Debate on the value of shards

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  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,956 Chairperson of the Boards
    HoundofShadow said:

    I infered that it's not unreasonable to believe that there are players expecting a full colourless 5* cover (in the future).

    If you said that in the beginning, then that’d be one thing. However that is a far cry from:
    HoundofShadow said:

    I know some of you are expecting them to give full cover of 5* in progression
  • Treras
    Treras Posts: 47 Just Dropped In
    For just 41.99€ you can buy 525 shards points for Phoenix, 425 shard points for HB, 1 LT, 60k purple iso, 3.4k HP, 3 CP AND 3 HB covers.

    Get this wonderfull deal and advance your roster! Get it now! Now!
  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,223 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2020
    Treras said:
    For just 41.99€ you can buy 525 shards points for Phoenix, 425 shard points for HB, 1 LT, 60k purple iso, 3.4k HP, 3 CP AND 3 HB covers.

    Get this wonderfull deal and advance your roster! Get it now! Now!
    In US dollars its 49.99.

    Logans Loonies is 19.99 for 2900 HP.
    The recent Mr F deal that just expired was 19.99 (3 covers and some assorted minor extras).

    If you factor those out of the deal you are left with 525 Shards for Phoenix and 460 Shards for HB for ~9.99 US. Lets say the Phoenix shards are 2x as valuable so it makes 525 shards (or 1 colorless cover) for a 5* worth approximately $7 US. It's not that outrageous if you need just 1 cover to finish someone.

    Now if they would only offer it for just that price without all the extras they might get a lot more buyers (or maybe not, who knows how well these deals do).

    KGB
  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,223 Chairperson of the Boards
    pheregas said:

    I went out and bought 5 used Xbox One games at GameStop for $40 USD before Christmas.  Granted, they are used, but still, that is hundreds of hours of playable content for the same price as a single five star level, 4 four star levels, an LT, and some in-game currency.

    I concede that this exchange may be worth it to some.  I'm just not one of them and nobody will ever convince me that hundreds of hours of other content is the same as those in-game rewards.

    It's fine to have two different opinions of the game.  It is up to the devs to balance that equation to cater to both sides.  It must be working for them because they keep releasing these bundles, even at the expense of my dwindling engagement, which again, is fine if that is their goal.
    The problem with these comparisons isn't the money, but rather the time. As you say, you got hundreds of hours of content. That means you must have hundreds of hours to devote to gaming on those games. As a fairly active MPQ player, I average 1-2 hrs a day (depending on if I am just doing PvE or PvE+PvP). That is pretty much most of my 'spare time' after accounting for sleep, job, family and other life committments.

    So even though I can get virtually infinite amount more games for free:
    - lots of older mid 90s PC games now available on abandonware that I used to/wanted to play in the day
    - I have MAME + oodles of arcade ROMs and a decent setup
    - I have friends/family more than willing to give me old XBoxs/Playstations with tons of games and even more friends willing to loan me games for said consoles
    - Plenty more 'free' games on my phone I could download
    I have a finite amount of time to play per day and at the moment all that time I choose to spend playing MPQ. So all those other free games / content really doesn't matter because it will always be there.

    Obviously if you are going to spend those hours on other games you purchased then you either have a ton more free time than me or you are really cutting back on MPQ (reaching retirement stage). But many players are probably still in the realm that all their entertainment time goes to MPQ.

    KGB
  • tonypq
    tonypq Posts: 557 Critical Contributor
    I'm not thrilled about shards and the cash grab they are currently. Especially being about 5X more expensive than 4* shards, which you also get less shards per stack and the cost goes up each stack you buy. Or the new random offer popping up that in some cases don't give you enough shards for a full 5* cover which I hate. Like oh great I get 250 shards for a 5* I've been chasing for over two years, now I've got 7 covers and 250 shards to a 8th cover yay, and still will probably take me a year or longer to finish them. If D3 wants $50 for some of these offers, give us enough shards for at least one darn full cover. Stop getting cute and sloppy by trying to dress up the lump of poop offer including a mighty token, some ISO and that 1 CP to help our alliance lol. 

    It's not bad the daily offer if you just happen to have some HPs to blow or need one more cover or a small amount of shards to finish a character. The other time they have helped is when I cracked my recent hoard on the LL store. I wanted 5Prof and set him to my focus hero. As I pulled and racked up 5Prof covers, I got to a point one of his colors was at 5. At that point I could have kept pulling tokens/CPs and ended up with multiple covers of his black which was at 5, who knows how many more LL/CPs I would have blown through pulling to trying to get the last cover or cover(s) I needed to finish him. Luckily being set as my target hero, I was able to get the last cover I needed to finish him, rather than burn through more of my stash of LL/CPs. 

    I do like that they allow us at some point to get a cover of our choice when we have enough. However I also liked how bonus heroes allowed us to set multiple characters we need a cover for and if we got lucky, at least we came away with a full cover. Most people probably weren't setting bonus heroes to characters they had at 5/5/2 covers, they typically would set a BH to one where the cover wouldn't be wasted who didn't have multiple abilities already at 5 covers. It was nice to be able to set BH to multiple characters IMO, which you can still do with shards but then you're getting absolutely nowhere fast with how few shards you then get divided among more than one target hero. 

    I'd also like to see the shards added as rewards in PVE and PVP, the rewards there are so stale and it would be nice to be able to earn them by playing the game, not just as you add champ covers or spending. Although I hope they don't add shards as PVE/PVP rewards so they can only be obtained if you finish top 10, especially with the imbalance in PVP and issues with sCL times for many in PVE.

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