The sensibility of removing shards from the game

[FlyingV]

This thread was inspired by those discussing the topic in the 11/14 update thread and suggesting its own discussion. I agree with the suggestion that it would be best that they were phased out. Shards may have some quaint tie-in with the story line, but they are something of a great disservice to the game overall and here are the reasons why:

1. Traditional grind/leveling is eliminated. When I was starting and quite resource poor, it seemed silly to "waste" gold and materials on leveling. Once I achieved 4* territory, characters that were not maxed were not even played. ALL leveling has been done artificially.

2. As a result of the artificial leveling, characters are not played. I have a good 90 4* maxed (or above) characters and I am confident that I have put NO serious play in at least 75% of them. 50% or more have been max-leveled to their current evo level without playing them at all. Consequently, I have missed out on the experience of learning their strengths and ideal parings. This is because natural levelling is an arduous process that makes no sense against the convenience of artificial leveling, which when presented with these shard rewards is an automatic must. Thus, this convenience has unintentionally gutted the game experience.

3. Store bonuses are ignored. If I am cramming shards down the throats of my toons all day and only playing maxed chars to build others, why would I care about XP bonuses for sale? Remove shards and suddenly my Ironite gets a whole different priority shift should I want to cut the maxing of my light voidling by 3 days.

4. Removal of shards cleans the game up. Server resources needed to keep tabs on 1*-5* shards of each color as well as colored and clear 1*-3* evo shards are freed up. Newer players are less overwhelmed by the removal of all this candy crush perphery. This also removes another variable from being tweaked regarding intentional/unintentional bottlenecks and drop rate tweaks. I can't tell you how many threads I have seen cluttering the site ISO the fishing spot for 1* reds or 2* blues.

5. Shards compete with other badly-needed resources in the rewards chest. Usually we get 1-3 rewards, typically 2. We need runes, shards, evos (for both) talismans, souls, gold, ironite, and skill shards. That is a lot of shit to keep up with and when you only have so many hourglasses, you are only getting so many rewards. For every time we don't get a shard reward, we stand a better tali, soul or rune chance. Suddenly unintentional bottlenecks of these items gain a bit of automatic relaxation.


What to do with the no shards gap then (like LOL dungeons)?

Skill shards. Skill shards preserve the story line about Eddie's soul, blah blah, for campaign mode. There is also less unfairness when devs modify characters in which players have heavily invested such rare shards as there are now more ways to earn them and recover. Morover, there are many ways to structure this, depending on how simplified or complex devs want to make this to streamline/free up resources or preserve game heritage.


Simple: fragments. Skill frags get a resource window above next to gold, SoT and ironite. 100, 500, 1,000 (whatever) frags = a skill shard. LOL dungeons drop frags, and if necessary, gold and other filler (maybe yellow drops Gold, purple drops ironite, color-coordinated rare souls, etc.)

Preservationist: make shards as we have them today soul frags... red, yellow, blue, etc. 100 (or whatever) of each color is needed to form a skill shard. Evo shards are needed to interface the shard to a character, so say, six 1* red, three 2* red, and two 3* red would be needed to fuse a skill shard to a warrior, whereas the same numbers of super rare clear evos allow the shard to be fused to ANY character. 5000 trooper badges now earns 1 skill shard and the clear evos to fuse with any character.

[LegoMech]

This is a great and logical suggestion. I like the layout of your argument going point by point.

[Eagleknight]

This thread was inspired by those discussing the topic in the 11/14 update thread and suggesting its own discussion. I agree with the suggestion that it would be best that they were phased out. Shards may have some quaint tie-in with the story line, but they are something of a great disservice to the game overall and here are the reasons why:

1. Traditional grind/leveling is eliminated. When I was starting and quite resource poor, it seemed silly to "waste" gold and materials on leveling. Once I achieved 4* territory, characters that were not maxed were not even played. ALL leveling has been done artificially.

2. As a result of the artificial leveling, characters are not played. I have a good 90 4* maxed (or above) characters and I am confident that I have put NO serious play in at least 75% of them. 50% or more have been max-leveled to their current evo level without playing them at all. Consequently, I have missed out on the experience of learning their strengths and ideal parings. This is because natural levelling is an arduous process that makes no sense against the convenience of artificial leveling, which when presented with these shard rewards is an automatic must. Thus, this convenience has unintentionally gutted the game experience.

3. Store bonuses are ignored. If I am cramming shards down this e throats of my toons all day and only playing maxed chars to build others, why would I care about XP bonuses for sale? Remove shards and suddenly my Ironite gets a whole different priority shift should I want to cut the maxing of my light voidling by 3 days.

4. Removal of shards cleans the game up. Server resources needed to keep tabs on 1*-5* shards of each color as well as colored and clear 1*-3* evo shards are freed up. Newer players are less overwhelmed by the removal of all this candy crush perphery. This also removes another variable from being tweaked regarding intentional/unintentional bottlenecks and drop rate tweaks. I can't tell you how many threads I have seen cluttering the site ISO the fishing spot for 1* reds or 2* blues.

5. Shards compete with other badly-needed resources in the rewards chest. Usually we get 1-3 rewards, typically 2. We need runes, shards, evos (for both) talismans, souls, gold, ironite, and skill shards. That is a lot of shit to keep up with and when you only have so many hourglasses, you are only getting so many rewards. For every time we don't get a shard reward, we stand a better tali, soul or rune chance. Suddenly unintentional bottlenecks of these items gain a bit of automatic relaxation.


What to do with the no shards gap then (like LOL dungeons)?

Skill shards. Skill shards preserve the story line about Eddie's soul, blah blah, for campaign mode. There is also less unfairness when devs modify characters in which players have heavily invested such rare shards as there are now more ways to earn them and recover. Morover, there are many ways to structure this, depending on how simplified or complex devs want to make this to streamline/free up resources or preserve game heritage.


Simple: fragments. Skill frags get a resource window above next to gold, SoT and ironite. 100, 500, 1,000 (whatever) frags = a skill shard. LOL dungeons drop frags, and if necessary, gold and other filler (maybe yellow drops Gold, purple drops ironite, color-coordinated rare souls, etc.)

Preservationist: make shards as we have them today soul frags... red, yellow, blue, etc. 100 (or whatever) of each color is needed to form a skill shard. Evo shards are needed to interface the shard to a character, so say, six 1* red, three 2* red, and two 3* red would be needed to fuse a skill shard to a warrior, whereas the same numbers of super rare clear evos allow the shard to be fused to ANY character. 5000 trooper badges now earns 1 skill shard and the clear evos to fuse with any character.

Hmm.
Removing lvling shards sounds like a really bad idea to me.

1. Traditional grinding for lvl happens automatically when trying to farm mats. I personally have 2 lvling Eddies equipped or one ally while grinding. I don't know about u but if I get new toon I'm excited about I want it 100 right now not a week later.

2. Artificial lvling doesn't teach you the toons. Is it really that hard to learn 4 skills at the most? This game isn't rocket science.

3. The store is making tons of money. The reason the power up packs are not bought is because they are useless because they contain no 3* mats. People do buy the lvling boost ocasionally when they have the me to play and are attempting to lvl up mutiple toons.

4. The shards are not the reason drop rates are screwed up. That lies solely with the inability of the developers to get it right. They fix one thing and break another. Part of the reason for this is that all the places like pvp and BNW have not been implemented yet. When they are the drops will be more spread out and therefore easier to balance.

5. Lvling shards allow new players to compete with older players. If they are removed new players will be more disadvantaged then they already are. All players are hampered by the rng in this game but it's harder on a new or casual player.

6. Lvling shards allow players the choice of lvling the normal way or power lvling a toon they really want. The also allow people to meet the current achievements. Thane them a way and it would take a year to hit 100 4 or 5* toons. Even paying for boost to lvl would take forever while constantly farming the highest lvls. I've tried it takes too long.

7. Why spend money for boosts when u don't have to.

8. I agree that the drop rates are screwed up but by taking out lvling shards you would only hurt players ability to choose what they lvl and how. Let's face it some toons are not as good as others and will not fit in with every team. This makes lvling many toons the traditional way is a real problem. Also, if you are starting to lvl a 1* toon to 100 and don't have maxed out eddies and allies and have no lvling shards you will be forced to grind low lvl areas that provide very little lvling exp.

In conclusion I see no reason to remove lvling shards except to line the game creators pockets with hard earned money. Let's face it they get enough by making us deal with terrible rng and by removing the drops of rare souls and ass/gun souls.

I like that you were thinking of ways to fix the drop rates. But I don't think removing a good item to make the developers job easier.

Oh one last thing meeting daily achievements will take be more difficult if u remove the ability to lvl 10 lvls quickly.

Just my opinion.

[konstifik]

Or, keep shards but only drop them in LoL.

And the skill shard fragments would be great either way.