Crystals unannounced tax when crafting

[Cottontail]

So… before we begin… this post isn’t a stab at perblue or an irate customer raging about nothing of importance.
This is feedback of the kind I hope you will actually appreciate

I’ve been playing this game since February 27th 2017 and have had my share of ups and downs with the staff at perblue
Overall they do provide a solid service… Just a few grey areas we (players and developers) should all be contributing ideas to to improve the gaming experience for everyone involved

I myself with a few other individuals have managed to get new features added or certain aspects of the game tweaked for the betterment of all.

One example … Naming sparkle pony’s cloud. Yeah that was for the giggles and to see if I could coerce a population to band together for a cause… Which they did and it was great fun.
Adapting on that style of collaboration a collective of players now work together to brainstorm ideas, go bug hunting and pass on the details of how things are happening, plus potential future features we can think of and pass those onto yourselves at perblue @OhRlyeh @Etesian

We do this to alleviate the workload on yourselves and to make portal quest even better then it already is

Crystals …

Whether it’s a good idea or not is not what I’m looking at .
I’m here to try get some actual definitive answers on certain aspects of the crystals

So… 47 heros needing 10,000 each and we have 470,000 vials to farm… When you work it out that’s not too many at all tbh…
A guild on more harder fortress can earn all that in 79 days without even doing portal lords
( yes I’d like to know exactly how much portal lords will drop of the vials)

Congrats you just used 10,000 vials go craft your crystal you’ve earned it… Hang on a minute what’s this extra tax that wasn’t discussed or declared to the player base and we would like to know why this information was withheld.

Guess you didn’t expect some of the more productive guilds to have the 10,000 on the second day

What’s with the 80 hero shards cost for crystals ?
Were free 2 play people even considered ?
The cost to max an epic skill is around about the 250 hero shards mark, you’ve just made that 330.
I doubt very much that any freeplayers will have 15510 spare hero shards for all 47 heros

First task for you guys and gals at perblue, slash that hero shard cost for a crystal to less then 25
Not a request, more of a light handed demand, it’s a multi-server concern due to players rage quitting the game in the face of insurmountable odds… We lose friends and family, you lot lose revenue

It’s a simple fix and will ensure the servers stay alive and well for a lot longer then current projections

Second task for you guys and gals ,
announce the methodology of crystals not just a location but actually a full brief on how they work what values you could get, and whether or not a crystal crafted then reset gives back all the items used or a fraction ( I know at 28% it gives back all resources I’ve tested that)

Something of that calibre was needed but wasn’t in the patch notes, whether it was overlooked or wasn’t considered is a moot point
I’ll let that slide but please try to ensure clarity upon delivery for future extravagant features

I’m only one player… Asking for the instruction manual
plain and simple this has thrown every one in blind and hardly any players can fathom what lasting benefits will arise from the crystal that will survive through the next hero balances or when cap raises arrive and hero values change again with gear ranks

Yeah I chat bubbles for a while… But everything there is combined questions and concerns from a lot of reputable players on servers 1+2

Thanks for your time and hopefully you can make a swift response to this

[AERITH2]

To add on to what cotton is talking about and why we request this information is because we make the guides to explain these concepts and try to increase the overall mood on servers… as we get frustrated with having to test things a billion times after updates so too do the average daily players and a lot in game can be very confusing to many people which is why when things don’t make sense in wording we start to ask questions.

As cotton stated many players (friends considered family) are dropping the game left and right due to bugs and things not making sense being ignored etc. I’m at the point where I don’t really care anymore and am tacking up all time and money invested thus far as a total loss and to just step away. But I’m staying for the people. Ones that use the tools I provide them across several servers ones that come to me asking advice what do build or do next in game… PerBlue as a company has permanently lost my business due to the way things such as tickets are handled and how people in higher positions release half information before doing some actual research and finding the problem as a whole before saying how to properly fix it.

But all of that is besides the point. Forums are supposed to be a place to communicate about the game the good and the bad bits about it and get feedback from both sides. But that’s not really how it’s done here. It’s more player to player advice being offered which to me is more accurate as they actually play the game and see things actively as we see them and not how it looks on a schematic of how it “should” work… every time an update is announced we start thinking of what’s going to be fixed and what implications that fix may possibly have and just test everything that was said to be fixed. And within minutes of server coming back up you have all these new issues being reported of things not working properly the broken things which were “fixed” are still broken but broken in a new way. We do these things as active game players who want to see good changes in the game. It’s disheartening to put so much into something and not being able to play it properly or have a fight bug out and lose or to have the mechanics of heroes change and not be listed as being changed.

We have offered our services to test things for free and we make the bug reports in tickets which are neglected or maybe they’re looked at and just never responded to but if you can’t see the benefit of reading the reports and making said changes for all… well then it’s safe to say that you have lost interest in progressing this game and just announce it as closing… because that’s how it feels when you have people telling you what’s wrong and you can’t even say thanks for the reply we’ll investigate it etc instead of saying maybe it’s your device or another program you’re running.

Crystals are a good addition but not announcing how they’re to be built and adding hidden costs (not discussed) you’re just building more distrust in the community for putting out false (not full) information. As for how the crystals are to function for being built is still a complete mystery it’s slightly intriguing, but at the same time annoying as there’s probably more we will uncover in the future being (hidden).

The potential future for crystals in the game is going to add new twists though as in dungeon fights will scale difficulty as they may leak into there. Crusades are already difficult enough to win the battles and hold charges add in crystals there and it’s just gonna be ludicrous. I somewhat can foresee energy being added into crystals as in hero starting energy as this company likes to do things in 3s and it would be a viable option eventually. But let’s get this all figured out first. Add in a crystal mine where you can set 1 hero per day to work mining extra crystals and let them gain exp or have a solo gauntlet battle where you choose 1 hero to run through and fight each individual front and back hero by themself and increase level/difficulty as progressing… make the prize something like extra exp or an item of your choice something promising.

There’s lots of ideas I’ve had for this game over the year plus that I’ve played this game. There’s countless guides that I’ve made and had to scrap due to updates made also.

Hope you take some of this into consideration.

[SueyJitSu]

There was this in the discord leader chat the other day too…

we are releasing 1 crystal per hero now and adding up to five over time in the future

I don’t know if either of you knew this, I just scrolled through your posts quickly .

[Wolverine]

Needing hero shards and epic scraps was in the patch notes. They just didn’t say how many would be needed.

See last bullet in above screenshot.

I do agree that the shard cost feels excessive.

[Lord_Sticker]

Well said cotton. . .

[AERITH2]

That’s still withholding information when you add something new you gotta say how it’s exactly intended to work… so if it doesn’t work that way we can come back and show them it’s not working as intended and not have devices being blamed for the issue. And I guess I misread that part about them being a cost too for whatever reason was thinking it meant that a heroes epic must be max level before crystals can be formed. So like I said it’s confusing when it’s not black and white exactly laid out. Mostly me and cotton bounce things off one another in line chat when things don’t make sense trying to rationalize explanations with one another. But all points above are still valid. Point is hexi had all required items etc and it still isn’t functioning properly.

[Stinkynate]

I fully support getting actual explanations on game mechanics with updates. Some transparency would aid in getting things that “weren’t as intended” fixed earlier as opposed to them sitting around “broken” for months with users having no way to know it wasnt as intended. Followed by a game altering “bug fix”.

[Chief_Talon_II]

@cottontail
Portal Lords will have tons of crystals, but… in the form of chat stamps and guild icons. LoL

[Cottontail]

As long as I get a 6th red dot stamp I’ll be happy will finally be able to use them to make it look like I have chicken pox