Remove (or Consolidate) Incarnate Shards

[Arbegla]

So, having two currencies for the Alpha slot, and then not using shards for the other slots is a tad confusing, especially for new folks who don't realize or understand that Shards aren't really as useful as they could be, and that you can use threads to craft everything.

 

I know on live, Shards were meant for alpha slot, and threads meant for the other slots, but now that we're homecoming, can we consolidate the Incarnate crafting items into one group?

[Clave Dark 5]

One step along the long, long road to cleaning up the entire system.

[Greycat]

All for it.

 

And streamlining the system's already been started. We don't have to earn iXP (or different sorts of XP) for (say) Judgement and Interface, or earn them separately, and Hybrid would have needed "Advanced IXP." Instead, each level's earned all at once, and everything requires iXP and threads... except for Alpha.

 

Shards, then Threads, were part of a grind to keep people paying for incarnate system access. We don't need that here.

[SuggestorK]

Okay but then we need a rework for the Whole WST System too, Notice of the Well would have to been replaced with at least RARE Incarnate Thread Components.

[Arbegla]

8 hours ago, SuggestorK said:

Okay but then we need a rework for the Whole WST System too, Notice of the Well would have to been replaced with at least RARE Incarnate Thread Components.

 

Or just give Emp/Astral merits? Those can be converted into Threads. Doesn't seem a hard thing to change, as the DA arcs have Thread Components are rewards already.

[SuggestorK]

20 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

 

Or just give Emp/Astral merits? Those can be converted into Threads. Doesn't seem a hard thing to change, as the DA arcs have Thread Components are rewards already.

Emp Merits yeah but how many should  be equal to what a notice be for shards... Astrals wouldnt work or can u create rare components with em without extra currency? Dont recall offhand at least that we could.

[srmalloy]

It requires eight Empyrean merits to make a Rare incarnate component, so that gives you an equivalent value. It seems to me, though, that a simpler solution would be to eliminate only shards -- bumping the chance of a thread drop by whatever percentage the 1-to-5 conversion rate from shards to threads would indicate is appropriate -- and leave the Notice of the Well awards as they are. Then you add two new conversion formulae to the incarnate window -- a straight-across conversion of a Notice into a Rare incarnate component of the player's choice, and a conversion of two Notices plus 150 threads to make a Very Rare incarnate component of the user's choice. The old shard-based recipes would remain for characters who still have shards.

 

This eliminates having to change the code that awards Notices for TFs; the functionality for the two new conversions is entirely new code, aavoiding having to go into the old code to change things.

[SuggestorK]

14 hours ago, srmalloy said:

It requires eight Empyrean merits to make a Rare incarnate component, so that gives you an equivalent value. It seems to me, though, that a simpler solution would be to eliminate only shards -- bumping the chance of a thread drop by whatever percentage the 1-to-5 conversion rate from shards to threads would indicate is appropriate -- and leave the Notice of the Well awards as they are. Then you add two new conversion formulae to the incarnate window -- a straight-across conversion of a Notice into a Rare incarnate component of the player's choice, and a conversion of two Notices plus 150 threads to make a Very Rare incarnate component of the user's choice. The old shard-based recipes would remain for characters who still have shards.

 

This eliminates having to change the code that awards Notices for TFs; the functionality for the two new conversions is entirely new code, aavoiding having to go into the old code to change things.

Indeed this would be working solution, and it would also be a solution for another problem that would come up and i had forgotten to mention before.

 

The Temp Power of Mortimer Kal SF that is transformed into a Notice of the Well at lvl 50.

Edited November 3, 2021 by SuggestorK

[kelika2]

You know you can mix and mash together the crafting of the alpha slot, right?

For example, threads for tier1/2, and use shards and shard related items for tier3/4,  between the weekly Notice of the Well and daily level 50 content the amount of shards builds up over time and using threads for other incarnate powers while doing so

 

Getting rid of Shards would either blow Thread production into overdrive which will also effect the other speed of the other incarnate powers and wait a minute why am i putting effort into this

 

/jranger

[Arbegla]

55 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

You know you can mix and mash together the crafting of the alpha slot, right?

For example, threads for tier1/2, and use shards and shard related items for tier3/4,  between the weekly Notice of the Well and daily level 50 content the amount of shards builds up over time and using threads for other incarnate powers while doing so

 

Getting rid of Shards would either blow Thread production into overdrive which will also effect the other speed of the other incarnate powers and wait a minute why am i putting effort into this

 

/jranger

 

Well, since the Vet levels were introduced, Thread production has already been put into overdrive. I know you can mix and match the recipes, but I did recently have a newbie question why we have Shards and Threads and how to get more Shards, as they didn't have enough to craft their T3 at the time. The solution we came up with was just for them to use Threads, as they have plenty of those, and knew how to get more, via the Vet Levels.

Farming Shards, while is pretty straight forward in the 'Just run Tasks Forces, the Weekly TF, and missions' isn't quite as easy as 'Gain some Vet levels and get all the threads you need, and/or run DA missions that give direct Thread components.'

[kelika2]

13 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

 

Well, since the Vet levels were introduced, Thread production has already been put into overdrive. I know you can mix and match the recipes, but I did recently have a newbie question why we have Shards and Threads and how to get more Shards, as they didn't have enough to craft their T3 at the time. The solution we came up with was just for them to use Threads, as they have plenty of those, and knew how to get more, via the Vet Levels.

Farming Shards, while is pretty straight forward in the 'Just run Tasks Forces, the Weekly TF, and missions' isn't quite as easy as 'Gain some Vet levels and get all the threads you need, and/or run DA missions that give direct Thread components.'

as someone who has never done a bit of coding in their life but see other people talking about it i can safely say that removing shards sounds like a nightmare to due for a small volunteer dev team for a problem that doesnt really exist

 

/jranger

[Arbegla]

8 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

as someone who has never done a bit of coding in their life but see other people talking about it i can safely say that removing shards sounds like a nightmare to due for a small volunteer dev team for a problem that doesnt really exist

 

/jranger

 

I mean, its far easier to remove something from code, then it is to add, but I do understand your point. That's part of why I said Consolidate. And just phase out the drops like we did with base salvage, so they still exist in game, but they don't actually drop anymore, and you just have a recipe to convert any existing Shard/Shard components into Threads.

[kelika2]

2 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

 

I mean, its far easier to remove something from code, then it is to add, but I do understand your point. That's part of why I said Consolidate. And just phase out the drops like we did with base salvage, so they still exist in game, but they don't actually drop anymore, and you just have a recipe to convert any existing Shard/Shard components into Threads.

doing said thing would also diminish the need for itrials assuming the old task force rewards also will reward threads and thread related items

domino effect will lead to pretty much just making a P2W vendor selling incarnate powers for like 1m inf a piece

sorry man things are ok the way they are, please embrace frankenbuying of alpha slots

 

/jranger

[Arbegla]

Call me crazy, but don't the itrials award Thread and Thread components? I know that certain TFs award shard components, and of course we have the Weekly Strike Target, but I thought all of the iTrials were already converted to threads. Especially with the Dark Astoria story line?

[kelika2]

3 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

Call me crazy, but don't the itrials award Thread and Thread components? I know that certain TFs award shard components, and of course we have the Weekly Strike Target, but I thought all of the iTrials were already converted to threads. Especially with the Dark Astoria story line?

This is correct

Itrials award threads and thread related items

Task forces award shards and shard related items

 

Removing shards would bump everything around.  please do some math on how much a shard/notice is really worth when using it as intended and not just for converting into threads

 

/jranger

[Oginth]

Why stop at consolidating incarnate shards? If there is a crazy enough Dev, we can consolidate everything to the base unit of Inf.

 

Inf	250,000.0	500,000.0	1,000,000.0	2,000,000.0	10,000,000.0	20,000,000.0	50,000,000.0	500,000,000.0
Alignment Merit	12.5	25.0	50.0	100.0	500.0	1,000.0	2,500.0	25,000.0
Vanguard Merit	7.5	15.0	30.0	60.0	300.0	600.0	1,500.0	15,000.0
Incarnate Shard	1.0	2.0	4.0	8.0	40.0	80.0	200.0	2,000.0
Incarnate Thread		1.0	2.0	4.0	20.0	40.0	100.0	1,000.0
Reward Merit			1.0	2.0	10.0	20.0	50.0	500.0
Astral Merit				1.0	5.0	10.0	25.0	250.0
Empyrean Merit					1.0	2.0	5.0	50.0
Notice of the Well						1.0	2.5	25.0
Favor of the Well							1.0	10.0
Transcendent Merit								1.0

* White = in-game conversion

* Yellow = calculated value

Edited November 4, 2021 by Oginth
Updating table calculation

[srmalloy]

21 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Removing shards would bump everything around.  please do some math on how much a shard/notice is really worth when using it as intended and not just for converting into threads

That's what I did -- it takes four shards or 20 threads to make a common incarnate component, one Notice of the Well or eight Empyrean merits to make a rare incarnate component, and 30 Empyrean merits or a Favor of the Well to make a Very Rare incarnate component, with a Favor requiring two Notices and 32 shards to create. So a shard is worth five threads, and a Notice is worth eight Empyreans. In my previous post, though, I misremembered the cost of a Favor as 30 shards; the correct number would make the thread-based Favor require two Notices and 160 threads.

[kelika2]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

That's what I did -- it takes four shards or 20 threads to make a common incarnate component, one Notice of the Well or eight Empyrean merits to make a rare incarnate component, and 30 Empyrean merits or a Favor of the Well to make a Very Rare incarnate component, with a Favor requiring two Notices and 32 shards to create. So a shard is worth five threads, and a Notice is worth eight Empyreans. In my previous post, though, I misremembered the cost of a Favor as 30 shards; the correct number would make the thread-based Favor require two Notices and 160 threads.

Now if you can talk the dev team into translating that into TF rewards and mess with the probability of random drops go for it.

But from my point of view its just easier to Frankenbuy using threads and shards for Alpha stuff

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Now if you can talk the dev team into translating that into TF rewards and mess with the probability of random drops go for it.

Well, the brute-force way is to keep the separate thread and 'shard' drops, except make a 'shard' drop award a thread instead, and increase the chance of getting a 'shard' drop by a factor of five to match the relative value. This would mean that it's possible to occasionally get two threads at once as a drop, but it's a smaller code change than any other solution. Whether the devs go for replacing shards across the board -- and the shard-based recipes would still have to remain in the game because there will be people out there with shards in their inventory -- is out of my purview.