You know, I'm pretty choosy when it comes to games. I won't play just anything. It needs to have a certain flavor, or a certain uniqueness that draws me in and makes me want to explore possibilities.

Rift has that. The soul system in Rift drew me to the game like a moth to flame. The idea of being able to essentially design your own class was so cool that I just had to play. And being able to change your role to fit any situation was constantly challenging and interesting. There is no best spec. There is no best rotation, or best strategy or best class. You must constantly adapt. It's kept me hooked for nearly a year.

Now Trion plans to ruin it all with one fell patch.

I am not one who is prone to exaggeration. When I said that rogues were a joke back in August, they were. Trion eventually got around to agreeing with me. This is just as bad, but now its bad for everyone, and bad for the game.

With the new PvP Planar Attunement system on the PTS, you now have a new tree called Attunement of War. This tree includes most of the good stuff in the Infiltrator soul. Sound like a good thing? I thought so too, until I realized that you have to choose between putting your PA points into this tree or your other PA trees, like fire and air that actually increase your raid damage.

That's right. Trion is now going to make you choose between PvP and PvE. If you want to be good in PvP, you'll need to dump about 9,000 points into the Attunement of War. How much does that leave for the rest? In my case, not much.

Gone are the days of leaving a raid and heading to Warfronts or oPvP in Stillmoore or EI. Unless you want to get totally crushed, and I mean horribly massacred. Gone is the versatility and flexibility that make Rift so great.

You get to either have a massive handicap in PvP or in PvE. Which would you like? What a fun choice this is. I hope I'm wrong about this. I hope that what I'm looking at is just a partial implementation or a mistake. But I'm not hopeful.
Posted by Dunsparrow Labels:

22 comments:

Asangar said...

I thought there is no cap on the obtainable PA points.
If there's no CAP whats the prob, grind out more PA points if you want.

Rais where designed before the PA, so its all extra, raids could be done without the PA.
And raids getting more easy every month to suit the easy crowd.

I cant see the big problem with this.

January 23, 2012 at 9:44 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

I'm glad you have hundreds of hours to grind out all the extra PA. Most of us don't.

January 23, 2012 at 10:05 AM  
f1NZ said...

I've heard that you get a certain amount of PA levels to spend if you're rank 8. I think its 40 (one PA level per rank in the new system). This might be wrong though.

January 23, 2012 at 10:14 AM  
Asangar said...

Yes you get those f1NZ, its just gonna take a bit of work to fill it all if you want to.

And Dunsparrow i don't have enough time but its just a bonus, not rlly needed, nice to have etc.

And you get a bunch of "free" PA exp to get starting.

Lets see how it works out, then complain.

For me this update will decide if i stay of leave, i have until April to decide :-)

January 23, 2012 at 10:36 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

The issue is that you'll be at a disadvantage unless you spend 10,000 points in the PvP PA, but you only get 4,000 points.

So you get to choose between gimping yourself in PvP or PvE.

January 23, 2012 at 11:00 AM  
Vatec said...

If you could make PvP builds without the Infiltrator soul before, how is this any different? And, as others have pointed out, there's no cap on Planar Attunement: if you want to focus on PvP, put your first 10K points into PvP. The amount of PvE damage you'll lose is, quite frankly, negligible.

January 23, 2012 at 11:08 AM  
Dunsparrow said...

@Vatac, this is different because you are losing relative power as a P8 by not maxing out the PvP tree.

Currently, I PvP without infiltrator because I have to sacrifice too much in other areas to put points in inf. So people who PvP as Inf right now can't get all the stuff in Sin/NB/RS that I get.

After the patch, everyone will have "infiltrator" but only if they PA spec it. This means anyone who doesn't PA spec it will be at a huge disadvantage, including my current non-infiltrator build.

January 23, 2012 at 11:58 AM  
Vatec said...

@Dunsparrow

And you'll only be at a disadvantage until you either respec PA (first one is free now) or earn enough PA to fill it up the "hard way."

To put it another way, if you have enough PA in PvE traits that losing them would "gimp" you, you enough enough PA to max out the PvP traits if you respec. If you don't, you're not really gimping yourself in PvE.

Honestly, I like the change. Those who care about PvP can earn PA through PvP and put those PA into the PvP traits. Those who don't care about PvP never need to look at that part of PA, the same as they never bothered to purchase the PvP souls. And it really doesn't take that long to accumulate PA experience. A couple of people in my guild are already on the verge of maxing out a tier 2 element. And no, they don't play 24 hours a day. Me, I have 6700 PA points. And I haven't played more than 10 hours on my "main" in the last two months.

Basically, I just don't think it's that hard to get 10K PA, especially when you're getting up to 4K PA directly from the PvP ranks. And I don't think that the minor bonuses you get to PvE amount to much, given that the majority of them don't stack with raid consumables anyway.

But I understand that someone with less free time could be annoyed by the changes, yes.

January 23, 2012 at 1:07 PM  
Dunsparrow said...

10k PA is 100 hours of grinding. If that seems easy to you, then you are way more hardcore than the vast majority of players.

Either way, the new PvP tree requires 11k points to fill and being P8 only gives you 3700.

If you only spend 3700, you're gimp. If you spend more than that, you're sucking points from PvE talents that you already spent.

One way or another, I have to gimp myself. Have fun on your 100 hour grind though.

January 23, 2012 at 2:05 PM  
Anonymous said...

Wow what happened to the whole, its the journey not the destination talk? Sounds like the other way around now.

January 23, 2012 at 2:18 PM  
Vatec said...

@Dunsparrow

Not sure where you're getting an hour per PA level. Especially given all the Crystallized Insight you can get from planar invasions and, after the patch, PvP. What else is there on which to spend Favor once you hit Rank 8 and have all the PvP armor?

Furthermore, I'm willing to bet you don't need to spend all 11K on the PvP tree to get the good stuff (stun reduction, extra Vengeance, extra Valor).

But again, I can see how someone with less time to play would be annoyed. I just think you're overestimating how much time it takes to accumulate those points.

January 23, 2012 at 3:58 PM  
Nick said...

I find it funny how when people are at the end of the journey they say to others it's all about the journey, but when they have to struggle through a new journey they complain :)

Remember... "Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it."

January 23, 2012 at 5:01 PM  
Dunsparrow said...

And when the journey takes you in the wrong direction? Thats when I complain. :]

January 23, 2012 at 10:50 PM  
Anonymous said...

Sounds like a complaint because you get get everything right away.

Points spent in PvE PA are not lost in PvP, for one thing. 15/30 full time dex is never lost.

Grinding 10k PA xp is actually done easily. In my guild, most of us don't have any more time to play than most folks, yet we still manage to rush a T2 or two once in a while for a newcomer or for extra greater marks of ascension. Most of them are done in 15 to 20 minutes and now award 250k PA xp.

Battleground daily grants 250k PA xp, ember isle invasion grant AT LEAST 100k PA xp, for just taking 5 minutes to kill a few roamers.

You're making all this way more impossible than it actually is.

January 24, 2012 at 8:26 PM  
Anonymous said...

I've been saving up PAs since I heard about the PVP PAs. Honestly, the best part of this post are the comments. It is truly great to know exactly how much I will need (thanks Dunsparrow).

Am I excited about the grind? No. But I will do it.

January 25, 2012 at 1:17 PM  
Anonymous said...

I do not think it is that much of an issue. Everyone is in the same boat here. You say you will be gimped in PvP because you can only spend 3700 PA in PvP Attunement, but that goes for everybody. We are all going to be on equal footing here. You are getting 37000 PA to spend and so am I, how are you going to be gimped vs me?

PA XP is soooo easy to get as it is. With the changes (see below) on PTS, it will be even easier.

ECI = External Crystalized Insight (100,000 exp)
PCI = Pure Crystalized Insight (50,000 exp)

Each PvP level starting with level 2 will award 1 PA level.
That's level, not Rank. All PvP Ranks (1 - 8) will be converted to PvP levels (1-40)

20 Inscribed Sourcestones = 1 PCI (50,000 exp)
12,000 Planarite = 1 PCI (50,000 exp)

6 Marks of Ascension = 1 ECI (100,000 exp)
30 Plaques of Achievents = 1 ECI (100,000 exp)
15,000 Favor = 1 ECI (100,000 exp)
Marks of Retribution (PvP Marks) will be converted back to Favor.
The current cap on Favor will be removed.

In fact, the more effecient way to build up PA XP is now going to be PvP. Becaus you get XP from player kills, you get XP from beating tasks (capturing flags for example), and you can turn favor into XP. So it is basically double dipping in the XP when you PvP...

January 28, 2012 at 7:52 AM  
tripeX said...

With all my saved up Stones, Marks, Planarit (Wonder why they didn't lift up the 60k cap) and Favor I just leveled 117 PA Lvls, so 11700 Points just from what I have now with some hours played a week (T1&2 Marks for example have no cap, I have around 8000 of them.)

You gain 250k XP from daily dungeon and daily battlefront. Thats 1 LVL for some minutes a day. In PvP you can gain 2-4 LvLs an hour on the PTS.

On Ember Isle, you gain 17-20 LvL in 10 hours just doing the Assault dailys, normal dailys and grind the invasions.

Sure, it is not really fun seeing things changed this way. But Trion is trying to make PvP more attractiv for anyone.

Remember the wise words: Bring the player, not the class.

Its a way to get more in the direction of bringing skil based PvP into Rift.

Well, an attempt too. ;)

January 28, 2012 at 5:38 PM  
Puremallace said...

I agree with some of your post Dunsparrow, but you are smart enough to know when people are being pigeonholed into builds.

The idea is to increase variety, but the pvp is basically forcing Warriors and Clerics to go so deep into the tree for one useful ability we are screwed with points.

I understand it sucks for ROgues, but if you look at 1.7 trust PA points are about TO RAINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN from the skies.

30 plaques = 100k crystal
6 marks of Ascension = 100k crystal
12k favor = 50k crystal
20 Inscribed = 100k crystal
20k Planarite = 100k crystal

^ You will be mazing out the pvp tree on the first day especially if you are max'd on orbs of retributions now.

Bam get the ability and no you have your pvp abilities with everything + a extra tree to play with. It free's up 21 points.

I am extremely glad to have you back from TOR.

January 28, 2012 at 7:12 PM  
Anonymous said...

I'm sorry that you feel disadvantaged because you choose to spend your spare time in another game Dun.

However, as a casual I generate 40-50 PA levels a week playing no more then 3-5 hours a day after work. With the new crystals you can buy with existing unwanted items like Plaques/Marks/Inscribeds etc, I see 60 PA levels a week being pretty easy.

That's a grand total of 2 weeks to Max that PA PvP tree. Without factoring the bonus 3,700 points you're given.

In short, PA levels are damn easy to come by, and if you want all the little perks, you'll farm them.

You're already at a disadvantage, if you only have 5k points vs someone who has 70k points anyway. Whether they spend it on PvE stuff or PvP stuff. Not much has changed.

January 28, 2012 at 9:58 PM  
Anonymous said...

This is going to add a lot more depth to PVP just based on the fact that you'll have an extra 3rd soul to mess with. Before you had to take that PVP soul. Now you will always have those PA PVP skills available.

January 30, 2012 at 3:03 PM  
Anonymous said...

Hi Dunsparrow coming to ya from a link on /r/rift reddit...

"- Prestige Ranks: Increased prestige ranks from 8 to 40! The time to hit max rank is still roughly the same but we’ve changed benefits from earning prestige rank. Existing ranks will be converted to the appropriate rank on the updated scale – on top of that each rank also grants a large amount of Planar Attunement experience."

Did you miss this? If you PVP then you'll earn Attunement points to fill out your PVP tree.. so it's not really grinding extra PA to fill your PVP tree. You'll PVP and get PA points to spend (which if you PVP will likely get spent in the PVP PA tree)

January 30, 2012 at 3:11 PM  
Anonymous said...

Knee-jerk reaction? Check.
Played the "I don't have time" card? Check.
Disappeared once people started challenging his logic? Check.

Verdict: Pride wall got in the way.

March 9, 2012 at 8:39 AM