Thoughts on making Incarnate Access more accessible to single teams.

The other thread seemed primarily about the 'Should/Shouldn't' argument rather than what steps should be taken to make Incarnate content more accessible to single-group teams.

First of all, I'm going to take for granted that the devs want to reward players for playing in the largest groups they can. Bearing that in mind,I have a few suggestions to tweak the current rates so that players who don't partake of the Lambda Sector and Behavoiral Adjustment Facility trials still have a reasonable way to progress.

First I suggest that the shard to thread conversion be tweaked. Rather than a straight 1-1 conversion, shards should trade 1-2. Add a five to ten conversion that can only take place once every 20 hours. The 10 to 10 conversion should be the 'often as you want' conversion.

It costs about 94 threads to completely unlock a slot and put a t1 enhancer in it. If a player completes both trials in one evening and meets all the objectives to get Astral Merits, and is willing to break up his Empyreans for threads, there's a good chance he can earn 94 threads worth in that time.

By comparison, a player who runs a taskforce (or equivalent) a night might see between 5-7 shard drop each time. It'd not be unreasonable to think he'd have five each day. If he converted 5 each day, then he'd be able to unlock the slot of his choice and put a t1 in it while depending solely on Shard drops after 9-10 days.

The second suggestion I have it to place Astral Merits and Empyrean Merits on the reward table for level 50 TFs at a 50% appearance rate as well as being subject to diminishing returns -- They should only be able to win 1 of each on existing level 50 TFs. Thus, if a player runs four 50 TFs a day, he'll have a pretty good shot for earning the equivalent of 24 threads, but only once a day. That'd shorten the time it takes to unlock and slot a t1 to about 3-4 days.

The last and most important suggestion is a design suggest for future incarnate trial content.

Attempt to include in the mix of content released at least one trial for which the max number of players is 8. Additionally work on changes to existing content so that if you enter them with fewer members, the encounter's mechanics also scale. Say if you only have 8 league members, there will only be five active doors in Lambda facility.


I am certain that others have better ideas than I do, and I'd like to hear them.

Also, please use this thread to discuss the 'how' rather than the 'Why' or 'Should/Should Not' issues.

And moderators, please feel free to merge the two if necessary.

Certain parts of the Trials do scale down to the minimum and up to the maximum player count and Lambda can already be run with only 8 players.

I'd like to see Threads drop from all 45+ TFs/SFs. Not at the Trial rate mind you, but if you got say 3-5 or more Threads for doing a ITF or a RSF, that would go a long way towards opening up the Incarnate abilities for more players. Seriously, if Tin Mage and Apex award 2 threads at the end, why can;t they award them all the way through?

I like the idea of Astral/Emphyral Merits being added to a reward table at the end, the worry is it would create farming even with a timer limit.

Have AVs and GMs drop threads for any player with a slot open.

Lose shards entirely and have threads drop instead. Make Alpha junk cost threads now. Still allow conversion of old shards.

In wow as the devs wanted the endgame to progress they had to help push the slow earners to make it so they could experience the end game content.

It went like this:
Round 1: Raids for the hardcore. non hardcore could grind heroics to gear up.
(for us we have i19.5 alpha for non hardcore, and i20 for hardcore) You can do BAF and Lamb with unalphaed+ 50s right now, but its pretty hard.
Round 2: Raids from round 1 are too easy for the hardcore. New level of raids added for hardcore. New currency converstions added for non hardcore to assist in gearing up.
(maybe a i21 that makes a new 10 hour shard to thread conversion of 4 shards to 20 threads? so you can buy commons at the same rate)

There has also been a very intersting idea to add an incarnate mode to all of the current level 45+ TFs. The idea is:
- all mobs spawn level 54
- no temp powers
- threads drop instead of shards from mobs
- random common i20 salvage instead of i19.5 specific salvage
- ixp is earned for alpha/judge/reactive in that order but at a reduced rate relative to trials.

Alpha already does use threads.

Honestly, I think the devs should just just close their eyes, ignore the consequences to their precious intentions, and make reward merits convertible into astral merits (20 to 1).

Also, allow Astral merits to be convertible into either a single shard or 4 threads.

I posted this in one of the other solo/teamed argument threads but it kinda got lost in the whole argument so I figure I'll repost. It's talking about the solo path more than small team path but most of the comments would apply to both.

My opinion, once you have any Incarnate power slotted you should earn iXP, in whatever you are doing. You're 50, you don't get XP anymore and you're an Incarnate so you should be getting iXP.

Shards should be replaced by Threads or vice versa, either way one of them should go.

As far as Astral/Empyrean merits go, I'm fine with them staying in the Incarnate trails only.

*Grabs more popcorn*

I am not opposed to F2P....

The problem with having a thread on "how" is that it assumes that the question of "why" is already settled.

Wanna play pure solo? Try Champions Online. It is languishing in solo-land now. I stopped playing that to come back here.