Prior to U6, refining an old T9 relic returned about 3k shards.
After U6, the same relics refine for only 1,044 shards.
Thanks for the heads up on the stealth nerf. (But hey, it wouldn't be a stealth nerf if you told us, eh?)
In the grand scheme of things, this is (and all MMO-related things are) pretty meaningless, but it's little things like this that annoy and upset people. (See the medallion exchange rate nerf that was never mentioned or even addressed after the fact.)
^^^^This!!! I just started getting back, after a few months of semi-afg for school, to the business of grinding out LI's on one of my toons and realized that the 5 old t9's I had kept in his bag are now only worth 1044! This is not just a little thing. It's not a minor irritation. It is really difficult to grind shards. The only consolation we had to their rendering our old relics pointless, was that they were going to be worth an amount of shards that would try to, but not at all, come close to our previous investment. These relics took some of us weeks to even get one tier 9. They were 5 per, and even with crits it was a long and arduous process. Now, without warning, I login and that is taken away. I am so tired Turbine. I fight for you guys, I argue on your behalf, I take time off so that I'll have it in me to come back. It is things like this that make it so difficult to re-engage your grinduntilyoucan'tsoyouhavetog otothestore. I spent 3 days grinding virtues and weeks grinding comms for moors armour only to hit this. Oh, and I won't even go into the ratio of comms earned to comms cost of creep skills.
I'm over it. You've officially completely disillusioned me in spite of some really great content. You guys don't seem to realize that your model is ruining our enjoyment. You are not as subtle as you think. Decisions like these are blatantly at odds with your player base's enjoyment, and blatantly in favor of grinding us to exhaustion so that we have no choice but to store buy. For every 1 thing you do right, you screw 5 other things up by increasing the grind. This leads me to believe that you guys are actually vested in opposing what we want in favor of what we'll come back to because we're hooked. Kudos to your brilliance in manipulating human nature. Not so much to your ability to make an enjoyable game or happy customers. If you wonder why in so many threads there are players complaining, it is because this strategy is wearing us down. It's eating away the loyalty to Tolkien (and some great early years) that has gotten us this far. MMO's are grinds, we get it. Do it appropriately, where the game content fits the grind and doesn't multiply at every turn. That is all.
Decisions like these are blatantly at odds with your player base's enjoyment, and blatantly in favor of grinding us to exhaustion so that we have no choice but to store buy.
I believe that there is a solid math and reason behind all of these changes. They usually do make sense, even if it is to momentary detriment of certain people. The issue is that the reason is often not obvious.
The simple problem is: Turbine pretty much rarely explains these "stealth nerfs" and other hidden changes. It would be a simple thing of "Here´s what: <insert change>, Here´s why: Yadda yadda". Instead, they open the door to all kind of frustration fuelled by hyperbole and speculation, coupled with rampant store conspiracies.
Re: AW: Something that would have been nice to know
Originally Posted by Vandervahn
I believe that there is a solid math and reason behind all of these changes. They usually do make sense, even if it is to momentary detriment of certain people. The issue is that the reason is often not obvious.
Yes there is a solid math: to force people to forget this "system" and get the relics and LI consumables for real money.
As long as they make this stuff rare, very hard to get and the grinding process less rewardly they will increase the store sales. The question is how much more they will press on the customers like "everybody is playing for free so we need to make money to keep the game alive".
The people who USE this stuff are not F2P and they have to play the game and deal with it. The lvl 75's (soon 85's) have not fell from the sky, they spent real money in the game to be where they are.
It is not easier to get them now if they reduce the amount of shards from one decon to 1044 from 2696. They did not reduce the grind or amount of effort to obtain the best relics by that ratio. In fact, it could be argued that they've increased it drastically by adding tier 7 and tier 8; where there is very little gain for a drastic increase in shard cost. Facts are not avoided by changing them to suit your argument.
Where were you folks when I first created this thread? :P
I felt like I must have been the only one with extra tier 9s just sitting there because I hadn't gotten around to turning them into shards yet, yet I'm certainly not paranoid enough to think that a change was made just to bugger me.
Luckily I still have enough shards that I (hopefully) won't ever have to grind for them, but this change was the final straw for me regarding relics and alts - now my alts just get T4 or T5 relics, even the alts that I occasionally raid on. One would think that I'd want to improve my characters as much as possible, but in the case of LI relics I no longer do. I don't have anything complimentary to say about a major game system that makes players not want to take part in it, so I'll leave it at that.
One can make a similar listing for the perceived higher grind for empowerment scrolls, which is actually lower now.
I dont deny that your old Tier9s were downgraded in shards return. I dont know why this happened. But it is only a fringe effect in any case. It gets soaked up by all the increased methods outlined above. And those dont even take into account that mid- to high level relics and large iXP runes drop everywhere.
On a different note, the whole system still isnt fun of course.
Last edited by Vandervahn; Jun 06 2012 at 07:05 PM.
Its much easier to get shards since update 6. With relic combines giving crits and higher next-tier relics per combine it is now more effecient to decon higher tier relics for shards. I tested this pretty extensively and put my numbers in one of those linked threads. Combining at tier 6+ may chew your gold up quickly, but gold is easy to get and with t5 relics dropping for everyone on every run I really dont have any issues getting relics to decon for shards. I dont even bother with crafted relics anymore.
My guess is they are getting ready for a new tier (t9) with RoR and the new decon rate fits in with the existing rates and follows the same curve. If you plot the numbers bleow you will see they are all part of the same curve.
Tier
Refine Shard Return
1
1
2
2
3
9
4
32
5
79
6
192
7
464
8
696
9
1044
We have just reached the point where we are (almost) back to having t9s and the old 'bonuses' for deconning them that were introduced with the relic revamp have to be eliminated to fit nicely in the current system. My theory anyway.
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Originally Posted by Doulos
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