Convert Shard of Empowerment to Greater Shards

athurrpewty

Please make a converter for these. I would gladly pay an AD surcharge to convert, say, 50-100 Shards of Empowerment to Greater Shards and bind the resulting GSE's to character or account if you wish. It is just an amazingly hard slog to get Greater shards in the number needed to upgrade collars.

greywynd

Patience is a virtue.

athurrpewty

Yes it is. But this is a game, not a job.

greywynd

Might as well ask for all the stuff you grind through dungeons and campaigns for, up front so you don't have to grind.

rikitaki

@greywynd The problem of Shards of Empowerment is that they serve practically one purpose only: to be sold for silver. At the beginning, thanks to the collar base drop decisions, there were much more dropped Shards than what was required for upgrades. ATM, thanks to the lockbox changes, there is even no reason to upgrade any collar below purple - as purple choice packs are below 40k AD on AH.

So, giving Shards a purpose other than a "treasure" to be sold is not that irrational idea. Especially since the Greater Shards of Empowerment are a well known choke point.

athurrpewty

Again, the whole idea of grinding . . . Yeah I understand you have to play through, only there's a point where it doesn't take a keen grasp of math or even understanding of higher concepts like quantum mechanics to realize that you would need to devote ridiculous amounts of time to grinding in order to upgrade some of the gear in this game. So, while I get that you may be perfectly happy where you are in the game, greywynd, that doesn't make me not want to provide my input in an attempt to make the game more fun for me. And, certainly, there is a very high probability that not a single employee of this company will pay attention to what I suggest, but I'm still gonna suggest it.

greywynd

rikitaki said:

@greywynd The problem of Shards of Empowerment is that they serve practically one purpose only: to be sold for silver. At the beginning, thanks to the collar base drop decisions, there were much more dropped Shards than what was required for upgrades. ATM, thanks to the lockbox changes, there is even no reason to upgrade any collar below purple - as purple choice packs are below 40k AD on AH.

So, giving Shards a purpose other than a "treasure" to be sold is not that irrational idea. Especially since the Greater Shards of Empowerment are a well known choke point.

And the devs stated when they introduced the system that the collars were intended to be the last things upgraded.

hadestemplar

athurrpewty said:

Please make a converter for these. I would gladly pay an AD surcharge to convert, say, 50-100 Shards of Empowerment to Greater Shards and bind the resulting GSE's to character or account if you wish. It is just an amazingly hard slog to get Greater shards in the number needed to upgrade collars.

Why not simply ask all game stuffs get put in local vendor so you could buy with few coins on copper. Sorry for sarcasm,

The greater-shards of empowerment, is probably only reason why players keep doing Reapers challenge q.
Also its one thing which kept players motivated to do farming.

There is one same thing for all mmo rpg games. Once you max out, there is no thing to hunt/farm, there is no drive to play game at all. So very quickly players bored and leave game.


Also if developers would do as you sugget, very quickly greater shards would be worth same as ~epic rank insignias. Cuz there are tons of epic version shards in game.

athurrpewty

hadestemlar, looking at the AH this morning, SGE's are going for ~90k AD with 70 items for sale and Epic insignia, at the lowest, are ~56k AD with 181 items for sale; so, I think your argument about the market being flooded is a little specious. Finally, I don't care if SGE's are the only thing keeping RCQ alive. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy doing RCQ in most cases, but there are some combos that I just won't do because of lack of interest from my guildies or a PUG never materializes.

tchefi

greywynd said:

Patience is a virtue.

And that virtue is acquired through patience ^^.

rikitaki said:

The problem of Shards of Empowerment is that they serve practically one purpose only: to be sold for silver.

So, giving Shards a purpose other than a "treasure" to be sold is not that irrational idea.

I agree with that : it is not an irrational idea.
It would even be great for me sitting over 3000+ shards (i'm hoarding those since the first I droped, never sold any be it on the AH or for gold as i need neither).

But.

athurrpewty said:

it doesn't take a keen grasp of math or even understanding of higher concepts like quantum mechanics to realize that you would need to devote ridiculous amounts of time to grinding in order to upgrade some of the gear in this game.

I can't remember the exact number, but on Eve Online (released in 2003) you were looking at more than 20 years to get all the skills maxed out (without purchasing skill injectors that were introduced in 2016 I think)

If having "perfect" everything, if having the "perfect stuff" is what drives the fun for you, for whatever reasons (I don't judge ^^), then, on Neverwinter, prepare yourself to invest what is needed : either a huge amount of time/grinding or a huge amount of money for what can be bought on the Zmarket/AH.
That is the state of the game today.

athurrpewty said:

So, while I get that you may be perfectly happy where you are in the game, greywynd, that doesn't make me not want to provide my input in an attempt to make the game more fun for me.

ok, @greywynd is kind of a specialist of the "one sentence punchline", and can be sometimes quite sarcastic, but once you can get beyond that, he/she usually brings fairly good points in the discussion, and in a way more concise and synthetical fashion than many of us .

Counter-opinions will always arise on this kind of topic as what a player finds fun may differ from another player.
Some find the fun in easy mode, others in extremely hard and challenging content. Some like to sit on a pile of diamonds, other will spend all their AD to buy a cool looking fashion. Some want the stuff to be quickly acquired, others prefer a long and slow progression process. Some like to math their own build, others will just exactly copy a build from a youtuber. Some like to play the AH speculation game, other don't bother. Etc, etc.
Game developpers have to manage all the different "fun" we, as players, want, and find compromises.

My opinion is most of the aspects of a MMORPG should be played on the (very) longterm.
Starting a MMORPG, especially those which are around since a long, I expect the game to keep me chasing stuff during at least 1 or 2 years.
Hiting the full BiS status is, for me, a reciepe to boredom, because then I don't have anything to do, to think about, to look for, to improve, to be challenged with or to work for anymore (except the social part within my guild/ally, which is also part of the fun of a MMORPG ^^).
This "BiS boredom" usually results in me loosing interest, drastically casualizing my playtime (happened once) taking a long break (happened twice), or quitting definitely (which will probably be the next time I will again get to "full BiS" status).

In other words, I enjoy the journey way more than the final destination. And as long as I have at least one remaining collar to upgrade, i'm not arrived yet (though I'm again pretty close now...)

mparcher

Not really sure what the issue is?

Why do you want mythic collars? They serve almost no purpose except to raise your IL by just 1000 if you have all 5 at legendary. At 82k IL, it's a drop in the bucket. They literally hurt our builds in 99% of content (scaled).

Another thing is that we earned enough during the 3 week summer festival to buy like 20 of these mythical collars.

Why remove one of the last farms in the game? Not everyone spends real money so those players should have something to farm.

An exchange would mean we could literally AFK farm mythic collars. Guess that's ok, but still...

xenocide

I think the original post has a valid point.
Shards of empowerment are currently useless, and having a way to turn them into greater shards of empowerment could make them somewhat worth keeping.

You could have a vendor trade X shards + reagent for a greater shard, but personally I think it would make a nice addition to one of the mastercrafting recipes.
Either 500 shards + Mark of potency + Teal Diamond = Greater shard? Crafting cost could be 25k AD instead of gold?

You could add any combination of items to the recipe but adding a mark would help retain value, and adding a rarish RP drop could help add value to a 2nd item that long time players dont really need.

grogthemagnif

athurrpewty said:

Yes it is. But this is a game, not a job.

Sez you.

grogthemagnif

I have a better idea, every 10th shard you collect becomes a Greater Shard.