[Opinion]The Auto Group Dichotomy

When I found and started playing Rift (which is a funny story I'll write someday) this automatic grouping feature was already in place so I can't talk about how the game was before it was implemented. In spite of that, I can form an opinion based on similar games I used to play back then that didn't have this feature.

What's Auto Group?
In RIFT, auto group is a feature that allows you to join anyone near you during any event/quest by clicking a small pop-up window that appears automatically. For this to happen, the players near you must have their public group enabled.

 The Consequences of Auto Group
As many people that have discussed this matter before, I am also concerned about the long-term consequences this feature (now widely used in MMO's) might bring to the community and it's interactions. First, I agree that the main pro is pretty obvious: seamless dynamic; which is indeed very important in such a dynamic game as Rift. Having to ask for/accept invites for group while doing a rift, which is an heavily timed and dynamic (dynamic is the key word here: dynamics, bitch!) event would be extremely frustrating. And auto group makes it extremely easy: no talk, no questions, no interaction, insta group! Well, that's it: while describing in what this features improves our game experience I just said what is, for me, the main con: lack of interaction. We can roam all around Brevane and Dusken, closing rifts, doing hunts, completing world events and whatnot without ever talking to someone else. 

Is this the game that we want? Some might say "well you can still talk if you want". Ok sure, we can. Those of us old enough to know better might still say something polite everytime we join a group, or even ask before joining but who wants to be the talking parrot in a mute game? And by my books things are very clear: "a mute MMO is a dead MMO".

This has clear consequences and some of those can be noticed right now. Certainly driven by the mute nature of the auto group it's a rare event when someone replies to my greetings when joining a SLE. And any more interaction than that is even rarer. For those of us who have a nice guild it easy to endure this game. For those who don't (as I didn't for some time) playing Rift is like playing hopscotch in an abandoned town. I even dare to say that between troll spammers or a chat box with nothing but "Entering Ashora. Leaving Ashora. Soul damage, blah, blah" I prefer the first. Hands down.

Now on the other hand, some people are too shy to talk (even if they don't have to use their own face or voice) and this is an unvaluable feature that allows them to do group content that they otherwise wouldn't do. But hey, MMO's are social games, get over it.

Happy rifts,
Jimmie@Gelidra
 

[Opinion] Daily Quests Counters and Charges

Doing dailies everyday is close to impossible for those with an unpredictable RL.

Contrary to my last entries this post will be more personal and it's mostly a suggestion of something that could help a lot of Rift (and other MMO's) casual players.

If you are like me then your real life is mostly unpredictable: you don't know when you'll be home tomorrow neither if you'll be able to login and do your dailies and notoriety grinds. Then the day comes when you can't do «that» faction dailies and you think "-Damn it, lost another bazillion notoriety points, I will never have my BiS Cape if I keep going like this"... From this thought to give up on dailies altogether it's just a small step.

It would be awesome if Rift could be more friendly to the casual player. I would love to be able to play on a totally irregular basis and still not lose (well it's not exactly that you lose anything, you just don't earn it) any notoriety or currency. How can Rift achieve this? Daily quest charges.

Daily Quest Charges
Basically this could be done by setting something like 7 charges for each in-game quest that has a repeatable property. Then you could do the same quest 7 times in a row, get your notoriety and currency and be done with it for the week. Of course, for this to work, the daily limit should be set up in a way that it would only limit the number of different quests you can do, otherwise by doing less than three different quests seven times each you would be blocked from doing any more.

Now, this may seem like a good idea, but who wants to do the same quests, sometimes dozens of them, several times in a row? Probably the same people who do seven SLE's in a row (I know, you don't do the «same» expert seven times in a row, but let's be honest: how different from each other are they?). Anyway when I do two or three experts in a row I usually don't do any the next day, so it's just a matter of scheduling and customizing your play time. This "charge" idea is already in place for PvP warfronts and PvE dungeons so why not expand it to dailies?

How to Implement it?
In my opinion it would just be a question of keeping a counter for each daily quest ingame. Each one has an ID that can be used to track this: spend a "charge" everytime you turn in that specific quest; add a "charge" everyday at the reset hour.

The problem with this is that there are hundreds of daily quests ingame and Trion would have to find a feasable way to do this without spending to many resources because each player only does a tiny portion of those hundreds of quests anyway.

How to Keep Track of the Charges?
That would be easy, just like the group quests have "Group (X)" in front of them saying it is a quest intended to be completed by a group of X players it could also have something like "Charges (Y)" or just "(Y)", indicating that that specific quest can still be completed Y more times before the server reset.

Other Unexpected Benefits
In addition to be able to customize your weekly/monthly play time it could have additional positive aspects like being able to help a friend (guildie) completing a quest and still be rewarded for it again even if you had already turned it in that day. And then another friend logs in and you do it again...and again 10 minutes later. You wouldn't have any reason to not help a friend in need (it might be a negative aspect sometimes hum?).

In conclusion I want to say that I would really love to see Trion implementing this, maybe for 3.0, since it has no visible negative aspects and with luck it can be implemented automatically thus saving precious resources.

See you all ingame,
Jimmie@Gelidra.

Order Of Mathos notoriety

Made for Rift 2.7
All values presented are base values without any vials.

About Order Of Mathos

Stillmoor main faction is Order of Mathos and it's quartermaster can be found at Zareph's Return (1574,2628).

Stillmoor. Quartermaster Savija can be found at Zareph's Return. Here you can also find most of the daily quests that award notoriety with Order of Mathos.

Quartermaster Savija offers a selection of unique items:

• Check items sold by Quartermaster Savija.

Order Of Mathos Notoriety

There's a variety of ways to gain notoriety with the Order of Mathos. In my opinion the best way should be by doing the daily quests at Zareph's Return. Also killing mobs around Stillmoor should increase your notoriety specially those elites around The Endless Citadel. Here is a Rifthead list of daily quests that award notoriety with the Order of Mathos. Notoriety awarded ranges from +250 to +900 without vials. If you're into fishing there's also two fish exchange quests located at Zareph's Return that award notoriety.

Quartermaster Savija and a couple other NPCs.

Other daily questgivers around Zareph's Return.

Achievement

By reaching Glorified with Order Of Mathos you will get the Knight Of Mathos achievement.