participants.

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The warmaster is stupidly OP. He hits, casts, summon and have a really high resistance, way too high for the current amount of players attending rifts. Due to all the above, it would also be more logical to have the warmaster on its own wave.

 

The 4th wave is also taking forever, making the time spend vs potential rewards quite inadequate.

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Inde warmaster seemed fine with 7(?) people. Most of those were hypercompetent though.

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Three waves total, exactly like it was before the "four wave rift" updates, four waves take too long to finish.  Stop rewarding people for hitting a mob once and sitting back so others tank and kill the mob.  Those who tank and kill should win the rifts, not those who hit once and run off.  Healing should get higher rewards given you heal a heap of people at once.  Third wave with warmaster, but allow smaller number of people with lower fs to actually kill the beast by adapting his skill to smaller groups as well.  Allow some way to stay with current mob instead of being taunted off constantly.

Edited by Fairyshine
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First of all: So far I never encountered those fabulous one hitters and sitbackers. Personally, I choose the targets under tactical considerations, and stay at the chosen one (unless taunted away with the new mechanics) until it is dead. I often concentrate on dogs though they possibly (?) yield less reward simply because packs of beasts are a menace to those sticking on stronger foes, sometimes I rely on others keeping the dogs off my butt, sometimes I have to run and bandage. I did not observe others acting differently. My rating is most times mediocre, but I don't care.

 

As to the length, I do not feel that overall rift time is longer than before. I consider round 1 and 2 redundant, both could be combined to one round. The teleporting of casters and summoners is debatable, personally I do not object it, others do. In fact, casters do much less AoE than before.

 

The warmaster in his end battle indeed uses more tricks and deals more damage than before, and as said, shielding should be dynamically reduced with a lower number of participants. To avoid WM being shunned after turrets, it might be an idea to drop extra rewards for the WM fighters when he dies. Only then he must be manageable even for a smaller team, say of 4 to 6 fighters.

 

That said, players should also adapt their tactics. They should figure in advance whether there are enough (say 2-3) PoP grade 9 fighters among them. Those could stick at the WM when he spams AoE spells. It is unnerving when players all run away and the damn rabbit is hopping after them, making me lose focus :). 

 

 

 

Edited by Ekcin
correction

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I'd love if pillars didn't create like 200 small wounds and rather contributed to a few larger ones tbh, the amount you get from casts is nuts

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1 hour ago, Madnath said:

I'd love if pillars didn't create like 200 small wounds and rather contributed to a few larger ones tbh, the amount you get from casts is nuts

 

death by a thousand papercuts!

 

2 hours ago, Ekcin said:

That said, players should also adapt their tactics. They should figure in advance whether there are enough (say 2-3) PoP grade 9 fighters among them. Those could stick at the WM when he spams AoE spells. It is unnerving when players all run away and the damn rabbit is hopping after them, making me lose focus :). 

 

 

this is PvE... we can't really adapt our tactics by requiring players to use priest or new meditation paths. Luring the damn thing off his AoE pillar is a decent tactic imho compared to what the average player can do. The fact the WM can get back to full health while you try to find where the goddamn turrets are is a trouble when combined with his shielded health... might want to make that one dispellable (and just get the WM to recast it <x amount of time> around).

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My main issues are

* the 4 waves - wave 1 is quite just a filler one, no excitement just spending time.

* warmaster oakshellish protection after the turrets die is quite impossible with a small group regardless off skills. Also no reward from killing it which means it may simply be more logical to skip killing it now.

* sounds. Please. Those ogrekind sounds...

* while new AI for the mobs is a good idea somehow it does not add finally to the mix but makes it more a massacre. Now it is you-just-sit-in-the-middle-and-hack-em-all. Being they are much less strong to hit mostly and quite too many of them. Less and stronger might be a better experience.

 

 

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Last rift (Celebration 6/10) we had an issue with the WM which did not spawn turrets and could be killed directly. That one also behaved strange, picked me as target (that is ok) but then pursued me (i was already on bad health and decided to retreat) more than 100 tiles outside the rift area and only gave in when I stepped on a bridge.

 

Edit: This overly long pursuit by rift creatures also is an issue under other considerations. The creatures wandering back may and did cross the rift camp. And while they are not aggressive towards other creatures than the targeted player, they can get into fights with hitched hell horses (which will and did attack them).

Edited by Ekcin

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Can the beam be made smaller at the base?  its so huge I can't see anything near it

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since the mechanical pig and broken cello sounds were added it seems a lot of others have been wiped, such as I cant hear myself hitting a hell hound there's no whimpering, I don't hear myself getting hit there's no awkward female noise and I cant hear my horse getting hit there's no distressed neigh

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My horse triggered one of the mines after the rift closed.  Is that a feature or a bug?

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12 minutes ago, rapidron said:

My horse triggered one of the mines after the rift closed.  Is that a feature or a bug?

That is a (nasty) feature which exists long time. Hope your horse survived.

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Did a rift with 1 priest+3 fighter accounts/2 actual people yesterday, waves 3 and 4 took us about 2 hours or so (probably could have cut half an hour off if we didn't want to clap warmaster cheeks and go out clearing all the stray mobs), gonna be commenting on smaller rifts instead of the bigger ones with people running around like headless chickens.

 

Rift AI is super bad. we had a certain spot where the mobs would walk over, find a mob in a collapsed cave, and try and target it every single time, pretty much forcing us to fight them all at once on that certain place. They would also aggro things outside the rift range and stare at the mob until it died.

Teleporting rift mobs are annoying at best, and most of the time they'll just run straight back into melee.

Rift dogs taunting breaks combat, interrupts cast timers, and resets focus. I feel like if it's that powerful, it should have a message saying that you were taunted pop up, much like how player spells do.

Rift caster/warmasters don't have messages for their spells like players casting ice/fire pillar do, they probably should.

The AOE cast damage as far as i can tell is being reduced by both body strength and soul strength, or maybe soul strength and armor? Oblivionnreaver was tanking the warmaster and was at 80% health when my 45 and 55 strength alts (all three in scale, but obliv has rare/supreme parts) were at dying. They'd get absolutely slaughtered by the aoes whereas obliv could just ignore them completely and i was dispelling tiles solely for the other accounts at the rift.

We managed to kill the riftmaster in about 15-20 minutes from starting combat, we just facetanked the rest of the spawned mobs during the 50-25% part and didnt back out until turrets spawned, and he was at about 70% health when we re-engaged after healing up. Alts got demolished in like a minute of aoe's so it was just 2 people for about half of the rest of the fight and we still managed to kill him, i'm not sure what kinda weapons (probably LT lol) other people are running but we didn't have *too* much of a problem with it using BT+venom weapons, considering i was told it's impossible unless you have like 8 people. Only had a problem with people taking 5% health a second from double aoe cast. DR from his gold glow should probably scale with amount of people instead of being a flat amount.

When a riftmaster gets onto a bridge, he spams his AOE non-stop without interruption aswell. i guess that's more of a bug than anything.

Overall, it was a hell of a lot more fun than pub rifts, and i'd probably go to more rifts if nobody else showed up. My horseless alt running away from the riftmaster at 0% stamina while we beat up turrets was a hoot

 

For rift points, as far as i can see, it's about 50 Base points, +2 for every point up to 100, and +1 for every point after that (approximation, i've only been to like 3 or 4 rifts). Someone that shows up for only the first wave can get almost as much participation as someone thats been there for the entire fourth wave, even though its probably 5-10 minutes in total. I feel like rift dogs should count for 1 point, jackals 3, ogres 5-8 and riftmaster like 40-100 or something like that, and balance the rift points reward appropriately. They also should only give points if you had the mob targeted when it dies, tagging is dumb. Expanding rift loot purchases for things like buying seryll+addy+glimmer and maybe random non-rift things like super expensive random affinity tokens, random unique bloods, weapon skins, sleep bonus, and other cool things would probably encourage rifting more. As far as i can tell, Metallic liquid is the ONLY practical thing you can get from a rift.

Edited by Oblivionnreaver
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