Grouchybeast

Why? I was in a BAF a few nights ago where a couple of people didn't yet have the Mo badge, so the leader declared an Mo run. It took us a couple of tries to sync up the AV takedown. If speed of completion was important, then maybe the rest of the league wouldn't have been so accommodating to the people who wanted the badges. What about people who have a newly Incarnate character? Would it be good to have them feel like they're screwing over the rest of the league by asking if they can take the extra time to kill more mobs for the IXP?

Again, why? What about people who really enjoy speed-running, and strive to get the lowest time and work together to figure out the best way to do it? They're already voluntarily reducing their XP and drops, so why the extra punishment? Do you really want the reward system specifically to make the value judgement that they're having fun in the wrong way, that they aren't 'participating' properly?


Honestly, I'm not picking on your particular suggestions for a system. There could be similar objections to *any* participation based system, because in order to set the rules, you have to define in advance what you think it the 'right' way to play.

It's a solution looking for a problem. Teams that work well together, with players who participate, will run smoothly through content and get their chance at a reward. All that leaves is a couple of issues like griefing and leeching, which have their own long-standing solutions.

I think Intrinsic has it right, if there has to be some kind of participation metric. Provide a very low minimal contribution threshold, and then have completion of objectives improve rewards in a clear and transparent fashion. As soon as you move beyond that, and particularly into individual participation, you're screwed.

You're looking at the cost to convert lower tier components into higher tier ones. You can also get all those Rare and Very Rare components as drops from the Trial reward tables. If you get the right drops, you don't need to convert anything or even use Empyrean Merits.

Exemp to 44 or below and you can still be the most uberest in the group :-)

According to the original I20 patch notes, mobs in Trials shouldn't be dropping Shards at all, so I guess that's currently bugged.

Gratz!

I have a shiny new computer, so I'm hoping to get to join some speed-running goodness on Defiant again soon. (I only had 1 GB of working memory for a while on the old computer -- my zone load times were longer than it takes to clear most ITF missions.)

Anything with high recharge and Rise of the Pheonix is probably a good choice.

Surely that's the point of Shards, though? They let characters continue to advance in their Incarnate powers when playing all the content in the game, except AE. I don't think that could be done with only Threads, unless there's a way to give mobs different drops rates in different content for the same drops (offhand, I don't recall any instances of that in the game).

There is good speed TFing and bad speed TFing.

Good speed TFing means matching the tactics to the team. On teams where there are enough support characters to hand out appropriate amounts of buffs (mmm, Cold shields), then the teams can split and clear out the cysts long before the shields wear off and the squishies will be fine. Sometimes, a squishy might take a string of unlucky hits and go down, but on speed runs I take part in they probably won't have time to make it back from the hospital before the mission is over. On the other hand, if there isn't that level of buffing, then squisihies need to bring plenty of purple and orange protection of their own, or the team needs to stick more closely together.

But, certainly, with the right team makeup, splitting up for the cysts can be blindingly fast and safe.

A lot of people seem to be looking at the Shards and Threads as an either/or situation when it comes to non-Alpha Incarnate progress. I see it more as a bonus -- every piece of content in the entire game now has the ability to provide Incarnate characters some advancement via Shard drops.

The rewards are distinct, because of the Inf cost of converting Shards to Threads, and the time gating between 1:1 and 1:2 conversions.

They're 'necessary' because the devs want to reward different activities at different rates, in the same way as they do in various areas of the game (e.g. TFs and arcs award different amounts of merits/time, higher-level mobs give more XP per kill). Incarnate-level content takes time and effort to set up, and is arguably more challenging, and the extra effort is matched with extra rewards.

Now, you can argue that all activities in the game should on principle receive rewards at the same rate, but I don't think that would get much traction with the devs.

Sadly, crafting in the AE map doesn't give crafting badge progress, if that was your plan.

Hi, and welcome to the game!

Before you try other servers (although trying other servers is always good), you can also sub to the Freedom global channels -- look in the Freedom section of the forums to find the names. You should then be able to find people doing the types of content you're more interested in.

Yes, I'm sure we'd all be terribly upset to have a cool new issue released just in time for a four-day weekend.

O.o

Only if you're talking about common salvage. I (and I think Penny) are talking about listing *everything* for 1 inf, from Temporal Analyzers to LotG +rech recipes. List at 1 inf, take what the market delivers. Yes, you'll get less that the optimal return you could've made, but you'll get a decent return.

I think the ability to support that kind of absolute minimalist market interaction is one of the main strength of the current system. Especially when at the same time it delivers a mini-game that another segment of the player base is busy enjoying. I think it's pretty cool, and the system should get more credit for that.

That would very probably hurt the people you're trying to help -- people who don't want to spend a lot of time on the market, people who don't want to have to invest time in understanding how it works. People who just want to punch bag guys (or good guys).

At the moment, the way the market works, a player can put every drop they get onto the market for 1 inf, and they will make a bucketload of inf. Not as large a bucketload as if they were more selective and crafted some of their drops, but still plenty. Here's someone spending their A-merits to prove that. That is possible because of the CoX blind bid system. I would like it if any other system proposed would allow people who hate the market to make a good return from it with equally little effort.

I had exactly the same issue when I finally got hold of a Ring Mistress costume. I was going to go Dark/Psi Defender, too, but luckily I noticed in advance that the stealth would conflict. So I went for a Mind/Psi Dom instead, which is a passable fit for a Ring Mistress, as opposed to a Dark Ring Mistress. I'm hoping that Psi Blast will be proliferated to Corrs at some point, as Psi Blast/Dark Miasma would make a great Dark Ring Mistress combo even without being able to use Shadow Fall.

Someone on the boards posted a collection of Carnie costumes -- I'm afraid I don't have a link to hand, but I remember I found it with the search function -- and I have a modified version of their Ring Mistress costume loaded up for when I can't use the costume power.