TL:DR Shard chat might be not as bad as you think, both sides have strong points, both sides can be good and bad, I’m a shard participant, I try to see things from both sides, plz let us a have a civil argument and share our experience and demonize both sides, (what comes next I hope it makes sense, not good with writing big texts)

First of all I know people that hate shard chat will most likely downvote me, that’s ok. My goals are to give an alternate view of the matter, as a participant in a shard chat, and have decent dialogue from both sides in the comments if possible.

First I want to begin with counter arguing the idea of non-shard chat sympathizers that reshuffling arena shards will solve this problem and create a more fair leaderboard based on equally strong people, and I say this to you: how would you feel if the day of the reshuffle you wake up in the 20.000 spot matched against equally strong people having to reclaim the top spots? I bet you would quit the game. Also another idea is being awarded the highest ranked achieves that day, that means more people being able to reach top ranks, so CG will ofc reduce the rewards if this happens, not a bad idea but it doesn’t negate the need of shard chat and either will mean that people complaining will have better luck. Imo the current system is the best possible, might be a better one but I haven’t seen one so far being suggested.

Now I would like to give my side of the arguments as a shard chat member/owner/creator of 2 shard chat 1 for arena and 1 for fleet. I started playing around November 2016 and as everyone new I wasn’t the best in pvp until I started paying more attention to it since I wanted to get these sweet free crystals, so around January I joined reddit in an effort to achieve a higher quality and amount of knowledge, when I started to hit top30, hovering around top50 and flerting with top20, it was the wiggs meta and the start of zaul, back then my top5 in arena was basically the same 5 people, whales/dolphins or people with alt accounts that new what they were doing and basically were untouchable. Around that time I realized the existence of shard chats and honestly back then shard chats were less common smaller and mostly about controlling top5 for yourself, and with that in mind I started the search/tries to create my own having in mind achieving that control. I found people quite fast and specifically the guys at the top, we created our shard chat and quickly started growing in size helping each other, people would go out of their way removing mods changing teams so I and other weaker members could achieve top ranks, not all the time, but it helped a lot to grow and with good planning I started building my Rex team, this team helped solidify my place as top dog in the shard, started earning enough crystals that I was basically able to keep up with the meta as f2p and I still do

So first point shard chat helped me personally to grow in power and knowledge I doubt I would have achieved that alone that easy, however it was my dedication to the game and perfect planning that actually got me here

Now around the Rex meta I believe the shard chat became quite popular, hence the reddit megathread about finding your shard members, the reason was that meta was becoming more f2p friendly meaning more people could now achieve top ranks, that meant we had to invite/search more people to join us to maintain that organized manner of payouts and climbing/protection we had achieved, however now my goal was to maintain that relax experience we had achieved and not be the dictator, so to speed things up and not tell the whole 2 years story we have chat with 50 members (not everyone active but we always try to recruit people that actually can get top ranks and want to play fair with everyone), that doesn’t mean we are nice with everyone since there have been people that either never tried to participate don’t want to or they just don’t even know that a shard chat exist, are we actively hunting all non chat participants no, at this point almost 24/7 top 20 consists of shard members not cuz we are kicking outsiders out but we are that many active and basically the best of the shard at this point meaning most outsiders just have hard time pushing especially since most of us have traya atm, things might change again with the nest meta

So second point is that shard chat helps me have a relax environment where I can get my rank maintain it for my payout and don’t have to spent all my day on the phone playing a game, we all have a real life with more important things to do

Now the main argument I see is non shard chat sympathizers claim constantly that if they reach top20 they are being kicked outside of top50, believe me it’s not shard chat actions but oustiders.. even our shard chat with 35 active members can’t control anything outside top20, and we constantly get outsiders reach top10-20 and not mess with them, however if they can reach top5 and can’t mess our members payout we will try to actively protect our members simple because we have the same goal and want to maintain that orderly chill payouts, then outsiders either try to join us which in most case we get them in or they just keep trying to be lone wolves which ofc hurts them. So who is wrong here the lone wolves or shard chats? My opinion none, both trying to achieve their goals in a different fashion one wants everything for themselves which is ok since it’s pvp the other wants stay at the top share and be more relaxed which is also ok since it’s pvp based on time zones and you basically get 5 attempts daily if you want more you have to pay so I don’t see how shard chat are unfair play in the current system you still have to be able to climb for yourself shard chat point is to help you avoid everyone outside your time zone and share top spots with the one in the same time zone be chill and less addicted/spent less time on the game we all want that imo if we have a healthy relationship with the game

Now I know there are really bad shards(cuz like myself who started on an ill goal,but got reformed along the way), but I doubt it’s the norm, also people that have never participated in shard chat and base their perspective on third persons info I would advise them not be so absolute

And to finish this up we don’t have to agree, both sides play the game, just differently, one got more advantages than the other, bullying is unacceptable and unreasonable targeting of outsiders shouldn’t be happening, shard chats goals is to maximize reward and reduce time spent on the game, however you have to realize that bulling and douchbaggery can happen from lone wolves too, if someone is being heavily targeted it’s most likely on their own fault, attacking all the time and or trading one spot doesn’t mean you play fair, it might be in your head but why then chard chat is unfair? And what makes you think that a shard chat free leaderboard will help you achieve top ranks easier, most likely will make it harder since everyone will attack anyone at any point just because, you will say prove it, my only argument is human nature

Thank you if you gave it a read, sorry for spelling/grammar mistakes or inconsistency or if anything doesn’t makes sense, I’m really bad at putting my thought in an orderly fashion and sometimes I write one thing and mean something else, I hope we can solve it in the comments