Simply, bean validation works fine even without rich:validator. WIth rich:validator you can expect the validation to be ajax/clientside which is also ok.
The problem is clientside message doesn't use the following property (from my validation messages properties):
javax.faces.validator.BeanValidator.MESSAGE={1}: {0}
to display itself. It just uses the default {0} (only bean message).
Any ideas if this can be overriden? I want the input label in the message...