The Purpose of Essentially Making Shards Obsolete?

Everything shards can do, threads can do better.

As said, the only reason I see for the inclusion of threads was to slow down people who had pilestocked tons of shards.

If I were the devs, once the shard supply has been mostly used up and/or threads have been gained, and/or iTrials have been run down to death, I'd be working towards phasing out shards. Alpha slots can be made with threads, so:

• Make threads drop instead of shards (at a x5 rate)
• Allow one shard to five thread conversion
• Let the common Alpha component be broken down to 20 threads
• Allow Notice of the Well to be converted into Rare components
• Same with the Very Rare
• Modify the Level 50 TF rewards from Alpha components to thread based components

To the OP:

It's a time sink, pure and simple. According to the traditional marketing theory of MMOs, a long, tedious grind keeps people subscribing longer.

That makes about as much sense as forcing people to watch 5000 hours of the Nosepicking Channel before they can subscribe to HBO. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be a Nosepicking Channel for those who enjoy such things, only that it's stupid to make it a prerequisite for the rest of us.

I get why they added a new way to get the Incarnate stuff. My only objection is its yet another currency to get your Stuff. We've already got merits, A-merits, shards, TF Incarnate salvage and now Threads/Trial Incarnate salvage.

It's going to be very tedious if every new set of trials comes with yet another currency to get the stuff just to gate the content.

I think having some people buy all the shinies on day 1 is a small price to pay for not having several different currencies and ways to get the stuff. If someone wants to grind TFs or Trials for weeks to stockpile Threads of Shards, let 'em. People are gonna run the new content in droves anyway.

You see there in lies the rub - why wouldn't they make a new currency?

If the lemmings jump over the cliff every time they make a new gate - why not? I refuse to play the Baf or Lambda trials. They are farms and I have never farmed anything other than the wall in Cim - just because I like beating up Romans!

The trials reward you for doing only one form of content. The content has been made so it just a Pavlov's dog form of reward punch the button for 30 minutes and get the reward. Players say 3 things not even realizing they contridict each other.

1. What's wrong with you don't like hard content?
2. What's wrong with you - you don't even have to win to advance.
3. What's wrong with you they only take 30 minutes.

You see the trap - it's not really that hard, it's not really that fun doing it over and over - but I don't have to win and it's quick.

Really?

I play to have fun. If I am not having fun - I stop playing and quit the team I am in, swap to another character or quit the game and go do something else. I do not find farming fun. If I can get the reward for content by doing what I want to do - like I could with Shards, then ok! Make me endlessly loop trials to get a new shiney - nope - I will ignore the "content" or if the new stuff becomes more heavily based on this sort of stuff - just quit and do something else.

The beauty of this game and what made it different is I could always play whatever I wanted to do and advance. If I can't no problem - I just spend my entertainment dollars elsewhere. This grinding farms is as far away from fun as anything I can even imagine.

I guess one good thing for the game is it will be attractive to the WoW crowd.

It is bad design regardless who designed it, or how much time was spent. That certain person IMVHO should move on for someone else that can bring fresh approaches to the game.

Not everyone will have these wondrous powers because not everyone is all that interested in them. I hate the grind and find the trials to be a bit monotonous so it will be a long time before I unlock everything on the alts I wish to take into the end game content.

Shards will be needed until everything is changed for Alpha. They drop in regular missions and even street sweeping. Not to mention the WST and the Level 50 TFs. For the toons I am going to keep up to date I will probably get to Tier 4 on at least 2-3 alpha powers, just in case I decide to change my mind along the way. I already did this with a scrapper by focusing first on endurance reduction and then starting to improve the accuracy for when I am going on a team that is running at +4.

The shards are dead, long live the shards.

Exactly proving my earlier point.

I am not saying that just following the Dev direction is wrong - I am saying I am not doing it - I don't find it fun and encouraging it leads to more of the same.

You said exactly what I pointed out - it isn't that fun but the reward is good and it only takes 30 minutes, so what is the harm? The harm is this will be what the game becomes if it is encouraged.

Nice try.

Nope I am not saying that I am better, that my way is better or that the WoW players are inferior.

What I am saying is that for 7 years the Devs had a specific goal in mind for their players - everyone can advance doing whatever it is they want to.

Yes, you may need to do a trial to get a respec - but once unlocked you were not forced to repeat the trial over and over - earning a currency that you could buy a respec with.

You may like the "content" we have been haded. I however don't as it flies directly into the face of past policy. Farming was a HUGE no-no, they added timers to farm missions so they would expire. They whacked repeatedly various AE missions. They spent a lot of time and made it a public policy that farming was not approved of.

Then they made 2 farms.

So please ignore what the past history of the game was and why it was so successful. It would be useful if you could understand this community is what it is because we have not had the drive for the shiney that in most players mind the shiney was playing itself and having fun.

Please continue to demonize me for pointing out this is NOT what the game has done for 7 years.

If I'd wanted to just do the same two raid- erm, trials over and over again just to get one of the few approved armor set- ah, Incarnate abilities, I'd never have cancelled my subscription to that other MMO.

I have to say that I thought WSF was a brilliant idea (while shards/NotW were still useful), and I love the new content. I'm taking more interest in the game than I have since 2007, and I'm enjoying it again. I hope the Devs continue on their present course.

That being said, I understand the flipside; it seems awfully inconsistent (if not two-faced) of the Devs to make uber content only unlockable by farming. I have several level 50 quondam farm toons that were retired after their respective farms were nerfed.

There's really no reason the Devs can't please everyone here. It would be nothing to provide alternative means of progress and stop spending R&D on totally unnecessary new game mechanics.

One thing I've noticed in my years of playing this

The devs seem to LOVE abandoning content they have recently made

Just look at Praetoria, they even admit it was a mistake to create a totally new player starting area. Just think about how much more useful/interesting Praetoria would've been as storyline content for high level players. Instead it became an extended noobie zone with players fighting to get to level 20 and to get OUT. I bet most people haven't seen 1/4th of the content available there. I recall reading articles about the devs basically saying 'Oops! We shouldn't have created a new starting area with the villain side already stressed for players! Oh well...'

How many times are these devs going to repeat the same mistake before they start using some of their old content? How many of those mistakes are going to be left in the game without care?

Now don't get me wrong here, I don't want to be stuck repeating the same thing over and over either, but I remember hazard zone street hunting in the ancient days of CoH. Now these whole zones lie unused and empty. I can't make a team go there and hunt the streets of a hazard zone with me cause the devs made absolutely sure that missions would be better XP way back in the early days of CoH.

The weekly taskforce was a GREAT idea! Absolutely loved it. However, it's been thrown out the window with the release of the newest incarnate FARMS. Did I say FARMS cause that's what they are. FARMS. Woo hoo farming, as if there wasn't enough of that in CoH!

What is going on with the devs? Hey! Devs! You made a lot of great content back in the old days! Fun stuff and places... how about you use more of it! Isn't that easier for you developers than creating all these grand new places to toss aside and completely ignore with the release of the next issue?

Even those money grubbing execs running Cryptic ought to be on board with reusing some old content on the cheap.

More weekly missions in the old places. Make them change as time goes on, extend the storyline beyond the current issue. Give rewards for visiting these places that are worth it for both the level capped and leveling players alike. And dear god please no more farms.

*Shrug* I don't really see the issue w/ i20 and iThreads...

There was a good number of people who complained that Mender Remeil's arc was too hard to solo- iTrials give those people a team-based way of unlocking their Alpha Slots. Some people don't like doing raids/farms, so they can solo up their shards/inf and eventually unlock Incarnate Slots 2-5.

Think about it this way: if the devs gave us iTrials and iThreads, but the iShards got you swag much faster (or only a little slower, since people were sure to have stockpiles of shards), then no one would do the trials.

I think everything is as it should be: running MR's arch unlocks the Alpha Slot faster than running trials (I would also intuitively suggest that running TFs will get up to T2 Alphas slotted faster, too), and running trials unlocks and equips Slots 2-5 faster than running TFs.

I would also guess that whatever currency the devs introduce next (I'm guessing there are 2-3 more types of currency, based on how they split up Slots 6-9,10) will "essentially make threads obsolete", and will require completely different types of content (maybe even PvP ) to slot most efficiently. A logical choice for "dev direction" would be to have many different ways of unlocking everything (exemping, TFs, PvP, solo, raids, etc), which each group being really fast at unlocking certain Incarnate Slots and being pretty slow at unlocking others. Because, let's be honest (and as we can observe from the forums) offering anything other than each players' favorite type of content will result in complaints.