Quote Originally Posted by Halley View Post
Yo, straight up, this is a horrible idea. Those same bots will farm these "cards" 24/7

If you thought the reive bots were bad back in early 2012/13 just wait for this to happen.

But hey, I'm all for free Hq gear, cause that's what's going to happen. There will be zero economy left.
Will it really matter tho if every single SoA non-NM can drop these new cards? There aren't enough players left on any server at this point to successfully crowd out the entire expac's worth of targets. The only immediate economic impact I'm seeing is that the price for spheres will plummet once it's simple enough for anyone/everyone to get them. It will still take a considerable time investment to complete the rest of the process, and there's no new time-saving shortcuts for reaching 100,000 spirit, or completing any of the earlier stages. I'd say this change is sort of comparable to what happened between old (lockout and group required) Dynamis relic farming vs new (spammable and soloable) Dynamis farming along with the reforge/upgrade process. They are shortening part of the grind, not the whole trip and all this really does is save player time.

Quote Originally Posted by Lunatone View Post
Its not a bad thing if it makes it easier for the rest of us but the main issue imo is that theyre already dominating the market and adding more shields wont make anything better the damage has already been done. If it were at all possible I'd suggest do the adjustment yes but ban the people who botted their shields to completion.

Again eyebrows should have been raised when these shields were showing up completed the month after the update that added last stage.

Whats the point of you getting a shield now? To make your own stuff maybe, but you woud have have to compete with the people who are hopping servers to buy mats for 5-600 mass synths of HQs and then selling them all again.

If a new synth comes out they will just buy out all the mats before you get a chance to get any so really making shields more accessible is just saying "here you too can craft your own stuff HQ for the low price of blah blah"
As I've said earlier in this thread, I'm expecting a ban wave to hit at least some of those who have botted their way to their shields >AFTER< this adjustment goes live. Yes, damage has been done and even high-end HQs are down to ~40mil each. No, it's not at/past the point where having a completed Escutcheon is solely for making your own gear.