The long wait may be over.. but did they wait too long? (opinions??)

Then do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and....

Did I mention 28 50s?

BAF and LAM are not that fun. None of the trials are. And DA is *way* too slow. Even in combination - ugh.

Edit:
Thought I needed to expand a bit - the "BAF and LAM are not that fun" should probably have some emphasis on "that." They can be fun, sure. The biggest problems, though, are that there's so LITTLE Incarnate content and that the higher ones seem very unrewarding until you've ground them out for a while - and DA is *very* late compared to the system's introduction.

I'm leaning more and more toward the camp that says "Get rid of/convert shards and recipes and just have everything drop threads/astrals/empyrians when the system's unlocked." Yes, it'll be slower than running iTrials, but it will seriously avoid burnout for people like me that like variety. They can't make the Incarnate content fast enough to avoid burnout, especially for the altaholics the game otherwise encourages.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I can only speak for myself, but part of what makes Incarnate Trials fun is the interaction people have during the content. Like with Task Forces, if you're teamed with people who talk, interact, and generally act like a team, it's a wonderful experience. And asking questions is certainly interaction - I enjoy it when people are new to trials on my leagues because it usually means they'll have a few things to say as the mission moves on.

QFT.. TFs and Trials are the thing I like most about CoH

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

I've yet to see that attiude on the Virtue trials. The BAF is esp. easy just to follow the crowd.

This.

So much this. Can't stress it enough. My interest in the incarnate storyline wanes with every issue it seems because of how much work (and yes, I mean work) it becomes to follow it, and I'm a huge fan of the story of the game. I'm still willing to do it in what little time I play without my SG (who for the most part want nothing to do with the grind) but the prospect of a single trial needed to unlock it over multiple plays is... starting to be a bit daunting... and maybe a little irritating.

I've typed, erased, typed, erased over 30 minutes worth of me trying to explain myself, but Memphis Bill really put it so well I'm hard pressed to have anything better to say about it, so I'll leave it at that.

But thats the silly way For just 16 astrals you can buy recipes that will sell for 100 - 150m, why wait until you have 60+ EMPs when you can just use astrals to get money to buy them

I have SOME incarnate salvage being built up now, but not enough to get me a few good tiers so i'll be running it quite a few times anyway I'll be wanting T4 of quite a few of those anyway so looks like i'll be busy with them! Though that being said, i agree that they should start pushing out further incarnate slots on a more regular basis. Even if it was one every other issue.

I have a different question.

If the only thing you care about in the game is the Hybrid slot.....then why are you still playing it?

Personally, my interest in the Hybrid slot, and Incarnate powers in general, is slightly above my interest in PvP. I enjoy the content and I enjoy the powers, but it has never been a huge concern of mine to have everything unlocked and slotted as soon as humanly possible.

I'll get to it when I get to it.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I have ... 4 characters that I bother to incarnate. Four. Because I play other characters, other games, work, go out, and other such things that would prevent me from having 45 incarnated characters.

Now, will the lack of a 7th or 8th slot stop you from running iTrials all day and night? Right. They didn't wait too long.

I agree mostly but in this context the question doesn't really make sense.

You have NO CHOICE except to run the Magistarium trial all day and all night, since it's the only way to unlock the Hybrid slot.

You ask that question like it's a choice.

so technically speaking no they didn't wait too long. If they had released it today or two weeks ago or a year ago you would STILL have NO CHOICE but to do 4-5 trials to unlock the slot.

I total agree with your suggestion in the final paragraph Bill. In fact at some point a while back I suggested it here. The fact is shards and even the notice of the week have become unnecessary .. I can build the exact same alpha power using threads and salvage I earn doing any of the seven current trials and the best part is I don't need to wait an entire week to earn 2 NOTWs so I ca craft it. My suggestion back then was switch it so everything a 50, with open Alpha, does drops threads and actually replace the current salvage offered on things like the ITF with the reward table we see in DA arcs and let players chose between threads, salvage or a possible Astral/Emp. You could even replace the current Notice of the Well given by doing the WST with 2 Empyreans.

This would give EVERY player, those that enjoy trials along with those that don't, another way to slot powers and increase the ways players can build powers. Could end the boerdom that some feel doing the same thing over and over... Don't feel like running a TPN tonight .. Let's go do the Manticore TF and grab a few threads and a piece of salvage instead.

Okay now back to Hybrid and a small concern i voiced in comments on the trial and slots during beta testing. It is now possible for me to open alpha simply by sending one character to Ouroborus and using 2 Astrals (worth exactly 8 threads) to email an alpha slot to any of my other 50 levels. I have used this method on several occasions. It is possible to PURCHASE IXP using threads and influence (takes 30 threads and 30 million to open Judegment and Interface and 45 threads and 45 million to open Lore and Destiny). I can take a new 50 level to dark Astroria and street hunt and earn both types of IXP to open all four of these powers as well. BUT the ONLY way I can earn the new Advanced IXP is doing the Magi trial? Isn't this the exact same situation all over again that had a number of players screaming bloody murder because it forced them, their words not mine, to run one particular trial if they wanted the power? Don't get me wrong I have no problem working for my rewards but more and more these days we find things for sale in the Paragon Store that we used to have to actually work to obtain.. If you are willing to pull out a credit card you can half a ton of stuff people used to actually run missions to get. Yet once again we are in the same situation as when the BAF and Lambda were new.. The ONLY way to open Hyrbid is to run the Magi trial.! Now I m sure at some point more trials will be added but by then most of the serious GOT to have it now players won't neeed them anyway and it will just be another way to mine astrals and emps.

It -is- a choice though. You can run one Magi trial when it launches... one the next week... one a month from then, and then 2 in one night 5 days later. BOOM! You have Hybrid unlocked on one of your characters.

There is no reason whatsoever to blast Magi trials as if there is nothing else to do in this game, because, well, there -is- other stuff to do. And the only trial where the difficulty is such that Hybrid will come in handy, is, well, the trial you have to do to unlock it.

More to the point then: After a few runs of Magisterium to unlock, then plopping in that nice, new T4 Hybrid... will the OP (and others with similar complaints) still be running trials all the time? Of course they will. That's what they do.

Yes, yes it is. Funny how that works, isn't it?

I agree with your approach to unlocking Hybrid (it is, after all, why I only have one character who is "keeping up" with the system). I just had to quote and bold that little piece of text there to emphasize the illogical nature of that design choice.

Yikes. I knew there were players like you out there itching for the next tier, but... man, to see the numbers.... that's impressive.

I... umm... have two characters that have their tier 3 unlocked on all powers with virtually nothing left in reserve to build hybrid with. Been playing since the purple patch and have 5 other level 50's... I think I bothered to unlock the alpha on most, but maybe 2 of them have a tier 1.

A NotW is worth a rare component, it'd need to be 8 Empyreans to keep its value.

Sooooo no matter how long they released the issue people would still be doing what they were. I think we are saying the same thing here and don't know it.

How long you have to run the trial to unlock the slot has nothing to do with how long it took the issue to come out. It's going to take them the same amount of runs no matter what.

No matter when you run them, the number needed to unlock the slot doesn't change.

I have 12 50s and two of them are still +1 (My Beam Blaster is CLOSE though, he's got a T3 lore ready, and needs one more empyrean to get a T3 Destiny for when the slots unlock).

Only one of my characters has a Royal Flush and he's got EIGHT T4 Abilities.

It's just too much work after a while. And I'm completely SICK of BAF/Lam/Keyes for my new incarnate characters.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

Indeed. I realized I have enough salvage on one character to get Hybrid, so even though the power itself it looks pretty lousy, I'll probably try to blitz through a few Magis tomorrow evening so that I can do it and be done. Replaying it over a couple weeks would just make it more tedious.

I on the other hand think that Hybrid will turn my character into a GOD!

75 - 80% smash def?
55% Energy def?
58hp/sec?

All on a street justice/energy scrapper? Its basically set my character to a new level that now all my other characters will have to try and reach

Edit: The thing is that there are multiple Hybrid powers which would fit my scrapper perfectly so im going to have to be running quite a few of them to get them all x)

...50% of the time (at best). Based on what I've heard (admittedly, all second hand, since I didn't do the new raid in beta to try it myself), the numbers are fairly uninspired on their own. Y'know what else I can only have up on special occasions? Hybrid powers don't sound nearly as strong as other "god mode" powers, yet that's what they seem to emulate in terms of use.

LOL okay in all fariness I am not your typical player. I retired from the military a few years back and with no job to go to and no school dragging me away I have quite a bit more free time than someone younger. I also don't find very much on television that interests me these days and generally watch older TV shows or movies online when i am in the mood for that.. something I can do anytime. I also have been fortunate enough to hook up with a lot of good players than can quickly and easily run every single trail available. UNTIL TOMORROW, and our success rate is extremely high. It doesn't take us long to put together a team, and we frequently do minis, and once we do we run one trial after another untl we have all the Emps we can get and then move on or log off. when you can do 6 trials in 4-5 hours and they all succeed and the group you team with does that every night for more than a month .. You can get a LOT of characters done. A

Oh and I have also used the system to my advantage on a number of later characters. Two Astrals opens up the Alpha slot and 150 threads will open up Judgement and interface (30 threads + 30 Mil in INF each ) and Destiny and Lore (45 threads and 45 Mil in INF each). At that point you can transfer threads to those characters to slo powers as well. 300 threads will slot all 5 powers to tier 1 (3 commons each at 20 threads) and another 500 threads will allow you to slot all 5 powers to tier 2 ( 2 commons at 20 each and 1 uncommon at 60). I forget exactly how many times I did that but at least 4 possibly 5 of my characters ran their first actual trial with every power already slotted to t2.

In terms of comparing them to god mode powers i think they are actually much better. The numbers that they give are indeed far lower than the god mode powers we already have, however these Hybrids will be up 50% of the time and with no god mode crashes as well.

As it stands, the melee version [saying as was my example] lets a melee player get up to the level of [or almost] to AVs i feel. A large majority of the melee characters will be able to either get close to or over the resis/def cap depending on which tree you take.
True this is only 50% of the time, but for those 2 minutes you will feel the huge increase in power. The clicking of the power every 2 minutes is annoying i will say though, hoping that they find out a way to do more than one auto power, however i feel that its the one downside to the power.

Of course i know some people are highly against the current version of Hybrid and welcome to their opinion, just saying that in my opinion im loving the set

I have over a dozen, and I think only one of them has all three level shifts. Logged onto that one after quite some time and was surprised just how much salvage she had (four VRs, need to work on upgrading those T3s).

I was on a Virtue BAF last night that downed NS and Siege alarmingly quickly. I was doing my part, but wow. Would have been very easy to just follow along. Lambda I still feel like that's about all I can do. Follow along, do my best to get killed [too often].

As to why I included ZM's post, part of me is disappointed that there is only one way to unlock Hybrid (not even converting threads??), part of me is happy that at least everyone is starting fresh and will have to run it. I got in on BAF/Lambda on the ground floor, so I'm comfortable with them. I've still not participated any of the other trials, and at this point I doubt that I will. I just don't want to be the n00b on these tasks. Running this new trial along with everybody else might make me feel better about blending in. If it's failed occasionally that's fine - chalk it up to learning the ropes. Plus if all that is really needed from it is iXP, failing isn't as big a deal.