Oliin

Oh I'm very much aware of that. I really should probably have quoted the Golden Girl comment that was being responded to there as well when I posted that.

As a side note, while I'm perfectly happy getting a new zone with all its assorted fun contents (new places to go and things to do is very much a good thing in my opinion), I'd like to add my 'vote' to the idea of revamps of old and unused zones first. I so much want to see DA and the Shard have reasons to be visited. They're fantastic areas of the game both thematically and visually ... and almost nobody goes to them.

That said, I'm certainly not going to turn up my nose at a new zone either.

I think very specifically they were referencing that making the Shadow Shard co-op was a lot of work. They'd originally thought it would be no problem but once they started it turned out it would have taken much more time then they'd alloted to do it.

Assuming I heard that part of the chat correctly.

Wait ... I don't remember seeing anything about a battle armor secondary for blasters. Some mention of a physical based secondary which may or may not be MA related, but not battle armor.

Well, at least you weren't surprised that Ice Pirates was a guilty pleasure film. That's just one of those so bad it's good things almost.

I'm guessing either a typo or the Barracuda SF merit rewards are just staying as is and the Khan TF is the only one being adjusted.

Edit: Typo it is then.

Heck, I constantly hover in the trials and keep up just fine.

That's fine and dandy for you, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you're more the exception than the rule. I generally do rather well on my 50 blaster, but she's energy/dev and I don't believe I'd even think about trying to solo an AV let alone a pylon.

If you haven't unlocked the alpha any of your IXP will go to unlocking that instead of judgement/interface, but once it's unlocked then all your IXP should be going towards the new incarnate slots.

I don't believe you need to have the alpha slotted for the new trials at all.

That seems very low, even given your only successfully completing one of those trials. Although it is easier to not get astral merits in the lambda trial than in the BAF.

Personally I generally get between both trials about 3-6 astral merits, 1 empyrean merit, 3-5 threads (they really don't seem to drop often for me), and 1 component reward (usually an uncommon piece). Lambda gives the lower end of astral merits usually and the BAF the higher.

My last ITF shard run got me two whole shards, but sometimes the RNG hates you ya know. Generally I'll get about 6-8 shards and the component from the thing.

I've found it significantly easier to slot the new incarnate powers than it was o fill the alpha slot.

Just thought I'd address these points briefly.

You probably already know this(very possibly from this thread which I only skimmed), but upon successful completion of a trial you get a menu of your reward choices and an empyrian(sp?) merit. The reward choice is randomly either a list of common, uncommon, rare or very rare components. Not sure how much that might bother you, since the do give you the option to create any of those components from incarnate threads and inf in the case of rare and very rare components. I just thought it was worth noting.

As far as the failure giving no reward for your effort part goes. The trials are rather different from anything else I've seen them do in the game so far. The whole thing is set up like the zone events in Praetoria, where a window pops up showing your objectives, giving a little help bar and letting you know which stage of the event you're in (it also lets you see the AV's health bars without having them targeted, and you can actually target them through the event's interface). You're rewarded not only for completion of the trial, but you can earn smaller rewards throughout it for completing various tasks and for earning the badges associated with it. Additionally you earn a form of XP during each of the trials (just like your normal XP) that slowly unlocks your slots. So while you can fail the trials, you're generally unlikely to have not made at least some sort of gain for your efforts (unless of course, your team just does horribly and you make nearly no progress into the trial).

If it helps I was sitting here puzzled by why people were responding like it was a real complaint. I was thinking I'd apparently missed something somewhere.

I could likewise have been mistaken. I was mostly looking at the animations and the colors were an afterthought. I don't think I missed something, but I've certainly been wrong before.

I was just went to look at the animations after you mentioned this, and I didn't see any bright/dark options for cryonic or void. Just a generic 'color tintable' option. Typical ice color options for one and a 'dark' looking set of options for the other.

Well, it doesn't appear to be affected by my blaster's defiance, so I would be surprised if it worked with fury.

I'm pretty sure the CR team is in Callifornia, so that would have been at around 9am for them.

Hmmm, I don't remember that and I actually kind of love that movie. It's probably a short one-scene bit towards the end (after the time-skip).

Ohh, it just occurred to me (because I watched a thing on TGWTG about it) that he was also in My Boyfriend's Back. I'd pretty much completely forgotten about that 'meh' film, but playing a minor character in a rom-com/zombie flick counts as much as anything els I suppose.

My memory's a little fuzzy on this, but we don't actually always get a freespec with a new issue I don't believe. At least I don't recall having seen them announce one for I20 anyway.