UberGuy

I still don't believe that's been clearly stated. Something like that was stated, and then something else was said that can be seen as contradicting it. Requests for further clarification have not yet been answered.

I think I would need to understand more about the intent of the cost mechanism. However, in order to not completely sidestep your question, I'll assume that the intent is simply to add overhead and take the player some more time to get to their goal. That means I need to use a 10% overhead and convert my "expected" time-to-obtain a Very Rare into Threads.

I don't have very good stats for this, but I estimate I have gotten a Very Rare on average about once per 15 trials. I earn about 5-8 Threads outright and about 5-7 Astral Merits (that does depend on the Trial I run). That's 375 -540 Threads equivalent. I probably got an Uncommon about 13 times in 15. For every Very Rare I get, I need to keep two Uncommon components, and I can break down the rest. Assume I get 9 Threads per breakdown, and that adds up to 492 - 657 Threads. Splitting that range (not necessarily a good target) gives about 575. One 10th of that would be around 58, which I would probably round up to 60.

Which is an impressive and wholly accidental alignment with Dispari's number.

Edit: Before I got distracted by matching Dispari's value, I had meant to add that I have no clear indication that this number is a good basis in general. It's a good basis for me based on my own luck getting Very Rares across three characters. Since I can't know that my luck is representative, I don't feel comfortable with that number of 60 as a firm recommendation. It's just what I had rough stats I could use to produce some number.

"I have cancer. You should not complain because a falling piano broke your collar bone."

Does that sound reasonable to you? I don't think it sounds reasonable.

This game has a self-contained context. As soon as we step out of that context, everything goes, and useful discussion about the game is lost. If this game sucked donkey butt, by the logic quoted above none of us would have a place asking for it to be improved, because it's better than being run over by a bus.

You've distilled the objections rather clearly here. What's being pointed out is that there are choices for the sake of making choices, and a cost associated with making the wrong choice ... which you had to make for its own sake.

Can you point to developer comment stating that as a design goal of the Incarnate System?

When you last went to the enhancement store, was there a random chance that they offered you TO, DO and SO enhancers, and getting SO enhancers was set to happen very infrequently? If this was how the enhancement stores worked, would you think it good design that it's easy to buy the wrong enhancement due to a similar colors and a descriptive name based on color text rather than function? What would you prefer to shop for: Mutation or Magic SOs?

The thread value of Rare and Very Rare in threads is effectively zero, because almost no one I know (there are exceptions) is using threads to create them. You cannot value something in a unit of cost that you do not use to buy it. The unit of cost of Rare and Very Rare components is instead the time it takes to obtain them as either random rewards or as purchases with Empyrian Merits.

I agree that this would be a wasteful conversion, but not in terms of the raw Thread cost of a Very Rare. It's a wasteful conversion because I am less likely to randomly get a Very Rare than a Rare, and because it takes more Empyrian Merits to make a Very Rare than a Rare. Expressing the cost in Threads and reminding me that 150 threads is only 10% of the "value" of the item is analogous to expressing the cost of replacing my car in terms of kg of CO² emitted to build the replacement. It may be a valid measurement, but it's almost completely orthogonal to the way I actually paid for my car. (OK, sure, somewhere someone might have rolled the carbon trading cost of the car into the dollar price. I hope the point is still clear.)

Except it doesn't have to be. I plan to spend threads buying a Rare or Very Rare exactly never. I will either get them as drops or buy them with Empyrian Merits (something I have not yet had to resort to). If I get them as a drop, they are actually free in Thread terms. In fact, I earned threads while working towards the random drop, which I can then immediately spend (or may already have spent) crafting the Commons and Uncommon powers required to prepare for getting a Rare or Very Rare power when granted a Rare or Very Rare component. I treat getting the Rare or Very Rare component (or the Empyrians to craft them) as an event trigger, not as a cost.

Nope. You are saying that the "cost" of a Very Rare is roughly 1500 Threads, and therefore 150 is 10% of that, and (I am inferring) therefore reasonable. But I do not value them at 1500 threads, because I will never spend 1500 Threads to create one. To me, that 150 Thread side-convert cost comes entirely out of all the other things I spend Threads on, which basically has been the crafting of Commons components.

Last night I believe we saw very good evidence that you can fail for just damaging the containers, because when it despawns it credits the last player who damaged it (or possibly the player who damaged it the most) with its defeat. This is well-known behavior - it's why Rikti Portals were changed to grant no XP - you used to be able to run around and "tag" them, and you'd get full XP for their defeat when they naturally despawned. We saw one of our Defenders get kill credit for a cylinder we know she didn't destroy, but which she might have damaged.

So I think anything that keeps a team for losing a MO credit on the basis of destroying the cylinders is a good change, because that implementation detail makes getting "credit" for that kill far to easy in a highly unexpected way.

Agreed. I would not, however, expect the 10 Threads reward to be popping up so much.

A casual read of the Dev posts on the Incarnate Rewards implies that the 10 Thread reward is the "door sitter's" prize. However, they never said explicitly that you can't ever get the 10 Threads reward randomly. They just said you are guaranteed to get it if you are deemed inadequately active.

If they have indeed made the 10 Threads reward a possibility for random reward, then the possibility of getting it may be increased with the reduction of the odds for getting Uncommon drops. If this is indeed what has happened, I will deem this to have been ... ill-advised. Giving people the "door sitter" prize randomly sends incredibly mixed messages, and the evidence I am seeing from both in-game and the forums is that mixed messages quickly piss a lot of players off.

If the only use case here was changing one's mind, I might agree more strongly with this. As Obitus mentions, the interface is not very friendly. I do what others have described - I click back and forth between the "Create" tab and the "Convert" tab, checking multiple times that I am, in fact, looking at the Incarnate power I actually want on this character. (I've gotten these powers on three characters now, and it's sometimes hard to keep track of what I actually am crafting for each one.)

My usual scenario is that I need to hurry up and pick the right thing before the next Trial starts. I haven't screwed up yet, but I can see it's very easy to do so. If the interface was nice and clean, and didn't involve clicking around different tabs, I might have less sympathy for the issue, but if you want to be safe, the best thing to do is track what you want, what you have and what you need in some other medium for easier cross reference. I don't think many people consider the opportunity to get their salvage choice wrong a "challenge" that they need to overcome through proper planning, and therefore "win" by choosing the right thing the first time. I don't think the game is made meaningfully better for introducing that possibility, so I question why it can't be made to better match what I see as player expectations.

I think there's a disconnect here where almost no player I have encountered (barring a few on the forums) considers the "value" of the item to be the number of Threads required to create it from scratch. Instead, because almost none of them are creating this way in practice, they are measuring the value of the item in terms of the time it takes them to obtain the requisite number of Threads by running trials, and the opportunity cost those Threads spent towards this conversion represent relative to building up their tree to the point required to create a Very Rare power.

So far, I play the Trials for Uncommon, Rare and Very Rare drops (and of course to unlock slots), and I have historically broken down Astral Merits and Uncommons into threads to create Commons, which I have received exactly twice in around 120 successful trials.

Based on that playstyle, a Thread cost of 150 is a large opportunity cost to me, because it represents a large number of Commons that I have, to date, had to create from Threads. For 180 Threads I could go from having a Rare (only) version of an Incarnate power to having the Very Rare. Having to spend an extra 150 Threads on that is not a 10% loss in "value", because it requires me to earn an extra 83.3% of the Threads I needed to slot the Very Rare version, assuming I was starting from an existing Rare version. If I already had my second Rare crafted, it's an even larger increase.

Measuring the "value" using a metric only that only applies to the hard-core solo way of earning a Very Rare doesn't seem very meaningful to me.

I just want to point out that I'm not at all convinced that this is the right cause and effect relationship. Prices were falling before I20 came out. There are likely changes in both supply and demand that I consider much more likely candidates for why prices have been on a sustained downward trend.

The biggest reason we need to produce and sell an ongoing supply of IOs and related goods is because people create new alts. Existing characters change out their total IO build very rarely - the majority of consumption is to add IOs to characters who don't already have them. I19 and now especially I20 introduce reasons to play existing 50s for extended periods of time, reducing the number of new alts people can be leveling up. This should decrease total demand.

My time on the markets as both a buyer and a seller have taught me that level 50 IOs, along with max-level versions of IOs that don't exist at level 50, are the most frequently purchased IOs. People will buy them and frequently pay more for them even when there is a lower-level alternative.* Having tons of people play at level 50 is increasing the supply of at least some of these items, particularly ones that can drop off of critters, including purples.ǂ This means that supply of many commonly purchased goods are on the rise at a time that demand for them may be on the decline.

Also, ever since I18, the price of items like LotG:+Recharge, Miracle uniques and other valuable items have been on the decline. I attribute this directly to the introduction of Alignment Merits. I believe that the purchasing power of Alignment Merits is accessible to more of the playing population at a greater rate than equivalent purchasing power in Reward Merits was previously. This is because there is a barrier to entry with Reward Merits at these acquisition rates - you need access to a Task Force or (non-Incarnate) Trial team. While this is not hard, per se, I suspect that it is a lot less hassle for many players to go into a handful of tip missions solo or with a few friends than get into a Task Force, possibly with folks they don't know.

If some of these people are also buying Alignment Merits, this may be a more likely source of influence drain in the economy than the new Incarnate Salvage costs. I have started to see people discuss buying Alignment Merits in "general" discussion, suggesting it may be becoming something of a matter of course for people with sufficient funds. In contrast, I see lots of grumbling about the costs of Incarnate Salvage, suggesting that lots of people are unwilling to spend this much for the gain involved.

* I attribute this to convenience - there is usually supply at the max and minimum level, and something of a wasteland in between. Bargain hunting in the wasteland takes time, and people spend inf liberally to save time.

ǂ Because the Incarnate trials do not give Reward Merits, supply of pool TF/Trial drops may be on the decline, but there may have been a preceding surge with the Alpha slot ties to TF completion.

Did it? If you ran the TFs to claim an Incarnate Alpha Component, you didn't get any Merits unless you were running the WTF, which only one character could claim per TF per week. I ran an awful lot of TFs where I got no merits, because I was creating Alpha Slots for 10 level 50s, always running the TF that I needed to get the component I needed for a power.

I almost never ran a "Shard" TF, but I did run a couple of them.

If you examine moderate debuff levels, resist debuffs cause you to take extra damage that plots a nice straight line of lost mitigation versus number of stacked debuffs. Stacking defense debuffs have an accelerating nature, where the rate of lost mitigation increases with lost mitigation. But it's totally fair that if those graphs are steep enough, it truly becomes academic to the player - they both just feel like an awfully big increase in damage that they may not survive.

Mechanically, you absolutely had to have had sufficient Psi damage to power through him at the end, because Psi is the only damage type that works. (Edit: Well, I think Toxic works as well, but I'm not sure anyone can pump out enough to be a significant factor.) As a weaker corollary, you had to have had a sufficiently small contribution from L/S-dealing powersets during the first 80-odd percent of his HP, because they cannot contribute damage.

There is a difference between getting the right mix without especially trying and not needing the right mix.

Not something I'm willing to do just for this badge. My Scrapper doesn't have any healing badges, either. I'm just not that hardcore about it.

My DM/Regen Scrapper has Shadow Meld. I went villain and came back.

I also vote for Barrier. With my DB/Regen's build, the tail end of Barrier puts me in spitting distance of the soft cap to melee at 44.3%. I don't usually recast it constantly, preferring instead to use it on-demand, but I could have that nearly perma. (I think the only reason it is not truly perma is cast/activation time.)

A copy of the game is not running, right?

No, you really don't. You don't need any of the ATs or powersets who are disadvantaged in the Marauder fight to complete the temp power collection. As long as you can complete the temp power collection in the time limits for that phase, you get the full time limit for defeating Marauder. It's not like time spent getting temps reduces the time available for defeating him. I've been on one successful fight against him, and it had three characters who dealt Lethal/Smashing damage along. Everyone else was someone who could apply Psi damage and/or +Dam/+Rech to the team and/or -DR/-Regen to Marauder. It was those Psi damage dealers and the buffs and debuffs that made victory possible. Except for the Tanker, the L/S dealers were in almost every way "pity" spots. As in, we took pity on them that having a whole team of Psi damage and buffs/debuffs was the only way they would ever see this badge, so we joined and spent five tries helping them get it. The time we did it, we won with 1 minute to spare, meaning we spent 19 minutes fighting him. That was easily as long, if not longer than the entire rest of the Trial.

My main badge collector is a DM/Regen Scrapper. That means that I have the "benefit" of doing a small amount of damage to Marauder until the very end of the fight with him. Once he uses Unstoppable, my badger can't hurt him at all. Other people I have helped get this badge have main badgers who deal Lethal or Smashing damage, and they do zero damage to him, period, for the whole ~20 minutes of the fight. I've been on several attempts with my badger, and only one was close. My estimation of why we weren't close enough? Not enough Psi damage or damage buffs. (I'm aware of eight tries by folks I know, of which only one succeeded. On the one that succeeded, I brought a Dark/Psi Defender.)

Edit...
Pets have the same problems - L/S pets do no damage, period. Pets that deal energy damage can deal damage to him up until he hits Unstoppable. After that, it's all about Psi, which means only the Seers count for much.

If you've brought the powersets that you need to buff the team DPS and debuff Marauder's DR, the stacking limits make the Interface effects that work on him a spec of dust in a sandstorm of debuffs. Reactive Fire DoT works until he pops Unstoppable, then is zero DPS.

Judgment's utility is in dealing with spawns. Destiny buffs teammates, and is always helpful.

In other words, characters with the "wrong" damage types aren't literally without any use what so ever, but possibly barring a Tanker, you'd perform better with something else. If you bring Illusion Control, you could likely eschew even a Tanker.

I really didn't need all that explained to me. I understand exactly what it does. My post stands.

I'm not really sure this is broken, though I understand your point. All the Interface effects are per attack, and rain and patch powers and the like perform a large number of attacks. The interface powers also have a stacking limit. What rain power are going to do is stack to the DoT limit (which I have read is six copies). Even if someone else dropped a rain on the same foes, they would max out at six of the DoTs and four of the -DRs.

Obviously to a lesser degree, the same situation you're describing exists between powersets with fast-activating and slow-activating attacks, or those with lots of pets vs those with few. Those with faster-activating powers or more pets can stack Interface effects faster, and therefore deal even more damage in shorter time. The rains might be overkill, though. If so, it'll be interesting to see if that has any knock-on effect on Interface powers in general.

Except for the server status XML feed. Since there are no frills on the XML feed - no template or style sheets, etc. - I'm guessing that, while that page is probably a PHP program like the rest of the site, it probably doesn't have to connect to the same back-end data store the main site does.