Ability to Downgrade Elemental Crystals into Shards.

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

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The Dev's did not give a precise reason as to why we cannot downgrade Clusters into crystals and crystals into shards. This VERY same method was used in 1.0; the early version of Final Fantasy XIV and they opted to remove it. Why?


I'm simply asking to undo this change and make it to where they are convertible again. Please re-read my OP as RMT is NOT the main reason that I want this to change. The main reason of my original post is to help SE see how damaged and flawed this system is. RMT combating is one reason among many that I have been pointing out through out this entire thread.

You've also failed to read over the many wonderful suggestions offered by players to help Square realize there is indeed a problem with the current gathering of shards in comparison to the amount of shards used via crafting as your crafting levels up further.

Tell me.. how much do the low level crafted materials and items from a lvl 1 crafter go for on your server? Not much I presume.. so where is the market for low level crafters?

I would also like confirmation of a thread where players of this games community have said they like the current system of crafting/gathering in terms of shards gained and used.

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Originally Posted by Grimmel

Please SE; give us this alternative to gaining shards, as our current means of gaining them are slim and too far apart.

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This right here is the main reason for this thread. Because our means of gathering shards are too few.

I wonder if this could become a desynth thing... Either all on ALC (as it used to be the crafting class in 1.xx that broke things down to make shards) or split up with 1 or 2 per class... Either way, I still support this coming back 100%!

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Originally Posted by Grimmel

... This VERY same method was used in 1.0; the early version of Final Fantasy XIV and they opted to remove it. Why?
...

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So what was the "converting ratio" in 1.0? And what is your suggesting ratio?
In my server a shard around 100g, a cluster around 1000g, will you break a cluster to 10 shards?

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Originally Posted by Grimmel

You've also failed to read over the many wonderful suggestions offered by players to help Square realize there is indeed a problem with the current gathering of shards in comparison to the amount of shards used via crafting as your crafting levels up further..

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There were many players complained the market was dead. I think SE just let players convert clusters to shards by trading thru the MB.
TBH, I read those "many wonderful suggestions" maybe wonderful but actually not really helpful.
If the problem is "amount of shards used via crafting as your crafting levels up", then they should simply decrease the shards required.
They will not do that because the required shards affect the cost of those crafting products, that's why ppl will not craft those products like free.

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Originally Posted by Grimmel

...Tell me.. how much do the low level crafted materials and items from a lvl 1 crafter go for on your server? Not much I presume.. so where is the market for low level crafters?..

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I didn't mean making the market for low level crafters.
Appereantly "make low level crafting relevent" would mean "make low level material/recipes still relevent to end game crafters"
for example, a 4stars everything will still need to stock some shards but not only clusters.

Nicobo, the issue lies in the fact that low level (lvl 1-49) crafting uses obscene amounts of shards compared to the rate of gathering.

I regularly burn 4000 shards per hour when making demimateria, how many hours of gathering does it take to get those shards?

The disparity continues when you look at the fact that the actual materials used to burn those 4000 shards take less then 30 min to gather.

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

So what was the "converting ratio" in 1.0? And what is your suggesting ratio?
In my server a shard around 100g, a cluster around 1000g, will you break a cluster to 10 shards?

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I did not play 1.0 to know their old conversion rate but it sounded reasonable if people began the game with capped shards across themselves and retainers.

However as far as a conversion rate that I'd suggest:
1 Cluster = 5 Crystals = 5 Shards

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Originally Posted by Taliph

Nicobo, the issue lies in the fact that low level (lvl 1-49) crafting uses obscene amounts of shards compared to the rate of gathering.

I regularly burn 4000 shards per hour when making demimateria, how many hours of gathering does it take to get those shards?

The disparity continues when you look at the fact that the actual materials used to burn those 4000 shards take less then 30 min to gather.

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Basically this. This post sums up everything this thread is about.

I think the thing that everyone is missing is that by opening up the supply of shards in the way that is suggested, the limiting factors on high level crafts are lifted. Rather than flooding the market with shards, increasing the shard supply in the economy could actually impact the supply/demand ratio for high level crafted items.

It might be convenient for you personally to be able to craft dozens of high level items for trade ins, but that in and of itself also impacts the market by increasing the supply of those higher level, and therefore supposedly rarer items. At the end of the day, loosening the shard supply as requested would attack the market from the top down by increasing the availability of rarer, high level items as a consequence of the looser supply of shards to crafters.

So by definition you want to be able to sell items for millions to hoard that gil to buy for yourself other million worth items and let the "middle class" players not being able to buy some cool glamour/furniture/other things.

Instead of leveling the prices by making shards more accessible, and like i said before yoshida can put them on sale on a npc vendor to control inflation of prices because of the gil hoarding.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

It might be convenient for you personally to be able to craft dozens of high level items for trade ins, but that in and of itself also impacts the market by increasing the supply of those higher level, and therefore supposedly rarer items. At the end of the day, loosening the shard supply as requested would attack the market from the top down by increasing the availability of rarer, high level items as a consequence of the looser supply of shards to crafters.

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What high level items are you talking about that use shards to craft? Everything currently in demand on the market board requires mainly clusters. All the ilvl 110 items use Clusters, all the rarer, high end furniture uses clusters. ilvl 90 stuff uses; guess what.. Clusters. 2 Star ilvl 70 stuff uses; you guessed it, clusters.

There will still be a high demand for clusters because all this High level, in demand, rare things you're mentioning utilize clusters. So I still do not see how shards fit in to your "increasing the availability of rare, higher level items thus making the market crash," scenario.

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Originally Posted by Grimmel

What high level items are you talking about that use shards to craft?

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It's a domino effect. The one thing you left off this list, which will have a direct impact on high-level crafters, is that all of the recipes for Master books only require shards. You need 8 and 7 shards per craft, and that's if you didn't need shards at all while crafting the base materials for those book crafts (which admittedly, most take crystals), so before the nerf you would need a bare minimum of 400/350 shards to get one i70 tool (no fails, previously buying all mats). When the amount of turn-ins decreased, so did the price of master demimateria, and the amount of endgame crafters (3-4*) jumped significantly.

Also, every attribute potion of the highest level only requires shards.

I would consider both of those high level items, with the former being a gateway into higher level crafts. I know many people who are 2* crafters in every trade that didn't feel the RNG/price of getting higher was worth what they had to do to get there. Shards is only a small piece of that puzzle, but it's a piece nonetheless.

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Originally Posted by JayCommon

It's a domino effect. The one thing you left off this list, which will have a direct impact on high-level crafters, is that all of the recipes for Master books only require shards. You need 8 and 7 shards per craft, and that's if you didn't need shards at all while crafting the base materials for those book crafts (which admittedly, most take crystals), so before the nerf you would need a bare minimum of 400/350 shards to get one i70 tool (no fails, previously buying all mats). When the amount of turn-ins decreased, so did the price of master demimateria, and the amount of endgame crafters (3-4*) jumped significantly.

Also, every attribute potion of the highest level only requires shards.

I would consider both of those high level items, with the former being a gateway into higher level crafts. I know many people who are 2* crafters in every trade that didn't feel the RNG/price of getting higher was worth what they had to do to get there. Shards is only a small piece of that puzzle, but it's a piece nonetheless.

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And what, making it a little less expensive to rank up your crafter by reducing the cost of the stupid lvl 1 items that you need enmasse is a bad thing?

I think it would only have a positive effect on the game.

Cluster > Crystal is just a matter of completeness, it's really not that needed because the crystals are already very valuable on their own.
Crystal > Shard would be VERY welcome because crystals just aren't that valuable right now, this gives them a purpose while tamping down on silly level 1 items getting too out of control in terms of price.

I, personally, would be very happy with a 3:1 ratio when converting from Clusters > Crystals > Shards. Keeps the materials prices balanced against each other without completely destroying the market.

Alternatively, increase the output (maybe 5:1), but require some kind of catalyst to break the cluster/crystal down so that the conversion isn't free.

Thanks all for telling me your desired ratio. I agree the ratio is reasonable.
So maybe the reason not having this is just as simple as below words, and cluster yield is going to be increased later. ^^;

//quote
in the future if there are requests to increase the cluster yield, being able to break these down into shards would overflow the market, and as a result it becomes much easier to use clusters, but the prices of shards would drop.
//enquote

Here's a reddit post from around a year ago that talked about all of this, including real numbers regarding how it worked in 1.0:

On shards and gathering bots... (Reddit)

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Originally Posted by Grimmel

The Dev's did not give a precise reason as to why we cannot downgrade Clusters into crystals and crystals into shards. This VERY same method was used in 1.0; the early version of Final Fantasy XIV and they opted to remove it. Why?

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Unlike in Version 1.0, each type of crystal has been re-designed to be their own unique and individual item. Shards are shards, crystals are crystals and clusters are clusters. As such there are no plans to add a feature to downgrade from one type to another.

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If I think I understand the lore of this argument, then it is something like this:

https://timewellness.files.wordpress...0&h=320&crop=1http://www.markon.com/sites/default/...?itok=0945BZnqhttp://www.devonfresh.com/images/cherry-toms.jpg



Here we have a nice large juicy tomato, some slim roma tomatoes and a bunch of cherry tomatoes. They are all tomatoes, but they are all unique and individual items. If you cut a tomato in half you do not get 2 roma tomatoes. And if you smash a tomato to pieces it doesn’t turn into little cherry tomatoes, it’s just a mushy tomato.



Clusters, Crystals and Shards are all described as “crystalline manifestation of aetheric elemental energy”. The reason we use them to craft is that we kind of “break” them to harness the energy. Like the fire energy of fire crystals heats our anvil so we can forge. The static electricity from lightning can aid fibres sticking together as we spin thread. But in all of these occasions, once the crystals are used and the power converted into energy for our crafts, the crystals disappear. I am not sure if they dissipate or if the crafting process grinds or shatters them or if they turn into blank shells like deaspected crystals. But once they have been broken they don’t seem to be able to retain their energy. So that is why I think they explained it as such. If you were to shatter a cluster, instead of turning to a bunch of shards, each with their own charge of energy being a fragment of the whole cluster, you would only get chips of crystal that would bleed out their energy and become blank and worthless.



As for non-lore reasons why they removed the shard breakdown, I can only guess it has something to do with how they want the game balanced. I don’t understand it, but that is what they have decided to do.

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

So what was the "converting ratio" in 1.0? And what is your suggesting ratio?

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Yes, back in 1.0 alchemists did have the ability to break down clusters into shards and crystals. They also had the ability to get crystals and shards out of fish. For those that were wondering, the receipies usually invovled some kind of grinding powder and the quality of the powder effected the result. Examples for ice are as follows;

Ice Crystals + Fine Sand = 16 Ice Shards
Ice Crystals + Ice Moraine = 24 Ice Shards
Ice Crystals + Radiant Ice Moraine = 32 Ice Shards
Ice Cluster + Ice Moraine = 16 Ice Crystals
Ice Cluster + Radiant Ice Moraine = 24 Ice Crystals
Earth Cluster + Astral Moraine = 32 Ice Crystals
Water Cluster + Umbral Moraine = 32 Ice Crystals
(using astral or umbral moraines changed the aspect of the crystal either forwards or backwards on the elemental wheel)

So with the lowest quality 1 Ice cluster = 256 ice shards, and at the highest quality, 1 Earth Cluster = 1,024 shards. I can’t find much information on Moraines, because the receipes were made outdated a long time ago, but I vaguely recall that they might have been rare drops from elemental sprites, so they weren’t easily farmable like Fine Sand. And also be aware that we did not have quick synth back in 1.0 so the time taken to obtain that 1:1024 ratio would have taken a while. See This Video for an example of 1.0 crafting. Grinding out my ALC luminary back then literally took hours and hours and hours.

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Originally Posted by Magnesium02

[Snip] Clusters, Crystals and Shards are all described as “crystalline manifestation of aetheric elemental energy”. The reason we use them to craft is that we kind of “break” them to harness the energy. Like the fire energy of fire crystals heats our anvil so we can forge. The static electricity from lightning can aid fibres sticking together as we spin thread. But in all of these occasions, once the crystals are used and the power converted into energy for our crafts, the crystals disappear. I am not sure if they dissipate or if the crafting process grinds or shatters them or if they turn into blank shells like deaspected crystals. But once they have been broken they don’t seem to be able to retain their energy. So that is why I think they explained it as such. If you were to shatter a cluster, instead of turning to a bunch of shards, each with their own charge of energy being a fragment of the whole cluster, you would only get chips of crystal that would bleed out their energy and become blank and worthless. [Snip]

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What about desynth though? It often returns some of the shards used so it's clear that the energy is not dissipated forever...

I dunno about the game/economy/etc balance aspect (that sort of stuff has always gone over my head) but lore-wise, I'm quite confident that they would have been able to find a way to work with either the old recipes or desynthesis. It seems as though they've simply chosen not to. This is their game and I do not dispute their right to make decisions just like that but lore should not be brought up by the devs as a reason when it's inconsistant with things already in the game and does not break any lore already in the game.

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Originally Posted by Giantbane

And what, making it a little less expensive to rank up your crafter by reducing the cost of the stupid lvl 1 items that you need enmasse is a bad thing?

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That was never stated, or implied throughout anything I wrote so I would appreciate you not grasping intent out of thin air and applying it to my paragraph. The small snip of a quote I referenced in my post is the absolute only thing I was referring to. Shards are used in some high level crafts. Period. End of story. No "anti-shard conversion" agenda here.... :rolleyes:

Personally I would love to be able to break down the different levels of energy, but that is irrelevant to why I posted what I did. The person asked a question and I answered it.

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Originally Posted by Magnesium02

If I think I understand the lore of this argument, then it is something like this:...

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The example of tomato for "the lore of this argument" is such a perfect interpretation.
before reading this I just limited my imagine that a cluster is a group of shards that joined together. ^^;

Thank you very much for the information about 1.0
Btw, it looks like "downgrade cluster to shards" could be described as "ALC crafting specific elemental item with cluster for shards" as well...

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Unlike in Version 1.0, each type of crystal has been re-designed to be their own unique and individual item. Shards are shards, crystals are crystals and clusters are clusters. As such there are no plans to add a feature to downgrade from one type to another.

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Then explain the spiritbonding situation. Rose Gold Earrings and Materia are their own unique and individual item and we still can convert 1 to the other.