Set me straight, please.

Let me make sure I understand this. If I have anything wrong, please, set me straight.

I just tried the new incarnate TFs. They're as hard as the old incarnate TFs, but you have 3-4 times as many people. Before, a single idiot on a team can ruin it for everybody. Now you have three times as many idiots playing.

I need at least three teams without any idiots in them to play one of the new trials.

I need approximately 6 of these trials in order to just unlock just one of the four new incarnate slots. One I have them unlocked, I need to keep performing these trials in order to amass...some amount of 3 or 4 bewildering new currencies to buy boosts for those slots.

And during all this time, I get no salvage or recipe drops.

Do I have all that straight? And if I do, can someone tell me how this isn't the worst designed high-level advancement system ever conceived?

You've got it right, save for one thing:

The Incarnate Shards, which are the only valuable currency that can be obtained in any way not relating to these new Trails, convert on a 1:1 basis to Incarnate Threads. However, equivalent Thread costs for items are 5 times that of Shards.

So it's basically like dividing your Shards by 5.

Not totally correct; you get Incarnate Threads from defeating enemies and only need them (well the components too but technically not needed since you can craft the comps. from Incarnate Threads)...so only 1 new form of 'currency' you have to worry about getting.

Astral/Empyrean Merits are good/nice to get but (as far as I can remember) aren't needed to craft an actual ability/power in the new slots.

Edit: Oh and what GreenFlame said; I wanted to say something snarky but...GreenFlame said it better

I don't know about you, but i managed to run 3 Lambdas (2 of them successful, the other couldn't deal with all the adds) in 8 people, and with globals down, and managed to unlock and slot my t1 interface in the process.

so.. its really not that hard, once you get the gist of it.

I'd recommend when running the trials to use threads to make any components you need for the common and any spare being used as Incarnate XP, it unlocks a hell of a lot quicker that way.

Remember when the ITF was introduced?

Some players screamed it was too hard.

Many complained about how it took two to three hours and then they couldn't complete it in the end because there was no way to overcome the heals of the healing Nictus?

Yeah... whatever happened to that?

Also Lambda caps at 2 teams.
You still make progress towards unlocking slots or collecting threads even on a failed run, so while successful runs are optimal, you still will likely gain from a failure.

There's only one new currency, threads, which is converted into components, to craft boosts, same as shards and the Alpha. And threads can also be used to craft Alpha slot components. And as stated above, you still get all the other normal drops one would expect when fighting. Got a purple on a failed lambda today, along with sundry other salvage, recipies, enhancements, inspirations and inf.

I like the set up like others have said it awards you after each section so even if you fail it you still make some progress.

Well currently on Union the group I'm running with (hello Damz and friends!) we're 2 failures on the BAF, one bugged dumped out of the BAF while we were within seconds of beating it and 5 completions.

Even if you fail you still win. Here is my suggestion: for now don't worry about wininng, just getting as far into the stages as possible.

On a BAF that got to the final stage and failed, I was able to get 16 threads (from the 3 Amper merits or whatever the hell the new currency idiocy is called) and 36% towards Judgement.

Don't worry about winning for now, it's not necessary.

Lambda only requires 8 to launch and scales based on the number of participants. Remember that the top numbers are only the max number of players. Each trial requires less than the max number to launch.

I've already stated that I intent to leave the game because of the addition of this grind. I feel like feedback against the grind was ignored. That's the position I'm posting from.