WST -- Ill-conceived.

So I basically got the exact same response I've always heard that made no sense. So the judgement slot will be obtainable solo because the rare slot is obtainable solo (really your first paragraph made no sense to me. They wouldn't need to make a new interface to require the judgement slot be locked behind a team oriented activity...)

I also never told you not to speculate. I stated that speculating the positive is no more valid than speculating the negative. I have plenty of evidence of the devs forgetting aspects of the player base (base builders, PVPers). You're essentially telling me to not speculate and just wait and hope my thoughts are read by the devs and I say no. The time to act is now, not later. Designs are not changed later, they are changed now.

You admit the level shifted stuff might stay behind a force team wall. ANY of this behind a wall is a problem. ANY of it. All level progression should be obtainable solo and if it is not, many of us will not be happy. You can find it wrong or whatever but that is my gripe and you've essentially admitted it might be true.

I find it incredibly unlikely that the devs would do the level shift and then not create any new content for those new levels. That'd be like if they made 40-50 but did not make PI or any content for over 40. Players aren't going to want to do the ITF when enemies are conning -10

As for what BS said. I'm sorry but he is a dev and he's the one who announced this crud. He basically gave us a PR line and ran off. I'm not pleased. If the devs want to shut me up they can come out and say "We are currently working on a solo option." if they do no wish to say that then they can deal with the outcry. It is not my job to make the devs feel like special snowflakes. They are employees at a company, not my buddies.

I don't feel neglected of end game content. I feel I am barred off from LEVEL ADVANCEMENT. That is what the level shift is to me as is new powers. I don't care about taskforces or raids or end game crud. I care about being able to advance. If the devs want to make some BAF raid, then good for them. But do not lock me from advancing because of it.

So at the end of your rant I just got a longer version of "I believe I am right even though I am doing exactly what you are doing. Speculating and assuming based on how I percieve the facts". Why is your speculation more valid?

There is no evidence against me. There is your own opinions (you like the WSF) and mine. Your opinions are no greater than mine or the homeless mans down the street.

Which is again, a no go for me. Sorry.

While I don't necessarily disagree with you in spirit..

1. Did we really need another incentive to run Task Forces? We already added Reward Merits which give us another form of currency to use to buy enhancements, recipes and salvage. Many of the task Forces are tied to one accolade or another that award bonus powers or strenths. For the badging community of course each TF has it's own badge and most aid in getting one or even more of the defeat badges. Then add in that for many players, myself included, they are a quick and easy way to level a character without resorting to mindless farming. Not that I think there is anything wrong with the WST but I hardly think NC Soft needed to institute it just to get people to play more TF content.

2. LOL Yeah your 100% right here. This week was week #1 and everyone that didn't have to work or head off to school was rushing to IP to get that first Notice and potentially slot their very first rare. Now it's just a grind to get a few more and work toward that very rare. I can almost promise every week the starting point for the WST will be crowded but not like it was this week.

3. True

4. Or as you said Finally .. true it has already been announced that when Issue 20 hits there will be other ways to ??? potentially craft or obtain the Notice of the Well. My biggest problem with this statement, and I have seen it on several similar posts, is why should we have to wait? No I'm not talking about having to slowly earn only one Notice a week but people keep saying. "Well if you don't like doing TFs just wait until issue 20" Now I am a Task Force queen so this doesn't affect me but how do you think that makes someone that doesn't enjoy teaming or simply can't do to computer/lag issues feel? The vasy majority of the player base is out there right now gobbling up Notices and making their characters even strong and better but because I someone can't afford to buy a newer, faster PC they are told to just wait and in a few more months Issue 20 will hit and you'll have a new way to earn them. Yeah but by then everyone else will be done slotting their Alpha with very rares and be busy working on the new Incarnate Slot that opens up at the same time (supposedly). Those people will begin to feel sort of like the proverbial Red-Headed Step Child.. always one step behind and getting the left over crumbs from the table after everyone else is finished eating.

I enjoy the new Incarnate System and love the things my Incarnates can do now base on the rare enhancers they all enjoy. I am looking forward to getting very rares and then moving on to the next incarnate ability. But it is beginning to seem like they are piecing it together as they go along. When we first got the new system with I-19 only getting the first 2 tiers of the Alpha seemed like a teaser to make us want more (which it probably is/was) but now we get I-19.5 and the next two tiers open up but instead of just completing the package and moving on to the next ability we get yet another teaser? "Here is the WST which is one way you can gain the thing you need to slot your rare and very rares. For more ways to do that see us when I-20 goes live" When you consider how active the servers have been ever since I-19 hit do we really need to keep finding new ways to entice the player base? We already know that I-20 promises the next Incarnate slot so why didn't they just open up all the methods to obtain a NotW now and move on? It certainly would have eliminated a lot of the threads here complaining about the WST and made both those that enjoy/can team and those that hate to team/can't happy.

Pay me for the six months I have to stick around for because I already paid and I'll gladly leave right now. Otherwise, I have as much right to voice my displeasure at the developer's actions as you have to voice your support.

You can voice it all you want, but if you're leaving, it means exactly nothing. In fact, if you're leaving, it means less than nothing, since people who are disgruntled don't exactly have the best long-term interest of the game at heart.

Personally, I doubt you're really leaving. I think people way overplay the whole "I'm leaving!" threat to the point where it's meaningless.

Six months is a long time. The devs have a pretty big window to address my concerns. It's entirely possible that they will do so and I will renew. It's less likely they will do so if they decide to listen to you rather than me, of course.

At the moment, I've done all I can to assure my departure (my account is not set to renew; there's not a lot else I can do about it.)

I've at different times in the game sub have felt like you do Eiko. If you paid with a credit card you can always dispute it. If your not happy, they'll credit you for your unused portion. I hope the devs have a bigger finale than what we've seen lately. I only do 1 month at time because I only pay for what they produce. Paying for 6 months or longer sends the wrong message to devs. Does your employer pay you 6 months in advance?

At the time I signed up for the one-year plan (which was eighteen months ago,) I liked where the game was going and hadn't seen any reason to doubt it would continue there. When it renewed six months ago, the same was true - GR was slated to come out soon and everything I saw of it was great stuff. Even the first part of the Alpha slot looked good.

This team-gating for the Rare/Very Rare parts really blind-sided me. It came out of nowhere; I never in my wildest dreams suspected they'd pull something like this.

That'll teach me to be optimistic.

(PS, I'm going to slap the next person that tells me to "wait for i20" - unless you want to tell me you're in the Closed Beta and can verify explicitly that "Incarnate Trial" doesn't mean the same thing as "Trial" has meant in the past.)

I don't like it but here's what maybe the Devs(assumption) are thinking about. Right now everyone wants to and is ready to go Alpha but what about 1 year later when everyone has done it? How do you continue to build the community if everyone is Alpha Level 50+?

The "Loops" allows everyone to reach their goals now or LATER at whatever level. I can still play with lowbies and we can all still get something out of it.

The only question I have is that I thought level 50 stuff had to be run for the notices, shards, etcs. It's not really Alpha stuff if we run Silver Mantis at 20/30. The WST must be an arbitrary selection by the devs weekly.

Of course she's not leaving. She's literally spent dozens of posts trying to convince us that she's "introverted" and that she's incapable of playing on a team because of her "social anxiety". That is to say: she's been aggressively arguing with people on the internet about how she's incapable of being social on the internet. If that isn't self-refuting I don't know what is.

It takes an epic hypocrite to cough that up while arguing to exclude a play style from a game system.

Teams can already do everything in this game, and generally do it faster and more efficiently than soloists.

The game was promoted and has historically been developed as 'the solo friendly' MMO.

And again, for about the 10,000th time, MULTIPLAYER describes the game environment, not any sort of forced teaming system.

When they engrave your expectations on stone tablets and elevate them above the expectations of the other paying customers, let me know.

I can see why Tony V's Little Book of Inspiration was circular filed by every publisher in town.


Oh you mean like when they added merits and let people buy recipes? Or when they added Amerits and let them buy more recipes easier? Or when they added tickets, or etc etc etc.

Whatever your personal feelings are, the devs clearly don't have anything against inclusion and so advocating for an expansion of Incarnate access is entirely reasonable. Your counter-argument, sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting NUH UH!, isn't very compelling.

There is a qualitative difference between time delayed interactions in a moderated environment like a forum and dynamic, instantaneous 'live' interaction with random unmoderated strangers.

...says one of the people vehemently arguing that no one should have to team up in an MMO.

It's also been promoted and has historically been developed as not a PvP-oriented game, yet there are some rewards you cannot get without venturing into a PvP zone, some badges you cannot obtain without directly engaging other players in combat.

And for the infinity plus oneth time, I've seen most of these exact same arguments in threads about that.

*yawn...*

As for the paying customers, I'm not worried. They seem pretty thrilled to me. One needs only look at the server loads lately or the population of WST contact zones to see that.

I'm not saying anyone should quit. In fact, I think anyone who does quit because of this is pretty stupid. I do think that some people would have quit anyway and they're using this as a lame excuse for doing so. I do question whether some people in this thread, if being genuine, should have ever gotten involved in an MMO to begin with.

But mostly, I think some people in here are trying to extort the devs into giving them what they want, which happens to be something the vast majority of players don't care one iota about, by throwing an "I quit!" temper tantrum. I've seen it before, they almost never do, and the game is still going like gangbusters in spite of them.

Tony's one of the original and most vocal of the Purity Police. He'd be super happy if the game was empty except for him and the twenty people who think exactly like he does.

His rabid exclusionism is such a given I rarely bother commenting on it.

I have never used the term "social anxiety" (except right now when I'm quoting you). My recall isn't perfect, but I think the people throwing around "social anxiety" have, by-and-large, been the "pro-team" side of the argument. It's a bit of a loaded term.

What I did say was that introverts that lacked social skills largely did so out of lack of practice, and not because of any inherent deficiency in developing them.

As Nethergoat already pointed out, but as I shall now explain in a bit more detail, online interaction on a forum is vastly different from online interaction in the game. For that matter, "chatting on channels" (another thing I do frequently) is vastly different from "playing on a team".

I like to think about what I'm going to say. In written communication, it's pretty easy for me to do that - the parts of the brain that control written communication are also the parts of the brain introverts are naturally wired to use. Being able to pause, collect my thoughts, and then process them is easy (and even relaxing) for me. I can do that on a forum. It's also something I can do while chatting on global channels in the game; there's no pressure for me to react immediately.

On a team, this ceases to be the case. I must react instantly to input - a call to switch targets from an anchor, or a rush to move to the next mob, or a sudden need to throw a heal or buff on an ally in trouble. I don't have time to think about what I'm doing, formulate my options, and move forward. I can't think - I must do.

"Do" comes naturally for extroverts, and they are empowered by doing. Introverts are natural "think"ers, however, and are empowered by thinking. We can "do", but it's effort - just like it's an effort for many extroverts to slow down and reflect on things before moving forward. Extroverts feel antsy and bored when they aren't "do"ing, when there isn't activity (and change). Introverts feel anxious and overwhelmed when there's a flurry of activity.

A lot of us can keep up, for a while, but eventually we're going to be worn out and shut down. The longer we have to do it, the more drained we get - we might be perfectly fine to team for a couple missions before breaking up (which, in my experience, is about as long as most PuGs last anyway), but the long stretch of a Task Force may be too much - or if we are going to do it, we need to be well-rested and recharged (which means we've spent a long time alone/thinking beforehand) before we can tackle it. When, as is the case for the vast majority of introverts, our actual lives and work require us to be expending that energy instead, we won't have the excess to spend on a video game.

If you watched me while I soloed, you'd probably notice the difference pretty quickly. While I'm not sure how others solo, judging from the way most teams roll I suspect the majority of people run missions as fast as their builds allow, taking just enough time to recover from the last fight before diving into the next. I don't do that (and I suspect many other introverts would see parallels to themselves here.) I take in as much as my character can take, but when the fight is over, I generally take quite a bit of time getting to the next one - far longer than is needed to rest/recuperate back to full for my character. It's mostly unconscious, but a lot of what I'm doing is reflecting on how the pull went, what I did to overcome it, what I might expect to see next, and what I could do to make the next one go smoother. I'm taking a moment to catch my breath and let my "think" smooth over the "do" I just went through.

I also like attack chains, and hate ambushes. Attack chains let me focus on the "think" in combat, and ambushes force me into the "do". "Do" is probably also why I hate Battle Maiden so much.

Looking at time stamps, this post took me about twenty minutes to compose. I paused in the middle of sentences, went back to read over what I'd already written, thought carefully about what I was putting down and in general took my time making my points and observations. There is no way I could have gotten away with this on a team.

Fair enough.

A 50/50 split seems fair to me

I know you're just being cute and don't really think this is a "50/50 split", GG (or at least I hope you are; despite everything I still want to think you're not a horrible person), but even jokingly, how can you claim that "you get the bottom half, I get the top half" of a tiered system is remotely fair?

I don't like TFs. Never have. For me, the level shift is the entire point of the Alpha Slot.

Being introverted is an excuse, and a poor one at that. It's not something game developers should have to design around. There's nothing wrong with having to play by a set of rules you don't particularly care for, or that aren't catered to your every need.

Being physically unable to play in a style that being on a team requires is a different animal, but that's not what you've been describing.

They're perfectly welcome to design their game to exclude 25% of their potential player base (probably more than 25%, because I suspect introverts are disproportionately gamers). I don't think it's a wise business decision, but they're perfectly free to make it.

And if they make it, I'll find somewhere else to spend my entertainment dollars. Why is this such a difficult concept for people to grasp?