Post Issue 20 Incarnate Q&A

Hi everyone,

By now, many of you are well versed in the new Incarnate Trial content and have successfully completed both the BAF and the Lambda Sector multiple times. You have answered the challenge of Emperor Cole and it is great to see so many players well on their way to greater levels of Incarnate power.

Since Issue 20’s launch, we’ve been following your posts on the forums and taking note of not only your feedback, but also of questions being asked about the Trials. I would like to take a few moments of your time to answer some of those burning questions:

Badges
There have been a few questions about the Well-Stocked, Antacid and Lambda Looter badges and how they are acquired. The hints for these particular badges don't go far enough in explaining the details. There’s additional confusion due to a bug where one of the badges is improperly awarding the other two. Both of these issues will be rectified soon, but until then here's a quick guide on how these badges are intended to work so you can be prepared when the bug is fixed:

• If your league is working on the Antacid or Well-Stocked badges, the objectives are:
  • The league gathers all 10 of one type of power without acquiring any of the other. The league can enter the other area, but cannot actually destroy any of the power-granting targets there.
  • After the Sabotage phase, the league does not use any of the gathered powers.
  • Also, during the final battle, the league does not make use of the Shipments to acquire any powers.
  • More succinctly: the league gathers all the powers in one area only within 5 minutes and then completes the event without using any of the gathered powers.

• If your league is working on the Lambda Looter Badge, the objectives are:
  • The league gathers all powers during the Sabotage phase (all 10 Acids and all 10 Grenades).
  • After the Sabotage phase, the league does not use any of the gathered powers.
  • Also, during the final battle, the league does not make use of the Shipments to acquire any powers.
  • More succinctly: the league gathers all the powers in one area within 15 minutes and then completes the event without using any of the gathered powers.

• If the league gathers one of both powers, the intention is that your league can only attempt the Lambda Looter badge. The Antacid and Well-Stocked badges are actually the harder pair of the three, since both have the same basic requirements of Lambda Looter, but also feature an additional time pressure of gathering 10 powers in one area within 5 minutes.

• Incarnate Threads can be earned via the Tin Mage Task Force and the Apex Task Force, each rewarding 2 Incarnate Threads each for completion.
• Further, Incarnate Shards can used as part of a recipe to craft Incarnate Threads, though this has some additional costs associated and is not meant to be the primary means of acquiring threads.
• Additionally, future issues will include additional methods of obtaining Incarnate Threads.

• Alpha Slot: 1,000,000
• Judgement & Interface Slots: 1,500,000
• Lore and Destiny Slots: 2,250,000

• When you’re queued, you cannot enter any instanced maps. This includes Mission maps and SG/VG Bases. If you do enter such a map, you will be removed from the queue.
• Conversely, you cannot queue using the Team Up Teleporter while on an instanced map.
• If you’re in a cross-faction team or league and you move into a setting or map which makes you ineligible to remain on that team, you will be removed from the queue. The best zones for assembling such a league are the co-op zones, like Pocket D and Rikti War Zone.
• Also, please keep in mind that there is a lot of information displayed in the tooltips of the League window and UI. If you have disabled your tooltips, try activating them and reading through the help provided in those windows.

• As Second Measure previously said, the system rewards participation.
• The Trials are a group effort, so working together to complete the objectives of the event will provide a more rewarding experience for all members of the league.
• While there is an element of randomness, the system is not completely random.
• Don’t forget that higher tier rewards can be broken down into lower tier components.
• We are actively monitoring the reward system to ensure it continues to reward players for their participation as fairly and equitably as possible.
• When a part of our community shows concern, such as Masterminds have, we will investigate the rewards and make tweaks as needed. In fact, you can expect to see some changes from the first round of metrics and feedback in an upcoming patch.

FPAARN

Thanks for the post.

Has there been any thought to retooling some content with added incarnate thread rewards. Also, could it perhaps be made possible to choose incarnate salvage instead of the 40 merits from TM or Apex?

Also, I am concerned that the players will never be satisfied with a system that rewards participation. There are too many factors for this be fully digested. How do you feel about players changing their play-style (perhaps in a way detrimental to the team) in an attempt to get the best reward?

Finally, you mentioned that we can breakdown larger rewards. Despite this, I would be better off getting the common or 10 thread reward table than getting another uncommon. Is there any way the breakdown tables could be improved. I would like to be able to breakdown an uncommon into a common, or a common into 10 threads. I don't like feeling penalized for landing in a higher reward bracket.

Thanks again for in the information. I would appreciate additional communication about specific concerns however.

the post is nice, however there are a lot of things that dont seem right to me

the antacid and well stocked badges dont seem to have a point if you cant use the one that you are not collecting, as it is, it makes more sense that all 3 badges award at the same time

essentially im saying that well stocked and antacid should allow use of the temp power that you are not collecting, but said temp can only be gotten from the courtyard (IE, if you go for antacid badge you must get all 10 acids and 0-9 pacifications from that phase, but it should not stop you from getting the badge if you use pacifications from the courtyard or even from the warehouse since they have absolutely nothing to do with the details of the antacid badge)


another point, the rewards based on participation is just awful, completely random rewards would be much better and more fair to everyone, and there are about half a dozen threads about this around the forum already

the reward tables would be better if it gave you 1 pick of common, uncommon, rare, very rare or inspirations. the choices you have to pick would be random (like it wouldnt show ALL of the commons, it would give you 1 random common as an option on the table)


the inf costs are prohibitively expensive, the conversion cost should not exist and/or we should be able to have the option to create incarnate powers with shards OR threads, because as the current system stands, the shards are literally pointless after you get the alpha boost you want and are a waste of space if you dont even have 10 to convert. threads should be the only things to give xp, but make the conversion cost free but leave them as they are with the time limited and non time limited ones


my experience with the LFG tool is that it does not work very well, the avg wait times are extremely inaccurate due to all the preformed leagues. also NOT being able to do instanced anything is extremely prohibitive, waiting for the queue to pick up anything can take between 15 and 75 minutes, and i dont think anyone wants to street sweep for more than a few minutes


the interface incarnate power is VERY underpowered, the minimal buffs it does are too resisted by high lvl foes such as AVs and GMs to really do anything significant and lower foes such as minion and LT class baddies, they get the full effect, but are so weak anyway they die to fast for the effect to really matter, either the stack limit needs to be increased significantly or allow the stacking from outside sources, otherwise i really do like this ability


i love the lore incarnate slot because of more pets, but the slot doesnt feel very good to me because of the enormous downtime on the pets, the 15 min rech is way too much, when other stuff such as destiny can perma or at least be perma half of the time from tier 1. the lore pets should either overall get shorter rech, or get increased duration on higher tiers


overall i am throughly enjoying the new content and powers, the things i mentioned above are what i would consider the biggest problems with the new content

Just thanking everyone in advance for keeping this conversation civil and on topic. Please keep in mind that we're going into the weekend, so there probably won't be many responses to questions until sometime next week.

Thanks!

- Z

I have five things to say:

First, this post is fantastic, and exactly what we've felt has been missing for a while. It answers a lot of questions we've had, in a detail that we were accustomed to when Castle and Back Alley Brawler were around and posting on the forums (doesn't mean I don't miss them anyway, but the point is that it's appreciated).

Second, I don't like the fact that we have 3 different badges for beating Marauder without using any temps. When I believed that there was a badge for doing it once without using one kind of temps, again without another, and then a third time without either, I thought that was interesting and challenging. I think 3 times without using either is annoying and repetitive. Getting all 10 of one kind of temp power in 5 minutes really isn't that hard when you have both teams in one area, so I don't see that as much of a challenge.

Third, I'm thrilled to hear that there will be more ways to get threads in the future.

Fourth, I'm glad to hear that you are going to make adjustments to the participation system. Masterminds don't perform well in these trials due to their design (-1 and -2 pets with low HPs facing +4s and deadly AoE attacks), and having them get a lower chance (or no chance at all, if it's set up that way) for the rare and very rare rewards to boot is not cool.

Fifth, I'd like to say that I feel there is something wrong with either the breakdown values of Uncommons and higher, or the reward tables. To make 4 Very Rares, you only need 8 Uncommons, but 64 commons. To make 4 Rares you only need 4 Uncommons, but 28 Commons. As a result, once you get the few Uncommons you need, Uncommons are worse than the lowest, 10 thread option, as Uncommons only break down into 8-10 threads. Please consider either raising the Uncommon breakdown to 20 or give people the option of taking a Common (or maybe just 20 Threads to simplify the window) instead of an Uncommon. It actually has made me consider holding back on trials and contributing less to get more value out of my rewards. The only reason I haven't is because I don't want to do that to my teammates. I don't think I deserve a reward I value less in return for greater effort.

Thank you so much for this post.

So, what of the reports of numerous Lambda teams getting all the temp power badges in a single run?