Eiko-chan

Barring a lucky drop, which in aggregate doesn't raise the figure very much, I probably get between 3-5 million a mission, and it takes me about an hour to do most missions. And I do farm, on x8.

EDIT: I also get about 1 shard a mission; as I admitted many pages ago, I will definitely reach the influence price before I'm even in sight of the shard price.

You're wrong.
And Black Scorpion has already verified that Incarnate Trials are an alternative to the WST.

Well, I guess I'm glad that, for the past two years, I've been paying for the development you're now enjoying. At least someone paid for it, and someone is enjoying it, I guess?

No, it's not. Simply saying that it is does not make it so.

Setting things up such that alternate paths aren't at all viable (and at 88 shards, this is not a viable alternative) will lead to those that cannot or will not do Task Forces or Trials - for all the very many reasons very many people have outlined - feeling like they're spinning on a treadmill making no progress, and they will get bored with the game and quit. It's not healthy for the game in the long term.

This is why I asked why balancing for those that run too fast - those that "stay in one spot and farm", those that exploited AE, etc - needed to be the focus. Focusing on making sure they don't go too fast can also lead to the slower players feeling like they can make no progress at all, and leads to all the same difficulties.

If the choice comes down to having to tell those that run too fast or those that run too slow "F- you", why should the balance always be in the favour of those that run too fast? From a purely economic standpoint, unless there are a lot more of them than the slower ones, they're not even the most profitable choice. The slower players make less demands on development time and are naturally inclined towards long-term patronage.

Every time someone says this, I just hear "I deserve to get better stuff because I team." I get the whole reward/action paradigm and so forth, but most arguments in favour of it (Arcanaville managed to make one that did not do this) just sound like "I team for shinies; if I can get shinies another way, no teaming."

Having the WSTs and the Trials be the most efficient way of gaining these rewards is reasonable; I can understand why that would be the case. Having to set up the rewards such that only an insane person would opt to try to do it without doing the WSTs/Trials is not reasonable.

(And if you're one of those people that's already gathered up several hundred shards, yes, I consider you insane.)

God forbid players be allowed to play the game in some manner other than whatever the flavour of the week is.

If they put in a restriction making you have to choose recipe or WST, that eliminates over-rewarding. I recognise that the SCR applies, and have made no judgement on the ease of that task.

However, if the Trials can get you unlimited Notices, I consider the matter moot. They would have already devalued the WST and the recipe could not devalue it further.

That actually sounds like it'd be a great place for things to be. "Hmm - I don't like this week's WST, but I could run it anyway in a couple hours and get my Notice and be done, or I could do this other stuff I actually like doing, spend a bit more time at it, and get my Notice that way." I would think that would actually be the ideal balance point for such things.

You're still not helping.

I refuse to believe that "people that go through content faster than it is designed to be consumed" are a majority. The last time we heard from the devs on the matter, "people with level 50 characters" was the minority. If you don't have a level 50 character, you cannot belong to the category of "consumes content too fast".

But .. why? Why does design always have to be from the stand point of making sure the fastest don't go too fast and hit the cap too soon? Why can't those be the people the Devs say "F- them" to, and ignore their concerns when doing their design and balancing? Is there some design rule that says you have to ensure your fastest aren't hitting your cap too quickly, rather that just letting them bounce against the cap for however long before you're ready to bring out the next bit?

I know that a segment of people sometimes run too fast through content and then agitate around until the next batch of content comes out, and then run through that too fast as well, meaning the developers never catch up. And design seems to constantly try to slow these people down, regardless of the effect these techniques might have on the rest of the population who don't rush through the content. Why does design have to cater to this segment, and not the other?

You've excluded me from far more activities than I've excluded myself.

Also, I'm pretty sure I never said "I don't care how, just give me a path". You can probably find me saying "I don't care if it's slower" - but this isn't "slower". This is "glacial".

Also: I'm really sick and tired of being penalised because I refuse to game every advantage and exploit every trick to get ahead. I play the game largely the way it was designed and intended to be played (even running TFs every now and then) but I get locked out of things because other people go through it faster and for some reason need to be reined in.

My 50s exclusively run at 50 (I hate exemplaring) and also run at x8 and it still took me two weeks of playing to get an Uncommon Boost, and that was supplemented by buying Gr'ai's with Vanguard Merits. And by some reports I'm on the lucky side of shard drops.

You sank my Battleship!

No, it's not. The WST gives a Notice. Crafting the Notice costs 40 shards and 4 uncommons. The cost of 4 uncommons is 12 each. The WST gives something that is the 40 shards and the 4 uncommons. That's 88 shards.

I already solo AVs. Saying that I am being unreasonable because I want more power to do things I already do, but easier, is itself unreasonable. That's the point of gaining more power in a video game - to do things easier, or to be able to tackle harder things. Exactly what I'm expecting.

Everything I've said about what I like and don't like comes from experience, not extrapolation. I have tried PuGs, I have tried raids, I have tried all these things. If more people were willing to run the team with just 4 people, or if the relevant Strike Forces could be run with that many, things might be a little different, but the magic number of 8 is just a bit too focused upon for my tastes.

Just think about my poor parents. They didn't even have computers! They had to turn actual pages when they wanted to read stuff and use their imaginations! The horror!

It coined the term, actually (Richard Garriot was the first to call his game an "MMORPG"; "MMOG" pre-existed it, though.)

But I was playing BatMUD back in 1992, when BatMUD was WoW. And the first MUD came out in 70-something, before I had discovered computers. The genre precedes graphics of any sort.

I said that the design and story of that arc was perfect for what solo Incarnate content should look like. I did not say the arc should drop Incarnate salvage.

I guess I can't think of a better way to do it.