Adeon Hawkwood

The problem with that method is that it doesn't account for the edge case of a member of the opposite sex who plays MMOs a similar/larger amount than you do.

True, except supposing he doesn't NEED his bow to get revenge? What if he gains new super powers that replace his bow. The obvious example I can think of is that he somehow manages to tap into the Well of the Furies taking the "fast path" to power up for his revenge.

Alternatively the shock of Sister P's death awakens his latent mutant abilities allowing him to kill people with his mind.

I really, really, hope they do not do this. Killing someone off and then bringing them back largely defeats the emotional impact of killing them off in the first place. No I realize that comic book heroes never stay dead but it still bugs me.

I agree, the only reason I stockpile inf at all is that I enjoy making inf on the market and am to lazy to spend it. I do have pimped out builds on my four incarnates but my other elvel 50s are pretty much shelved so I don't bother to IO them.

8 for Lambda, 12 for BAF/Keyes.

You know, given that both of them are missing from that picture I think the broken bow is misdirection. My bet is on Sister Psyche dying and Manticore going Evil to get revenge (the broken bow is symbolic both of his broken heart and him giving up his father's legacy as a hero to pursue vengeance). Manticore has always been the most... morally flexible... member of the Phalanx so I could easily see his wife's death causing him to go uber-vigilante.

True, but since the devs specifically made Pain Domination as an Empathy replacement set I doubt they will ever port either Empathy or Pain Domination.

Short answer is pop-cultural osmosis. It's 18 in California and since most TV/Movie writers live in California they tend to use 18 whenever it comes up in a show. As a result a lot of people tend to assume it's 18 everywhere in America.

TVTropes even has a trope about it:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SoCalization

That pretty much sums up my views on the matter. I'm content with the trials but if the devs ever do implement a solo path I think they would run into the exact same problems you are describing.

Controller, not Corruptor but otherwise I agree with this.

Precisely, for you it's not grinding yet someone else probably would consider it grinding.

I call it stockpiling and not grinding since I believe that most people who had large stockpiles of shards prior to I20 were not grinding them, they were simply running level 50 TFs a lot.

Grinding is a somewhat loaded word and I don't think I've ever seen an agreed upon definition for it. One person's "grinding" is another person's "running content I love". With that in mind I've come to define grinding as "Repeatedly running content that you don't really like solely for the rewards". Now most people who engage in something they consider "grinding" tend to stop as soon as they have accomplished their immediate goal (which in the case of the pre-I20 shards would presumably have been a T4 Alpha boost).

Someone who hated running level 50 content (and level 50 TFs in particular) would be unlikely to continue running them after getting their Alpha boost up to the desired level. Therefore I figure most people who had large shard stockpiles had accumulated them incidentally in the process of running level 50 content either because they enjoy running level 50 content or because they were grinding it for non-shard reasons (i.e. merits or purples).

I could be wrong, but I think the number of people who were grinding content specifically for the purpose of stockpiling shards was probably very low.

Well, as I said earlier I don't think the switch WAS to solve the stockpiling problem. If that had been the dev's goals they would have instituted stricter control on trial based incarnate progression as well.

You know, I disagree with this. If the devs' goal in depreciating shards was to make people unable to get the new slots very quickly then they utterly screwed up by not implementing timers on the new rewards. Now I assume that the devs are not idiots, if they had really wanted to force a certain time limit on getting the new stuff then they would have done so in an overt way (one component per trial per day for example). Given that my opinion is that they depreciated shards not to provide a time gate to getting the new stuff but to provide a content gate. The inability to use shards for post-Alpha advancement means that post-Alpha advancement has to be accomplished through Incarnate content rather than simply rerunning the old level 50 content.

What that in mind I think the answer to your question is yes, the later slots will almost certainly provide a new set of Incarnate components. Not because the devs hate players or want to prevent people getting the new slots on day 1 but because they will want to depreciate the current set of incarnate trials as a means of incarnate advancement and introduce new, more difficult, trials in their place.

Assuming you mean the various Fire farms I'm pretty sure that isn't considered an exploit simply because the mods have not been nuking the many, many threads talking about it.

So what you're saying is that when you look at the data in smaller chunks it shows more variation from the predicted values then when you look at the large chunk?

Sorry, I kinda went with the assumption that anyone buying it on steam would have steam installed, I wasn't aware you could buy stuff without having it installed .

Yes. Once you purchase it instead of installing it go into your game library and select the game. You should then have an option that says "CD Key" over on the right hand side of the interface. Clicking that will give you a serial code that you can use to upgrade your account on the NC Soft Website.

That's not a bad idea. Downside is that I'll need to create a new Steam Account since I already have GR on my current one (I purchased in the alst Steam Sale to upgrade my main account).

It's a bit of a grey area, that is true. The core difference (to me at least) is that demons are generically religious while angels are not.

Demons (and devils) have existed in a lot of different mythologies and are not really considered associated with any single religion. As such the devs were able to make non-denominational demons that look pretty much what people would expect without really risking offending anyone (notice how they very specifically do not resemble common depictions of Satan).

Conversely angels (and especially the depiction of them in Western society) are associated with a specific, modern, religion. While beings equivalent to angles exist in other mythologies (the Valkyries being a prime example) the popular view of angles is influenced (in Western culture) by Christianity to such an extent that implimenting an angel based set that doesn't draw on them would pretty much defeat the point of calling it angel summoning. Implementing it with the traditional view of angels seems like it would open up to much possibility of someone getting a bee in their bonnet about it (especially when you consider the possibility of someone making an evil angel summoner).