Lazarillo

Well, they might exist because they're fun? And honestly? I mean that. They're fun. The first couple of times. What they, and all the content in this game is exactly like your analogy: something that's fun to do a few times, at which point you can move on from it and do something new.

If they want something that can't be done quickly, then they've failed. Because I got all four of the i20 Rare powers (sometimes, they Very Rares) on four different characters, and none of them took longer than a couple evenings and a lazy Saturday.

What's more, the reason I have four characters I did Incarnates with in the first place was because Alpha was reasonable to obtain with a variety of characters. Making us grind out the trials as it stands doesn't make me do them any more, or less, it just means I have fewer characters I bother to do them with.

That Task Forces are not endgame is an arbitrary decision. Task Forces worked well as end game for the Alpha slot, and could work just as well if incorporated into the current ones. Apex and Tin Mage, amusingly, still haven't really been used for Incarnate progression at all, despite being labelled as content for such.

Before the trials, there were seven different tasks that would all provide meaningful Incarnate progress, and we weren't even restricted to those seven, because of Shards. Now, we have three, and because of the infinitesimal rate of return, we can't make reasonable progress through the rest of the game, either.

Basically, the trial system has given us a negative amount of content. There's more to get, but less to do to get it. The whole point of not adding 10 more levels, as has been pointed out in this topic, was because of the steep amount of additional content that would need to be added. The Incarnate system was, in theory, supposed to work, because it involved more things to do to improve our level 50s characters, but since everything we could do before has been removed from that equation, we've actually been given less to do.

Speaking from my own perspective, I rather doubt that the same people complaining about the grind are also the people running repeated ITFs. Or, at least, I can say that about myself. My four Incarnates all did ITFs as part of their Alpha progress, certainly, but I don't think any of them individually had to run that single TF more than once. At most, I might've done three. Three BAFs won't even unlock the Judgement slot.

I'm snipping the next few paragraphs because, as demonstrated here, you're kind of building off a false premise. But in short, you're right. People who want to maximize rewards grind ITFs unflinchingly. And those same people grind the raids unflinchingly. But the people who want variety can get the same rewards the ITF gives reasonably without doing nothing but ITFs. People who want the rewards from the raids do not have that option.

Except it's the way this game has worked, since i9, for many years now. I could join a TF, or fight a Mothership raid, or just solo arcs on my own, and all of those would allow me to make meaningful progression. What I've been able to do in the past is log on in the evening for an hour or two, say "okay, I want to do X", and do it, and when I'm done, I can say "okay, and here's what I have to show for it". The new system allows for neither of these things. I don't have a choice in the case of my 50s. I can raid, or nothing. And when I'm done, I often have absolutely nothing to show for it.

Okay, I think I get it now! You're saying the trial system is a slap in the face! Right?! Am I getting warmer, at least?

So it's like the forum equivalent of Incarnate trials?

They look more or less like the guys from Phantom Army. IIRC, the boss is a standard male, the attack lieutenant is a Huge male, and I'm guessing the support lieutenant is female, though I never messed with the radial tree, so I'm not totally sure on that one. The costumes are a little different, though; instead of whites and blues, they're gray and darker gray. And like all Lore pets they have that Reflections aura going on.

If the devs want the system to linger, it would have been wiser to use time gating than repetitive grinding. It's worked for Merits, it's worked for the Alpha, but it's been the complete antithesis for the raids, which provide the greatest amount of reward to those who run the same character through them over and over and over and over again. What's more

This is not true. It's easy enough to get everything in a couple weeks. Hell, most of my characters who Incarnated, did so in a couple of days. The problem is that this content, by it's very nature, is burned through. It only takes 40 minutes to do a raid. Then it's done. Once the raid is over, you've already burned through that content. But once you're done with the content, you still haven't received any tangible reward, because doing one raid will never reward you enough to actually obtain anything.

When the raids are the only meaningful way to progress, it's no surprise that people who don't like raids are raiding. If they offered story arcs or even TFs in place of such, would the data mining show such good numbers for raiding, I wonder.

Every arc thusfar though has been written with him as a whiny second banana who, despite being a technical genius, is a complete toad in every other possible way. The fact that the raid makes him the man of one million gimmicks really doesn't make it sound like he's any better here, to be honest, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised whenever I get around to running it.

Neuron gets points for pulling a great Not So Harmless (WARNING: TVTropes link!) moment if you do the Praetorian arcs in the right order. I did the power arc first, and he was complete dope, so him turning out to be a legitimately threatening villain in the Warden arcs was a pretty inspiring moment. Here's hoping the new raid can do the same for Keyes.

As a big naysayer to the current raid system, I do agree that switching out characters is a good way to avoid the feeling of a grind. Unfortunately, from my experience at least, the minimal rewards for a single raid are such that you just replace the negative "grinding" feeling with a negative "didn't really accomplish anything" feeling. Fixing one problem by replacing it with another...really isn't fixing anything.

"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of problems it is unable to solve approaches zero."
Especially when those problems are pesky Primal invaders.

I was talking with a friend about this the other day, and yeah, in a lot of ways they kick off in the exact opposite fashions. Baccano drops a ton of plot threads and then the characters begin to emerge in them. Durarara drops a ton of characters and then lets the story thread them together.

For what it's worth, I find both series pretty dang good, despite their differences.

You're supposed to be intrigued by that, my man. Who are these three? Why are they sharing this chat room? How will it tie back into the story? Have you no sense of mystery?

...why wouldn't they?