RIFT MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

In our fourth exclusive interview with Trion Worlds, Ten Ton Hammer probes ever deeper into the upcoming Rift: Planes of Telara MMOG. This time, we talk to Lead Systems Designer Cameron McNeil, who goes into depth of the combat system in Rift. The combat-themed discussion also touches on various abilities, soul trees, the user interface, and even PvP. If you wish to have a question answered in a future interview, please submit them in our official Rift forum.

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Ten Ton Hammer: For most MMOGs, the heart of the game is the combat system. What about Rift: Planes of Telara? How does that combat system work?

Cameron McNeil: The combat system in Rift is very similar to other traditional MMOG combat systems. There’s ability selection, target selection, cast times, cooldowns; if you’ve played an MMOG, you’ll understand the core fundamentals on how the game plays. A lot of what happens though depends on your class, what you’re doing, and how you want to play the game. We don’t want to change the fundamentals of the game. We want to change what sits on top of those fundamentals and the things that make it fun. Pressing “1” to swing my sword, changing that isn’t necessarily what we want to do. What sword do you want to swing?

For a given fight, depending upon my class, I’m going to find my target, I’m going to start off by throwing a damage-over-time spell, I’m going to hit my instant, I’m going to start throwing around my bread-and-butter fireball, and when they get close to death, I’m going to finish them off either with my instant, which has hopefully cooled off, or with another ability that will hit them harder when they’re under a certain amount of health.

For harder pulls or larger mobs, I’ll throw in some crowd controls, pop a cooldown, drink a potion; all the things you would expect to do in an MMOG.

Ten Ton Hammer: Basically, it’s along the philosophy of “if ain’t broke, then don’t fix it.” Would the advantage here be that it sounds like the system would easily be picked up by players if they’ve ever played other MMOGs before?

Cameron McNeil: Yes, very much so. We want people to sit down and start playing immediately. Having never played Rift before, you should be able to pick it up and go, “Hey! I know how this works. Let’s start killing stuff!” What we have is an incredibly flexible soul system that allows players to create their own classes and play style. What we want is for players to define how they want to play, which abilities to use, what effects they want, and the general strategy. That’s where we want our players to feel that our game is different. That’s what we think is fun. It’s not in pressing the “1” button, it’s in my choice as a player deciding on what I’m going to do.

Ten Ton Hammer: How many abilities are going to be within a rotation? Obviously, you can’t give exact examples, but do you think it’ll be a lot of rows of hotkeys that people will be using or is it going to be five to seven main abilities that people will rotate through?

Cameron McNeil: Each class has generally about 20 abilities. We certainly don’t expect you to be using all of those. A lot of those are situational, and a lot of them are reactionary. In my general rotation, four or five abilities are might what I throw around. If something happens, I have access to other things. A lot of it depends upon your class as well. If you’re a stealth class, you’re going to have a few more buttons that you’re going to use. If you’re a class that’s going to set themselves up as a tank, then there’s going to be one or two more things that you’re going to do at the start of combat. We don’t expect you to be pressing the one through nine buttons in order before looping back to one again.

Ten Ton Hammer: Would you say that you have the standard arsenal of damage-over-time, direct damage spells, AoE spells, and that sort of thing?

Cameron McNeil: There are certainly those abilities in there, and more abilities sitting on top that you don’t see around the place very often. Your standard MMO fare is in there. That’s your meat and potatoes, and there’s a little bit of desert thrown in on top of that as well.

Ten Ton Hammer: Does that mean that we’ll see the holy trinity return in combat, where you need to have a tank, a healer, and a DPS class?

Cameron McNeil: Yes you do if you’re going to attempt a dungeon or a raid, but unlike other games, who your tank is might not always the same person. If the warrior isn’t on for the night, someone can change their role quite easily and use the options in another class. Just because there is a holy trinity, it doesn’t mean that you have to have the warrior, cleric, and the mage.

Ten Ton Hammer: Talking a little bit more about the combat on the screen, some games tend to get so intense with ability rotations that you find yourself focusing on the UI and not the combat itself. Would you say that that is something you’ve been trying to avoid?

Cameron McNeil: It’s something that we’re very aware of. There are things that we try to do to make sure that the information you need is easily accessible onscreen. We have an incredibly talented UI department who are looking at these things all the time. How do we make this better? How do we make sure that your focus isn’t sitting on the top left or the top right corner of your screen? We want you to be looking at the center of your screen. We want the effects to be meaningful. We want you to know what everything means. If something happens and you have to react to it, there should be something sitting there to help you know when to do it. You shouldn’t have to look at the top right hand corner of your screen and go, “Oh! That little icon has popped up.”

Ten Ton Hammer: Do the abilities have ranks?

Cameron McNeil: Yes. If an ability requires a rank, then it has a rank. For example, how much your fireball hits for. That’s going to go up in ranks. Something like a Silence, we don’t put ranks on that. It’s a single ability. You buy it once and it’s there now. There’s nothing else there that needs to rank up on it.

One of the reasons for that is when you do get a new rank in an ability, we want it to feel special. We don’t want it to be that you go up a level, and now you’re hitting for one more extra point of damage. We want you looking forward to getting those new ranks. When you get a new rank, it’s like, “Awesome! I’m hitting for more damage now. I’m healing more now. This makes me feel better as a player.”

Ten Ton Hammer: You’re bringing meaning back to leveling again?

Cameron McNeil: Yes.