EvilGeko

Yup. Would love to play the set, but can't stand how it looks.

Seriously. Trials have been around since the game began. Incarnate trials are just a special iteration of those.

The only level 50 I have that is a grey alignment is my rogue Bane Spider. That's only because I was tired of seeing hero side TFs recruiting all the time and being trapped in dirtyville!

It does not get containment damage.

No. You actually get to move slower!

Doesn't really matter if you buy in or not, it's one of the foundations of many MMORPGs including this one.

Sure. Teams have a time penalty built in.

Forming a trial can take anywhere between 5 min-hour. And you don't know going in how long. Teams/Leagues require more organization and you're dependent on others for your reward. Teams/Leagues have to deal with "brb dog barfing on rug" (This has really happened to me). Teams/Leagues may have to carry or teach a newbie, who is trying but just doesn't know what to do.

Solo you control many more of the variables that can make teams/leagues difficult and time-consuming. To put some real world examples on this, I've done ITFs that have taken 16 min. I've also done ITFs that have taken 3 hours. My skill level didn't change and I was using the same character in both instances. The difference was my team. The 16 one was filled with vets with perfectly tailored IO builds (this was PRE-INCARNATES) who all had played together before. Most of those folks could probably solo the TF post-Incarnates. The 3-hour was a good team of folks who just had weaker builds, and many hadn't done the ITF 200 times. They made mistakes, died a lot more and worst of all killed Romi with his fluffies out of range. Our DPS took a long time to take down those darn things.

So to answer your question, yes, there is a very good reason teaming is allowed to generate rewards faster than soloing in the general case.

It was frustrating for me as well, moreso when Alpha Strike came out and we knew we would be stronger when the trial finally went live. My only point was that it was possible.

I think it's a pretty high likelihood. Either that or the next slots will cost an obscene amount of threads and/or shards like you suggest.

It wasn't terrible. It was decent, if a bit laggy. What we have now is terrific. Different strokes and all that.

The game has been worth my time, money and dedication for the 7.34 years it has been live. If the Incarnate system is not your taste and that significantly degrades your enjoyment of the game, I would suggest that this genre of video games is not for you. Because there's no more casual friendly endgame system on the market.

While Keyes and Underground are definitely easier with three level shifts, both trials were tested with raid forces that included either NO level shifts at all or only a few people with level shifts.

Standard Hero contacts will introduce you to a new contact when you get their phone number. Even some of the side contacts like Montague continue this practice. It is possible to get every contact in a level range without ever doing a Safeguard mission.

Being that I was born in the year of the rat, I have no problem with this analogy and I agree!

What people say they like and how they actually behave can differ wildly.

Honestly, given that many of the things I've championed have been added to the game and those things have been universally hailed, I could challenge that.

However, I don't suggest that people don't like a deterministic path, only that they wouldn't like it if that was the only path. Which is exactly what people seem to be suggesting. Because we have a deterministic path now, and as I said, I don't see any way that the devs would make a solely deterministic path any faster than it is now.

Finally, I always question 'most'. That implies a majority. There's the first issue that just because a majority prefers something doesn't make it a good idea. But more to the point, none of us know whether our opinion represents the majority view. It's irrelevant in any case. I don't believe that even people who think they would like a purely deterministic system would actually be happy with such a system. I've seen how that works in practice and is isn't pretty.

Other games I've played have set gear that is 100% earned through a deterministic method. And you think we have complaining about grinding here? In that game, folks are constantly annoyed that the only thing they have to look forward to is their token to get the gear they know they are going to get. It's terrible.

I would argue that there are no pitfalls in a properly designed random determination system. Which I believe we have here. I think the devs only error with Incarnates was the madness of creating a system that rewards 'participation' when participation is very hard to determine given the different abilities players can bring to bear.

Random systems remove the 'grindy' feeling IMO. There's nothing more tedious than knowing exactly what you're going to get every time you do something. The chance to always get something amazing is what makes this a game and not work. It's what makes poker and blackjack and even Monopoly fun. Random chance means that a casual player can keep up and even surpass the 'hardcore' player at times. It levels the playing field more than anything.

If there were no random components given at the end of the trials, there's no reason to believe that the devs would set the deterministic path any more favorably than they do now. And then it would be immensely grindy and boring. Because you would need 5 days and 20 trials minimum to get a VR component, where now Lady Luck can favor you on your first trial.

That's a substantially better deal IMO.

Of course, that's entirely intentional. There's a reason that 90%+ of the power of Incarnate slots comes from the rares. The Very Rares are a bonus, something to work towards. Ironically for me, I had the very rare components done before I had the rares done on my main character. She still only has two VR slots filled. I just don't see enough of a boost in power to bother with the others, although I might have enough merits/threads/salvage to do it right now.

Go back to Issue 1 through Issue 5. The strongest loot in the game came from the Hamidon raid. At the time, HOs offered significant advantages over SOs. For example, a Ribosome was worth 30% Res; 50% End Red. That's the equivalent of an even level SO and DO in two attributes. And there was no ED. Obviously by the end of 2005 there was an ED and HOs had been reduced to their current values, but there are still some HOs worth many hundreds of millions of influence because of certain advantages they have over IOs that the devs have chosen to leave in place.

Until Issue 9, hero players had exactly ONE way to earn HOs. Do the Hamidon trial with 49+ of their closest friends. After Issue 9, they had what was at the time the hardest TF in the game. Villains got the TF first, raid second. But even more, HOs are now and always have been 100% a random reward. You get what you get. Don't like what you got? Re-run the raid/TF.

That's why I'm so astounded by folks who complain about the trials so much. This is significantly better than what's come before. There's more content, less 'grinding' to get what you want, a fully deterministic path.

Likely all you'll need for later trials is every available level shift. Again, there's a reason those level shifts come at the T3 stage and not T4. If they did, I would have more sympathy with the arguments obsessed with getting a very rare in each slot.

I don't know if that much story is locked behind the trials. The story of Praetoria is told much more through solo arcs than in TFs and trials. A characters first exposure to the Coming Storm now takes place when they login for the first time into a zone destroyed by it. So, I see this as more conjecture than anything.

No, actually. The deterministic path becomes, like UberGuy stated, an escape hatch. If the random number generator really hates you, then you will still eventually get what you want. IMO, the deterministic path is quite reasonable here. 8 Empyreans to a rare? You can do that in two days right now. I'm not even sure it can be said that the random path is necessarily faster. It is if you're lucky, but if not, tokens work too.

Actually, I'll bet that the primary reason that merits came about is the Katie Hannon Task Force and the 15 min. rare recipe.

But in any event, most MMORPGs have token systems to earn loot. This game isn't that different to be honest. Perhaps a bit easier to earn loot, but that's only recently.

You have random rewards here. Many rewards in this game have a random component. I think that's my whole problem with people's objections to the Incarnate system. It's not grounded in facts. I haven't stated a preference here at all. I'm taking issue with the descriptors being tossed around because they are erroneous by any objective measure.