I agree with the rest, shards are just an amorphous mass of things.
I click them out of habit more than anything else. I never intentionally read them, and whenever I read them, I end up questioning why I am even picking them up to be honest.
I never found a shard I was looking for as a random and noticed (probably dropped them at some point, just did not read them).
To this end, let me recycle a post about shattering uniques into rare affix shards:
Rare affix shards have such a minuscule chance to be useful, it is delusional to believe you can ever find a useful one on the ground.
EHG are well within their rights to withhold any future plans, roadmaps or design documents.
As demonstrated by Mike’s earlier post, they are already sharing more than they had in the past (which was basically shards are items, as you said).
Yet.
To clarify and expand on my earlier post, auto pick-up and auto-transfer (and they should be considered separately) introduce a design constraint which doesn’t currently exist.
Yes, it would be more convenient, but it would also constrain future opportunities.
Here are some entirely rigorous and well considered dumb ideas:
a mechanic which explodes items on the ground and shards do more damage than regular items
a dungeon ability which upgrades or adjusts shards on the ground or in your inventory and then shards are exchanged at the end of the dungeon
a glyph which applies shards adjacent to it in your inventory to your weapon
fishing which uses shards as bait
Ok, that last one is impressively ridiculous, I admit.
These (and better ideas) are all opportunities which EHG would likely have to forgo if shards are not items on the ground and/or in the inventory.
Should a convenience feature (even a popular one) be implemented even if it means forgoing all these opportunities?
Perhaps.
But, for now at least, it seems EHG has decided against that.
Imagine having actual worthwhile items to pickup fairly frequently but nope… seems like shards are enough.
I picked up my fair share of shards and it’s simple: It’s 2 unnessesary steps that slow you down,
Since the crafting stahs is there I don’t look at shards anymore. I click the color and when my inventory is full I click the move button.
2 complety useless actions to take and I can’t come up with a worthwhile explaintion even after I’ve read what Mike said.
This all sounds like a lame excuse so people have to pickup at least something when everything else drops so bad it might be even more obvious if we don’t have to click shards. Every time this topic comes up and a dev is answering it the whole thing feels more and more like a crutch to keep people playing.
You can make enemys drop bricks you are able to pick up and throw away when the inventory is full would be equaly exciting.
The status quo right now is pretty bad and I’m simply used to it and gave up on the topic because for whatever reason the Devs don’t move an inch and the topic and mechanic is to stupid to “fight” for it.
Bad ingame system for bad reasons and badly executed… at least from my point of view.
Nah. The everage Joe that had already followed LE for some time, already knows that.
Of course. But don’t you think it might help the case for people to know a glimpse of what these future plans would be? Yes, I think so.
Why not? Fishing works in every game .
I think what Mike said about increasing pickup radius and having shards drop more in a bunch will already make an impact. And I look forward to see how this feels. I’m not complaining about autopickup that much. It doesn’t feel to bad since Mike implemented the suction function back in the days. And its true that the most annoying thing is when shards are on the ground separately.
But that inventory thing is what i dont like that much because it clutters your inventory. Even more if you already picked up some items. The space gets less and less and forces me to push that “send to stash” button more and more frequently.
My proposals up to this day were
Automate the send to stash
give that function a keybind or clickable symbol on the UI so I dont need to open the inventory
Make the shards stackable
add a seperate shards inventory so shards don’t eat up your item inventory space
The first 2 “yes” are hard to believe for me. Is that measurable? How? Is that what you think people do?
Great points you made Kovitikus. No need to complicate this any more. Its pretty clear a vast majority would prefer an easier more automated pickup of shards. Of course there’s trolls who want to argue with anyone who gives them the time of day who will try to say “oh no clicking on shards is so wonderful because X Y Z” but if given the option we all know damn well they would pick auto.
@EHG_Mike Why not try a setting selection to please everyone, settings toggle between current system and something with much less repetitive clicking . Or make a companion pet that picks up shards for the player and put it on cash shop, biggest seller guaranteed. Either way consider something other than increase vacuum and adding in shard sinks, any sinks really suck for newer players, well sinks suck for everyone. Its a lazy solution to a common gaming problem you dont seem to have here, shards are useful. Im sure ppl use chaos, so all shards are useful already.
Because that’s the same thing as changing the system, which we don’t want to do. We’ve heard all the feedback on it. I’ve read all these posts. There isn’t anything novel in them. The most recent in-depth discussion with the entire design team was held very recently.
We will be implementing the changes I have referenced above and will then evaluate the new feedback after that.
Fair enough and thanks for responding, looking forward to the new changes. Im a fan either way, love the game its literally all I play since MP release.
I’m looking forward for more infos on it or the actual implementation ingame. So far it sounds like you still have the useless clutter in the new system and to the functionality of shards and you make them interchangeable. I think the root of the problem will still be there even if I say “Yay! i can change my ~5k phys resi shards against 100 +whater level shards!”. pickung up shards will still be the same old thing people aren’t exited about.
But maybe I’m wrong here we’ll see sooner or later.
All the people who remember the time without this feature are pretty happy it’s there for sure . The better question is: Does anyone thinks it’s a wonderfull solution that should stay ingame because it’s the best possible thing to have?
nothing will change, because the shards will still not be read.
So long as shards cannot be filtered, they will be very hard to distinguish from other shards without taking the TIME to read them, and clusters of shards will just be visual clutter. noise that distracts from running fast and killing mobs. And as reading takes time that is better spent picking it up, there is essentially no decision making process if you are running fast through echos - which is “pick them up if you see them, otherwise ignore”.
If you want shards to have weight, let players filter them and actually make a downside to picking up bad ones, but as they only take up one inventory slot and can be insta-sent to stash - there is no downside to pickups. You already have a aoe loot that triggers on click too, so players will pick up the group of shards rather than the single specific shard. they will not think of a group of shards as each individual one, just as a group.
You’re acting as if the shards are named like the title of an Isekai anime. They’re short and can be read in less than a half second. I’m making the immediate decision on whether on not I bother picking up individual shards. When there’s a large group of shards I’ll go to pick them up regardless. I think the changes Mike suggested will be plenty enough to make picking them up easier (it was already not a problem) and we should see how the game feels after those changes.
But, what is the point in reading them? It takes longer to read them, than it would to just pick them up. And, there’s no drawback in picking every one of them up, because the shard stash is (effectively) unlimited.
I can accomplish the exact same thing with filtering items to get the shards I’m looking for, and it’s a more effective way to obtain them as well. Apply bold+colored filter for the shards specific to my build, and run around picking up those items for shatter+removal.
Runes and glyphs, once again, no drawback in picking them all up, so why bother reading them. Besides, the rarest of them are already highlighted for me by the game, so I know not to miss them. So, once again, no need to read anything.
You’re making the assumption that shards drop right next to me. In ailment builds enemies can die behind you, or you are clearing quickly and don’t take the second to precisely click on the shard on the ground. There are plenty of cases where a shard is out of range of any auto-pickup they would implement where I’m making the conscious decision to not pick up that shard and go out of my way.
Sorry, but this reply is substandard, at least professionally (if not outright condescending).
You have a lot of “business representatives” that offer pretty strong arguments why shard picking is simply wasting time (forced by you). The design, on this limited topic, is an abject failure - simple as that.
There is no use case so far identified (nor one provided by you, or at least hinted at) that can possibly justify mindless, tiresome, useless clicking. Unlike “true” items, the player doesn’t actually need to worry about a full inventory because he/she can always transfer to the “infinite” mats inventory.
So there is no decision involved. Moreover, IF anyone actually stops to get the input info in order to decide if a shard should be picked up, the time lost to read and decide if it’s worth it or not (considering how shard rarity is not entirely reflected by the coloring or IF the shard actually benefits your build AND what your current/target gearing) then they are losing even more time.
And I’m not even getting to the point where I actually pick up shard in order for them not to mess up/be in the way of a fight - I doubt anyone wants to missclick on some random shard that they left on the floor because they’re really zealous and want to suck up to the “devs” so they decided to spend 5 seconds to read the damn thing and mentally compare to how rare it is or what they need for your build vs 1 sec to pick it up.
Saying that it’s the same as changing the system - I highly doubt that. You don’t need to change the system to solve the problem, you can simply make it so that a shard drop event automatically triggers a “pick-up shard to inventory” (or, to be more precise, pick-up item to inventory where item type in {shard, rune, glyph}) event, and if you really want to go the whole mile, the “pick-up shard to inventory” event can automatically trigger the “send to mats stash”.
You don’t need to change any of the current implementation, just build on it.
Eh, I value shards, runes, and gold kind of in there own category. They drop a lot, maybe less so runes… Just I feel that the non inventory items should be auto picked. Sure the runes, and shards go into your inventory, but they just get deposited, which is strange also. Should just go immediately into your craft bag.
Now, for something like this if it was implemented… Maybe there should be an option in options for all 3.
Auto pick shards [ ✓ ]
Auto pick runes [ ]
Auto pick gold [ ✓ ]
So, maybe this is what your options would look like.
.
Shards for sure.
. The better question is: Does anyone thinks it’s a wonderfull solution that should stay ingame because it’s the best possible thing to have?
