I have run 10 trials today, I never want to run them again. Am I alone?

It's almost as if they thought a lot of players have multiple 50s, and wanted to make it possible to make more than one a high level Incarnate.

The devs aren't idiots. The experience during the open beta showed that most people could pick the trials up in a couple fo runs. If they had wanted to limit progression in terms of calendar time then they would have imposed some limits on our ability to acquire components in order to limit people to progressing at a rate they deemed proper. Now, I will admit that I am somewhat surprised that they didn't do this, my theory is that the devs decided that since only a small minority would get the progression faster than the limits the devs might set anyway reducing the impact of calendar based limits made it more appealing to the majority.

In any case for whatever reason they decided to go for a playing time based approach where you'll need to do a certain amount of runs but spreading your runs out over a period of calendar days has a relatively small benefit (it does have some benefit in terms of using Empyrean Merits to get rares/very rares but not a huge one).

Why? Reward nerfs in the past have always been focused on issues of rewards per unit play time. Yes, the time on the trials is coming down somewhat but the nature of the trials means that the time variation is pretty low compared to older content. It's also worth pointing out that since everything in BOP farming Incarnate Trials doesn't really impact the value of other people's rewards in the way that other forms of farming do. As such I really doubt that we'll see any direct nerfs.

However *Puts on Conspiracy Theory Hat* we might see an indirect nerf to the value of Astral and Empyrean Merits. According to the devs we will eventually be able to use them for things other eventually. Now there are two reasons for that not to be included at launch. The first is that the items in question are not yet in game (a plausible theory) but the alternative is that thy want to see the rates at which people earn Astral and Empryean Merits before setting a value to them *Removes on Conspiracy Theory Hat*.

I always expect to see a large nerf somewhere at some point. But could you be more specific? I seriously doubt the devs will reduce thread drop rates and they can't cut the drop table rewards since they are atomic (they can't award half an uncommon drop really). They could DR repetitive runs of the trials, but I doubt that's going to happen any time soon because as a practical matter the devs have to assume that run rates will drop over time anyway and make that matter moot. The reward rates have to be consistent with what the long-term running rate is likely to be, and a few months from now they will still want new level 50s to be able to earn these slots.

So, I could see them tweaking the actual difficulty of the trials upward a bit if we continue to steam roll them. I don't consider that a nerf: that's just normal balancing.

Right now Astrals are basically free threads. I can imagine the devs adding essentially astral sinks which in effect put pressure on threads because astrals will be diverted to the New Stuff. I don't really consider that a nerf to their value either: if anything I consider that a buff to their value, which causes them to experience shortages rather then their current oversupply.

At this point I think that is a good idea any way. The other option is to find a way to add a slider so we can increase the difficulty.

Also, I never intended to change anyone's opinion. I just want people to see the various ways of looking at all of it.

They have said it is going to this, I just fear what they will tie it to. I think most of us costume lovers see it coming no matter what though. Costumes are the one thing they know (almost) everyone will save and drop A and E merits on.

I take it you haven't been on an ITF lately, have you? You can add all the difficulty sliders you want, but unless you incentivize higher difficulties people are just going to steamroll everything.

In that case I hope the costumes are over-the-top and ostentatious and "epic" because then I won't want them. Whatever they are, they are still not a substitute for adding new, free costume pieces available at character creation on a regular basis.

Only for people that are willing to grind, grind away. I've gotten bored after six run on Lambda and no BAFs thanks to being in Beta. I have exactly the first Slot open on one character (and nothing created to slot into it.)

This is the same game where the Devs didn't think anyone would six-slot damage...

I expect that it (the nerfs) will be crushing in that you can only get the major reward once a week and you will get only threads otherwise. And probably not a great amount of them.

You know, I'm almost willing to bet real money that they do. Except I'm poor.

Except the value of Astral and Empryean merits right *now* makes it trivial to grind out your entire tree if you can stomach running the trials over and over.

There's no real gating.

They could quite easily drop the table reward to once every 72 hours and make it you can only earn Astral merit rewards once ever 18 hours.

It will be far too late, thanks to the incarnate powers. They can't actually bump the difficulty up too much otherwise it *is* gated on having the Incarnate powers to actually do the trials.

Really, they made it too easy to grind *and* unfriendly to the non-grinding people.

That's like the worst of both worlds. They didn't learn anything *good* from the Weekly Strike Targets.

My experience echos your rate of iXP

I said I had my conspiracy theory hat on . In any case my point was more "Schrodinger's Rewards". We have no clue what value the devs will assign to Astral/Empyrean Merits when they provide other things to spend them on, as such they could conceivably be waiting to see how many people are accruing before they set prices.

Yes, that's pretty much what I said. The difference is that you seem to have an extremely negative view of the devs intent while I am taking the positive view.

In the past the devs have not shied away from implementing time gates on rewards where they deemed it necessary: the WST has a weekly cooldown, Merits Rewards have diminishing returns, Tips, Alignment Merits, Grai'Matter and even the new Empyrean Merits all have 18 hour cooldown. On the other side if the devs ever had any doubt that a certain portion of their playerbase will happily farm things until their eye bleed if the rewards are worth it the introduction of the AE should have cured them of that. As such the logical conclusion is the devs did not implement any additional gates on the trial earning rate because they do not believe it to be necessary. Now maybe I'm wrong and the devs did not intend this but honestly if they didn't then they will have demonstrated a fantastic ability to not learn anything on a par with sticking their fingers in their ears and say "la, la, la, la, I can't hear you".

Now, the other side of it (and this is where my Conspiracy Theory Hat comes in) is that in their current incarnation the Trials essentially produce nothing except "Experience". You get a small amount of inf and stuff but due to team sizes this is lower than running normal content, all of the major rewards from the trials (threads, components and merits) are bound to a single character and have only one use: incarnate progression. Eventually the new merits will be used to acquire other things but the rate at which they will do so has not been set.

Put this all together and what it says to me is that the devs do not care how fast people progress through the incarnate trials in terms of calendar days, they simply care about playtime. This isn't unreasonable, after all progression from level 1 to level 50 is not gated in terms of days simply in terms of how much time you spend playing. However there is a need to keep people interested after they have acquired the new slots and that is where the new merits come in. However rather than attempting to set fixed values for the new merits and adjust the rate they are awarded at to balance rewards the devs are planning to spend some time monitoring the practical rate at which players acquire them and use that data to set the values.

Now this is obviously all supposition but I think it's just as valid as your supposition of DOOOOOMMMM!!!!.

You do realize that the whole point of introducing new content is to prevent people from getting bored?

Wait, "A-Merits?" What are we talking about here? I thought A-Merits stood for Alignment Merits. Shouldn't we come up with non-conflicting terminology for the newer stuff?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

We have:

Reward Merits

Vanguard Merits

Hero Merits

Villain Merits

Astral Merits

Empherium (SP?) merits

So, many merits to choose from.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, we already have the WTF. We might as well have Assmerits. I might actually go ahead and use that. Thanks, Doc!

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Astral(s). Simple and to the point.

Glad I could be of service *salutes*