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Except that Incarnate Advancement post the Alpha slot bears no resemblance to earlier accolades. One thing that these Trials are going to introduce to the player base, in I fear a quick slap to the head way, is the concept that you can, and probably will, fail. It is one thing to count how much XP or salvage you would get for successful runs and figure out your advancement, but, they are probably not going to be all successful runs. The "wiggle-room" of success that made this game inclusive is narrowed for these Trials.|
Originally Posted by Frosty_Surprise
My point? I'm a mostly-solo, time limited player, but I find nothing to object to the way the endgame is shaping up. If I wanted certain accolades (TF Commander, Marshal), I would need a team to get those. Why should Incarnate be any different?
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I don't think anyone has seen how slow the progress on these would go if every run you went on were unsuccessful. You might think that signing up in a queue and making getting a team "easier" would be a good thing. It also means that the level of failure will be potentially higher as well on these missions. As far as we know, the turnstile system is first in first out. There is no team creation logic, so, you could get 12 scrappers or 12 tankers for your team.
Sir Zane (Lvl 50, Inv/SS/Nrg Tank);Atomic Jake (Lvl 50, Kin/Rad/Elec Defender)
Nikolai (Lvl 50, DM/EA/GW Brute);Raging Stallion (Lvl 50 MA/SR/Weap Scrapper)
Archmage Tristam (Lvl 50 Ill/Son/Psi Controller)
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-g=C800:5
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I would say that the fact you don't have to succeed in the Incarnate trials to make significant progress in the end game system, you just have to participate, makes it more inclusive. You don't have to win, you just have to play. And the more you play, the more you advance, the more Incarnate power you acquire, the easier it will be for you to eventually succeed.|
Originally Posted by Sir_Zane
Except that Incarnate Advancement post the Alpha slot bears no resemblance to earlier accolades. One thing that these Trials are going to introduce to the player base, in I fear a quick slap to the head way, is the concept that you can, and probably will, fail. It is one thing to count how much XP or salvage you would get for successful runs and figure out your advancement, but, they are probably not going to be all successful runs. The "wiggle-room" of success that made this game inclusive is narrowed for these Trials.
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For some people, the lack of a guarantee of success will itself be unpalatable. But that doesn't mean the system is less inclusive. It may simply be less appealing to people who must always succeed.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
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I'm looking forward to getting booted from iTrial pugs when I inform them I will have to sit still for part of it because I can't play under specific conditions. XD|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
You don't have to win, you just have to play.
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(More accurately, I'm curious to find out how many teams actually WILL boot me for that. It'll be an interesting research experiment. I don't often get booted from TFs for that, but very seldomly nowadays are TFs that tight on requirements. Most of the pug ITF teams I've been in lately can handle rommie with half the team AFK.)
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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The first 5 times I attempted the STF, my team failed to beat Lord Recluse. I have since then finished the TF to get those badges. While I can say that I was discouraged after the 5 failed attempts, I certainly wanted the badges enough to keep trying at to get the badges.|
Originally Posted by Sir_Zane
One thing that these Trials are going to introduce to the player base, in I fear a quick slap to the head way, is the concept that you can, and probably will, fail. It is one thing to count how much XP or salvage you would get for successful runs and figure out your advancement, but, they are probably not going to be all successful runs. The "wiggle-room" of success that made this game inclusive is narrowed for these Trials.
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I see this as a comparison to what Incarnate will be. Yes, there will be unsuccessful runs, but I will still keep on trying. Yes, it will be discouraging, especially when I see broadcasts and/or posts from other players who have unlocked/slotted. However, I feel that, just because something is challenging and/or time-consuming, doesn't mean that I decide it's not worth it. Like other things in life, if it came easy, it would probably not be worth it.
I find your lack of signature disturbing.
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It's subtle, but there is a bit of difference in "failing" that way and in the way of trials. You "failed" due to just not being able to beat down a bad guy ever with the resources at hand. You could try for as long as you wanted, but you presumably ultimately gave up because it just didn't look likely. With trials you can fail explicitly. You can run out of time, fail to meet some objective (like protecting a generator or preventing fleeing foes from escaping), etc.|
Originally Posted by Frosty_Surprise
I see this as a comparison to what Incarnate will be. Yes, there will be unsuccessful runs, but I will still keep on trying. Yes, it will be discouraging, especially when I see broadcasts and/or posts from other players who have unlocked/slotted. However, I feel that, just because something is challenging and/or time-consuming, doesn't mean that I decide it's not worth it. Like other things in life, if it came easy, it would probably not be worth it.
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Trials have always been distinct in this game from other content for having this explicit failure mode. For most of them, this has been a formality, as their time limits are usually immense compared to completion times since long before IOs, and the only one I can think of with a destructible objective has been trivially defensible for a very long time. The Sewer Trial has long stood out as something that strong teams are still reasonably likely to fail. I am a bit worried that this has something to do with the fact that it is not run very often. However, there are much better rewards for running the Incarnate trials, so I am hopeful that will overcome people's possible aversion to content they can fail.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
The way I read your post was that because of the incarnate stuff you are not getting to spend as much time with your alts/lowbies that you would like to.... which is why I said:
That is your choice.
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Achieving this already put a big crimp time allocated to leveling new alts. I19 and I20 aren't changing that, they're just extending it. I do have an increasing desire to level some new alts, so I will get to it sometime soon. But I will now get to it less soon that I would have without the Incarnate system, because I have new progress to focus on for my existing stable of 50s. |
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
Was there some hint in my post that made it seem that I felt otherwise?
I'm trying to understand why you felt the need to give this response. |
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I guess you have a very large amount of non-personal non-anecdotal evidence that a large group of the population are being excluded from a majority of the content because or by IO-using players?|
Originally Posted by Indomitable
"Let them eat cake" was beautifully said too, if not actually by a certain Austrian.
What made this game special was that, with careful character design, the game mechanics flattened out differences between characters played by casual and obsessive players. For the most part, everyone could team together and all be useful. Whether the devs intended this outcome or not, many fans of the game have stayed with it precisely because it exemplified the inclusive atmosphere of the supers genre. IOs were widely viewed as a marketing move to draw in players from the other MMOs who felt lost without a gear grind. I submit that introducing them was a mistake. A gear-centric "End Game" that further separates the haves and have-nots may not kill the game, but it will subvert what was special and unique about it. A pity, if not exactly Doom. Good luck with the caste system that arises... |
Also +1 to lumping everyone that uses IO as gear-grind obsessed people that are killing the game and alienating the have-nots, (have not what? fun?)
A Caste system? Oh you mean character progession, just like at the start of the game where people started with few powers and only TOs, and progressed onto DOs, then SOs and then finally trial orgins, and now further expanded. Well I guess you have a point, people that only use TOs would be at the bottom of your system.
Edit: Brb, making a toon that only uses TOs and starts teaming and wonders when I will be excluded from all that content and how long it will take for people to notice.
"An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of BS." -General George Patton
-Lord Azazel
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No, I am fine because I only have one main character that is all level-shifted and epic through casual play.|
Originally Posted by Fixxer
So your issue is you don't feel cool? Ahh I see.
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And I don't think it takes too long or mind if a team can't beat something or whatever whining you might complain about and actually find the bonus level I get is too much.
(I know, heresy because it contradicts the gimme-gimme-gimme! mentality.)
But graystar_blaster said in the original post he thinks the great boost makes chars that don't have it feel puny and makes it less fun to play his alt 50s that don't have it, while having a hard time bringing them all to that new level. And I can see his point and agree.
And yes, I still think removing the level-51-plus-extra-rewards for the tier 3 Alpha would make the game better.
Mmm...
I must confess, I am facing the same experience such as you. Of my 40 level 50s, I only progressing 12 of them to tier-4 (11 are already at tier-4, and last is full tier 3), with the rest sent to a nursing home, to essentially never be played again.
When I20 comes out and their random end of trial awards hit (since range is my enemy thus far), I am not sure to how many alts, I am going to down select to (I hope not to zero). Only after I experienced for real I20, I will be able to tell if its a horrid grind or not too bad. My only prayer is that I20 will not turn CoX into a WoW grind environment.
Stormy
You better run for cover! Stormy is agreeing with Devs! Its the end of the world, I tell you...
These past few days I been doing some very deep soul searching, with regards to this game. All my close friends have left CoX to go play Rift, my husband has left DAOC and his harem to go play Rift (I think his gals followed him there anyway). My son bought me the game and installed it for me, and has been showing me the game, which looks very good incidentally.
But going back to topic, I have been contemplating leaving CoX to go play Rift, even played it last night and enjoyed it very much, but then its new so not a fair evaluation. What had horrified me, was the threat of i20 and the miserable grind that would ensue, especially with someone so unlucky as I am with regards to drops. Last night I did an entire LGTF with no shard drops at all.
So the question was to stay or not subscribed to the game.
So I reflected on the i20, and got information to base my decision. Here are some my conclusions:
Tier-1: 60 Threads
Tier-2: 100 Threads + 100 Mil inf
Tier-3: 380 Threads + 100 Mil inf
Tier-4:2,800 Threads + 1,600 Mil inf
After recovering from the utterless shock I experienced...
I went 2,800 Threads? What is this? WoW resurrected?
And that was for only 1 tier-4, out 4 unlockable incarnate powers!
Now I was really, really tempted to cancel my account, right there and then. But I have so many friends in Champions, and I really did not want to leave their fellowship. I want to stay, but the game struck me as a tedium that make WoW look like a walk in the park.
So I continued studying the information. Guess what I found!
Many Incarnate powers really do not provide much more performance beyond tier-2, as a whole the upper tiers only provides longer radiuses, not more bang for them. There are a few who has Procs that increase in magnitude, but you are talking of extemely few conditions.
So I dug into the data, even deeper, trying to find out at what tier for each incarnate slot I would get essentially the same bang as a tier 4 minus the added range or radius. My conclusions are as follows:
Judgement: Tier-1, anything higher is just colorfullness
Lore: Who cares for that, more colorfullness, The only reason I unlock this is for the Destiny
Interface: Tier-2, anything higher is just warm and fuzzy
Destiny: Tier-2, more is simply overkill
Now any alt you have with this level of tiering in incarnate can go one-on-one with a an alt with all 4 tiered upto level 4, and you will find yourself hardly handicapped at all.
What is the butcher's bill for this base ability, not counting unlocking cost:
260 Threads and 200 Million Influence.
Some may be anxious over 200 M influence, but in 4 days of doing tips and getting your 2 A-Merits you can trade them for a high selling recipe, craft it, and bingo you got your 200M.
260 Threads, now that seems rather demoralizing, even my stomack knots up, when looking at this number.
But is it really bad?
I feel that one, even with my luck, can expect to get 20 Threads per Trial. If you divide the 260 threads by 20, you need to do 13 trials, which only last like what, an hour? And thats assuming you only get Stormy drops: Trash. A regular person, getting truly random drops, could easily achieve this standard in much less than 13 trials.
If a trial takes 30 min, then in under 7 hours of play, you are there!.
I don't know if you can do trials back to back, without penalty, such as it is done with merits and TFs. But even so. After 7 days of playing 2 trials a day, and doing 5 tips a day, you are there!
Frankly 2 half hour trials, and 5 tips, is not too bad, hardly can be considered a grind at all.
Do I have concerns?
Yes I do, but I will find out tonight as i20 is released, if my fears have merit.
My real concern is the ability to get into teams to do the trials, it will be much harder than the PUG of 8 players. I am very afraid after a week or 2, a great slow down will occur, such as it happened with Cathedral of Pain. And that will cripple the casual player's ability to reasonably incarnate. The shard and influence cost to brute force your way into the incarnate powers is simply crazy expensive and totally inpractical.
Maybe, just maybe, the devs will make PUG sized TFs where you can get threads, don't have to be 20+ at a time, but even 5 awarded at the TF completion would be cool.
Maybe one could trade 1 A-Merit for 1 Thread, and 125 regular mertis for a Thread would be very nice. But only kicking ideas around....
Stormy
Yeah, I've known for a while that going past tier 3 on the Alpha and past tier 2 or so on the rest is roughly the same as getting purple sets for a character that does't really need them.
Sure, maybe they're cool to have, and you can say "Look what I got!". But, do you really NEED them? No, they don't really add that much more on top of the lower tiers.
I only plan on going tier 4 Alpha with my main (because 2/3rds of 45% recharge being unaffected by ED is just gravy for a Regen), and I have no idea how far I will go with the next 4 slots, but it probably won't be very far.
I still think it's funny as hell how so many people are approaching this from the viewpoint that you are gimped if you don't have the tier 4 on every slot filled on every level 50 you have.
You don't need that stuff any more than you need purples and PvP IOs filling every build.
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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. |
Mmm...
This is my post i20 report...
I found getting threads not to be too bad, between the normal drops and the Astral merits you can convert for 4 threads per Astral, you can reliably get the 20 threads per trial run. The Empyrian threads are awesome for trades, but hanging on to them, just in case there is anohter undocumented use for them.
I also noticed I could get material drops during the trial itself, usually coomon thread types, byt still worth 20 threads toweards building your incarnate level. While I don't get a material component evry run, I have gotten them in just about one in 6 trials.
At the end of BAF I got a material componet ranging from common to super rare. My very first BAF I got the purple of the materials, followed by 3 more commons (only been in 4 successful trials, so far the failure rate on these is very high).
All in all, the getting the threads and workingyourself up is not too bad, but my fear of grouping has materialized.
So far trying to get a group for a BAF or Lambda has been painfully long, too long. It also is apparent that a certain mix of ATs is needed, besides outstanding leadership, to succeed in these trials.
I will confess, the lengthy waits for groups at Pocket D, are too long, and I am getting very bored at the game as a consequence.
It also occurs to me, the trials requiring so many players and specific mixes, totally zapped the "casual" out of the game, a real loss from my opinion.
Stormy
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Are you sure that's the preferred meeting spot on your server? On Infinity, the location for trials seems to be the Rikti War Zone, near Lady Grey.
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Originally Posted by Stormfront_NA
I will confess, the lengthy waits for groups at Pocket D, are too long, and I am getting very bored at the game as a consequence.
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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Originally Posted by Ironblade
Are you sure that's the preferred meeting spot on your server? On Infinity, the location for trials seems to be the Rikti War Zone, near Lady Grey.
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For Champions, Pocket D is the prime location, followed by RWZ by LG. But the main server chats is the best way to find out were the actual gathering places are at, thus BMT of Champions, and Champions United server chats are a good way to know which of the 2 gathering places to go hunt at and to also ask for a reservation. Yet despite of these chat services, and much to my astonishment, the wait to get the trial off is near an hour; I would have thought being the first week and days after i20, the teaming would be lightning fast, yet its not.
Stormy
I am always working on stuff. I am averaging 1-2 shards per WTF. I hear many others average 5-8 and 8-12. So at the rate I am going I can get to tier 4 after 40 TFs from now. So I will be grinding for a while.
Protector 50s:
Matryx - blaster
Mad Cabbie - Scr
Lord Havok - MM
Yamaneko - Scr
Cold187 - MM
Gladiatyr - Tank
Tymberwolf - Brute
Champ 50s:
Shamyra - troller
RockSlyde - Tank
Minnesota Slim - troller
Fire Storme - troller
Rough Ryder - troller
Chamyra - PB
Victory
Fyre Hawke - Tank
I don't have as much time to play as I would like. And since I like to explore things thoroughly, I often feel as if I can't keep up with new content--I'll be working on stuff that's two issues old while everyone else if forging ahead.
The Incarnate system has made this much worse. I'm still working on trying to afford purples, which is what? 5 issues ago? Ten issues ago? while everyone else is forging ahead getting their (+1)'s. I am now focusing almost exclusively on three toons so I can have them play with (+1)s and not gimp the team. Just as I got the first of them to (+1), I20 comes out and within a week I see people with all these new powers that I figure will take me weeks to acquire.
And the path to these advanced powers aren't relatively straightforward, like from 1 to 50, but much more byzantine, like something you'd see in EVE Online. Between figuring it out and the constant grinding to keep up with the Joneses, I'm finding that this is starting to be too much like work. 
I think it says something that after 4 years of gameplay I finally registered for the boards just to voice my frustration on this topic.
My previous list of 50s was 11 chars long. Alpha slot knocked that down to 8. Rare knocked it down to 6. Very rare knocked that down to 4. The new trials knocked it down to 2 (and I may even stop that second one after Judgement and Interface).
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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What makes you think purples are necessary? For a lot of characters, purples are actually a BAD idea because they don't actually give you bonuses to the things you need. |
Originally Posted by Gothica
I'm still working on trying to afford purples.
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| I am now focusing almost exclusively on three toons so I can have them play with (+1)s and not gimp the team. |
Don't be in such a hurry, the end game stuff isn't going anywhere. It'll still be there when you get around to it.
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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. |
QR to OP
I thought the same thing, but it happened to me once already when IOs were introduced.
I'm sitting at ~20 50s give or take, and a lot of them were before or shortly after IOs were introduced. When they came out I shelved about half of them and focused on my main Controller and a Corruptor to take to purples and blow billions on. Others were done on a budget and to challenge my building prowess. Like a Perma AM/Hasten on a Rad/Sonic defender that didn't use purples, or getting my tank to the HP cap without outside buffs. There were around 7 or 8 characters that I ended up focusing on for IOs.
Now that this new system is in, everything but my main Controller is on the back burner. Once he is done i'll focus on my Corruptor. After that, I MAY focus on my Hovercrab, but I probably won't bother with any others unless I get really bored with my two main characters. Since they're my favorite two to play I doubt that'll happen anytime soon.
I'm trying to understand why you felt the need to give this response.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA