#Rift rework

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surreal river
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Allow me to preface this by saying that I would like for this post to be a thread with input from both veterans and newer players.

Alright, so let's be honest, the rift was pretty cool when it was first released (same with ER), but overtime, it becomes quite obvious it has many issues, namely, its lack of replayability (more on that later) and novelty. Once you've played a few weeks of the rift and the novelty wears off, you realize it's literally the exact same thing every single week. Sure, one can argue that since both map layouts and lineups get randomly generated every week, there a nearly infinite number of possible runs. However, this simply gets boring way too quickly, as it isn't actually game changing in any way (i.e. you can run the same two heroes+build for all 7 realms, regardless of the lineups/layout). The rift is also not farmable, which goes against the core idea of end-game content in this style of games. Together, these nullify the replayability aspect of the only end-game content this game offers.

Suggestion 1:
This one is a pretty obvious one and I'm honestly baffled it still exists after so many years and is an absolute must, regardless of if any of the other suggestions even get read. REMOVE these stupid time gates from the rift. They serve no purpose, other than artificially inflating the "runtime" of the mode, by soft locking players from progressing. Time gates are NOT a fix for a lack of content. By making the game mechanically challenging (not bullet sponges, but something similar to karnheim/karnage), you achieve the same thing, but without imposing artificial gates for the sole purpose of stretching out content (eg. atlantica gates).

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Suggestion 2:
Since time gates are no longer a thing, the rift must be longer or replayable. This can be achieved via a few ways (these are some of my ideas, please suggest others):

**Add more realms / Infinite realms **
This one speaks for itself. Make NR and ER 10 or even 12 realms. This doesn't necessarily fix the replayability aspect, but what it does, is make the activity more rewarding and allows players to progress faster through the game, both of which are important to encourage participation and long-term retention. The threat gains/node and/or max threat can be adjusted accordingly with the longer layout. The other option is to get rid of the 7 realms all together. Since layouts and lineups are generated randomly anyways, let’s take advantage of it. Each week, after selecting NR or ER, all players start at realm 1. Only, after beating the boss, you get access to the portal node which opens access to a newly generated realm, up to a predetermined number of realms (eg 15 or 20). The second option does make the activity a little more linear (definitely a drawback compared to currently), but it also makes the later realms be more challenging and rewarding (currently depending on the week you can get to the to R7 boss with very low threat).

Rift Reruns
Similar to the portal, allow us to rerun the rift upon beating the final boss. Please don’t make this cost gems like the portal. Ideally this would cost gold or even better, introduce “rift tokens”, a new farmable resource from roaming monsters. This makes the portal replayable, farmable and boosts progression. It also means you can actually enjoy end-game content throughout the entire week (with different modifiers/layouts/runs) and as much or as little as you desire.

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Suggestion 3:
There needs to be more novelty with the rift. One way to achieve that is to make rift scores actually mean something, since currently they are as relevant as fame. For instance, a rift season could last 2-3 weeks, where each week’s scores are carried over and those with the highest scores at the end of the season (top 5 or 10) get skins/gems/hero shards/hero skins or other meaningful rewards. This makes the end game activity competitive with a purpose, since the game doesn’t offer actual pvp anyways.

I do realize that my suggestions require an overhaul of the rift, but that’s only because zero attention was given to it all this time. Currently, the rift is not a meaningful end-game activity, is not competitive, has no novelty, has no replayability, and becomes another onslaught dungeon you auto to finish as quickly as possible (especially with the raiding mechanic). I also realize that master rift comes out in the first quarter of 2026, so they are not likely to work on anything else atm, however, my hope is that everyone’s suggestions from here can get somehow implemented so that it isn’t just another ER with a different set of modifiers and enemies.

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Rift rework

humble lava
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The rift is meh. The only reason to be in there is to get charms and gauntlet tokens and once those are all done.. not much of reason to bother with it

surreal river
humble lava
open hill
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I totally agree with this but I'll like to add some
I know most end game players benefit from the fact that the rift gives cores but as a lvl 55 player, needing to raise my RP, all I get from the rift is gauntlet cores and it's seriously annoying imagining having the option to get good items but 10 out of your 13 rewards were gauntlet cores and blue charms all through the rift. This doesn't even want me to play the rift since I'm gonna be getting cores idk about ER if its also like this but since you can farm cores from roaming monsters, I think the chances of getting cores in NR should be incredibly low at least give us something to play for and I know some actually get lucky and get some unique items but all I've been getting is gauntlet cores and blue charms and sometimes purple amour

slow rune
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Cores are mostly melted into essence past a certain point. Especially once gauntlets are maxed.

humble lava
open hill
humble lava
# open hill Well, it's boring getting cores all the time Maybe when I reach lvl 70, I can w...

The game was a slow burn, the owners have really fast tracked some stuff and it’s supremely screwed up the balance. But at its core, this game is a grind like no other. To your point, I don’t think the devs understand how to keep people interested and the game is slipping. I’ve watched so many of my long time guild mates hang it up and now I’m watching new players come in- build up quick- get bored and quit. So there’s a critical state of the game that’s not being addressed. I feel ya for sure

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It used to be a truly heroic endeavor to become lvl45 and get full unique gear, I have a guy who started playing about 2 months ago and he’s full mythic already 🤣 you can’t really claim it’s difficult or rare to become an efficient knight anymore so that alone kills it. If everyone is special, then no one is.

open hill
open hill
open hill
humble lava
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Yep, it’s a bummer. Supply and demand is a delicate balance, so once you start throwing charms and stuff at people behind pay walls (events) nothing is special about the game. In addition, the massive lack of support for us Guild Leaders / guilds in general, then mix in lacking cosmetics, a crappy PvP arena mechanic, guild wars which never really worked well and continues to suck, literally nothing new that’s an actual addition to the gaming experience since the rift. It’s all just kinda meh these days. I only play because of my guild but even that doesn’t keep me very interested.

light remnant
# humble lava The game was a slow burn, the owners have really fast tracked some stuff and it’...

I really think it’s hard to overstate how badly guild wars screwed up the base game by wrecking the in-game economy.

I’m genuinely curious what they will do for the MR, because there isn’t new content to pair it with and all of the endgame tasks are basically completed at this point. In a sense the rift power grinding is its own reward for a certain kind of player, but the access to rare mats/charms/cores was definitely a big draw for the NR/ER content when it rolled out.

surreal river
# light remnant I really think it’s hard to overstate how badly guild wars screwed up the base g...

I don’t think I fully agree. GW and rift are standalone game modes. The fact that both can offer similar rewards is not inherently bad, especially, since that increases accessibility to endgame and min maxing and faster progress for newer players. Although, you are correct that rift is less attractive because the rewards are meh/overlapping, it’s mainly bad because it’s just poorly designed and uninteresting

humble lava
light remnant
open hill
humble lava
# open hill I don't have a problem with the fact that GW lets players max unique faster beca...

It’s a perspective difference. Some of us who have been around long enough to see the steady growth and reasons for the steady growth vs some of you who are newer and can only see how to progress faster. Again in my guild, I’m watching people show up, lvl up and get bored. There isn’t that real strong community anymore. Why should I continue to invest into a game where someone else can jump in and get pretty close to where I am super fast? So your older players are leaving- rightfully so. And newer players are in and out within a year. Not a good strategy for longevity imop

surreal river
# humble lava It’s a perspective difference. Some of us who have been around long enough to s...

I don't see this as a perspective difference at all. The issue isn't necessarily faster progression. Newer players progressing faster has no impact on your account nor your enjoyment of the game. If anything that means you can onboard lower lvl players and within a decent amount of time (given they play consistently) u can have a guild with very strong players. A game where reaching true endgame takes years, is a massive deterrent (the current time investment KH requires is very reasonable)

Moreover, making someone inaccessible other than for paying players isn't a good longterm tactic. Therefore, GW giving dust and other resources that speed up progression is a fantastic game addition. To your point about "I’m watching people show up, lvl up and get bored", is not a GW or progression issue, but a general game structure and overall game loop issue. On it's surface, the game offers a LOT to do everyday, but in reality the majority of it is meaningless and pretty boring. What you're witnessing is new layers not getting to the point of being able to auto/quickly do those daily activities, so they become a burden, players get bored and leave.

humble lava
surreal river
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That's fine, you're welcome to disagree. Just understand that saying "faster progression is bad, because back in the day it took us years to get where players now get in about 3 months", not only doesn't acknowledge the core issues in the game, but is also gatekeeping with no actual reason for it

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it's also extremely common (in all games) to speed up progression for new players as the game expends throughout the years

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without that, you can never catch up as a new player, so why would anyone ever join a few years after release

light remnant
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I think that the point is that the game used to be, in a sense, about progression and a lot of old players liked that. I’m not too sure what the game is about now, because as you say a lot of the game is focused on enabling progression and isn’t “fun” in the traditional sense. I think @youngsteak and I are just saying that Midoki clearly made a move to try to retrofit the game around guild wars and they ate the core game when they did that.

surreal river
light remnant
# surreal river Ok so just help me here understand your guys' point better. The game is the sa...

GW caused the decline, because it was an unpopular mode when they rolled it out and Midoki added a huge amount of rewards to the early wars as an enticement for players to participate. They have since scaled back to GW rewards a lot, but it’s still the easiest way to get shards in the game by a lot and the damage is already done in the sense that older players that were playing the game for the slow build up are all flooded with materials and wondering what to do at this point.

It seems like you might be a different kind of player that is looking for a different experience out of the game, which is fine. But to the oldsters it’s hard not to remember what the game used to be when they were winning all of those pocket gamer awards.

surreal river
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I agree that GW is a pretty bad game mode (especially after the change to hold wars) and that flooding new players with the same scale of rewards as more advanced ones is a massive problem (i.e. if you join a guild that's in war masters as a lvl10 player, you get the same rewards as a lvl70 player) and kinda progression breaking.

The other very prominent issue you highlighted is the accumulation of resources with no avenue of spending them for older players. That's also a massive issue, but is a reflection of bad end game design (it's important to distinguish that), especially, since we know when master rift or world 8 comes out, there will be a new resource everyone will have to grind for. Tbh the overall in game economy is just a massive problem, everything is so overinflated purely for stalling progression, which is a whole issue in itself. From my understanding GW was introduced to dampen this progression curve, but inadvertently, they screwed up the economy even further.

I still disagree with the shards and dust argument, since GW is literally the only way to reliably "farm" those resources, which are otherwise gatekept (and hence unique/legendary heroes) behind events with paid passes or that require gemming sprees with chests, which as I previously said, is a horrible long term player retention strategy.

light remnant
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But yeah, the shard issue that you point out is basically downstream of the endgame and pacing problems. Before flooding the game with shards, none of the content really required that you have a hero fully promoted so there was a lot more variation in play style and you don’t have battles that are basically impossible without a full star doceo and a kit full of gold charms. But now they are stuck, because there is a substantial player base that has access to most of the maxxed heroes and new players realize that they are going to have to do that too to make it through the existing content. So you are right that people need access to more shards now, but this is basically because Midoki fell into a situation where every player needs to achieve completionist level heroes to play the game.

humble lava
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Agreed, the game has become an “on/off” switch. My community in my guild is crickets, I’ve cycling through members like crazy and my core 14 or so members is down to 7 or 8. The game offers fast progression and then nothing.

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Even building unique armor for your main set or a side set.. that was a huge endeavor. Now it costs like 20k in coin and farm some gear for a week. So, as I said.. when everyone is special, no one is. Hard to promote a game as this amazing thing when you can jump in a decent guild and then be pretty close to a top rated player in a few months.

open hill
open hill
# humble lava Agreed, the game has become an “on/off” switch. My community in my guild is cri...

Idk about fast progression, the game is pretty normal paced for me and I just think people need new content or something more hard to grind for. True in a like 8 months to a year, you can reach the max lvl but I wouldn't wanna play a game that takes 2 years to reach the max lvl also maybe people just need to find a goal or something
Idk if you've been playing for a year too, you're kinda new at this game because you definitely don't have all your side builds equipped with yellow charms 😂no offense but I understand that people get bored because they don't have anything to do again but maybe that's the whole point of MR. Guild wars and everything is pretty fine. Lvl 70 players saying new players shouldn't get access to the same rewards as lvl 70 doesn't really make sense to me. Here are my reasons, I haven't seen any higher lvl guild set their joining lvl to 10 even if somehow a lvl 10 got his way into a guild that's in war masters, you have to be lvl 35 before you can even get to use dusts and even at lvl 35, somehow magically you have all the heroes, that doesn't mean you can progress faster because you still have amours to upgrade and this things are pretty scarce for "beginners" as you call them I wouldn't call any player above 50 a beginner anymore. So all this about Gw being a bad mode or something just doesn't make sense also most of this is just unnecessary gatekeeping 🤧

humble lava
open hill
humble lava
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I’m not saying people shouldn’t have access to things, but when tons of stuff gets dumped into the stream especially behind a pay wall it just sorta turns the water brown.

light remnant
# open hill Idk about fast progression, the game is pretty normal paced for me and I just th...

I think that the point is that the game clearly had a plan for endgame and the Devs basically screwed it up because they were desperate to make Guild Wars a thing. I know some people really like GW, and although I don’t think it’s a particularly popular part of the game the issue is less about the mode itself and more about what Midoki gave up to implement it.

You are right that they could fix this with more endgame content but there has been almost no new content since Atlantica dropped in early 2024, and now it seems clear that adding more content will be really hard because of the major issues with the game economy.

open hill
humble lava
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Agreed, even Atlantica is cool but it was just kind of a rinse and repeat off Karnheim- and I think Karnheim was the big step that many of us at that time were really stoked for. It became truly a good puzzle of difficulty.

surreal river
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Atlantica is a massive step down from Karnheim. No original (aside from design) boss fights or really anything. Really boring and even more repetitive than Karnheim. Also, the citadel design is horrible and should never be used again in future map expansions

shadow portal
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Well, seriously, if so many aspects of the game bother or bore you, maybe it's time to go find a new game to play.

You can always take a break and come back after awhile, see if Midoki brought some changes to the game that make it more fun tor you to play.

After getting everything & everybody that I cared about up to lvl 60, which was the max at the time, I took a break for more than a year. Came back, everything up to Lvl 70, new heroes, new bosses, new event, new land, new strategies, great new skins - it was great. I'm really glad I took the break & really glad I came back.

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As for rift rewards, Midoki has actually improved some lately. The expert rewards have become more varied & more useful lately. Funny though, they now seem to start dominating the rewards beginning lvl 5 of ER.

I was complaining about all the blue gauntlet cores for awhile. When I left game before, if you hadn't completed your gauntlets you probably struggled quite a bit to complete ER. So I don't understand why those cores are now being pushed where you previously couldn't get to.
Lots of things make good ER rewards besides cores.

How about having some GW Orders as rift rewards during the week of GW?

That's really what I dropped by to suggest.