RIFT Beta Test Analysis With Scott Hartsman

21 Dec 2010 at 16:54:51 by Paul Younger

IncGamers managed to have a quick chat with Scott Hartsman, RIFT’s Executive Producer and TRION’S CCO to find out more about their upcoming MMORPG RIFT.

Last weekend saw the second  Beta test session for the game, and as far as Beta tests go for MMORPGs,  RIFT has already proved to be highly stable and very polished, in fact some completed games have not even made it out in as good a state as the first and second  Beta tests for RIFT.

The Beta Tests

Scott told us that there are around 200 people currently working on RIFT and that they were very well prepared for the beta test. The development team have been working hard to achieve the level of polish which was obvious in the first round of testing.

Scott said that the feedback they were receiving from players was highly positive and they are taking all feedback into account whether it’s good or bad. However TRION does look at the quality of feedback, who is posting and where it is being posted.   Although the Beta forums were abuzz with suggestions, this was only a small portion of the feedback and many of the quality comments were coming through the in-game reporting system.

Around 20,000 pieces of feedback were submitted to the development team from inside the game itself during the first test, and all of them are being looked at and triaged by developers, Quality Assurance teams, and community teams alike.  While doing this, TRION is also sorting through the thousands of comments their beta forums, which will be reopening each beta event.

During the Beta tests the team were on-hand and working away to fix problems and making improvements for future betas even while the test was in progress.  During the test the team really wanted to really test the game so they started to spawn larger rifts in the world to really push the technology to the max and also receive feedback from the players in-game on the invasions going on around the game world.

The RIFTS

During the early stages of the first Beta, small rifts would open up and they were not too challenging. When asked about the RIFT invasions, Scott mentioned that the second half of the first Beta test was when they really kicked things up a gear and the development team wanted to see how players would respond to larger invasions and give the NPC invasions a chance to set up footholds in the zones. 

Trion had  members of the development team on-hand throughout the Beta tests, they watched very closely what was going on and how players were reacting. They were monitoring stats and actions of players to see how they were tackling the challenges in the world and dealing with the rifts. It’s safe to say that players are going to see some pretty amazing things as the Beta test progresses and Scott assures us there is still a lot to come from the rifts and what we have seen so far is just the beginning.

Interface

Right now RIFT is working on polishing the standard built-in interface and making sure it’s highly customizable.  When asked about whether they would implement full addon support, Scott stated, “much of that depends on the progress of future betas – We like the idea of people being able to enhance their game experience in new and creative ways, but not in ways that automate gameplay.”  

When TRION are happy with the base UI they will look at opening it up further. There may be some restrictions on what players will be able to do with customisation to prevent botting, but it’s clear that TRION are very open to the idea. Scott himself has been involved in interface design and user modifications on other MMOs, so he is very aware that it can be an important part of the game and community.

Optimisation

During the first test it became apparent there was going to be some work needed to the game optimisation as even high-end PCs struggled when larger groups gathered, especially around RIFT invasion combat. During one test  period Scott mentioned that players were gathered in groups of 400 and there were also 500 NPCs into one small part of a zone during an invasion to see how far they could push the technology.

As part of the development process, Scott was keen to reassure players that optimising the game is something that is continually being done by the development team and is an on-going process throughout the testing.  

When asked, he wasn’t shy about letting us know that “optimising the engine and visual assets is something that we’re working on every day.  We’ve already got some fantastic improvements implemented as a direct result of the performance metrics we gathered throughout Beta 1. “

As the Beta progresses players should see some notable differences in the game’s performance,  and by end of the second beta test there was a notable improvement to the performance of the game.

Comment