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

My problem is three fold:

(1) No one seems to run Lamda, or at least it's rare enough to make BAF the only raid I've been able to get on after 11 tries now. So for me, the content that I am gated to for any progress results in ONE mission that I have to repeat. Doesn't matter if I repeat it once a day, or once a week, I am still looking at another 10+ runs to get what I need. To put it in perspective, I've run ITF's probably 10-15 times total since it's been out. I like the ITF, just like I liked BAF the first time I did it. However, those 10-15 runs were over a period of two years and there was plenty of other things to do that gave equivalent rewards in that time period.

So I am forced to run ONE mission over and over if I want to progress in any sort of meaningful fashion. Regardless of the time frame, that's horrible game design.

(2) Unless you make multiple runs, you end up waiting 5-20 minutes to get a raid going. Where before I could start a small team, and go whether I was alone, had a partner, or a couple and pick people up on the way. No longer. I've spent more time standing around waiting for people to be able to get into a zone than I ever have in the game.

(3) I am feeling less heroic the more powerful I am getting. The same guys I was arresting solo, or with a team of up to 8, I now need 3x that many to do the same job. I've become a minion!

Roll back I20 please...

Running anything 10 times a day will make you tire of it really quickly.

As for iXP per run....

IF you convert all threads and merits, two successful runs will unlock BOTH judgement and interface. That's how mine went on my blaster.

I have been running anywhere from 2-5 per day, basically any time I can get on a team. I enjoy the planning stages, meeting new people, smashing stuff, and getting my shiny stuff.

It would be nice if there were other trials to choose from to mix it up more, but I really enjoy running around with 15-23 other players blowing stuff up.

I decided to only run these twice a day before I do my best Roberto Duran impersonation and say "No mas". Unfortunately since these are the only ways to get iXP (that I know of), I feel in a way "forced" to constantly repeat these trials while they are still in high demand. I haven't made enough progress to unlock either of the next two Incarnate powers yet on the one toon I have been concentrating on even though he's ran 8 or so BAFs (Still only 78%).

IMO since they introduced iXP into the mix, toons should earn iXP anytime they have a top tier Alpha Incarnate power slotted.

My admiration for the Incarnate system as a whole has decreased significantly over the last week with the repeating content, the new merits, new salvage, iXP etc. If the system stays the as it is now I'm reserved to only unlock the alpha slot on some toons. I probably won't even bother on the rest unless I casually unlock them.

I honestly dont mind running the trials. Its the reward table that makes me want to give up. All I get are common and uncommon tables. I've had one rare and one very rare and thats it. The idea of having to spend 100s of millions of inf to get any other very rares i'll need is frustrating. I hope its not performance based as some people were saying in pocket d the other day. I dont door sit and the only time im not attacking is when I die, and that is getting less and less as the tactics are getting better. I shouldnt be surprised really as I rarely get good drops in other areas of the game. Since I.Os came out i have had about 2 LoTG +rech and about 4 or 5 purples. The plan now is to try for tier 4s on everything for my main and to stop at tier 3 for any other alts I decide to go incarnate.

Raaaaaaaaan about twenty trials yesterday. Had my stuff unlocked and slotted well before I finished, was enjoying it so much that I was helping others get their stuff unlocked, get badges, whatever you need. If I wasn't heading out of town for work today, I would run a whole bunch more tonight. Hell, if the hotel internet is decent, I will run some more tonight anyway!

Bottom line for me is: if this is a grind, bring it on devs, I am loving the new stuff. I love helping others achieve goals and the fact that I enjoy the new stuff on its own merits is just gravy.

I am having fun while doing the Trials, especially when our team/league leader is knowledgeable and gives good direction (and when the rest of the team *listens* to the leader!)

I also have the enthusiasm which comes from *years* of wishing that Amerikatt had an AoE heal, which helped to override the frustation of 14 failed Lambda Sector Trials (which is what it took for me to unlock both types of Incarnate slots)!

While I will be pursuing the Tier 4 Destiny, I do not anticipate going after that level in the other three powers, nor will I be grinding for other characters. For me, it is a win-win situation, though, because Amerikatt gets the power most important to her, gains new abilities to round her out, I-salvage for the other powers, and tons of Prestige for my SG.

For me, it is only a grind if I let it be. Lambda *was* a grind -- a *very* frustrating grind. A grind which did not yield anything beyond the joy of seeing the "Destiny Slot Unlocked" message blaze across the computer monitor. Thank goodness for debt badges!

Everyone who is offering Shard/Thread conversion as a viable method for progress are as disingenuous as the devs.

Its not offered as a viable option, but as a bullet point: Look there is another way!

Even though that other way is a massively punative monument to stupidity!

And for the people telling me: Take your time:

Well the Trials are already petering out on virtue. Its getting REALLy hard to get into a lambda run after a week as people have stopped playing it. I haven't really STARTED on my Freedom toon and I am massively worried.

So If I don't man up and put up with repeating these two missions NOW while the rest of the playerbase is Putting up with it, its less and less likely I will ever get slots done.

Things will be even worse come the next slots because we all know they will be using INCARNATE SOULS or something, that will have an even more punative conversion method, and no one will be running the "old" trials any longer.


Most people I know are getting one toon kitted out and then they stop logging in. Its probably what I will do once I finish my mains on Virtue and Freedom.

10 trials should have been enough to take care of a lot of slot opening.

You get 4 threads per astral, possibly 4 astrals per trial (unless you did something wrong and failed). You get some number of % towards your slot.

4*4 = 16, *10 = 160 threads. Thats a whole ton of threads, not including whatever dropped during your trials. Based on that, at 30 threads per slot, you have already opened all 4 of your slots, and have threads left over for components to boot.

I have done 2 on Thursday, 2 on Friday, 2 on Saturday, 1 on Sunday, and I have 1 rare, 1 uncommon. I could have slotted out to have 3 slots instead of two high power slots, but I just wanted my clockworks. And I am 3 trials short of you, and never spent any shards to convert.

I dunno man, I think you burnt yourself out. Why did you do that?

Ran a whole bunch of trials this weekend on my tank (not 10 in a row though) and had fun throughout. I'll happily admit that a lot of the "defense is worthless" grousing I'd heard was overblown and my tank still felt tank-y even if I did need to pop a purple now and then to re-soft cap my soft cap against the higher innate chances for trial mobs. I'm on Virtue and didn't have trouble getting into Lambdas or BAFs. On a Lambda I was on last night, we still had 4 or 5 people who had never run it so everyone is definitely not "done" with it yet.

Switched to my controller and ran some more trials. BAF as a 'troller is different enough from BAF as a tank to make it still fresh. Lambda as a 'troller means a lot of time staring at the lab/weapons storage floor

This is really sort of the sweet spot for me. Now people know how to run them so it's not an immediate exercise in frustration yet new enough that it still feels fast-paced and challenging. We'll have to see what happens in three weeks.

On BAF, I get about 8-10% progress on slots. On Lambda, it's more like 12-15%. Nothing near 50% or whatever GG claimed.

I love these threads.

From here on I'm labeling them as Defeatist Forumite Propaganda.

Clouded/Test_rat, you are on ****** teams then.

I pulled 51% on my very first BAF. It depends on what your team is, and if you have a leader who can communicate.

The overwhelming majority of your iXp comes from killing adds in BAF, and clearing the outer perimeter in Lambda. Any mob left unkilled is less iXp for you.

In BAF, cycle between killing Siege and Nightstar. It gives you 10 seconds of breathing room when one is down. Have part of your league be dedicated to killing the viki/9cu adds. If you want threads, have the League Leader split your 3 times up, top 2 of each team, dedicated to killing adds, while the bottom 6 dedicated to killing the AVs and cycling them. This will get you exp plenty quick. If you aren't killing the adds, you are going to get squat for iXp. You should be able to cycle the AVs two, maybe three times depending on the team. If you are extremely DPS heavy, with good agro management, you should be able to push your time all the way to 5 minutes or less, and still complete the trial no problem, having killed stupid amounts of adds.

In Lambda, leave one of the portals open! IF you can handle the adds. But because Marauder is such a chimp, it should be reasonable to handle the adds from 1 portal and put him down as well. Even if you leave all the portals dead (probably a wise decision), if you didn't clear the outer perimeter before you entered the gate, you would have been missing several % of iXp. Always kill everything!

Moreover, you don't have to do Lambda if you don't want to! Sure doing BAF means you get no physical iXp. However, you get 16 threads which you can just burn for iXp, components, and who knows what goodies. I have more fun doing BAF. I don't think I will be doing any more Lambdas, even though it will take me longer to get my slots. I just can't stand the middle phase of Lambda.

edit: Just to be clear, nuking the adds in BAF is not as easy as it seems.... but if you picked Judgement up quick, and you have a lot of Judgement in your league, it makes managing the adds much much easier.