I do like the new Incarnate Trials as they offer something fun and challenging to do. However, I have a few criticisms...
1: These Trials seem heavily dependent on the presence of Controllers and Dominators. Last night in B.A.F. was a night of Brutes, Tankers, Scrappers, Corruptors, and Blasters with almost every group lacking controls becoming duds at the final phase. One group had a perfect no-escape, but couldn't do anything about Siege's and Nightstar's support.
Lambda also seems to be plagued by this lack of control issue. With control, groups can breeze through the 5-minute phase and pick off a ton of containers (possibly crates as well) and make the Marauder fight become a walk in the park. Without controls it becomes a support's nightmare. Try keeping everyone alive and buffing everyone at the same time.
2: Much of the issues of the first point made is related to another reason. This is in light of using the LFG tool, which only pulls bare minimum people for the Trials as opposed to making full/almost full Leagues most of the time. One can skip the need for control if one has a lot of offense and support to handle reinforcements and the AVs (for B.A.F.) or actually split two teams to take on each facility for acids and grenades (for Lambda). Considering LFG randomly puts people together without so much as a solid algorithm for setting up balanced teams (which teams at bare minimum standing WILL need control), this tool makes doing these trials much more of a pain than they should be.
How can 12 people without any form of holding power expect to smash Nightstar, Siege, and their reinforcements? So far, just from last night, I can give four instances of this very situation, all spelling out disaster. How can 8 people without any form of holding power expect to get all the grenades and acids they need? It is just like B.A.F.: disaster. Does this mean people suck? Of course not. It means things are way out of control in ways that only a Controller or Dominator can effectively handle. Again, this is in light of the LFG tool because that consistently gives Leagues of 12-13 for B.A.F. and Leagues of 8-9 for Lambda when these are designed for Leagues of 20-24 and 14-16, respectively.
3: I definitely have a large issue with how the new Incarnate powers are rewarded. This is what discourages me from trying for Incarnate powers on any other character. Shards were fairly acceptable because shards were obtainable, whether in Task Forces/Strike Forces or playing alone. The costs to rare salvage were also reasonable since you were only working on one Alpha most of the time.
With the Incarnate Trials and the four new Incarnate slots, things certainly took a 180 on the community. We -have- to do Incarnate Trials for our Threads as opposed to doing solo missions, group missions, or Task/Strike Forces for shards based on preference. Much of City of Heroes/Villains I've noticed revolved around this flexibility for people. Naturally, larger groups merits more reward opportunities but does not restrict solo players. However, the new Incarnate slots are limited to just these trials, which is forcing people into these large group settings. LFG issues aside, this detracts from something that makes City of Heroes/Villains very attractive and starts to show the mentality that other MMOs reflect: enforcing the end-game as solely being large group (raid) experiences.
As for the salvage, itself? Let's weigh things for a second. To get just one Tier 3 Alpha with shards drains 50 million inf plus shards and materials that require shards. That's just one Alpha, though. You're not getting every possible Alpha lest out of boredom. 50 million is a lot, but not the end-all, be-all of existence. However, there are FOUR slots with I20, each rare salvage draining 100 million inf. I'll put it this way: I could have nothing but Tier 2 Incarnate powers and still not see a single rare (except from the lucky Trial completion drop, which said completions aren't consistent enough to be considered reliable) for a long time. Considering Destiny and Lore give Incarnate shifts that can help tremendously in these trials? Just to have two Incarnate shifts will cost a person 200 million inf. Combined with the absurdity of draining inf to convert shards to threads or threads to slot experience, it's a poor attempt to putting value in the game economy that many MMOs do: make everything absurdly expensive in the end so that people have to grind or buy inf from some website (I don't condone inf buying).
I can understand the inf needs to be used somewhere, but the idea of pressing the players for millions also puts a restriction on end-game accessibility. If City of Heroes/Villains is supposed to be accessible to every player, why should we be restricted by our wallets?
Of course, pointing out flaws in these things have no weight if feedback does not offer suggestions.
Suggestion for point 1: put a limit on the size of mob packs and reinforcements, especially for small group settings. A reinforcement of 6 9CUs for a group of 24 is not even close to the difficulty of 3 9CUs for a group of 12. Considering mobs are level 54, it takes way more than 30 seconds to nail a crate or containers since mobs cannot be ignored, no matter how hard one wishes to try, and mobs are built to be in packs suited for 8 players. If LFG is going to stick us with the bare minimum and with a poor sense of group balance, rescale the Trials to support it!
Suggestion for point 2: tweak the LFG tool so that it is making larger Leagues. If rebalancing is not an option, make the LFG look for more people to have larger League sizes. If we're going to be stuck with just brutes, scrappers, tankers, corruptors, and blasters for a trial, give us the manpower to make up for a lack of controllers and dominators! League power shifts exponentially with more people, not linearly.
Suggestion for point 3: cut back a lot of the costs and make threads as accessible as shards. There really is little logic to making people spend inf for converting shards to threads or threads to inf that can be seen, outside of just having an excuse for someone to spend inf as opposed to saving the inf for something big. For those that have tons of inf, kudos to them, but not everyone is sporting 9 or 10 figures worth of inf. In regard to how many slots are available (and the importance of having two particular slots at Tier 3), the cost of rare salvage could use a solid drop, lest there's a way to get 200 million inf without relying on luck that is not restricted to those that can afford to power grind.
As for accessibility of threads, I also see no reason why we shouldn't be allowed to do the missions and TF we know and love for threads, just like we can do those for shards (if limited to being level 50 missions/TFs). If regular missions/TFs do drop threads, then I retract this part of the suggestion. If not, then having threads drop like shards (if more frequently, though) would offer more accessibility to players. Sarcasm aside, I believe accessibility is a good thing.
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Nice piece, there!
shiny... the entire pose, and the hat--gotta love the hat!--, reminds me of ninja scroll for some reason.