Hey folks!
So... interesting idea. Have a merchant or merchants sell shards and crystals for a flat rate. Could be tied into the Beast Tribes (Amal'jaa sell Fire, Sylphs sell Lightning, Kobolds sell Earth, Sahagin sell Water, Ixali sell Wind, and an NPC in Coerthas could sell Ice.
This would help crafters in two ways:
1.) It would make shards and crystals much more accessible by being purchased in whatever quantities they wish.
2.) It would cause shard/crystal prices on the market boards to plummet down to around the price range they are sold for by the beast tribes. That way, RMT wouldn't be able to take nearly as much advantage of the shard/crystal market as they do now.
Shard/Crystal Ceiling Price
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12-16-2014, 09:58 PMHakuroDKShard/Crystal Ceiling Price
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12-16-2014, 10:47 PMCynthis
I am completely against this. There are too few ways for gatherers to make serious money as it is.
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12-16-2014, 11:21 PMHakuroDKMiners can make serious money with clusters. I'm just talking shards and crystals. Plus, there's always the raw mats from unspoiled nodes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthis
Gatherers have Crafters by the balls, especially considering how many shards and crystals they need just to be able to craft at all. Gatherers don't have that problem of needing shards or crystals to craft. -
12-16-2014, 11:58 PMNashredI agree.. As a crafter I could see how one would want this but as a gatherer I would be against it..Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthis
Shards are like level 5 and super easy to get for anyone.
Gatherers dont have to many options to make money and there is a lot of competition too..
Also it gives low level gatherers s0mehting to make money on...
Honestly I hate farming shards and crystals too. But let the economy work the way it should with supply and demand... If prices get too high more people will farm them pushing them lower.. -
12-17-2014, 12:53 AMchrillix
Also against this. There are already way too many crafting materials/gear/weapons that can be bought from vendors, not to mention the stuff handed out as quest rewards.
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12-17-2014, 03:51 AMChameleonMS
Also against this. Crafter's have many, many ways to recoup the cost of the shards from the items crafted. I drop 200K on shards without thinking about it because I know I can recover that cost in 20 minutes of crafting; while it took the gather a couple of hours to collect those shards I purchased.
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12-17-2014, 04:02 AMXystic
I'm not sure why we would want some of the hottest selling items to be dirt cheap...
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12-17-2014, 11:31 AMUrthdiggerYes, because the #1 source of money for gatherers should be possible at level 1 and get no better with higher levels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthis
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12-17-2014, 02:06 PMtocsinFar from it. shards already aren't a good enough money maker as it is, even on Jenova, where shards are 150 gil per. it gets better with crystals and clusters, but shards themselves need a higher price floor, not a price ceiling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Urthdigger
100% against this. -
12-18-2014, 01:54 PMHakuroDK100% against a price floor. Do you know how many shards it takes for Armorer to craft anything sellable? At least four at the lowest possible level, and closer to 40-50 at the highest sub-50. At your server's rates, that's charging a 600 gil fee to craft something that'll likely only sell for half that (without price of other materials taken into consideration), and a 7500 gil fee to craft something that may only sell for less than a quarter of that (without price of other materials taken into consideration.) If materials are taken into consideration, the percentages are significantly worse.Quote:
Originally Posted by tocsin
I'm lucky that I'm on Balmung where shards usually sell for 45-ish gil, but still. 150 per shard is unreasonable when it's a mandatory catalyst for every crafter. Why can't gatherers gather up metals or logs? AFAIK, as far as mining goes, only Copper, Tin, and Zinc Ore sell from NPC vendors. Every other ore is purely controlled by the market board, with a soft ceiling as far up as mythril due to ingots being sold from Amal'jaa, with cobalt and electrum having free reign over the markets. Hell, as someone who has CUL as one of their three major crafting classes, I prefer to buy ingredients over the market boards rather than gather them up myself because there are so many different ingredients needed and in such high quantities, that I need to keep a stockpile of every ingredient I can find, preferably in HQ.
There's also stuff like Darksteel and Spruce which is always in demand for endgame crafters. Don't talk like shards and crystals are the only feasible means of revenue for a gatherer, because that's complete and utter falsehood and, in fact, those are some of the worst means of revenue compared to many other options out there. -
12-18-2014, 02:00 PMXakery
Most just use freaking bots to gather the shards anyways so I'm for it. I mainly get my shards from retainer gathering anyways. I gather shards from time to time but only if I must. Clusters are a given. Shards and crystals in beastmen vendor would make so much sense anyways. When the beast tribes first came out they gave a good chunk of shards as part of the reward for dailies...
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12-18-2014, 06:10 PMxPeAcEx
Don't worry once 3.0 rolls around all base mats like silver ore and mythril ore or at least the ingots will be npc items. There may or may not be a shard breaker class but i doubt they will ever make shards/crystals come from npc. However with the increase of retainer level, you will be able to obtain more ^^
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12-19-2014, 02:32 AMShadygroveIron ore and ingots are sold by the vendors in the housing wards.Quote:
Originally Posted by HakuroDK
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12-19-2014, 04:21 AMHakuroDKI didn't know about that, but there is a lot more that doesn't sell from NPCs. Mythril Ore, anything Cobalt and Electrum, anything Darksteel and Spruce, any HQ raw materials in general, etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadygrove
There are still plenty of other things that could be focused on. Shards and Crystals should not be. Clusters are acceptable, but a line should be drawn when it comes to shards and crystals. -
12-23-2014, 11:59 PMXakery
Do you have the FFXIV Libra app? That can help you locate npc vendors and stuff a tad faster
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12-25-2014, 09:08 AMHakuroDKI use XIVDB, which is a smidge more detailed than Libra.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xakery
Anyway, this is the stuff I see all the time when I need to get more shards.
http://i61.tinypic.com/ofygzd.jpg
That's all the same retainer, which I assume belongs to the same person, who may well be an RMT. Most of the retainer's name is blocked out, the first couple letters are not to show that it is, in fact, the exact same retainer for all of them.
This is why we need a Shard/Crystal ceiling price, especially if it can happen through the Beast Tribes. If that happens, then RMTs will be forced to price themselves below the ceiling to sell, causing them to have to work a hell of a lot longer and harder to sell, increasing the risk of getting banned by GMs. -
12-26-2014, 12:00 PMSyrellarisSo basically you want to eliminate the miner class from the game as you will be taking a big chunk of there profits away.Quote:
Originally Posted by HakuroDK
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12-27-2014, 05:49 AMXakeryIt only seems profitable if you run a bot. Not sure how you could spend hours upon hours mining shards when there are so many others things that can be gathered / do in game. and it's "their profits". :<Quote:
Originally Posted by Syrellaris
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12-27-2014, 07:29 AMHakuroDKAs someone whose primary crafting classes rely on mining, which I do myself, especially as it pertains to Darksteel Ore, that's not what I'm saying at all. I mean, unless you run a mining bot to auto-mine for you while you're AFK, in which case you're part of the problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by Syrellaris
You want to turn a profit? Mine Cobalt. Mine Electrum. Mine Elemental Clusters. Mine HQ Copper/Tin/Zinc/Iron/Bomb Ash/Mythril Ore. Mine Carbonized Matter. Mine Raw Gemstones.
Miners have so very many options that turn a hell of a lot more of a profit than shards and crystals ever would, and only people who use mining bots would ever consider shards/crystals to be more lucrative, since they can stack up to 9999 rather than the regular 99.
I'm speaking as someone who is a miner, blacksmith, armorsmith, and culinarian. I mine my own Darksteel Ore. I mine my own Umbral Rocks. When I absolutely have to, I mine my own shards and crystals. Have you seen the price of HQ Electrum and Cobalt? It's pretty damn impressive, especially compared to the prices of shards and crystals (on a per unit basis). -
12-27-2014, 07:40 AMGardes
Gatherers actually use shards to make money? I thought its all RMT. I rarely buy them since i only craft for fc and sometimes we just pool the shards to me for the food and xpots.
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12-28-2014, 02:06 AMShadygrove
Why mine or harvest shards or crystals?
My retainers get them for me. -
12-28-2014, 07:25 AMChameleonMSVolume, I burn through them faster than they can be gathered by my retainer. I have 1 miner, and 1 DoW. Thus, only 1 retainer that can gather for me. Since I only get about 2 1/2 hours of play as an average, the most I can have my retainer gather for me in one day is 300 shards (usually only get about 180 (3 ventures) on a given day). I will burn through twice that many in 1 hour of Desynth crafting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadygrove
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12-29-2014, 04:03 PMEllatrix
The only people who gather shards/crystals are RMT, since if you're a human being there's well... absolutely everything else you could be gathering instead for gil. So yes, having a vendor price at, say, 20g/pop would be great and it would also provide a good way to drain gil from the economy since there's still inflation going on.
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12-29-2014, 08:05 PMHybris-MaenadGatherers have plenty of things to gather to make money and not one of them is to run in circles for hours gathering shards. If you say otherwise you should really know that botting is against the ToS.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthis
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12-30-2014, 12:46 AMDyvid
Well as a gatherer I don't farm shard simply because I make more money off mats. Also RMT is a huge source of shard farming so I think honest players need alternate sources for shards. As weird as it sounds maybe add them to gardening and find in dungeons.
True and as soon as my retainer gets me a damn minecart minion she goes right back to getting shards ><Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadygrove
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12-30-2014, 12:49 AMXystic
I actually tend to farm quite a few shards when looking for my daily treasure map. It's definitely nowhere near what I consume daily but its definitely not few enough where it would be considered insignificant.
I also see many players, not bots, farming shards. Its one of the best selling items and if you really don't have any idea how to play the market, resorting to shards is the easiest thing to do. Yes, RMTs do indeed bot shards as well but to say all or a majority is probably not very true. -
01-05-2015, 12:33 PMkaworutabris
With inflation creep (more currency continues to enter the economy than exits thereby raising average prices slowly over time) eventually shards would only be bought from npcs. (why should bots in the future mine shards that sell for 50 gil each ((assuming a theoretical npc sells for 51)) when they can mine grade 1 carbonized matter going for a future 300 gil a piece) the bots would move on to other sources of gil. SE only responds to bots to show an effort as players dislike them, but bots pay subscriptions too (yeah, SE makes money off bots, so other than making a show to the player base they try to limit bots, they really don't have an incentive to get rid of them until enough players decide to drop subscriptions because bots made their game un-fun that it over rides the incremental revenue bot account holders generate. If you don't think this is how business works keep dreaming). So, if your gripe is you dislike shard prices, fact is they keep your shard prices lower than what it would be without them. What players want to spend days gathering nothing but shards? If your argument is you dislike bots, they would move on to other items if shards are shut down. If it's because you don't see shards as a gaming activity worth player time, then consider that shards are targeted at brand new players who think "I want to try a gathering job!" and introduce them to the job with a tangible reward desired by others in the player base. It also transfers gil from those of us that have a much higher opportunity cost if we were to gather shards ourselves to those that have few to no gil resources, there by giving that player incentive to continue playing aka paying their sub.
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01-05-2015, 12:59 PMtocsinThank you, thank you, THANK YOU, you are doing Byregots work. keep it up.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaworutabris
Everyone, go read this, and upvote it. it is the truth of the world. -
01-05-2015, 02:20 PMNutz
I do a lot of shard gathering myself (for personal use, typically while looking for a treasure map) and wouldn't have any sort of problem with this, except that it would make the bots target something else (what that something is I don't know). It might be all for the good because bots would have a difficult time finding another massively steady market. You can't simply farm electrum in the same quantities that they are currently farming shards and expect even a fraction of it to move, no matter how low they price it.
As others have said, shards are not a normal source of income for gatherers. You'd do better gathering just about anything because the bots have increased the supply so greatly. Really without the bots I'm not sure what SE would have done with shards by now. They'd likely be hundreds of gil a piece simply because the supply (provided by sane gatherers who are real people) could never meet the demand.
As it stands now, shards are gathered for personal use, by new gatherers who don't know what they're doing, and by bots. Making them purchasable will have a negative effect only on the bots, though the subsequent actions of the bots would probably have negative effects on legitimate gathering, unless they just eat the loss and sell for the NPC price. -
01-05-2015, 08:00 PMHakuroDKThere are a few noticeable problems here.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaworutabris
1. You're assuming gathering shards/crystals is anything like gathering crafting mats. Shards and Crystals are stackable to at 9999, maybe more, each. For that to happen with a raw material like electrum, that would require filling up one's entire inventory and that's it. Not only that, but you can't use Wards on normal crafting materials. You have to use King's Yield, and that is not only more expensive GP-wise, but also only works on a single attempt, making it economically not worth it.
2. You're assuming that the dev team doesn't care about botting. First of all, the dev team are players of the game just like anyone else and play fairly just like everyone else. Second, bots are prohibited by the ToS. If they weren't prohibited, everyone would be using bots. The fact that they are prohibited by the ToS and little is being done about it is less attributed to sub prices (as I am absolutely certain that the players who do bot make up less than 1% of the subscription base, which isn't worth defending.) So here's a question: Why prohibit bots in the ToS if the dev team ultimately doesn't care? That makes no sense and it sounds extremely jaded and cynical of the entire process.
3. My "gripe" is backed up with the solution of selling shards and crystals from beast tribe vendors, which renders them completely worthless to sell on the market boards except for convenience purposes. So no, they would not keep shard prices lower. At least not universally. If I want shards, I want to be able to buy them for 10 gil each at a beast tribe vendor. Crystals? 100 gil sounds fair for those. Clusters wouldn't be sold as they aren't nearly as farmable.
4. Your whole argument seems to be defending botters from an economic standpoint. There are a lot of bots, true, but their numbers nowhere near compare to the number of legitimate players. Why else would there be so much action taken against them? Your argument makes no sense.
5. As for new gatherers, I can guarantee that all of the legitimate gatherers want to level their gatherers ASAP. Farming shards and crystals is not at all the fastest way of doing that. Shards are always Level 1. That means maybe 10XP yield with each gathering attempt, maybe more. With how XP scales, this is not at all lucrative unless you plan on botting while doing other things. Crystals only appear at specific nodes in an area and are Level 30, making them even less lucrative for leveling unless botting. I started mining with a crafting mentality. Mine up all of the ore so I don't have to buy it on the market boards. That was my goal. And you know what? I achieved it. Now I'm mining up Darksteel and doing stuff with it. And I am sure there are miners that try to make a profit from mining, and that they do succeed through legitimate methods. But the fact of the matter is that no legitimate player would ever mine up shards and crystals exclusively to turn a profit. Ever. -
01-06-2015, 07:40 AMWintersandman1. Why yes items only stack to 99 you can easily get 9900 in your bag which a bot wouldn't care about inventory space. Next you don't need as many raw materials as you do shards to do a craft. Which would still flood the market making every other material useless for revenue generation.Quote:
Originally Posted by HakuroDK
2. SE needs to look like their doing something because an ethical player will complain. Which is why they don't seek them out but take action when reported.
3. Beast Tribes? Some people don't want to even bother. Like myself. But ultimately I want to craft.
4. Again this is due to ethical players complaining. SE's job is to make it look like they have done something.
5. I leveled my crafter not through leves but farming zone by zone. Not shards but other raw materials. I would sell some then keep some. I leveled my crafts with my gatherers so what didn't get used got sold. I go gather all my own crystals. I would rather have the abundance that is on the market board. -
01-07-2015, 06:34 AMkaworutabris1. I think what you're trying to say here is that inventory and selling space of said inventory is a limited resource where shard space is much less limited. This is sort of irrelevant. Bot companies can simply add more accounts to counter this. The number of accounts they can chose to purchase for retainer/inventory space is only limited by how much revenue they can generate selling gil and their other costs.Quote:
Originally Posted by HakuroDK
2. What the dev team cares about is irrelevant when you are talking about terminating accounts. This is driven by managers, not by developers. Telling your shareholders "we canceled 10,000 illegal accounts thereby forfeiting $14.99x10,000x3(months) in revenue" is bad. Saying "we cancelled 1,000 accounts, forfeiting $45,000 in revenue but keeping 30,000 accounts that would have otherwise canceled subscription due to poor gameplay" is ok. What the ToS says is less important to SE than the bottom line. Fact of life. Bots are only a problem to managers when adding 1 more bot account causes the number of accounts cancelled because of bots to exceed the total number of bot accounts.
3. The reason the bots keep shard prices lower is that demand does not change with or without bots. Regardless of bots existing or not the same number of shards are needed by players for their crafting desires. Bots do however, inflate supply. Lets say in theory that 200,000 shards are needed per day by players. Legitimate players provide 150,000 shards per day and bots provide 100,000 shards per day that would not exist without them. So now the undercutting begins until shards are so cheap crafters say "hey, I'll buy more than I need today because its so cheap and I know I need some tomorrow." but now, you get rid of all the bots. We are 50,000 shards per day short of what we need. Well, the wealthiest players will ensure they get the shards they need at a much higher price point because for them to spend time gather the shards themselves they lose out on the millions they could have obtained using the same time to craft (opportunity cost). They ensure they get the shards they need by paying inflated prices until it hits the ceiling price set by the npc you have suggested. So now prices have gone on shards from the lower price on mb to the ceiling price set by npc.
4. I'm not "defending botters" I'm saying your suggestion doesn't solve anything, yet harms new players wanting to "try out" a dol job, lowers the transfer of wealth in the economy and raises shard prices to the npc price
5. They won't level the job if they don't believe there is value in playing the job. Without seeing some tangible reward they will simply chose to not play the game for being un fun.
I know I'm just saying no when you believe you have an idea that you believe will improve the game experience, and it sucks to hear criticism of our ideas. Maybe SE will implement your idea, but if they don't consider this as a possible reason why. -
01-07-2015, 09:35 PMHakuroDKThat's not a valid reason. Beast Tribes have been around for about a year now and the vast majority of players have had every chance to max them all out. Not only that, but Ixali beast tribe quests are integral to crafting due to Ehcatl Sealant and Xephatol Spring Water.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wintersandman
You would rather have the "abundance" on the market board rather than being able to buy an infinite amount at a lower cost from an NPC merchant. What?Quote:
Originally Posted by Wintersandman
There is value in playing the job, that value has absolutely nothing to do with farming shards and crystals to sell, and doing so is the most un-fun thing I can think of in the entire game, nevermind when it comes to gathering. Cobalt, Electrum, Darksteel, Gold, Platinum, and a whole host of other items sell for a mint on the market boards because no one wants to bother with mining themselves. But if you're telling me that mining shards is more fun and lucrative at 40-60 gil each than Cobalt/Electrum at 400-600 gil each, Darksteel/Gold at 500-700 gil each, and Platinum at >900 gil each, that's ridiculous.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaworutabris
It's not that you're saying no. It's the cynical attitude towards the development team and the undertones that botting is an acceptable practice that are getting me on-edge in this conversation. You're basically saying--and correct me if I'm wrong--"People bot, no one's going to do anything about it and your suggestion will hurt more players than it will help because shards and crystals are lucrative." Except they're only lucrative to players who soullessly grind for 8+ hours a day for a 100k gil paycheck at the end of said day that I could easily achieve 1.5-fold in less than an hour by doing Beast Tribes and selling Sealants.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaworutabris