The real difference between Trial and non-Trial Incarnate Advancement

I suppose they are similar. I just don't expect them to make that error again. I still think giving an option to feel useless is an error. Better to flat out exclude the person until they manage to overcome the hurdle.

Considering that the trials don't have any hurdles to jump on board, (other than level 50) I would say they learned a lesson.

<nitpick>

There is a hurdle, you must buy Going Rogue. :P

</nitpick>

Thank you. I do remember that now, and appreciate the summary.

OK, in game hurdle. Feh.

Sidetrack on this, though this could be seen as a marketing effort, I've wondered recently if the GR gating of this content is so they can use the higher advertised minimum specs for GR versus vanilla CoH when considering player tech while designing these new challenges.

I wouldn't even try for the 10 assist badge if my badger wasn't a Vigilante and wasn't still missing most of the MO badges. It should have been 50 WSTs, period, if they wanted a long-term WST badge. This badge falls into the "what the hell were they thinking?" category. A badge for "helping others"? Do they think people don't have alts that would also want to run the WST? Do they think the hardcore badgers that really want this badge wouldn't get it during the initial WST frenzy when nobody needed "help" getting a WST together?

Agreed. It pretty much amounts to the same thing, and it wouldn't have required a hamhanded story explanation either.

You still don't understand.

I am not talking player behaviour. I am talking about the devs designing content that requires a player to have the Level shifts and powers from issue 20.

Like I said its only natural, because if the devs are handing these shinies to us they must have plans for content that will use them otherwise what is the point of these powers?

If you could tell me right now with 100% assurance that the future issues of the game will not have 54+3 enemies or encounters that need teams with Destiny buffs I would drop what I am doing dragging my most treasured 50s through these raids, and go back to rolling new Toons.

Again: I am not talking about playerbase behaviour, I am predicting that future content will be designed (at least till the inarcnate stuff is done) with the current power increase in mind. And that is what people want.

It still doesn't help when people are firing off Judgement nukes on Lag Hill.

Nor does it excuse designing content that their tech can't handle. People report "my powers look recharged but aren't" issues during the BAF, and to my understanding that problem is not on the player's end.

OK, fair enough, I didn't get your point and misinterpreted. I don't believe the devs have that kind of thing in mind (given the inclusiveness of the current trials as my basis). But of course we will see.

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.

I do get a lot of that ("dammit! judgement fire you bloody thing!"). Then again I run on a Mac and the interpretation business doesn't help my cause. I don't imagine my performance will ever be top notch.

Well, I'll agree Cimerora is weaksauce, that's for sure. But it's also not when I started enjoying the story in the game. THAT happened in I18 with Praetoria.

For me, it very much is the story not the gameplay that I'm loving here. I can't stand redside because I feel THAT is "ham-handed" in that it actually tells me WHY I'm motivated to do things, and that motivation changes randomly. The redside content, through the writing, tells me my character is absolutely psychotic and unable to hold a coherent thought or objective for more than maybe 20 minutes.

Conversely, in Praetoria, the game tells me what is happening, and I'm able to fill in the blanks with WHY my character is doing this thing. For me, a lot of the things left out are IMPORTANT to be unstated, because I can finish it in the context of my character. I'm much more engaged, and whenever I hit one of the morality choices, I actually have to read the options, then mull it over for a while, the game sitting there 'paused' while I try to work out what my character will do. And it's often agonizing to me because I can see it both ways.

That, to me, is DEFINITELY engaging, and I'd like to see more of it.

Similarly, the tip missions. If I see one that doesn't fit my character, I can simply drop it, grab another. More often I just play through them and treat them as apocryphal, since I KNOW it's optional. It's harder to do that redside when you pretty much HAVE to go through the stuff that bothers me in order to advance at all.

I've frequently toyed with the idea of reviewing older content as if it was AE arcs, providing feedback on presentation and how to use the available tools more effectively. I keep deciding it's too much work that likely few people would care about, even if the idea amuses me.

Haven't done it. Don't have any redside characters of the appropriate level. I moved them all blueside, or they're only redside to grab an objective (accolade or patron) then head back blueside. Or I deleted them and started over blueside.

Maybe someday I'll get one of my praetorian characters to 20 that would reasonably go redside, and try again. I'm somewhat doubtful.


This is a symptom of how earnings are distributed. As I've mentioned before, in TWO BAFs I finished the last of my Judgement slot and got halfway to Lore, because I was on the adds team and we were hitting the badge for handling the adds.

I really think they need to revisit that, because it's unfair to give most of the rewards to one part of the league, when every team is just as critical.

Yeah, the time dilation issues are a well-worn phenomena, and I don't really understand why we're experiencing them on the trials. For mothership raids and invasion events, it makes sense; the server is having to deal with an entire zone's worth of people plus an absurd number of enemies. The trials are smaller, more contained, and as far as I can tell, with consistently fewer players and enemies than a mothership raid. If anyone has any insight into that, I'd like to hear it.

(Also, I'm totally guilty of dropping my ion on lag hill. It makes me giggle.)

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

That's pretty good for a BAF. I get around 10% each run...ugh.

Luckily, there seems to be growing awareness about how structuring the league on the BAF affects incarnate xp distribution. In the last couple of days I've more often seen leaders having 2-3 members of each team sent to fight adds, while the rest of the team members focus on the AVs.

I missed the day that double-Incarnate rewards were activated on the servers. That's more than twice the earning rate I'm currently earning either iXP or Empyreans (I'm averaging about 15% iXP per run, and less than one Empyrean per two successful runs - 8 out of 20).

I've seen twelve shards drop in an ITF. I've never seen those numbers quoted above before, or anything close to them. Theoretically speaking they are possible if one team on a BAF hoards the kills. But I do not believe there is any strategy possible that can earn that level of rewards for an entire league, or even half of it. Its only possible in a BAF where one third of the league takes the vast majority of the iXP, which is why its nearly three times the average (and on such runs, everyone else is usually stuck around 8-10%).

There have been a few posts from players claiming 40-50% per run. I haven't seen anything like that either but I just wanted to point it out.

Fair enough. I guess I've been in too many arguments along the lines of "new content is better written because it doesn't have defeat alls," so I think it's important to make the distinction between better writing and better presentation.

I'm really curious to see what happens as knowledge of how this works becomes more widespread. I'm sure there will be some jackholes who will try to hog the iXP for themselves, but it remains to be seen whether the non-jackholes decide that fair distribution is more important than convenience and efficiency.

Well in all fairness it's not like everybody else isn't doing it too.

I have gotten as high as 49% on a single Lambda run. That is an outlier, however.

Though Lambda does tend to run higher, in my experience, than BAF due to the smaller team size I suspect.

I'm just curious about your Empyrean stat here. Do you mean that you've been on an average 12 failed trials out of 20? Or just that your total ratio of trials that provided an Empyrean to those that did not (including extra trails per day past the first) was 20 to 8?

Lambda is a joy comparatively for iXP purposes. I think it's a combination of things. If you do both trials straight through and pretty much only fight what is required to complete the trial, you still end up defeating more stuff in the Lambda Sector trial. I think there is also more opportunity for "collateral defeats" as you do things like take out the containment chambers and weapon storage boxes. Much of what you defeat in the BAF is either minions or LTs, or the two AVs, and if you defeat the AVs rapidly, you don't get as many supporting boss mobs. Combine that with the smaller league size and LS just progresses you a lot faster.

I probably average just under 33% progress on Interface per LS, and only about 10-15% on Judgement per BAF.

For the character I mention, 27 runs, 20 successes, 7 non-successes (failures, trial-crashes), 8 empyreans. That's confirmed by the fact that the character currently has eight, has never converted one, and the logs show eight total drops.

The raw numbers are in this post from last night.

Actually it wouldn't surprise me to see level shifted enemies on the higher level trials, say versus hamidon, the Well/Tyrant.

It would make sense, because by the time we get there I don't think lvl 54 enemies alone will cut it. Some folks with their +3 were saying the mobs were red to them during the trials.

I definetly see them adding enemies like that.

The implementation of mechanical aspects in Praetoria is .. mixed. I think overall it's better, but where we had endless defeat alls and dozens of glowies, now we have enemy groups that are substantially more powerful than the level equivalents on Primal, and endless ambushes. The latter is definitely not cool in my opinion, and for the former, I think some of the enemies could be toned down a squidge.

I mean, I'm able to handle them on everything I've tried, but evidence suggests I'm a significantly above average capacity soloer, and rather patient when necessary. There's plenty of people who hit digital brick walls on this stuff, and that concerns me a little.. but despite that, with the availability of teaming, I think Praetoria is a superior early level range region than red or blue from a purely mechanical/implementation standpoint.

Obviously, opinions differ on story content. Subjective things are subjective.

I've been pondering that. If I ever get around to actually leading a BAF, and they haven't addressed the rewards issue, I'll probably just do something like "Last three of teams 1 and 2, last two of team 3, you're on adds."

It's less elegant. We've lost some functionality this way. But at least everyone gets paid.

Because it's awesome. Every. Time. :D

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

Another thought...once the majority of people have their slot unlocked and no longer care, it might be easier to stick those who don't on the reinforcement team. Again, it will come down to what kind of players end up leading these things.