Incarnate xp and future slots

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Given the wording of 2
If the answer to 1 is no, there is no answer to 2 as it is never asked.
If you remove the "If so," then it could equally be yes but the "overflow" added would be zero.

I realize many people hate the idea of yet -another- currency and to be honest I'm hoping that doesn't happen either.

But there are people out there right now sitting on hundreds (if not thousands) of astral and empyrean merits already. If the Devs based the next batch of Incarnate powers on the same types of merits/XP we have now then there will be people who'll be able to unlock everything almost instantaneously and it's fairly clear the Devs have never wanted us being able to do that kind of thing. That's the whole reason they dreamt up things like Threads and Prestige as "replacements" for Shards and Influence.

My guess (like DumpleBerry said) is that we'll get something new to prevent the people who've been hording from insta-unlock everything. Not sure exactly what that form of control will be, but it's pretty safe to assume there will be one.

I don't mind filling up the cosmic xp bar to "unlock" the slot. I think it would suck hard if they make new salvage, new threads, new AM's and new EM's.

Then perhaps they shouldn't have invented new merits that could be converted into threads, or used to purchase Incarnate components. They pretty much created the very problem they appear to want to avoid with that bit of "convenience and flexibility."

I guess we can expect new Cosmic Threads which will be used to create the new components provided just for Mind, Genesis, Hybrid, and Vitae. And new Celestial Merits which can be converted into Cosmic Threads or components. These will be good for the next four slots. And for people with stockpiled Empyrean merits, there will be the 100 EMs for 1 Celestial Merit exchange rate to help give them a teeny jumpstart.

And then, for the final slot, we'll get Omega Threads and Blessing of the Gods merits. I doubt such a moderate currency proliferation would get in the way of any serious Incarnate-devoted players.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Then how do they propose to prevent insta-tier-4s via stockpiled resources without making an impossibly steep build trajectory for everyone else?

Well it depends on what they really want. Personally my feeling was that they weren't particularly concerned about day 1 tier 4s anyway and that introducing the Thread components was more about limiting what content could be used to progress through Incarnate abilities. If their concern was related to time-gating I'd have expected them to impose much stronger time-gates on all aspects of the Incarnate Salvage (i.e. first time you run a trial each day you get the standard rewards subsequent times you just get a single Astral merit and a few threads, no E Merits, no component drop and no Astrals for completing each section).

Now to answer your other question, assuming that they do feel a need to devalue everyone's stockpile's without introducing a new currency the simple answer is to drastically increase both the costs for the new slots and the rewards from the new trials. For example, multiply the number of components needed by 10 but also have each trial drop 10 components, 10 E Merits and about 50 Astral Merits. Essentially re-value the entire iSalvage system (this also has the advantage of making it easier to "gear-up" new characters, keeping raiders concentrated).

The second option would be to depreciate old currency (a method used in the MMO that shall not be named) so E Merits get downgraded to Astrals, and higher-tier salvage gets replaced by threads (20 threads for a rare, 60 for a V.R.) so you can instantly buy a tier 1 or tier 2 but probably not a tier 3 or tier 4. Obviously this would upset a lot of people due to also affecting progress on the other slots (which at the very least would be hilarious to watch).

The final option is to not worry about it. Unless they introduce much stricter time gating on rewards people will get day 1 tier 4s and the people with the large component stockpiles to do it will be running trials no matter what anyway. Given that it's reasonable to use passive encouragement to move people to the newer trials (better rewards, disabling higer tier slots in the old trials etc.). Some people choose to go from levle 1 to 50 just by playing Death From Below, does it really matter if someone wants to go form Alpha to Omega just running the BAF, especially if you make the iSlots beyond Lore/Destiny not work so he isn't screwing the balance?

Ain't you a smart feller. Also, keep in mind the iXP cost will hopefully be higher for each new power to gate it that way as well. Say 5 million iXP for the next two to open(with option to buy iXP with astrals not threads), 10 for the next two(bought with emps if wanted, not astrals) and 15 to 20 for omega(bought with cosmic(they are in game already, you know they will use them), not emps).

I don't see this as a good thing. If they keep with the current trend of making successive trials harder, people will want to bring their low-level incarnates on these high-payout trials, but without enough incarnate powers and level shifts, they won't be able to contribute much. There's only so much dead weight a league can carry, and I expect PUG runs will have a high failure rate, while non-PUG leagues will have fairly strict requirements for joining.

I never said it was the best option, I said it was the simplest option.

That was sort of the problem they ran into with underground. The length and amount of mobs was obviously designed with the intent of dumping masses of iXP onto players, but the difficulty was designed with level shifts in mind so you only want to do it after you've unlocked the necessary slots.

Unless they make having at least a +2 level shift a prerequisite for entering the new trial(s). It might help push the devs into giving league leaders tools for filtering out ineligible toons prior to queueing up; such as an invite option that fails if sent to non-VIPs (and non +2's if that becomes a prereq, for instance), etc.

UG was very contradictory. It was meant to help folk get iXP, as you said, a lot faster but you pretty much NEED the level shifts from the slots to even survive.

To say nothing of the Incarnate powers themselves, Destiny in particular. And woe to the toon who isn't optimized for set-IO boosted +DEF/+Res/+Regen/+MaxHP/+mez prot. Being/becoming an Incarnate is serious business!

My opinion of their simplest and best option for the remaining 5 slots:

1: Ignore the stockpiles. The number of people who will t4 a new slot the day it drops are probably few enough that it shouldn't matter.

2: Require iXP to unlock slots - iXP does not accumulate unless there is a slot for it to open. Whining about all that iXP one should be getting when there are no slots to unlock is autoforwarded to /dev/null. The alternative is to make a 2nd kind of XP and link it to specific, as of yet unreleased trials. I like this option less and it doesn't resolve the "where does my NoodleXP go when I unlock all the slots?!?!?" complaint, so why not just go simpler and use the existing iXP model?

3: Keep the same salvage for the next 4 slots that is used for the previous 4 (ie the ones in parallel)

4: Omega slot has unique unlock method and semi-unique salvage. Previous salvage can be "upgraded" to Omega salvage in methods similar to shards-> threads and so on. Omega Salvage can be "downgraded" to standard iSalvage or Alpha salvage.

Reasoning:

Alpha was the start, it had a task to complete to open it, and it's own salvage. The alpha slot was like buying our way into the club. We can craft an alpha with relatively "weak" components (in the incarnate scale), and we can also craft it using stronger components, which brings me to the 8 slots between alpha and omega:

These are where we build power, it makes sense that they are different from Alpha and Omega, but there is no need for them to be different from each other. Also, since many folks will craft multiple Destiny powers (and probably others), salvage/merit stockpiles aren't a big problem. People will just make multiple powers, and I imagine that while the "I have eleventy hundred merits and salvage" crowd may be large on the forums, I bet it is compartively small in game.

Which brings us to Omega. Setting aside the idea that these 10 slots are not the be all/end all of incarnate power, it is a pinnacle of a sort. Giving it its own salvage isn't going to kill anyone, and it gives the slot a sense of gravity. Here is where the real Incarnates are separated from the iKiddies. Many will attempt to climb the hill, but few will reach the summit sort of thing. I know mechanically it shouldn't be heavily prohibitive so that players don't feel left out or whatever, but it should carry some freaking weight of its own.