Crystals & Shards No more

I know this is a crazy idea - to get rid of crystals, shards and clusters completely but hear me out here:

1. Most of the gil bots spam ephemeral nodes to gather crystals in order to sell them on the marketboard. Since they're bots, they can do this all day every day. This is their chosen method of making gil. If you get rid of crystals and shards - they have one less venue for making gil to sell in RMT transactions.

2. Honestly it just makes no sense. I realize that it's a time sink - but, IRL we can make the same items and we don't need crystals to...craft...furniture?

3. The amount of crystals we get per swing just isn't worth it for people that aren't botters and don't have all day to go AFK auto farming shards and crystals.

In order to just get enough Sublimes for a gathering and crafting set, I have to gather over 1200 lignum vitae logs, 400 dimythrite ore and 100 mythrite sand. (OH BUT THAT'S NOT ALL) Even after I do that (Which even with auto gathering has taken over a full hour to gather.) Now i have to gather 3500 wind crystals and 700 ice crystals. That's going to take me another 2-3 hours of mindless farming to get since no one will be on to do Diadem with. And that's just for the sublimes you need to craft the set. That's not including the THOUSANDS of crystals to make the sets themselves.

I think crafting is plenty a time sink as it is, without having the crystals and shards involved IMHO. It wouldn't be so bad if each item only took 1 or 2 crystals but when making one piece of lumber takes 7 crystals it gets a bit insane.

Seriously though: It'd stick it to the gathering bots.

Agreed. Shards/crystals/clusters are outdated as a concept and need to go.

Disagree because it fits with the plot of the game. You craft magical items with crystals made from Aether. GG

Just because it can be explained by the lore doesn't make it a good idea.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Just because it can be explained by the lore doesn't make it a good idea.

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It only became a bad idea because they neutered the ways to obtain them with 2.0. They used to be secondary items you got every gather instead of a dedicated target and you got 1-3+. Alch could also convert them between shards, crystals and clusters.

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Originally Posted by Angellos

It wouldn't be so bad if each item only took 1 or 2 crystals but when making one piece of lumber takes 7 crystals it gets a bit insane.

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I think this is the real issue. Only the very low levels have shard usage in reasonable numbers. But then it starts ramping up the number you need without a corresponding ramping up of the number you can collect in a reasonable timeframe. (I suppose the idea is that people who are buying their shards can afford more at high levels, but it kind of screws over people trying to be at least mostly self sufficient.)

let's remove materia too since bots sell those too, just stop being lazy and go gather shards with aetherical reduction, even the new 5.1 skill give lots of crystals now.

Are you aware that you can now get as much as 30 shards/clusters per GATHER ATTEMPT? The skill has a cool down, but it lets you get as much as 30x5 from a single node with 5 successful gather attemps, if you are lucky. Thats as much as 150 shards my dude. People shouldnt need to worry about them anymore.

Just go out to one of the nodes with a +1 on it and use 'The Giving Land' - https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/T...ng_Land_(Miner) -
and then 'The Twelves Bounty' for up to 3 more per gather attempt. Youll get random amounts but sometimes itll say more than 30.

I am allowed to post links right? If not I can remove it.

doing a daily map is a great way to stay in crystals as well.

umm..hmmhrrmm ah retainers?

What I'd like to see is a way to break down a Cluster into multiple Crystals, and a Crystal into multiple Shards.

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Originally Posted by Angellos

1. Most of the gil bots spam ephemeral nodes to gather crystals in order to sell them on the marketboard. Since they're bots, they can do this all day every day. This is their chosen method of making gil. If you get rid of crystals and shards - they have one less venue for making gil to sell in RMT transactions.

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I'm not sure whether removing crystals would help anything on that front. The bots used to farm them would still exist, so wouldn't they just move onto selling something else?

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Originally Posted by AbelArchaniEA

Disagree because it fits with the plot of the game. You craft magical items with crystals made from Aether. GG

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That's also because the crafting system was taken directly from FFXI (right down to being literally called 'Synthesis') which also required crystals to be used as a catalyst when crafting - only difference being you didn't use tools to craft, you basically just selected the required materials and crystals from your inventory and selected 'Synthesis' from the menu.

But you are totally correct about the lore specifically stating the reason why crystals are needed in crafting. Because you are not actually making the item the normal way despite using tools to do so. You're actually initiating a magical reaction by drawing on the aether in the crystals to change the raw materials into the desired object based on your thoughts (the tools you use are just a conduit to focus the aetheric energy, just like how mages in the game use their weapons fo focus the aether into the desired spell).

This is incidentally also the reason why the game can get away with the old meme about using a frypan to make orange juice for instance. ;)

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Originally Posted by Jimmymagic

umm..hmmhrrmm ah retainers?

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Yield is too low and there are higher value things that a retainer can be sent out for to be worth it.

[QUOTE=aesteval;5262110]Yield is too low and there are higher value things that a retainer can be sent out for to be worth it.[/QUOT

60 shards an hour is not to low and I can focus on collecting other things or do dailies and getting thing s of value is subjective server to server player to player.
even with just two default retainers that's 120 an hour while im doing raids. leveling or whatever I want.

If you have a house, you can get shards from gardening as well. They take a day to grow and give 50 shards per plant. Granted there are some high-value crosses that can be done in a garden as well but for someone not obsessed with getting the most value out of everything gardening for shards is a very low-effort option.

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Originally Posted by Jimmymagic

60 shards an hour is not to low and I can focus on collecting other things or do dailies and getting thing s of value is subjective server to server player to player.
even with just two default retainers that's 120 an hour while im doing raids. leveling or whatever I want.

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And with current abilities you can get 100+ shards or crystals from a single node once every 3 minutes or so. Meanwhile the retainers could be going for RNG minions that are worth millions of gil. The value of shards and crystals from retainer ventures has stagnated vs what else retainers can bring back.

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Originally Posted by tdb

If you have a house, you can get shards from gardening as well. They take a day to grow and give 50 shards per plant. Granted there are some high-value crosses that can be done in a garden as well but for someone not obsessed with getting the most value out of everything gardening for shards is a very low-effort option.

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They can be grown in flowerpots as well. The various grades of Shroud topsoil increase yeild. G1 = 65, G2 = 75, G 3 =100.

If we aren't going to care about depth why not just reduce the whole thing to a browser game with numbers, I mean that's really all we need. If you actually play the game and put in the tiniest bit of effort, I know crazy idea, it will pay off. I'm surprised no one is asking for crafter jump potions yet. I would also like to add, it's valuable because it's hard, it takes time, effort, you take that away and it's no longer valuable, it's no longer worth doing.

HEY HEY HEY CLOSE THIS THREAD HORRIBLE IDEA and if anything WE NEED CRAFTS WITH MORE CRYSTALS/CLUSTERS REQUIREMENTS get rid of the shards I agree but not the crystals.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I'm not sure whether removing crystals would help anything on that front. The bots used to farm them would still exist, so wouldn't they just move onto selling something else?

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Those are just hard working players.

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Originally Posted by Shadygrove

They can be grown in flowerpots as well. The various grades of Shroud topsoil increase yeild. G1 = 65, G2 = 75, G 3 =100.

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True, I forgot flowerpots were a thing. I think you can only put one pot in an apartment though? So it's not a very fast way without access to a garden. I think the shroud topsoils are not worth it for growing shards though, given the prices of soil and shards on the MB.

Mining retainers will bring 10 G1 soils or 3 G2.

On the MB G1s are often as cheap as potting soil.

Private chambers and apartments can hold 2 flowerpots.

Fair enough, I guess I was only thinking of G3 soil, which is the grade usually employed with crossing plants. And for some reason I thought apartment would be one less than a cottage, but it appears to be the same.

Since crafting and other in-world things require crystals lore-wise, why not simply do away with shards and clusters? Keeps it simple since we need a plethora of crystals for crafting as it is.

If you have a garden, it is a potential massive source of shards. They grow in a day. You can even send your retainer for the seeds and soil (I think more efficient than sending for shards).

Did you need them in FFXI to craft items? It's been so long I don't remember.

Yeah. Crystals for crafting was a thing in XI.

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Originally Posted by AbelArchaniEA

Disagree because it fits with the plot of the game. You craft magical items with crystals made from Aether. GG

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While I generally enjoy lore-based explanations for in-game mechanics (and Enkidoh's elaboration on your post was fascinating for me to read, as I'd never considered FF14's crafting from that angle), do note that the lore of the game HAS changed in regards to similar systems. The lv.20 MIN and BTN quests have you gather 99 units of grade 1 carbonized matter; the MIN version, which I did early on in my time here, explained that carbonized matter was used as a catalyst for affixing materia to gear. In a later patch, however, this requirement was removed; I did the BTN quest AFTER this patch, and the dialogue explained that carbonized matter HAD ONCE been used to meld materia but that other methods had been found that no longer required it.

Similarly, the quests revolving around converting gear to materia mention (if memory serves) that materia conversion destroys the gear being converted, and that you need to have the appropriate crafter at the right level to affix it yourself. However, the devs have already stated that this will simply reset the spiritbond rating on gear being "converted" in 5.2, and that having ANY crafter at the right level will let you affix materia to any gear at that level. No doubt the quest dialogue will be adjusted to accomodate this change as well.

If the devs decided to at least REDUCE the crystal catalyst requirements for crafting across the board--say, 1 of any given shard/crystal/cluster per craft instead of multiple--it could easily be explained in-game, if necessary, as having "refined the relevant crafting techniques to require less aether," or something to that effect.

Tl;dr: don't hide behind the game's lore if you don't like someone's idea. The lore can be adjusted as needed if the devs decide to simplify any given process that has a lore-based explanation.

I don't think many people would be upset if they were removed. Maybe purging it would free up some character data headroom for something else like adding more things to the currency window or armory chest.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I don't think many people would be upset if they were removed. Maybe purging it would free up some character data headroom for something else like adding more things to the currency window or armory chest.

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yes, let's replace crystals with random materials for every class which use 15 more inventory slots, need to encourage people to buy more retainers after all.

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Originally Posted by RyuSaarva

yes, let's replace crystals with random materials for every class which use 15 more inventory slots, need to encourage people to buy more retainers after all.

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I feel like you're either missing or purposefully ignoring what Rufalus is actually saying here. The idea being presented is to remove crystal catalysts and use the equivalent data space to allow OTHER things to be removed from physical storage, such as primal/raid tokens that only serve as currency and probably shouldn't be physically-stored items anyway. Or letting us store more AF/relic gear in the armoire. Or grant us more glamour dresser storage and/or plates. Things that would actually FREE UP inventory space, not occupy more.

I'd much rather see them significantly increase how many we get for activities, and add other ways to get them. It's insulting that the skills we have to spend GP on yield so few. Why not make them have a high base yield on nodes rather than 1? Why not make the GP skill give 10 or 20 per swing? Why not have reduction give 70-100.

If you make it so it's easy to be self-sufficient on them, people won't need to buy them, and if they're even more abundant, they won't be worth botting. Best of all, this requires no real functional change by SE.

Their nerf of reduction actually benefited RMT because the time value of doing it is tolerable to a bot that plays 24/7.

A lot of people here don't seem to understand the issue either. Retainers and maps and things like that don't give enough to do much of anything. I can easily go through 7000+ crystals a day, and that's at least an hour of aetherial farming. That's why I don't do it, and instead just give gil to bots who do it 24/7.

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Originally Posted by Angellos

It wouldn't be so bad if each item only took 1 or 2 crystals but when making one piece of lumber takes 7 crystals it gets a bit insane.

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Agreed. This was the issue that made leve crafting for WVR from 70 to 80 a pain was because they would have you craft multiple of the same thread and they would cost an extraordinary amount of crystals to make.

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Originally Posted by Angellos

3. The amount of crystals we get per swing just isn't worth it for people that aren't botters and don't have all day to go AFK auto farming shards and crystals.

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No it's not and that's why you use either aetherial reduction for poly's or Crystals or, in case of the shards, you plant them in your garden.

Who in their right mind farms these things the old fashion way. Oo