Primalist the Star of In-House Interview

With the revelation of the new Rift class, the Primalist, earlier this month, Trion decided to conduct an in-house interview with Lead Systems Designer Jeff Hamilton. The interview focuses on the design process for the new class, as well as a bit of information about Hamilton himself.

While the Primalist has been Hamilton's focus, the other Callings are receiving attention as well:

OCHO: While working on Primalist, you’ve been working on the other Callings as well. Has working on Primalist given you any insights on the other Callings?

JH: It has almost been the other way around. I’ll look at abilities of another soul, and I’ll see that it has 18 different effects that deal with various edge cases. When you look under the hood, you know that someone had a specific intent that caused the various parts to work together in this way, but when you’re making something new, you want to make it as forward thinking and easy to maintain as possible. I really tried to build everything with that in mind.

A lot of times, when I am looking at existing Callings, I have to keep in mind not just “is this better gameplay than before,” but even if it is, how does it differ from how players expect it to be? The differences may cause them to have very strong feelings about it, positive or negative. Primalist is free from this limitation – we get a chance to make something fun with no pre-existing expectations of what it feels like.

You can check out the full interview on the Rift site.