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We have got to address Spirit Shards and Tomes of Knowledge


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18 minutes ago, Jianyu.7065 said:

I'd rather talk about blue and green prophet shards and the fact that, as a solo player, I can't find a group to do strike missions...

I see plenty of no req groups in strikes lfg every day. But if you can't find one, consider creating a group by yourself.

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13 hours ago, Argothian.3715 said:

Not to necro a near-dead thread, but there is a weird trend in GW2 where anyone brings up a valid criticism (spirit shards aren't reliably farmable because anet wants you to buy gold for your legendaries) and you get droves of people with the "f*ck you, I got mine" mentality who basically just use it as an excuse to brag about their material stockpiles. We get it: this issue doesn't affect you. Then why feel the need to throw in your two-cents? There is a real problem when a 10-year-old game with an ever-shrinking population (like it or not, all active MMOs nowadays have a dwindling playerbase) has a crucial currency tied to several important features (stat swapping, crafting, etc) that is only obtainable through passive gameplay. As someone in a similar boat, grinding experience for spirit shards feels like an absolutely miserable way to play the game.

If they're going to go so long without adding meaningful content to the point where the only meaningful content is crafting legendaries, I think it's worth a re-examination.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spirit_Shard
There are, quite literally, over a 100 different and varying sources and methods of acquisition for spirit shards.  You get 10 each month doing nothing more than logging in.  You get 3 per day for finishing your daily.  That's 94 a month barely doing anything and discounting any other acquisition method.  That's 9 changes for gear per month, which covers 6 armor, 3 weapons.  The meta doesn't change enough to justify changing that much and it'd make more sense to farm up other ascended gear sets via currencies that aren't as gated.  Everything else is pretty cheap.  Even before I had obtained my legendary armor, I still have been floating around 1200 spirit shards.  This is actually a non-issue if people just play the game. 

T4 Fractals award about 3-4 per completion, even more  if you have the bonus exp from Deroir (Which is worth it).  Dungeons award about 1 per path.  Last I checked Raid bosses and Strike bosses award similar exp for completion which I believe is 150% of a level.  And, if you absolutely, positively despise instanced content, open world metas in HoT, Season 3, Season 4, PoF, IBS, etc. All award ~20k exp per event completion and net about 4-5 spirit shards from event completion exp alone.  This is a currency one accrues from just playing the game.

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On 4/1/2022 at 9:45 AM, Legend of Rogue.5394 said:

The process of gaining spirit shards and the lack of abundance is terrible for for the game. Let's analyze the ability to get them:

Tome Excess

Dailies

Killing Players in WVW on random Drops

SOS (Max 5)

 

Thats it:

 

Now let's look at access to Tomes: Once a week on Daily Log in

PVP, WVW Track (max is a few)

Chests 

 

Anyone going for Stat swaps on ascended, Crafting Legendaries, Crafting Ascended, using Augur Stones for Vision Crystals, Anthologys, Bloodstones, Eldritch, all require MASSIVE amounts of Shards when the application of getting them is extremely low. Stat swapping ascended armor or crafting ascended armor just needs to flat out be removed with Spirit Shards or changed in currency. The cost of making ascended armor per piece will average about 60 gold (more or less) and the cost of stat swapping other than hours of grinding WVW or wasting money on Gems for chests is insane... You might get lucky if you can get with a ZERG group and get some on chests. (Dont even bother for lower end servers with low pop getting ROFL Stomped by Black Rock) Its not even a process that matches the identity of the item its just a random lets have players do this because we have nothing else to think of. At least half the requirements or up the drop rate, change the daily log in and include more shards. The only way to actually gain a lot is spend 2 3 hours and maybe you will get a max of 15 or 20? Maybe? Not everyone is going to dedicate 8 to 22 hours a day like Teapot can. This is such an outdated process that has been going on since HOT and even before that. You have changed clovers, you have changed mystic coins, Ectos were addressed WAY back in the day, you have addressed obsidian shards but this is the most broken annoying part of the game. Luckily there are some who enjoy ALL aspects of GW2 and don't mind playing WVW but what of those who refuse or are only PVE? Going for anything that require shards you make it pretty much impossible. and dull., not to mention you can play and do everything and get 1-3? Thats insane Anet

 

 

Im not sure I started the game at release and have played pretty regularly other than an ~ 2 year break between hot and pof. I have ~6k unused shards sitting in my wallet and I dont really grind anything nor have I for years. I have 3 full sets of legendary armor, about 8 weapons and a full set of trinkets + runes & sigils. I never ran low on Spirit Shards.

 

Personally, I would like more useful things to do with Spirit Shards. Spirit Banners would be ok if they didnt expire the moment I have to reload the a map or if I DC. As it stands I really have no use for the spirit shards I have.

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15 hours ago, Argothian.3715 said:

Not to necro a near-dead thread, but there is a weird trend in GW2 where anyone brings up a valid criticism (spirit shards aren't reliably farmable because anet wants you to buy gold for your legendaries) and you get droves of people with the "kitten you, I got mine" mentality who basically just use it as an excuse to brag about their material stockpiles. We get it: this issue doesn't affect you. Then why feel the need to throw in your two-cents? There is a real problem when a 10-year-old game with an ever-shrinking population (like it or not, all active MMOs nowadays have a dwindling playerbase) has a crucial currency tied to several important features (stat swapping, crafting, etc) that is only obtainable through passive gameplay. As someone in a similar boat, grinding experience for spirit shards feels like an absolutely miserable way to play the game.

If they're going to go so long without adding meaningful content to the point where the only meaningful content is crafting legendaries, I think it's worth a re-examination.

In what way are spirit shards only gained via, "passive" gameplay?

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17 hours ago, Argothian.3715 said:

Not to necro a near-dead thread, but there is a weird trend in GW2 where anyone brings up a valid criticism... and you get droves of people with the "kitten you, I got mine" mentality 

I don't find this weird at all. It's human nature, and pretty much everywhere. "I worked hard to get where I am and so can you" is the standard response whenever anyone criticizes rewards systems anywhere. It's born out of our complete inability to see our advantages and our need to justify what we've given up along the way.

On the other hand, it's also human nature to criticize systems without really understanding them, and reject anyone as kneejerk defenders who try to explain why they are the way they are.

People. We're special in so many ways.

17 hours ago, Argothian.3715 said:

 As someone in a similar boat, grinding experience for spirit shards feels like an absolutely miserable way to play the game.
 

Gotta agree with you there.

How are you getting all of the rest of the mats and precursors faster than you're getting the required spirit shards? Like clovers? Or the trophies? Those, to me, always seem like far tighter bottlenecks than spirit shards.

Edited by Gibson.4036
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17 hours ago, Argothian.3715 said:

As someone in a similar boat, grinding experience for spirit shards feels like an absolutely miserable way to play the game.

I could understand this take in more of a "classic" takes on mmorpgs, where to gain xp you basically need to indeed grind mobs. But here? You do almost anything and you get xp. I hardly see it as grind, I play whatever and never missed shards, whether I was new or not. Honesly, I'm not sure how people manage to be missing them, unless they try to skip content AND gear tiers in order to rush legendaries. At that point the complaint becomes "why can't I skip playing the game faster to shoot directly towards the late game, long term reward instead?". Am I missing something about shards here?

Edited by Sobx.1758
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I am not what you would consider an experienced player.  I have only been playing since October of last year so about 5 months into the game.  I use them primarily to change stats on ascended and a few other minor purchases.  I can only say I have them in abundance.  I have over 1,500 and it's just been from playing the game.  I am in no form or fashion trying to collect them.  You get one every time you go through a level once you reach 80 and honestly going through the story, doing events, completing maps, doing fractals, dungeons, strikes for me it appears spirit shards rain from the sky.  I am guessing in the future I will need them for other purposes but I can't say acquiring spirit shards is a problem.

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1 hour ago, Barraind.7324 said:

  Almost a year later and Spirit Shards are still the gatekeeper for every legendary thing I have made to this point, though to be fair, thats something like 8,500 shards a year

So what is it? High gold income from alt accounts, reselling on tp or something similar, which results in you having disproportionally higher gold than shard gain, which would come from a more active/regular gameplay? Then you're using it to further gold gain by selling the weapons? If that's the case, you're not exactly a "regular player" and considering crafting a leggy is around 270 (gen 3) - 340 (gen 1) shards (correct me if I'm wrong, using l2effi as source)... You're crafting around 25 leggy weapons a year (using higher -340 shards- value in an attempt to intentionally lowball the number of leggies you craft for your convenience). At that point... I fail to see how this is somehow supposed to be a problematic currency for even above average* players.

Unless the main point of this post was "I craft a lot of leggies" humble-brag, at which point: yes you do, congrats 😄

Edited by Sobx.1758
*above average considering # of crafted leggies
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25 minutes ago, Barraind.7324 said:

  

 

Almost a year later and Spirit Shards are still the gatekeeper for every legendary thing I have made to this point, though to be fair, thats something like 8,500 shards a year

So same curiousity. How are you getting the needed clovers, trophies, and precursors so much faster than spirit shards?

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3 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

I could understand this take in more of a "classic" takes on mmorpgs, where to gain xp you basically need to indeed grind mobs. But here? You do almost anything and you get xp. I hardly see it as grind, I play whatever and never missed shards, whether I was new or not. Honesly, I'm not sure how people manage to be missing them, unless they try to skip content AND gear tiers in order to rush legendaries. At that point the complaint becomes "why can't I skip playing the game faster to shoot directly towards the late game, long term reward instead?". Am I missing something about shards here?

This is exactly the problem that needs to be addressed by removing time gated content, the only thing it does is forcing people to be online every day, not everyone can do these things since they have other things in life. the other reason is that this game is already way too old to keep these time gates in place, this will allow new players to catch up and have some gear too so they can join the end game with veterans.

 

The excuse "i worked hard for it, so should you" is exactly the toxic behavior that keeps new players from staying in the game, they see the wall, they get ejected from groups because they are not wearing optimized gear and even scolded in chat at times, you as veterans never have to deal with this since it is not your problem, me as a person who took a long break and is back now to try the game again gets this daily thrown into my face that i lack ascended gear to optimize my healing or damage and parties refusing because of it, though its only a small difference, yet the community dictates they need it since they want their grind as optimized as possible. 

 

Time gated materials only held value for a few years and actually been dropping since 2018 in value to almost same price as materials are when crafting today, unless you can call a 26 silver a real profit these days when pve farmers can earn like 40 gold in a few hours(for now, this will go down soon too once the aftereffect hits those materials too). To be honest crafting any gear today barely seems to have any value, you are faster with running PVE raids, strikes, fractals. PVE farming has been spoiled for years over their ears with drops and gold inflation that they lost track of what is important in games, which is having fun and growing as a community, now forums have new players putting a big issue on the table and have veteran players wipe it off the table with the excuse "I suffered, so should you!" (Thank you so much for being a supportive community, you really should be proud of yourself for this!) 

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15 hours ago, BloodyDBunny.8192 said:

This is exactly the problem that needs to be addressed by removing time gated content

Spirit shards are not even time gated content. At this point you're simply complaining about gameplay being required to craft things like leggies.

Considering your post consists of...
1) Mislabeling the currency (calling it "time gated" when it's not)
2) "New players catching up with veterans so they can play endgame content" (for which -in majority of cases- exotics are enough, while for the rest ascended gear has the same power legendaries do and there's already more ways to get ascended gear than there was in the past)
3) From my understanding making up the "I worked hard for it so should you", which is not even what was written in the post you're quoted
...I really fail to see the validity of your response to what I wrote or even to this thread as a whole.

If you want to respond, try actually responding to the contents of the posts you're quoting instead of going for the extremely easy -but missed- attempt to find a villain by pretending I wrote something I did not. You seem to be mostly set on repeating that "I suffered so you should too!" phrase which has nothing to do with what was written before, so for now I'm just left confused by your response.

Edited by Sobx.1758
to -> too
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8 hours ago, BloodyDBunny.8192 said:

 

This is exactly the problem that needs to be addressed by removing time gated content, the only thing it does is forcing people to be online every day, not everyone can do these things since they have other things in life. the other reason is that this game is already way too old to keep these time gates in place, this will allow new players to catch up and have some gear too so they can join the end game with veterans.

 

The excuse "i worked hard for it, so should you" is exactly the toxic behavior that keeps new players from staying in the game, they see the wall, they get ejected from groups because they are not wearing optimized gear and even scolded in chat at times, you as veterans never have to deal with this since it is not your problem, me as a person who took a long break and is back now to try the game again gets this daily thrown into my face that i lack ascended gear to optimize my healing or damage and parties refusing because of it, though its only a small difference, yet the community dictates they need it since they want their grind as optimized as possible. 

 

Time gated materials only held value for a few years and actually been dropping since 2018 in value to almost same price as materials are when crafting today, unless you can call a 26 silver a real profit these days when pve farmers can earn like 40 gold in a few hours(for now, this will go down soon too once the aftereffect hits those materials too). To be honest crafting any gear today barely seems to have any value, you are faster with running PVE raids, strikes, fractals. PVE farming has been spoiled for years over their ears with drops and gold inflation that they lost track of what is important in games, which is having fun and growing as a community, now forums have new players putting a big issue on the table and have veteran players wipe it off the table with the excuse "I suffered, so should you!" (Thank you so much for being a supportive community, you really should be proud of yourself for this!) 

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

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40 minutes ago, BloodyDBunny.8192 said:

Can "Wendy's" please direct me to the correct location then since search brought me here about this topic and other posts are more than 5 years old, TY

For what it counts, since spirit shards aren't time gated, there are a few ways to build them up quickly. Like someone pointed out, you get over 90 per month for playing pretty normally. You can do WvW for a ton of tomes which directly translate to shards. You can do any of the multi-event farms for quick xp. RIBA comes to mind. You get a ton of xp there. with (or even without)some boosters, you can rack up shards quickly, on top of getting mats/gold. Those are the 2 faster ways that come to mind. I'm sure there are more. Probably even more efficient.
But just from playing you'll get plenty.

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18 hours ago, BloodyDBunny.8192 said:

 

This is exactly the problem that needs to be addressed by removing time gated content, the only thing it does is forcing people to be online every day, not everyone can do these things since they have other things in life.

 

Time gating materials helps casuals. It equalizes people who play regularly but smaller amounts of time with players who play like a full time job.

18 hours ago, BloodyDBunny.8192 said:

 

Time gated materials only held value for a few years and actually been dropping since 2018 in value to almost same price as materials are when crafting today, unless you can call a 26 silver a real profit these days when pve farmers can earn like 40 gold in a few hours(for now, this will go down soon too once the aftereffect hits those materials too). 

Last night I made over 3g/mat crafting with a timegated material.

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19 hours ago, BloodyDBunny.8192 said:

Time gated materials only held value for a few years and actually been dropping since 2018 in value to almost same price as materials are when crafting today, unless you can call a 26 silver a real profit these days when pve farmers can earn like 40 gold in a few hours(for now, this will go down soon too once the aftereffect hits those materials too).

If that difference in value is so trivial to you then just sell the materials and buy the product. No time gating for you.

On the other hand if that is not true then you are calling yourself a liar. Please pick a side. You can't be on both sides.

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3 hours ago, BloodyDBunny.8192 said:

Can "Wendy's" please direct me to the correct location then since search brought me here about this topic and other posts are more than 5 years old, TY

It depends. Main questions I'd have here are: what were you looking for? And why did you quote my post in your previous response? 😄

Edited by Sobx.1758
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I have been making legendaries for 3 1/2 years now non-stop, making 1-2 legendaries a month on average. I have about 14/15 weapons left to make, and I am still hovering around 1k spirit shards. I have not ever ran into a situtation where I was short on spirit shards. As long as you are max mastery points, spirit shards should be easy to come by. Tomes of knowledge just help.

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