Incarnate rewards based on participation?

I'd heard it was based around participation using more or less the same mechanics as the praetorian zone events... and for both situations MM's reliant on henchmen have been screaming about being screwed over, as their pet damage apparently hasn't been factored into their "contribution".

I get rare/very rare very commonly, with the only commons I've gotten being while I was afk for the first stage or two of BAF. Most people I've seen talk about this report similar consistency... generally "all uncommons" or "all commons." Or that changing their playstyle nets different rewards ("I started ignoring most my storm powers, and spammed O2 and I started getting rares consistently", etc). I'd suspect there is a random component at least... but that there could very well be a "baseline" contribution from participation. I also totally get the "random is random" and "sample size is small" stuff, so I'm curious to hear more on this.

Never actually had a Very Rare drop, but have had enough Rares drop that I can build 1 Very Rare anyway. Lately I've been getting more and more Uncommons. I'm trying to remember if the times I got the Rares weren't BAF runs where I was assigned to deal with adds instead of the main bosses. Lately, when I've gotten Uncommons, I've been mostly on the "AV teams," but this could be coincidence.

I find this all very interesting, but it probably won't be known until the Devs chime in. There are too many factors for it to be tested by the players.

I have received 2 (maybe 3, can't remember) rare tables at the completion of an iTrial, 1 common and the rest uncommon tables (probably 3 or so uncommons).

I, too, have never seen only the "10 threads or super inspiration" reward table. I play on my Kin/Rad Defender. In BAF I am usually on the team that helps take down the AV...wonder if buffing teammates with SB gives a better reward heh...

Though I think it's a bit random, I also think there's probably some weighting involved based on how much you participate. Probably a mix of the two. On well-formed teams of great players I usually get Uncommons (by far the most common drop) or Rares (second most common). I've only gotten Commons a couple of times, and never gotten the threads. However, if I do a PUG (especially a PUG Lambda, where I usually end up soloing half of the Temp power phase myself) I tend to get Rares or Very Rares... as long as the team pulls together in the end to win.

It's interesting if true, and not just random luck... but also a bit weird. I actually have more incentive to play with "bad" teams than I do with awesome teams, because it'd increase my chances of getting good rewards.

Huh. I'd really like to know what their participation system is if there is one. I never got a common until today. I had to build all commons from shards, but got enough rares, very rares, and uncommons to build all 4 tier 4's by the time I had the exp to unlock all the slots. Whenever I accumulate enough commons through shards or drops I can finish.

That only common drop came from a steamroll BAF where very possibly the game's participation tracker, if there is one, might not mark me very exceptionally.

Edit: One thing that might count is text. Most previous runs I have given a lot of advice; on the forementioned steamroll run I might have been silent the whole time. Boy, if this turned out to be true, it would make these runs rather unpleasant once word got out.

With my fire/fire tank who recently finished enough to get everything unlocked, I've seen a couple common reward tables, I think two rare tables, and everything else uncommon; I've never seen a very rare or thread-only table, that I can recall.

I'm an active player and up until a couple days ago I didn't know you could get a Common reward table, much less 10 threads. Then yesterday, a buddy had to leave a trial suddenly. We let him door sit the rest of the trial and he ended with with the 10 thread option.

After running a BAF this morning in which an MM (who had NO attacks what-so-ever) claimed he had gotten a common table 4 times in a row (again, I've only gotten this once) I started to thinking maybe power activation had something to do with it. I ran 2 more runs in which, in addition to my usual activity, I decided to make sure I was shielding people (toon is a fire/cold) during EVERY SECOND of the trial. Any time I wasn't engaging an enemy, I was buffing.... each run awared me a very rare.

Activity certainly plays a role. I'm just not sure exactly how it's caculated. Does it count movement? Auto powers?

Just got a common and an uncommon from Lambda...not exactly sure what more I could have been doing to "participate more," since as a Scrapper all I can really do is piss things off and kill them, and I was doing that. Unless damage done by Shield Charge doesn't count because it's a pseudopet or something dumb like that. And unless participating includes being attacked, you wouldn't get bonus points for grabbing aggro either.

On my brute I have all tier 4s slotted and tend to get some uncommon, rare and sometimes very rare. I have recived more very rare than common. Now on my defender that is mainly for debuffing and buffing I have never got more than common. Hmmmm. Think I will run a few times on my brute and do nothing to see what happens.

Edit, first run helping as little as possible on my ss/fire brute - common.
Ok, did a few runs and only helped out enough to make sure no one escaped. Didn't want to be a total jerk. 6 times I got common drops. 1 time I got an uncommon.

Granted this is far from enough data to draw a conclusion but it does get me wondering how the reward tables are set and keep on testing with other toons to see if I can duplicate these results.

For what it's worth, on my Mastermind running BAF I was FF bubbling the entire league (which took longer than killing Nightstar...) and still getting mostly Commons with the occasional Uncommon. I tried a run of spamming pet commands needlessly and got a rare, which made me think I might be onto something, but next run with spamming pet commands even more (while still bubbling everyone), it was Uncommon. I'm gonna continue to monitor what I'm getting vs what I do.

I was just on a string of five BAFs. I did the same basic thing every time, since being on a Dual Blades Scrapper who doesn't yet have any slots above Alpha unlocked doesn't lend itself to massive variety beyond "kill stuff". I was a team lead on most of them, but I didn't do anything with that, as the League leader was giving instructions. I guarded the same escapee door with basically the same other characters every time. We used the same strat basically every time. I got two rares and three uncommons. One of the other players was a KM/SR, who also did basically the same thing every time, and he went from a string of four very rares to a string of four commons. (He was running the trial before I joined.)

I'm not seeing any pattern.

While I can see the point that an Uncommon is, once you have all you need, worth less than a Common, I've yet to find myself needing a Common as the one thing missing and not having the threads to craft it. I have found myself in that scenario with Uncommon, albeit only once on one character.

As a support toon I spend a lot of time bubbling teams that are not part of my main league team. I get to fire off an attack here and there, but truthfully I do not get the returns that others get in the trials because it's based on enemies eliminated as far as I can tell.

Which seems sort of something that they will have to tweak out.

In another super hero game that will go without mention, but is not on a console, and sucked a lot, healers or support would never get rewards because rewards be based on the number of things you damaged and not the contribution to the team.

That game is free to play now because it needed a mass overhaul because of such things.

I'm also convinced the drop tables are completely random. I've run over a dozen Lambdas and BAFs on my fire/SR scrapper and have been an active participant every single time. I've killed lots of things and done plenty of damage to the AVs, and with the exception of a single rare drop, I've had nothing but commons and uncommons. So add me to the 'random drops are random' crowd.

If the whole MM 'activation and orders and pet damage doesn't count' thing is even 1/3 true, I for one would be immensely hacked off.

I could rant on for quite some time, but I'm honestly sick and tired of the constant feeling of 'short end of the stick' here. Either the RNG is just being utterly crule (as it does, like the 'one shard off component' runs that I bloody hate...) or something in the system is screwed.

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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

I am not liking the formula the Devs are using to determine participation level and to at least partially affect reward bonuses. It appears to disproportionately favor certain ATs with a combination of AoE damage/control, and player targetable buffs that can be spammed during downtime. If you are a damage dealer, debuffer, or a single target character-- there really appears to be a consistent bias in the rewards you are granted.

Controllers, MMs, and Defender/Corruptor builds that can sway their participation quotient seem to consistently get the best drops. ATs with no downtime abilities really seem to take a hit.

That's been my anecdotal experience so far... (And MANY posts here seem to confirm it.)