Blue_Mourning

That's what they're for right now.

That's what Astral Merits are for.

That's true if you never team. Seriously, is this going to turn into "Solo players should get the same rewards as team players" thread? ITF's - long ones - are about an hour to an hour and a half. What it really breaks down into is an hour to an hour and a half of 8 man teaming. I usually get 5 - 8 shards during those runs. Replace ITF with "radio team" or "story arc team" and you're still getting 5 - 8/hour.

So speed is partially a factor? I'm a little confused.

As I said above it would be fairly easy to get a common slotted in 10 days (once you have the slot unlocked, and I don't know how long that would take, except I think it takes about 30 threads to unlock enough iXP to get the Judgement slot, so another 5 days?). How much shorter would be the ideal time, considering that if you do a BAF a day I think it'll take 3 days to unlock the judgement slot (and by that time you'll have enough to slot a common and probably a quite a bit more). So that's 3 days vs. 15 days if you're playing in what I define as a "casual" manner.

Not to mention that there's a thread reward at the end of both Apex and Tin Mage II (not a lot, but it'll speed up your time anyway).

It's probably slower to get PVP IO's than getting the common. It's pretty easy to get 6 shards a day, which means it takes approximately 10 days to get 60 shards; 60 shards=60 threads. PVP IO's require 25 - 35 alignment merits, which fall 1/2days, which means at minimum, you're looking at 50 days for the cheapest PVP recipe.

Then i have nothing to say other than give it time. Any new way of getting incarnate powers would have to take resources to make, which means entirely new content. This was a fairly content heavy issue, with a lot of resources going between Admiral Sutter, Mortimer Kal, and the 2 incarnate trials. I wouldn't have expected them to add the a new thing right away.

Put it this way, the powers team added and balanced 144 new powers to the game, and people STILL wanted them to give them new power proliferation. They're working with finite resources and those resources when elsewhere this issue - and possibly the next issue as well.

It is partially a speed thing though, because if you could get threads faster you wouldn't be upset about it. Also, as I've said before, if they've added trials this difficult in the game and didn't give rewards commensurate with the difficulty presented there would be little to no reason to do the trials, other than you find them fun.

So....you're agreeing with me? Seriously, this post is not clear at all.

And I know they're powerful in base form because I've either gotten them (I've unlocked and slotted an uncommon Judgement and a common Interface, and I'm working on Lore and Destiny) or I've had them cast in my presence and I could see the difference (rebirth destiny is going to change my MM).

I'm not completely disagreeing with you, but what, pray tell, is a reasonable time frame? Just as fast as you get it in trials? Well, no, I would say, because that's not fair to the people who spend the time building and engaging in that challenging content (that is +4 level locked and with a damned difficult enemy group) with large spawn groupings, difficult mechanics and some of the hardest AV's in the game. So is 1/2 as fast a reasonable time frame? Especially now when you can get shards farming 8 man maps at -1? Is 1/3rd of the time since you're earning those rewards at potentially 1/3rd of the difficulty (estimation on my part, but it seems generous when we're talking about how hard the 9CU's can get on the BAF)?

I'm all for a smaller team content way to get threads, but considering how difficult the BAF and Lambda are it would be a "slap in the face" to anyone who engaged in the difficulty of those two trials. Also, still not a slap in the face. it sounds ridiculous when I say it too.

To be fair the main reason to get the Rare over the Uncommon is the Level shift in the Lore and Destiny slots. The powers as they exist in base form and uncommon form are PLENTY powerful, and the only reason to get the level shift is is you play the trials, since those level shifts only exist within the trial.

Which means that if you want to get an uncommon in every slot you're looking at 180 shards and 200 million to craft each uncommon. By the time you get 180 shards 200 million is actually not unreasonable a price, the question becomes is 180 shards reasonable.

The commons are so good they're kind of a game changer all on their own, so the above numbers might not entirely be accurate to what would be useful for the small content player outside of trials.

Agreed. Right now we don't know which faction from Primal fired first. I was putting forward Ultimatum as a possibility, not as a fact. If that was unclear I apologize.

You haven't though. You might do a very good job coming to conclusions but you do a terrible job actually explaining your position. You make statements of broad fact but never actually do the work in backing it up. You make broad statements about what everyone else should believe but put very little effort into actually explaining why I should agree with you. You refuse to countenance a counter argument by simply saying "it's semantics" when, by any reasonable standard, it's clearly not.

Support your position, or stop making broad statements of fact. Even when I agree with you I'm offended by your methods which seem to be continually dishonest.


EDIT: Also, as a side argument I'm beginning to despise anyone who dismisses an argument by simply saying "That's just semantics". Semantics is the study of meaning, and when we're having an argument meaning is very very important. We're on the internet and the only way we can communicate is with words, and as such words are very important - they're all we have to state our position. Facts exist, but without the ability to clearly and concisely express your position, they mean very little.

There is a vast difference between a full scale invasion and a minor non-military conflict, which was my entire point. That you dismiss it as "just semantics" reveals either that you don't understand what semantics is, or that you don't understand what I was trying to say (and since everyone else did, I can only assume that you didn't actually read what I said), or you understood and tried to purposefully bury it by demeaning it. Since you're beginning to build up a history of doing this with me, and others, I can only assume it's one of the latter two.

It should be pointed out that just because this is a video game doesn't mean we shouldn't hold them to the standard of cohesive storytelling. I just hold that Venture's threshold for that standard is extremely low by any measure where the playerbase hasn't seen all the story threads, and doesn't know what's coming next except for the broad strokes. When you challenge him on it, he either supports his argument by setting up a false dichotomy, taking what you said to an extreme position and then knocking it down (which is called setting up a strawman, and that's something I rarely accuse someone of).

Home invasions and the Invasion of Normandy were both invasions, but it's a question of scale, and a home invasion does not, except under some very specific circumstances, justify return action on the scale of the Invasion of Normandy.

This isn't Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a complicated plot.

It might not necessarily be the same exact storyline. Nemesis wanted to start a war, for one, that might not have been the case this time.

Furthermore "firing the first shot" can mean a lot of things. We're assuming that Cole took it for justification in the same way the Rikti did. Given what we know of Cole I have to assume that that's not the case. Look, Nemesis started the Rikti War with a no holds barred attack on the Rikti by members of a supposed Freedom Phalanx. I can only assume that these attacks were devastating.

The first shot fired here might not have been on a large scale at all. It might, indeed, have been a faction of a government doing covert work in other dimensions (which I can imagine would happen) and contact spiraled out of control when Cole's agents instigated a fight. All of which I can imagine happening.

Which is only one scenario where I can imagine both conditions being true. They might have done something similar to the Rikti war, and i do agree there, but it depends on how they do it, or even if its a big deal of a revelation - which it might not be, in the same way that Ultimatum's existence just isn't a big deal because it has very low impact on the storyline.

I'm going to point out that according to Cole he already has casus belli. And just because Cole says he has it doesn't make it so.

I'm starting to think that you've already made up your mind on the subject and you either are being intentionally obtuse so you can continue to complain, or you really have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to analyzing plot lines.

You're taking a shot and turning it into an invasion force though - maybe you're taking the part of Emperor Cole, but I am not. A minor conflict or misunderstanding that might have been the grounds Cole used to invade Primal as a pre-emptive strike against a larger "invading force". The fact is we don't know - no one does except for whoever is holding the lore bible, and that might have been alluded to from the beginning.

The fact is we don't know, and you're stating things as fact that are clearly not fact, but extrapolation and then building your whole house of cards on it. Which is all well and good except if you're wrong and that first shot was something fairly minor on the grand scheme of things, and Praetoria's actual invasion is a pre-emptive strike against what they call a full scale invasion (that will never happen).

Just because you can't think of, or write, a situation where both "Praetoria's invasion was a "preemptive" strike" and "Primal fired the first shot" are true, doesn't mean that no one can.

Fair enough. I was more responding to the general tone of the thread, although I used you specifically. But I think we're confusing things here (and not you specifically but a general we) between things that Protean actually said and conclusions, inferences and guesses we made from that. It's fine to make conclusions and inferences and guesses, but we shouldn't take them as gospel until it becomes gospel.

Things like taking "Primal fired the first shot" to "Primal invaded first". It's a logical conclusion, but it's also a bit extreme. And by no means is it the only logical conclusion to make.

Except that's it's not necessarily "tacked on" with little regard for existing lore. I don't think "Primal fired the first shot" is synonymous with "Primal invaded first". I think a lot of people take it to mean that and given how little information we were given I can't really extrapolate from that that we invaded first.

That's fine. It's my definitioni as well. I object to the word "retcon" being used in this case. 1) We don't know what he was talking about. 2) Saying "Praetoria invaded first" does not invalidate "Primal fired first".

I can imagine several scenarios that would require a retcon, but I can come up with several that don't. With the advent of Maelstrom (whether you like him or not) and the advent of Praetoria 1 - 20, there are somethings that we aren't yet apprised of in the Primal/Praetorian conflict. Not to mention the existence of "ultimatum" which likely was at least one group doing things they shouldn't in other dimensions, or even Malta since we know they have at least one agent in long term deep cover.

This sounds eerily like when you like the evolution of a story you call it evolution. When you don't you call it a retcon.

Venture, for a guy who constantly criticizes other people's story arcs, with this comment I seriously question your ability to understand language. It's not just semantics and that's the kind of retort someone makes when they don't actually know what they're talking about.

It's not *just* semantics (which, by the way, is a really stupid response anyway. Words are important because they're the only way we have to communicate.). Firing the first shot doesn't mean that they were the first one to invade. The question, if I recall, was who fired the first shot, and the answer was Primal. This does not mean they fired it with an invasion force.

"Fired the first shot" =/= invasion.

EDIT: the Portal technology has been around for longer than the Praetorians have existed for - far longer. As a result, I find it rather unbelievable that the government or Malta, or whoever, would not be conducting rather secret investigations into other dimensions; to say little of Arachnos - who we KNOW have portal technology. Everything that already exists in the current lore of the game can still be right and someone from Primal Earth could still have killed someone in Praetoria first before the heroes ever knew about them.

Firing a shot doesn't mean invasion.

So according to you what's the difference between a revelation and a retcon?

They're revisiting the Primal/Praetoria relationship. We've played through the old Tina arc which was the heroes first interaction with Praetoria, but that wasn't necessarily their first encounter with us - and in fact that they were stealing OUR portal technology indicates that they knew about us beforehand. How did they find out?

I don't think (and correct me if I'm wrong) that that was ever introduced as a story element. There's nothing wrong with expanding upon existing lore. Just because you understood something to be true doesn't mean it is. In fact, we could have fired the first shot and Praetoria could STILL be the bad guy in this plot.

Uh...weren't the last few added powersets Electric Control, Kinetic Melee, Demon Summoning, and Dual Pistols, only one of which was a weapon set, and that weapon set a modern one at that? So huh?