MrCaptainMan

Originally Posted by Winterminal

I see what ya did there

Methinks I need to make an ironic costume if/when I run another trial.

Originally Posted by MaestroMavius

Never done a trial but my SG used to regularly host No Pants TF's that required 'dressing down' and of course the summer months bring swimming parties that require a change of costume etc etc...

Originally Posted by Dante

So is limiting your flagship endgame to one exclusive playstyle when the game it's tacked on to is famous for its casual, pick up and play nature. They tried to limit this by creating the team up teleporter but that seems to have failed as a solution.

They can't cater for everyone, that's true, but focusing on just one playstyle seems terribly shortsighted to me.

Originally Posted by LISAR

Ummm I was pointing out (again because it bears repeating) that the extreme does not make sense.

The devs are not bribing people who hate trials to do them because they know that will cost them money.

Originally Posted by BrandX

Giving an Emp merit for using the queue would go along way in getting people to use it.

Just saying

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

I think that the 5 minute delay was a poor design decision on the Devs part, unfortunately the Open Beta patch notes did not actually reveal that was what it was doing (I don't know if others found out earlier, but I had no clue until the patch went live).

The problem with the 5 minute delay is that it encourages people pre-forming leagues to either make the league closed or recruit a full league in order to avoid it. This in turn means that pre-formed leagues are much less likely to pick up people from the queue. Therefore the 5 minute delay is actually making the queue situation worse. Previously I would leave a few open spots on my league in case someone was in the queue. Now I'm penalized for doing so. With that in mind I would suggest one of two solutions.

First option is to remove the 5 minute delay entirely. The "willing to join event in progress" option seems to work now (I've seen people pop into open leagues that lost people) so starting with a minimum size open league is no longer the death sentence it was before. If a league is understrength then the queue should allow other people to trickle in so it has a full complement for the AV.

The second option (which I prefer) is the intermediate method of starting an open league once either it has reached the mid-point between min and max size or 5 minutes has passed. This allows a pre-formed league to leave some spots open (4 on Lambda, 6 on BAF/Keyes) and still start the league immediately. Hopefully overtime this will become more common encouraging other people to use the queue to try and grab those spots.

Originally Posted by LISAR

The developers gain nothing if people who don't ant to play the trials do them get stressed and quit. What goal could they possibly achieve by that method?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

The truth is somewhat in the middle actually. The devs are not attempting to bribe players who do not want to run the trials at all into doing them. The devs assume such an attempt would actually fail for most such players. However, the vast, overwhelming majority of players are perceived to be not just people who pick what they do completely reward-blind, or people who pick what they do based solely on the rewards offered, but on a value judgment that balances their preferences with their desire for certain rewards.

Every day when I log out a character, for *some* of them I specifically move them to a spot where they can earn a day job badge or accolade they don't yet have. Do I literally want to run around to pseudo-random locations in the game before logging off? Would I do that if there was no such reward? Of course not. I don't literally *want* to move to those specific spots before logging out. On the other hand, I don't think its all that big a deal to get those rewards. I don't *hate* moving to those spots to get those rewards.

I don't like doing it, I don't hate doing it. Its not something I would ordinarily do for no reason, but I am willing to do them for the reward. Does that mean I'm being "bribed" to do it? Not really, except insofar as rewarding any behavior is a bribe. I don't believe I'm being persuaded to do something I have a specific prohibition from doing. I'm simply being offered a choice: do X, get Y. Or not. And in this case, the decision is not one of being forced to do it, but choosing to do it.

I say I'm not forced to do it because I actually don't do this for every single character I play. I do it on my main (whose still working on the side switch day jobs) most of the time. I do it on most of my 50s. I sometimes do it on alts I'm leveling, but other times I don't bother. I make the choice not just per alt, but also per day, situationally, depending on whether I feel like it or not.

Nearly *all* the choices the devs offer in the game are choices intended to be evaluated in that way. Here's a reward, here's the activity that generates it, do it or not, do it frequently or infrequently, today or tomorrow, based on whether you think the activity is worth the effort and whether the activity is something you are willing or desire to do.

People saying that if the trials were any good the devs wouldn't have to offer rewards for them are being disingenuous. They wouldn't advocate removing *all* rewards for the game. That's not how these games work. But conversely saying the devs think the players are completely blind to rewards is also not accurate. The devs recognize that players do evaluate their choices based in part on what rewards are generated by each activity. That doesn't mean players always seek to optimize reward earning, but it does factor in and the devs know this. The devs target the middle, offering choices that players will be motivated to make, but aren't compelled to make. If most players said they didn't care about the rewards at all, that would indicate the rewards are probably too low. But if most players said they felt compelled to acquire the rewards because their value made it impossible to do otherwise, that would indicate the rewards are probably too high. What they are aiming for is "I'd like that reward, I'll put some effort into it, but I won't damage my own enjoyment of the game to pursue it."

And they aren't aiming for *everyone* to think that, because that's impossible. They are only aiming for the average player to think that. The extremes on both ends will think the rewards are either meaningless or too overtly compelling. That's unintended, but unavoidable. Thinking that the devs specifically did something to make one specific person feel the way they do is generally wrong.


In the specific case of the incarnate costume parts, they are certainly a reward for people who are already running a lot of trials and accumulating merits. But its also true that those rewards were added for people who were not necessarily doing that but would be willing to do so simply because the reward itself was something they were more inclined to pursue than the incarnate powers themselves. But the devs are not attempting to bribe someone who doesn't want to run the trials at all into suddenly running them constantly. The players who are doing that are outside the sphere of what the devs specifically intend.

Originally Posted by EvilGeko

No, that's not correct. The costume pieces are rewards for people who enjoy the trials and value cosmetic items. This idea that the devs are trying to 'bribe' anyone is silly.

Originally Posted by Wrong_Number

It would be idiotic to deny DC worthy arcs a DC because they were played in a month with other DC worthy arcs. What I think they are saying is that they will roll out one a month and that one will come from the ones they played in the past that are worthy.

WN

Originally Posted by Avatea

Freitag and I invaded Champion today and played Fear and Loathing on Striga #350522 by @FredrikSvanberg with a super team! I forgot to take a screenshot actually, shame on me, but you know who you are!

The Arc was really interesting and the first 3-4 missions were a blast. Although to be quite honest I was too busy leec... erm, reading descriptions, clues and whatnots to really show off my wee Crab.

Keep recommending more arcs if you think they are Dev Choice worthy!

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

The Incarnate content is the narrative of the Praetorian war

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

The Trials are the incarnate path - the whole system is designed around them - that isn't going to change.
And once I21 goes live, a lot of the new players who pick up subs will be used to multi-team endgame content from other games, so that's going to tip the population balance even further in the right direction.

Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane

If we have to twist peoples' arms to make them team, maybe team-based content isn't what people actually want.

Originally Posted by Lemur Lad

So you really really need to make a new thread on this every couple days?

Originally Posted by Smersh

*bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

Nope, try again.

In the first post in this thread, you were talking about how she should be won over by his "idiot charm and persistence."

You do not get to have it both ways.

As to the rest - you are wrong, and incredibly wrong, and if you would like me to educate you as to precisely *why* you are wrong, send me a PM and I'll get you some material. I'll ignore your strawmen for now, thanks.

For now, I'm out of this thread.

Originally Posted by Unknown_User

Yet Ghost Widow is still around. Honestly if the remains had some kind of control or influence over Ghost Widow then MAGI would have used it along time ago. In Seer Marino's arc GW explains that she is anchored to the Arachnos Organization itself and can't be destroyed unless Arachnos itself was destroyed. So I really don't think her bones have any kind of power. I'd say that if a Shivian bound itself to her remains it would be like the ones found in Bloody Bay.