Am I alone in this...

I really am happy that the new content coming and what we recieved has made the game a lot of fun and i appreciate the newness.

However the shard grind has killed about 15 of my 50s...


Just dont play them anymore. My lvl shifted toons and my new incarnate abilities make my other toons feel so puny. And i dont think i am gonna grind hundred+ shards for those. It made an entire server full of 50s kinda done.

Did the new stuff as fun as it has been kill some of your alts also?

And here is my dillema there are one or 2 toons from one server id like to play but its a slow server and I am in a very active sg on a different server. But the new server is full and i cant see buyin slots then buying transfers just to grind out shards to have another toon or two. For two toons it would cost me about 40 bucks to get them over to the new server and well thats crappy. So i guess goodbye old toons...

Hasn't happened to me yet. Always something to work on. I switch it up nightly to keep them all about even.

I have decided to focus only on a few toons for incarnate stuff. I have unlocked the alpha for all of my 50's, but less than half are slotted. Even less above the first slot.

I am still having fun with the rest of the content, trying out new toons and powersets I have not played. I will leave the new incarnate stuff to my few toons getting attention.

My play time has been severely reduced due to work and school.I know when I do get to play I sure in the hell don't want to grind for shards.

Incarnate stuff has pretty well killed it for me too, I like my lowbie alts but, all my friends are doin Incarnate stuff and something I've noticed is that lower lvl pug's don't last real long(2-4 mishes).

So I'll solo when I can play but grinding for shards is not something I want to do with my sub.Was hoping for some love in other areas of the game and not really seeing it.

Might be time to move on.

Right there with ya. I chose 2 on an active server and 2 on my original server, then also spilt the server choices to 1 vill, 1 hero. My 50s have survived ED, IOS, and FOTMS, but now I kinda feel like I threw away 50 toons.

I still have some lower level characters that I want to level up, and I appreciate the fact that some of the lower level TFs have been added as the WSF. This makes it easier to get teams for those TFs, so I can get XP and double merits on the lower level characters.

I ran the Incarnate mission with all my 50's except maybe 2. I have slotted the first level Alpha on probably 75%. Maybe a third have the tier 3 slotted. And so far, I only have 2 slotted with the tier 4.

I'm still having fun . . . but to a great degree it is because I'm still teaming up with the same great group of guys who have been my friends in-game for years now.

I have noticed that the number of people playing sub-50s has been climbing recently. I expect when I20 comes out, it will decline again for awhile. However, once people get a 50 or 2 decked out, I expect the new lvl 20-40 Task Forces will help encourage people to play sub-50s again.

It will be interesting to observe. I usually take one or two breaks a year (anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks where I just do not login). I am trying to time my fatigue with the time period where people start to get bored with their 50s and start switching back to playing a bigger variety of characters. That way I can come back right when people are just doing whatever, instead of focusing on one level range (before I21 comes out and we all focus on our 50s again for a bit ).

Once you get your tier 3 Alpha for the level shift, don't worry about grinding for shards. Just play the game and do the weekly strike targets. Don't get stressed out over the grind. I'm getting enough shards as I play normally.

I did have to cut my Incarnate-focused characters down to three main ones, but that isn't such a bad thing. I chose to play the ones I find the most fun, and most effective on teams. The rest of my characters may have been fun, but they didn't feel like they could contribute as much as I wanted to a team.

i must be the opposite or something, im really glad i have something to do with my 50s now and i absolutely cannot wait for the new incarnate stuff

pre GR most of my non 50s were pretty much only existed because my current 50s had nothing to do

now that i do have something to do with my 50s, ive given about 6 of them respecs and actually started to IO them out and while doing so ive gotten shards and had a lot of fun especially being lvl shifted, and with the new incarnate powers down the road i cant wait for it

ive always disliked the lowbie lvls so i usually PL my toons to the 30s, run them for awhile, then PL them instead of running mishs, i do tfs with them too, but not common for me to do lowbie tfs

It had no effect at all on my playstyle. I play all my alts, and I always did. I have unlocked the alpha on all of my 50s, including the ones who leveled since i19. More than half were unlocked as a side effect of helping people who were in Oro asking for help with trapdoor. I have level shifted only 3 of them, none deliberately, I just play them and if I get enough rewards for an upgrade, great, if not, great!

As far as I'm concerned, it's a game and for me the is fun comes from playing not having. the rewards are pretty much meaningless to me. I don't hunt badges deliberately, I don't grind accolade powers, and I don't grind shards. I just do what's fun. None of my characters are optimized. I have a fire/shield brute who "should" have been a scrapper because both sets perform better on scrappers. I have a dark/dark stalker, where both those sets are weakest. And none of them are properly slotted. Hell, about half my characters still don't have inherent fitness because I haven't respecced them.

I contribute to the team. I can solo and have fun at 0/0 no bosses with every character no matter how gimped. Everything else is gravy.

Incarnate content will have no effect on my play. When I log in I go through the list and find which character has been logged out the longest and play that one. =) Unless a team asks specifically for something, then I'll swap.

The other night someone was complaining to me about how he had to farm for shards on all his characters so he had to get farms for them all, he was really going on about it until I pointed out that he didn't have to have farms for shards, he could just play the game. Seriously. Have you run through all your contacts? Do tip missions. No more tips today? Do radio missions. Bored of radio missions? Do a task force. Bored of task forces? Do a flashback. Bored of flashbacks? Go to rikti war zone and do missions there. Bored of RWZ missions? Go back to tips, change alignments, and do the missions from contacts from the other side.

There is a heck of a lot of stuff you can do at 50, and when we start getting incarnate drops from mobs below 50 there will be a heck of a lot more you can do.

I have, at last count, 17 level 50 characters... I think I've unlocked the Alpha on all but 3 of them... I did that the first two weeks after it dropped. On the other hand I've only slotted the tier 2 on about half of them and only focused on really working with 4-5 of them. As of last night I've slotted the tier 4 on one (my Ill/Rad) and the tier 3 on 4 more of them. Narrowing my focus helped greatly in reducing grind; I anticipate getting the tier 4 on my Fire/EM blaster tonight (only need 2 more shards) and probably on CMA (only needs one more WTF).

I've picked one of my 4 tanks (CMA), one of my two blasters (Delta Farce), one of my 3 controllers (Nameless Phantom) and one of my 3 scrappers (Sword of Damocleve) as my current focus. After the first WTF came in I practically burned out trying to run everything through it; since then I decided that was pointless. I'll play a few characters regularly and if I get the urge to play one of the others I'll start with them. No point racing all 17 through all at once; I didn't level them to 50 all together so why try and "level" them all together through the Incarnate?

I was looking through my list of characters and I only found two 50's without a tier 1 so if I get the urge there's nothing preventing them from running anything. Of course all this new stuff IS making my non-50's gather dust but that will change eventually. Frankly I love having something new to work towards with my 50's.

The Incarnate stuff has had minimal effect on my playstyle. The only change is that it's given me one more thing to think about when I decide to log in. I've been playing my 50s more because there's more for them to do, but I'm still doing everything I was doing before i19 came out, just at a slower pace.

I refuse to be in a hurry to get anywhere in an MMO, and I refuse to do anything that feels like "grind" to me. When I start feeling like I am grinding, then it's time to log out and read a book. And if everything feels like "grinding" then it's time to take a break from the game.

I never will understand why people continue to use their leisure time to do something they aren't even enjoying.

I'm happy with the way things have gone so far. My focus shifts over time. Before the Incarnate stuff, I was playing a lot of new toons and not playing my main (Ironblade) or other 50's much.

When we first got the Incarnate stuff, I gradually ran all my 50's through Ramiel's arc. I enjoyed revisiting all these toons (21 of them), some of whom I had not touched for weeks.

When we got the WST, I focused back on Ironblade. I got him the badge for assisting on 50 WST's a couple weeks ago. Now I'm looking at which 50's need the level shift (I think just 4) and how many need the Alpha slotted so they can do Apex and Tin Mage (2 or 3 others).

I'm still doing other stuff, also. Every Tuesday is a regularly scheduled villain night. Every week I run at least one character who can still earn XP through the WST.

The biggest change I'm seeing is that, on several global channels I'm on, the mantra is task force, task force, task force. This is not good for people who like to do other things. It's fine for me, though. I love doing task forces. I will point out, though, that I'm seeing a lot less focus on the WST than a month ago. I think we're moving back toward 'normal' play patterns. I don't think we'll ever go back to exactly the way things were a few months back, but that's to be expected. The game evolves. We form a new consensus of 'normal play'. Each major new feature causes a disruption, then it settles down. It may settle down with the new feature being under-utilized or the new feature may successfully integrate into the game as a whole and remain popular.

At least some aspects of the Incarnate system have integrated. Running Ramiel's arc is something that I intend to do with every single character, just as all my toons do the Midnighter arc and the Vanguard arc. This gives them the maximum range of options and qualifies them for the optional drops (Vanguard Merits and Incarnate Shards).

I have 15+ level 50s... I've opened up the incarnate slot on maybe half of them. I've alpha slotted a few of them... I probably have enough shards to tier 2 on two of them, but I haven't bothered yet. Nobody is level shifted.

Most of my 50's are pretty heavily IO'd out already, I'm sure level shifting them will be nice but I don't expect it to have a huge effect on my gameplay. I still run a lot of lower level TFs on my 50's, I never understood people who said there was "nothing to do" with their 50's. I play mine all the time, always have.

For the last 6 weeks, I've played one character, and one only...

So yeah, even though I tend to stick with one character for a while anyway, it usually wasn't to this extreme, so the coming stuff has changed my playstyle some, but I'm not minding it at all...

I've got 5 50's total. 3 have Alpha slot - at least 2nd tier, and only one (current main) will I load up with as much Incarnate stuff as possible. My other 50s don't have alpha, or even a respec into inherent fitness. I suppose, when my main is loaded and Incarnate stuff has died down somewhat into normalcy, my other toons (incl below 50) will see some action. Till then, Destiny (slot) awaits

I was barely playing most of my 50's before Incarnate. Now I rotate through them, doing the WST or whatever is around. Most are level shifted now, but only a select few will try for that top slot.

I'm ending up grinding for shards on one 50 . That takes so much time that I am no longer playing my sub 50 alts. I have one sitting at 45 that before shards was my big project to get to 50. My other 50's are not being used b ecause grinding for shards on one of them lessens the effect on my first Incarnate attempt.

I am so out of the Alpha stuff it's crazy...

I have 6 50's.

I have done the original Alpha mish on my fire/fire scrapper.

He still doesn't have the slot filled. I need to get a whack more of Vanguard merits for that to happen and frankly, I am most definitely not in a rush! Heh.

I will get there with this one toon. Maybe my D3 as well. But for now, I play all my other alts instead. I really enjoy leveling my chars up from 1 with content. I never seem to tire of it.

cheers!

GF

Is this any different from when you had to decide how much resources you wanted to spend to "Hami-O out" all your 50s or just some of them? Or "IO Set out" all your 50s or just some of them?

A long time ago, I decided only one toon will be the badger...