AV Maps, What are they?

Spoken, it's easy to mistake AE for AV, but perhaps there's some new farm. However, if there is something new, then it is likely to be an exploit, and therefore not something that the OP will learn about here on the forums.

Oh what I would give to go back to the days when that was true

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

You mean, go back to today? That seems odd.

How is it -not- true anymore?

Because the majority of the focus of new content is incarnate related, which requires you to get to 50 in order to participate. And it is only going to get worse as more content is stacked on.

It doesn't even use the wonderful exemplar system that is the one thing this game had over every other MMO out there.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I never said there wasn't low-mid level content, but previously any content was accessible by any character of any level. It isn't the case now so to experience all content you have to get to 50, and if you want to experience it before it degenerates into a grind that people only take their alts through now and again you have to hit 50 quickly.

Before incarnates you really could enjoy the journey, because once you hit 50 you would be doing the same stuff again anyway, on the same toon or an alt. Now once you hit 50 you get to play the rest of the game, which is just like all the other games out there. WoW has low-mid level content, but it doesn't reward you like the high level content which is why people rush towards it. CoX has now shifted it's reward focus to the same model.

Edit: Before incarnates I could pretty much shout up on the channels any time of day for a TF or group and get replies, now if it is not a trial most people are not interested because it doesn't help them progress their characters.

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

How many times do (generic) you run Laura Lockhart's arc on the same character in one evening?

How many times do you run the iTrial de jour on the same character in one evening?

If the iStuff gets vastly more playable time added then it is the majority of the focus.

A much better way of putting it. Thank you

Princess Darkstar - Proud Member of the Handprints of Union, the #1 ranked SG in Europe!
British by act of union, English by grace of God, Northern by pure good fortune!

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

You can't compare Incarnate content and regular content like that because regular content vastly outweighs Incarnate content in terms of variety. There's also no real reason to do any non-Incarnate non-repeatable (i.e., not a paper/radio/Tip mission, not counting Ouro reruns) content such as Laura Lockhart's arc more than once on any single character. But when you start taking alts into account, you see a lot of replay. How many times had I played Doctor Creed's arc for lowbie villains pre-Freedom? Plenty, since I love the arc and played it every chance I got. How many times have I done the Vial of Pulsating Liquid Alignment Mission? Or This Is How She Dies? Also plenty. And those even get repeated on the same characters.

Prior to the Incarnate System, people used to say "There's no sense in rushing to 50 because there's no endgame to do once you get there besides running the same 2 or 3 TFs over and over again". Now this is no longer true, but that doesn't mean people don't play sub-50 content anymore. The WST means that sub-50 TFs/SFs get run on a regular basis (and even if they aren't the WST, they still have badges, and folks love badges), and the devs are not only releasing Incarnate content with new issues (Laura Lockhart being a prime example of very recently released non-Incarnate content). Much of this content has non-XP/inf rewards associated with it (badges, Alignment Merits, Reward Merits, Notices of the Well, Incarnate Shards) that cannot be obtained through farming AE missions or running iTrials, thus they still get run. iTrials have certainly became a main focus of the game, but that's mostly because they're relatively new, and they are still not the focus.

In short, the sub-50 game still exists, and a new player should definitely run through it if they want to know anything about how to play their character and the game in general. Even if their eye is on the endgame, nobody is going to be inviting them to iTrials if they don't know what they're doing. Believe me, I've seen a few folks on Pinnacle who quickly developed a reputation for not knowing how to play their characters at all, and as a consequence they got completely ignored when trials were forming. This should serve as a cautionary tale to the OP and any other new players reading this -- learn to play first, or no one will want to team with you.

I haven't run Laura Lockhart's mission, but I've run some of the other low-to-mid level stuff often. Twinshot's arc, Habashy's arc of course, First Ward, getting ready to start on Night Ward.

I've not run a single Trial.

I ran the DA arcs running 1 arc/day each day. Once that arc was done, I swapped to a lower level character and worked on leveling them up.

During that time I did see people doing repeat runs on some of the iTrials, but I also saw other low-to-mid level content being run repeatedly by people including DiB, DfB, First Ward, Moonfire when it's the WST, others running the Roy Cooling arc, others running the Laura Lockhart arc, other running the SSA's, in other words plenty of people running other things than just iTrials.

Most of the people I've seen will run the trials a few times in a row then switch to other characters to run other content for a while to keep from getting burned out on the trials too quickly. In the past week I've been to at least three Hamidon raids, two Ship Raids as well as running SSA 1.7 and SSA 2.1 mixed in. I might have run two DA arcs on TJ to finish out my weekly run for Empyreans and I think I ran three arcs on Eyes on different nights.

There's been a lot of content added besides just Incarnates since the Incarnate system was introduced and I see it being run fairly often and at least as often as I see calls for Incarnate trials.

You two are either deluding yourselves or you are deliberately being argumentative.

There's only 8 Trials and what is it 1 zone that is dedicated to incarnate content which is restricted to VIP accounts.

As opposed to roughly

35-40 regular content TF's, SF's, Trials, and Raids
At least hundred or so regular missions
Hundreds of AE missions
70 zones
PvP (what's left of it)
The Arena
19 Zone Events
3 Holiday Events Toting, Xmas gifts, Spring Fling missions, The Chalet mini games

That everyone can participate in without being locked behind a VIP subscription.

Yeah the Incarnate stuff is obviously the focus of the game.

Of course, the incarnate system is still relatively new, so it makes sense that there would be a lot of focus on it currently.


Absolutely, complete, FALSE. Or were task forces and trials, which have ironclad minimum level requirements, just introduced today?

So what you are trying to say is that previously you could get into Perez Park to run missions at any level.

You could into Brickstown to run missions at any level.

You could get into Faultline to run missions at any level.

You could get into Dark Astoria to run missions at any level.

You could get into Crey's Folly to run missions at any level.

You could get into Eden to run missions at any level.

You could get into Cimerora to run missions at any level.

You could get into the old Rikti Crash Site to run missions at any level.

You could get into the Rikti War Zone to run missions at any level.

You could get into the Shadow Shard to run missions at any level.

You could get into The Hive at any level.

Not to mention all of the Task Forces and Trials that had a minimum level, as Ironblade pointed out.

If you believe any of that you are only deluding yourself.