Arcanaville

It doesn't mean either of those things.

I wouldn't. That ends up converting 88 shards into 40 threads starting from scratch. Even if you could somehow get the uncommon components quickly, the absolute best you can do is 40 shards into the Notice and then 40 threads out. You would generally do better using the 10->5 conversion most of the time. And unless you can earn more than 10 shards a day every day, you really should just use the 10->10 conversion daily, even if you have a big pile of shards to start with. Impatience is penalized heavily.


Incidentally, I don't know if the devs were thinking this particular thought at the time, but I sure was. When the incarnate merit vendors were introduced, many players asked why you could only use astral and empyrean merits to transfer threads from one character to another. And my very first thought was this exploit: wait for Freedom, make seven freebee alts, run WSTs every week padded with them, convert their Notices into threads, email them to my main. Of course, I couldn't say that at the time.

I'm not sure I understand the question. The reason shards exist is to give players a way to earn at least one slot relatively quickly with standard content. There's no specific reason why Alpha has to be earnable *faster* in standard content than in incarnate content. Even so, its debatable that Alpha is earnable faster with threads than shards. First of all, one of the shard-based components is purchasable with Vanguard merits (Grai Matter). Second, the rare component for Alpha is the Notice of the Well which has a guaranteed path to earning it in the WSTs. In one high level task force you can earn one Alpha component and enough shards to make another. That's comparable to the drop at the end of an incarnate trial and the approximate amount of threads you earn from direct thread drops and astral merits.

I believe the intent was that you earn shards slower than threads, but it takes less shards than threads to make Alpha, so it roughly evens out, but *only* for Alpha. After Alpha, the only way for shards to help with the other slots is by converting to threads. There are no shard recipes for the other slots. So that slower shard earning rate now translates into a much slower earning rate for incarnate powers past Alpha.

That's actually why you need two different currencies. You want one for incarnate content, and another one for standard content that is awarded slower *but* allows for reasonably quick earning of Alpha. If you give players threads everywhere, there's no way to give players two independent paths to Alpha, one balanced for standard content and one balanced for running trials.

We're simultaneously talking about the shard path, and the solo path, and these are not precisely identical. I just mentioned to Bill in a PM something that is important for the shard path but not for the solo path. The best thing you can do outside of the trials that is technically part of the "shard" path is to do the WST. It requires teaming sort of, but come Freedom we're all going to be able to bypass the minimum player limit for task forces at least with free accounts (most of the time). It comes down to whether you can actually solo the task force or not.

But assuming most players can't actually solo task forces, looking at the WST as a teaming activity in the shard path, it awards a Notice of the Well which converts to 40 threads (if I'm remembering correctly). That is actually an extremely good time/thread ratio, depending on how fast you run task forces. But even if you end up taking three hours to solo a WST, that's still 13 threads per hour.

The strong time gate limits how fast you can earn threads this way, and its limited to "teaming" content. But it offers a path to incarnate power that is, while not literally using shards, technically part of the shard system.

By my calculations it takes 2390 threads to unlock and then slot all four incarnate slots with tier 3 powers. If you solo 10 hours a week averaging three shards per hour at BillZBubba's pace, and then run one WST a week separate from that, you'll be earning essentially 70 threads in about 12 hours (assuming two hours total to run the WST). It will then take about 34 weeks, or about 410 hours total to fully slot tier 3s, assuming you don't even get any shards or component drops convertible into a shard during the WST run. If we assume you get a few shards in those WSTs, the time drops to under 400 hours.

Still long, but not astronomically long. That's for tier 3 powers. Calculating for tier 4 powers triggers the discussion of whether it is reasonable to calculate average earning times for tier 4 without using its optimal methods of acquisition when its intended to be a longer term pursuit goal even under optimum conditions.

Incidentally, if you are a high performance player with alts then believe it or not, it actually gets better in a way. Because suppose you have exactly the same 12 hours to play, but decide to advance two level 50s at the same time. Now, you'll burn 4 hours running a WST for each alt, and you'll have only 8 hours left which you will split 4 and 4 between those alts. Each alt gets 12 shards and 40 threads from the Notice, or about 52 threads each for those same 12 hours of play. It will now take 46 weeks to fully tier 3 both alts, or about 551 hours of play. That's only 276 hours per alt. The more alts you spread yourself across (to a point), the more WSTs you do, the more efficient your earning time becomes. When you get to the point that those 12 hours are being burned doing 6 WSTs for 6 alts, it will take 60 weeks and 720 hours to get six alts to all tier 3 slotting. That's only 120 hours per alt. In calendar time, its taking progressively longer, but in terms of hours of play per alt the time is dropping quite fast. And even in terms of calendar time its taking less than twice as many weeks to progress six alts simultaneously as it does to progress one alt.

So let me see if I have this correct. The devs have decided to target new free players as the focus of the game. So their plan is to limit the number of character slots these players can use, funnel them into leveling 50s, and encourage them to play a part of the game they don't have access to. The people they've decided are no longer the focus of the game have been deliberately hampered by being given too many character slots, which makes it harder for them to play the end game which they get access to automatically.

And what happens when these new non-subscribers decide to buy new character slots, which the devs have said will be available in the store, instead of access to the incarnate system which the devs have not said will be available in the store? Sounds like Nemesis is going to get his *** handed to him yet again.

Everything I think is broken I've already suggested fixes for. But awarding threads everywhere shards are rewarded is fixing being on fire by drowning you.

The incarnate rewards are fundamentally very high escalations in power. Those things were intended to be tied to much more difficult end game content. If the players said, or the devs thought, that the players did not want such content, we wouldn't have gotten the incarnate system either. Period, end of story.

We got the incarnate system and the end game content tied together. But the problem that was perceived was that they were totally separate systems: the content didn't really overlap and the reward systems didn't really overlap. It was almost like two games side by side. So the devs used Alpha to bridge between the two. A *piece* of the Incarnate system would be the sacrificial lamb that would have two ways to earn: by end game content (which didn't really even exist when the Alpha slot was created) and from running standard content. So even if you were not running end game content, you could still make *some* progress in the incarnate system. First by earning shards which worked for Alpha, and later by trading shards for threads. This a compromise and not a necessary one: it was appealing to the players who wanted some continuity across the systems. I had reservations about the shard system because I thought it would have balance issues since it would have to be subject to multiple contradictory reward balance requirements. Incidentally, that objection tended to be acknowledged derisively if at all, I'm more than willing to point out. Just Arcana making ******** up again. But on the whole I accepted the shard system as a reasonable compromise, if a somewhat unstable one.

Awarding threads everywhere is tantamount to as saying let shards buy everything. But shards were intended to only buy Alpha: they are balanced on the presumption that its ok to award them everywhere, because they cannot efficiently unlock the other slots without passing through conversion gates that can be controlled and if necessary balanced over time. Now, when you say to remove shards and replace them with threads, I'm assuming you're asking for shards to be replaced with *more* threads and not just one to one, because we can already convert one to one through the conversion gate. The conversion gate is only a time gate if you can earn more than ten shards per day, every day, consistently. I'm assuming based on your OP that the actual earning rate is, separate from the multiple currency issue, unacceptable. So we'd be handing players more threads than shards now, they could earn them while completely avoiding end game content, and we'd have no gate control over this.

The shard system and its path to Alpha was a compromise between competing interests in connecting the power of the incarnate system to the end game content, and providing progressional continuity across the entire game. I thought it was a reasonable compromise. Its a compromise I expect the devs to honor. If it turns out that compromise forms the basis of overturning the end game reward system itself, that would mean I was mistaken. I won't make that mistake twice.

Well since I like *some* (not all) aspects of the trials others don't like, it comes down less to whether the devs ignore complaints and feedback, and more which complaints and feedback they choose to align themselves with. While there are specific detail aspects I can agree are problematic about the trials and the reward systems surrounding them, ultimately if the devs change some of the fundamental design decisions that some players are complaining about, I'll have just as much right to complain the devs aren't listening as other players do now. The devs have no way whatsoever to escape the charge that they are ignoring feedback.

Actually, I think when I first posted my analysis of this, I used the estimate of 2.5 shards per hour. That's actually a faster rate than I presumed.

I also assumed, however, that there was no specific requirement for the highest tiers of the system to be readily accessible via the most inefficient method of acquisition, a principle that exists everywhere else in the game's reward systems (such as the invention system).


I'm afraid I cannot support this suggestion no matter how many times it comes up. Shards were put into the game in the first place as a compromise to allow a bridge from standard content to the invention system. Shards have properties threads were never intended to have, such as being earnable everywhere. If the devs knew - if I knew - that the end result of shards being created was that they would effectively be used to justify eliminating the distinction between the Alpha bridge reward system and the Incarnate system I would have opposed shards right from the beginning, declaring them a slippery slope trojan horse.

There comes a point where I stop arguing against this tactic, and decide to toss my hands up and start *using* it instead.

Its just page one ("hello, hello" is the last page).

That's just their respective versions of the "glowing embers are hitting my butt and I forgot to bring a coat" face.

Thanks for the correction: I forgot they changed that.

Well, this is a matter of some debate. Here's the abbreviated version.

First, incarnate trials don't just drop threads for kills, they also drop Astral Merits for completing tasks in the trial and Empyrean Merits for completing the trial (capped to one per trial per day, approximately: if you do the same trial twice in one day you get another astral instead of the Emp) and you get a random incarnate component at the end for completion also.

You're likely to average somewhere around 4 threads per trial run. You're also likely to average about four astral merits per trial run. And Astral merits can be converted into 4 threads a piece. So actually the astrals themselves can be converted into 16 threads, which means you can get the equivalent of about 20 threads per run.

Expanding on Wonderslug's numbers, Alpha, Interface, and Judgment require 1,500,000 iXP (incarnate XP) to unlock. Destiny and Lore require 2,250,000 iXP to unlock. You earn iXP killing things in trials, and different trials award one or both of two kinds of iXP: Physical and Psychic. Physical unlocks Alpha, Interface, and Destiny. Psychic unlocks Alpha, Judgment, and Lore. Expect to get about 5-10%ish of the total amount required per run.

Converting one thread into iXP generates 50,000 iXP. So it takes 30 threads to unlock Alpha, Interface, and Judgment. It takes 45 threads to unlock Destiny and Lore. To unlock all five would take 180 threads. But since you can unlock Alpha by just running Mender Ramiel's arc, that's a waste of threads (unless you have tons of them). To unlock the other four takes 150 threads. As you will be getting about 20 threads between actual thread drops and astral merits, 8 runs will definitely unlock everything. It will probably take less because you will be earning some iXP along the way anyway.

Otherwise, going the shard route you need to earn 150 shards and convert them into 150 threads. It will take 15 conversions of 10 shards to 10 threads, which will cost 15,000,000 inf (1,000,000 per conversion). How long will it take to earn 150 shards? Depends. Running task forces where you plow through, you'll likely to earn between 4 and 7 shards. Soloing, if you can solo 0x8 you might earn one shard every hour or two.

That's to unlock the slots. To slot powers in them will require actually crafting Incarnate powers, and that will also take stuff. It would be much easier in the trials. There's four kinds of incarnate component: common, uncommon, rare, and very rare. Forget the names, its just tier 1, 2, 3, and 4. Tier 1 powers take 3 tier 1 components. Each one will cost 20 threads (or 20 shards) to make. Tier 2 powers take 2 tier 1 and 1 tier 2 component to make, *plus* a tier 1 power (which gets consumed by the creation process). Tier 2 components take 60 threads to make. So to make a tier 1 power takes 60 threads. To make a tier 2 power *from scratch* takes 160 threads total - the cost of the tier 1 plus the additional cost of the tier 2. Tier 3 powers take a tier 2 power, plus 2 tier 1 components, plus a tier 3 component. Tier 3 components are very expensive to make from scratch: they take four tier 2 components and 100 threads (and 25,000,000 inf). And if you have to ask about tier 4...

Running trials assuming you don't run afoul of the participation algorithm, and the majority of players do not nearly all the time, you will get a component drop for every successful run. Component drops will convert downward without additional cost, and the most common drop in the trials is tier 2 ("uncommon" which is why I said ignore the names). So in effect in every run you're likely to get a drop that will satisfy the requirement for any tier 1 or 2 component. That plus those astral merits you're earning per run, which almost buy a common component on every run, makes running trials far faster. In fact, you could probably slot up to tier 2 at an average of 4 to 5 trial runs per slot (for Interface, Judgment, Lore, and Destinry) starting completely from scratch.


I would say if you're the sort of person that primarily plays one alt, is willing to accumulate shards over long periods of time, and is in no rush to have everything at once, unlocking and slotting with tier 1 powers is a credible long term goal for someone that doesn't want to run trials and wants to solo themselves into the incarnate system, but can at least solo at 0x4 to 0x8 most of the time. It will be a long term goal, however: probably a couple hundred hours of accumulated play. Slotting with tier 2 can be done outside the trials but it would be a really long term goal unless you at least run a lot of task forces - where the shard drop rate is higher. Slotting all tier 3 would be extremely difficult unless you could play in your sleep or are willing to put potentially years of play into it.

Incarnate powers are usable everywhere so long as you are intrinsically level 50 - meaning, you are not exemped below level 50. However, the level shifts in tier 3 and 4 Destiny and tier 3 and 4 Lore powers specifically only work in Incarnate trials. The *powers* themselves work anywhere provided you are still level 50. Alpha's combat level shift works everywhere, provided you are level 50.

So you can go to Perez if you want and use Judgment blasts on those critters: the power will still be available. You can cast Lore pets and have them chase Skulls all around the park. And you'll actually be effectively level 51 if you have an Alpha tier 3 or tier 4 slotted. It'll all work provided you are not exemped. Try to run Sister Psyche task force, and you'll exemp down below level 50 and all your incarnate powers will switch off and otherwise be unusable.


Threads only drop in Incarnate trials. Shards drop outside of Incarnate trials. Shards used to drop only from level 50 and higher critters, but now they will drop for a player that is exemplared, such as in a lower level task force. They will also drop in standard content provided the critters are your level or higher. So kills in normal content, tip missions, task forces, and non-incarnate trials will all have a chance to drop shards. I'm pretty sure you still need to have Alpha unlocked in order to get shard drops: you won't get them until you either run Mender Ramiel's arc or unlock Alpha through running Incarnate trials.

I can't tell what she's running to be +8, but if she wanted to she could have shown up as almost anything up to +50 (or technically I think +51). However, that doesn't necessarily mean we will ever get that degree of level shift in or out of the trials.

I'm not even sure what would happen if a +51 level 50 dev attacked a level 1 minion at an effective combat level difference of 100. I'm not sure the tables go that high.

It actually felt like a streamlined Emerald Dawn to me also in many ways. The main differences: they eliminated the ring's yellow weakness, replaced Legion with pseudo-Parralax, and set the climax on Earth instead of Oa. All three changes would have probably been necessary even if they attempted to translate Emerald Dawn directly to the screen. Emerald Dawn also has too many things going on in it for a single movie.

I liked Emerald Dawn myself, but no way does Emerald Dawn make it to this or any other movie screen without major alteration.

Did the application specifically state that a Class Three Intellect was a step up?

Observe:

McDonalds has installed all new Class Three Intellect point of sales terminals that have pictures of the food instead of numbers and spits out change automatically, making educational background not a factor.

But as you point out, there's a hundred thousand other people out there. There aren't any you would like that lots of other people wouldn't think are lame. That's just the way it works. The idea is to make each trial different so there's something for everyone. There won't be one thing everyone will like.

Plus, this is an incarnate trial and we already have incarnate teams with so much destiny buffs flying around that saying we forgot to bring a healer is like running the STF and saying everyone forgot to slot enhancements.

Galactus empowered his heralds with many potent abilities, but super-intelligence was never one of them.

Without Defenders and Tankers, Brutes and Corruptors will become depressed there's nothing they outclass. I recommend we add two new archetypes, a ranged archetype with higher buff modifiers and a lower damage modifier than Defenders called the Eminator and a melee archetype with higher health and lower damage than Tankers called the Sarcophagus. That way Defenders and Tankers will also have a reason to be happy.

I doubt its the first time anyone typed that string of letters together, but I do know when the April Fools joke was posted no one at the time claimed it was a rip off of something else. It was certainly not a meme at the time. And it was just one among many of the "visual sound effects" in that post: it was actually the players that first latched onto Freem, and it entered the game afterwards. The same way that Kill Skuls entered the game, basically.

Except that isn't really close to being related. A reactivation weekend is a temporary reactivation of a subscription, not free to play access. Its giving you a couple of days of a sub. A trial account is the closest match to non-VIP Freedom access, and the precedent has been strongly set that people who don't pay for access can have that access limited even past the login screen, and those limitations are subject to what impacts the rest of the game the least, not what benefits them the most.


As to whether the decision is just a matter of personal preference, that gets into the subject of how MMO studios, and Paragon Studios in particular, collectively makes decisions, which is a very long topic. But the abbreviated version is: at PS most decisions are made collectively and collaboratively, not individually. Every design decision we see generally went through many hands, many desks, many meetings, and represents a compromise between many different points of view within the studio. Deliberately changing those decisions outside that process is possible, but doesn't happen often. There are people with the *power* to simply move where the lines are drawn, what's VIP only, what's premium, what can be bought and what can't be. But in practice they generally don't, and what we see is a compromise collective decision that cannot just be altered randomly without invalidating a lot of developer's input into the process.

So when you say they could do whatever they want, that's sort of true, but not in a way that allows you to say they could just change their minds. Its not true that anything was or is possible. Change one thing over here, and you would have changed many other things over there, as people altered their positions to match, and the decisions of the studio changed as a result.

Isn't that how they arbitrarily compel subscribers from unsubbing now, by arbitrarily deciding that they can't access the game if they stop paying money?

There's two aspects to this. The first is that Premium players will not have the same amount of access that VIPs do, at least not without paying for it (and even then, there will be things Premium players can't even buy, like access to the VIP server). There is no issue of fairness here: Premium players are a fancy way of saying "people who don't pay a subscription." People who do not pay for a subscription every month will have less access. That's not some strange arbitrary decision. That's deliberately baked into the design of Freedom: subs get the best value. Not only do subs get the best value, that fact is supposed to be dead bang obvious: its not supposed to take a pocket calculator to figure that out. If you sub, you get the best value. If you don't, you won't. You'll get a lot, and Freedom will try to give you enough to experience a good enough chunk of the game to be itself a complete experience also. But frankly and bluntly, the devs really don't care if a Premium customer thinks its unfair they get less than a VIP subscriber.


The other aspect to this which is at least more credible is that when the devs said "you keep what you bought" that was in itself a potentially confusing statement to make in isolation. I can understand that to a degree: the notion that we never actually bought *access* rights, only *account unlocks* is in my opinion obvious but also novel because its never been a significant distinction in the past. But Freedom takes access rights and breaks them up - in the same way it will unbundle unlocks from booster packs and let someone buy them ala carte, it will *also* unbundle access rights and allow players to access some, but not all of the game.

We've always spackled over this distinction between unlock and access. We buy a costume part with a booster pack but we can only use it if we have access to Icon. We do for new characters automatically. But we don't for existing characters unless they have empty costume slots or you are high enough level to unlock the icon contacts. We can "buy" the incarnate system but we can't use it unless we have characters that are level 50. There has always been a distinction between whether our accounts were theoretically unlocked for something and whether we could actually see the thing in actual play. Freedom expands on this greatly, because it adds a whole section of the game that eliminates the prerequisite of subscription. Or rather, the gate that currently exists that requires players to have a subscription just to log in disappears with Freedom. But in its place are new gates *within the game* that gate access to specific pieces of the game.

Players should expect that if they stop subscribing now, they stop being able to log in. I think most do. But they should also expect that when they stop subscribing in Freedom, while they will then still be able to log in, access to many parts of the game will be gated. And virtually all month to month, day to day access to the game is something no player has actually *bought* and *owns*. So it is all theoretically revokable when the player stop subscribing.

I didn't realize this was the crazy train express. Please, take my seat: this would be my stop.

You'll have to balance the benefit of extending that sort of thing against the complaints you'll generate from people who will feel slighted by the very small amount of points they can earn. And it doesn't really matter if the complaint appears irrational: if you want to try to convince me that something is better than nothing and the number of people who would complain and cause a problem under those circumstances would be extremely small, you may certainly give it your best shot.

One more thing: if this thing is very time consuming it will be seen as a grind on top of being infinitesimal. But if it doesn't take a lot of time, since points can buy consumables I can sign up for a hundred free accounts and earn a ton of points across those accounts, bypassing the time gates. You potentially open the door to another RMT opportunity. Free accounts will cost nothing to make and in this game will be trivial to PL to any combat level you want rapidly, making level gating irrelevant.

Is it mathematically possible to find just the right balancing point for the reward rate and the time gates and the content selection to prevent trivial exploit? Maybe. How many man-years would you like the devs to allocate finding it?