Why allow shard chat?

I believe that most shard chats simply aim at people not hitting each other close to payout. The ones, I know, are quite friendly and don't have such blacklists/hitlists aimed at dropping players that are not members of the shard chat.

Yes, I have experienced cooperation to fight a player as much as possible for a day to try and get a message through and then leave him be a few days again. That, however, was only because we couldn't get in touch with him through these forums or his guild. The aim was to send a message to not mess with others at the same payout. The aim was not to ruin his fun and his possibilities to rank high.

"Waqui;c-1592288" wrote:
I believe that most shard chats simply aim at people not hitting each other close to payout. The ones, I know, are quite friendly and don't have such blacklists/hitlists aimed at dropping players that are not members of the shard chat.

Yes, I have experienced cooperation to fight a player as much as possible for a day to try and get a message through and then leave him be a few days again. That, however, was only because we couldn't get in touch with him through these forums or his guild. The aim was to send a message to not mess with others at the same payout. The aim was not to ruin his fun and his possibilities to rank high.

This

Shard chat has drastically improved QOL 4 many, many ppl. The days of sitting glued to your phone during your payout hour to prevent sniping are over. Thank God !

On my shard chart we've reached out to, or been contacted by, everyone that regularly places top 20 and we r all in chat. We rotate spots for payout. 3 ppl in my hour. 2 swap 1st and 3rd and 1 takes 2nd.

Its cooperation, not collusion.

Well, I've seen the greed of people being turned away because people didn't want their toes stepped on. I once thought just like you guys, that it could be a useful tool for coordinating payouts making sure everyone gets a fair chance. Couple weeks in I had a problem with a guy hitting me just before payout. I asked if I could reach out was told no because he shares a payout time with so and so and that was already being split X number of ways. Then saw others turned away and just a few brought in.

"LordMorsResistis;c-1592353" wrote:
Close enough.

Except that a shard chat isn’t “secret” (everyone knows about them) nor is it “illegal” (there are no laws or game rules against it.

Oh, and it’s not intended to “cheat or deceive” anyone either.

Pretty close aside from that though.

How is it secret when you are in the shard chat for over a year?
How is it illegal when there are no game rules against it?
Have you even seen the looking for shard chat threads posted on this forum? Doesn't that kinda imply that it's allowed. Heck, they've even introduced in game chat which allows for shard chats to form easier.

The OP does have a point that some chats can be exclusionary. I've been in six different ones across three accounts (though fleet doesn't really count all that much given its relatively low key nature). They've each had their whale, there's been a little drama here and there, but generally the people playing the game share a common interest and get along well.

Shard chats and drama can all go away if payout times were no longer a thing, but instead you got payed out at the highest rank achieved in some window. I actually think you could do this without reducing crystal spend on refreshes (and therefore revenue). You'd need to change reward tiers around to incentivize it, and you'll upset some people, but, hey, Ships 2.0, so there's precedent.

Wouldn't it be nice to actually do your climb when you wanted to?

If you don't like it, don't participate. Allowed or not, there are very few things they could do at this point to get rid of them. It is unfortunate for those stuck on shards with jerks, but such is life.

For those not browsing the forums desperate for solutions to get ahead "shard chats" are pretty damn secret!
I've known about them for a while but I just found out about blacklists - and I play since launch. Shard chats aren't openly supported and it's implied that they are looking for solutions (like shard-shuffle, which - as stated - isn't viable). If there are no laws against it, that doesn't make it legal (not does it imply it is). If you're allowed to talk about something on the official forum it doesn't mean it's actually (officially) OK to do it.

Morality check! Look up "gank" and try to put yourself on the receiving end. Keeping "blacklists" is a lot like organized crime. May the best player win?

There are shards where really selfish people run them and have to always be top of the board all times of the day etc, and then make everyone else in the chat to gang up on anyone not in the chat. I would support CG stepping in with shards like this, but I don't know what they could do about it.

Fortunately, the shards I am in are very laid back and mostly just rotate with other people in our payout, but not overly strict about it.

Personally, I see the shard chats as making a frustrating system more manageable. Without it it would be very frustrating dealing with sniping for top spots every day. The game is designed so offense has a massive advantage so everyone just beats each other on offense anyway so you can't rely on your defense to hold.

I do find it unfair that some people get 1st every day cause no one else is in their payout, and then me for example rotates with 5 other people in my payout. That's just how it goes though.

There's not a whole lot they can do about it. Especially not without considerable resources.

And shard shuffling literally won't work. The only way to do it without lumping people of wildly different ages together is to simply broaden the timeframe, and choose from the larger pool when redistributing people within shards. But that means you have metashards. And the formation of metashard chats. And the same problem.