My friend is quitting soon...

I think it was Positron who gave the number I quoted, but it miiiiiiiiight have been BAB...

I had a supergroup (villain group, really) do that as well. Had absolutely nothing to do with ED. Had to do with SG politics, going from a nice, social group to "My word is GOD, you WILL do this!" And a lot of people there turned atheist, and formed or joined other groups (including me.)

And yes, States looked at subs- he had the numbers TO look at. And if you look at it historically - since we have a few *years* worth of numbers - overall, he was right. We had a spike as people tried out the "new" game, and then it went to about the same population and stayed reasonably steady, with only a slow bleed of subs and a yearly cycle of population.

Also, we've seen a fair number of those people (no, I don't have exact numbers) come back - it's not unusual to hear "I played this game before, been away a few years, what's new?"

Tanstaafl makes another point, too - it's hard to see immediate impact on sub numbers, good or bad, with people who have multi-month subs. For instance, if I said right now "I quit, I'm not coming back," my two accounts wouldn't show as inactive for a few months yet. We'd have to see - looking at ED:
- Total subs, for the overall number.
- Existing subscriptions and their server access.
- New subs.
- Subs not renewed - and we couldn't attribute this solely to ED, either, as people leave for other reasons.

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Unless you know the person in question, you have no basis to say this at all. You're making an assumption.

I've made the statement myself that I'm going to sit back and see what happens, see if this is indicated as the overall direction of the game from here on out and if it fractures the game - and if so, yes, I will leave. No other reasons needed. But I'm giving it time. (Not least because the rather negative lower-level impact it's having needs to even out. When I do a server search and see one person from 1-10, zero from 11-20, 2-3 people from 20-30 and 30-40, a fair number in the 40s and everyone else on their 50s in missions, Pocket D and/or RWZ... that needs to even out some, and hopefully will when the new-shiny-ness wears off.)

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I'm more worried about how things are going to be when the newness wears off. Right now, I expect to spend a minimum of 20 minutes forming a BAF, so I can't imagine how it's going to be when I need to run 6-8 of them in 6 months with a new level 50 when most people are doing something else entirely.

Well said. I love the 1st part, and 2nd, and 3rd.

I say screw your friend can't stand people that wont pug. I say good riddance. Game is a better place without people like that.

Love the 2nd part too. You dont even have to ******* finish either of the trials to get a good chunk of stuff. I think i had gotten tier 2 interface and 50% into destiny before i finished a lambda. Havent failed the BAF to often though, but if you get stuck with a bad team its hopeless.

Yeah that's why I've been telling people that "give it more time!" because we really only start with two trials and obviously they will seem very repetitive after a while. It's just like when they first introduced SFs. I didn't play this game since beta but I know they've added a lot more SFs later on so people don't feel like they need to repeat the same SFs over and over again for drops.

I can see the concern for having way too many people playing high level toons and not enough in lower levels but I think that's because most people are excited about the new content. Much like when Going Rogue came out, a lot of people made new toons for Praetoria and new powersets. There are a lot less people in Praetoria now. I would log on to the 3rd zone and there's only like 1-2 players.


Probably the best addition to overall "team gaming" is Weekly Strike Target IMO. We do Weekly all the time to get double merits and every week is a different SF so we don't get too bored with the same one. And it's quite easy to find a SF team for the specific target. Before we would log on and debate which SF to do for 30mins but now we know which one to do because we can get Well and double bonus in the end!

I actually do enjoy i20 (and mainly because getting new powers is always exciting for me). I just want to know if they will introduce more ways to get them "easier" than doing the trials. Just by converting Shards to Threads is going to take forever.

How about if you do a +4 Master run on lvl 50 SFs like LRSF, Lady Grey and Barracuda you can choose a Common/Uncommon salvage for Incarnate? That way people can get Shards and some Threads/salvages.

Again it must be said, the worst part about I20 is that people like this seem to be around more and seem more willing to make their bad attitudes publicly known.

You need better friends, nuff said. Seriously the whole point of a game like this is to interact with one another, to be apart of something bigger than yourself. Besides after you do the trial long enough you will have played with most of the active lvl 50s on your server. So technically speaking since you know them it wouldnt be a pug now would it?

Well thats mostly an issue due to the horrid queue system we have thats not good at making the trial work nicely. The thing is as a player you should be using the star ranking system on the add note feature that lets you know how to avoid or look out for but on a global level.

Did an ITF last weekend with a bunch of Incarnates. Had some interesting effects.

Normally, I'm the weakest as the buffer, so I die a lot chasing everyone else I make Invincible.

This time, I did not auto-die, but we all seemed far more reckless and giddy. We'd wipe out a pack, laugh about it.........

.....then another pack would hit us when our Judgements were down. :P And we'd actually have to pay attention again.

I've done ITF many times, and I'm used to a certain routine about it. We spanked Romulus like he was a *****, but the adds kept on almost killing us. We just weren't being careful as much.

The people I know who have the awesome builds are still the badasses who can take it. Plain Incarnates have just enough extra to get in trouble.

I did much better soloing. I've been running my Force field/rad blast at lowest difficulties forever. I'm currently trying to solo Sirocco's arc (Yes, my final test will be Lord Recluse). Beating Sirocco as an Elite Boss was so easy, it was shocking.

I raised my diff +2 and to fight regular bosses. It was doable, but I had to actually start using my old tactics. Incarnate powers have made a huge difference there, but I wouldn't call it bad.

On the other hand, last night I dreamed about nothing but trial farming. Over and over and over again. D: And I still don't have a Tier 4!

Now if they'd make their globals known, we could just add them to /gignore. Certainly not people I'd want to team with with attitudes like that.

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... I really can't think of anything useful to say about this. I mean... really? You honestly think the best way to keep this game going is to drive out anyone who doesn't play it *exactly* the way you do? Because that's the *best* spin I can put on this.

To be honest, comments like this are pretty much exactly what I expected to see from "end game" content. It's *exactly* the kind of attitude that permeates "That Other Game." IE, if you're not going to make raiding your primary job, then feel free to set fire to your computer and quit the game, you nOOb LOLsolo loser.

And I'm already seeing the kind of problems in-game that I expected, as well. Trying to do the ITF, my level 50 character got kicked off a full team of level 50s, because *I didn't have any Incarnate slots.*

But whatever. My opinions on any of this are irrelevant at this point. I'm under no illusions that my input has any value whatsoever to the devs, to the players who like the trials, or probably to anyone else. Of the handful of people on my global friend list, all but two have quit, and both of them are too busy grinding to trials to even say hello.

Heh... maybe it's the Enriche, but I find myself agreeing with you more and more, Bill.

It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets

... Hit it ...

Well if nothing else you prove my point...a single patch isnt making you leave...as with all things there has to be more to make someone give up on something they toiled on and grew.

And you are right.....i too have noticed kind of a lack of ingame support for game elements for new players and new characters that could be the reason you dont see alot of the lower level players.

For me i see a fair number of them....i play on Guardian server alot...i dont know if the server is a reason or not but could be though.

I think there is some reasonable debate over the costs of higher incarnate powers, particularly rare and very rare. I don't think the costs of unlocking the slot and crafting a common power are all that high no matter how you attempt to do it. Even if you avoid the trials altogether it only takes about 30 threads to buy the iXP to unlock it, and that can be had for thirty threads. It takes three common components to make the common power, and even with zero drops that's 60 threads. 90 threads total. If you're even moderately patient, as in you can wait a week and two days, you can convert that from 90 shards.

I would expect 40 shards plus 5 NotW breakdowns plus 3 ITF runs to get you close to 80 shards. I can believe your friend ended up with 84 - 6 six short of crafting the common power - after the effort you mention. That leaves basically one WST to go to finish that power. Seven total task forces plus your original inventory to get the common judgment, going nowhere near the Incarnate content. Seven hours of his time maybe?

That's not a level of time that I believe is unreasonable, specifically for someone that doesn't want to team in large teams, doesn't want to raid, and in fact doesn't want to run the Incarnate content at all. But that's not my decision to make.


Then just run Lambda. Just running Lambda, even if you fail is going to allow your friend to slot up *all four slots* even faster than he's doing now. Suppose you run one single Lambda and you fail it, and suppose we ignore iXP altogether. Just earn, say, three threads from it and two astral merits in the attempt and you have the equivalent of 11 threads from that run. Three *failed* runs like that will unlock Judgment or Interface by converting threads to iXP.

Suppose you succeed *once*. You're likely to have at least four threads, at least three astral merits (probably more), and one empyrean merit. That equates to 36 threads from breakdown: enough to unlock either Judgment or Interface in one run, and get 80% of the way to unlocking Lore and Destiny. And that doesn't count the successful drop which could be as bad as just ten threads, but more likely will be a common or uncommon drop at least. Lets say you average getting 10 threads sometimes, and a common drop the other times: the two worst drop tables.

Suppose you run just two Lambdas a week with your friend, and you fail half the time. How long would it take to unlock all four slots and slot a common power in each? Well, every week you're going to get 57 threads from breakdowns and one common drop. Even at this low activity level, and even failing as often as half the time, and even getting nothing but the two worst case drops when you succeed, and even ignoring all the iXP from these runs and looking only at the drops, and even assuming your friend was starting from scratch with a different character, in week one he would have unlocked Judgment (30 threads) and got one common, converted one common (20 threads) and have seven threads left over. In week two, he would be slotting Judgment with his next common drop, unlocking Interface (30 threads) converting another common (20 threads) and have 14 threads left over. Week three: he'd be unlocking Destiny (44 threads), converting another common (20 threads) and with the drop and the left over from the previous week he'd be crafting and slotting Interface. Week four: he'd be unlocking Lore (44 threads), getting one common drop, converting one common drop, and be one common drop short of slotting Destiny. In week five, he would be slotting Destiny *and* slotting Lore.

That's ten Lambda tries in five weeks, with five successes and five failures, and one of the worst run of drops on the successful runs ever. This also doesn't count any earned iXP towards unlocking any of the slots, which would happen half the time when you run only Lambda. So I'm actually painting a very pessimistic picture: reality is likely to be a little better than this, at least.

Now, the question to pose to your friend is: given that pace of effort, which you could spread out over as much time as you want, is that too much effort to unlock four Incarnate slots and getting at least one common Incarnate power in each? If it is, I'm not sure I can be of any help beyond that. If that makes the situation less bleak, perhaps there's hope your friend can still play the game on his terms and still get some participation in the system. It may encourage him to participate more over time. If nothing else it buys you a month where he can at least earn that much.

The attitude that Im not going to miss the guy that refuses to play with me even though we have never met? He judges me by some bad teams that he has had before, and you want to put me on ignore? Really?

You're entitled to feel that way, just like all the people who felt the invention system turned this game into a crappy wow clone, and all the people who felt the mothership raids turned this game into a crappy wow clone, and all the people who felt that the LRSF turned this game into a crappy wow clone. I'll bet there were a few people who said that when WoW added their version of exemplar, it just turned WoW in to a crappy City of Heroes clone (a very, very, very few). Everyone's entitled to their perspective, but to me this sounds like someone saying that converting an F22 to run on biofuel turns it into just another crappy Geo Metro clone.

I've taken occasional breaks from the game myself. Perhaps you need one. If you don't like running something but you feel compelled to do so, that's probably the best time to step back for a while. If you like the game, you'll come back. I always do.

I have to agree here. They should have held this off until they had like 8 or so different trials to do that way we dont get burnt out so fast. Personally though I am getting ticked off about the random rewards of all of this. It should have never been implimented in the first place. We have gone down that road once before and it did not end well and the devs just ended up putting resources towards reward merits and A-merits. The you can save all your empryean merits for that purple salvage you need 30 trials is alot of time, especially since you only get 2 a day.