Give us something to do with the Incarnate Shards.

[rolandgrey]

Yeah, I know we can build Alpha Incarnate powers with them.

 

And that's it.

 

They're otherwise paperweights for our characters and they're piling up.

[Astralock]

You can convert them into Incarnate threads.

[Etched]

After you've changed them into threads you can go to that pixie chick in Ouro and exchange those threads for Super Insp. Then if you want... Sell them at AH.

[Etched]

Second option would be emialing them to other toons that may need them. You can convert them to a Trancendant Merit or something like that and mail 50 at a time.

[Greycat]

7 minutes ago, Etched said:

After you've changed them into threads you can go to that pixie chick in Ouro and exchange those threads for Super Insp. Then if you want... Sell them at AH.

 

... that "pixie chick in Ouro," btw, being Luna, a player who passed away.

 

And personally, my "what to do with shards" is "get rid of them as a drop and use threads for everything" as an overall solution. But, yeah. I've got hundreds on some characters.

[rolandgrey]

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

 

... that "pixie chick in Ouro," btw, being Luna, a player who passed away.

 

And personally, my "what to do with shards" is "get rid of them as a drop and use threads for everything" as an overall solution. But, yeah. I've got hundreds on some characters.

See, this guy gets it.  Either do something with them, or just get rid of them.  As it stands, it's just a notification of disappointment as something clutters up our inventory and has a very limited scope of use.

 

"Well, you can just convert them..."

For an abysmal rate of 2-for-1, or a once-a-day expense of 1M inf for a single 1-to-1 conversion...  And then we're just right back to the Threads, which I already have plenty of and they drop much faster than the shards do.

Oh, and then there's the Notice of the Well conversion to Incarnate Threads, which takes a Rare-tier item and converts it down to the equivalent of two Common Incarnate Salvage worth of Threads.  Cute.  And don't get me started on the Favor of the Well's conversion.  It's almost as if Paragon was punishing players for playing the new endgame content until they had new endgame content and never got around to rebalancing the system after the initial "Well, we don't want the Trial farmers to have an early advantage..." phase (not that it helped much, as it wasn't even a week before the very players they were concerned about had the new slots unlocked and stocked full of Tier 4 Incarnate powers).

 

"You can convert it into a Transcendent Merit..." Gonna stop you there, chief.  That's Empyrian Merits.  I'm already emailing those to my other characters so my various 50s are already helping each other on that front.  Shards don't convert to Transcendent Merits.  Do something with them or get rid of them.

 

 

[Rudra]

No, it's more like they realized what a clunky mess incarnate shards were, introduced a better system, made it also work for the Alpha, and then neglected to remove Shards after.

[srmalloy]

7 hours ago, rolandgrey said:

And then we're just right back to the Threads, which I already have plenty of and they drop much faster than the shards do.

Threads have to drop faster than shards in order to have roughly the same acquisition rate for incarnate components, since everything is five times as expensive -- a common component is four shards, but twenty threads..

[cotesan]

It would be nice to convert to pe and maybe use for adding powers

[rolandgrey]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Threads have to drop faster than shards in order to have roughly the same acquisition rate for incarnate components, since everything is five times as expensive -- a common component is four shards, but twenty threads..

 

So explain the exchange rate, how shard materials convert to less than their value in threads in that equation.  Or that thread Incarnate Salvage never converts back to shard Incarnate Salvage, or that shard Incarnate Salvage is never used in any of the other Incarnate Slots.  Suddenly, the value of the shard salvage is dropping as a result of its lack of utility and the mechanics deliberately reducing their value.

So, no, Shards are NOT roughly equivalent to five threads.  A Notice of the Well should be as valuable as a Rare thread item, but can only be exchanged for a value of threads equivalent to TWO common thread items.  A Favor of the Well, Very Rare thread salvage equivalence, converts to the thread count of a Rare tier item, but you don't get any of the rare tier items.

 

At every turn, the game treats shards as being less than their thread equivalents.  It's an unnecessary mechanic that isn't really contributing to the game.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, rolandgrey said:

So explain the exchange rate, how shard materials convert to less than their value in threads in that equation.  Or that thread Incarnate Salvage never converts back to shard Incarnate Salvage, or that shard Incarnate Salvage is never used in any of the other Incarnate Slots. 

Back on Live, only the Alpha slot was available to non-subscribers; having a currency not available to them which was used for the other incarnate enhancements isolated that effectively, and the conversion inequality emphasized the advantages of subscribing, and reduced the effect of people accumulating large amounts of shard-based rewards subscribing, quickly converting their stash to threads, and letting their subscription drop after they unlocked the higher incarnate slots, since a character didn't lose them if you unsubscribed -- you just wouldn't be able to upgrade them.

[rolandgrey]

13 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Back on Live, only the Alpha slot was available to non-subscribers; having a currency not available to them which was used for the other incarnate enhancements isolated that effectively, and the conversion inequality emphasized the advantages of subscribing, and reduced the effect of people accumulating large amounts of shard-based rewards subscribing, quickly converting their stash to threads, and letting their subscription drop after they unlocked the higher incarnate slots, since a character didn't lose them if you unsubscribed -- you just wouldn't be able to upgrade them.

Cool.  Cool.  Except we don't HAVE paid subscriptions here.  We CAN'T have paid subscriptions here.

 

I don't know why you're arguing old paradigms.  If I'm being charitable, I would say you're just explaining why things are the way they are.  However, none of that logic applies to today, and doesn't serve as a defense for the shard salvage.  We have plenty of changes implemented by the HC crew that I'm perfectly happy with, but I don't understand why this vestigial thing is allowed to persist.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, rolandgrey said:

Cool.  Cool.  Except we don't HAVE paid subscriptions here.  We CAN'T have paid subscriptions here.

 

I don't know why you're arguing old paradigms.  If I'm being charitable, I would say you're just explaining why things are the way they are.  However, none of that logic applies to today, and doesn't serve as a defense for the shard salvage.  We have plenty of changes implemented by the HC crew that I'm perfectly happy with, but I don't understand why this vestigial thing is allowed to persist.

You asked why something in the game works the way it does. @srmalloy gave that explanation.

[lemming]

It probably would be fine to just remove them, though one should then replace items where we get Shard related items:

1) Vanguard merits for Grai

2) Weekly Notice of Well

3) TFs that give out an incarnate component including the unlock for Alpha.

4) Probably forgetting something

 

What to do with existing shard salvage?

1) Auto convert (could be messy and hit limits on some characters

2) Leave them for people to convert on their own with current methods

 

Personally,  I tend to use shards to build alternative Alphas, looks like my main can t4 a couple more if wanted.  They're clutter, but not terribly in the way of anything.

[Luminara]

21 hours ago, rolandgrey said:

Yeah, I know we can build Alpha Incarnate powers with them.

 

And that's it.

 

They're otherwise paperweights for our characters and they're piling up.

 

If players have a sizable stockpile of them, then suddenly giving them value might have negative repercussions on the economy.  Given that they don't replace other items on the drop list, or reduce the chances for other items to drop, or cut into inventory space, there's no real harm in their existence as it is now, meaningless bits of game fluff.  Probably best to just ignore them, rather than create a larger problem by making them worthwhile at this point.

[weewoozesty]

I like them if only because they make my sad salvage inventory look more impressive than it really is.

 

Like putting parsley on a shitty meal.

[rolandgrey]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

If players have a sizable stockpile of them, then suddenly giving them value might have negative repercussions on the economy.  Given that they don't replace other items on the drop list, or reduce the chances for other items to drop, or cut into inventory space, there's no real harm in their existence as it is now, meaningless bits of game fluff.  Probably best to just ignore them, rather than create a larger problem by making them worthwhile at this point.

 

We had people grinding out missions in AE relentlessly since the private servers opened up.  We've got people who speedrun through the content so they can stockpile the rewards they get at the end.  There are countless ways that people are already upsetting the market, I don't see how fixing this would be so utterly devastating.

 

Take, for instance, the Prismatic Shard salvage.  The market price for those went down throughout October, but it hasn't even been a week since the end of the Halloween Event ended and their market price is already steadily climbing.  PVP enhancement recipes remain practically gold compared to any other IO recipe, and Rare salvage remains a consistent couple hundred thousand a pop, even with a seeded market.  Then there was what happened in the old Paragon days, when they decided to drop the Base Salvage and allow players to convert it all to Invention Salvage.  I don't recall that having a devastating effect on the economy, either.  I don't think the data bears out your concern.

[Sirius.Games]

57 minutes ago, rolandgrey said:

 

We had people grinding out missions in AE relentlessly since the private servers opened up.  We've got people who speedrun through the content so they can stockpile the rewards they get at the end.  There are countless ways that people are already upsetting the market, I don't see how fixing this would be so utterly devastating.

 

Take, for instance, the Prismatic Shard salvage.  The market price for those went down throughout October, but it hasn't even been a week since the end of the Halloween Event ended and their market price is already steadily climbing.  PVP enhancement recipes remain practically gold compared to any other IO recipe, and Rare salvage remains a consistent couple hundred thousand a pop, even with a seeded market.  Then there was what happened in the old Paragon days, when they decided to drop the Base Salvage and allow players to convert it all to Invention Salvage.  I don't recall that having a devastating effect on the economy, either.  I don't think the data bears out your concern.

The economy on live was really bad and non sustainable. By the end you had to play the game in odd ways to actually be able to pay for things. We don't know the effect of changing the purpose of converting them would have.

 

Incarnates are much easier to unlock than on live. I don't see a benefit to the time required to make a change to something else either.

 

Some things just have no value or extremely low value.

[rolandgrey]

11 minutes ago, Sirius.Games said:

The economy on live was really bad and non sustainable. By the end you had to play the game in odd ways to actually be able to pay for things. We don't know the effect of changing the purpose of converting them would have.

 

Incarnates are much easier to unlock than on live. I don't see a benefit to the time required to make a change to something else either.

 

Some things just have no value or extremely low value.

 

You're going to have to do some more explaining on that first part, because there wasn't much you had to do to pay for things in the Paragon days.  You could run AE farms, you could run TFs, you could get lucky on the market, you could just play the game, run missions and complete arcs, and you could pool resources across your characters.  What is playing the game in "odd ways" about any of that?

 

The rest of your post is just further reinforces my point.  We can get Incarnate abilities easily here, shards need not apply.  Established characters can share Empyrean Merits with newly minted 50s and those don't convert to Shard salvage.  If the Incarnate Shards have no value here, then why keep them around?  If people like having them, then why not find something for them to do?

[srmalloy]

9 hours ago, rolandgrey said:

I don't know why you're arguing old paradigms.  If I'm being charitable, I would say you're just explaining why things are the way they are.  However, none of that logic applies to today, and doesn't serve as a defense for the shard salvage.

Feel free to download the game source code and rip out the code for incarnate shards yourself, then, if you're so adamant that they be eradicated from the game, or write in the additional functionality you want them to have.

[Akisan]

Seeing as they're effectively free alternate Alpha powers if you're patient, I've no issues with them staying in game.  I do have quite the stockpile of them though, so extra uses for them would be nice (besides converting to threads.  Total waste of resources). 

 

And, here's a few thoughts for how they could be used:

• Shards could be converted into the old base salvage.  I miss the extra bits of lore that we got from seeing the odd drops from the various enemy groups.
• Option at Null the Gull:  Legacy Incarnate system.  Normal areas no longer give incarnate xp and/or Threads, for those of us who want a harder sense of progression in end-game.
• Other conversions, as others have suggested.  Prismatics were mentioned, and there could be other salvages or even recipes available.

[rolandgrey]

23 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Feel free to download the game source code and rip out the code for incarnate shards yourself, then, if you're so adamant that they be eradicated from the game, or write in the additional functionality you want them to have.

 

If I could do that, I wouldn't be wading into the Suggestions forum to offer my two cents.