The new Solo-able incarnate drops
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2012-03-09 15:36 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Slightly faster is barley worth the effort. It is a whole order of magnitude slower, and slight changes are going to be lost in the noise.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
On the UStream broadcast today, Positron said that there are some upcoming tweaks that will make the solo progress rate slightly faster.
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Even in an ideal land, where the iTrials were super-fun for everybody and did not pall after repeated playings, it's simply not going to be a viable game path for people who have the misfortune to be in a low-population timezone or server. Making the activity over 20 times more rewarding will not magick iTrialing players out of thin air. There needs to be an alternative, and it's clear that DA is not a serious one.
I honestly like the story arc, and will happily run it a few times across different characters. Given the time it takes, it should offer rewards vaguely comparable with running a similar number of trials. Taking 30 days to match 6 hours of trialing is simply ridiculous.
Multiple people on multiple levels said this was too slow going out - the Devs tested it - and LOWERED the rate and PENALIZED players by forcing a cooldown on the already slower way to incarnate powers.
The current rate is very close to hours in iTrials compared to Weeks solo.
It is not readily apparent but once you crash through the initial bonus the solo arcs slow down from 1/20th to about 1/50th the speed of iTrials. What is yet for many to discover is over time say 6 months it gets WORSE THE LONGER YOU SOLO. So over a year it may drop to 1/100th.
Players in the beta said repeatedly add an Emp to the completion of the full arcs per 20 hours and drop the cooldown to the rest.
I highly doubt we will see anything like this live. Likely they will change the end 2 threads to 3. If I am wrong I would love to say so and apologize. The paying customers are the only ones doing the incarnate stuff Devs - hello?
Honestly I'd like to see either a more reliable way to get the emps via DA or some way to convert astrals into emps. Thats the real stickler blocking advancement. Getting tons of commons and uncommons gets your to tier 2 in a reasonable amount of time. Getting to the level shifts? Not so much.
I mean dont you get tons of emps running the trials? Is earning 1 emp a day too much to ask for from the solo path?
Jem - Ill/Rad Controller Lv 50+3 Nic - Mind/Psi Dominator Lv 50+3 Lady Liberation - Invuln/SS Tanker Lv 50+1 Invicitx - Demon/Pain Mastermind Lv 50+1 Celeste - Emp/Arch Defender Lv 50+1 Nightsilver - DB/WP Scrapper Lv 34 Dusk Howl - StJ/Regen Brute Lv 32 Kyriani - Time/Energy Defender Lv 41Psifire - FF/Psi Defender Lv 50
Star Lighter - LB/LA Peacebringer Lv 30
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Just remember that the 20 Hour cool-down on the rewards tables affect all of the arcs, just like the one on the SSAs affect all of them. After your first "freebie" run through the series, you can only get one component roll, one merit roll and one batch of threads per 20 hour period from any combination of arcs.
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Originally Posted by Wicked_Wendy
So you have 6 repeatable arcs that can award merits, components and threads every day along with the threads tyou earn running them.
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@Brightfires - @Talisander
That chick what plays the bird-things...
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Do you mean drop any sort of cooldown on the arcs at all? |
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Players in the beta said repeatedly add an Emp to the completion of the full arcs per 20 hours and drop the cooldown to the rest.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Yes, as that would make it follow a similar progression to trials - still slower, but similar.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Do you mean drop any sort of cooldown on the arcs at all?
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In trials, you have the fast, but random "pray for a rare" method and the slow, safety net "emp" method.
In the itrials, the emp method is time gated, but the slot machine method has no limit. You get one pull of the handle every time you run a trial. For DA, they time gated both (in addition to the dozen other ways DA is inferior.)
So, new patch on Beta today.
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10 threads may be a bit too high, IMO, but everything else looks rad. Big fan of the guaranteed Empyrean merits.
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The Daily Repeatable mission reward has been increased to 10 threads from 2 threads. Players can now earn two Empyrean merits a week by completing all Dark Astoria arcs every week. They can speak with Taskmaster Gabriel, who is outside of the Dark Astoria hospital, in order to claim these merits. Taskmaster Gabriel will inform players on how long they have until they can earn their next Empyrean merit, along with which arcs they still need to complete for their next reward. Adjusted the maximum merit reward in Dark Astoria's Repeatable Missions to 2 Reward Merits. This is attainable once per 20 hours. After that, each Repeatable mission will only offer one Merit. |
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How is a 10 minute Heather run slower than any Trial? |
Originally Posted by rsclark
Yes, as that would make it follow a similar progression to trials - still slower, but similar.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
The new opportunity to earn emp's and the upped threads on the daily repeatable are awesome forthcoming changes.
The emps in particular will allow people to break the level shift barrier in much more reasonable amounts of time without being at the mercy of the RNG.
The thread increase for the daily repeatable will be incentive for me to actually DO it. I've been ignoring the repeatables simply because they just dont pay out enough threads. Now at least i'll be inclined to do it once a day... if you increase the follow ups to 3-5 threads a day I'd probably do more of the repeats than just the one.
Jem - Ill/Rad Controller Lv 50+3 Nic - Mind/Psi Dominator Lv 50+3 Lady Liberation - Invuln/SS Tanker Lv 50+1 Invicitx - Demon/Pain Mastermind Lv 50+1 Celeste - Emp/Arch Defender Lv 50+1 Nightsilver - DB/WP Scrapper Lv 34 Dusk Howl - StJ/Regen Brute Lv 32 Kyriani - Time/Energy Defender Lv 41Psifire - FF/Psi Defender Lv 50
Star Lighter - LB/LA Peacebringer Lv 30
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Fewer Threads, at most 2 Astrals, which would mean no Empyrean, and those are mutually exclusive with the Component rolls, which are Common much more frequently than in Trials.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
How is a 10 minute Heather run slower than any Trial?
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This is what I was hoping for. In my head without doing Arcana level math this should bring the solo speeds to about 1/10th or so and it won't decay as it did over time the old way.|
Originally Posted by Crippl3
So, new patch on Beta today.
10 threads may be a bit too high, IMO, but everything else looks rad. Big fan of the guaranteed Empyrean merits. |
This is what we asked for on Beta and I am very happy they did it and I said I would apologize and I do so now. This is more than I expected as I actually thought they would just bump Threads from 3-5 and an Emp + 10 threads makes this a truly viable solo method.
Now you will have a roughly (in my head math) a rate of hours to days. So if in Trials it would take you 20 hours to achieve it would take you 20 days and that is a fair rate for solo progression in my opinion.
I could see them dropping the thread rate to 5 instead of 10 and that would have far less impact than the Emp.
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Well, if that goes live, looks like I'll resub.
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Originally Posted by Crippl3
So, new patch on Beta today.
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It's almost as if they were waiting to datamine the results on the live severs before making anymore tweaks |
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
This is what I was hoping for. In my head without doing Arcana level math this should bring the solo speeds to about 1/10th or so and it won't decay as it did over time the old way.
This is what we asked for on Beta and I am very happy they did it and I said I would apologize and I do so now. This is more than I expected as I actually thought they would just bump Threads from 3-5 and an Emp + 10 threads makes this a truly viable solo method. Now you will have a roughly (in my head math) a rate of hours to days. So if in Trials it would take you 20 hours to achieve it would take you 20 days and that is a fair rate for solo progression in my opinion. I could see them dropping the thread rate to 5 instead of 10 and that would have far less impact than the Emp. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
GG your incredible brown nosing to anything the Devs do gets old.
If we don't like something that is what the forums are FOR - feedback.
You just ape and copy and behave like Miss Obvious.
If I like something I post it and if I don't like it I post it. You know there was hundreds of posts on Beta saying that what they are giving us on Live is terrible and over time is slower than 1/100th of iTrial speed.
The changes are almost exactly what people asked for except the Emps on Beta were for daily not 2 per 7 days. This is still much better and won't suffer from the decay creep that solo did over time. I believe we figured out it would take you over a year to tier 4 all current Incarnate powers solo.
Your posts add nothing and your snark isn't appreciated. Remember when it was asked to be changed the Devs LOWERED IT and added the cooldown penalty that Trials don't have.
So you feel all warm and fuzzy about the changes and I feel they dug their heels in and grudgingly changed it when people saw how terrible it is.
The repeatable was always going to be changed. They told us before live that the 2 thread reward would get published and they'd bump it sometime afterward.
The emp reward is more of a compromise. It's not the 1 per day that was asked for, but it's also not left up to the RNG to decide if we get it or not. And we can get it in addition to any we get from the random roll.
Honestly I'm not sure any datamining was involved, I think it was more that Marketing set a date for when the issue -had- to go out and the devs ran over the deadline so they pushed what they know worked and now they're testing what they want to top it off with.
What I'm -hoping- they're datamining is the drop rates on the component rolls. By the sound of it it's still wayway too heavily slanted towards commons.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It's almost as if they were waiting to datamine the results on the live severs before making anymore tweaks
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Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
GG your incredible brown nosing to anything the Devs do gets old.
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| So you feel all warm and fuzzy about the changes and I feel they dug their heels in and grudgingly changed it when people saw how terrible it is. |
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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I've only received commons, but my friend who reactivated and I reran the entire arc with received three uncommons. I was quite upset.
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Originally Posted by graystar_blaster
I am totally fine with the rate. Its great. I love it and its great fun and these are the best missons i think you ever put out.
I wonder what you all think. yes it could be higher but its high enough for me. Yes it could be shorter but its just long enough for me. please let me know your thoughts. |
[image]You CAN'T post images in sigs like they say you can in the forum FAQ.jpg[/image]
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On live now, you only get to choose two threads ONCE. After that, you only get ONE thread.| The Daily Repeatable mission reward has been increased to 10 threads from 2 threads. |
So is it now, run a single repeatable, get 10 threads, after that, all repeatables for the next twenty hours still only give 1 thread?
Still crap.
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| Players can now earn two Empyrean merits a week by completing all Dark Astoria arcs every week. They can speak with Taskmaster Gabriel, who is outside of the Dark Astoria hospital, in order to claim these merits. Taskmaster Gabriel will inform players on how long they have until they can earn their next Empyrean merit, along with which arcs they still need to complete for their next reward. |
Not good enough. I'm still getting complete crap each week in comparison to what I get get running trials.
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| Adjusted the maximum merit reward in Dark Astoria's Repeatable Missions to 2 Reward Merits. This is attainable once per 20 hours. After that, each Repeatable mission will only offer one Merit. |
And we're still only getting one component chance per night?
Swing and a miss, devs. Your solo incarnate path still sucks ***.
So... here's a standard week:
Monday night:
Run Heather's arc, get a common + 5 threads for random thread drops.
Run Heather's arc again, get 2 astrals + 5 threads.
Run it a third time, get 10 threads + 5 threads.
Run a repeatable, get 10 threads + 5 threads.
Doing any more than this and you're wasting your time.
Tuesday night:
Run Arc#2, ooo look, common #15 for me! + 5 threads.
Run Heather's arc, get 2 astrals + 5 threads.
Run it again, get 10 threads + 5 threads.
Run a repeatable, get 10 threads + 5 threads.
You get the picture.
After a week, I get:
7 component rolls, probably all commons, maybe I'll get lucky and get an uncommon.
Probably 10 astrals from 5 rolls of astrals
Maybe 2 emps from random rolls when astrals don't show up
2 emps from completing all 6 arcs over 7 days
280 threads from choosing the thread option and thread drops.
Still sucks. Try again.
It'll only take me two months to save up enough emps for that very rare. How incredibly generous of you, devs! You're so nice!
Be well, people of CoH.
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And in a few years I might have acquired one or two of the costume pieces.
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
It'll only take me two months to save up enough emps for that very rare. How incredibly generous of you, devs! You're so nice!
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Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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you're honestly not missing out on much.
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Originally Posted by Tenzhi
And in a few years I might have acquired one or two of the costume pieces.
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...oh, wait, I've tried to do that since the trials first began, but, they aren't being run at 2 AM. If the devs match your attitude, then there should be a discounted subscription for those that play between midnight and 6 AM as they want to make sure we are not allowed to make any significant incarnate progress.
...or, they could make the DA content have a progression rate closer to 1/4 to 1/8 of trial progression instead of its current 1/20th.
Another issue I have with the DA content is the timer. I can't play on a daily basis. I can play, at best, twice a week. That makes my progression towards my goals of gaining incarnate powers and gaining the auras and costumes that have been stupidly locked behind incarnate rewards virtually nil. I realize some form of throttling has to be in place, but, the devs need to find a way that does not penalize casual players.
So, currently, DA is not a solo path to incarnate rewards. It is just something to do when I feel like playing a 50. It's a fine supplement to trials, but does little for those who can't/won/t run them.
@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.