Bill Z Bubba

The topic of the thread is solo content. Stay on topic and cease being an ***.

Takes a team to start those, doesn't it?

And thus the multiple threads on the topic.

Fully incarnated with tier 4s in everything within a month easily on teams versus a path that ... as you put it, is freaking nuts and would involve so much time that you might get done before the servers are shut down but you'll have to work pretty hard at it.

You can get shards soloing paper missions. If memory serves, I was getting around 8 an hour ripping through them at full tilt at +0/x8/yes/yes difficulty.

We'll say 5 hours of that. Per day.

Of the 40 shards, once a day you can swap 10 shards for 10 threads. For the other 30, you get cut in half.

25 threads a day. 5 common pieces every 4 days. You can extrapolate from there what it would take to unlock the 4 incarnate buffs and craft even tier 3 pieces. It's a loooooonnng farkin ride.

Or just run 3-4 incarnate trials a night (that's only 2 hours a night) for 9 days or so.

I did completely neglect to consider those that wish to spread the IO/Purple love around. I have two characters with purples and only BZB gets the hardcore love. Every other character I have will get the unique IOs, maybe some sets, but purples aren't on the menu and what they do get won't show up for the most part until they hit 50. So far, BZB is also the only character to get incarnate buffed.

heh... for my new spines/fa scrapper that's done nothing but solo AE? Yes. He'll be rolling in cash regularly.

For my main claws/sr scrapper? It was bit slower.

While it wasn't AS easy to get purpled and IOed out while solo, it was nowhere near the gap that currently exists for incarnate buffs. I farmed and paid inflated prices for my build, yes, but was able to do so by what I did solo in game. I was done with that first build in what I felt was a properly comparable time to the time spent by my team-minded brother.

As for the HO period... I was one of the evil punks that would show up during the hold phase.

A fair point. Then they decide to use those resources for a third trial rather than provide a solo path.

That's the point, EG. If the devs are going to give us what we want eventually, why do they insist on dragging it out when they could have put in both the faster, easier path of trials along with the slower (but not idiotically slow,) harder solo path at the same time?

How is it irrelevant? Because its difficulty would make it impossible to solo for 99% of the playerbase? Because it would be far more difficult to gather enough people willing to start it but not do it?

I'm unsure why you keep stating this. I decide one day to lead a lambda. I felt that I had done it enough that it wouldn't be a big deal.

Organizing it was nothing more than broadcasting, "Lambda starting, X spots left." Once full, we ran it. This is not more difficult than anything else in the game. It took X amount of time, yes, but that is all.

What about running it? I repeated the same instructions that I had seen other people use. I faceplanted once that trial. We finished in average time. Where's the "more difficult that soloing," EG?

Now compare it to me soloing the Lambda. Which would be more difficult again?

Please cease stating something that is so obviously untrue.

I remember testing this when the new difficulty system was added.

How'd the old difficulty system work?
Base was +0/x1
Then +0/x2.
+1/x1
+1/x2
+2/x1

Does that sound right?

It makes sense to me that the devs would make the the mission completion bonus static because it would have been a pain to configure an appropriate scale for everything between +0/x1 and +4/x8. Also, the added XP from being able to change the virtual team size alone more than makes up for the loss in completion bonuses.

Not even a little bit. But I have recently learned that powerleveling myself by soloing tweaked AE arcs isn't all that bad. Not something I'll do regularly, but it's been interesting watching this spines/fa scrapper progress.

Really? Always? This is why the vast majority of my characters go up through the ranks by doing paper/scanner missions and story arcs? Because it's the path of least resistance? Or am I just not people?

Easier, you say? It's easier to solo the ITF than it is to steamroll through it with a team of incarnates? It's easier to solo a defender through Praetoria than it is to burn through it with a tank and a blaster on your hip?

Wrong. Their job is to provide a service/product that makes a profit.

Fun is subjective. You have read MANY posts from individuals that have tried the incarnate trials and did not find them fun. I enjoy lambda and find it fun. I find baf to be boring and buggy.

Player A teams. Player B solos. Player C (as I mentioned earlier, the vast majority of players) do both.

The people that want to try out the trials will do so. Those that don't won't. There's not a damn thing the devs can do about that. So why bother "forcing" anything?

Every time the devs have attempted to force behavior, the attempt has failed. People should learn from their mistakes.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, the answer is because everything else in the game works that way.

You get to 50 faster on a team of 8. You finish TFs/Trials faster with a team of 8.

The team path should ALWAYS be faster than the solo path.

This doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a solo path.

That sounds nice. There's a lot of us that want solo incarnate arcs.

And yet you come back for more in a sad attempt to cover your BS. Nice rig. You still get lag in the BAF and you're still a liar. You can't avoid code side issues.

While your attempts to overplay my statements are sad and pointless, much like your cog in a huge corporation job where you have no important decision making responsibilities, nothing about the developer decisions are destroying me or causing me misery. If I get annoyed, I simply walk away from the game. As I have before and will no doubt do so again.

It's a pleasant diversion to come back to from time to time. Much like our lovely conversations.