The I20 Incarnates Grind: Am I Missing the Point of Resurrecting My 50?

Are you saying there *aren't* a lot of posts complaining about the fact that there are only 2 trials currently? Feedback is one thing, but complaining about something that is known to be a temporary situation isn't exactly useful.

"The house is on fire!"
"Yes, we know, that's why we firemen are here, with these pump trucks and hoses."
"No! You don't understand!! THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!!!"
"..."

"The house is on fire!"

"Yes, we know, that's why the firemen are on their way...might take a year though. Just hang in there."

"No! You don't understand!! THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!!!"

"..."



Heh, i normally dislike analogies but that just popped in my head.

Feedback is often referred to as complaints by people of the opposing viewpoint at an attempt to belittle their argument.

And we do not know when the 2 new trials will be available for Live servers. It could be 2 months or 8. People have the right to voice their opinions on the new content.

Thankfully, you were wrong. What purpose would there be in doing anything else if that were true..........

Coming Soon: City of GM Soloers

There is a difference I think, between incarnate powers and inventions: the game wasn't (and isn't) going to be balanced around inventions, but I *strongly* suspect (some) gameplay will be balanced around incarnate powers (in fact, it already is)

Yes, but what's the point of offering "feedback" that provides the Devs no new information to act upon?

Devs: "Here's I20. Enjoy. BTW, we are planning more Incarnate content in the future because we know you want more."
Players: "But there's only two new Incarnate trials in I20 right NAO! Why don't you give us more content right NAO?"
Devs: *sigh*

I'm quite sure if the Devs could they would give us 20 new trials to play with exactly 13.5 milliseconds from now. But unfortunately software development doesn't work like that. Basically trying to claim your "helpful feedback" on this is really anything more than futile complaining is, well, pretty futile.

Feedback doesn't necessarily become a futile complaint just because there's no change to be expected. Some feedback can be carried over to whatever they may have planned in the future not just in the present.

Even if it's the same message but there's numerous players saying it can be useful. If only one shows an issue...it might not be considered a priority. If there's a significant number expressing the same issue, then maybe that merits more investigation.

It's not up to players to decide what is helpful and what isn't. Just speak your mind and let the community reps filter them out to the devs. They're paid to do that.

I'm not saying feedback is bad as long as it serves a purpose. But if the "feedback" you're providing is just along the lines of "We want more stuff to do NAO!" then how much is that going to help?

Provide some details as to what you might want. The Devs might respond to that.
Simply whine that there's not enough to do right now? What's the point?

I'm very aware of what the term implies... It's a grind. I would have rather been rewarded with incarnate shards by completing more incarnate-based story-arcs as apposed to a cluster of meaningless chaos and boring button clicking and endless face-planting... raids that must be done over and over and over. Defeating thousands of aliens over and over to become a god takes away from the character's origin, IMO. That's just my two cents to add on this thread.

By "grind," what he's implying is that, in order to get the slot(s) to which you refer, he has to play one of those two trials repeatedly. And if he wants to gain the materials needed to power those new slots, he has to play those same trials even more. (Yes. I am aware that there are other methods of gaining Threads, but the trials are quite obviously the best way to do it.) Before, if he wanted to unlock the Alpha slot, he had one arc to complete. True enough, there was no other option, but he only had to run that arc once. Then, in order to get the materials to power is Alpha slot, he could run any content involving 50+ enemies (except AE missions IIRC). That's TFs/SFs, tip missions, story arcs, radio missions, Ship/Hami raids, and even street sweeping.

I'll keep saying it: The problem everyone seems to be having is that none of the aforementioned in-game activities directly give you access to the new slots, nor the materials for their powers.

If the post literally only has the words "i20 bleh, want more NAO" then yes that might not be as useful as it could be but still is...if you think of posts as surveys (which is what the forums essentially are) then that's one check on the unsatisfactory column. If there's a whole bunch of checks on that column then it would seem the feature list of i20 is too focused on a small segment of the playerbase and maybe next issue they need to add something else besides 2 trials.

Though most of the feedback i see actually has more detail than that though.

Like i said, of course more detail is preferable but short of troll posts, there can be some use for all opinions. It's not up to us to decide which ones the devs should listen to.

Just keep in mind that the idea of "forum posting as customer survey tool" can only go so far. It's been commonly accepted for years that maybe only about 5-10% of the playerbase even reads these forums much less posts to them. The voices of we, the "vocal minority", can only be counted as far or as little as the Devs want.

Sorry if it wasn't clear, but when i said "think of them as a survey" i was trying to demonstrate that even the least detailed feedback can still be useful if only as a tally.

Yes, not everyone posts on the forums. It's likely more people read the forums than actually post in them but still is not everyone. But it is still a source of feedback from the playbase. The devs have datamining tools to show what players are doing but not why they're doing it. You can't datamine player intent, you just have to ask and short of the exit survey when they cancel an account (which to me is a bit late) the forums is the only other place to get that.

Except that in my version, the firemen are already working on putting out the fire....much like the devs are already working on new content.

FWIW:

I agree that it's going to get pretty grindy unless future trials or TFs offer rewards for these 4 slots, but I think we haven't had them in the general populace long enough to get a baseline of how long it takes to get what.

For example, I unlocked Judgement and am 1 common shy of crafting the T1 Void after 1 failed and 1 successful BAF run. About twice the rate of your estimate. Cashing in the merits and the bonuses for getting achievement badges the 1st time really speeds up the initial process.

However, once you have all those badges, that boost is gone. This means you get that initial boost on each toon (currently) twice. It's probably safe to guess that future trials will offer similar badge boosts as well - all of them received per character probably within the first few runs of each trial. So there is that, but without adding additional ways to earn these rewards, then yeah - probably super grindy for anyone with lots of 50s to run through it. Basically it's my hope that we get more than just the 2 trials to do these slots.

Have we confirmed that the next 4 slots have their own currency, and that Omega does as well? I mean, is there a chance that we'll be using the same Donuts and Cookies for all the 8 parallel slots? That would be the best situation. Keep them paired in terms of unlocking XP, but all the trials give salvage usable for all 8 of those slots, with Alpha and Omega being the outliers.

All that being said; yes, unlocking a VR for each slot (much less multiples of them) using only the existing 2 trials would be ... time consuming. That said, I was pretty pleased with the reward rate in my admittedly brief experience. Way faster than getting the shards for my t4 - still short of those. Just needs more ways to get said rewards dropping!

So was my version...it just mentions it'll take them awhile till it happens. 2-3 issues a year average is their speed and they still have half the incarnate slots probably more tiers to some of those slots in queue.

You will either complete or fail BAF in about that time. Assuming you aren't cybering for the first untimed part that is.

Are you counting the time you may have to spend trying to get one started? Because I'm guessing you're not. And time spent waiting in the queue is still time spent.

No because that's variable. I've zoned into Pocket D and gotten an invite and been on the trial 3 minutes after logging in. But please don't let me keep you all from being upset while everyone else has fun.

I should have been more specific. I'm not talking so much about strictly content, but development resources. When you look at development resources as a whole, much more than 50% is dedicated to things related to the incarnate system (new incarnate powers, incarnate trials, the queuing and league systems to make incarnate trials easier to run) than pre-50 content.

I am jealous. I ran 4-5 Lambda and 4-5 BAF, all of them failed. The first BAF was headed to a win, but we all got booted by that bug. The last Lamba had Marauder down to about half health, but we ran out of time/grenades.

I've slotted Judgement with the 1st tier Pyronic, unlocked Interface, but haven't been able to slot it. I've got only 2% of Lore unlocked and about 21% of Destiny. And the Judgement was unlocked mostly by spending threads on ixp.

I'm happy to see that once I start actually winning at the trials that the reward tables are so good.

No. No, it isn't. Its exactly the right amount of time for a casual player to settle in, run a mish, then decide if they want to stick around for another run or do something else. I like the 30 minute trial - I like it a lot, actually - and just so we're clear, I (the OP) did not mean to suggest that 30 minutes is a largely unreasonable amount of time to spend running a trial/mission of any kind (regardless of how many times one chooses to run it).


What I *would* like to know is - just how many times (theoretically speaking) does a player have to run the Incarnate Trials to achieve Tier 4 on all the available slots (which assumes what it takes to get the cash, the salvage and whatever else is need to actually craft those powers all the way to Tier 4)?

100 times per slot on one toon? 500 times? 1000 times? More?

I know there's a theoretical "magic number" projection of just how many times the Devs expect folks to recycle this content to achieve Incarnate nirvana. I'd like to know what that magic number really is (and I'm sure there's a low/high range involved but let's try to talk the *average* number of runs expected to achieve tier 4 in all the available Incarnate slots right now). I think that magic number/range would frighten/intrigue folks (assuming there is an expectation of how many runs it would take versus how long the Devs *think* it will take players to reach the max).

Does anyone really know?

I had a sneaky suspicion your estimate did not include the forming of the team. And pleae stop throwing around veiled insults, it's very immature.

Hey guy. The completion time for Lambda and BAF is also variable.

So, you are willing to count the variable nature of the actual task but not the setup time? K.

What about the other 15-23 people that were already in the zone. Did you survey each one to find out how long they were waiting for the league to fill?


You assume that because people decide to post feedback that they are not having fun. Here's a revelation for you...just because players post feedback does not mean they are not enjoying the content or are even upset. It's you that keeps resorting to grade school insults (see your first post above).

Case in point. I like the trials. They are very fun and even with my limited play time, I can still log in and enjoy one or two a week. My only issue with the...well...Issue comes down to the lack of options for the Incarnate System. I feel the devs should take a look at making existing content applicable for earning threads and/or components. And/Or revising the current converstion method for shards -> threads.