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

I want the new shinies. I want them so I can mess around with them. I don't really understand people asking what I want them for if not for the trials; they work outside the trials, and I want to use them wherever they work. It's like asking why I would want Inventions since I don't need them anywhere. I want them because they're there. People with variations on my personality are why things like this are added to these games.

I am like endless folks doing things that have come before I20. I want something, and I will inflict things on myself that I may not enjoy in order to obtain them. Now, unlike some people, I do actually enjoy the new trials. I am happy to run them a lot. I am also quite tolerant of repetition. However, even I can see that I am going to get tired of running these two trials at this rate.

So should I slow down and mix it up? That's great advice, but it conflicts with my goals. I want the new shinies. I don't want them just for these new trials. I want them for everything where they're allowed to work. Is that my fault? Well, it's certainly my decision, but stuff like this is why I play the game.

I know more trials are probably coming. I sure hope there are. I know it made sense to get us some trials now rather than waiting for more to be created. For my own goals though, it still makes me sad to only have the two, and to get the joy of the new shinies on more characters, I am going to make myself sick of these two trials. It's how my personality works.

By the way, I definitely agree with the people who feel that now is the time to get your cramming in if that's what you want to do. Everything I know of that's come before has worked like this. I don't believe for a second that people will stop running these trials, but I do believe ease of access to getting pre-formed team will cool off and become less frequent in coming weeks as the hardcore folks (like myself) start wrapping up their own cram sessions. If you want rapid progress early, I say ride the wave now. The community's focused engagement with the new content will tail off. It always has. You'll still be able to progress later, but it won't be as fast to find something as it is now.

You're right to want the new powers outside the trials. I feel like a god among lesser men when I buff everyone with the barrier and blow up a group with ion judgement with a trial of praetorian clockwork behind me and someone asks wtf is going on because they've never seen any of it before.

Usually my coral sentinel is included with the list of things they've never seen before, though...

I am still having fun. Did an ITF and 4 trials last night. The only part which wearied me was forming the trials (I ran each league). I wish the devs would introduce a means of getting threads outside of the trials before i21 however (ie. threads dropping off of all 54s).

I think trials are fun and exciting.
I only play them 2 or 3 times in a week, both BAF and LAMBDA.
Also try to play the WTF and an ITF, some tips... You know, same stuff but running new trials with my main a couple of times if possible.
Im not in hurry to unlock the powers and I got rare Alpha, uncommon Judgement and Interface.
I think everyone can keep a casual gameplay and still enjoy end game.
Is just that end game is not for all 50s, if you cant play hardcore, just play it with your main, thats what I do so far.

Here's how my last week went:

Tues: I20, patch. Run 1 failed Lambda to get the feel. Got 33% IXP for the run, couldn't get any action on the LFG system, logged.

Wed: Ugh, grinding. I think I'll read. Ooh, new Mythbusters!

Thu: Watched some TV. Did some chores. Couldn't bring myself to play.

Fri: Hmm... peak playing times for many. Did a MSR raid, then another failed Lambda (at 55% now). Still not excited about it.

Sat: Did other things involving RL, finally logged back on around 8PM, noticed a lot of ppl congregating in RWZ. Joined a league, starting farming BAFs. Hey, ppl know what they're doing now! And they have giant nukes to back them up. Did like 6 or so runs, all successes.

Sun: All day grinding. Did like 12-15 BAF runs in a row, then 8 Lambda runs. Again, all successes. MoBAF too. Pretty much everyone knows what's up now, or know enough to listen to the leaders. Amazing that just 5 days ago, the Marauder fight was kinda hard. Got T3 J & I slots for my main, much progress on other toons. Did laundry and other chores during the cut scenes & filling out league break times.

Mon: At work, thinking of how many more runs I can stomach tonight, but I'll be there barring injury.

Am I sick of the 2 trials? Yes. Does my greed for the newest shiny currently outweigh any boredom? Absolutely. Also, I do think ppl will get their 4 T4s and stop running them at this rate, so I wanna go through w/my 12 or so Incarnates while the getting is good, so to speak. So yeah, I'll keep grinding them until I'm utterly fed up w/them, and I have no one else to blame but myself. Meanwhile, I sincerely hope there'll be other ways to progress by I21, tho by then, I may well have all my T4s so the point will be moot (well, more 50s are upcoming, I guess).

I mix the trials up with some alignment missions, other TFs, alting.. dont need to get t4 incarnate everythings in one day.. ya know?

Total level 50s: 5
Total Alpha slots unlocked: 0
Total Incarnate Trials done: 0

I did play my low level Shield/ss tank last night though.

[Warning: Totally anecdotal.]

I've mostly been playing trials in a weird, semi-casual way, by which I mean I've played a lot of trials, but I also switched to a different alt for every trial so I wouldn't miss out on the Empyrean Merit. I also didn't want to spend threads on incarnate exp because, hey, you get incarnate exp for mobs! Why would you use valuable threads for that! Net effect is I had none of my incarnate slots (except the Alpha slot) unlocked on any toon until yesterday.

So yesterday I joined FriendA on a Lambda trial that he formed. FriendA led the trial successfully, then had to log for RL and gave the league star to FriendB while I was switching to my next alt. FriendB was like, I don't want to lead -- PW, you lead! So I rejoined the league and suddenly had the big star.

So I led the Lambda trial. I had been on enough of them to know what people were supposed to do, and enough of my team members knew what to do that I didn't have too many problems. After we finished, it seemed like it would be disruptive to switch to a new toon when I was the league leader, so I just stayed on my dark defender and led another Lambda trial. I ended up leading 8 Lambda trials in a row, then I was so tired of Lambda that I switched to BAF for 2 trials (which the players seemed OK with). Unlocked my Interface, Destiny and Judgement slots all in the same day (after not having any yet for the week).

Some observations I had:

* I really don't like the waiting time between runs of the trial, where you're just sitting around waiting for the teams to fill up, so I tried to be very aggressive about starting the next trial run each time. (This is perhaps a little hypocritical because I personally like to switch toons for each run...) I did let people reboot their game or switch toons or AFK if needed, but I would start as soon as people got back. This kept things moving pretty well, but on two different runs, I lost a player or two who were AFK for the trial countdown timer. After this happened, I made sure to ask people to announce in league chat if they were going AFK, which I think helped.

* I personally tried to keep the 2 Lambda teams reasonably well balanced. On Liberty (where I play) having too many support toons on a team doesn't seem to be as much of a problem as reported in earlier posts on this thread; usually I tried to make sure each team would have enough support toons to be viable. I felt this was particularly important for Lambda since the teams are split up to chase down weapons and acids, so need to be somewhat independent. But even on BAF it felt worthwhile to balance the teams out since they generally would cover different sectors for the prisoner escape. I think this largely kept exp even (I would guess I averaged 30% exp per trial); I did not assign anyone specifically to clean up ambushes, people just killed stuff that got near them which was fine by me.

* When I switched from Lambda to BAF, I immediately found I was competing with 2 other BAF trials that were forming, and ended up absorbing the smallest of the other two BAF leagues in order to launch. At several points RWZ was so full that it was hard to get everyone in the same instance of RWZ to launch a trial. It definitely felt like the incarnate trials were very popular.

* There were plenty of times that I would've gladly taken a stalker for the DPS, over a fourth or fifth tanker. Heck, plenty of times I would've taken anything, just to fill a spot; once I had the core members needed to beat an AV or two covered, anything played reasonably competently was acceptable IMHO. There were a lot of trials running and for much of the day it was the leagues competing for players rather than players competing for slots on a league. Admittedly this was a weekend afternoon/evening so maybe a busier time than most.

* I probably would not have run 10 trials in a row as just a league member ... being league leader made me feel responsible for the success of the league, though (especially since many league members were friends) so I kept it going as long as I could. I did feel pretty fried after calling it a night. I've half a mind to not do any trials tonight, but truthfully if I log on and my friends are doing trials, I'll probably join them. Even though I've done them a lot now, I still think they're fun. (Though it's tempting to squeeze a few ITF runs in, before the WST changes, too....)

Personally I feel the same way about ITF and LGTF too but they are the best way to get shards.

Important to remember that you can advance in ANY slot by collecting shards and converting them. So any level 50 content gives you additional Incarnate power, just not as quickly.

Just a gentle reminder to please keep the discussion civil, avoid poking at each other and please be respectful in your responses.

Wow; just read someone pulling 51% iXP on a BAF...yikes; the most I've ever pulled from a BAF was like 15% (maybe 18 or 20% can't remember) What the heck heh....


And yes we kill as many mobs as possible...