You can scale OD, but cannot scale The Rift?

[Moors-Battlemaster]

Contrary to Sapience's belief that Rift is overrated by players these days, a lot of us would love to earn rewards by max level by running it. Plenty of people do it weekly at level 50, level 95 would be a great challenge.

[Castorix]

Yes, but they must first scale correctly other instances/raids at 95.
OD, BG, and others are too faceroll, even without knowing mechanics.
And with new itemization.

[Brinswith]

As fond as many of us remember the Rift, to scale it would mean that turbine would have to make changes that would sour that recollection, no matter what they done to it players would complain. Take Helegrod it was cut up into wings for many this spolied the raid completely. Fornost is another, for years the only thing wrong was that it lacked locks as it was as time consuming as Carn Dum. Garth Agarwen and the Great Barrow too. - scaling often comes hand in hand with lower difficulty one of the pulls for the rift and the other old instances was that they were difficult on level. History has shown that scaling leads to a much easier ride and often a spoiled experiance of older content.

[BangoTwinkletoes]

Contrary to Sapience's belief that Rift is overrated by players these days, a lot of us would love to earn rewards by max level by running it. Plenty of people do it weekly at level 50, level 95 would be a great challenge.

Read somewhere on this forum that the "tech" used to the build the Rift is very old and the effort and work required to port it to a scalable set up is just too much. If that is the case then it's a blessing in disguise - long may the Rift stay as it is as an example of what all lotro raids should be like

[Galuhad]

To scale The Rift would mean Turbine needing to make significant changes to the entire raid. At the time of release, instance scaling was probably not even on the table. This means nothing about the Rift was designed for future scaling. Therefore all the monsters are not designed to scale, so each type of monster will need to be changed; likewise the loot is also not designed to scale, and still uses the old 'barter' style drops, which means all the loot tables need to be changed and updated, and probably new loot designed for each mob and boss. New quests will have to be designed and translated, and deeds updated. The raid mechanics will need to be looked at since every class has come a long way since SoA, which will probably lead to a split-up of the instance in the same way that Helegrod experienced. Then once all that is done, QA will need to spend hours upon hours testing it for balance and to make sure the changes didn't break anything. As nice as it would be to have a scaled version of The Rift, it is a huge undertaking which will probably upset more players than it would satisfy.

OD on the otherhand was introduced alongside the 'In Their Abscence' cluster which, if I'm not mistaken, was the first group of instances to introduce scaling. Therefore it's probable that OD was designed with future scalingalready in mind. So the mobs and bosses were probably designed to scale, loot probably designed to scale (but I'd imagine they looked this over before releasing the scaled version of the raid) and the mechanics designed for players of different levels. When it came to introducing the scaling version of OD, most of the work was probably already done.

[Moors-Battlemaster]

At the time of release, instance scaling was probably not even on the table. This means nothing about the Rift was designed for future scaling.

Ummm, Helegrod?

[Brinswith]

Ummm, Helegrod?

ripped to shreds and a mere mockery of the great raid it was.

[Tiempko]

Ummm, Helegrod?

Helegrod (like the Barrow a Downs, Garth Agarwen, and Fornost) was rebuilt - turned from one unsealed instance to several smaller scaled instance. Doing the same to the Rift would mean taking each section and building it into a standalone instance. It would cease to be the same raid.

[Alex53]

Please, please, please, pretty please. Do not break the Rift. By all means scale the levels of the enemies and the loot, but please please please, (did I say please?) don't break it up into wings, don't change the layout, don't change the mechanics of the fights.

Dalí would not paint on top of the Mona Lisa, even if he could paint better than Da Vinci.

And if you do, for some reason, think that you can improve it by breaking it up, could you please keep the original raid available as 'The Rift (Classic)'? Thanks.

Oh, and I am not saying this out of some kind of misguided nostalgia. Been there a few times not that long ago, most of the group using levels 50 to 60 something. It is still the best raid in the game.

[Galuhad]

Ummm, Helegrod?

Helegrod now is not the same raid it was back then. As someone else mentioned, it was practically rebuilt. The same treatment would need to be applied to the Rift to get it to scale. It's a long process which is probably why it hasn't been done yet. From what I see, the new version of Helegrod isn't particularly very popular, so Turbine would be taking a gamble on investing in the Rift to be upscaled.

[Beaniemooch]

I don't want Rift scaled. What they did with Helegrod was sad.

[frickinmuck]

I am eternally grateful that Rift scaling will probably never happen. Some things should not be messed around with. If you want to re-experience the Rift, roll up an alt and do it on level.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

OD is a much newer instance. I believe it was created after the scaling feature as such should have been a scalable instance to start with.

The problem with the Rift is that it totally incompatible with the scaling feature and how Turbine does instances today. The current Rift that many people know and love will disappear. A new instance cluster will be created using parts of the old map and the design documentation.

I suppose it would be like someone taking Tolkien's Lord of the Ring story which is currently published in 3 books. They write their own version. They decide three books is too many words in a book. It is broken in 10 smaller pieces.

[frickinmuck]

OD is a much newer instance. I believe it was created after the scaling feature as such should have been a scalable instance to start with.

The problem with the Rift is that it totally incompatible with the scaling feature and how Turbine does instances today. The current Rift that many people know and love will disappear. A new instance cluster will be created using parts of the old map and the design documentation.

I suppose it would be like someone taking Tolkien's Lord of the Ring story which is currently published in 3 books. They write their own version. They decide three books is too many words in a book. It is broken in 10 smaller pieces.

I would far rather see them create a brand new, ultra difficult multi-boss raid than scale the Rift - or anything else for that matter. From what's been said by the devs, it doesn't sound like the work would be all that much more than scaling something.

jwbarry – There are a couple of things that are candidates that they could do, the Isengard cluster is the closest one. However, there is significant work in scaling a space. The Isengard cluster has a pair of instances, particularly the Dargnakh instance with the troll, where if we could see behind the scenes we would be ashamed of them if we were to see how it was built. It needs a fair bit of work, and he knows the Foundry instance needs a lot of difficulty balance work. Scaling something isn’t free. They like to go back and make sure that they look at the polish, make sure they look at modern standards, the bugs, the things that didn’t quite live up to their expectations when they launched it, they redo all the loot for the space and incorporate it into the marks, medallions, seals system, so it’s not by any means something that is inexpensive or free.
There’s also definitely a feeling out there, that they understand very much, that scaling a space, no matter how many bosses it has or how interesting it is, is not the same as a new space. So they need to balance those things together and try to figure out where to lay out their resources and what they can support, to ensure they are doing the most that will scratch the largest itch.

[Sapience]

Contrary to Sapience's belief that Rift is overrated by players these days, a lot of us would love to earn rewards by max level by running it. Plenty of people do it weekly at level 50, level 95 would be a great challenge.

Never said it was overrated. I said players have a nostalgic, rose colored glasses view of it it. Which they do. So much so that many players swear that it was a launch raid and was pefect out of the box. Neither of which is true(It was the second raid added, many months after launch and it was quite buggy at the time).

We have said many times we have no plans to scale the Rift because it would require changes that we know players would not like (breaking it up similar to the Helegrod wings for example).

[Alex53]

My nostalgia must develop particularly fast, because it was still great when I was there a few weeks ago. Definitely better than epic battles and skirmishes. Just my opinion of course. Other might love skirmishes.

[anthonyx]

Essentially for the rift to be scaled up that would require the work of creating a new raid which the resources at this time are not available. Priorities, if I am reading correctly, are focused on other things.

I am one that was here a few months from launch. I remember Rift when it was introduced but I was too low of a level to give it much of a thought. Back then it took much longer to level up. By the time I did join our kin raids it was fairly smooth. I do recall the occasional fire lizard getting stuck in a wall and a GM had to come in clear it for us. Nostalgic or not, I think if the rift was scaled (or made as a new raid) that would make untold peoples very happy! But I think with the modern way to run raids (short, not overly challenging, roles not all that important) I wonder if people would still have the attention span to run it. I wonder if I would?

[Schinderhannes]

My nostalgia must develop particularly fast, because it was still great when I was there a few weeks ago. Definitely better than epic battles and skirmishes. Just my opinion of course. Other might love skirmishes.

I assume not only with lvl 50 characters?

I think a big problem with scaling is the old gear restriction. It was a very important part of the game mechanics and difficulty of the rift. Removing it would make it way easier and less fun. If the high shadow dmg output remains, we will be pulverized with our low tactical mits atm.

On the other side, I have another opinion about the seperation of each boss in an extra instance, if that is how they initially imagined the rift 2.0. I can handle bigger slices of a pie, not as big as BG, but 2-3 bosses at once shouldn't be a problem for most raids.

What I personally would do is make two rifts, keep old one for sake of nostalgica and a new, experimental one. Only max level at the beginning, with minor work involved. Just a new entry in the list of instances.
So people can come in and try at least the first one or 2 bosses. Emphasis on try. They probably die on the first wave or crash the server. :P
Maybe that is already done on a secret server we don't know. But well... we don't know.

Why the scaling-shenanigans anyway? Maxlevel should be sufficient. Sure it probably needs finetuning every new levelcap. But why not?

[Frisco]

It's hard to argue with the fact that the Rift kept people happy for *over a year*. Just because it's nostalgic to talk about it fondly doesn't mean that it's being overestimated. The bugs were few, gating was low, encounters were fun and well done, and yet it was difficult enough that there was a pride in doing it. OD on-level is the only thing that even came close to rivaling it in design (but unfortunately didn't have the same effect on the community, since it was released near the end of the Dark Ages of Mirkwood when content was put on hold to develop f2p).

That said, I'm glad it's not getting the scaling treatment. It would no doubt become trivially easy like everything else that gets scaled--it's impossible to make something easy enough that L50s could do it while keeping it difficult for L95s.

Incidentally, if anyone on Brandywine is interested, I've started a kin with the sole mission of doing L50 content with disablers. Send an in-game mail to Zylon, or do a /who for Fifty Shades of Angmar.

[Schinderhannes]

... or do a /who for Fifty Shades of Angmar.

I like that name

[Frisco]

I like that name

Thanks. It started out as just a descriptive ("fifty" and "Angmar") joke name, but I came to like it even more when I thought of the less-common definition of "shades" as disembodied spirits, as Angmar sometimes feels like a ghost town when you're doing L50 stuff.

I'm looking forward to getting 12 people for the Rift--it was an old haunt of mine.

[Schinderhannes]

New idea! Wouldn't it be cool to be scaled down to 50 and be able to jump in the old rift armor?

[Sapience]

What I personally would do is make two rifts, keep old one for sake of nostalgica and a new, experimental one. Only max level at the beginning, with minor work involved. Just a new entry in the list of instances.

I may have mentioned this in the past, but it bears repeating here. The solution "do it twice", it's pretty much a non-starter.

[Schinderhannes]

"do it twice"

I'm not sure what exactly is ment by this because it probably doesn't mean "do something".
My suggestion was more the use of strg+c instead of strg+x. Just to please people who want to preserve the old rift, and maybe for those that do not have access to Moria+ content.

It can also mean we will not have two entries of the same instance. hmm... Probably because of immersion and to have no "Extrawürste". In this case, I'm ok with it.

It's just in this case I'm all in for an super fancy experimental sandbox community feedback approach implementation, than see no progress whatsoever on that front.

I mean Thaurlach was used to get spanked in his chains every night, now this poor guy rarely get's visited. Btw, kudus for Frisco and Shades of Angmar for changing that at least on one server. Ok, I have to stop here...


EDIT7: Ok, one last thing. Thaurlach is one of the best Encounters this game has to offer. Stunning atmosphere, thrilling sound and great animations. I really liked this fight. Draigoch is good, too.

[Agrandir]

While I remember the Rift quite fondly and enjoyed my time spent inside the instance I have to say that I do not wish to see a scaleable version if this means we would have to lose the original.

With dividing the Rift into multiple wings the entire feeling of advancing deeper and deeper into the heart of Núrz-Ghâshu would be destroyed. Almost every Boss save for Bârz&Zurm has his own little Wing, blocking access to the next level.

Most of said wings pretty much consist of the boss and thats it. Ripping them from the instance would not improve their replay factor, at least for me.

Then there is the whole issue with the Eldgang + rep. Both appearances would need major rework since their introduction was tied to the defeat of Barz and Zurm and their second comming to the defeat of Thrâng.


But another question (and I hope Sapience can help with that one):

I can see and agree that scaling the Rift is sisyphean task but why did you not scale the three Angmar battles and the battle of Lothlorien? You redesigned the three Moria battles and turned them into skirmishes which greatly improved them imho. As I have still access to their original implementation via reflecting pool they pretty much use the same engine as the three Angmar battles. Addionally, the Battle of Lothlorien was added after the three battles of Moria. Save for its specialised feature (Quest "Goals") it is kinda a cross between a skirmish and our current big battles.

I ask this question because nobody on my server runs them anymore and why should they? There is nothing to get in them anyway save for a deed in Lorien should you run it 10 times. This is shame because I remember many people doing them back in the day as they offered unique cosmetic items and interesting jewelry (+2 [Virtue]. /shrug