Incarnate Strikes - A proposed solo/small team path

OK, you all know about the controversy so I'm going to skip that and get right to the idea. This is an idea for a solo/small team path which I believe is reasonable, not grindy and includes some of the same time gates that exist in the strike pack. It's based on the daily missions that most MMOs use to allow soloists and small team folks to participate in earning endgame gear.

THE STORY

The Lady Grey, Leader of Vanguard is impressed with the efforts against the Praetorians, but has a concern with the current strategies by Earth's defenders. All too often, our efforts include major flashy strikes against major targets in Praetoria. This is fine for what it is, but it does not endear us to the Enriche addled masses of Praetoria. If hearts and minds there see their unjust attack as illegitimate it might break morale among the people. For that reason the Lady Grey has created a new division to coordinate small targeted missions into Praetoria. THE VANGUARD HAMMER! As a weapon, hammers (like other blunt heavy weapons) are intended to be able to cause damage to even heavily armored foes. So shall it be with the nearly impenetrable Praetorian society.

THE MECHANICS

The Vanguard Hammer will have a NPC leader who will give ONE mission a day to a player. No matter how many Incarnate Strikes you've attempted in the last 20 hours, just as with Alignment tips, you can only get credit for a limited number. In this case exactly ONE per day.

These missions would take on two flavors: One would involve rescuing a Praetorian from the excesses of the Cole regime. The other would be clandestine sabotage intended to show the true colors of various Praetorian heroes (Maurader, et. al.). The first type of missions would reward an Incarnate Salvage bonus (see below) (plus whatever drops) and psychic incarnate exp. The second type would reward an Incarnate salvage bonus plus physical incarnate exp.

Just like with Alignment tips, you have to do ten before you get a big mission. This mission could be done either on the same day as the tenth tip (like alignment tips) or if you wanted more time gating making the person wait till the next day. This mission like Alignment changing missions would be longer and more involved. It would reward either: A Notice of the Well (Rare Alpha); OR a reward for the upper Incarnate abilities on the same terms as completing a trial.

Incarnate Strike missions would obey the character's difficulty slider, but a boss would be mandatory, no Lt. downgrades. The rewards for doing the mission would be based on the difficulty selected.

-1 - No Incarnate salvage bonus
+0 - One Incarnate Shard
+1 - One Incarnate Thread
+2 - Two Incarnate Threads
+3 - Three Incarnate Threads
+4 - Four Incarnate Threads



THOUGHTS?

SIGNED.

God dang, Geko. Good show.

I could see that being... interesting indeed.

I like it. I like it a lot.

Tip style missions for the 'grind' (and it's not really a grind if you're doing something you enjoy - like a small team/solo mission) and a big mission at the end of it for the reward, and for some actual Incarnate level story content, so we don't feel that only the Raids are getting a look at any new shinies - enemies, locations, the ongoing story...

Yeah, I'd love to see this. I know this isn't Suggestions, but /signed.

All in favor of forming a petition to have this added to the game?

Aye.

But if this was implemented what would people complain about?

Ok, more seriously I think the basic idea makes sense but I'm not a fan of the timing. I personally HATE daily quests because it gates me based on which days I have time to do it.

My suggestion would be to make it so that like tips you are limited to some number of preparatory missions each day (maybe 5) but the finale mission is limited to once a week. In addition doing the finale would count as your WST for the week (and doing a WST would lock out the possibility of doing the finale. Finally I would say give the finale mission an EB/AV (based on team size/difficulty settings).

The general idea here is to make the WST slightly more rewarding (since you get merits as well and can do it in a single day) to compensate for the fact that getting a team does complicate doing it somewhat.

Now rewards, I see what you're doing but I think tying it to difficulty is not the way to go. Most characters can solo a mission set to +4/x1 without to much difficulty (especially once you get a level shift) so I think doing it that way makes it way to attractive.

So for an alternative, how about this. A NotW currently breaks down into 4-6 shards. In I20 it will be possible to convert 10 shards to 6 threads. So, how about having the reward table for the finale allow you to chose one of:
1. NotW
2. 10 Shards
3. 6 Threads

It would also be necessary to increase the breakdown value of the Notice to 10 shards to provide incentive to do the WST for shards/threads instead (yes there is the 10 million inf cost the WST gives you get a bunch of merits you can use to get the inf).

The remaining issue is the Incarnate exp. The simple option is to add it to the Finale reward table but I'm not sure how good of an idea that is. I can't really say how best to do that since I don't yet have a feel for the XP rates in the trials.

Finally one thing I would think worth considering is allowing enemies in the missions to drop threads instead of shards but only under certain circumstances (maybe if the difficulty is set to +4?)

Overall I think something like this is probably the best solution. If the devs do decide to implement a real solo path (as opposed to the ridiculous one they have now) then I think the primary requirements are that is should:
1. Require at least a bit more personal time/effort than the team method (since you don't have the difficulty of getting a team together)
2. Not allow faster progression than the team method (if the 'solo' method is the fastest people will simply form teams to do that instead of the actual team content).
3. Not allow someone to do both the solo method and the team method for really fast progression (for obvious reasons).

As someone who plays strange hours and does not enjoy large raids but does enjoy small, fun, story based missions, this is an excellent suggestion.

I heartily approve.

I like it. I'd especially like it to see just little touches of flavor (more or less like we have in Tip missions now) into Praetoria. And I love the idea of linking difficulty to higher level rewards, since there really isn't much reason to crank it up, currently.

When ya miss, Geko ya miss, but hey, I'd say this one not only hits, but knocks it outta the park.

I, as probably the biggest soloer in the game, clap my hands real loud, stomp my huge feets, and whistle....I love this idea.

Thank and Bless you Geko for caring enough to come up with an idea that just might work

Now, if only the powers that be see this.....

Lisa-Closes her eyes, and prays real hard.

I'm with Adeon on the weird time schedule thing. I'd rather have larger chunks of content using a longer time gate. If we only get a reward weekly, that's fine, but sometimes I have (for example) 5 hours on the weekend with no time during the week, sometimes I have an hour per week day with no time on the weekend, and sometimes I have 3 two hour chunks. So it would be nice if it was more flexible.

But no matter what the schedule is, I support something like this idea that would give Incarnate rewards via non-raiding means at a slower pace than raids (but not so slow that it takes months to get what a raider gets in a few days, given the same amount of play time per day), against more challenging content. The more interesting the challenges, the better, and hopefully they can be somewhat randomized in terms of what actually happens to keep us on our toes. (I'd rather not have a randomized paper-mission style story, though, but I'll take what I can get)

I think something like this would be excellent. I think time gating it at some approved rate/day should allow the Devs to be comfortable that a tweaked out minion muncher won't use it to rack up progress out of line with the Devs' progress targets.

I'm not sure the difficulty slider part going up the reward scale like that is the best way to handle it. A reward table with conversion-rate-based rewards, like suggested already is one alternative.

Another is to perhaps add more missions with some progress tiers. For example, using tip missions as a model, maybe you could unlock a "notice mission" every 10 "incarnate missions", and get credit for 5 incarnate missions per day. Incarnate missions would be available only to characters with an unlocked Alpha slot, would contain level 50 foes that would drop Shards, and might give a guaranteed shard at the end. The "Notice" mission would give out a Notice, but only one per week. (I see problems with this at once, since you could get a WST Notice and get one this way...unless the Devs implement a way to put rewards on a common timer.) It probably makes sense to have there be an alternative reward for when accepting a Notice is not valid. Reward Merits come to mind, since Incarnate missions wouldn't be tied to Hero/Villain Merits.

Having the missions reward some bonus salvage based on the difficulty is just a plain nice concept though, no matter how the rest of it is twiddled.

I definitely like the basic idea.

You need to be patient about solo Incarnate stuff

I've said all I will about it really, in any thread.

Once I realized the only thing to actually do with the incarnate powers was to keep grinding the TF's, only a bit easier, I got all happy.

Turns out I'm not missing out on much afterall, since I don't like large raids, and large raids are the only place the incarnate slots will be working all the time...

It's a moot point for me.

I could get behind something akin to this.

I would like to sign this 1000 times.

Geko: It would need some tweaking, obviously, but I like. I especially like the idea of an incentive for running on higher than +0. Although one could argue that +0 shouldn't give you anything either, since for people with a level shift it would amount to -1.

Sam: If I ever quit you can have my stuff. Seriously.

/signed to the OP. Sounds like a very good starting point.

Are we certain that the Incarnate powers can only be used in the trials?

I had heard that about the two new level shifts, but not about the powers.