Am I alone in this...

I personally think the Level shift makes too much of a difference to comfortable not have it.

I mean, when I read about it first, I thought, OK, because of the bonus the tier 3 and tier 4 abilities give you, you in return count as being one level higher for all the ill effects, as in getting rewards as if you were defeating stuff of one level less.
Sounded fair to me. You can have the ultra bonus, but have to fight enemies of one level higher than before for the old results.

But I am getting this right?
Once you have the awesome bonus of tier 3, you are made level 51 with ALL the BENEFITS instead, everything being easier to hit, mez and defeat, while doing less damage to you, AND you still get the same rewards for it too? Shards included, because you can defeat level 50s much easier now?

So because you now have a cool bonus, you are rewarded with much more cool bonus and more rewards? That doesn't sound right to me.
And yes, that makes it feel rather stupid to play character without tier 3 alpha stuff to me, greatly underperforming in groups, and getting the short end of the stick solo, resulting in less incentive to play them or need to grind them too.

I have 10 50's.. all of which have the incarnate slot.

I chose 7 to Incarnate-Up so to speak. I do the WSF once per day with one of them and maybe run a few missions on the side for some shards. All 7 of mine are Tier 3 and 1 is a Tier 4.

The Incarnate system has made me love and tweak these toons so much. If the game feels like a grind to you then I think you need to figure out why it feels that way. I find most people who say it is GRINDY also want everything NOW. If I get a shard while playing... I get one.. if not oh well still got recipes/inf/salvage/merits etc etc etc. Once you actually slot your first incarnate slot there is nothing in the game you cannot access. How I did it was - run the incarnate trial.. run an ITF.. do a few missions and BOOM..slotted.

Then just PLAY

It really helps if you don't try to grind all your 50's to incarnate level in a couple months. All you do is burn out.

Everyone who's racing to get "The Ultimate" ASAP is missing the point the first 50 levels of the game taught them.

Fine, they race a bunch of their toons to full Incarnate with all the sweetest swag. THEN what?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Play your alts the way you used to, and don't worry about "grinding." Just let the stuff drop as it comes, and whenever you get around to getting enough stuff to create boosts, do it then. If you don't want to feel pressured to do something, don't put the pressure on yourself.

One of the good things about the Incarnate system as it is, is that you don't have to run the WSTs, you won't have to run the Ramiel arc to unlock the Alpha once I20 drops, and you don't even have to do any of the TFs that have Incarnate components as rewards. Shards drop in any lvl 50 content now, and soon they'll drop for everything once you unlock the Alpha. If "having it right now" isn't your bag, you don't have to play that way, and there's plenty of other folks that fall in that category.

Besides, once the crowd that grinds gets the highest level gear on them, they'll have nothing else to do but play as they used to anyway, and they'll be available to play at your speed again.

I'm ignoring Incarnate content for the most part, aside from the Alpha unlock (since I rather like seeing my 50s going vs trapdoor/honoree/etc. and it unlocks a very casual-accessible slot.)

I'll get whatever if/when I get it. If the TF I want to run on is the WTF, yay. if not, yay. I've still got "All control sets to 50," "All MMs to 50," etc. to work on.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I only have 4 level 50's (heaps of alts around 20 to 30 but) and I've resigned myself that although I’ve done the unlock arc on all 4 50s, only one of them will advance any further.

Yes, I've stop playing the others for similar reasons as the OP stated. However, on the other hand I've found playing my low level alts is fun again. Mainly as a side effect of having to respec them all (as most of them took fitness) and therefore ending up with more skills at the lower levels to try out.

I'm very reluctant to do a TF with one of my other 50's now, not only do they seem less capable but also I worry they won't be helping the team enough, or I’ll be playing them “wrong” etc. But then again I only ever really grouped with my main character anyway so in a strange way nothing has changed, but it sure feels like it has.

Actually I sort of feel just the opposite. I have more than twenty level 50 characters on the Virtue Server and most were in semi retirement as I continued to level other characters rather than continue to play old ones. Since the incarnate stuff hit I started with 9 characters I picked from my various Super Groups and began running through the TFS for shards and components. I have increased that number to 11so far and 1 of those is a brand new 50 level Blaster I hit Five O with doing the WST a few weeks back. Ten of the 11 are at 50 (+1) now and 7 have their tier 4 in place. When I get the other 4 to that status I am considering adding one one incarnate so I have three from each of the Sgs I belong to and help run.

My lower levels are suffering a bit but I still pull them out now and then just for a change of pace.. I can only do SO many of the same task Force in one day and since I have 7 days to basically do 11 .. why not play a 20+ level now and then just to see something different?

As for the others .. No I probably won't run multiple TFS to anhance them as well. So they are sort of retired and I may even move some to another server to free up slots on Virtue (next time they let us do it for free of course LOL).

Since the Incarnate system is in its infancy and is still a long ways from being fully realized and I don't want to burn out on it so soon in its development, I've purposely delayed devoting much play time or thought to it. 2 of my 6 50's have opened and filled the alpha slot with one of those going to 50+1. I refuse to grind for shards but if any drop during the course of my normal play (TIPS only) with those 2 50's, so be it. This constitutes about 1/2 of my play time.

The other half is dedicated to the quite a few AT's and character concepts I want to try out and develop. The game for me must always stay fresh and interesting so not spending too much time on any one thing is essential to maintaining my motivation.

One reason that people may feel compelled to obtain the most effective <whatever> may be that they know what happens to characters without it: Sometimes they aren't invited to teams, or even get booted off instead.

Yeah, I've heard the rah-rah before, "Well, *I* always invite whoever's around and even take special pity on the smelly losers." Thanks, the condescension feels so good. That's why these days if my character can't solo on x8 AND offer support to a team, then it's not worth my time to improve. Bye-bye fun concept builds!

From a practical game-design standpoint, I don't understand how the devs plan to develop new content with the competence spread of level-50 character builds increasing tremendously. Without going into specifics, we all know that even with SOs, some builds were hugely more effective than others. IOs exaggerated this difference between the most and least effective, and now Incarnate powers will do so again.

Will non-IOed, non-Incarnates be able to find a team at all soon? How many threads will there be to the effect that, "LOL, somebody actually expected to get an invite to the WTF, and he didn't even have a rare in his Justice slot?"

Then there's the question of what happens when somebody spends 9000 hours upgrading one character, and that power set then gets nerfed, or simply isn't needed for the Omega Task Force that all the cool kids are doing...

I guess I'll chime in here too. I have brought up around 25-30 Level 50s since I started the game. Before Incarnates, I would play whatever character was needed to fill a gap in the team's dynamics. I would play a lowbie or one of my many 50s. Now I find myself playing my main 2 50s on my 2 main accounts. I have no time to screw around with starting a new alt because I barely have time to get that Once per Week NotW on my 2 mains. All of my other accounts are lapsing. I'm really getting sick of this grind knowing, in the back of my mind, I have so many more 50s to "finish."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Indomitable Then there's the question of what happens when somebody spends 9000 hours upgrading one character, and that power set then gets nerfed, or simply isn't needed for the Omega Task Force that all the cool kids are doing...

I wouldn't worry until they went over that.

You are not alone.
I wrote a beautiful post, then deleted it because my feelings about this are on record..and Sir Darcy the Teaming God will flame me for feeling the way I feel, so it was not worth posting.

Lisa.