Post about Incarnate Rewards is coming

I realize that correlation is not causation and that I haven't done a statistically significant number of tests or used any consistent testing methodology.

However, anecdotally. My night widow almost always gets the uncommon table. She has exactly 4 times gotten the very rare table, and exactly 11 gotten the rare table. Otherwise, she has almost always gotten the uncommon table. In fact for the first 3 days the trials were out, despite running them several hours a day, I didn't even know that the 'threads table' and the 'commons table' were different things. I'd never seen either.

When I do get commons or threads, it has always been when I was leading and providing instructions and direction to the team. I have never gotten above an uncommon while leading and directing my team. It may be that because widows are a very high-speed attacking AT, my frequent attack use when I'm not typing much provides very high 'participation' and my less frequent attacking when chatting doesn't. Maybe 'participation' is graded by ATs, or by powersets. But then that'd punish people with fast animating powers for leading or talking, and not people with slow animating powers. Which is unfair. But then, people with slow animating powers don't get to attack as often even if they want to. So that's another type of unfair.

Most issues and concepts I can see going into the participation system are similar - no matter how you 'grade' it or judge it, it's going to have bias, and it's going to blindly follow that bias because it's an algorithm, not a human being. That bias is going to be projected onto the devs, in turn, because it's representing their ideas to us, the players. The devs, via this game mechanic, are judging our behavior and performance in the trials and giving us a grade at the end. A for very-rare, B for rare, C for uncommon, D for common, and F for threads.

People who are getting D's and F's are, in my experience, increasingly deciding to drop out of 'how the devs think they should play school.'

The bottom line to me is that the system simply by existing has a very strong appearance of being unfair and judgemental, and ought to be scrapped. However complicated it's made, it'll never be more fair and balanced than rewarding people for completion with a random reward table selection, and rewarding people for skilled completion with 'more things to buy with astral merits that you get extra of for achieving badge goals.'

Double-edit: Let the players police themselves for leechers. Under a random + astrals rewarding scheme the only way to leech is to obviously sandbag by door-sitting, laying dead, staying in the hospital, and so on. This is much easier to spot in play than 'participation gaming' which has to be done actively, but via activities that either contribute only tangentially to team success, or run counter to team success (generally the latter, such as allowing prisoner escapes, or simply being play that puts other teammates at risk).

Also, I've habitually run the BAF as a master trial for several days. I saw no correlation with master BAF success and improved rewards. I almost always got uncommons still, and when I was leading I would sometimes get commons or threads.

I'm really hoping we get clearer guildlines about what equals particpation. It shouldn't be a guessing game.

I'ld really like to know if mezzing counts towards it

Another issue is the powers in tanks for example.

You have to "tag" enemies with damage to constitute participation. So, my Invuln tank with no damage in my aggro aura will be out done by fire tanks/scraps/brutes just standing next to the enemies. Yes I have foot stomp but its not a toggle that fires off ticks of damage constantly. There are other comparisons here too like willpower vs. spines and dark/kins vs emps and paindoms, not to mention MM in general.
Also, if it counts powers being activated constantly I have rage triple stacked without speed boost so does rage not count as a participating power like other non-damage powers?

Huh. I am quite taken aback by your information, Arcanaville. Statistics done as carefully as you do them do not lie. I guess I can see how some of the things you say that you HAVE observed as having an effect could help produce the results I've personally seen. I am just surprised that over the 100+ runs I've now made, the majority on one character, that the random element has not evened out at least somewhat. Hopefully we will know more later today.

The reward system should scale upwards depending on what tiers you have unlocked. If you have already built a tier 2 slot of any type thmen the chance for rare shoulkd go up for you so that you can actually progress. The same goes for tier 3 once you arrive there your chance to get a very rare drop should scale up as well.

I dont know if that can actually be done.. but I think its the way I would approach it..

The cost to make just a rare is ridiculous.. 199 MILLION influence.. 100 threads AND a bunch of salvage... ridiculous.. and I have a lot of influence and I STILL that that is outlandish.. 25 million and maybe 60 threads would have been more reasonable for a rare IMO..

I've done quite a number of BAF runs the last few days. All Mo (or attempts at). I have only ever gotten Uncommons. I might have gotten something when I got the Mo badge, if so I didn't see it.
The end reward table has always, for me, been an uncommon. I've been running a DM/Regen Scrapper. I have tier 4 alpha, and nothing else unlocked (still at 88%).
I do what all scrapper do. I go where I am supposed to and punch the crap out of things. Apparently I've not been punching enough to count as participating.
On a side note. My judgement slot. The first time I was in a BAF I got to 68%. Everytime sense I've gotten 4 - 5%. I've no idea what caused the difference. My guess is the first time I had a Fire/Fire Blaster on my team. I am guessing he had a lot of AOEs, and was doing tons of AOE damage. But as Arcana points out, I have no logs, and am only guessing.