Want a Notice of the Well solo? That'll be...

This coming from someone who has to come up with their own unique snowflake term like 'anti-teamers', when the reality is people who cannot reliably team or who do not want to be a hinderance?

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Having a 'solo-only' way to get this stuff is the reasonable alternative. Whether you agree with how many shards it costs or not is immaterial. The devs could have said "Don't want to team? Well, then you don't get ANY rare Incarnate salvage." yet they did not.

I've explained why I use that term several times in this thread. But feel free to ignore that and grasp for straws.

Kidding me?

What kind of character are you playing that gets less than one shard every four hours solo?

I might somehow be able to be convinced to see that figure being true if time spent not whacking anything was also included and you really liked not to whack anything.

It was forced teaming for me... There was *no* way I was going to get past Honoree and the other dude solo.

I *had* to team up for that mission.

My other half *had* to ask me for help with Trapdoor, but not for the follow up mission (+0x1 for both of us).

So, what do you make of that?

Are you saying that me and my GF are crap players and didnt deserve it? It was challenging "solo orientated" content, but it was also definately forced teaming for me and my GF.

Not at all. I had to get help with Holtz and the Honoree on two other chars (Alpha was ok, because..well, because )
However, it is still soloable. As in, there is nothing saying you HAVE to have a team to start the mission. Sure, it might be night impossible for certain ATs and sets, and I wouldn't expect it to be otherwise. Thats always been true of EBs and AVs, so theres nothing new or wrong there.

With the WST, you HAVE to have a team to get a Notice. You HAVE to have a team to do the BAF trial.
The only other option is spending an unreasonable ammount of time and resources on something that does NOT need to be that expensive while still encouraging Teaming and having the solo option being slower.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

^ qft.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I make that you and your GF probably aren't the people that should be the balance point for what can and cannot be a "soloable arc". The nice thing about story arcs is that you can get help when you need it, or try to tackle the challenge yourself if you don't.

I soloed the Ramiel arc with every single one of my 5 50s. Only problem I had was when I forgot to turn off AVs for the Honoree/Holtz fight with my Tanker (so I reset the mission, turned off AVs, and went and took them out as EBs.) I probably shouldn't be the balance point either; my solo ability is pretty far beyond the norm.

No-one knows, this is all just from the interface seen in the I20 sneak peak, there are no patch notes or any offical details about it at all.

There are also people who cannot complete a single traditional mission due to time constraints. Should they be relegated to only progressing on a story arc once every 3 days? Mostly trying to state, there comes a point where it should reasonable be acceptable to acknowledge some folks aren't going to be able to complete some content.

The tolerance for that may be different for different people, and that's fine, but it should be realized that there is generally a minimum level of interaction actually necessary to play parts of a game.

Gimmick fights can tend to favor certain builds over others. Not necessarily a bad thing. Keep from boss, well that may be easier for ranged builds, or depending on implementation non-pet ranged builds. Keep boss away from an area, far easier for control powersets [or ridiculously annoying for control powersets to manage]. Avoid certain areas yourself [stay out of the fire!] potentially hard for high effect characters [pets come to mind again here, although stone tank sets also come to mind].

These hardships are normalized in a group, so it becomes more doable [although I will say the Ghost Widow run were everyone but the tank was stuck using temp vet powers because we couldn't manage to avoid her drain sucked].

It's disproportionate in difficulty for different builds. Which is the point other's were trying to make, and showing that it is difficult to manage that. As a fun sidenote, I remember with CoV beta/launch the grumpiness over how many Elite Bosses and Heroes showed up in lower level arcs, because, while some builds could manage them easily, other's couldn't and got forced to actually find teams to clear the mission. Also rather well evidenced in this thread, how you see different people's experience with Shard generation rates.

Similar statement here, that was trying to get through [and failed], perhaps your experience shouldn't be the balance point for shard generation?

I think you'll be surprised to find people have differing opinions on different issues normally. But then again, I'm just a whiner.

According to Arcanaville (who I, personally, consider a pretty reputable source) there's no cooldown of any kind on crafting/earning Notices of the Well currently. The only cooldown is the one on the Weekly Strike Task.

Solo, one shard a mission seems to be a pretty standard average across most reports.

Ah, optimistic by my view [then again, RNG hates charactes with my global handle , seriously, a STF with only 1 shard drop ], but it is an easy workable number . Going to respond on two points.

Doing just tip missions, that comes out to 5/day with 35/week. So about 18 days, let's just say 3 weeks for one. Contrasted to 1/week for WSF.

Other aspect do have to consider, the rate needs to be considered against farm groups not necessarily solists. That it benefits solists should be seen as a side-effect, at least in my view. Someone with a better understanding on the numbers could probably provide the metrics, as I really don't even know if the shard rate increases geometrically with team size [as I've seen claims but *shrug*]. But there needs to be restrain on that end.

Now I will admit that there is a difference between 2 hr/week [WSF] commitment and the 1hr/day commitments theoretical, and that's largely an awkwardness of the time-gate constraint, and I'd really prefer to make those comparisons against the Incarnate Trial reward table instead. I really prefer to think of the WSF as a supplementary method [even though currently, it is not], but I can't really do that comparison now.

I will say, though, I think your shard generation rate is overly generous. Or is that rate typically coming from /x8 missions?

I wish I could get one shard per mission! I solo at +0 x2 or 3 depending on the group I'm fighting and I'm lucky if I get 1 shard every 2 or 3 days!

Should maybe run more than one mission a day then

I kid I kid...

An increase in drop rates could actually help alleviate the "strain" of earning these shards itself, so although it appears to be a "high" number, earning 3x or 4x a many shards a mission could make it more acceptable.

It is coming from x8 missions.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

That arc just unlocks the Alpha Slot. Content for Incarnate-powered characters should be even tougher. That's the whole point of the system. Once you get to those levels, "solo-friendly" goes out the window.

It is not just about money.

It is about where the developers want to take the game.

It is about how they want to balance the reward ratios.

They could give everyone a NotW just for logging in if they wanted to, cheaply and easily.

What you think of as reasonable is not, necessarily, what everyone else thinks is reasonable, which is, IMO, what this entire, worthless argument is about; some people think they should get more than the developers are willing to give at this time.

Should everyone voice their concerns? Certainly, if they like.

That does not mean that everyone who voices a concern is right, or that their concerns should even be acknowledged.

As many have pointed out, these same arguments have occurred with every major change that has been implemented. The game is still here. I conclude, from this, that the developers might actually know what they are doing and that the Incarnate system will be successful, in turn, keeping the lights on at Paragon Studios.

Pleasing everyone, in any aspect of life, is simply not possible.

This entire argument, at this point, IMO, is nothing more than a few people that like to argue gnashing at one another in a public forum for attention. It serves no useful purpose beyond allowing both sides to posture and argue further, over something they have no control over, which is probably yet another reason they are upset.

The armchair developer brigade will continue to argue over every little thing that changes, just like the Trekkies argue over the best Captain of the Enterprise.

Thank you Paragon Studios for making a game that instigate so much nerd-rage. It just means you are 'doing it right'.

Just to clarify my point earlier. I agree criticism is always acceptable. Even if that criticism is something as generic as "this sucks". However, when people start crossing the line into personal attacks, they lose their credibility and probably any hope of being listened to. I know when a customer starts becoming insulting towards me, I stop caring.

Sigh.

Yes, you revamped existing content. Good for you. Revamping, pointing out and fixing flaws, is easy. Creating from scratch is not. Especially content the entire game is going to see and at least a majority of players need to approve of. Content that presumably moves the Incarnate storyline forward, because otherwise people would simply gripe about being given a placeholder arc.

Look at Hassenpheffer's post, the one I quoted. He's not the only one who expected a solo path to be this amazing fantastical story arc that's a joy to play through. You can't come up with that in a week.

But hey, for the sake of argument, let's say you're right and it would only take a week. That week of work (which likely involves more than one person) still couldn't happen until the project they're currently working on, i20, was finished.

This happens all the time at my own place of business. On a given day, my team has about 100+ deadlines to meet that were arranged 1-3 days in advance. Customer service might approach me and tell me a customer has a complaint about a finished product they received (which thankfully doesn't happen often). I can't drop everything to take care of the complaint, because while the complaining customer may certainly believe that their problem is the most important, I still have a load of deadlines I've already agreed to meet for other customers. If I push them aside to work the complaint in, I risk angering even more customers. So instead, what I need to do is finish the work I have on my plate for that day and address the complaint the following day, when I can prepare for it in the schedule.

My work churn takes place over the course of mere days. MMO development churn takes place over weeks and months. Fitting in a week's worth of arc creation (and I still dispute that it would only take a week) is no trivial task.

Yeah but PRAF in that same month (4 weeks) doing one WTS a week I can get 4 Notices which is enough to craft 2 rare enhancers and make the Favor of the Well I need to craft a very rare. Now not even getting into the number of shards you need to craft each notice.. each one will cost you 100 Million in INF so I also saved 400 million in INF that I can use to purchase other things, like purples, to make my Incarnate even more powerful. You are playing 1-2 hours a day EVERY day to get one NotW and I am playing 1-2 hours a WEEK and at the end of that same month I have 4 times as many as you do. You have invested between 28 to 56 hours (1 hour per day X 28 days or 2 hours per day X 28 days) and I've invested, at MOST 8 hours (4 TFs at 2 hours each.. and frankly most can be done in a lot less than 2).

Well, if you're limiting it to captains of the Enterprise then clearly the answer is Kirk.

If you're just talking about captains in general, though, then The Sisko is going to give him a run for his money...

/treknerd

Fair enough, so I pose this as a question. What sort of 'rate' advantage do you think would be fair, at least in terms of /week [since, we can really only work with the WST method currently].

I can see the merit behind the idea of 1/week, WSTs would have a far reduced time investment [30m to 3 hr a week as opposed to missions every day], personally, I dislike that avenue myself, but I can see the logic behind it.

Perhaps closer to 0.5/week, to appease folks like me who would like there to a be of difference in the weekly obtain rate?

Also, as an aside, adding in the morality mission every two [5.5 missions/day I guess], you're looking at ~16 days, which is a bit closer to the 0.5/week rate. So, I dunno *shrug*.