New Feature in R191: Shards

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Comments

  • PiMacleod
    PiMacleod Posts: 1,786 Chairperson of the Boards
    Tony_Foot said:

    I will certainly plan ahead 300 days, looking what 5* comes from daily rewards and only going classic.
    And i will keep posting those daily updates to the best of my ability.  ;)
  • Projectus2501
    Projectus2501 Posts: 218 Tile Toppler
    JDFiend said:
    acescracked said:
    I'm taking a shard while reading this thread.
    Rather long shard. Getting enough fibre? 
    This feature seems hollow and a bit sharddy to me
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    I also don't take too much satisfaction from being on the side of HoundofShadow here, but I really expect we're going to end up with all kinds of incidental shard pools on all our characters once the rest of the shard sources get revealed whether we chase it or not. To what extent that's going to matter remains to be seen, but as with any system it's going to be predictable once we know what it looks like, and you'll be able to make your plans around it in a largely meaningful way. 

    Ideally the 5e for story will have some shards worked into progression and placement some place, same with the 3 and 4. It would be ideal if there were some "favorited shards" there too, but I could see that not being part of it outside the hidden shards you get from event tokens.

    What I DON"T want to see are full cover rewards or CP replaced with shards for a character, unless they are enough shards to earn the same number of covers as before immediately.
  • Dogface
    Dogface Posts: 999 Critical Contributor
    It's surprising to see that much talk about 'wasted' shards is in scenarios where one has 12 covers in a 5/5/2 (or any other combinatiojn of these numbers). In that case pulling the missing cover seems like a waste. Well, how many people would BH a character in that case? I certainly wouldn't or it had to be a world altering meta character.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm BH- Okoye in that case: I have a 6/5/1. I was planning to move my 4* to Shuri and use the 3:1 to get her swapped after Shuri hits 340, but now that I can definitely target that red, it'll probably change what I do there.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    2/5/5 is a 12 cover character, then you get your organic 13th, and that's a bare bones champ, and 1st level is an LT for 3, 4, and 5* characters?
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,822 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    I suppose it might be instructive to consider that many other games with shards have the situation of many characters with shards on them.

    We are used to the situation of cover/not cover but it's basically normal to have partial covers/levels in games with shard systems.

    Not to say it's not a big change.  But new players will probably think it's entirely normal if they start after shards kick in.
  • Bryan Lambert
    Bryan Lambert Posts: 234 Tile Toppler
    Followup thought - I’m sure this must have come up in the thread before now but shards are cover-specific, not character-specific, right? Which means if you don’t know what color cover you’ll eventually need after 167 pulls it’s an awful, awful idea to target that character at all. 
  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,238 Chairperson of the Boards
    Bryan Lambert said:
    Followup thought - I’m sure this must have come up in the thread before now but shards are cover-specific, not character-specific, right? Which means if you don’t know what color cover you’ll eventually need after 167 pulls it’s an awful, awful idea to target that character at all. 
    Shards are not cover specific. So once you get 500 Okoye shards you select the color of cover you want. If you couldn't do that then shards would be incredibly useless.

    KGB
  • Rhipf
    Rhipf Posts: 295 Mover and Shaker
    Bryan Lambert said:
    Followup thought - I’m sure this must have come up in the thread before now but shards are cover-specific, not character-specific, right? Which means if you don’t know what color cover you’ll eventually need after 167 pulls it’s an awful, awful idea to target that character at all. 

    Not a definitive answer but it is my understanding that the shards are character specific (i.e. you target a character not a cover) and once you get enough shards to redeem you then select which colour cover you want to get.
  • shardwick
    shardwick Posts: 2,121 Chairperson of the Boards
    I agree with previous sentiments that there should be a general pool of shards for each tier. It would completely kill the feeling that shards are wasted on a character. If I'm targeting Talos to get him champed, legit example because mine is at 6 covers and I'll have to focus on him soon, and I pull the 13th organically when I was at 50 shards away from finishing him off do you think that I'm gonna care a whole lot about one extra champ level for him? It's not like I'm gonna use him anyway outside of when he's featured. Sure, lv 271 gets me an LT which could potentially get me a cover for the next meta 5* character that works for 4* and 5* players, or it could just be another Talos or Emma Frost. So in a system with a general pool of shards instead of feeling like a lot of shards are being taken up by Talos I'm now just 50 shards away from a cover for a different character. 
  • Bryan Lambert
    Bryan Lambert Posts: 234 Tile Toppler
    Rhipf said:
    Bryan Lambert said:
    Followup thought - I’m sure this must have come up in the thread before now but shards are cover-specific, not character-specific, right? Which means if you don’t know what color cover you’ll eventually need after 167 pulls it’s an awful, awful idea to target that character at all. 

    Not a definitive answer but it is my understanding that the shards are character specific (i.e. you target a character not a cover) and once you get enough shards to redeem you then select which colour cover you want to get.
    I know what my brain did. It remembered that graphic from the initial post with the blue, yellow, and purple targeting hearts next to each other and transposed that onto my memory of the targeting interface for a character - making me think there were three targeting options per character. Oops. Nevermind.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    Bryan Lambert said:
    Dogface said:
    It's surprising to see that much talk about 'wasted' shards is in scenarios where one has 12 covers in a 5/5/2 (or any other combinatiojn of these numbers). In that case pulling the missing cover seems like a waste. Well, how many people would BH a character in that case? I certainly wouldn't or it had to be a world altering meta character.
    Except it’s not just in that case. It’s leading up to that case.

    [...]

    Under the shard system, you need to decide in advance that you’re going to pull shards for Character X in the hopes of pulling only 12 covers and spending the shards on the 13th. You’re forced to commit in advance instead of adjusting your strategy based on pull results. And then if you’re left with a character at, say, 50% shards for a cover, you have to decide whether to keep targeting that character for shards to get the champ level, or switch the targeting to a cover you need so all your future pulls will work toward that cover you need.

    It’s a tradeoff of flexibility and worse odds in exchange for color specificity and an eventual guarantee. We can argue the relative value of four things but this absolutely is the tradeoff.
    IS this what happens? @IceIX, Do you have to apply the shard-earned cover immediately, or it can it sit in your Shard Bank like a saved cover would do until such time as you choose to apply it? If the cover gets immediately spit out to your vine, yes, it works this way. If it gets banked till you need it, then you just proceed as normal and apply it whenever you want that last cover, right?

    The way I read the original post, it looks like you just have a bank of 400 shards, and you can choose to apply it or not, so it won't expire. It seems like you can handle the previous case by just picking the one you want to bh, pull till you have the shards you need, don't spend those shards, move your favorite to the other, and pull till you get where you want to be. As with BH, you had to commit to one or the other either way. I concede that you don't "luck" into a full, or multiple full covers this way, but since I don't play the way you're describing I still can't get my head into the space where this is a terrible issue.
  • Bryan Lambert
    Bryan Lambert Posts: 234 Tile Toppler
    ThaRoadWarrior said:

    It’s a tradeoff of flexibility and worse odds in exchange for color specificity and an eventual guarantee. We can argue the relative value of four things but this absolutely is the tradeoff.
    IS this what happens? @IceIX, Do you have to apply the shard-earned cover immediately, or it can it sit in your Shard Bank like a saved cover would do until such time as you choose to apply it? If the cover gets immediately spit out to your vine, yes, it works this way. If it gets banked till you need it, then you just proceed as normal and apply it whenever you want that last cover, right?

    The way I read the original post, it looks like you just have a bank of 400 shards, and you can choose to apply it or not, so it won't expire. It seems like you can handle the previous case by just picking the one you want to bh, pull till you have the shards you need, don't spend those shards, move your favorite to the other, and pull till you get where you want to be. As with BH, you had to commit to one or the other either way. I concede that you don't "luck" into a full, or multiple full covers this way, but since I don't play the way you're describing I still can't get my head into the space where this is a terrible issue.

    What you describe only applies if you get enough shards (167 pulls for a 5) before you get the covers you need. Most of the time when you pop a hoard, though, you’re not starting from 0 covers in two out of the three Latests. I don’t know what the math is on starting from 0 so I can’t say whether it’d be a great idea to target the newest of the three.

    The point is that unlike Bonus Heroes, you make the decision before you start pulling and you can’t change your mind without starting over from 0, even though a LOT can change over the course of 166 Latest pulls.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    I thought we were discussing the 2 4*s here based on my read of your post. You don't need 166.667 pulls for an extra 4 there, it's more like 26.667, so you'll be racking up the 4* covers on your way to the 5, and since it doesn't appear you have to actually use them right then, you should realistically be able to control what happens on your way to the 2 new covered 4s at least. 

    Every Shard 5 will have earned 6 guaranteed useful Shard 4* covers along the way.

    That being said - @IceIX is there a cap on how many shards you can bank per character? does it stop accruing at <one cover's worth> until you spend them? If it does, now you do have "wasted" shards.

    What I was proposing for the 4*s was that you bank up a cover (or more if allowed) for each, and then spend your way to completion based on how your 5* shakes out if necessary
  • Bryan Lambert
    Bryan Lambert Posts: 234 Tile Toppler
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    I thought we were discussing the 2 4*s here based on my read of your post. You don't need 166.667 pulls for an extra 4 there, it's more like 26.667, so you'll be racking up the 4* covers on your way to the 5, and since it doesn't appear you have to actually use them right then, you should realistically be able to control what happens on your way to the 2 new covered 4s at least. That being said - @IceIX is there a cap on how many shards you can bank per character? does it stop accruing at <one cover's worth> until you spend them? If it does, now you do have "wasted" shards.

    What I was proposing for the 4*s was that you bank up a cover (or more if allowed) for each, and then spend your way to completion based on how your 5* shakes out if necessary
    Well, I was discussing both - but yeah, pretty much all of the issues around wasted shards (which is a bit of a misnomer - it’s not the shards that are wasted, it’s really more the bonus from pulls that’s wasted compared to the old system) are much less severe in the 4* tier because getting a 4* via shards is, using your numbers, six times faster than gaining a 5* and that’s before you factor in Heroics.

    And to get even farther in the weeds, 4* dilution means you’re even LESS likely to pull the covers you need for a 4 before you get the shards for them. Thanks, dilution?

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2019
    I think if you decouple your thinking from “bonus” and treat this system as individual character XP, or let’s say individual character shield rank to use an MPQ concept, it could reframe things.

    its adding an RPG element to the CCG element of this game.

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