Remove Incarnate Shards from the game entirely.

Yeah, I know that sounds a little drastic. But, hear me out. I've heard from a lot of people that they don't like how in I20 you have to run the new trials to get the new powers or you're restricted to paying a ton of inf and taking literally forever to get anything. Many more dislike that we now have two currencies to do basically the same thing - sub-components to make the full components you need to craft powers. In my personal opinion the second is a more valid concern, but both would be solved or at least alleviated somewhat by what I'm proposing.

That is, to remove shards from the game entirely. Much like was done with base salvage, change all current shard recipes to make the old components to use threads. Make breakdowns give threads instead of shards. In effect, do a blanket find and replace so that everything that currently gives or needs shards will now give or need threads. The exception being leaving the existing conversion recipes in place and add one to convert a single shard to a single thread, for those who don't conveniently posess them in multiples of ten.

Thus people could convert shards they currently have into threads, and going forward we no longer have the confusion of the two seperate systems. There's still incentive to run the trials if you want the new stuff, because they'll still be a more effective way of obtaining threads in addition to obtaining components directly. But you won't have to run them because you could get threads elsewhere, albeit at a reduced rate. Mostly a QoL thing in that respect since you can already convert shards to threads but still. Mostly, it would just help to relieve the confusion a lot of people have over the three or four new currencies in this issue. The only possibly negative effect I can see would be people getting their Alphas faster by doing trials, but personally I think that's fair if doing the higher tier content, as such, gets you the lower tier rewards faster. If it really bothers people, they could always slap the same 'no alpha = negative level shift' effect on the trials as they have on the Apex and Tin Mage TFs.

Apologies for the wall of text. Anyway... comments? Ideas? Flames, dare I say it?

Would you be able to convert shards to threads for free? If no then you're screwing over people with lots of shards who haven't crafted Alpha enhancements yet. If yes then you're giving a massive advantage to those with lots of shards that they threads were supposed to prevent

Here's the problem I see with your post and many like it.

Now while you may not have been the type to post such a thing, what has been a complaint of the system...no influence sink!

Well here it is!

Will it have much an effect? Not likely.

Next, those want to obtain things while solo, while still maintaining the team option as the best choice. This does that!

Don't want to team to get those threads, well then go solo and start converting shards. Is it neary as fast? Nope. But the solo option is there for you to use!

Seeing as how soloers really don't need the abilities outside of "Oooo...look at me...I have a cool power." (which of course they ARE!) it really doesn't matter much if it takes longer to obtain the powers.

As to the confusion...what confusion? It's really not that complicated past a 3rd grade education. No really. It's not.

As for having the shards when you're now ready to go after the threads, when you get enough shards, just convert them!

I have a college eduation and it's confusing to me... but I'm old and feeble minded to start with.

My question is do the new 'thread based powers" only work in the new trials. If so then there's not much point in making everything "tread based".

(this is what I heard.. I haven't actually been able to find the information on it.. but like I said.. I'm old, feeble minded and the interwebs confuse me) (smile)

We need shards in order to feed the void.

I'd much rather see them enable other ways to get threads at this point. As suggested in another thread.

For level 50 tfs only, set your tf difficulty to +4 +8 bosses when solo, avs instead of elites make threads drop instead of shards. They could also enable incarnate level shifts while on these level 54 tfs as an incentive to do other things besides farm the same 2 trials. Which really i'd like to see anyway. With the added level shifts it would truly make the old tfs more interesting as well although some changes would probably need to be added to these tfs at +4 while incarnate mode was enabled.

There goes your job in international banking.

Shards are Incarnate progress points that can be earned from any content in the game outside of AE.

Threads are Incarnate progress points that can be earned from Incarnate Trial contents.

Having them as separate drops makes it possible to have clearly different rates of Incarnate progress in the different content types. It would be possible to do the same thing with only one type of salvage, but that would require being able to set different drop rates for mobs under different circumstances. I'm not sure that's possible in the current game, and it would certainly make the differential rates less well defined that having the two different types.

The incarnate thread system is idiotic! It does nothing but discurage all the vets I play with. This needless addition has actually stopped my friends, who have been playing for over 6 years, to actually not play the game scene this new system has been implemented. The idea was before I20 came out was that, Hey collecting shards and components must still be good, they obviously would continue their use for the future incarnate slots.

At the same time I was thinking that perhaps something like this would happen, but to be honest I hoped it would not.

We need to stick to one system of incarnate slot components.

Shards drop for 50s with unlocked Alpha slots when doing ANY content except the new Incarnate Trials.

Threads only drop on the Incarnate Trials.

See the problem here?

If you have excess Shards you can convert them (10 per day, with no loss) to Threads. You can't do the reverse, Threads > Shards.

So you're back to penalizing people who are trying to create their Alpha boost when they exemp.

Furthermore, Threads have a much higher drop rate than Shards do.

So if you want to eliminate Shards (something I'm not opposed to) you'll need to address the above issues in your solution.