Arilou

THe physical Well is (as mentioned by Ramiel, only an extension of the metaphysical Well. And there are almost certainly other physical wells in other universes (Praetoria almost certainly)

And he actually seems to be lacking in a lot of universes (COT-verse, for instance)

People still do that actually (mainly because you don't get purples from AE)

There IS a differene with AE though: Due to the way you can set up ambushes and spawns you can get a lot more enemies in a lot smaller area (IE: Less downtime) you don't havet o walk around the map herding, because eight ambushes will be heading straight for you.

(which is why these farms actuallly require pretty complex builds, there's A LOT of incoming damage)

There is (effectively) a streak-breaker. It's called Empyreal merits. Functionally it's the same thing.

*headdesks*

DO YOU EVEN READ!?

I've specifically determined what I mean by effort.

YES. Any particular challenge is going to be harder than teaming against that particular challenge.* So beating that hellion boss is harder solo than teaming. This is already baked into what I mean by "effort".

I said that given the same failure-chance and time spent on the actual task it takes more effort to team because you have to actually get a team first (the difficulty of this varies, but it's a factor).

So stop bringing up all sorts of stuff that's entirely besides the point. Take two identical tasks (let's say, sit for 30 minutes in a room and then a reward-box spawns, only one version of this task requires a team, and the other does not) the challenge is the same (100% chance of success assuming you don't get bored) the time is the same (just 30 minutes of waiting) given these parameters the team-task is going to require more effort because you have to actually get a team to do it, while the solo-character can just go in and start waiting immediately

DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND? Or do I have to say the same thing I've said two-dozen times AGAIN. Are you goint to keep up bringing up arguments that are completely irrelevant?

Any team-based vs. solo task has to take into account (in addition to the synergistic effects of teams, etc. etc.) the effort it takes to actually form a team. (or look one up)

The rest of your post just has absolutely NOTHING to do with what I'm talking about at all. I'm just saying that if there's going to be a solo path (WHICH I THINK THERE SHOULD BE, AND BY THE WAY, ADDING ONE WOULD NOT BE PENALIZING SOLOERS BECAUSE PRETTY MUCH ANY SOLO PATH WOULD BE BETTER THAN THE SISYPHEAN TASK THEY HAVE AHEAD OF THEM RIGHT NOW, SO IT WOULD BE MAKING IT EASIER AND NOT PENALIZING THEM) it's going to have to require an equal amount of effort as the trial path. However they choose to distribute that effort. (repetitiveness, challenge, etc. etc.)

Ideally the solo-path should require exactly as much time from the moment you decided to start collecting incarnate stuff as the trial path. Including the time it takes to form teams and such.

* the scaling system *somewhat* changes this, but it's still true for any given challenge.

Yep. But the deterministic path is there as a floor, for those people who are just plain unlucky. Remember, theoretically you could run twenty million trials and never get a very rare. Becuase that's how randomness. works. It acts as a streak-breaker.

I, personally, am more on the other side: I'd be allright with only have a 10% chance of success (that is on average, I don't want it to actually be random) if I only had to do it once. The sweet sense of accomplishment after beating a really tough challenge is... Well, sweet.

The best way of course is some kind of staged rewards that means you can get some level of slow/grindy progress even if you fail, while if you succeed (which is really hard) you don't have to repeat it at all. But that's pretty much impossible to balance.

Congratulations! The devs thinks so too! That's why you can convert Empyreal Merits to Very Rare components.*

Again, I don't neccessarily think putting AV's into the hypotethical solo incarnate path is neccessarily a good idea. But IF you don't (since remember, some characters CAN solo AV's easily, which means EB's is going to be a cakewalk for them) it's likely going to require more repetitions (IE: more actual grinding) than if you didn't.

If you're not putting AV's in there (or some new game mechanics I can't even speculate on) characters like Bill's aren't going to be challenged at all... And since solo requires so much less effort than trials (essentially, in trials Bill's characters matter less becuase the rest o fthe teams are going to slow it down, unless he takes the time to find a team BillClones, and in that case the time he spends doing that is time he's not running trials, so it slows him donw anyway) which means that the "challenge" part isn't going to be particularly important in determining the time/reward ratio. So they're going to have to go for repetition instead. (Or at some other form of making sure you spend time doing it)

*Whether or not the conversion ratio is where it should be is beside the point. That's why it's there.

Again, that's probably deliberate. You want the random method to be a better odds, statistically, than the deterministic one simply because it's random. (whether it should be three times better is a different question, it probably should have a slight edge)

It's actually even kinder than that since the deterministic method isn't directly tied to the random one: IE: You can progress down both at the same time.

Okay, let's start with a few basics.

There are rewards. There's going to be a task required to do these rewards. Doesen't matter if it's just standard levels, incarnate rewards, IO's whatever. If you want "stuff" you're going to have to do something. Play the game. Meet the challenge.

Sure, they could give us a "get to level 50" button at the start of the game. They could just ignore the entire idea of game mechanics and progression and make it into a free-form diceless RPG.

But it's not very likely. The game is a "classic" RPG, that means that in order to get rewards you're going to have to meet challenges of some kind. Are we okay on this? Can you accept at least this much?

Now. Ideally there would be an infinite amount of content to run, and an infinite amount of rewards to get: You'd never have to repeat ANYTHING unless you wanted to and you'd always have something new to work for.

This is unrealistic. The devs do not have that kind of time or resources. They are working with finite resources.

A lot of people (not all, but many) only play as long as they can get new stuff. Improve their characters (they might roll a new one of course, but even that has a finite kind of permutations before it gets stale) if they stop getting to be able to do new stuff with their characters, they eventually stop playing them. Once they feel there's nothing new to get (at all) they stop playing the game.

Now, the easiest way for the devs to keep these players occupied (as in, the least amount of work for them) is to make them repeat content to get shinies. If you make them run the Gauntlet of Doom 10 times before they get the Sword of Sharpness they'll stay playing ten times as long as if you gave them the sword after one Gauntlet run, and you'll have to do 1/10th of the work as if you had made ten different dungeons they could run.

Hence "grinding". It's a rather efficient way of doing things. Most people don't mind repeating content *to a certain extent* if they get some new shinies from it. And the devs don't have to make infinite permutations of content.

That's why they make you repeat content: IE: Grind.

Now, of course the devs knows there's a balance to be struck here, make players repeat the same content TOO many times and they'll get bored and quit, regardless of the shinies. So they have to make some kind balance. Maybe you need to run the Gauntlet of Doom only five times rather than ten to get the Sword of Sharpness.

Now, the thing is that *players have different tolerance for these kinds of things*. COH is (and I can state this with confidence) on the VERY low end of the grind-scale. The trials are relatively non-grindy compared to a lot of other MMORPG's high-end stuff. (and just like everything else, it'll become less grindy as more alternative paths/content exists)

This doesen't neccessarily mean the devs have put the level of grind on the right level, but at least you should be able to understand why grinding is neccessary. It's because it's effectively recycling the dev's work.

So if you want to argue that the current system is too grindy (I think it's about right, personally, there's a few minor stuff that could be sorted out, and I'd certainly not mind some kind of solo-path, but the grindiness-level itself is pretty decent, you can get a fully kitted-out incarnate in a couple of days if you are at it, which is lightning-fast by MMORPG standards) you can. But that's a separate argument for arguing about the grindiness or lack thereof of a solo-path compared to the trial-path.

To a certain extent repetitiveness can be balanced by risk of failure: If a challenge is set so that people will fail it about half the time, then effectively you can cut the level of repetitions in half (since half the time they won't even get to the reward stage) so in that sense repetitiveness and challenge are conversible: The repetition/challenge values can be combined into one value, let's call it "effort", that can be used to determine how long a player "should" have to play before they get their reward.

There's all sorts of ways of making you "feel" progress between actual rewards of course, like giving you tokens that can be traded for stuff, etc. That gives you a feeling of progress, even though they can't be used for anything until you get 10 of them, say. But you know you only have to get 3 more of them before you have your Sword of Sharpness.

Now, if you have a solo-task that takes the same amount of time and has the same challenge-factor (let's say the average failure rate is 50%) as a team-task, a team-task *is going to require more effort*. This is counterintuitive but rather simple: It takes effort to assemble and coordinate a team. (a team can also make a task much easier, but that afects the failure rate, assuming the failure rate remains constant, it takes more effort to do it with a team)

Do you understand?

Now, the devs have set the effort-level required to get the Incarnate Powers. it might be too high, it might be too low. You think it is too high, but anyway. Assume the devs have figured that this is the optimal level of effort required and they're pretty happy with it.

That means that any solo path is going to require the same level of effort (time, repetition, challenge, what-have you) as the trial path. (Or, given that the devs are fallible human beings, they're at least going to take a stab at it)

Why that is, is well... obvious. They don't want the solo-path to be obviously superior (in the lack of effort required) because if so people will do it exclusively, then get bored, and quit the game.

Do you understand now? This is well... It's really basic game-design. If you don't want a challenge, if you just want to make up "the rules" as you go along, then the game really isn't for you. The devs are trying to keep the requirement of a challenge up becuase they know that most people will get bored running around with God Mode after a while. (this, incidentally, is also why they periodically nerf stuff that they consider overpowered)

Again, where the level of "too easy so it gets boring" is? that's going to vary from person to person, and the devs are going to try to hit a middle-ground that's acceptable to the largest number of people. (Whether or not they succeed is a different matter.

And that's why they have to make the solo-path equally grindy to the trial-path.* Now you have your answer, please never ask that question again.

Because people appreciate a challenge. They value stuff more after they've had to work for it. Again, there's a balance: Give people stuff too easily and they won't value it, make it too much work and they'll give up, thinking it's not worth it.

* Not neccessarily the current trial-path. It's possible the devs are going to figure "Eh, we made it too grindy, let's scale it back." But that's a different matter.

That's what I said actually. He was complaining that a solo path described earlier would be too hard/repetitive. I mentioned that if he's going to get a solo path it's likely going to be at least as hard (which admittedly isn't much) as the trial path, and if it isn't as hard it's probably going to be twice as repetitive to compensate.

Mercy is getting updated (unless they changed that) It's not neccessarily getting the Full Atlas overhaul though. (Mind, since it's newer it might not need to)

Mind, it would be relatively simple to do.

Say, if you've run 50 successful trials and never gotten a very rare, the game forces one.

Although then again, it would be pointless since we already have the empyreal method.

I've been pushing this for quite a while.

If you're doing F2P I think you should pretty much resign yourself to being a second-class citizen since, well, that's the point.

Honestly, the "there's one kind of fundamental force underlying everything else in the universe" is kind of a common theme. Not just in comics, but in real-life as well. (Not to mention that the "all origins are ultimately different manifestations of the same thing" DOES rather neatly explain why everyone's abilities are mechanically identical)

Except that you DO reject it. (or rather, before you even get the chance to reject it the Letter Writer makes sure that you're in no position to accept it anyway)

You can get uneasonable number of foes by chaining ambushes (that's how most farms work, for instance)