Vhailorx said: Yes, it is obvious that hoarding is by far the best tool available to players to counter the problem of stranded shards.Locking shards per character is just a terrible design decision. Nor was it an unforeseen consequence. I and many, many other players identified this issue in the original shards announcement thread almost immediately.
HoundofShadow said: I still think it's not an actual waste until you are 1 level away from max champing that character. The wastage that you are experiencing seems to be due to the psychological need for completeness. Hoarding is not going to prevent you from "wastage" because there's possibility of you pulling a character with 13/13 + 350/400 shards, unless somehow you know what's the next 134 pulls in advance.
HoundofShadow said: Let's say you are sharding R4G and they are at 250/400. New character comes into store and you switch to sharding her. You completed your goal and you go back to sharding R4G. You completed one round of sharding for R4G. New character comes in. Rinse and repeat the process.
It seems pretty clear this is an issue of the player's stance on delayed gratification. The original poster said he likes to open tokens immediately, so presumably wants to take advantage of any rewards as soon as they're earned.
With the shard system, every token you open now gives you rewards you won't be able to take advantage of for tens or even hundreds more token pulls. Sure, these are similar to the old bonus hero rewards, but you never felt like you'd earned a bonus hero until you received a whole usable cover.
And while it is possible to switch backward and forward between which heroes you target, that really just delays gratification even further over only switching targets once a whole cover has been earned for a character.
JHawkInc said: You do realize that they did it on purpose, right? This isn't a situation where the clever players saw a problem the devs failed to predict. They know exactly what they're doing, and are probably okay with making a handful of forumites grumpy if that's the tradeoff for adding hundreds of monetizable items to their free to play microtransaction game. Further, putting players in a bind encourages them to spend to get out of that bind. That's how the game has worked since day one, from the very first time you have a cover expiring and need HP to roster a new character. It's not a flaw, it's a perk.And that's before you get to the future benefits of the devs having a finer control over resource distribution.
MadScientist said: Elite Tokens and Heroic Tokens yield more extra covers under the new system, Legendary Tokens less:Elite Tokens:Winner: Target HeroesHeroic Tokens:Legendary Tokens:Winner: Bonus HeroesTherefore, any player who gains "100 Heroic Tokens per week" should love target heroes.
HoundofShadow said: The fact that the devs deliberately sell "wasted shards" in Kitty Pryde bundle is as good as reinforcing their belief that "wasted shard is not a problem." or they are aware that it will be a problem, that's why they do things this way. I don't think they are going to do away with character-specific shards gain.Let's say you are sharding R4G and they are at 250/400. New character comes into store and you switch to sharding her. You completed your goal and you go back to sharding R4G. You completed one round of sharding for R4G. New character comes in. Rinse and repeat the process.I still think it's not an actual waste until you are 1 level away from max champing that character. The wastage that you are experiencing seems to be due to the psychological need for completeness. Hoarding is not going to prevent you from "wastage" because there's possibility of you pulling a character with 13/13 + 350/400 shards, unless somehow you know what's the next 134 pulls in advance.
Warbringa said: HoundofShadow said: The fact that the devs deliberately sell "wasted shards" in Kitty Pryde bundle is as good as reinforcing their belief that "wasted shard is not a problem." or they are aware that it will be a problem, that's why they do things this way. I don't think they are going to do away with character-specific shards gain.Let's say you are sharding R4G and they are at 250/400. New character comes into store and you switch to sharding her. You completed your goal and you go back to sharding R4G. You completed one round of sharding for R4G. New character comes in. Rinse and repeat the process.I still think it's not an actual waste until you are 1 level away from max champing that character. The wastage that you are experiencing seems to be due to the psychological need for completeness. Hoarding is not going to prevent you from "wastage" because there's possibility of you pulling a character with 13/13 + 350/400 shards, unless somehow you know what's the next 134 pulls in advance. I agree with Hound here. There is a difference between waste defined by forums and waste by the devs. You don't lose those shards on a targeted character, you can always finish completing it. The devs, rightly so, do not believe that is waste. What the forums are calling waste is actually a form of opportunity cost. It isn't a direct cost in the games resources (HP, Iso, CP, etc.) but it is an opportunity cost in that you applied these shards to a character that you ended up getting covered through another means. You look at it and say, geez, I could have had those shards on another 4* or 5* in hindsight. That is the opportunity costs that the new shard system presents. It is not however the same as waste. Those shards that you put into the character are still there and just as effective in getting you another cover of that character, even if you now don't want it. Those of us who are analytical with roster building recognize the new cost of this system. I don't believe it is necessarily worse than the costs of the old one. Those included pulling far under averages (which many players have documented in past posts) and getting wrong color covers. In the old system, an opportunity cost was I didn't want to bonus hero a 5* with a 5/5/2 (or any other 12 cover variation with two 5s) since I have a good chance of not getting that one specific color cover. So instead I would apply my bonus 5* covers to another "less wasteful" option, even though that was not actually waste as well (at least since saved covers became a feature). It is the new system, we will get used to it. I am waiting to see how the roll out of other ways to get shards is implemented in the game before declaring with finality if this system is worse, better or similar to bonus heroes for most rosters.