Stormfront_NA

Mmm...

I must confess at the end of a successful Lambda or BAF, I do get a random complexity component to choose from, I normally get the common component, but have gotten the other complexities as well. For a change, I do feel I am getting the components in the appropriate scarcity mixes. I have received like 8 whites, 4 yellows, 2 reds and 1 purple ratio of component drops. Which frankly is quite good, all things considered.

I do believe I have received component drops during Lamda and BAF play, but did not pay attention if they were given as a result of getting a badge. All I know, we wooped a bunch of tin cans, and a white or yellow component came my way.

I do think, as we beat up on mobs, we do have a finite chance to get astral merits as well, independent of the milestones being achieved. For I have received a few of them during mostly BAFs, but I am sure Lambda can drop them too.

Hugs

Sue

Mmm...

As a general rule, you don't want to skip content. This is one of those occassions that ghosting is not a good thing, with the exception of LAMBDA where you have a very limited time to get 10 weapon caches and 10 Personnel Holding Containers. Sadly because in a timer, you have to spike and run. It would be nice from a thread earning eprspective if this part was not timed, so many mobs to defeat, oh my, the lost opportunity to earn goodies.

The reason you may not want to skip content at all, is that for each kill you do get a chance to get a thread, and a random complexity component drop. Thus far I received common and rare component drops during the execution of either trial. Admittedly those drops are a rare event, but I usually get a component drop once every eight trials, which is pretty good in my book.

I expect in the future, there will be other alternate ways to unlock incarnate slots, and to earn threads as well.

Sue

Mmm...

Before I begin with my suggestions, I want to say I believe i20 as a whole was a good release, not with out issues, but as a whole a very good release.

There are a few things, I believe the devs did really right. Considering that I have very bad luck for drops, I was very concerned on my thread drop rate. The application the devs made, was an elegant one, by accomplishing discrete milestones within the trial you earn Astral Merits, which you could later breakdown for 4 threads. If you have a good team and complete the trial successfully, you are guaranteed to walk out with 4 Astral merits each time for an equivalent of 16 threads, and when combined with an avrage of 4 threads for killing content you wind up with 20 threads that is just about the right rate of thread drops to slot up your incarnate slots. You also get a random class of component, which is frosting, but the good thing is that you get to choose the component within the class of componets, that is really nice. Thus my real concern about luck being too over-bearing with regards to personal incarnate development has been put to bed.

This said, I do have a few suggestions for later releases, i21 etc.

1. Conversion from Threads to Notices of the well would be nice.
2. Conversion from a rarer component to a less rare component.
3. Conversion from Merits to Shards and Threads.
4. Conversion from Alignment Merits to Shards and Threads.
5. Conversion from Notices to Threads.
6. Unlock Mission Threads for Judgment, Lore, Interface and Destiny (like Alphas).
7. New TFs/SFs or retooled to earn threads and upper class components.
8. Make BAF and Lamda scalable.


Now let me explain the why of the suggestions...

Suggestion 1:

There is no direct way to go from threads to Notices of the Well, going from Thread to Shard and then to Notice is a very un-efficient way to go about it.

Suggestion 2:

If I need a rare component, but have a very rare component, I could breakdown the very rare component and get threads from it. Sadly you do not get enough threads to assemble the component immediately below it in complexity, this strikes me as not too nice. We should be able to break a very rare component into a rare component and have a few threads to go with it, for instance.

Suggestion 3:

With the advent of Incarnate system, level 50+ players are naturally reluctant to do any lower than 50 content. If merits could be converted to useful incarnate currency, it may relieve some of this reluctancy.

Suggestion 4:

The Alignment system, now has reduced relevance, for it offers no incarnate currency. Would be interesting if you could acquire threads and components through the alignment merit system.

Suggestion 5:

The TF/SF of the week main driver for 50th level alts is not so much the double merits, its the receiving of the notice of the well. Yet for the new incarnate slots, the notice of the well has no intrinsic value. If one could break down a notice of the well for a reasonable number of threads, perhaps 20, doing the weekly targeted activities would regain its demand.

Suggestion 6:

The concept of trials, imo, hurt the casual players quite hard. To me an 8 player PUG is about as complex one can get within a casual environment. Also having to do the same Trial over and over and over and over to unlock the two incarnate slots associated with it, is just aweful. Then do the very same trials over and over, and over to get the threads to make the components to make the enhancements can get a bit old after a few days. It would be nice, if a new set of trial missions, as it was done for the Alpha's, could be done for each of the new incarnate slots. This suggestion is an alternative not a replacement to the current method. This way a casual player, could (if desired) to solo the mission thread and unlock the incarnate slot.

Suggestion 7:

This goes back to the casual environment, and teams of 8 players. Lets have new TFs that can be accomplished by a group of 4 to 8 players and during the execution of the TF you get shards, and at the end (if slots unlocked) you get 20 Threads, and a random component as it is done with the present trials. I am envisioning a 4 long missioned TFs, where you essentially earn 5 threads each, but do not get the tally until the TF is completed. Also this TFs are set to level 54 mobs as a standard, such as they are done at the trials.

Re-tooled present level 50 TFs/SFs, would essentialy consist of present level 50 TFs/SFs where if the player sets the difficulty of the TF to +4, thus mobs are level 54. The TF/SF is flagged to yield shards along the way, but at the end of the TF it gives you a choice to receive 20 threads, among the other choices such as merits, shard based components, etc.


Suggestion 8:

If we want to regain a sense of casualness, the trials could be made to be scalable to an 8 player team, and not require the 16 or 24 players they do now. Thus while retaining the level 54 mobs in it, the number of mobs would be greatly decreased, and the AVs toned down some to accomodate a group of 8 players level of challenge.


Other suggestion:

I feel Lamda is too hectic for only 2 teams, would be nice if it could be gated to allow 3 teams as it is done with BAF. Perhaps this would reduce the failure rate experienced in Lamda some. While a very disciplined team can do Lamda reliably, a PUG one will be hard pressed to succeed, thus my suggestion for relief in order to support or enhance the casual feel.

Another request, do something about the inherent lag on the trials if possible. These places are not as loaded as Rikti Mothership raids or Hami's. Maybe there are just too many mobs loading the place down, or something. Only a request not a biggie.

Hugs

Sue

Mmm...

i20 really does not strike me as a grind, despite of my sad trial success record. Yet win or lose, I get a nice share of threads that essentially averages after converting and what not to an average of 20 threads per trial performed. Not a bad number IMO, when you look at the cost at slotting incarnate powers to tier-2. Now Tier-2 is a fairly robust capability, across the board, one really does not have to go to 4 to actually have the power. In many cases Tier-3 and 4 all they do is add added radius to your effect, but do not increase the effect itself. Like so many powers, how many mobs you hurt will a power is limited as well, since mobs, like to "mob" you; odds are having the extra radius buys you nothing.

What has really bothered me during i20, I really thought in the first week after release, getting groups together would be nearly instantaneous, but sadly it is far from it. I suspect, that since the failure rate of these trials are so great, that team leaders are being very picky about team composition and player experience or reputation, thus making the time to arrange for a team take as long as an hour or more. IMO the i20 by default is removing the "casual" feel of the game it once had enjoyed, at least for the incarnate stuff, and this is a sad thing.

For Lambda, I feel it should be a 3 team effort as opposed to 2, its just too hectic with too many mobs when compared to BAP and its 4 team composition.

Perhaps the trials should be remade to be scalable based on full teams going in, so a casual group of 8 players could do these trials.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

This is my post i20 report...

I found getting threads not to be too bad, between the normal drops and the Astral merits you can convert for 4 threads per Astral, you can reliably get the 20 threads per trial run. The Empyrian threads are awesome for trades, but hanging on to them, just in case there is anohter undocumented use for them.

I also noticed I could get material drops during the trial itself, usually coomon thread types, byt still worth 20 threads toweards building your incarnate level. While I don't get a material component evry run, I have gotten them in just about one in 6 trials.

At the end of BAF I got a material componet ranging from common to super rare. My very first BAF I got the purple of the materials, followed by 3 more commons (only been in 4 successful trials, so far the failure rate on these is very high).

All in all, the getting the threads and workingyourself up is not too bad, but my fear of grouping has materialized.

So far trying to get a group for a BAF or Lambda has been painfully long, too long. It also is apparent that a certain mix of ATs is needed, besides outstanding leadership, to succeed in these trials.

I will confess, the lengthy waits for groups at Pocket D, are too long, and I am getting very bored at the game as a consequence.

It also occurs to me, the trials requiring so many players and specific mixes, totally zapped the "casual" out of the game, a real loss from my opinion.

Stormy

You better run for cover! Stormy is agreeing with Devs! Its the end of the world, I tell you...

These past few days I been doing some very deep soul searching, with regards to this game. All my close friends have left CoX to go play Rift, my husband has left DAOC and his harem to go play Rift (I think his gals followed him there anyway). My son bought me the game and installed it for me, and has been showing me the game, which looks very good incidentally.

But going back to topic, I have been contemplating leaving CoX to go play Rift, even played it last night and enjoyed it very much, but then its new so not a fair evaluation. What had horrified me, was the threat of i20 and the miserable grind that would ensue, especially with someone so unlucky as I am with regards to drops. Last night I did an entire LGTF with no shard drops at all.

So the question was to stay or not subscribed to the game.

So I reflected on the i20, and got information to base my decision. Here are some my conclusions:

Tier-1: 60 Threads
Tier-2: 100 Threads + 100 Mil inf
Tier-3: 380 Threads + 100 Mil inf
Tier-4:2,800 Threads + 1,600 Mil inf

After recovering from the utterless shock I experienced...

I went 2,800 Threads? What is this? WoW resurrected?

And that was for only 1 tier-4, out 4 unlockable incarnate powers!

Now I was really, really tempted to cancel my account, right there and then. But I have so many friends in Champions, and I really did not want to leave their fellowship. I want to stay, but the game struck me as a tedium that make WoW look like a walk in the park.

So I continued studying the information. Guess what I found!

Many Incarnate powers really do not provide much more performance beyond tier-2, as a whole the upper tiers only provides longer radiuses, not more bang for them. There are a few who has Procs that increase in magnitude, but you are talking of extemely few conditions.

So I dug into the data, even deeper, trying to find out at what tier for each incarnate slot I would get essentially the same bang as a tier 4 minus the added range or radius. My conclusions are as follows:

Judgement: Tier-1, anything higher is just colorfullness
Lore: Who cares for that, more colorfullness, The only reason I unlock this is for the Destiny
Interface: Tier-2, anything higher is just warm and fuzzy
Destiny: Tier-2, more is simply overkill

Now any alt you have with this level of tiering in incarnate can go one-on-one with a an alt with all 4 tiered upto level 4, and you will find yourself hardly handicapped at all.

What is the butcher's bill for this base ability, not counting unlocking cost:

260 Threads and 200 Million Influence.

Some may be anxious over 200 M influence, but in 4 days of doing tips and getting your 2 A-Merits you can trade them for a high selling recipe, craft it, and bingo you got your 200M.

260 Threads, now that seems rather demoralizing, even my stomack knots up, when looking at this number.

But is it really bad?

I feel that one, even with my luck, can expect to get 20 Threads per Trial. If you divide the 260 threads by 20, you need to do 13 trials, which only last like what, an hour? And thats assuming you only get Stormy drops: Trash. A regular person, getting truly random drops, could easily achieve this standard in much less than 13 trials.

If a trial takes 30 min, then in under 7 hours of play, you are there!.

I don't know if you can do trials back to back, without penalty, such as it is done with merits and TFs. But even so. After 7 days of playing 2 trials a day, and doing 5 tips a day, you are there!

Frankly 2 half hour trials, and 5 tips, is not too bad, hardly can be considered a grind at all.

Do I have concerns?

Yes I do, but I will find out tonight as i20 is released, if my fears have merit.

My real concern is the ability to get into teams to do the trials, it will be much harder than the PUG of 8 players. I am very afraid after a week or 2, a great slow down will occur, such as it happened with Cathedral of Pain. And that will cripple the casual player's ability to reasonably incarnate. The shard and influence cost to brute force your way into the incarnate powers is simply crazy expensive and totally inpractical.

Maybe, just maybe, the devs will make PUG sized TFs where you can get threads, don't have to be 20+ at a time, but even 5 awarded at the TF completion would be cool.

Maybe one could trade 1 A-Merit for 1 Thread, and 125 regular mertis for a Thread would be very nice. But only kicking ideas around....

Stormy

With I20 just over the horizon...

I really have an aweful time, finding information on how things are going to work, or the actual process...

Such as go to this guy, located here, get this mission

Mission is about this, but it has new features that are interacted differently in this manner.

You have new IOs or powers you can get and are thus listed and described for you

To get the new powers, you must have these collections of items and these are their relative worth

For instance I19, while I am sure, there are detailed instructions, where were they?

I was able to stumble through I19 because after a few "?" it was fairly straight forward.

From what I can tell i20 is going to be much more complex, and I want to learn as much "official" information as possible to adequately prepare for "D" Day.

Hugs

Stormfront

Mmm...

It depends what i smy mood or emotional need, and if soloing for emotional release or teaming for camaraderie.

Soling:

If I had a tough day at work, I want to play an AT that is truly super, basically unstoppable, for that! Just about any Melee will do, but Tankers are best in PvE. Lots of resistance, defense, hitpoints, regen, huge MAG resistance to Mez effects (almost immune), very nice resistances to debuffs as well. Tanker is the class to just go out there and have fun with out worry. My favorite is a Shield/EM lots of AOE damage...

Now if I feel like being challenged, and not have the game handed to me in a silver platter, none beats the Defender. I have the weakest damage, no protection versus mez, no really good area mez (but I do have good individual mez), not much for hit points or regeneration, defense is patchy, about a third of my primary powers don't even work for me, in general a very nice handicapped AT for solo play and thus maximum challenge. For this I prefer a Storm/Dark Defender, they can be very satisfying.

Teaming:

Obviously I am not doing this to release tension from my mean boss, instead I am more in a socializing mood. Thus I want a more laid back AT that lets me help all, not quite be the center of interest, and not find myself as a personal servant to some other AT player.

For this the best is the Dominator, hands down. You do your thing, and help the group and there are no Bozos demanding SB, CM and what not... My Choice: Mind/Psi Dominatrix.


Grinding Missions for influence, recipes or whatever:

Obviously you are looking for a cash cow for your other ALTs, but want to have fun. For this the Master Mind reigns supreme, they are versatile, and they are a team all to themselves. If properly played, the have the best of both the melee and support worlds. My choice: Dark/Necro


Hugs

Sue

Hi:

Many of us have Rogues or Vigilantes we have evolved so we could play with friends on either blue or red side, or have access to the game's full content. But if the group want to do an Oro mission for whatever reason, we run into difficulties. If the Oro mission is blue side and a player is a rogue we experience an unpleasant situation; same occusr if the Oro is red and the player is a Vigilante.

It occurs to me, why not make a co-op Oro zone, where players could do either blue or red side missions? Especially if they are Rogues or Vigilantes?

If one was to "spin it" even heroes or villains could be justified doing eithers threads, the heroes could be "unselfish" to protect the timeline, and the villains "selfish" by protecting the timeline to avoid their power and fortunes ebbing away. This is a case like it is at RWZ, where both sides for different reasons, actually work together.

Hugs

Sue, aka Stormy

Mmm...

I like both sides, they both have rather unique "feel" to them.

I do believe the red side is "handicapped" versus blue in several areas such as gaining accolades in red side are much more difficult to acquire than blue side for instance, and SFs are much tougher than Blue side and less rewarding merit wise to add insult over injury. On the other hand, the mission threads in red side are more interesting and worth reading as you go, also red side do not have nearly the moronic inter zone traveling as blue side does.

With the alignment system, the matter of being forced to chose has been pretty much removed or greatly mitigated. You can align your alt either as a Vigilante or Rogue and have access to all the content of the game. But if you want to be pure as well, you can.

Something I do, to take advantage of easy blue accolade gainmanship, is that I make my villain and at level 20 turn her into a rogue! So both sides content are available to me, and commence to do blue side accolade requirements such as badge explorations and history markers, followed by the hunts of freak bosses, gears, warwolves, vampir and fake nemesis. I do the blue TFs as I progress and by the time I reach 40 I unluck my patron powers, so i can have choice between red and blue side epic powers. If I am lucky along the ways, I can catch players actually doing the rescue the psychic mission and not the Oro version, so I don't have to turn blue to otherwise acquire it. The same happens with doing Maria's Praetorian arcs towards portal jockey accolade. You can usually in global channel ask for access to Antimatter and have that one pesky rascal taken care of. You need to also keep an eye or ask when players are ready to get the multidimensional badge, a means to get Marauder, and finally the exploration badge you get from going to Nightstar's plane.

If the later becomes too difficult, just turn hero by doing the 10 tips and morality mission (I usually do these at Bricks) and then use Oro as your means to get what you need. And afterwards take the long road back t villain by going hero to vigilante and vigilante to villain.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

Getting flight as a power or a temp, is a matter of perspective. I am essentially a role-player, thus all of my alts have biographies and are concept characters as well: Thus each of their powers they utilize must have a reason for being, as a result my alts are not going to win any awards for exceptional performance.

As a role player, in my mind, flight is a badge of distinction, the real cool and powerful heroes usually fly, there are exceptions, but to me, if you are really super you fly.

Now for the tech minded super types, the flight graphics does not make sense, and thus are revolting to a role player or concept character maker. As a result the jet pack is the way to go from an asthetics perspective.

If you are a min-max type of player, you really should by pass flight as a pool power and seriously consider leap, for combat jumping is an excellent power in the pool which adds full defense against all forms of attacks, you also choose maneuvers's defensive power and fight pool's weave and bam! You just got yourself as much as 12% defense against all forms of attack, and if you are wise during leveling you can have these bonuses available even in the lowest leveled TF/SF. You could actually use "hover" instead of combat jumping and get the same effect, but hover is broken with regards to "follow" it never closes in to allow for melee combat ranges.

If you don't acquire flight, for max defense gain and ease of play. Do buy a flight pack from your most convenient vendor and keep it for a rainy day, you may be going to Fire base Zulu where you will definetly need or for a Positron part II where they come handy, but if I remember right, Positron TF gives yo the flight temp as well, but not sure, I don't do Posi very often ( I don't like the excessive number of ambushes in part I)

Hugs

Sue

I know your pain...

I do the same, I pass the star to the next most experienced person and ask them to invite the 9th person and leave the group.

I find it hard when folks in global tell me they are coming, and then folks show up telling me "ready for invite" at my zone; leaving a chance that the global tell and the local tell are actually not the same persons.

Something that would assist me greatly, but I know the community would just give reasons not to do it as a matter of standard, is for local tells to have the global name included in parenthesis such as: "Ironmike (@MrGorgeous): ready for invite."

The above would do much for succint communications and greatly reduce uncertainty of invites.

Hugs

Sue

Mmm...

I must confess, I am facing the same experience such as you. Of my 40 level 50s, I only progressing 12 of them to tier-4 (11 are already at tier-4, and last is full tier 3), with the rest sent to a nursing home, to essentially never be played again.

When I20 comes out and their random end of trial awards hit (since range is my enemy thus far), I am not sure to how many alts, I am going to down select to (I hope not to zero). Only after I experienced for real I20, I will be able to tell if its a horrid grind or not too bad. My only prayer is that I20 will not turn CoX into a WoW grind environment.

Stormy

Mmm...

You also can buy any Purple recipe with Alignment Merits (A-Merits), also known as Hero or Villain Merits respectively. For about 30 A-Merits you can get PvP recipes.

Stormy

Mmm...

This is a very interesting thread, thank you for the information is to say the least "eye opening".

Maybe its bias, giggles, but I would have thought CoH would have more than a mere 125K players. I would like to learn more on how the statistic was collected, so its true meaning can be better understood.

It seems the statistics for some of the games are solely U.S. data, while others are global in nature, not sure my perception is correct.

It still concerns me that CoH is 125,000 players, seems kinda low to me. It also amazes me that WoW is so huge after all this years, I know too many people who left the game for its excesive grind, but as Barnum Bailey said: "There is a sucker born every minute"

I would have thought CoH would have been larger, since as far as I can tell, it's got to be the most active game in terms of adding new content and things to do! I played Dark Age of Camelot, and while they have outstanding customer service, they do not add new material too often, they tend to go a few years and then a new release hits. WoW its the same as DAOC, every two years there is a new expansion. Guild Wars, same as the others but for a game with no monthly subscription: That ain't bad. Star Wars, same deal, etc.

So I crossing my fingers for CoH to rise to the top!

Stormy