shard yeilding

ok, am I the only one finding it extremely insane that shard yeilds is only 1/hit? i understand crystals and clusters at 1 a hit but why can't shards be at 5/hit or 10? it's harder to farm shards then the materials per craft, and I had 9999 shards in 1.0 now im struggling to get shards. Square Enix please fix it

Well as a temporary fix, find the areas for the shards that spawn 2 per hit, and use your ward to increase it by another 2. It helps speed it along a bit.

i know but let's admit it's still tedious. it's just as bad as farming buttons in a blanket and i need more shards then buttons

Don't raise shards. I think it's just right. You either take the time to gather or pay the price just like anything else. Not sure on your server but Lightning Shards are most expensive on mine at average of 70 per shard. Too tedius for me to spend an hour farming so I just mass produce certain weaver gear, sell the weaver gear to stock up on shards. 1peice of the right armor sold equals 100 shards.

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Originally Posted by Githiun

Don't raise shards. I think it's just right. You either take the time to gather or pay the price just like anything else. Not sure on your server but Lightning Shards are most expensive on mine at average of 70 per shard. Too tedius for me to spend an hour farming so I just mass produce certain weaver gear, sell the weaver gear to stock up on shards. 1peice of the right armor sold equals 100 shards.

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It's hard to justify buying shards when you don't know whether a legit player or someone using bots or RMT players farmed them up. It's kind of a moral grey area.

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Originally Posted by Orophin

It's hard to justify buying shards when you don't know whether a legit player or someone using bots or RMT players farmed them up. It's kind of a moral grey area.

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Hint: When there are 4000 shards for sale by the same person, that's usually a bot...

I farm shards/crystals constantly, and it takes close to 2hrs for me to gather 700 crystals. This is my normal sell amount and shards I sell about 700 of those at a time also, now I know some could farm for days on end, then drop 4000 shards in, but let's be realistic...not many folks doing that I am sure.

I honestly don't think shards/crystals should be increased. They are already under 20gil a piece for most shards on my server.

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Originally Posted by retribution

ok, am I the only one finding it extremely insane that shard yeilds is only 1/hit? i understand crystals and clusters at 1 a hit but why can't shards be at 5/hit or 10? it's harder to farm shards then the materials per craft, and I had 9999 shards in 1.0 now im struggling to get shards. Square Enix please fix it

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I have to agree that it's ridiculous. I find it funny that getting shards is one the most tedious thing to do in game right now.

I wouldn't mind if they had at least allowed us to turn fish into shards and crystals.

I'd have to agree with the above posts. Nodes should give more than one. Or at least, we should have an alternate way of getting shards. Shards given from leves are much too sporadic. I don't mind farming up mats while crafting, however, if I can avoid spending 5 hrs farming shards I would like that very much. And yes I have the option of buying them, but I would rather save my money for other things.

As a botanist, using the Wards increases your shard yields. I wait until I have an 'additional gathering attempt' in place, use a Ward, and get 15 shards instead of 5.

All you can really do is use the yield buff (about a 20% increase on total yield if used on extra gather nodes) or hit an area with double yield buff (though I haven't located one that has both double and extra attempt, double yield should give more over all though).

I agree that it's crazy that you only pull 1 shard per.

Crystals should be breakable down to 3-5 shards.
Clusters should be breakable down to 3-5 crystals.

Will this cause high level miners/botanists to be able to flood the shard market? Yes.
Will this force RMT to have to shoot for higher level bots and higher level areas to compete in the shard market? Yes.
Will banning a bot that's level 30+ gatherer have a greater effect on RMT bottom line than banning a level 5 gatherer? Yes!

I'm leveling all my crafting classes in tangent after getting armorer to 50 and realizing I needed at least the level 15 cross class skills to compete. I'm also leveling gathering classes to maintain my ability to supply gathered materials for these classes.

Once you hit about 20s, the amount of shards you need to gather compared to other mats reaches about equivalency.

Now that I'm in my 30s it's more than double. Just pulling a random recipe for weaving, which may or may not be representative of the overall whole:
Linen Chausses(33 recipe)
Total mats:
14 flax
40 shards

So gathering my own materials, I spend almost 3x as much time gathering what's essentially a level 1 material than I do the level 30 materials for crafting. And it just gets worse as you go on.

This is why RMT bots mining shards is so lucrative, because they're at almost max earning potential as soon as they put on a mining pick/harvester axe. They are almost certainly at a higher gathering potential on shards than a level 50 miner/botanist if they are using a teleportation hack, even if that miner/botanist is taking advantage of buffs and multi-yield nodes.

If you allowed crystals to be broken down into 3-5 shards then gather time for shards for a level 30 gatherer supplying a level 30 recipe would move to approximately even for shards:materials at 3 shards to about a third at 5 shards.

TLDR:
The fact that the ratio of gathering time spent on shards vs level appropriate materials consistently rises as you approach higher level recipes encourages wholesale purchase of shards. The fact that high level gatherers are less efficient at gathering shards than teleporting entry level bots gives RMT an advantage in this lucrative market. If crystals/clusters could be broken down, this would make high level gatherers more efficient than bots, reduce the time spent by legitimate players gathering shards, and possibly help curb shard market domination of RMT. Though this would have a negative effect on low level legitimate crafters trying to sell shards, it should have a net positive effect on higher level gatherers and crafters and reduce RMT profits in one stroke.

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Originally Posted by CianaIezuborn

If crystals/clusters could be broken down, this would make high level gatherers more efficient than bots, reduce the time spent by legitimate players gathering shards, and possibly help curb shard market domination of RMT.

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Agreed. I put crystal splitting into shards as I suggestion in the game as spending hours running between 4 trees in Thanalan to get the lightning shards for weaver at 24xp a hit is BORING.

Agree, the shard yield could be better. Crystal/cluster yields are fine thu, I think.

Maybe a way of "balancing" with crafting, would be to give gatheres +1 shard yield for every 10 level, starting at level 20 to kinda force RMT to lvl up aswell if they want it.
So at lv 20, you have 2 shards/hit.
lv 30, 3 shards/hit
and so on.

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Originally Posted by Githiun

Don't raise shards. I think it's just right. You either take the time to gather or pay the price just like anything else. Not sure on your server but Lightning Shards are most expensive on mine at average of 70 per shard. Too tedius for me to spend an hour farming so I just mass produce certain weaver gear, sell the weaver gear to stock up on shards. 1peice of the right armor sold equals 100 shards.

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The only reason they're 70 per shard is because of the bot farmers. Get rid of the bots and the price will rise even higher. That said, the biggest drain on shards is levelling a craft. Once you get a craft to 50, and get a stockpile of materials preparred, the shards last quite a long time (I tend to farm my own during DF queues), so perhaps the appearance of a shard shortage is a consequence of demand being front-loaded by the game being relatively new. On the flipside, I don't think we're going to see the market crash if they allow us to break down clusters and crystals

Um ............ Leves, anyone? Turning in a single item to get back like 5-10 times it used to make it, plus the bonus xp is way better than farming level 1 shards. Not to mention triple turn ins.......

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Originally Posted by ruinedmirage

Um ............ Leves, anyone? Turning in a single item to get back like 5-10 times it used to make it, plus the bonus xp is way better than farming level 1 shards. Not to mention triple turn ins.......

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Except:
a) Leves are already in incredibly short supply for actually leveling your craft skills in the first place, without having to decide between good xp, or good reward
b) Most leves only break even at best in the shards they offer (remember most projects require 2 types of shard, and require processing of base materials, ie. flax into yarn into linen into product)
c) The rewards offered for any given leve are random. It's far from guaranteed that a relevant leve will yield shards

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Originally Posted by CianaIezuborn

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Agreed! SE please implement this!

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Originally Posted by ruinedmirage

Um ............ Leves, anyone? Turning in a single item to get back like 5-10 times it used to make it, plus the bonus xp is way better than farming level 1 shards. Not to mention triple turn ins.......

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Unfortunately, for weaver at least, that's not even remotely true once you get past early levels. Let's use the example from Ciana:

Linen Chausses(33 recipe)
Total mats:
14 flax
40 shards

How many shards do you get for turning those in as a leve reward as a weaver? 6. A net loss of 34 shards. The most I have seen rewarded as a weaver is 18...for a triple turn in that probably cost well over 20 lightning shard per item turned in. Most likely closer to 40. At least for weavers, the shard rewards for leve quests are rarely anything like what you need to craft.

I've been leveling all crafting classes fairly evenly .. and the shard rewards for Leves are nowhere near the production cost for the items being requested, for any of the classes, not once you get past the first few levels.

When you first started out, the crafting Guildmasters gave you some shards as part of the class quest rewards. They soon stop, and some time between then and when you start Triple Leves, you find that shard use skyrockets, to the point where Leves do not begin to cover their own shard use.

i have everything 50 myself, but i want to make money, not spend 50k on only 1000 shards. like some 50 crafts require 5 shards of two kinds to make one craft...... one! now i don't mind getting clusters, i can do that no problem. so i agree with everyone saying that we should be able to split crystals and clusters

I also hate having to gather my own shards... so I buy them for a very reasonable price (thank you gil-sellers). THE END. If you can't be bothered to gather them, then buy them. If you cant afford to buy them, you're doing something wrong..! Not to worry though, within 3 weeks we'll ALL have EVERY craft to 50, making crafting pointless.

We do need some way to allow higher level gatherers to get more shards than they do. Reducing GP cost on Wards or a trait to increase yield, breaking down crystals and clusters, converting fish, something.

It would be a mistake to think that making higher level gathering of shards easier would greatly hurt the RMT farmers though. People have caught RMT's speed-leveling practically 1-50 in 10 minutes with some classes so I would assume they can blaze a gatherer through as well (even just plain farming materials the old fashioned way using teleports to speed it up). I believe they will continue to game the system efficiently until SE really manages to crack down.

Greetings,

There has been a lot of discussions and feedback regarding shards and I’d like to respond to what I can.

• Shard yield
  The development team understands the shard yield amount to be an extremely delicate issue. They are very carefully looking into whether they increase the amount of shards yielded and how much they would increase it as they give consideration to the economic effects.
  
  
• Methods of obtaining shards
  Looking at the current shard yield and the amount of shards used in recipes, we are currently looking into new methods of obtaining shards; however, we will not be making it so they simply drop from monsters.
  
  
• Crystal and cluster breaking
  There have been some comments about the feature in 1.0 where you could break down crystals and clusters, but we do not have plans at the moment to implement this. The concern is that it will become difficult to control the prices of individual shards if they can be produced from crystals and such.
  
  For example, 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.
  
  
• RMT issue
  We understand that there are RMT issues surrounding shards and the STF is after them every day.
  
  We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating].

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Methods of obtaining shards
Looking at the current shard yield and the amount of shards used in recipes, we are currently looking into new methods of obtaining shards; however, we will not be making it so they simply drop from monsters.

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Well, don't they already drop from elementals, or am I mistaken here?

Two quick changes that would help shard farming a lot is to have Ward II and Ward III traits increase shard amount +1 so that you get +4 shards at level 50.

Also, create a +2 shard yield node in the level 50 - Grade 3 Carbo Matter locations like you have +1 in the grade 2 Carbo Matter locations.

Those two changes could lighten the load significantly without completely destroying the market. You still have to go out an collect shards, its just a little quicker.

Also, look into letting us buy shards with seals. Seals are mostly worthless and shards would be a great money sink for GC seals. Something along the lines of 4-5 seals per shard maybe? (so 100 seals for a pack of 25 shards)

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Well, don't they already drop from elementals, or am I mistaken here?

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I think he means they don't want to go the FF11 and 1.0 route where every enemy drops shards.

It's a lot different when you have to target specific enemies to get shards you want, versus everyone on the server getting shards from doing everyday things and leveling up, it adds a ton of overflow into the market.

Honestly I don't think they should increase shard yield but rather decrease the number of shards needed for some recipes, mainly consumables and parts. Finished non consumable products needing several shards/crystals/clusters is fine but things people NEED to make lots of, not so much.

They could also decrease the GP cost of the elemental Ward abilities and add shards back to fishing (and/or make the Ward abilities actually have an effect on fisher, such as adding a chance for shards of the given element)

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Honestly I don't think they should increase shard yield but rather decrease the number of shards needed for some recipes, mainly consumables and parts. Finished non consumable products needing several shards/crystals/clusters is fine but things people NEED to make lots of, not so much.

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Pretty much this.

Gathering shards isn't really a problem. Its a money maker for some players (and the RMT obviously), and SE shouldn't kill it for the legit players just because a part of the playerbase wants to get shards faster.

But they should adjust the shards required for some crafting recipees. Especially for the recipees for consumables and parts.

And while I have no big problems with Wards and think they should stay the same, I'm all for Fisher being able to get shards. The class is pretty bare-bones at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Camate

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Thank you for taking the time to respond and acknowledge our grievance. I look forward to the news that comes forward regarding this.

I ask that you please deliver my question to Yoshida-san, in case he is possibly ready to reveal something during the live letter.

I ask my forum mates to please like my "question post" if it is something that matters to you.

My question can be found, HERE!

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Honestly I don't think they should increase shard yield but rather decrease the number of shards needed for some recipes, mainly consumables and parts. Finished non consumable products needing several shards/crystals/clusters is fine but things people NEED to make lots of, not so much.

They could also decrease the GP cost of the elemental Ward abilities and add shards back to fishing (and/or make the Ward abilities actually have an effect on fisher, such as adding a chance for shards of the given element)

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Yea this is really my only beef with shards too. To be fair, making food last even upon death is a huge improvement but I think higher tier food could still have their shard costs reduced or even changed to crystals.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings,
We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating]. [/list]

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Any plans to improve the reporting process? Like right-clicking on a player and choose "Report". The current process of filling out the form is very time consuming: manually typing in player name, server name, location... etc. I see so many botters, cheaters, RMT spamming, that I've stopped reporting them all together because it takes so much time away from me actually enjoying the game. In an hour I see probably around 20-30 cheaters, there's no way I'm going to spend that much time reporting all of them. I created a macro to black list the last RMT seller that sent me a tell but now that is useless because my list is full at 200/200.

Also, how do you report cheaters you can't even see?? I'm talking about all those teleporting underground miners/loggers where they're completed hidden and can't be targeted. All you can see are their gathering "swing" animations.

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Originally Posted by Camate

We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating]. [/list]

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Yes, we know, and yet almost everyone can talk of having reported a bot that is still there a week or more later, gathering shards and destroying the economy one shard at a time. It often feels like nothing is being done when we report, leaving little incentive to actually take the time to report. It is also extremely difficult to target the bots that harvest underground, making is impossible to report them by name.

Can you tell us whether the Dev team/STF are doing anything proactively in the game itself to prevent the obvious and widely abused teleport/warp/position coordinate exploits being used by the bots?

Best way to combat RMT for shards is make them untradable.

Then increase the number you get from gathering them and reduce the number needed to craft things.
That way you are not out mindlessly farming shards for hours on end.

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Originally Posted by Camate

We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating].

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It would help us a lot if you made a bearable UI to do so in the first place. I gladly report every RMT/bots/scroungers in any MMO, but I won't do it in FF14 until this is implemented in a way that respect me. Still waiting...

Well maybe they should change the mechanics of how ward works? for example a sustainable buff that you can have on all the time instead of 1 node. Just bear in mind it would turn your GP pool into a GP puddle.

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Originally Posted by Camate

• RMT issue
  We understand that there are RMT issues surrounding shards and the STF is after them every day.
  
  We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating].

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I've reported every bot user I came across, but these players are still running around.
One of them, which I reported ~6-7 weeks ago for using a speed hack and bot to gather from the trees west of Dragonhead, got up every crafting class to 50 in the meantime and is running around like nothing happened.

Another ones bot was messed up at Nophica's Wells in Western Thanalan, running and spinning on a spot for over 30 minutes, not reacting to tell.

Oh, and the character which was porting around between mining spots in Central Thanalan while using the sneak skill is still in the game too.

And I still see retainers selling 5-10+ stacks of 1000+ shards every day.

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Originally Posted by Camate

• Shard yield

The development team understands the shard yield amount to be an extremely delicate issue. They are very carefully looking into whether they increase the amount of shards yielded and how much they would increase it as they give consideration to the economic effects.

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How about using the existing things like gathering stats?
We already have nodes providing a bonus depending on elemental resistance or main stat.
How about increasing the yield of shards depending on perception or gathering stats?
Let characters with ilvl45 gear gather 2-3 shards, players with ilvl55 gear 3-5 shards and players with melded HQ ilvl55 gear and buff food 4-6 shards.

The ammounts of shards required for synths are fine except for cooking and maybe alchemy.
It would be better if meals would use crystals for lvl40-45+ items instead of high ammounts of shards.
I'd rather use 2-3 crystals instead of 10-12 shards.

It would be most helpful if we didn't have to use so many shards in recipes for sure.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings,

There has been a lot of discussions and feedback regarding shards and I’d like to respond to what I can.

• Methods of obtaining shards
  Looking at the current shard yield and the amount of shards used in recipes, we are currently looking into new methods of obtaining shards; however, we will not be making it so they simply drop from monsters.
  
  
  

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- Purchase through GC seals
- Optional rewards for Leve Quests with Shard in the list 100%
- Returning to breakdown, you don't need to regulate the prices. They will regulate themselves. If a crystal shatters to 6 shards, it will sell for 6 shards. It's the same with EVE Online. Most stuff sells for reproc value. If Tritanium sells at 5 ISK and a Shuttle takes 500 trit, the shuttle sells for 2500 minimum. Markets are competition based and nothing gets by the competition.

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Originally Posted by retribution

ok, am I the only one finding it extremely insane that shard yeilds is only 1/hit? i understand crystals and clusters at 1 a hit but why can't shards be at 5/hit or 10? it's harder to farm shards then the materials per craft, and I had 9999 shards in 1.0 now im struggling to get shards. Square Enix please fix it

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This. It makes now damn sense to mine at same rate as a lvl 26 miner/bot as a lvl 50 on shards I pretty much stopped crafting all together because you make more money running wp and selling mats and sb gear lol.

Hello everyone,

Here's a slightly more in-depth follow-up regarding the shards and RMT activity.

We are not planning to address the RMT activity related to shards by making adjustments to game balance, instead we will be individually tracking RMT activity and handling them. Basically, removing profit gain from shards would not decrease the amount of RMT, they would move to some other item and some other way to generate gil.

However, we do understand that many of you are concerned and upset that reports of botting and other activity is not addressed immediately. Please understand that ridding the game of RMT is not something that can take place overnight, but we are working extremely hard to ensure that everyone can play comfortably and without concern for RMT. We will also continue to post news announcements about how RMT and cheaters are being handled, so please be sure to check periodically.