Conqueror's Shards exchange facility needed

vulpasvulpas

When strongholds arrived on preview it was loudly pointed out to Cryptic that making a PvE building, The Barracks need PvP shards was a mistake. But was it a mistake or a deliberate marketing strategy, When this issue was not fixed in the initial patches that followed Strongholds release to the live world, most guilds adapted, some PvP'ed , many others bought shards, no doubt this provided Cryptic with a nice cash boost.

As the months dragged on it become clear that this was infact a subtle and I suspect highly successful marketing ploy, a fact confirmed by the sudden and unannounced fix with mod 14 to swap the Barracks to Adventurers shards. Enough Guilds had finished building that Fixing this mistake now has very linited cash implications to Cryptic. Those guilds which did not, could not or would not adapt to get conqeror shards are now happy, bur did Cryptic give any thought to those guilds who have spent hard cash buying shards that they will now never use, I think they did, why else make this change with no announcement or fanfare, because they were biting the hand that feeds them, those of us who put hard cash into this game.

If Cryptic want to keep getting my cash and I suspect many other players caught out by the Mod 14 change they need to give us a way to exchange shards, those rotting in our Guild coffers and those stashed in our banks awaiting donation.

What I am going to propose is not a free exchange, I am far to much of a realist to believe that could happen, but a facility to swap conqueror's shards to Adventurer's shards with an AD charge applied, this game needs more AD sinks and this could be one that actually helps players and developers alike. I would also suggest that this is a temporary measure for say 3 months to allow us to get rid of the now useless conquerors shards without making a large impact on the games Zen market. But then again people my actually buy Shards packs just to swap them so generating more Zen store sales and removing more AD from the game via the proposed exchange charge.

My idea is that for shards in players storage they have a vendor/npc in the stronghold who they can exchange shards with at a cost of 100AD per shard, So to swap a 1000 conqueror shards to Adventurers would cost 100,000 AD , for those shards already in the guild coffer there should be a facility for guild leaders to swap conquerors shards , again with an AD charge, As a Guild leader I am happy to cover this cost as I set the long term strategy for my guild, so members who have bought shard packs at my request do not suffer twice over.

Players of Neverwinter, please leave your constructive thoughts and feed back on this subject and maybe the powers that be in this game will take notice and do something that helps us the players and I believe helps the game designers and the games Public image as well.

grogthemagnif

Free exchange would work better. For instance, if you still have structures that need Conqueror's shards, then you could donate Adventurer's shards and the equivalent number of Conqueror's shards would be donated to the coffer also (and could be used to build the Siege structures, defense towers, etc. (up to the value of the Conqueror's shards used to build the Barracks). Once that number was reached. the bonus would stop. there could also be a mechanism to donate Adventurer's shards and donate the equivalent number to a Guild Ally's coffer (up to the value of the Conqueror's shards used to build the Barracks for any builds). This would allow your allies to rise faster.

myrinx

I am a leader of one of those guilds that had most of the conqueror's shards needed to finish off all levels of the barracks. I agree, that this probably effects a small number of guilds, but still...we are real people too!

My guild is a PVE guild, with people that can not stomach pvp. So me and the other guild leader took it upon ourselves to dive into BiD as often as we could and, for months and months, we farmed conqueror's shards. I really dont like pvp either, but it's what had to be done. We have 3 more barracks upgrades to do and had enough shards to compete 2 upgrades plus 1/2 way to the last. Then this change happens no warning. My Guild Hall was in the middle of a upgrade, so there was no way I could even attempt to "rush" one more Barracks upgrade with the few hour notice I had.

Guilds have been out for nearly 3 years now, and people have been asking for this change since the very beginning. At some point, they put it on their list of things to do so why not give some of us a warning? With some warning, we could have made at least 1 if not 2 upgrades and used up the majority of our shards. But no warning was given, so I agree with everyone else that some sort of exchange would be nice. After all, we worked hard on the task that you layed out before us...a task that had been the same for YEARS and is not part of some grand Guild Hall overhaul.

So now we aren't far off from being able to do another Barracks upgrade. Do I wait and hope for an exchange? Or use up a resource needed for other structures for the Barracks and hope that whatever "fix" may be implemented isn't Barracks specific?

krzrsms

I wrote a suggestion about the need for an exchange early on in the patch notes thread. Ill reiterate my support for this idea here. Theres no reason that I know of to add in a cost for the exchange, so having a free exchange between shards with whatever value seems fair.

As it stands my guild is sitting with nearly 30k conqueror shards that will never be used. The sudden nature of this change versus the long term process of building these shards really deserves some work to tamp down the ill will coming from an otherwise welcome change.

minotaur2857

A load of our people bought a LOT of SH packs in the sale precisely to get some conqueror's shards for our guilds, notification before the sale would have been what a company that cared about its customers would have done. We've largely wasted our money (although now with the RQ changes and nobody in my guilds running those the dungeon shards will be useful). Yes, exchange for conq shards please.

cerealkiller0tx

It would seem an update to Shards of Power in general would be a better solution. Similar to the update from Marks of Power, Union & Stability to the universal enchanting stones. Combine the for types into one universal shard of power.

nunya

cerealkiller0tx said:

It would seem an update to Shards of Power in general would be a better solution. Similar to the update from Marks of Power, Union & Stability to the universal enchanting stones. Combine the for types into one universal shard of power.

I like this idea. I used Gauntlgrym Bounty boxes from Maze Engine to get Conqueror's Shards for my guild. We haven't been able to build the Barracks, yet, at all. There's no reason to keep this system as complicated as it is.

mullymoomoo

When the devs have removed character seals before now they allow players to exchange 3 for 1 at the seal vendors. It sucks when you get left with 2 seals that you can't do anything with but that's life.

The devs could do the same for shards easily. It's just some additional code to add to the seal vendor. At least that way players who still have conquerer shards in inventory could swap them.

Shards already donated to the coffer are harder to deal with because guilds can use them for pvp buildings regardless if you want to do that or not.

My suggestion would be this. Get rid of the 4 different types of guild shards and replace with just 1. Change all the SH building costs to use 1 shard type and change the Sh chest of power to reward 400 of that 1 type. Tweak the rewards of quests to reward the 1 type of shard. Players will still have to do the same tasks as before to earn the same amount of shards.

It would just be a nice QoL change. They did it with seals so no reason why they can't do it to shards as well. There are too many currencies in this game.