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

It's a Strike Target. That's Weekly.

Weekly Strike Target.

WST. There's even a thread of the same name.

I know it might be funny to some, but I will forever read WTF as "what the ****". It's hard to make the distinction when just casually reading Broadcast.

See my above response.

Lighten up, Francis.

He'll change his tune in 6 or 7 weeks. Once the playerbase has gotten used to a rotating WTF, and the devs drop Doc Quaterly on us for a week.

WTF indeed.

Hehe, I doubt Doc Q will happen anytime soon, simply as there is nothing comparable Redside.

And while I would love to see the Shard revamped/opened up to both sides, if it were to happen, I imagine Q would be 'updated' at the same time.

Time will tell, although, supposedly you will be able to unlock your Alpha [and I believe the other two slots] via the Incarnate Trials in I20. We don't have much information on that though. I'm guessing it may be related to those % numbers we see on the interface though.

Add in that DE Devoured are bugged to spawn as bosses even when set to No Bosses.

Does this vary by faction? Last night I set my blaster to +0/x3 with bosses and ran five tip missions.. I faced: Crey, Knives of Artemis, Circle, 5th Column (with splashes of Malta and P.Clockwork thanks to Maelstrom's party buddies), and Freakshow.

For the first four factions, I faced 1 or 2 bosses per map. For three of them, I think the only boss entities were at the final objective. Enemy quantities varied a bit, of course, and I didn't actually tally the quantities. (I do have logs, so I can probably go back and pull them later)

Freakshow, I ended up with I think six bosses (a few of which respawned, giving me extra boss kills).

Has anyone else had experiences like this?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

I just meant it in a way regardless of how poor your luck has been, you'll get 2 shards by default. Wasn't really trying to dig all that much into it.

I understand, and apologize. I lost some of the context of this particular conversation throughout the reading of the rest of the thread. So much to keep track of, somethings get muddled or lost. I must be getting old

I also apologize if it seems that I'm calling you out. I don't intend for that, really. Originally, I disagreed with some particular or other and its kind of stuck with me. I'll be sure to let that drop as best I can.

Okay, I get this, just not sure if I agree that the solution as presented is the most eloquent way of handing it.

IMHO if that is the intent then they should reduce the raw shard cost and replace it with a shard-equivalent component cost. Currently you need 4 TFs worth of components but 72 shards which is probably somewhere between 9 and 14 Tfs depending on luck.

Sorry but I do see it from both sides and as much as I hate time-gating that is a potentially viable option to let the soloist progress at the same rate as the grouper / hardcore speedrunner.

The issue is gathering shards as a soloist and then having this price tag slapped on it which the hardcore player is going to have far less of an issue with then the soloist will, assuming the soloist isn't a powergamer/farmer.

I think your idea of some sort of single drop that is used to combine and is divided amongst team mates is also a viable solution to the issue of drop rates of shards solo vs grouped. How is a soloist supposed to gather 40 shards + 40 shards + 32 shards + 200mil + all other components just to make one of these very rares in any reasonable amount of time? It's just like a-merit costs on purple recipes where it will take you over half a year just to get 1 purple set doing 1 a-merit every 2 days. The costs are ridiculous, and no everyone shouldn't be kitting themselves out in purples in a week but they should be able to get a full set faster then half a year.

I would by far rather see incarnate trials be trapdoor-ish missions (story arc) for the soloist that would award components or some sort of weekly story arc from oro that's similar to the weekly task force and you'd get flagged for doing either one to keep notices at the weekly gained rate. Forget all this crafting with shards crap for the soloist. Give them the same style option as the grouper to keep it fun.

There is nothing fun about excessive grinds. There was nothing fun about 10,000 monkies and 1,000 is still a lot but doable. Whenever a game mechanic is introduced that makes a majority of players want to avoid it or gouge their eyes out with rusty spoons due to the excessive repetitiveness then it needs to be reexamined and changed. With the current costs in shards and the low drop rate that's this mechanic.

Shard drops are a catch 22. Groupers will accrue them faster due to mass destruction of piles of foes and soloists, who are not farmers, won't. Thus they need to be awarded for completed tasks and not just more random crap drop rates.

Any system introduced into a game should have as many potential viable paths for the greater playerbase and lesser playerbase if possible. Some want raids, that's coming with these new trials. Some want to continue to enhance their characters through small group or solo play in a reasonable time frame. That's not happened yet and with the current proposed system isn't going to happen. Shame too because there are some good ideas in this thread.

In short something like the WTF for Oro missions using the same flag upon completion (so that the wtf'er can't go get 2x the drops) would be a viable alternative to gaining notices for the soloist instead of extreme rare drops and crafting costs that are punitive to the non farming soloist. That way the powergamer can't abuse the system.

I remember Yahtzee saying something along the lines of "I stopped snickering at Spotted Dick by the time I was 9" when talking about how people will see profanities where others have gotten past the profane meaning of a word or a term.

Personally, I intend to use WTF because I choose to. I don't hound people for using the term "IOs" even though there is no such thing as Inventions Origin, and that Dual and Single Origin enhancements are called that because they affect two or one origins, with no such thing as Training Origin enhancements since "Training" is not an origin. It's like taking the term "dual wield weapons" for a class of weapons which can be dual-wielded, and extrapolating this to "Onyxia Wield" weapons for single weapons dropped by Onyxia, or "Crafting Wield" weapons for weapons which can be crafted by players. It doesn't work that way.

But you don't see me getting indignant when people use the ******* of a term that is iiO, do you?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Team of 3 gets 1 per person. It is easy enough to keep it simple without getting all math-stupid. Here I'll lay out a quick system for you.

Team of 7-8 = 1 drop each
Team of 5-6 = 2 drops each
Team of 3-4 = 3 drops each
Team of 1-2 = 4 drops each

So 4 drops for the soloist and 1 drop for the people who group all the time, combine to taste for whatever is needed.

Yeah it's predictable but at least no one is getting screwed by the range which I see happen far too often. Oh look billy got 3 purples on this TF run and joey, mack, and janey got zero. Yeah that's fun.

You could even interject some random into it as long as there was a base minimum. Chance that a person at the end would get a single extra drop at 5-8 or 2 at 1-4.

And you know what? I quit UO and EQ due to that as did many many others. Game developers need to stop looking at the punitive boring gameplay in EQ as the way to design games and start looking at it as the way to not design games

Guild Wars 2 has some very interesting mechanics that the developers are adding to stop excessive grinding, allow progression solo and grouped, prevent griefers and take some of the sting out of the rng. Looks to be a fantastic game that will cater to the raider and the casual player.

I completely agree, see earlier post in regards to that.

Which doesn't do the soloist any good. People have issues with lag at mothership raids and lately there have been a lot of complaints of lag on these WTFs. How are people going to do these queued events with this kind of lag when you can have upwards of 48 players?

People who have a lot of lag and may not be able to participate in these events, or people who have real life commitments that may call them away from the keyboard frequently, or just hate grouping in uncontrollable envornments (read other players) should have viable paths in a similar time frame as the powergamer / hard core grouper.

Their subscription money is just as good as anyone elses and keeps the City Of franchise running.

I remember Yahtzee saying something along the lines of "I stopped snickering at Spotted Dick by the time I was 9" when talking about how people will see profanities where others have gotten past the profane meaning of a word or a term.

Personally, I intend to use WTF because I choose to. I don't hound people for using the term "IOs" even though there is no such thing as Inventions Origin, and that Dual and Single Origin enhancements are called that because they affect two or one origins, with no such thing as Training Origin enhancements since "Training" is not an origin. It's like taking the term "dual wield weapons" for a class of weapons which can be dual-wielded, and extrapolating this to "Onyxia Wield" weapons for single weapons dropped by Onyxia, or "Crafting Wield" weapons for weapons which can be crafted by players. It doesn't work that way.

But you don't see me getting indignant when people use that kludge of a term that is iiO, do you?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think this is actually a good comparison -- in both cases people using the system in the absolutely least optimal way will find their rewards substantially reduced compared to people who don't. Likewise, even very occasionally teaming, or very occasionally using the market, gives an enormous boost in reaching the desired goal.

Actually, from a technical standpoint these events appear to handle the lag better. And that lag issue is a big part of why they want to stress test those systems [hence the sneak peak for BAF].

I will disagree completely that they should have pathes that have a similar time frame as a powergamer /hard core 'anything' though. But that's most likely just a difference of interpretation of terms, which is prolly ok in the end. A character that is optimized/well played should perform better. For terms of absurd, should the rate be similar for a blaster who forgoes almost all their primary and secondary in light of power pool abilities? It should be a goal range, the problem, I feel, is that the range on (shard) generation for characters is far too broad, so it creates this ugly mess where something looks very intimidating at the low and mid-range.

My bulk of problem with a time gate [on the combine] is that it doesn't change the time commitment to acquisition, it just encourages the character to log in on every cooldown. A time gate on acquisition [WST, or some of Arcana's theorycrafted ideas] is a different matter, at least then you're logging in to do something more than hit combine on your cooldown .

...Except those are the official names for them.
The enhancement numbers of TOs originate from Training. And the enhancement numbers of IOs come from the new invention you just made. Same as HOs coming from Hamidon.

So...yes, there very much is such a thing if even the Devs say it

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.

Well if you intend to do a 30 minute ITF you need to do just the objectives and nothing else. That's pretty clear. Even with doing that you will get shards since there's a fair amount of mandatory 'arresting' in a number of the missions. Did a fairly speedy one last night and got around 5 shards. I can't remember the time, but it must have been around 35 minutes. I think it might have taken the originator longer to recruit the team given that everyone wanted a LGTF.