Please Stop Pushing the Awesome Button

I log in for the first time since 2XP weekend, with a brand-new 50, excited to start running a variety of trials, earning badges, earning Empyrean Merits ... and what do I find?

I find that nobody, and I mean nobody, is willing to queue for anything but the Behavioral Adjustment Facility (BAF). Everybody tells me "just grind the BAF until you get enough rares, spend the threads to get the other XP - it's quicker."

Why does anybody even ask for anything new? I feel like 99 out of 100 of you don't actually want anything new unless the reward/minute ratio is higher than your current favorite self-stim button.

I don't know what the answer is, although if someone at Paragon were to tell me that they were putting diminishing rewards on astrals, threads, and reward rolls for trials, I'd be ecstatic. Maybe what I want is so unpopular that getting rid of me, and the 1% or so of players who are like me, is the right answer. All I know is this:

I can run any given mission once per night easily. Twice, maybe. Running it three, four, five times a night? I just can't do it. That's not a game, that's a job. A job that doesn't even pay me, I have to pay other people to let me do it. Quite possibly the only job I've ever had that was duller than 3rd-shift rent-a-copping.

news flash: some people are dumb

The 'funny' thing to do is start up a trial (BAF/Lambda) and get a good league together showing everyone that the league can take out BAF/Lambda with ease....

Then after a BAF say, "okay who wants to do Keyes?"

Watch them scatter and say, "g2g"



I've even seen where I was in a trial (not the leader) and someone mentioned "keyes" and people were like, "no!!! I hate keyes!"

Sad really

I don't like either of the iTrials I've done. I've been assuming that I won't like Keyes or the upcoming Underground trials. Add to that that queueing up for the trials often entails over an hour of wait time during which I annoyingly can't run missions and I find myself not queueing up for anything.

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Originally Posted by InfamousBrad Quite possibly the only job I've ever had that was duller than 3rd-shift rent-a-copping.

I enjoyed that job when it was just me checking gauges at a factory to make sure nothing was going to explode. Far better than doing iTrials.

We have to earn hundreds of doodads to make things, tens of thousands of something-or-others to unlock slots and hundreds of millions of Inf in order to craft whatchamacallits and you're surprised people are maximizing their grind? Weird.

I have seen this alot as well. All the itrials are fun and I enjoy doing them all but usually only get a chance to do BAF. Main reason I cant get in on a Keyes is like you said, no one wants to run it. I dont mind I find it really fun, but have only done 6 and tanked Anti on 4 of those. Took me till the 6th try to not fail thou lol. We got the last Anti fight and people couldnt stay outta the green and then no one would heal up the disintegrating people. I admit that after finally finishing Keyes and getting the badge I have slacked off on trying to get in on any more. If they came up I would thou.

Lambda is a different story altogether. I think it may be my favorite itrial so far but, almost everytime I do one I crash at least once during it. I've tried everything I can think of on all graphic settings and still crash. This is the only time I crash in-game, well not the only time, very rarely I will get the "ran out of memory" thing outside of itrials (and I have plenty). So these things lead me to basically only doing BAFs. Hopefully the Underground itrial will turn out to be very fun and challenging but easy enough so everyone wont avoid it. Maybe something can be done to get more people into Keyes in the future.

I have thought of many things regarding the trials, and while I have my concerns, Im using it as a way to combat market griefing.

Ok, so yes, my Level shifted Gav/FF controller grinds tips and trials. I really do not have much of a choice in the matter. While inf is not generally super hard to get, the point is that recipe's and salvage are or can be.

With a common rune now selling for the same cost as a rare piece of salvage (Last count on a rune common was 1,400,000 inf), I have to save money somewhere. So you use astrals and hero/villain merits to buy the recipe and inf to buy the salvage. Sure the threads/incarnate salvage is worthless cuz you can't trade it, but grinding astrals offsets the cost of salvage so I can techinically finance my alts.

The drawback is that now, there is little reason to do anything but that. I mean luck is one thing, but when luck is just being elusive for 3 months at a time, it's just plain easier to grind something that offers direct returns.

The same can be said about AE ticket farming, Running ITF's over and over.

Am I enjoying this process? Not really, and I too am finding it dull, but without the Inf in the game to enjoy the crafting system, it's just easier, smarter and much quicker than relying on a rare drop. And if I can barely afford a common piece of salvage...how would I ever be able to afford the recipe in which the salvage belongs too.

If you have to repeat a piece of content until your eyes bleed, might as well do the one that you can run on autopilot while watching Simpsons reruns.

I find on Champion Lambda is often run before BAF, because the smaller sized league is easier to form up. When you're done, most people will stick around for BAF, so you only need to grab a few more people.

Keyes is less forgiving than the other two, so it's run less often.

Path of Least Resistance.

I've seen too many dumb things on Keyes to the point where I just won't run on it much anymore. I've seen at least 1-2 numbskulls beating on AM.

The Keyes trial almost needs giant red letters saying "Character is damaing Anti-Matter!" So the whole trial knows who is messing that part up.

Maybe if Keyes was worth 3 Emp merits I'd run on it more, but for 1 its better to run one BAF and one LAM and move on to the next character for emp merit farming.

I see tons of people Lambda. I don't see many Keyes...probably because it is a lot of un-fun.

Running on Victory, Virtue, and Freedom I still see quite a lot of Lambdas forming. Keyes not so much.

In my experience it's about 2:1 ratio of BAF:Lambda, with Keyes only forming a couple of percent of the time (I've never seen Keyes form on Victory during the hours I play).

It isn't a matter of people not wanting to do new things, it's a matter of the rewards system being unbalanced. I personally feel that successful Master runs for BAF and Lambda should automatically eliminate the common and threads reward tables for everyone in the league, and Master runs for Keyes should eliminate the uncommon table in addition. Run a successful MoKeyes, get a Rare or VR guaranteed. That would not only get people running the trial more, it would force people to learn it well also.

Something else that I've heard is already being addressed is the ability to get two Emp merits with i21 for Keyes and UG trials. This is enough for me to do Keyes again (I've only done it twice, the day it came out) and start doing the UG trial... Emp merits can be saved for extremely valuable items, and I'm (pretty sure) this will be a faster way to progress than saving alignment merits.

I'm not sure if Incarnate progression has ever been anything BUT work. Which is kind of why I find it odd that THIS is the one single VIP-only feature in the game. Other things you can get on the cheap or if you stick around long enough, but for THIS you have to subscribe. Personally, this feel like - to quote SomethingAwful - "I'll give you this bag full of rats, but only if you let me kick you in the groin ten times." This is what we're marketing? Three half-hour missions? This is the big selling point?

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I don't know that everyone is doing it for the adventure, or even the pay out. Sometimes it's just fun to hang out with people and do something you can do on autopilot whilst talking about odd stuff.

Min/maxers get tiresome, though. That's why I avoid AE like the plague. There's probably even some good arcs, but I don't want to get sucked into another AE farm. I want to bore myself, I'll do like the OP seems to be suggesting: work some overtime in RL. Then maybe I can buy some booster packs or something.

People will do what is easiest, especially since the Devs have pretty much dictated that you have to repeat these trials ad-nauseum to get anything incarnate related.

Personally, I prefer LAM, but I'll join whatever is forming.

You know i've been doing an experiment on some of my newer level 50 characters.

After running 2/3 trials i usually have quite a good selection of iSalvage thanks to the random drop via badges and the reward table. Then i just carry on playing the game as normal and converting shards into threads. Sure its slower but it really isnt as slow as everybody makes out to be.
If you want the rare/very rare parts of the trees then it will take a while, but to get to [at least] uncommon its VERY quick.

With the new trial in i21 we'll even now have 4 trials for which to get salvage/merits from. What i find people doing on union is recruiting for a lambda, then upgrading after it to a baf or a keyes and then we'll more than likely in i21 throw in a hamidon trial too.

People go for BAF because it's pretty easy on the whole assuming a team that isn't asleep and has enough buffs/shifts/traps to handle the +levels on the escapees. It also has the absolute easiest bonus Astral to get.

People go for Lambda because you can blitz through that sucker if everyone is well kitted out with Incarnate goodies. (Seriously, I've watched a full league or so of +3s melt that thing.)

People don't go for Keyes pretty much at all because it's even more tedious than the other two. A trial you're expected to repeatedly do that has more or less the same awkward gameplay gimmick repeated three times in a row while another gimmick that's annoying to everyone on top of that ticks every 30 seconds. Then it ends in a fight that has another obnoxious gimmick in the form of Disintegration. Maybe if the pre-AM phases were more varied, the raid was less griefable, and AM didn't have multiple ways of healing people would actually care to do it.

Keyes is unfun...A-yup, and I rarely do them.

It's not because they are chaotic to begin with. Pretty much every person I see running them or I have run with knows that the team knows what to do, or the tem ensures everyone is on the right page.

The issue is that with death pulses every 30 seconds, which takes in some cases have the life bar from a squishy, thats always going to breed chaos. When downtime is more than the uptime of any said hero, it naturally sepperates the group.

There are people say that there are ways around this. Really...they have either a self heal available or something to that effect. Otherwise they are popping greens, or have more HP and better life regen.

Baf/Lams are not that hard, and can be done over and over without frustration and yield better results, where as a single keyes can kill the spirit of an entire league.

I have seen to many people quit a keyes in mid trial...then when I join a baf, all of those poeple who quit the Keyes are in my group.

Would I normally hang with players who gave up when the going was tuff? No...not if they left me in a paper mission, radio, or TF. But I have to overlook the Keyes, because it's just unfun, and I can't be mad at them as much as I try

I haven't seen this on Union at all. Most people I find are willing to run BAF and Lambda and then grind ITF or LGTF for Shards afterwards.