So Solo Friendly Incarnate Path=Team?

In that case I apologize! Sorry, Techbot!

Good news, we already have that. It's called the team up teleporter. Just ignore those NPCs wandering around with blue names.

This is all your fault.

Also, I hereby crown you the Golden Girl Mk2. Wear your Smiley crown, crafted from forumgoers tears, with pride. Or something.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I think the fact that there ultimately is no real and achievable solo option is...well pretty much par for the course, why would you want to solo when there's a shiny new trial on which you can lag and crash and try to get enough people for at 11 am and farm and farm for a million billion Uncommons?

I think the wording of this "feature" is marketspeak fail on Galactus-meets-Unicron levels of epic.

Sounds about right.
Sadly the internet has failed me. There are no Unicron Facepalm images

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I'm the progenitor, I'll have you know!

That's said, all I can do is try not to get too snarky. In any other game soloers being given a path, any path to raiders gear/power is considered patently absurd. I know, you all don't play those games. But you are playing a MMORPG. One where the devs have made ample and reasonable accommodations to those who prefer to solo. You all apparently disagree. So be it.

But your position is unreasonable and worthy of derision.

Oh, look, a strawman!

How's about an already fully IO'd MM who can handle x8 regular settings just fine getting shafted by Praetorian mobs, spastic pet AI and auto-hit attack and spammed AoE that basically negate all defences I have and my entire Primary being made useless?

Strangely enough, I don't find grinding content that shafts me fun. What a surprise! But oh, I guess, like Inventions, I can do something else to- Oh! Wait! I don't HAVE any other options!

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

You're totally correct. We're not playing another MMO. We're playing THIS MMO. THIS MMO has always been solo friendly, has always had solo options, and has only now chosen to turn its back on that. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to find two paths (Team and Solo) suddenly becoming one (You will team and LIKE it!) not a satisfactory state of play.


In the past, yes. Not now. And what about it being an MMO? Multi-player; meaning, containing more than one player. At no point does that infer forced teaming. Anyone claiming such needs medical treatment for their cranial-rectal reversal disorder.

As is yours, quite frankly.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Oh, fine, I'll do it.

You seem to be confusing "solo-friendly" with "solo-only." Yes, "solo-friendly" means that you might still have to team up sometimes. If you literally never want to interact with another human being in this game, then you really need to re-evaluate your decision to play an MMORPG, but hey, whatever floats your boat, but don't expect everyone to bend over backwards for your weird play style.

Anyhoo, the way that I understand this to work is that currently, if you have 30 characters and you want to unlock the Alpha slot on all 30 of them, you have to run 30 trials. Under the new system, you only have to run one trial. After that, you can trade Incarnate Shards that you earn in solo missions into Incarnate Threads, then Incarnate Threads into Astral Merits, Astral Merits into account-wide Alpha Slot vouchers, which can be used to unlock your alpha slots on your other 29 characters.

Is it easy? Nope. But hey, you're the one who never wants to interact with another human being in a game whose genre's raison d'être is being a social experience. No one promised you a walk in the park.

Enjoy that solo experience!

The existence of a solo path is not a right.

I'm not sure what a "****" is, but we've had this fight before. Not sure why you feel the need to go so negative for someone having a different opinion, but I'm happy to take on that title whatever it is. There is no solo path that will ever be as fast, or anywhere near as fast as a 24 man raid. Reason being there will never be solo content that this playerbase will allow to be a difficult and interesting as the 24 man raid. This has been shown conclusively by the ridiculous complaining about the easy as pie Ramiel arc.

Calling someone a worthless piece of **** is not equivalent to denouncing someone's OPINIONS.

Yours is an attack on the speaker. Mine is an attack on the message. There is a major difference. Ideas can be savaged, but there is no need to insult the person.

It's a little more than just killing a couple of AVs. But you know that.

No, really, you don't. If the game looks interesting, that's all the reason needed to decide to play it.

... except you don't. (Mender Ramiel's arc.)

Actually, it's reason for existence is "To provide a world in which you're a superhero fighting various enemies/running missions/etc."

Yahoo Messenger, by contrast, is more "designed to bring a social experience," as it's purpose is "Communicating with other people." But last I checked, we weren't playing Yahoo Messenger.

See my Guides and Tutorials

It is. When he gets riled up, it's fun to argue with him. But it's like playing with hornets!

I like Billz because he reminds morons that they are morons. Just scroll up a couple posts.

Oh you guys are snippy tonight.

Yes, they are equivalent. Your opinion that they aren't isn't worthy of my acceptance.

I don't give a damn what you're attacking with disrespectful and idiotic statements. Attack me or my posts in that way, get it back in spades. You should know this after this much time.

More than killing a couple AVs? No, it isn't.

Zone in, defeat a few spawns, kill AV, guard doors during lagfest, kill AV, kill 2 AVs within 10 seconds of each other. That's the BAF. That's all it is.

Lambda: run a lap killing spawns, clear courtyard and guns, split up teams, get temp powers, use temps on doors, use temps on AV while you chase him around the map. I enjoy this one, mind you.

Why do shards even exist in the game? What's the point of them? Why not just have threads drop as shards are dropping now? Purge the entire shard system from the game.

Throw in a few more repeatable arcs for soloists that follow the same rules as the BAF/Lambda with similar but appropriate rewards (fighting +4s, you're -4 if alpha isn't slotted, get a random incarnate drop at the end) and call it a day.

Will such a thing be the end of all teaming like X, Y and Z were before this? What's that? People still team? Oh.

Well, I'll leave you all to your complaints then. I've been arguing about this stuff since last summer. Eventually, you'll the devs will give you all what you want. Probably not on a timeframe that will make you happy, but what can you do?

Leave for 7 months, come back and be 100% caught up in 9 days.

While Marauder is talking crap, let me just leave you with one word on that point:

/auctionhouse

That doesn't seem to be the implication. What are you going to use to buy these vouchers? I'm guessing Astral and Empyrean Merits. Which means you'll need to keep running the group content in order to help the solo characters.

Frankly, I have no idea what this feature is trying to achieve.

-D

Calling this new unlock the "solo" path is dubious, if not outright backwards and wrong.

The options now as presented to a solo-Incarnate are: Tough out Ramiel's arc or stop playing solo in order to earn merits...to go towards helping other characters gain access to the same tedious, penalizing grind your first character is stuck in. (Keep in mind that they're allowing you to trade merits in for something that normally takes more than 1 Trial to unlock, AFAIK. I doubt it will be as cheap as 1 Empyrean merit.)

Even the average, somewhat casual-ish Incarnate player (IE, me) has little use for this. They're unlikely to squander their flighty merit rewards on something they can achieve by just doing Ramiel's arc, teaming if necessary, or continuing to participate in raids they clearly have no qualm with.

In fact, who this system serves the most is the power gamer: The one who has access to the largest pool of merits and a long list of characters who are in need of a quick Alpha slot unlock. And even then a power gamer can just blitz Ramiel's arc.