Suggestions for Shard* Crafting (*splinter)

[hypevosa]

The fact that shards have been largely neglected (aside from letting them craft healing crystals) was brought up today while playing on grid with Rob and a few others. Let's help come up with ideas for possible uses.

1. Healing self (already exists, seems to work fine as it is)

2. AOE healing effect: natural next step in the co-op cycle. Double the cost of their respective self healing shard sounds appropriate.

3. Megaton Missile: Fires straight forward and explodes on impact with an enemy (don't mess up that shot), dealing massive damage (5k hp) over a 4 square radius. costs 50 of every shard (Rob's suggested retail price)

4. Cooldown Quicken: halves the time it takes for abilities to regen for 5 minutes (instant regen seems rather broken) 25 shards of each kind.

5. X% boost to stat y for 5 minutes - 20 shards of y color (same order from up to down).

6. Mega Tank - as per my other suggestion, this tank is massive, encompassing 5 squares of space. It is sluggish, and cannot be repaired by any normal methods, but it has a formidable arsenal of lasers and missile pods on all sides and 6 large linked shields. You could use it to knock over a drilling platform solo, but that would pretty much kill it even with full pulchs. Essentially it's only effective when used to team up with other players.

Now you list your own ideas!

[tarbomb]

Great ideas, hype!

7. Universal teleport: allows you to teleport anywhere on the map by clicking on it; does not require destination to be a leveled town or another player. Cost: 30 shards (10 of each of three kinds).

8. Shield regen: regenerates shields all by 30/60/100% of full capacity, costing 24/48/72 shards (equally split among the six types). It's an instant regeneration. Also, AoE regen crystals for 150% of the cost.

9. Turbocharge: boosts range, attack power, and cooldown by an extra 60% each, but nerfs speed, shields, and health by 60%, for 30 seconds. Costs 75 shards (25 of each of three types).

10. Auxiliary defense crystal: the opposite of turbocharge. Boosts speed, shield, and health by 60% and nerfs range, attack power, and cooldown by 60%. Costs 75 shards (25 of each of the three types not used by turbocharge).

11. Smart targeting: guns lock onto and target large structures (only targeting minions if there are no large structures in sight) for 60 seconds. Costs 30 shards (5 of each type) - before you say this is too cheap, remember that you won't be able to kill minions blocking your retreat path, so teamwork is a necessity with this. Goes well with megatank too.

12. Cloak: ghost rum for grid. Cloaks you for 10 second, costs 40 shards (20 of two types each and 10 of a third type).

[quicklite]

My turn!

I'm not quite sure how shards work, so I can't put exact numbers, but I can still do ideas.
EDIT: Okay, so now I do know how shards work, but I still prefer to leave the costs up to you guys .

13. Regenerator: Causes your hit points to regenerate (relatively) quickly for 30 seconds. I know hit points do regenerate, but think of this as the equivalent of a pally boost, but slightly less so because of the time you get on this. It allows you take more damage without being invincible, and will help with more serious assaults.

14: Priority-Targeting Shard Missles: Shoots 5 seekers that go after the toughest units they can find. These are long ranged, but not THAT long ranged. If there is nothing in sight, they just fly around in circles for a little while, then explode.

15: Mass Optimization: Makes you and all your team-mates receive lesser versions of the regenerator and Turbocharge without the nerf. Basically, you and everyone around you shoots slightly farther, does a little bit more damage, regens hit points a bit faster, and speeds up both cool downs and your actual movement. This would be really expensive and would only last 5-10 seconds.

16: Infectious Shard: Now this one is kinda complicated, and possibly broken but I'll shoot anyway. Basically, it shoots a single shard straight forwards. This shard, on contact, splits into two other shards that shoot towards a different enemy. If those hit, they break into two more, which break into two more, which just break . All these shards do no actual damage but apply DoT, so you can use it to 'poison' really large groups of enemies to make the assault easier.

17: Shard-Enhanced Shield: Basically, this shield just takes less damage for 60 secs. But not that much less damage, this isn't an invincibility power up.

18: Reflector Shard-Tech: This makes the shield take more damage for 60 secs, but it also reflects all attacks back at the aggressor for 70% damage. Would be seriously useful until it breaks ^^.

And that's all I got for now. Also, you shouldn't be able to stack these by crafting 2 at once. My guess is that crafting one over the other should overwrite the first or something. Unless I'm screwing up again, and it would be impossible to craft 2 at once anyway XD.

[randomg]

I'm sleepy, but...

19. Hero Shard: All tiles that you light up give buffs while other players are on them, so players following you into battle will be amplified.

20. Scrambler Beacon: Destructible beacon sends out pulses every 10 seconds. Enemies hit by the pulse will become allies for 5 seconds. Enemies target the beacon like any other player.

21. Buddy Bot: Small airborn bot that can fire various effects at monsters for a short period of time(think Drakes).

[rob]

These are really good!

[hypevosa]

randomg's hero shard: very unique, I love the idea, though I'm not sure about ease of implementation.

[hypevosa]

Hey, just bumping this due to a recent incident where I pressed my button to use a shard (X) and it didn't deploy, resulting in my death and loss of all 12 pulchs (ugh, off to farm those again sometime -.-). I would like to have the option to craft automatically used crystals via splinters, losing all those pulchs to some kind of input error was a major buzz kill.

[Ood]

Not sure of the exact intention with splinters, but I think it'd be cool if they (or perhaps something else) were used to upgrade triggers, instead of 1 time use items.

Just my two cents.

[hypevosa]

Apr 16, 2013 15:04:56 GMT -5 Ood said:

Not sure of the exact intention with splinters, but I think it'd be cool if they (or perhaps something else) were used to upgrade triggers, instead of 1 time use items.

Just my two cents.

I like having them as a temporary one use resource - it means we actually have incentive to use them to make those temporary resources. If you give them any kind of use for permanent upgrades, you'll now have half your player base ignoring all the temporary buffs to just hold onto them for the permanent ones, meaning the temporary ones will be largely neglected and may as well be gotten rid of.

Let's not mix our permanent and temporary resources.

[Ood]

Apr 16, 2013 16:26:37 GMT -5 hypevosa said:

I like having them as a temporary one use resource - it means we actually have incentive to use them to make those temporary resources. If you give them any kind of use for permanent upgrades, you'll now have half your player base ignoring all the temporary buffs to just hold onto them for the permanent ones, meaning the temporary ones will be largely neglected and may as well be gotten rid of.

Let's not mix our permanent and temporary resources.

Fair enough, currently I just don't see much incentive to use them, some of the above craftables would help, but without some sort of auto-replenish system, I don't really see myself using any of them.

Using the Realm analogy, using 1 hp potion does help (or even 8 [pre-Kabam] or 6 currently) but if you are relying on potions to stay alive, your playstyle might be a bit too aggressive. Similar things happen here. If I can use a crystal to bump my HP to max, sure it saves me a trip from the nearest city to my current location (assuming lone-wolf), but really it doesn't change how I play the game, aside from that one use to save myself.

(perhaps that's poorly worded... but... there it is)

[hypevosa]

I look at temporary buffs like this - they either allow you to be careless or awesome for a bit, both of which increase player fun. No one has fun when they're in the act of saving up a hundred shards just to get an imperceptible stat boost. Everyone has fun when they get to do something interesting or when they've managed to save their butt from dying.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be permanent goals, like augments, tank unlocks, etc. Those are great to have for all players - I'm just saying that we should also have lots of temporary goals as well, as those increase enjoyment and playability.

The beauty of the current system is that there's no reason to JUST save up for anything if we add more splinter crafting items. You can slowly stockpile splinters, and use them however you like, still eventually being able to craft whatever item you like as long as you don't burn through your splinters like a madman. It'll result in alot more fun for me compared to having to hold onto that drake egg just waiting for that giant spider around the corner that will likely never come.

[quicklite]

I'm with hype on this one: I like how shards work, even when all they can do for the time being is be turned into three health pots of varying strength. This being temporary would mean that people wouldn't have to grind shards (which would suck) for those tiny stat boosts they wanted, and still would be rewarded for gameplay with a little piece of awesome.

[hypevosa]

While working with the overdrive bug, quicklite and I agreed it would be fun to be able to craft a crystal that randomly puts one stat into overdrive for a minute. Everyone should experience the quick blazing that I did once, it was awesome