rsclark

Well, except for those half of your powers that do nothing except take time and energy for no reward.

Welcome to the world of the well-favored widow. I had to start standing around doing nothing for half of lambda, because I needed uncommons.

No, actually you wouldn't. You just need enough trials. If anything, data from one player would be more reliable, as it would be more likely to remove the element of player skill.

Only if you stick one end of the scale over in the life/relationship ruining territory. Really the scale starts at casual, runs through "hardcore" and ends somewhere around "dear god what is that thing". On that scale, CoH is firmly in hardcore territory. There are people saying "I did this playing only 3 hours a day"; that's hardcore-ville.

Every bit of statistical data ever gathered on this planet was from a limited number of trials - no one has infinite time and resources. Your statement is dumb.

All we know is that certain characters clump around certain rewards is a very un-random way. And that toa slightly lesser degree, the same thing happens with ATs. Some people have tried experimenting on the same character with different playstyles, but those don't have the same supporting numbers - yet.

There are many reasons I don't play that game and you listed one of them. Saying "we're less ******" is not something that can be bragged about. People should have higher standards.

I'd go a step further and have a checkbox for "Incarnate difficulty". Run any 50 mission with it checked and you can get shards. Everything inside is 54 and has the increased base hit chance. +whatever other increased difficulty you want.

I see no way in which the game would benefit from that.

Yea, there are some people who don't seem to understand that getting those 2 components I already have was a major time investment, and not something I want to just throw away. The alternate recipes are fine, but they don't buy back the time I spent grinding under the old system.

Once they all actually work on MMs, that is.

Because it doesn't work just fine the way it is. It is worthless at best. Really, "festering turd" is a more apt description.

Going by my secondary mutation timer, I waited over an hour on a Friday night without getting in. That's an indication something is working poorly.

I have only seen a league "fill" once with anyone from the LFG, and that added only 2 people when we had room for 4. Presumably this means that there were only 2 available.

As it currently stands, the system is worthless.

I assume by "back in the day", you mean "still today".

Again it must be said, the worst part about I20 is that people like this seem to be around more and seem more willing to make their bad attitudes publicly known.

See, this is what makes me think the participation goes beyond a binary random good/thread choice and influences the chance of each table. The fact that you usually get a common is completely different from my experiences. I played for all day Saturday and unlocked 3 slots on one character and nothing on the other two I tried. During that time, I got exactly one common - and that was when I switched from my scrapper to a defender to try him out. Getting mostly commons sounds like an extraordinarily bad run of luck given my experiences. More likely, it's not random.

I'm more worried about how things are going to be when the newness wears off. Right now, I expect to spend a minimum of 20 minutes forming a BAF, so I can't imagine how it's going to be when I need to run 6-8 of them in 6 months with a new level 50 when most people are doing something else entirely.

You're ignoring the iXP you already get in the trial.

Real numbers:
~40% XP from one trial
3 Astrals because getting 3 on Lambda is easy.
1 Emprean

You need about 20 since it's 3% per trade, so that leaves you with 12 threads to spare. No breaking down of any components needed.

ITF
0% XP from trial
You need 33.3 thread/shards round to 34
So, that's 7 shards. About average for a run.

You still need to get lucky and get 2 more to put you on the same level as the trial runner, and that's ignoring that nice uncommon he got.

Sure, maybe 1:5 is a too good exchange rate, but to claim that it's faster than doing the trial is plainly wrong. Don't do statistical analysis when simple counting works better.

Automatically bucking trends is just as stupid as automatically following trends. It's perfectly fine to like a song they play on the radio. It doesn't make you uncool. Your leather jacket wearing friends won't laugh at you.

It is only in the devs hands. I cannot make it more worthwhile, but they can. Currently it isn't even close. That's not a judgment call. It is a simple observable fact. To claim otherwise is delusional.

"Give me your money or I shoot" is not two options and neither is the current incarnate system. Calling something an option does not make it one. Nor does crossing your fingers and pretending really hard.

You can unlock Interface after one trial if you break everything down and convert it to XP - exactly what the guy doing ITF would be doing. If you stick to making fair comparisons it's not faster at all.

Huge assumption. Even at peak times, rolling from one complete BAF to starting the next, the minimal time I have seen is 15 minutes. On average, more time is spent looking to fill the spots for the 6-8 people who quit than we spent running the trial.

You do realize that the whole point of introducing new content is to prevent people from getting bored?