So here's a crazy idea

Make shards, crystals and clusters only as open world mobs drops. What would happen if SE actually did this. I doubt the Gil farming bots would have a problem with this, maybe even welcome the influx of easy Gil.

There would be a riot. Do you have any idea how many shards and crystals a crafter can go through in a week?

I would only support this because the market is in dire need of some form of scarcity.

The open world has not enough mobs for this. A handfull of people who are farming them will be enough to prevent story and side mission progress for everyone else. Not to mention that we already have bots wo one-shot kill mobs from underground as soon as they spawn. So a handfull of bots will be dominating the whole shard market and nobody else will ever see a mob in the open world again.

We don't need the game to become more and more casual.

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

Make shards, crystals and clusters only as open world mobs drops. What would happen if SE actually did this. I doubt the Gil farming bots would have a problem with this, maybe even welcome the influx of easy Gil.

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no. They are meant to be mined.

It's too late to fix the economy this expansion. They already screwed it up making the recipes too easy as well as making it too easy to level all the crafters/gatherers to 80. Bots are running rampant gathering in droves and the MB are full of goods listed by bots, made by bots 24/7. Nothing short of a full overhaul can fix it at this point. I've completely given up until 6.0 and see what they're going to do.

I will just leave this here.

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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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Originally Posted by Magnesium02

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.



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)
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Your thread title is right on.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

Your thread title is right on.

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Ikr, no clickbait this time.

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Originally Posted by Tint

The open world has not enough mobs for this. A handfull of people who are farming them will be enough to prevent story and side mission progress for everyone else. Not to mention that we already have bots wo one-shot kill mobs from underground as soon as they spawn. So a handfull of bots will be dominating the whole shard market and nobody else will ever see a mob in the open world again.

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Bots already dominate the market for shards and crystals so that wouldn't be any different. Shards/crystal drops from overworld mobs was also a system from v1 and it cause no difference in the mobs on the overworld simply because with 1 kill you could get 10 shards, making gathering shards/crystals nothing since you were drowning in them most of the time by doing nothing more than day to day play and ppl sold them for almost nothing just to be rid of them. As for the rest, I will just quote myself from another thread...

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

The true holdover from an old system is having to use shards and crystals in the first place, which came from ffxi. It's not a system you normally see in mmos or single player games because it simply makes 0 sense to have your players gather 7 items that are completely unrelated to the craft on top of the items you need for the actual synthesis to take place. It did make more sense in v1 because you advanced the craft by keeping the elements of the crystals in balance, but when they got rid of that, admittedly horrific, crafting mini game there was no reason to actually keep the crystal requirement outside of just being what was always done.
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Crystals are admittedly pointless when it comes to crafting, so if they refuse to get rid of them there is no reason not to make them so plentiful that they would just be worthless for rmt to farm.

so, the idea is to have crafters not only have to take time to scrip grind, but also to grind for teh very things that they need to scrip grind...

its... most assuredly a crazy idea...

not sure where I stop at the problems with this idea

It all depends on the grind. You don't want to make it too easy, but you also don't want to overdo it.

We already need anywhere from 1-4 skins to make 1 piece of leather, which by itself does nothing, it's just a component of a bigger craft. The 4 skins and 1 alumen you need to make that one leather, is by most standards, fine. Add to that 7 crystals, which serve no purpose other than make it a little more final fantasy-ish (because crystals) was a really weird choice. You are more than doubling the amount of items needed in most cases for no clear reason. This has always been a weird addition to crafting in xiv.

I find resistance to this sort of thing odd. I mean, removing something that no one would even notice if it didn't exist to begin with and has no real purpose outside of adding a needless time sink and expense to something that is already a time sink and expensive takes nothing away from crafting.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

I find resistance to this sort of thing odd. I mean, removing something that no one would even notice if it didn't exist to begin with and has no real purpose outside of adding a needless time sink and expense to something that is already a time sink and expensive takes nothing away from crafting.

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Resistance to what? I wouldn't mind at all if crafting crystals was removed. I rarely have to pay attention to them anyway. But unless I've grossly misinterpreted something, the OP's suggestion was to remove them from gathering and gardening and instead make them drop from mobs, while still keeping them necessary for crafting. If the droprates would be anything like existing crafting materials it would make them a royal pain to get when I run out. If you think crystals are currently an unnecessary grind, surely you'll agree they shouldn't be made even more of a grind.

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Originally Posted by tdb

Resistance to what? .

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I was referring to the comment above mine from kes13a. Not sure why you think I was targeting your comment in particular... guess direct quotes are necessary always.

Considering bots can (and do) mass kill things while underground, why would you want to give them an easier time farming things while also massively causing issues for people who just need to kill a few mobs for a quest?

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

Considering bots can (and do) mass kill things while underground, why would you want to give them an easier time farming things while also massively causing issues for people who just need to kill a few mobs for a quest?

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Hell, they're already doing that.

Playing on an alt and I found several names that are literal gibberish like someone just rubbed their arse on their keyboard during character creation.

They would be popping in and out of existence, underground, wiping out multiple mobs.

Several times now I would see an enemy just start randomly losing hp because some jackhole bot was attacking its feet underground.

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

Ikr, no clickbait this time.

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Sure it isn't.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

I was referring to the comment above mine from kes13a. Not sure why you think I was targeting your comment in particular... guess direct quotes are necessary always.

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I wasn't thinking you were targeting my comment. But both kes13a's comment and the general tone of this thread is one of opposing the OP's self-admittedly crazy idea of making shards and crystals drops from the mobs. So if you find that resistance odd, it seems to me that you support the OP's idea. But then you seem to go on to say that crystals are already a needless time sink, so it seems strange that you would want to make them even more of a time sink. Is one of us misunderstanding something here?

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Originally Posted by tdb

I wasn't thinking you were targeting my comment. But both kes13a's comment and the general tone of this thread is one of opposing the OP's self-admittedly crazy idea of making shards and crystals drops from the mobs. So if you find that resistance odd, it seems to me that you support the OP's idea. But then you seem to go on to say that crystals are already a needless time sink, so it seems strange that you would want to make them even more of a time sink. Is one of us misunderstanding something here?

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Having them drop from overworld mobs, like they did in v1, would not be even more of a time sink, because the flood of crystals into the market would make them so abundant that even buying them if you just crafted that much would be a non issue. This is how it was in v1. You could easily get 10 shards and 4 crystals from one mob with all kills dropping shards or crystals and you would therefore literally be swimming in shards and crystals at any given time. And you could reduced them down as well, so clusters could be made into crystals and crystals into shards. Crystals also played more into crafting and made more sense since the whole goal was to keep the elements stable.

They are not like standard materials, nowadays with the crafting mini game gone, they are a completely pointless thing when you already need to grind levels, have specialized gear and the actual ingredients that make sense like bolts of cloth, the need for so many of them or even their mere existence is confusing. Like I said, its just more final fantasy-ish to incorporate crystals into something, but that doesn't mean it's a good system, esp when you sometimes need more crystals than actual components.

As of right now they are already mostly a non issue for established crafters who can buy them (from rmt mostly) in bulk, but for those starting out they are a pointless grinding roadblock. So making them easier to obtain by simply playing the game would not really have any effect on the already established crafters outside of saving them a minute amount of gil, but would make it easier for those who want to level their crafters, who would just need materials, some of which are already hard to come by, and be a hit to rmt. I do not see the bad in this.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

Having them drop from overworld mobs, like they did in v1, would not be even more of a time sink, because the flood of crystals into the market would make them so abundant that even buying them if you just crafted that much would be a non issue. This is how it was in v1. You could easily get 10 shards and 4 crystals from one mob with all kills dropping shards or crystals and you would therefore literally be swimming in shards and crystals at any given time. And you could reduced them down as well, so clusters could be made into crystals and crystals into shards. Crystals also played more into crafting and made more sense since the whole goal was to keep the elements stable.

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Well yeah, if they dropped in that sort of quantities it wouldn't be an issue. I was thinking they'd be have droprates similar to other materials in FFXIV where one mob typically drops 0-3 and the average might be less than one.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

As of right now they are already mostly a non issue for established crafters who can buy them (from rmt mostly) in bulk, but for those starting out they are a pointless grinding roadblock. So making them easier to obtain by simply playing the game would not really have any effect on the already established crafters outside of saving them a minute amount of gil, but would make it easier for those who want to level their crafters, who would just need materials, some of which are already hard to come by, and be a hit to rmt. I do not see the bad in this.

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I don't know if I count as an established crafter since I don't craft "for a living", but I do have all DoH and DoL classes at 80 and well geared. I mostly craft for myself, sometimes for my friends and occasionally I even put something on MB. I get shards from gardening (500 shards in 24 hours per garden patch with very little effort and basically zero cost) and I honestly don't know where I've gotten all of my crystals - probably from quests, because at least the Crystalline Mean quests gave loads of them. Gathering buffs make getting them fairly easy though.