Please Stop Pushing the Awesome Button

You can farm a character to 50 in 3 hours? And play them "normally" to 50 in 30?

I'd like to try that just once. Someone point me to these farms. And someone tell me how to get ANY character to 50 in less than a week of playing.

8 man radio/tips missions give massive XP, even if you're at-level (and actually contributing; tagging along on a lvl 50 tip mission x8 is basically being PLed). Post-35, an ITF gives 2 levels in an hour to 90 minutes.

Without any special tricks, just being in large teams, it's not difficult to level quite fast. Not that you'll always have those circumstances, but I have characters I only break out when there's an open team on an LFG channel, and they've ended up in the late 30s to early 40s without much effort.

My style is the exact opposite of the OP. Sorry if that makes me unfit for playing in the correct way.

I am cool with new stuff from time to time, but what I really love is repetition. Even since this game was new, nothing made me happier than finding one of those large warehouses that take up a COH city block. Because I would throw on some music, get a soda and a large bag of chips, and literally go around the warehouse from spawn to spawn for 2 to 5 hours. Humming, blasting, singing, kicking, killing freak after freak after crey after crey until I am forced to move on due to level increase. But these stupid door missions? Screw that. I have to like, travel. And click on a door or some crap.

So then they made outdoor xp kinda suck but they had scanner missions and loot and drops and whatnot eventually. So I gravitated towards whatever would let me kill stuff over and over without going anywhere. So you learn which scanner missions are easy to repeat, or you find a good real mission with a big map so as to have to mission reset less often. Then you just kill 95 of 100, leave the last 5, reset, repeat. Where are my chips?

This may seem like hell to you, but to me it is Heaven.

Then came the AE. And I am not even talking about farm maps or exploits in the AE. I love it simply because I can find a mission I like, just a simple mission, and do it over and over. So fun! I dont even have to go sell recipes. Just crank my tunes, kick back, and crunch through some bad guys. Occasionally I have to deal with ticket rolls, but I mostly get crap, so it doesnt take time.

Enter the incarnates. The lambda is tedious. Floating around those stupid basements and chasing that cowardly AV. I hear keyes is bad so I havent tried. But the BAF while tedious in ways (ugh, those were my warning rings?) it is fairly straightforward. I have even been on a full team that LOST it 4 times in a row due to escapees. But still. Its simple. Kill bad guys. Minimal tedium. Win or lose. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Did I just say repeat? I think I am in Heaven again.

So by all means, I will stand there in one spot doing the BAF over and over on the same team for 2 hours if I am in the mood. Or 5 hours. And there are already diminishing returns (only 1 empyrean per 20 hours). But even if you complain and get the devs all up in punishment mode (bad boy! you arent having the right kind of fun!) and they have diminishing returns on astrals (unlock your auras now boys before the OP gets his way) I would still prefer to repeat the BAF. I already repeat the ITF for fun even when stuck with diminishing merits.

So I LIKE running the BAF over and over, thank you very much. Why dont you make some connections with a supergroup or find your server global channel? On my server (pinnacle) those guys are always lining up different missions. Why not find people who want to play your way? Why make other people suffer until all the options that differ from your preferences are made too tedious to tolerate?

Best wishes,

Lewis

BaF: open area, clearly designated objectives that with no temp power gimmicks. Coordination comes down to pulling and killing stuff faster or slower. To be honest, this one plays the most similarly to the rest of the game, is pretty forgiving so long as people pay attention, and demands nothing newer than killing/controlling/debuffing/chasing stuff.

Lambda: varied areas, some open, some closed. Lots of ambushes in a timed area, REQUIRES temp powers, final battle goes from doable to impossible depending on performance in the speed run portion. Requires people to be good at/familiar with ITF speed run style glowie smashing, temp power usage, and good navigation in twisted corridors. Good for the ITF speeders, and folks who don't get lost. Most people have the hang of the the maps in a basic sense, or can tag along with those that do. It's easy enough for a second empyrean merit, after a BAF when some peter off and you don't want to recruit.

Keyes: requires temp powers, repeat group defeats, precise pulling (if team isn't fast) lots of awareness, map navigation, mitigation for auto-hit mostly unresistable burst of damage alongside consistent high end enemies. Without good healing, the final battle will consistently kill players and heal the boss, and the patches auto-hold and do huge damage for those not paying attention. Pets/stupid targeting cause damage to the boss, increasing deaths from pulses.

Of all the trials, the BAF is most forgiving, and goes best with the strategies of the rest of the game. The Lambda brings new tricks, but they play to pre-existing strategies and has pretty blatant/easy objectives. (blast this, use temp now, etc.) Keyes ignores defense in many ways, punishes anything without healing, and defeats players very consistently. At first I thought the complexity was to blame, but Lamda is actually just about as complex as Keyes. But here's the thing: a good player can get through Lambda without death on their own.

Even a good player, if you don't have a good self heal or destiny or green inspirations will die, at least on one's own. If you have a team member who can help this is less a problem, but relying on someone else to have a specific kind of skill and be able to be attentive to you and your health for you to live. A trial that needs somebody else to do something challenging, a specific trial reward that uses a lot of investment, and may be outside your abilities to never die? Kinda risky. Or you can just die.

There's no huge problem with death around here, but it is probably the least favorite thing you can do to a player's character- kill them, especially in an unavoidable fashion. Things that defeat the player's character are avoided almost universally. Why? People play this for a number of reasons, but I'd venture to guess that winning, being victorious, and feeling powerful are up there in the list, even if unconsciously. Having your level 50 faceplant gives the message "you're not strong enough" or "X is stronger." Make these semi-unavoidable, and you've got something people will shun to varying extents.

Even after runnng them both so many times (Easily in the hundreds. Most of my 50s are full Incarnates at this point-), I still enjoy BAF and Lambda. I really, honestly do... They're each fun in their own way, and Liberty's "usual suspects" are a pretty entertaining group of people to hang around with.

That said, I refuse to go anywhere near Keyes. I've tried it four times to date and not only did all four of those runs fail, all four of them were chaotic, annoying death-traps, even on the completely level-shifted, purpled-out character (with self-heal) that I know and play better than any other toon in my collection. It wasn't in any way, shape or form what I'd call "fun". It was a pain in the rear. I hated every minute of it.

Given that my play time is limited... Why the devil would I waste it running the one trial I hated instead of the two I enjoy?

The Underground Trial gives a huge amount of both types of IXP - it could be come very popular

Well, at least until they add new types of IXP for the next slots

Incarnate trials are farms, and the only sensible thing to do if you're going to farm is to do so in the most efficient manner possible.

I'd enjoy pouring hot coffee into my lap 6 - maybe even 8 - times in one night over running LAM once.

They created content that requires repetition until you want to vomit. Repeating 3 things a dozen times is no better than doing one thing 30 times.