New efforts!

[Twisted Toon]

I managed two level shifts on Agent Standin while running around in Dark Astoria. I also unlocked my fourth and fifth incarnate slots in Dark Astoria on the same character. Mainly, because I seriously do not like large raids. I never participated in a Hami raid, and only did one Rikti Mothership raid just for the stupid badge they placed under the shield, just so I could unlock the beacon for the RWZ.

I much prefer doing missions with my small group of friends. Which the solo path for incarnates allowed.

[MWRuger]

Anyone saying the solo path for incarnates was viable is hopelessly clueless or just wants to keep anyone from ever making any progress on the incarnate path entirely.  When you actually look at how slow the reward gains were you'd be rather surprised, shocked and disappointed.  I think the max was one empyrean merit per week, so thats over 8 weeks for a rare component not to mention the thread drop rate was way to slow.  You needed 60 threads for a tier ONE abilities and many more for a tier 2, so it was outright impractical to do so.  If we get the game back i'd recommend first thing to patch was the solo path, make it a bit more viable if possible.

Edit: Made my post a little less hostile towards those who think the solo path was doable.  Will add this though;

When the Itrials reward 100x more in only 30 minutes to an hour than a solo path somethings off :S.

They were planning on adding more solo content for solo incarnate so that it would be possible to do more than one a week. Still, they wouldn't make it too attractive.

[Sinistar]

I managed two level shifts on Agent Standin while running around in Dark Astoria. I also unlocked my fourth and fifth incarnate slots in Dark Astoria on the same character. Mainly, because I seriously do not like large raids. I never participated in a Hami raid, and only did one Rikti Mothership raid just for the stupid badge they placed under the shield, just so I could unlock the beacon for the RWZ.

I much prefer doing missions with my small group of friends. Which the solo path for incarnates allowed.

Best way I found to get the badge on the ship in RWZ was if a raid was running, I'd hover over the center of the ship, then when the shield dropped, I'd fly/divebomb to the badge then take off as fast as I could, all while under maximum stealth possible and some purple insps running for extra def.

I was in about 5 hami raids total, all wins, but just not that fun overall for me.

[Remaugen]

The problem there is if you give too much reward for the solo path....you ruin the chances for league play for the ITrials.  I know many who did not do ITrials because of the time invested and the more complicated mechanics of the missions.  But if you can get the same rewards for solo content as for team play it is just going to make it harder to form teams.  I think solo play is fine for adding additional rewards above and beyond team play but should not replace team play.  I had no issues with solo rewards as it was.

For me the ITrial leagues were nearly impossible. I am not really all that social to begin with, stick me in a huge crowd, which causes massive lag, and my social skills and personal cool devolve even further. About the time my screen starts spazzing out and displaying at 20-30 frames a minute during the big fights, there is no way for me to help or barely even know if my toon is still standing, much less targeting anything. And I know that I am not the only one who had those bad experiences. I and those like me, need a reasonable solo or small team incarnate path to be able to get any joy out of the experience, to be able to complete the experience. . .

[Ban-Sidhe]

Best way I found to get the badge on the ship in RWZ was if a raid was running, I'd hover over the center of the ship, then when the shield dropped, I'd fly/divebomb to the badge then take off as fast as I could, all while under maximum stealth possible and some purple insps running for extra def.

I was in about 5 hami raids total, all wins, but just not that fun overall for me.

I will admit to this shameful act as well. But I did do the mothership raid afterwards, and it was a lot of fun. Excluding the occasional face-plant. 😉

[Blackgrue]

So there's been no news for a while, so let's fire up the ol' rumor mill.

*WHIIIIIIIR*

There's no news because NCSoft has them all under NDAs and are threatening to destroy the earth with their "Sunset Laser" if anyone dares to break it!

[Sugoi]

Ooooh!  Ooooh!  Look at the Shiny Red Button!

Can I push it?  Can I?

[Ironwolf]

So there's been no news for a while, so let's fire up the ol' rumor mill.

*WHIIIIIIIR*

There's no news because NCSoft has them all under NDAs and are threatening to destroy the earth with their "Sunset Laser" if anyone dares to break it!

I have information from a good source that NCSoft is a Nemesis plot.

[Sugoi]

I have information from a good source that NCSoft is a Nemesis plot.

Nemesis Conspiracy Software?   That explains a lot.

[umber]

Personally I'm having trouble remembering Incarnate details.  Dunno if the addition to the game was too short to be permanently burned into ROM, can remember hunting werewolves for the badge 8 years ago but can barely remember the trials or power details at all.  And I know I had at least four characters completely kitted out and easily a dozen others well on their way.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

Personally I'm having trouble remembering Incarnate details.  Dunno if the addition to the game was too short to be permanently burned into ROM, can remember hunting werewolves for the badge 8 years ago but can barely remember the trials or power details at all.  And I know I had at least four characters completely kitted out and easily a dozen others well on their way.

*points and screams* 

Um!  Not you, too!

I remember most of them.  I didn't get to run that many of the Mother of Mercy trials, so that's fuzzy. 

But I spent many times running the Lambda and BAF.  Of course, I'm also the guy that took damage during the prisoner escape portion of the BAF...

[drmanbot]

I was very fond of the Itrials. as a nutball badger, the hardest badge for me EVER to acquire was "avoids the green stuff" as part of the positron trial.

I made a great deal of online pals running that one constantly until we finally did it. It also allowed me the opportunity to lead groups in the other trials and guide people, so there's there's that

Sad note, exactly 1 week after I got that badge they announced the game was shutting down. I felt somehow, my getting that badge shifted Karma in some way to punish me.

[Ironwolf]

I used to use my sonic/ice blaster to slow all the prisoners down.

[LaughingAlex]

I used to use my sonic/ice blaster to slow all the prisoners down.

I liked to stack temporal distortion fields in key points on my time manipulation characters.  Often I could keep 3 out at all times, it was then a matter of destroying the fast ones with my superior firepower and to-hit ratings.

[Teikiatsu]

I used to use my sonic/ice blaster to slow all the prisoners down.

I'd plant a Bonfire in their path.  They'd be KB, stand, look confused, then run into the Bonfire again.  Ah well.

[umber]

I was very fond of the Itrials. as a nutball badger, the hardest badge for me EVER to acquire was "avoids the green stuff" as part of the positron trial.

The Trial badges are what finally broke my casual-badge collecting.

Oh, I had pretty much every badge when the Trials first popped up, "casual" seems a little odd even to my ears, I wasn't an obsessive collector but after being around since the game launched and playing quite a lot... it reminds me of that scene in GroundHog Day:

Phil: Well maybe the *real* God uses tricks, you know? Maybe he's not omnipotent. He's just been around so long he knows everything.

I never saw myself as being particularly good at badge-hunting, I just had an awesome SG to run with and had been around long enough that picking up a badge now and then added up.  When you can't sleep and you're online at 5am, what else is there to do *but* grind those crafting badges?  Go pick off a Contaminated in Recluses Victory?

I never cared for the Master badges though.  I ran with a great SG that was probably too good for me and was lucky enough to assist on multiple Master runs.  Conceptually I abhorred those badges, the notion of a person's badge progress being determined by a different player's skill or simply being lucky enough to run with the right crowd never set well with me.  It didn't matter that I came out on the plus side of that equation, I knew it was negatively impacting other badgers who might not be so lucky so it constantly grated.

Then I saw badge runs during Trials being deliberately griefed, or failed over a momentary network hiccup, or Real Life (tm) taking priority at the Wrong Time.  When you have 32 people cooperating the odds of any one of those 32 having (being) a problem at any one time goes way up compared to 8-man teams.

Realized I couldn't support badging anymore, just wasn't for me.  More to the point, the Trials forced to the surface that badging never really was for me  to begin with.  Removed all the badge-tracking stuff and just played the game until the doors closed. 

[Reaper]

I used to use my sonic/ice blaster to slow all the prisoners down.

My Plant/Storm troller used to eat through them rather quickly.  It was one of the most fun characters to use during the prisoner escape (at least in my opinion  ;D).

[Felderburg]

The Trial badges are what finally broke my casual-badge collecting.

You lasted a lot longer than I did. I got the game in '05, around Issue 5 coming out... I went for all the exploration badges, as part of my quest to get all the badges, but the TF badges did me in pretty quickly. I realized there was no way for me to actually commit to all the time / energy for those, and consciously stopped my desire to get every single badge.

[Power Gamer]

Badges, mmmmgooood.

[LaughingAlex]

The Trial badges are what finally broke my casual-badge collecting.

Oh, I had pretty much every badge when the Trials first popped up, "casual" seems a little odd even to my ears, I wasn't an obsessive collector but after being around since the game launched and playing quite a lot... it reminds me of that scene in GroundHog Day:

Phil: Well maybe the *real* God uses tricks, you know? Maybe he's not omnipotent. He's just been around so long he knows everything.

I never saw myself as being particularly good at badge-hunting, I just had an awesome SG to run with and had been around long enough that picking up a badge now and then added up.  When you can't sleep and you're online at 5am, what else is there to do *but* grind those crafting badges?  Go pick off a Contaminated in Recluses Victory?

I never cared for the Master badges though.  I ran with a great SG that was probably too good for me and was lucky enough to assist on multiple Master runs.  Conceptually I abhorred those badges, the notion of a person's badge progress being determined by a different player's skill or simply being lucky enough to run with the right crowd never set well with me.  It didn't matter that I came out on the plus side of that equation, I knew it was negatively impacting other badgers who might not be so lucky so it constantly grated.

Then I saw badge runs during Trials being deliberately griefed, or failed over a momentary network hiccup, or Real Life (tm) taking priority at the Wrong Time.  When you have 32 people cooperating the odds of any one of those 32 having (being) a problem at any one time goes way up compared to 8-man teams.

Realized I couldn't support badging anymore, just wasn't for me.  More to the point, the Trials forced to the surface that badging never really was for me  to begin with.  Removed all the badge-tracking stuff and just played the game until the doors closed.

I was never a badge hunter myself, I would sometimes get some badges, but I didn't particularly enjoy getting the tricky ones.  Honestly the ITrial badges to me, a good number of them are fake difficulty as your expected to do things in a total nonsense manner.  And I felt they encouraged elitism and general bigotry elitists eventually allow to cloud their judgement and begin imposing the catch 22 rules that can be near fatal to any community.  I felt I was only seeing the beginning when I saw the, thankfully rare, BAF trial being formed with +3 as a requirement.