Holy Incarnate Costs, Batman!

EDIT: Yes, I know the title says "Incatnate". I have typo-itis. Sorry. "Incarnate". Fixed! :-) ~Moderator 13

So I've been working on Incarnating my Electric/Storm controller, whom I love dearly. She's got two of each third tier (except Lore, which I'm quite frankly ignoring completely) and I have been running trial after trial praying for a Very Rare table to drop with no luck (despite one of my scrappers getting it twice in the two trials I've done with her).

So I decided to look up how much it would, ultimately, cost me to make the Very Rares so I can finally get my Tier Fours slotted in Interface, Destiny, and Judgement. Mind, the ONLY salvage I still need for these three slots is a Forbidden Technique, a Thaumic Resonator, and a Living Relic. Everything else, I've either gotten off of the reward tables or managed to create using Threads.

To craft 3 Very Rare salvage pieces, you need four Rares for each one. To craft a Rare, you need four Uncommons.

So, for the first step (Uncommons to Rares) I'd need:

1,200,000,000 influence (that's 100,000,000 x 12)
12 Cytolic Infusions
12 Dimensional Pockets
12 Gluon Compounds
12 Worn Spellbooks

Then, for the second step (Rares to Very Rares) I'd need:

Another 1,200,000,000 influence (that's 400,000,000 x3)
3 Ancient Texts (crafted in the last step)
3 Exotic Isotopes (crafted in the last step)
3 Semi-Conscious Energys (crafted in the last step)
3 Superconductive Membranes (crafted in the last step)

So, either I need to run a grand total of 90 Incarnate Trials to get 90 Empyrean Merits to craft the Very Rares, or I need to shell out 2,400,000,000 influence and (again) spend a lot of time running Incarnate Trials. I hate to say it, but those trials get boring after a while. When you run them over and over and over again every day, eventually, you never want to see another War Walker ever again.

So what can we do to alleviate the irritation of people like me, who really don't want to spend all of their ingame time running trials in the hopes of getting a Rare or Very Rare drop and having one less piece of salvage to pay for crafting?

Here are a few ideas.

1.) Make the influence crafting costs a little lower. It shouldn't cost as much to make the Rare materials for the Very Rares as it costs to make the Very Rares themselves. That's a grand total of 2,400,000,000 influence-and if you're crafting for all four slots, the price jumps up to 3,200,000,000 influence. How many players really see that much inf pass through their hands and are willing to spend it all on one character? Obviously, I am, but I'm having to funnel all the influence my other characters make onto that character to do it.

2.) Make Astral Merits useful! So you're getting around 6-8 Astral merits per Trial run. You can break them down into Threads...and that's all. What if you could upgrade, say, 20 Astral merits into an Empyrean merit? That's at least 3 Trials worth of Astral merits, for one Empyrean merit. That would definitely make things go a little faster when it comes to working on the Very Rares!

3.) Increase the drop rate for Rares and Very Rares. I know it'll never happen, but I figured I'd add it to the bottom of the list anyhow. It's the long-shot idea.

Anyone else having a frustratingly difficult time getting all of your Tier Fours slotted on a character? Would you ever consider just crafting them all instead of waiting for them to drop? And do these costs seem ridiculously high and time-consuming to anyone else?

There is a long running thread on this very subject over in the development forums. I believe it is entitled "incarnate rewards." It's a conversation worth checking out and joining. Pretty sure Zwillinger and company have been monitoring that thread in particular and writing up summaries to brief the dev team with anecdotal player feedback regarding how the system is or isn't functioning.

Edit: oh and yes, I have one character in particular that has never gotten anything above an uncommon drop (not including her MoBAF free rare salvage). I gave up counting at 75+ trials. Each of my four other incarnates have been able to get at least 2 if not 3 rare drop tables and 3 of them have gotten at least 1 very rare running a mere fraction of the number of trials. The system is still quite flawed IMO and I've pretty much given up on iTrials and returned to developing my mid level alts and lowbie Praetorians out of disappointment and frustration with the inequities of how the reward system currently works. I do every so often still do a trial now and then, if only for giggles and a smug "yup, yet another uncommon drop--system's still broken" feeling. Oh well...

At first, I'll admit that I was leery about all the bemoaning I thought was coming from the boards about the trials and the Rares/Very Rares and the Inf costs. I figured that it couldn't really be that bad, and went on my way.

I started running these trials the day the Issue went live, and have been running them on and off since. Some days I ran 3 or 4 of each, some days I didn't run any. I had fun with them, believe it or not, and made a lot of new friends on Protector with the trials.

Then I reached the stalling point, where you have all the lower salvage you need, but no Very Rare drops and not enough Inf to craft them from salvage. As it turns out, the costs and requirements are that bad if they can take a system about continued character progression to a complete halt.

/signed. Not asking to take the costs out completely, just make them more manageable.

If they're truly meant to be a "long term goal" then they shouldn't be part of the random reward table at all, or at least limited to very successful trials, such as full Master runs. Either they're a long-term goal or they're a lottery win. Pick one.

So, if I'm getting the overall reaction, a lot of folks are happy that this casual-friendly game is essentially telling the folks who would like to continue to play casually will never have the penultimate capabilities advertised. Casual players won't get the money required by these things. Casual players won't be hitting both Incarnate Trials (soon to be all three) every day, multiple times a day, to get the Empyrean Merits and different Randomly Rolled Reward Tables.

Frankly, I'm getting to the point where playing these Incarnate Trials over and over and over and over and over and over again is far beyond ludicrous. I keep losing my patience with them, especially when I get punted from the server because I decided to check my Incarnate Trees to see what salvage I need for my next recipe.

I'm hoping that the future has more options available to players to unlock these things (namely, would it really be so wrong to have Shard recipes made for them?), because the current "Lottery" system is hair-rippingly aggravating.

When it comes to the Incarnate Trials, it IS a grind if you want to get the top tier stuff, no matter what you do. It's a grind.

And I'm sorry, but this game is starting to turn into work, it seems to me. Five tip missions and two Incarnate Trials per day, plus the alignment mission every other day, plus the WST once a week...just for one toon, just to keep up with the current "stuff" in City of Heroes. I've given up on tip missions and A-merits almost entirely, and I'm about to go the same way with Incarnate Trials.