Incarnate Rewards

Hello everyone,

As I mentioned in my previous post, we have been looking at your feedback and our own internal data and coming up with some improvements for a few aspects of the Incarnate System. I'd like to thank you for patiently waiting while we sort out the details, some of which I go into below. Before that, let’s address some general concerns that have come up, particularly in relation to the reward system.

• All throughout beta and since Issue 20 went live, we’ve been tracking data on the reward system. After evaluating the data since the launch of Issue 20 we’ve found that players are being rewarded with the Uncommon table more frequently than we anticipated. An adjustment for this that improves the availability and frequency of Common, Rare and Very Rare salvage will be included in an upcoming patch.
• The participation system's primary function is to qualify players for the component reward tables.
• Once a player qualifies for a component reward, the final block of choices presented to the player are rolled randomly. If you qualified for a component reward, you reached the level of participation for yourself and your league needed to have a chance at any component type.
  • We will continue to monitor the data from the trials, and if we find instances where this is not the case, we will correct them to ensure that this is the case.
  • It has never been possible to guarantee that you will receive a Very Rare. Once the participation system has done a handoff to the random table, it no longer has any effect on your reward. While reports of multiple Very Rares are not unexpected, these occurrences are evidence of consistent league success combined with a large amount of good luck.
• The 10 Thread table is present to make sure that everyone receives something for their efforts in completing the trial, regardless of whether they had to leave their computer temporarily, suffered numerous disconnections or any of another host of circumstances that could happen when content is out in the wild.
  • We are aware that this also awards the door-sitters, which leads to the perception that this is a consolation prize.
  • We are also aware that this is a point of consternation, because it is possible to get this table through acts of nature or acts of league beyond your control.
  • The second item above is exactly why we felt it was better to offer some minimum tangible reward (which is the equivalent of half a Common component) to everyone for their efforts, even if they are affected by events beyond their control, rather than reward nothing.
• You are cooperating together against the challenges of the Trial. Rewards earned by you at the end of the trial have no bearing on what rewards other players can potentially receive. This is not a case of “there are only so many Very Rares to go around.” There’s no group loot table: everyone is rewarded independently and has the potential to qualify individually for a Very Rare. If your league does well, and you are a factor in that success, this will only increase your opportunity to earn a Very Rare component. You are not in competition with other players.
• To illustrate this in a different way: team and league contributions for completion of goals found in the trials are an extremely important part of your overall individual participation score.
  • When your league is successful, you are successful, and your efforts at achieving goals help everyone else in the league. A rising tide lifts all boats.
  • This aspect of the system is why people can sometimes seem to be rewarded for aberrant behavior. Your league has succeeded in meeting the goals of the trial, and their success carries over to you.
• Earning a decent individual participation score does not require an immense amount of effort, but it does require consistent effort. This is specifically because we are aware of the limited nature of some power sets in regards what they can throw at the enemies encountered.
  • We know that leading one of these trials can take significant effort on the leader’s part, which is why our threshold for participation takes that into account.
  • We also actively monitor the data from the trials to assess whether the thresholds are achieving what we hoped. We have made adjustments in the past, and will continue to do so as necessary.
• Four things that definitely do not affect your level of participation:
  • Tagging targets
  • Healing points or damage points
  • Interrupting powers mid-cast
  • Cycling powers on and off
• Any success that may have been achieved while performing actions which do not affect your level of participation listed above is, as noted, due to the success of your league and random chance.

• We will be adding free downwards conversions of higher rarity Incarnate Components to your choice of a lower tier, as well as sidegrade conversions of Incarnate Components to your choice of another component in the same rarity tier for the additional cost of some Incarnate Threads. This will be coming in a near-future patch.
• In terms of breaking down higher tier components into more threads than they currently do, the preference is to leave those costs alone. The breakdown to threads should be the most expensive proposition, because they have the most significant utility. In lieu of this, we have added the downward and sidegrade conversions.
• On the subject of balancing Lambda Sector's rewards with the mutually exclusive nature of the badge challenges, we will increase by 1 the number of merits awarded by the badges which ask that you completely ignore one side of the interior. Defeating Marauder will award 2 Merits, replacing the one awarded for "all 20 powers", to ensure that no successful badge run results in fewer merits than any other.
  • The extra Merit is being added to Marauder in order to help Lambda Sector behave more like the BAF, which has no “missable” merits of any kind. Adding the extra merit to Marauder takes us further in that direction, without placing too much weight on the badges. Not every Lambda run should need to be a badge run.
  • However, due to the unique nature of the challenges in Lambda Sector and its length, we will not be increasing the per run potential for Merits at this time. If you would like to make a suggestion on ways to improve the Merit income from Lambda without watering down the challenges, please PM me.
• In regards to "what other ways we'll earn threads in the future," yes, new Incarnate Trials are a part of that. They are not the only part, but anything else is in such early stages of development that it would be one promise too far. I will, however, say that we do have some things in mind like Incarnate Story Arcs and Repeatable Missions.
• I also wanted to add a quick reminder: Astral and Empyrean Merits will in the coming months be able to be used to acquire other rewards. To that end, these changes are partially intended to place less pressure on you to use Merits to fill in the gaps for your Incarnate components.

Thanks for the great post. I will continue to monitor, but I must take issue with the contention that once you pass the participation threshold, rewards are random. If that is the case, then the chance of receiving a rare or higher reward must be much larger than we guessed.

I can tell you that hitting a lot of stuff, tends to correlate very well for me in earning a rare reward. I haven't kept logs, but I will going forward. I don't doubt what you are saying is what is intended, I just question whether it's actually working out that way.

EDIT: I would recommend that you put these points into a MOTD pop-up sooner rather than later. Aberrant behavior has taken hold with respect to the trials and folks need to know this isn't the way to succeed.

Okay, now that I'm not trying and failing at FPARN...

Thanks, Baryonyx. While it will take some time for players to be convinced of this, this is in fact exactly how a participation metric for these things _ought_ to be designed, and I deeply appreciate you informing us that it is in fact working this way.

With that, I can now get back to playing - and enjoying - the content, and pointing people who are being idiots in trials at this thread.

Interesting.


-C.A.

Hmmn. So all the folks so frustrated at getting a paucity of rares and very rares have just been getting hosed by the RNG. Thanks for the information, at the very least this should put to rest some of the wild rumors and nutty behavior that have been becoming commonplace.

Sounds fair enough. For now.

Maybe I'm slow but I'm not sure I understand.

Is the message here that you either qualify for a component reward or you don't and, if you do, then you have the same chances at a Common-V. Rare as everyone else who qualified?

Thank-you for your response and time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baryonyx Statement #1: After evaluating the data since the launch of Issue 20 we’ve found that players are being rewarded with the Uncommon table more frequently than we anticipated. Statement #2: Once a player qualifies for a component reward, the final block of choices presented to the player are rolled randomly.

Q1: If #2 is true and is the case, then how could #1 be possible?

Q2: Is this the same algorithm for Praetorian Events?

So, based on this, my quick summary:

1. The system cannot be gamed by a single player to get higher rewards beyond the 10 thread table for themselves. The choice between common, uncommon, rare, and very rare is completely random per player.

2. The system is not zero-sum in the sense that there is only a certain number of high value rewards that can be earned, and players are competing for them. Each player rolls randomly, and there are no limits on what is awarded across a team or league.

3. The system is based on thresholds, not relative performance. You're only in competition with the system and the minimum effort it asks you do to, you're not in competition with other players.

4. Tagging and other personal odd behavior has no effect, except to elevate you out of the 10 thread table, which most other activity would do.

5. Uncommon was weighted to heavily, which is why so many players were getting it.

6. People claiming to get constant very rares were either incredibly lucky, or lying.

7. The participation algorithm seems to not count direct damage, healing points, or toggle activations specifically.

8. The devs *hint* that the participation algorithm is time-weighted (I was suspecting that, even told another player that last night). Meaning it wants you to be active in some way for a majority of the trial. A huge burst of effort at the beginning followed by door sitting at the end, no matter how much effort you put in at the beginning, might generate poor resulots.

9. Trials that accomplish more things (its unclear precisely what things, but its likely it involves things like the badge-worthy tasks) increase the likelyhood of every member in the team getting a higher reward individually. This means every single person that let a prisoner escape in a mad attempt to tag as many of them as possible was almost certainly reducing the entire league's chances of getting a better reward, including themselves.

With Finals and everything else going on, I'm gonna acknowledge that I am reading this. Once I digest it a bit and see how it reflects upon my experiences in trial rewards so far, I may comment further.

Baryonyx,

Could I get clarification on one point? I may be reading something into part of your post that is not correct.

You said:

I've never hit the "10 thread" drop, so I guess I'm passing the participation limit each time. Good to know that once you hit that limit, everything else is random, rather than tilting you towards or away from a rare. Thanks for the clarification.

Downgrades and sidegrades sound good, especially if they're cheap or free -- something to do with all these extra Uncommons I've been getting.

As for Astrals and Emps, sorry, but until I know WHAT future rewards we get for our Astrals, I'm threading them. I need threads for components more than I need Astrals. If they're just going to get us new costume pieces or auras, pass. If it's a way to buy purple IOs, that's considerably more important, but they're easy enough to get and right now, this is a more demanding use for them. Perhaps if we could get a hint at what they're good for, there'd be more cause for hoarding? (Hoarding shards sure didn't help us.)

I LOVE the idea of Incarnate Story Arcs and Repeatable Missions. We need more Incarnate content that's soloable or capable of being run with a single team -- things SGs and friends can do, without needing to dogpile in on a 24 man league. "Solo up some shards and convert them to threads" is plausible only in the way walking on foot from Los Angeles to New York is plausible.

Nice to know this is all being looked at and addressed thanks. Now, can we please have the tanker taunt sound back? The presence pool one just is not as cool.

This does nothing to address what many of us feel is an extremely unfair cost inf cost for the rare and very rare rewards.

I do hope that what you have explained will alter some of the idiotic behavior many of have seen in the past few days.

What about the paltry 2 thread reward of the Tin Mage/Apex TF's, that works out as 1/10 a common component rather than the 1/2 it used to be when it was a shard reward?

Would any change be considered to at least let the breakdown threads for components be a round unit of 10, for the Uncommon, and so forth?

Will there be any clarifications or tweaks to the MoLambda requirements? I'm still having trouble getting my head round them.

Will you comment on the situation with Leagues and Physical/Psychic Incarnate experience?