Rift Difficulty and Completion
With the rift closing today I am rather surprised to see I am still 5 tiers from completion and was curious to see what others thought about the level of effort involved in being able to complete the rift.
I will admit that I play DBD more than a little, easily 5 out of 7 days a week for at least 1-2 hours.
I also have played for a LONG time, slightly ashamed to admit 1700 hours clocked in over the years. I say this to highlight that I typically have no problem completing Archive challenges and consistently participate in high XP and BP games.
I believe the motivation of making rift fragments so hard to get has to do with BHVR wanting some money for the premium items, WHICH IS TOTALLY FINE. However, it would be nice to not have to no-life this game just to get a sense of completion.
Some ideas for this:
- The rift pass awards bonus rift fragments(motivation to buy it early)
- OR You only receive a portion (3/4 or even 1/2) of cells back, not all of them
- OR Decrease number of items in rift
- OR Decrease shards required for each level
Obviously, I would prefer the rift pass bonus because I get all my money back but I think a combination of the bonus + only receiving a portion is good for the player and BHVR.
What do you think about the current rift progression?
Inb4 gEht GuD nEwb I diD iT JuSt FinE. This convo is for the rest of us.
Comments
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For the 100th time: The rift is designed for the average player across all players they have. I got all tomes to rift 70 without problems and also downcalculating was always looking fine to get tier 70 done within the 2h/day average.
In detail for this tome: I needed 138 hours (including queue times etc) and I had 6 complete rifts of rewards left in lv4 when I reached tier 70. I think the tomes have always been fine
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For the 2nd time: "Inb4 gEht GuD nEwb I diD iT JuSt FinE. --> This convo is for the rest of us. <--"
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It’s a chore, the challenges give you around 8-10 tiers but you need 17-18 at each rift stage to keep up.
This equates to grinding out the rest, spending typically 2-3 per day and playing every day.
I guesstimate its 175-250 hours each rift if you do all the challenges to max it out.
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Thanks for the grown up response... I said nothing about newbie or entitlement or whatever, I just said what the rift is designed about and why I think it fits perfectly.
This is not meant personally, there are just thousands of threads about it. What do you mean with the rest of us? Average players? Below average? Everyone except me? Everyone except those that got tier 70?
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Also: you edited your post and I only got half of it...
Regarding the auric cells you get back: consider that the whole battle path costs less than a normal full outfit. You can always check what you get for your cells depending on current progress and if it is worth for you or not
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Starting out something with "For the 100th time" is really a great way to start a 'grown-up' conversation.
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Right, by the end of the rift it starts to feel like a chore which isn't exactly fun. I like the difficulty of the archive challenges but the slow gain of rift fragments takes away from some of the satisfaction.
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Justifying to ignore the rest of the post and kill the conversation right away? Sorry anyway if you felt personally attacked, in case you didnt get that from my last post
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"Inb4 gEht GuD nEwb I diD iT JuSt FinE. This convo is for the rest of us."
Well, I did not have any problem completing the Rift, but I think I am still allowed to write in this Thread if I like to.
Your ideas are not really good to be honest.
Rift Pass Bonus Rift Fragments-->This would just encourage people to buy the Rift Pass on Day 1 and if they still dont complete it, crying out that it is a scam. This is happening already because players buy the pass because they cannot wait until the end and then complaining that they dont finish the Rift. In fact, it is really fair from BHVR that you a) get all your Cells back on completion and b) can buy the Rift Pass at any point you like. But if you feel pressured in buying it on Day 1 for easier Rift Completion, not really cool.
Less Auric Cells back-->I think the main reason for buying the Rift Pass is that you get the Cells back. This also helps BHVR to estimate how many people might buy it. I am pretty sure, if you would only get back 500 Auric Cells, less people would buy the Rift. And those who already complete it, will have to spend 5 Euros on top of it instead of just using the same 1000 Auric Cells all the time. In general, taking things away from players is not a good strategy.
Less Items in the Rift-->Thats basically the same as less Auric Cells. Why exactly would you like to get the Rift Pass, if you get less? There are already too many empty spots in the free Rift (which can be filled with small amounts of Auric Cells), more empty Tiers in the free Rift would again make players complain and empty Tiers in the Premium Rift would be even worse. There are already a lot of placeholders and I think that the charms can be divided on multiple Rifts (yes, its a Wraith-Tome, but you dont need the same Charm 5 times, you can have it two times and the other variations on other Rifts), but a placeholder is still better than "nothing".
Less Rift Fragments per Level-->This is probably the only reasonable suggestion, but as I said, I think it is fine how it currently is. You cant except to complete a Battle Pass while basically not playing the game. And its not like anyone has to sweat their balls off for the Archives. Like, a friend of mine completed the Rift by playing around 2 hours in the week and 4 hours on Friday/Saturday and doing only the Survivor Challenges. This is fine IMO.
If the Rift gets completed faster, this would mean that players who already complete it, will finish it even faster, which means that they dont have anything to do. Yes, there are the tomes, but at least for me, I prefer them giving Rift Fragments so that I can see the Progression and not just do them for the Lore and BPs. And also, BHVR cut the amount of Fragments via the Archives, which means that too many people completed the Rift for them, so it is unlikely that they will reduce the grind on that one.
In the end, the entire Rift is 100% optional. You dont have to care for it at all, you dont have to pay for it.
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To your ideas:
- seems fine, many active players should know about their average progress now and be able to guess if the early battle pass will help them. Just not sure about the "pay2win" feeling some people might get about that
- seems bad, I think the idea of returning all cells is motivation and reward for above-average players that support the game anyway for a long time and keep it alive. otherwise it would not make sense to me why BHVR would make the premium pass possibly free
- not sure what that idea would fix or target
- again, this is about balancing to the average DBD player. it is like that on purpose
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I needed 138 this time, taking exact notes. Did that also for the last 2 tomes and never needed more than 160 hours
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You keep saying that this is somehow balanced for the average DBD player but meanwhile you are also saying there are thousands of threads where players are saying they can't complete it.
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First, not every DBD-player is also on the Forums.
And second, people are more likely to open Threads when they want to complain and not when everything went right. Which is just human nature.
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The rift is perfect if you DON'T care about the cosmetic rewards. If you do or you buy the pass (like I did), you'll feel obligated to grind for those rewards, and make it "worth your while". But it'll end up feeling like a chore, and games where you don't achieve your challenge feel like a waste of time.
It's so much better when you don't care, and just treat these like sidequests or free bloodpoints every few games. It gives you something different to do during the game so it doesn't feel too same-y.
I play every now and then and couldn't complete all 70 tiers. I'm sure if i was unemployed + single I'd get it done no sweat.
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I think I play a lot for someone who has a job and partner and I know it is due to the archvies/rift. I am not one to really care that much about cosmetics but it is more the sense of progression/completion that pulls me in.
I enjoy having a reason to grind again, the fun archive challenges, and the lore additions. However, it feelsbadman to put in a decent amount of effort and still lose out on the payoff of completing the rift.
I actually didn't even buy the rift until the last day because I knew I wouldn't be able to complete it but I got close enough that I decided to. I opted to not pay the extra couple hundred cells to get the remaining rewards because that doesn't feel good to have to pay for levels that, even though I played a lot and completed all archives, I wasn't able to get.
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How does it contradict? If there is an average, there are probably half the people finishing the tome in time, and half does not
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I'm going to chime in simply because there doesn't seem to be enough support for your position in this thread.
To put it bluntly, the rift is far too intense (grindy), far too long, and come far too frequently, all at the same time. If it was 2 out of 3 of those, maybe it would be reasonable.
To all the naysayers that keep parroting "I completed it just fine so it's not a problem", your response lacks respect for other people's time and lives. 2 hrs of play per day is NOT sufficient to complete the rift. It's closer to 1.5 hrs /day of IN TRIAL TIME (does not include queue times, loading time, spending BP times, and only counts the first 10 min of the trial). The fragment manipulation they've done with the tomes is ridiculous, just to give people a false sense of security, since the first few tomes were "easier", thus creating the precedent that the time investment would remain the same for all rifts. It is abundantly clear that they have made the rift harder to complete, and just because some people can nolife play the game regardless of difficulty, doesn't mean everyone else can.
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I 100% agree with this. The Rift is a nice treat for playing the game and doing specific rewards for charms and skins, but it shouldn't be a burden upon those who're seeking other things to do or the things they're doing within their life at the moment.
I for one love The Rift and what it can offer, but I don't enjoy feeling paranoid about losing out on those rewards due to the grindy aspect of The Rift itself, which a lot of people forget a key aspect of when it comes to how you gain Tiers in The Rift itself. What is that you might ask? The passive shards that you gain for 800 EXP each, which you can get by playing the game or even doing challenges to gain other Rift Shards.
Now some of you might not realize that the challenges themselves only make up about half or so of the Tiers you need, while the other half is gained passively through EXP gains. It's nice that you gain these while doing the challenges themselves, but after those challenges are done it takes a REALLY long time to get the rest of the Tiers you need, especially if you're busy with school, work, life, etc.
The Rift itself shouldn't be made easier, it should just be made more realistic for the average player. It's nice that the devs made a system that rewards dedicated players, but it shouldn't be something that requires you to play the game for hours on end, which is also something people forget as well. On average, a match could take 20 - 30 minutes each. You might not even GAIN 800 EXP from that match, which requires you to continue waiting for more matches, playing those matches, getting 1 shard per 800 EXP, etc. It's a long grind that really should be toned down in my opinion, at least to a more reasonable degree.
Also I should mention the frequency the rift comes out
While it's nice to have a new Rift show up soon after one closes, it isn't realistic either in terms of how certain players hours work or what they're able to play at a given time. There should honestly be a few weeks or (if it really needs to be) a month before a new Rift opens, this'll give people enough time to prepare or see if they can even do The Rift at all.
Now of course The Rift lasts for about 70 days (if my memory is correct) which is usually enough time for some players to complete it, but again, some players forget that not everyone plays DBD everyday, some of us have other things we want to play or do in the meantime. So those 70 days can really disappear quickly before you even know it.
I don't personally think it's the days or the frequency that The Rift comes out that's the main issue though, I think it's just the EXP requirement for the passive shards, if it was 600 or 700 than it'd be a lot more reasonable for players to complete. Since again, queue times and match times really do play a factor in how long someone can even play the game at a given time.
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The average player will be able to get to tier 70? I hardly doubt that. Maybe with the tomes 2 and 3, but not with this one. Why do I doubt that? Because I play the game literally daily for at 2 hours, sometimes way more. That's hardly "only" average. But still, I was not able to get all tiers even though I finished all challenges. Maybe I was to effective with the challenges, don't know. But I would expect an average player to play significantly less than me, and when I did not get all tiers, there's no way they would have.
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Your points about not making the rift easier and also allowing more time in between made me think of perhaps a smaller change to the rift system. If we leave the archive and rift as it is now but simply extend the time it is open, this should still be satisfying for people who play more than average and makes the rift more approachable for average players. I would vote at least a week more, preferably two.
I don't personally mind that a new rift opens so quickly as I like to feel like I am making progress on something but I can see how it could cause fatigue and/or makes 'normal/pre-rift' gameplay kind of rare since everyone is more focused on their challenge than trying to just kill/survive. Perhaps if we didn't feel like we were under the gun to get the rift completed the fatigue wouldn't set it and the willingness to just have normal fun in-game would be more frequent, so having a rift always active wouldn't really be a problem.
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Clarifying question, are you playing just one role or both Survivor and Killer? Finishing the challenges for both roles and playing roughly two hours a day got me to 70 before even finishing level 4 of the challenges. Personally I do feel it is a bit of a grind but with the amount of time given it's something that is fairly easily accomplished. Just grinding out some of the challenges has been enough to get a tier.
The rewards from the rift are all cosmetics that don't affect gameplay and are entirely optional. If you don't know if you can finish the rift don't buy in. You don't need to spend the money at the beginning, you can spend it at the end when you've finished or know you can finish and get all of the rewards at that time.
Also, you get your Auric cells back for finishing the rift so that's the incentive to play more and finish, in fact, that's the business model for something like this. Get a lot of players to spend $10, give that money back as in game currency to the ones that finished, if they didn't get the $10 back they may be likely to spend it again on the next one. Or they'll spend the cells they got back on other cosmetics and pay for the next rift again.
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I typically play more survivor than killer but I play both enough that they are always in red rank. I also always finish all challenges.
I don't really mind the basic approach of motivating players to play and trying to make money in the process, I buy all dlcs with money even though I have enough with shards because I want to support the devs. My issue is more with the fun factor of playing (what I feel like is) more than the average amount of time and still not being able to complete the rift. I feel like it is just too much in too little time, even just extending the time that the rift is open would be a simple adjustment to make it more enjoyable.
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I totally get that. If they even extended it a week it would feel like a little less of a grind. I think a better option would be to make the XP needed for a shard to go down from 800 to 600. On average in a match I make 550xp so if I could almost get a shard every match it would ease up a lot. Especially since the first Survivor and first killer matches of the day award additional xp
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I mean either one of these changes would help with the overall time it'd take, which is a plus for those who can't play semi-actively or all the time. Keeping it at 600 or 700 EXP is also reasonable, but extending The Rifts time would also be plausible as well.
Also the time between a old and new Rift might be good for some but for others it's not (like you said), so at least it should get a week extension rather than a almost instantaneous continuation, that'd at least be more reasonable for those who want to take a moment to play the game normally or play something else. It could even be because of work or just something else to do.
At the end of the day any of these suggestions would at least help in some way, but the overall grindy part should honestly be looked into imo.
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I can just repeat: I needed 138 hours on tome 4
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Ok first of all the rift is not designed so that someone who plays here or there will complete it. If you play about 2-4 hours a day average PLUS complete all 4 levels of the tome on both killer and survivor challenges. You do not have to pay for the battle pass till you get to tier 70 and you STILL get all the pass and cells back at that point. this is optional they did not have to do this, and in the long run it is free. 4 times i've paid 1000 auric cells, 4 times i've gotten 1000 back. so i've paid 2.50 for each rift so far. If you want something you have to do what is required to get it done! Nothing should just be given to you!
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Based on the Instagram polls they do to see if people have unlocked a Tome-exclusive outfit (not the recolors) or Tome level completion rewards, less than half of the people are completing it. The most recent poll (the Meg outfit which is completed at tier 70) currently has 34% of people voting yes and 66% voting no. Maybe it’s just Instagram and that this will change when including other platforms, but people aren’t completing the Rifts. If they are, then they’re taking a long time. I wouldn’t mind adding fragments to the Rift paid track.
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The cost of the Rift should be 0 Auric Cells. Why? It's because of the sunk cost incentive that screams inside people's minds that they can recoup their losses if they play MOOOOOOREEEE! Long after many of us have had our fill of DBD for the day/week/month, the Rift beckons to be grinded. The Rift should have been modeled after the previous in-game events: A short diversion from the base game, time limited to only a week or 2, no cost to the player, and achievable with a reasonable amount of play time. The current Rift system does none of these.
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that is not what they designed. and I actually like the "BUY IN" aspect of having part of the rift. for 10 bucks i've gotten about 100 bucks worth of cosmetics and other aspects. I'd say that's pretty good... hell technically after each rift tier 70 I've gotten my 10 bucks back. it's a good thing over all. I expect nothing to be given to me and I hate pay to win models, and this is not even that. it's pay to look good but we'll give you the in game currency back to spend on other things! why is that wrong? and if the rift was going on like the other events, it'd cheapen the events even further. but to each their own.
I buy 1000 auric cells (a 10 dollar purchase roughly) I then get to choose what to apply that to,a full cosmetic outfit or the rift pass and then in the case of the latter I get the 1000 cells back once again! so I can choose to buy a full cosmetic again in addition to all the stuff I just got or I could hold the cells till the next rift and do the same thing all over again. eventually it gets down to little cost and that's a plus to me!
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I've made it to level 70 on every rift released so far, and the grind has progressively gotten worse. In fact, I kind of regret doing this Rift and the last, but did it anyway to keep my record.
The biggest appeal in my opinion is getting all your Auric Cells back (in fact, I only paid for the 1st Rift, and have done all subsequent from the same Auric Cells). The outfits are nice but usually there's only one or two I care about.
Some ideas I have to decrease the grind:
Increase the daily XP bonus - keeps the need to play every day, but still makes things easier
Daily Rituals give 1-2 Rift fragments
Randomly generated simple challenges - kind of like Daily Rituals
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I'd be fine with all this, but I think the XP cost per Rift Fragment definitely should be lowered to 600 XP (or less). That would equate to about 1 Fragment earned per match played (instead of 1 Fragment per 1.25 matches as it currently is).
Including the daily role bonuses, this would drop the number of trials you'd need to play per Rift Tier from 12 down to 9 (which probably saves the rough equivalent of about 45-60 min of time per Tier).
Stacking in extra Fragments from rituals and randomly-generated challenges would just be icing on a much more pleasant cake.
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I never finish the rift, and I am also a completionist, and yes it annoys me as well how long it takes to tier up.
But I'm pretty sure if I was a game designer I'd want to set the difficulty to best suit the players who spend the most money on the game, which is generally going to be the people who play many hours every day. It only makes sense that the game will be best suited to it's best customers.
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And 138h in 70 days, about 2h per day, in certainly not "average" play. Sure the rift can be finished by just playing enough, but that takes dedication, not some playing every other day. So if the Devs aim is really that average play will get you to Tier 70, they failed it thoroughly, at least for this tome.
Out of curiosity, did you play more survivor in this 138 hours? Bc I would think it's a little easier to tier up as survivor, just bc. you can get out of the game earlier. The killer always has to wait for the last survivor(s). Since you will only get awarded XP up to around 10 minutes, every minute above that is practically waisted, Xp-vise. I play more killer than survivor, if you played more survivor that might explain why you managed to finish all tiers where I didn't even though we should have roughly the same play time. Or maybe I played something like 120 hours. Is there are way to look this up?
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I had no problems reaching Tier 70 with rift 2 and 3. But for rift 1 and 4 I did not get it in time and hat to buy some tiers with auric cells, since i wanted the Tier 70 item.
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The average DBD player doesn't play for 2 hours a day, every single day, or whatever equivalent of hours-to-rift ratio you prefer to measure. Most people have other things they do, whether it is other games, socialising, or another form of entertainment. That sort of playtime is reserved for the hardcore audience, mostly the ones that feel the need to actually talk about the game outside of their social group.
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About average, that's what BHVR said on tome 1
I play more survivor, but somewhat between 60-65%. I'm not sure if it makes that much of a difference if you play killer or survivor, because you always need to get as close to the 10 minutes as possible, too less or too much is both bad. Don't forget queue times between games, it is better to spend the time in game rather than in lobby.
Of course depending on killer/survivor queue time differences, but if it is the same, then having 4 games lasting 8 minutes +3m queue would be the roughly the same like 3 games lasting 12m + 3m queue. 32m of XP playtime for 44m total gametime vs 30m of XP playtime for 45m total gametime
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I can't tell you about the distribution, it is most likely that there are like 10% of players having 1k or multiple k hours and 40% play a couple of hours per week. The average was stated by BHVR on tome 1 when they explained their design. So this is nothing I came up with or which I was guessing about
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Unless I get gen rushed / perform too bad, my games are usually longer than 10 mintues as a killer, more like between 15 and 20 minutes. So you could say i "waste" some minutes with every killer game. The survivor games tend to be shorter, be it bc gens are flying or I'm killed and not the last one. The queue for survivor is longer for me, thats right, so maybe I'm coming out the same either way.
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I was 11 tiers off from completion without buying anything, but I also took two months off from playing.
If I need to spend 10ish dollars to complete it, that's fine imo. That's typically the cost of one cosmetic anyways.
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138 hours to get to level 70 in the rift...
Over the course of 70 days.
So about 2 hours per day, on average. 2 hours to complete a single level of the rift.
Cool. But some of us have day jobs and interests in addition to DbD. People in our lives we want to spend time with.
I have no problem sinking hours into a game I enjoy. But I don't want to feel obligated to make time to grind out challenges to the exclusion of other things.
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Yes, and for those, you can definitely say they don't play like the average player and the rift is not designed around them. Is that a problem? Do you expect to get the rift done within 10 hours? And what forces you to complete the rift anyway? The pure existence?
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