Scrap the IXP concept

Tl;dr, IXP comes in too slow relative to other rewards, and once you open the slots, it's useless. IXP is far outpaced by thread, merit & component gains. Why have IXP at all? Let us open slots w/threads (and increase thread drops to compensate). Note, this is NOT a rant on how IXP comes in too slow, period (see the bold part above), or that other rewards come in too fast, but that their ratio is borked.

I ran trials pretty much non stop over the weekend and opened up T3s in Judgment & Interface on 1 toon, and made nice progresses w/other toons, but haven't opened anything else yet. So what's my problem? I never got to play w/T1 or T2 powers. I mean I could have, but didn't really feel the need, because as soon as I had enough IXP to open up one of the two slots, I had more than enough components to craft straight to the T3 (and in fact I mistakenly crafted a T1 I didn't want, so even wasted 60 threads there). I'm about 60%/85% done for Lore/Destiny too, and I'm sure that as soon as I open those up, I'll have more than I'll need for T3s of those as well.

Is this how the devs want us to progress on our Incarnates? Nothing, nothing, nothing, BIG power boost! Wouldn't it make more sense to, you know, fairly quickly get our T1s, which would then make the trials a bit smoother as we work our way to T2s, etc? Remember our Alpha slots? You could solo, or get a bit of help, and open the Alpha slot in well under an hour, but you'd only get 1 shard. A decent amount of work went into slotting that w/the T1 alpha, and a bit more for the T2. An artificial wait for I19.5 for the T3 & 4s, but still, it was a nice progression of our initial Incarnate abilities.

As it stands, the only way I can see getting enough IXP and not having enough components for a T3 is to constantly fail the trials, and merely kill enough mobs to get IXP, but not complete any objectives which will get you Astral merits (4 threads per!), and have horrible luck w/thread drops. Or if you just refuse to break apart your Astrals, cuz their only use atm is for more threads. If you hoard all your merits, you too can start w/a mere T1 or likely T2 when you open your slots.

Otherwise I'm thinking about 3-4 unsuccessful Lambda runs will open your Interface slot. Of course, you only need 60 threads to fill your T1, so you might still immediately do that, even w/o a single successful run depending on how many A-merits you've picked up. Interface is trickier--you can't kill that many mobs in the first phase, and you start getting your Astral merits awfully fast. The best tactic might be to let the prisoners escape, failing the trial at that stage. This strat might necessitate a good 8-10 failed BAFs, which unfortunately will still net you enough thread & A-merits to get to T1 easily. In fact, I think it may be impossible to open your Judgment slot w/o having enough material for at least a T1. Is this what the devs had in mind, that we'd fail a lot in the beginning letting us build up our IXP first?

Lore & Destiny have it worse w/higher IXP needs to open. I've landed a couple of very rares already, so I may even have a T4 ready when mine open up. Yes, you can buy IXP. Why? You'll open your slots quickly enough, and then IXP is irrelevant--why waste the threads that you'll use to, well, craft your T3 when said slots open? Remember, I'm not saying IXP rates are too slow, only that they're slow compared to thread/component/merit gain. And for Posi's sake, I'm not advocating slowing our thread/component/merit gains, though that's an obvious solution.

My solution? Get rid of IXP. Too big a change, I know, so won't happen, but either accelerate the gains, lower the threshold for slots opening, or let us buy them w/our now useless Alpha components (hey, what about all these Notices I'm racking up w/WSTs?), V-merits, hell reward merits even. At the very least, let us share our IXP pools so that we're not "wasting" IXP earning potential doing one trial and not the other.

The IXP thing was just a game mechanic throttle to keep too many people from instantly unlocking all of their Incarnate slots. It's the same reason Issue 19.5 introduced the Notices that forced you to play at least a few weeks worth of WSTs to get your Alphas fully slotted.

The Devs want you to have a reason to keep playing for a while to make sure everyone has a fair chance to get on full trial leagues for at least a few weeks/months. If everyone could easily unlock all of their incarnate slots like in a day then no one would be around to keep running them.

Besides that in a few months from now no one will be caring about IXP one way of the other anyway. *shrugs*

I know what you mean I just opened up Lore on my second character last night and by the time the trial I was on ended I stepped outside the BAF and slotted a tier three into the brand new power. And the exact same thing occured when I opened up Destiny.

I think part of the problem is the design of both trials and I seriously doubt anything we say here will change it.

You start a BAF and enter the facility. The entire inner courtyard is teaming with IDF troops and it looks like one heck of a battle but as soon as you defeat 40 of them the rest all disappear.

You move into part two and tackle Nightstar solo along with her MK Vickies. Now I suppose you COULD slow down the defeat of the AV and use as much of the time as your allowed to get more Vickies out but most people just defeat Nightstar and move on. Worst part is .. even if there are 9 or 10 Vickies still around when she is defeated they disappear too.

Now you move to the Escapee phase and at least during this for 5 straight minutes you can defeat as many runaways as possibe. When the 5 minutes are up they drop to their knees and are no longer vaild targets.

Now you take on Siege and the 9CU units and just like the solo battle with Nightstar you have an opportunity to take out his support. This is probably the one phase here things don't go poof because as fast as he is defeat Siege and Nightstar regen for the final battle. You can take out quite a few Vickies and 9CU during this since your trying to make sure BOTH AVs are defeated together but once again as soon as they both die.. anything still standing to attack disappears.

I averaged about 10% of the IXP I needed for every BAF run I did and since last Tuesday I have opened up and slotted 2 characters with all 4 new powers and gotten them to 50(+3). Now I had some failed attempts which messed up the numbers a bit but I'd say I probably have done the BAF at least 45 to 50 times to get all those slots open

The Lambda isn't quite as bad.. Part one allows you to clear the entire map including the EB "security team" before moving on to part two.

Part two is a huge tease though... You know you have to get all, or as many as you can, of the acids and pacifier grenades to succeed in part three so you rush past mob after mob of IDT searching and if your lucky may take out a few of them as you destrot weapon caches or containment chambers. then, just like the BAF, you are denied any chance at extra iXP since either the time runs out or your teams locate all of both weapons. You can have 5 or 6 minujtes left on the clock when the last glowie is destroyed but forget about battling any of the mobs in the facility because part three starts and you are transported outside to battle Maurader.

The very first thing you do outside is close down all of the portals that will allow reinforcements to arrive so you deny yourself added things to defeat.. then again if your teams failed to get most of those acid bombs the reinforcements come so fast that you can quickly be overwhelmed and wind up failing the trial. Of course you can take out IDT while battling Maurader but just like the BAF as soon as he is defeated everything else disappears and you are left inside an empty facility. Time to head out and start over

Now suprisingly the Lambda does seem to actually give out more IXP.. I averaged about 20-25% per attempt and almost always 25% or higher on the successful ones. That translated into doing around 4-5 to open each power so I have only done about 20 of them.

Now fortunately neither trial takes a huge amount of time to complete with a good team and I have been on some REALLY good teams but that still equates to close to 30 hours of nothing but running trials .. I managed one ITF on a character that still needed a Notice and did managed to complete one KAL TF villain side on my badger but for the most part all I did all week was BAF and Lambda.

Neither is set up like say the Imperious TF. Even after defeating Romulus you can roam around inside his castle and defeat hundreds of left over Cimeroran Traitors. With the BAF and LAMBDA mission complete means MISSION OVER.. move on!

Aurgh, brain fail. Dunno where that came from.... forgeddit.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

How about after you have no slots to unlock, letting IXP count towards gaining Threads?

I pretty much agree. By the time I unlocked Destiny I'd already had a tier 3 ready to slot for some time. I wonder if maybe the devs didn't account for people forming full leagues rather than using the queue to PUG. Aside from ambushes the trials have a fixed number of mobs to defeat. The larger the league, the more people getting a piece of that pie. So everyone gets a smaller piece. On the BAF trial especially it seems glacial. I seem to be averaging a bit over 10% iXP on a full league, efficient run. That's almost 20 BAFs just to unlock both slots...per toon. Seriously?

So just to update, I opened up my Destiny slot Monday, and sure enough I had enough for my T3. Then last night (Tuesday), I opened up my Lore slot, and immediately T3 again. Still haven't played w/a T1 or T2 power (again, I could just choose not to slot my T3... but why, esp considering the level shifts?).

I was a bit surprised when I opened my T3 Lore slot that I didn't have enough threads or commons (tons of uncommons and 2 rares in inventory tho) to get a T1 of my next tree--I figured I'd have enough to start my 2nd climb to a rare to get my T4, at least not w/o breaking any uncommons or E-merits. Then again, I wasted 60 merits opening up the Cryo tree when I planned on going Pryo.

I am a bit worried about the lack of very rare drops--I have 2, but on another toon, and he doesn't even have a single thing opened yet. E-merits are definitely harder to come by (only 7 or 8 so far). I'm thinking, esp for the long term, that I should rotate in toons more often to get everyone their nightly E-merit(s) instead of grinding just 1 toon to get enough IXP to open something up. Which just means for all my incarnates, it's going to be weeks of nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing... bam! T3s for all! It's a tiny bit frustrating.

Personally, I think the Tin Mage and Apex TF's should be adjusted to award iXP as well. My biggest complaint with incarnate XP at the moment is the constant grind. On a good BAF I've gained around 20% or 5 runs. I only have 4 alts that I'm focusing on for the incarnate content, but after unlocking the slots with the first I'm finding it a bit dull.

Couldn't agree with you more on this, dave... and after minor participation on Trials with my FF Defender... I'll not be returning to them until something (if anything) is done to make it worthwhile for me. I'll just stick with Alpha. Way too poor to afford to make anything and not "farming" 2 Trials to get the new shinies. But, that's my choice.