Incarnate rewards based on participation?

My thoughts:

I can't be persuaded to believe that the devs are stupid enough to consider damage delt what-so-ever in the caculation of activity. They know better than to put the many "buff first" characters so far behind the curve.

Activity is likely caculated by power clicks and possibly movement. Though some power clicks may be more heavily weighted than others. IE: and attack may be worth 2 points to a buff's 1. An AoE attack may be worth more, etc.

No matter your activity, it's still random. If you meet the maximum (or a very high) activity threshold, you simply have a higher chance of getting the better rewards. No matter how active, you're probably still most likely to get an uncommon.

There may be a mimimum activity threshold which if you do not surpass you're automatically given the 10 thread option, as I'm yet to hear of someone afk'ing a trial and earning something better.

I've done probably about 3 dozen trials, mostly using my DM/Energy Aura Brute that's softcapped for 'normal' PvE stuff and she's more survivable for it. I'd probably say more Lambda's than BAF's, but only a 60/40 split. I've yet to get ANY Rare or Very Rare reward table from any trial. I try to cause as much trouble as possible and regularly get 'warned' by Siege, Nightstar etc and often 'collect' Nightstar and Siege and bring them to the tennis courts but I'm very much a single target Brute until i got my Void power recently. If it truly is random, then I guess I've been very very unlucky. If it's based on the amount of 'work' you do then there's really not much else I can do. I have no buffs other than the incarnate one I have just slotted (the +Dam res, +def one, Clarion?) and my mystical fortune. If it's really based on amount of damage or activity the game sees you doing, then that's a very very poor decision by the Dev's and should be looked at again.

Moved to my trapper now, and I no longer think its random.

Its based on PERSONAL attacks/heals.
Pseudo pets and pets don't count.

And I have 15 commons to show for it.

If this is completely random, then I would like to know the percentages for each reward screen. Screwing a person over because they don't participate as much as other people is not cool. I am a /dark MM and my main attack for most mobs is fearsome stare and tarpatch. Mobs don't usually last long enough for my henchmen to run over and slice them a few times. Also, since my henchmen are usually in melee mode, there have been times when I can't contribute any damage on AVs and can only keep Darkest Night and Tar Patch on them and spam Twilight Grasp for the -regen. As long as I am contributing to the team and not afk in the hospital, then I should get the same chance of getting rares and very rares as everyone else instead of having to worry about those people that have made sacrifices to the RNG gods.

I really wish they'd give hard information on this. As is, when I get the leech prize, I can't help but wonder if it was random or if I got screwed due to poor game mechanics. A bad random roll is one thing, getting scammed because I used too many pseudo-pets is another. The whole thing leaves a sour taste.

Also, trials these days (especially the clearing phases) are a madhouse cluster as everyone rushes to be first to a group and lay out their best attacks for the credit.

I notice this back when Praetoria was opened up for everyone. I was badging on my MM. I was doing the "Zone Events". I soloed the Seers onw in Nova, but had to do Sindicate 2x to get the badge as an option, because I guess I did not participate enough. A similar thing happened with the Ghouls. I was on a team on one run, and solo with others at the event, neither time did I get the badge as an option. I had to do it with no one else at the event to get teh badge option.

One thing to think about... The rewards tables may be tied to also what the rest of your team has done. On the occassions that I have gotten a Very Rare, someone complained about getting 10 Threads.

My experience leads me to believe that the drop tables for the trials is weighted by participation but not determined by participation. Which means you cannot predict what you will get based on activity, but you can say that higher activity increases the chances of a higher reward.

I don't have quantitative evidence of this yet, but I hope to soon one way or the other. I can say that I've seen some highly suggestive evidence.

1. People who d/c for extended periods of time during trials seem to more likely claim to get a common reward.

2. My blaster, in 20 completed trials, got only one common table. If the system was weighted towards common actually being more common than uncommon, this would be an *incredibly* astronomical run of good or bad luck, depending on your point of view.

3. Every short trial I've run has netted me a rare or very rare so far.

I'm going to look more deeply at my logs to see if I can find stronger evidence than that, either tonight or tomorrow.

Up until tonight, my scrapper found 2 very rares total while my dominator found none. Tonight when I ran a couple of BAF trials with the dom, I did something a little different from my previous runs during the last stage. I got a very rare each time. I switched leagues between runs, so I didn't go with the same bunch of people twice. At the time I thought I was the luckiest bugger in the game, but in light of this thread I'm wondering about that. I'll have to see if I can replicate my good fortune tomorrow.

This thread makes me see patterns that probably aren't there. I think I'll burn an offering to the RNGs before my next run.

Adding my anecdotes to the fray:

I have two characters that I'm running Incarnate stuff on for now - a Fire/Fire/Fire Dominator, and a Fire/EM/Fire Blaster. The two characters are different ATs, yet they tend to play pretty much the same. Both are AoE heavy characters. The Blaster's burst AoE is significantly higher, but the Dom is able to sustain it at a high rate forever thanks to more AoE powers and a much higher recharge.

Anyway, I try to get on two or three trials a night, sometimes more if I'm on a good team farming BAFs. Just want to strike while the iron's hot, because I am in a weird timezone and anticipate greater difficulty getting on a league to run these once most of the community gets their shinies.

My Blaster has had amazing luck with these. Rares almost every run, to the point where I have all of the rare salvage I need for the character's build - one T4 slot, the rest T3, so 5 total. I just melt down all the rares I've gotten since for the threads. Even got a lucky Very Rare salvage drop on a Lambda she was on, which is the only reason I decided to shoot for T4 on her Judgment in the first place - the only thing holding me back from a full kit at this point is accumulating the necessary commons and unlocking my last slot. I expect I'll get there in a few more days, and then I'll finally be able to chill out on these.

My Dom is a different story. So far, all of her drops have been 10-threads, Common, or Uncommon. Mostly Uncommon. She's got two slots unlocked at this point, uncommons in both, and she's got threads up to her eyeballs. Again, I'm going to stick to T3s unless I get a lucky drop. So far, no dice. I feel spoiled by my Blaster.

(Both of these characters have done roughly the same number of runs - around 12-15 of them, at a guess. Maybe the Blaster's done around 20.)

Anyway, I know that the plural of 'Anecdote' is not 'Data,' but damn if it doesn't make my tin foil hat itch.

Maybe the Devs hate villains?

I posted this info elswhere, but I will post it here since this thread pertains to this directly...

Every since issue 20, I noticed a wierd trend od reward tables, no matter what I did I got the same thing each and every days. So today I figured I would record my drops...

9 BAF - 9 Uncommons

7 Lambda - 7 Uncommons

Yeah, it looks random to me

For a test .....

I ran a Lambda with my SG, they sat and watched me defeat all the mobs on the outside street and inner court yard of the Lambda Trial, they participated inside the Training Facility and Munitions Warehouse, and of course defeating the AV, I got still got a damn uncommon drop.

Yet, I did most of the work, while they sat and watch. So it would be nice to have a red name comment on this, because I'm sick of getting uncommon drops, when I need commons more than anything. I'm starting to think the uncommons are actually our common drops in hopes that will will spend the god aweful time and keep running these trials for months on end on a single character rather then running multiple characters, or they want us to spend our inf to do the conversions.

Um, if you've worked out which uncommons you need - and by my reckoning, that should be no more than...8? - can you not just break down any spares into threads to create commons?

(I guess, if you're crazy lucky and get 4 Very Rares early on, that you could similarly break down any subsequent ones and charge ahead making 70+ threads at a throw)

A question: what would happen if a person were to do nothing but attack with Brawl (I can have a perma-Brawl chain on my dom) and spam PBAoE attacks during down time (waiting for spawns, waiting for AVs to be pulled during BAF)? 10 Threads? Common? Uncommon? Better?

My own anecdotal experience:

I'm doing Incarnate stuff on an Earth/Fire dominator who's deep into perma territory. During clearing phases, I hit the enemies with Stalagmites, then AoEs. I use my AoE control patches against the adds on BAF and to slow down the pursuing enemies inside Lambda. In Lambda, I usually use every single power I have except for Stone Prison (which I like to feel is pretty good design) pretty commonly. Between the two trials, I've done probably about 20 runs, with a slight majority of them being BAFs. I've gotten 6 Rares, the rest Uncommons. I didn't even know it was possible to get a Common in the reward table until I heard people talking about it, and likewise, I've never seen a Very Rare.

I do have to say that rewards are based on participation is a joke. I lead at least 10 trials per day and am never inactive and am always killing something, yet I have still only gotten 1 rare pool the rest were uncommon.

I've seen all options.

Some raids I've felt useless and got a rare, others I've felt like I led from the front and got threads.

I've not kept a record of it but it does feel random to me.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk