TrueMetal

I mostly post when I'm at work (I have a lot of free time when things run smoothly ). Which can be any time of the day or night depending on which shift I'm working ...
I'm not unhappy with how things are now. Back on the Euro bords the community reps would've gone home by peak posting hours (17:00-21:00?) anyway.

I consider a direct line to the devs much more valuable than someone at peak hours.

The only thing I consider annoying is that it takes hours after the servers have gone back up to get any patch notes ...

*sigh* This isn't about me, or you. It's about the long term life of the game. That's the devs angle. And it's quite obvious from the recent course and Black Scorpions post that they believe that to be in teamed end game content. And I happen to agree.

So they want things that encourage people to play the teamed end game content (incarnate powers!). If you give the same rewards for easier farmable actions, a subsection of the playerbase isn't going to bother with all your nicely designed end game trials in order to get those rewards. They're just going to stay in 1 spot and farm their rewards quickly, get bored with the game and quit. It's not a healthy for the game in the long term. See the AE exploiting mess.

That is why the cost for crafting needs to be so high.

My main has about 60, maybe 70 not sure. Mostly from 3 failed MoSTF runs I did over winter holidays and the 2 STFs I did last week for the NotW/badge credit. My other incarnate 50s have less than 20. I have 2 characters with rare alphas, and 2 with uncommons. 3 of my 7 50s aren't even incarnate yet. I'm in no hurry. As I said I'm a fairly casual player.

No, that's not an ideal balance point. It would devalue the WST and potentially the new trials.

Honestly for me personally that problem wouldn't exist. If the WST is a TF I don't like to run (more than once) I simply won't run it (more than once). NotW or not. Luckily I'm mostly a villain player and I like all the villain SFs.

That being said, I do think 88 shards is a bit on the high side of reasonable. I wouldn't mind if it's brought down some.

People who don't have 50s yet are hardly the target audience for end game content I would think. So they're not really relevant for this discussion. (Except that it might serve as an extra incentive for the push to 50.)

Considering the devs sudden focus on end game content I'm also tempted to assume that the number of people with 50s have rissen somewhat.

It's also not just "people that go through content faster than it is designed to be consumed" that they're balancing against. It's also people like me. I'm not a power gamer or speedrunner. I don't farm, min/max or marketeer. I have raised 7 lvl 50s in the 54 months I've been playing. All my characters are built for concept first. None of them have purples/pvp recipes. In the weeks that I play this game (which is 50/50 nowadays.) I do 1-2 TF/SF's on average. (The WST brought that up to 4 this and 3 previous week.) The majority of my time goes towards soloing or small team play. Obviously there's a spike in my activity when new stuff gets released. All in all I consider myself a pretty average, casual player in terms of investment in the game.

As it stands now, the shard cost is too high for me to consider crafting a NotW. The inf cost I consider trivial. If they lower the shard cost by half I'd be tempted to not bother with the WST if it's a TF I don't particularly care about.

Because quite frankly, you and people like you are a fringe case. There's a lot more of 'those' people than there are of 'you'. The devs have to pick and choose their battles and catering to the majority makes the most economic sense.

It's also the reason why there isn't a fully fleshed out story mode solo player incarnate path. That would easily double the devs workload if not more. And since this isn't WoW that's simply not realistic.

I'm fairly sure that this is the intended reaction.

Yes, yes. I'm a doofus.

I'm aware of all that. I'd rehash what I was getting at, but since I'm a doofus it's not really relevant anymore, so I'm not going to bother, mkay?

Ah oops. Will you believe I actually looked at the screeny twice to make sure I was seeing it right?

In that case I agree that 88 seems a bit steep. The 100 mil really isn't though.

You have to take into account that this stuff isn't available JUST to non-teamers though. If they make it so you can get it a week or 2 of non-farming solo play (or even a month) it will be trivial for casual players who team and do TFs, let alone for the more hardcore players. It would kind of defeat to point of having it locked behind time gated TFs and end-game raids.

Lets not portray things worse than they are, hmm?

It's 40 shards vs. running the WST once.

The other 48 shards come from crafting the uncommon boost. The fastest I ever crafted an uncommon was in 3 TFs and a Mothership raid.

I do. On a server with half the population of Freedom, if that much. You're overstating the problem.

Yes, limited resources and catering to the majority. Simple as that.

You changed your mind on that then?

You'll have to shard make it (and add some inf). Just read his follow up post in this thread.

No idea about other MMOs, but whole teams will be able to join the queue here. The teamleader being the one doing the actual joining. It's in the Issue 20 sneak peek patchnotes.

Yea I was going with a raid that needed minimum 24 people to start. But that's not important for the point I was making.

Anyway, according to the Issue 20 sneak peek patch notes a confimation popup will be implemented. Which is fine with me (good even) as long as people aren't allowed to join missions while on a queue, (the logic behind it that not being on a mission would reduce the incentive to opt out of the trial at the very last moment.)

Those animated costume pieces change postions when changing the various width and heigth sliders though. Which means the animations need to be changed or you're dropping your guns in midair or sticking them into your hip or theigh. Just think granites and lobsters chucking coffee over their shoulder. It's something entirely different from holding weapons in your hands.

Non animated holsters (including the 2 frame thing) wouldn't have that problem, but since we still don't have them I think it's safe to say that there are other issues with that don't make it all that simple as people are assuming.

I didn't even think about griefing when making my post. That's not really what I'm concerned about.

The thing is, if there's 30 people, the first ones on the queue might be waiting for half an hour or longer. If I was one of those persons I'd be mighty annoyed to get the confirmation box, click it, only to have to do it again 1 2 3 ... times because someone drops out. It's even more fun if there's just 23 people. A 24th is found, the trial starts and someone drops out and now you potentionally have to wait for another few minutes (or many) before starting again. No thanks.

The 'forced' argument really doesn't hold water. If you don't want to be 'forced' into the trial, just don't join the queue.

There's gear now?

Not to take away from your rant, but didn't Second Measure just go out of his way to say that this wouldn't be the case?

I don't see how solo incarnate content would work. If they made it challenging people would complain it wasn't soloable (cfr Trapdoor)

If they made it so that you're uberawesome plowing through everything (like you seem to want) people would get really bored really fast (first mission of Ramiels arc is neat and fun. For the first 1 or 2 times you do it.) My mildly IOd and Alpha slotted brute is already at that stage for the 'regular' content at difficulties x8 +2 and lower.

Getting that confirmation box would mean the trial is ready to start. You dropping out because you want to finish the mission would put the whole thing on hold again. This could potentionally happen a number of times in a row. Bad idea.

I hope that if this is the same system used in the Praetorian zone events, there are going to be some tweaks to the system. There are a few problems with masterminds and stuff not getting the rewards they deserve.

I actually like White. At least he just is what he is, without any show or deception. Antimatter, though not as bad as some others, still only cares about himself.