The world of RIFT welcomes a new calling, the Primalist. A developer now talks about his ideas and challenges during the development …
Community Manager Interviews Designer
In RIFT, a lot has happened in recent months, and the long line of new announcements seems far from over. The new calling of the Primalist is probably the latest example, differing in several aspects from previous design ideas. The community manager “Ocho” took this opportunity to interview Senior Systems Designer Jeff Hamilton to clarify the key questions surrounding the creation of the Primalist.
The Differences of the Primalist
Unlike previous callings that have evolved over several expansions, the Primalist will have significantly fewer talent points available for his souls. Instead of the usual 61, the Wielder of Nature’s Fury will only have to make do with 31 points. This, in turn, means that the individual choices carry much more weight. Instead of small, rather boring passive bonuses like “One attack deals 2% more damage,” the focus has been on exciting and fun abilities, such as “Attacks on targets affected by your DoTs restore 1% of your maximum hit points.” At the same time, the aim was to create a strong incentive to actually invest those points with the various powerful level 21 talents (the end talent of a tree). While there will also be hybrids, they will probably be significantly fewer than with other callings.
Initial Feedback and Doubts at GamesCom
At GamesCom, the Primalist was shown to a larger audience for the first time, and Hamilton was pleased with the reactions. Whenever a player said, “That looks really cool, I want to play that,” he was very satisfied. However, doubts also arose, as he “has so much to do. So much work until all the pieces come together and work.” No matter how good the result will be, he himself will probably still be accompanied by some doubts. He even openly admits his own mistakes: “We tried many different designs. It was good to fail so often at the beginning. When something doesn’t work, you want to know that as early as possible.“
Overwhelming, Helpful Player Feedback
Hamilton finds the feedback from players particularly pleasing. Developers constantly receive feedback from players of other callings who think about talents – even if they do not work yet: “Oh, this talent doesn’t work yet, but if it did, these would be my thoughts on it.” He is already looking forward to the public test server and the many suggestions and thoughts he will receive about the Primalist.
More about the new calling can be found in our preview of the Primalist.
