The real difference between Trial and non-Trial Incarnate Advancement
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-04-11 09:25 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Originally Posted by Liquid
Trial content reward equivalent: 1815 Threads
Non-Trial content, for equivalent time: 18 Threads That's the equivalent of 100 times more Threads for running trials, and I didn't even include the slot unlocks (I unlocked all 4, so that would be the equivalent of another 150 Threads). Obviously, there was some luck involved here-- I did get 2 rares, but even if those were commons (I actually found uncommons to be the most common-- I only got one common drop), the difference would be staggering. In conclusion: Yeah, your mileage may vary, but let's stop using the "5 times as long" value. It's closer to 100. It would have taken me 100 weeks to do what I did last week if I tried to use the Shard conversion to do it, and that's assuming that same level of activity on a full team for the full 100 weeks, never playing another character. That's almost 2 years. |
Which is why there's been many complaints...not just in the conversion method but also of players being compelled to do the trials who normally wouldn't.
The shard conversion method (to me) is not so much an alternative path to the trials but more an incentive to DO the trials over other content.
And when people who normally would do a variety of things to progress, suddenly gets stuck doing 2, then they get a form of culture shock. It might even hasten burnout and not just in the trials but the game overall, but that's an unknown this early in.
If the shard conversion payouts is more in line with the trials, i'm thinking the trials wouldn't be as active as it would be once the new shiny wears off.
Random information: It takes 10,070 shards to get 4x very rares if you don't do the trials. Completely disregarding the inf cost, that's 10 shards a day for 1007 days, since you can only convert 10 a day (unless you want to double the amount you have to earn to over 20,000). That's over 2.7 years of converting 10 shards daily.
In just a couple days of playing trials, even crashing out of most of them and missing a lot of astrals and reward tables, I have one very rare and 3 rares. 1 very rare represents 8.1 months of grinding shards for the non-trial playing soloist. Which I got in a couple days.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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People running TFs full time are in the same boat. Also, unless there's a cooldown on the 2 Threads reward, 5x Apex/Tin Mage per day would have the same result. Soloists would probably be worse off (how much does a soloist need to play per day to get 10 shards a day on x8?)
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Originally Posted by Dispari
Random information: It takes 10,070 shards to get 4x very rares if you don't do the trials. Completely disregarding the inf cost, that's 10 shards a day for 1007 days, since you can only convert 10 a day (unless you want to double the amount you have to earn to over 20,000). That's over 2.7 years of converting 10 shards daily.
In just a couple days of playing trials, even crashing out of most of them and missing a lot of astrals and reward tables, I have one very rare and 3 rares. 1 very rare represents 8.1 months of grinding shards for the non-trial playing soloist. Which I got in a couple days. |
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So? Very rares should not be seen as a realistic goal for someone who refuses to engage in group content. It's possible, but unrealistic. |
Originally Posted by Dispari
Random information: It takes 10,070 shards to get 4x very rares if you don't do the trials. Completely disregarding the inf cost, that's 10 shards a day for 1007 days, since you can only convert 10 a day (unless you want to double the amount you have to earn to over 20,000). That's over 2.7 years of converting 10 shards daily.
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| In just a couple days of playing trials, even crashing out of most of them and missing a lot of astrals and reward tables, I have one very rare and 3 rares. 1 very rare represents 8.1 months of grinding shards for the non-trial playing soloist. Which I got in a couple days. |
The hardcore soloist self-selects themselves out of this content. There have been people this week who have mapserved often, lagged considerably, but kept coming back for more because they liked the trials or wanted the shinies. People that don't, don't. I don't begrudge them not liking the trials, but this week even people who played a few trials could have two slots unlocked and have stuff in those slots.
It's irrelevant whether it takes 2 or 25 years to get to very rares via solo grinding of shards. Because that's plainly not intended to be the means to do it. It's hyperbole to even mention that because it's not an either or thing. The shard conversion path should be a supplement and a partner to doing the trials, doing the WST, etc. If the devs eventually (and I think they should) add a solo option, then there will be even more options for folks. That's what happened with Inventions. It took awhile though.
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in 1 week of running the trials i have tier 3 judgement, destiny, and interface and tier 4 of lore
the toon i did this on did have 225 shards and a ton of inf stockpiled pre i20, so i unlocked the slots almost immediatly on first day
i still regularly convert shards to threads since shards are all but useless to me since i have the tier 4 alpha that i want on 6 toons
to make it easier for solo people they should give an option to convert shards to threads (1 shard for 1 thread), or something basically on smaller ratios than requiring 10 shards to do a conversion
converting shards to threads and using those to unlock the slots is not that hard overall, but trying to use shards for everything in the new slots would be way way too much (and expensive has heck lol)
just converting 225 shards to threads and those threads to xp prolly cost around 365-380 mil (didnt keep track of exact number)
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I guess we have different definitions of unrealistic, but I think solo content taking one thousand times longer is a little unrealistic. Even before considering people running trials don't have to spend any money, while solo players have to spend several billion. More money than one character can even hold.|
Originally Posted by EvilGeko
So? Very rares should not be seen as a realistic goal for someone who refuses to engage in group content. It's possible, but unrealistic.
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| The hardcore soloist self-selects themselves out of this content. |
I don't particularly like the Barracuda TF, so I didn't really run it to get Alpha stuff. I did an extra TF and used shards instead. It sounds to me like if you were in charge, you would insult people who don't want to run "team content" of Barracuda and give them completely absurd alternatives saying it's "not unreasonable."
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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It sounds like we have the same definition of unrealistic. I don't think it's realistic either to solo grind for these abilities. Our difference of opinion is that I don't care a bit for those who claim to not be able to do the trials. I have no concern whatsoever for those who refuse because of playstyle choice.|
Originally Posted by Dispari
I guess we have different definitions of unrealistic, but I think solo content taking one thousand times longer is a little unrealistic. Even before considering people running trials don't have to spend any money, while solo players have to spend several billion. More money than one character can even hold.
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| If I had the option of not doing the trials, I would take that. I don't have fun constantly crashing or running with my settings turned down so that all I see are blurs. I'm only pushing myself through it for the rewards. Because this "not unreasonable" alternative you mention is, in fact, quite unreasonable. |
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My red flag alarm dinged on this. Something is wrong with the assumptions, because there's no way a player that runs 15 to 20 task forces over a week ends up with 18 shards. I would expect such a person to end up with about 80-150 shards, and thus (eventually) about the same number of threads. Which makes the trial content - counting all of the extra drops besides direct threads - about fifteen times faster than task force content on average.|
Originally Posted by Liquid
Had I been running full team TF content for that time, assuming that the drop rate for Threads is 5 times that of Shards (as we were told in Beta), then that means that I would have earned 18 shards for my effort instead of 90 Threads from drops. That would then be converted over 2 days into 18 Threads (obviously, I'd have waited until I had 20 Shards to convert, but you get the point).
Trial content reward equivalent: 1815 Threads Non-Trial content, for equivalent time: 18 Threads That's the equivalent of 100 times more Threads for running trials, and I didn't even include the slot unlocks (I unlocked all 4, so that would be the equivalent of another 150 Threads). |
The drop rate for threads cannot be five times higher than shards. I would be more inclined to believe its the reverse.
Also, higher task forces drop components that can be broken down into shards. 15-20 runs should earn at least 15-20 of those, which would be more than 18 shards right there.
Factoring everything in, my ballpark estimate is that trials might be earning ten times the equivalent thread count as task forces drop from thread/shard conversions, not a hundred (and certainly not a thousand like some people have been suggesting).
One more thing: counting optimally for the trial drops adds an additional skew. I've been getting the majority of my reward tables as uncommons, not commons. If uncommon really is more likely than common on successful runs, which is possible, the uncommons are actually *hurting* earnings, because if you need commons you cannot count uncommons as their *creation* value, but rather their *breakdown* value. And every uncommon is actually only worth 9 threads on average when broken down - less than half of one common.
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For the soloist, the Inf costs are not a concern at all. If you defeated enough mobs to get that many Shards, you've got more than enough Inf. You're probably generating something like 10 million Inf per Shard that drops, at minimum.|
Originally Posted by Dispari
I guess we have different definitions of unrealistic, but I think solo content taking one thousand times longer is a little unrealistic. Even before considering people running trials don't have to spend any money, while solo players have to spend several billion. More money than one character can even hold.
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The glacial pace of solo Incarnating is the real issue. I'm doing it on one character, but yeah, you kind of have to just forget about the shinies and run a character because you enjoy playing them. You do get to do a variety of things in game at least, unlike the iTrials.
What I didn't expect is what the OP is showing. The teamed conversion path being 100 times slower than the iTrials. That's just plain wrong.
The solo and teamed conversion paths need a buff. They seriously need it.
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this is what i was thinking, if you ran 1 tf/sf a day, then maybe you would get 18 at weeks end, if you ran the same amount of tfs a day as trial, you would be getting around 10-20 shards a day (avging 4-8 per tf/sf)|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
My red flag alarm dinged on this. Something is wrong with the assumptions, because there's no way a player that runs 15 to 20 task forces over a week ends up with 18 shards. I would expect such a person to end up with about 80-150 shards, and thus (eventually) about the same number of threads. Which makes the trial content - counting all of the extra drops besides direct threads - about fifteen times faster than task force content on average.
The drop rate for threads cannot be five times higher than shards. I would be more inclined to believe its the reverse. Also, higher task forces drop components that can be broken down into shards. 15-20 runs should earn at least 15-20 of those, which would be more than 18 shards right there. Factoring everything in, my ballpark estimate is that trials might be earning ten times the equivalent thread count as task forces drop from thread/shard conversions, not a hundred (and certainly not a thousand like some people have been suggesting). One more thing: counting optimally for the trial drops adds an additional skew. I've been getting the majority of my reward tables as uncommons, not commons. If uncommon really is more likely than common on successful runs, which is possible, the uncommons are actually *hurting* earnings, because if you need commons you cannot count uncommons as their *creation* value, but rather their *breakdown* value. And every uncommon is actually only worth 9 threads on average when broken down - less than half of one common. |
when itf was the weekly tf, my main toon prolly made about 100ish shards that week because i ran ITF with him approx 28 times in the one week and getting 4-8 shards per run plus breaking down the component every 20 hours and the notice of the well at the beginning of the week, it adds up quite fast
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I never said 15-20 Task Forces. I said Trials. These trials are much shorter than most Task Forces. Some of the trials I ran took 20 minutes (I think all the BAFs were that short), while most ITFs I run take an hour, and I get maybe 4-7 shards from those. You can't equate a trial to a task force like this. I'm equating play time.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
My red flag alarm dinged on this. Something is wrong with the assumptions, because there's no way a player that runs 15 to 20 task forces over a week ends up with 18 shards. I would expect such a person to end up with about 80-150 shards, and thus (eventually) about the same number of threads. Which makes the trial content - counting all of the extra drops besides direct threads - about fifteen times faster than task force content on average.
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| Also, higher task forces drop components that can be broken down into shards. 15-20 runs should earn at least 15-20 of those, which would be more than 18 shards right there. |
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| The drop rate for threads cannot be five times higher than shards. I would be more inclined to believe its the reverse. |
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| Factoring everything in, my ballpark estimate is that trials might be earning ten times the equivalent thread count as task forces drop from thread/shard conversions, not a hundred (and certainly not a thousand like some people have been suggesting). |
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I don't understand this question. Are you asking what need they have for Judgement, Lore, and/or Destiny powers? Seems like an obvious answer. |
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Let me ask a stupid question.
If you don't intend to do the trials, what need have you of the trial rewards? |
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If you run only those, then yes. If you also run lower level task forces, not so much. Although if you do the WST every week and already have your very rare alpha you can also break down the notice.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Also, higher task forces drop components that can be broken down into shards. 15-20 runs should earn at least 15-20 of those, which would be more than 18 shards right there.
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There might be another thing about that worth looking into. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
One more thing: counting optimally for the trial drops adds an additional skew. I've been getting the majority of my reward tables as uncommons, not commons. If uncommon really is more likely than common on successful runs, which is possible, the uncommons are actually *hurting* earnings, because if you need commons you cannot count uncommons as their *creation* value, but rather their *breakdown* value. And every uncommon is actually only worth 9 threads on average when broken down - less than half of one common.
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Even though which end reward table (rarity) you get at the end is random, it might still be faster, consider everything else about the trials and it's duration, to wait and keep rolling and eventually save yourself the breakdown/creation cost, than to earn enough shards to get the equivalent using the same timeframe.
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I'm responding too quickly here, and I missed this. What did I count optimally for the trial? I'm giving my actual experience, which, by the way, points out that I get more Uncommons than commons, and I only count Uncommons at their creation value when they are used. I then use 9 threads as their value for the rest. It's actually broken out here in the op for the leftover components:|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
One more thing: counting optimally for the trial drops adds an additional skew. I've been getting the majority of my reward tables as uncommons, not commons. If uncommon really is more likely than common on successful runs, which is possible, the uncommons are actually *hurting* earnings, because if you need commons you cannot count uncommons as their *creation* value, but rather their *breakdown* value. And every uncommon is actually only worth 9 threads on average when broken down - less than half of one common.
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I've been running at least 5 trials a day and I still think very rares aren't very realistic unless you're incredibly lucky.
Soloists can't get lucky, yeah, but they're still intended to be a far off reach goal.
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I feel like I'm missing something here. This looks like it is saying that Shards drop five times more often that Threads? I don't know what the actual ratio of the probabilities is, but I'm certain Threads drop significantly more often than Shards. I get probably 2-6 Threads per trial (not counting any breakdowns). I get something like 0-4 Shards per speed run of an ITF, which I think is actually a lot more required defeated mobs than either new trial.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The drop rate for threads cannot be five times higher than shards. I would be more inclined to believe its the reverse.
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Because I do the trials?|
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Let me ask a stupid question.
If you don't intend to do the trials, what need have you of the trial rewards? |
My problem with the Solo/Conversion path is that it is the ONLY alternative to the Lambda/BAF repeat system. And lets all be honest, its the BAF repeat system.
So if a person gets tired of running the same One (Two) Trial(s) over and over, thier only alternative is the conversion path to continue to make progress.
If you do any other content in this game of 7 years age, you are making insignificant almost FUTILE progress towards being an Incarnate. This is what irks me.
So the Conversion path isn't an option at all but a bullet point.
As clear as I can make this:
I am not a soloer, but I get tired of grinding the same trial over and over. There currently isn't anyway for me to progress on my toons (SOLO or GROUPED) that isn't a engineered waste of time and an insult to my intelligence.
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I've gotten two VRs so far (one is slotted already). If you save up emp merits you can get a guaranteed VR every two weeks, along with whatever you get just randomly. And if you start getting tons of rares, you can just make a VR (it would cost 400m, but that's still significantly less than a solo player has to pay).
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Originally Posted by Kailure
I've been running at least 5 trials a day and I still think very rares aren't very realistic unless you're incredibly lucky.
Soloists can't get lucky, yeah, but they're still intended to be a far off reach goal. |
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Why do you need the abilities ASAP? The trials can obviously be done without them. Other content is not designed with them in mind. Why can't you just take your time, play a BAF or Lambda when you feel like it. Why are you putting the pressure on yourself to earn these abilities right away?|
Originally Posted by Test_Rat
I am not a soloer, but I get tired of grinding the same trial over and over. There currently isn't anyway for me to progress on my toons that isn't a engineered waste of time and an insult to my intelligence.
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If you take your time and just have fun, the abilities will come when they come. It's something to work for. It's the chase that's important.
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Incarnate rewards for Incanate content. The only need for them is to play the incarnate content.
If you only want them because they're 'awesome', then run the trials until you have them. You can stop at any time your satisfied with your Incarnate slots.
If you only want to solo, and you still want them because they're 'awesome', grind shards at the slow slow slow rate, or grab a helmet and run the trials once per day each until you are satisfied with your incanate slot. Again, you won't have to run them forever. Just for the slots, which, according to the various maths in this thread, won't take that many times through trial rewards.
If you never want to set foot in an Incarnate trial, ever never never refuse no friggin way, want all the Incarnate abilities maxed out in short order, you are out of luck.
The Incarnate Abilities were designed specifically for the incarnate content, not to allow people to run +4 x8 even faster solo. Or to solo ITF, or to be a 1 man Hamidon team. If you want to use them for that, fine. But that was not the purpose of adding them to the game.
It's an endgame system. And probably the least time intensive endgame content of any game. It's endgame. Not character advancement. It's gear. Raid gear. You don't like raid gear and endgamey stuff, then yeah, i20 is a crappy issue for you. If i21 is more endgame stuff, then that will be a crappy issue for you.
Complain all you want but there is nothing flawed with adding an endgame system that only gives the rewards for completing the endgame content. What did you want this to be? Just levels 50-55 with new powers to use on the old content?
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I dunno what problems you're having with Lambda, but I've yet to fail more than one in about 15 runs.|
Originally Posted by Test_Rat
Because I do the trials?
My problem with the Solo/Conversion path is that it is the ONLY alternative to the Lambda/BAF repeat system. And lets all be honest, its the BAF repeat system. |
Also, it's the only alternative for now.
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Originally Posted by Test_Rat
I am not a soloer, but I get tired of grinding the same trial over and over. There currently isn't anyway for me to progress on my toons (SOLO or GROUPED) that isn't a engineered waste of time and an insult to my intelligence.
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The trials are fun, I enjoy running them as many times as it takes because I enjoy the company of 15 (23) other friends. It's better than running ITFs ad naseum.
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You're saying you ran 15 to 20 trials; I compared that to running 15 to 20 task forces as the standard content equivalent. But even if I use your numbers and say that running 15-20 trials is equal to running only 5 to 7 task forces (and that is *wildly* skewed towards the incarnate trials) you're saying that in 5 to 7 task force runs you'd only get 18 shards, averaging 3 per run.|
Originally Posted by Liquid
I never said 15-20 Task Forces. I said Trials. These trials are much shorter than most Task Forces. Some of the trials I ran took 20 minutes (I think all the BAFs were that short), while most ITFs I run take an hour, and I get maybe 4-7 shards from those. You can't equate a trial to a task force like this. I'm equating play time.
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That is treating the Incarnate trials as optimistically as possible, and the task forces as pessimistically as possible, which is why my calculation red flag tripped. It invalidates the conclusion.
My average shard drop rate for ITFs is closer to 7 in about an hour plus the component (plows, not quicks - nobody running for shards runs quicks), and my trial run time average has been close to 35 minutes: some faster, some slower. If we assume my trial drop rates were similar to yours per trial (because I don't have those numbers in front of me) then 18 trial runs (taking the average estimate for number of runs) would take about 630 minutes, the equivalent of 6.5 of my ITFs. That's 52 shards including component breakdown. That's a difference of a factor of three just in the shard earning estimate alone. And that's a slow ITF average: I haven't run a plow yet with I20 Incarnates plowing it. I would imagine the teams I've been running trials with would obliterate an ITF plow in about a half hour: I've seen really fast teams get close to that without I20 incarnate powers. That's effectively accounting for a difference of over 5.5x the shard/thread estimate in your OP. That's already a huge discrepancy that isn't likely accountable to anecdotal anomalies.
If you're going to make an extraordinary claim like the standard earning rate is one hundred times slower than the trials, you have an obligation to be conservative on your estimates. If you're highly aggressive, and it seems every single one of your calculation decisions was highly aggressive, it makes the conclusion very shaky. Its entirely possible the trials are twenty times faster, maybe even thirty times faster. To assert they are a hundred times faster I would want very strong evidence.
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UPDATED: I forgot to include breaking down components from TFs. These numbers have been updated.
UPDATED x2 : I have doubled my expected Shard drop values, as my Thread drop is not entirely accurate, and the TF estimate I gave at the end resulted in an average shard drop rate that is about half what I am used to.
So I ran several trials last week (didn't keep count, I'd guess maybe 15-20? I had a lot of extra time last week due to RL circumstances), and it looks to me like initial estimates as to the difference between Trial and non-Trial advancement rates were way off. From my experience this last week, the vast majority of threads come from completion components and Astral Merits, not Thread drops themselves. I've got a common Judgement and the rare Destiny and Lore (for the level shifts). The rare components and uncommon components were all drops, which are effectively "free" compared to non-trial content since I don't have to spend threads on them. I then converted something like 30 or 40 Astral merits to make the common components I needed. I think I got a total of about 90 actual Thread drops between Tuesday and Saturday (I wish I had an exact total for that one, but I don't. I do know that I used 60 actual Thread drops to craft my first common power (Judgement) before giving up on saving Astrals for the mysterious stuff Positron says they'll buy, and converting them to Threads on the spot to make my 2 rares. 90 is a high estimate; I am only 100% positive that I got 74, and then I ran one more Lambda, and I've never gotten more than 16 in a Lambda run).
So, there's a lot of randomness and other factors that go into this, but, assuming I'd spent this last week running regular content and converting the shards to threads instead, what would be the difference in my progress?
Theoretical Comparison of Trial vs. Non-Trial advancement based on my performance from last week
I didn't fully keep track of what I got, but I can work backwards to figure it out based on what I crafted, and what I have left. I made 1 common power (60 Threads) and 2 rare powers, and have several components and some merits left over. Here's the breakdown:
Total Threads used: 60 + 280 + 120 + 680 = 1,140 Threads
I also still have Astrals and Empyrians left over, and several extra uncommons, which can be broken down into 8-10 threads or used, and one Rare component. We'll assume that I'm only going to use 2 of the Uncommons (since I don't intend to go beyond Rare with that character, if I did, the others would be worth more) and break down the rest. Astrals give 4 Threads, and Empyrians give 20.
Total usable Threads remaining: 120 + 32 + 120 + 63 + 340 = 675 Threads
Total effective Thread gains for all my runs from last week: 1,140 + 675 = 1815 Threads
Had I been running full team TF content for that time, assuming that the drop rate for Threads is 5 times that of Shards (as we were told in Beta), then that means that I would have earned 18 shards for my effort instead of 90 Threads from drops. That would then be converted over 2 days into 18 Threads (obviously, I'd have waited until I had 20 Shards to convert, but you get the point). (EDIT: I'm adding component breakdowns, which I missed) Now, I couldn't actually have been running full team TF content for that time, as I couldn't devote my mornings or my lunch hour to it, as my average TF time is probably 1 hour, but if we assume I ran 9 TFs (2 per day Tues-Thurs is 6, with 2 on Friday night and 1 Saturday morning), that would be 9 more shards plus the notice, which is 4-6, so I'll say 5. That means 14 more shards, for a total of 32 Threads converted over 3 days. EDIT 2: However, if I ran 9 TFs, that would suggest that I earned 2 shards per TF from drops over an hour, which has not been my experience. I'm going to double that, as 4 per TF is probably closer to my average, which means 18 more Threads for 50 Threads total.
Trial content reward equivalent: 1815 Threads
Non-Trial content, for equivalent time: 50 Threads
That's the equivalent of 36.3 times more Threads for running trials, and I didn't even include the slot unlocks (I unlocked all 4, so that would be the equivalent of another 150 Threads). Obviously, there was some luck involved here-- I did get 3 rares, but even if those were commons (I actually found uncommons to be the most common-- I only got one common drop), the difference would be staggering.
In conclusion: Yeah, your mileage may vary, but let's stop using the "5 times as long" value. It's closer to 35 for me. It would have taken me 36 weeks to do what I did last week if I tried to use the Shard conversion to do it, and that's assuming that same level of activity on a full team for the full 36 weeks, never playing another character. That's about 9 months.
If anyone else kept track of theirs, please post in here, and maybe we can attempt to get a good average estimate of the difference.
Please try my custom mission arcs!
Legacy of a Rogue (ID 459586, Entry for Dr. Aeon's Third Challenge)
Death for Dollars! (ID 1050)
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare (ID 1218)
Win the Past, Own the Future (ID 1429)