RMT are now advertising crystal/shards - Shards need changed

[Hix]

There needs to be more ways to get shards? Seriously? Level 1 gathering too hard for people to do now?

[Nihility]

it's not that shards are hard to get it's just how annoyingly time consuming it is.

For instance when i make a set of jewelery for someone in fc that just hit 49 it takes longer to get the shards than the electrum and jewels combined
It just seems wrong that is what is basically just a catalyst is harder to get than the actual materials

Just feels like to me either it should be once you hit 30+ it goes to taking 1 crystal per synth instead and then 50+ stuff all just takes a cluster
or
Give the ability to break down crystals and clusters for lots of shards, It wouldn't really change anything outside high level gatherers being able to get them a little more efficiently


and why is there always someone saying stuff like this is just to deplete legacy characters, if that was true it wouldn't exist on non-legacy servers...

[CaZx]

I saw an RMT spamming that they were selling game CD Keys for cheap..so yeah it looks like their basically selling everything.

Personally..I think the shards should not be attainable at the lowest level mining areas. However, its not like moving them up a few lvls of difficulty would solve much..I am sure their bot programs work just fine on those higher level areas and they level up quicker than the rest of us anyway with a PC bot teleport mining for hours on end.

Basically..either SE lays down the law and starts ban hammering the crap out of these jerks..or they will continue to exist because apparently there are plenty of dorks out there willing to shell out cash for in game currency.

It might also help if you could farm the shards in clusters at higher levels (heck maybe you can idk) but the fact that it is so time consuming to farm the shards is more than likely why people are going out to purchase them. I mean I really enjoy crafting..but the whole idea of mining for hours upon hours makes me want to send my in-game character off the nearest in-game cliff. That said I am not going to resort to supporting some RMT dousch companies..but clearly others are willing to stoop to that level.

[Seiver]

there at the sheep in Dragonhead not too, farming fleece.

[Hix]

Gathering classes need something that they can sell for money. Did you think only crafters were entitled to make money in this game?

[Teth]

What is wrong with people? Think before you post.

RMTers have a simple equation. They want real world cash. They have time and they want to convert that time into cash at an optimal rate. To do that they want to focus their time on most profitable infinitely available item and if they can manipulate a market to create inflated value all the better.

FFXIV is actually really well designed to counter this. There is a Gil economy with fountains and syncs and there is a separate loop resource economy with gathering and drops being converted to gear which is then melded to materia.

Shards are a component of a crafting combine which comes from DoH professions just like Ore. If you don't want to invest time in the gathering then buy them on the market from the Gil you make from your crafts.

The only way that this could be terrible for the game if gil sellers manage to corner the shard market. But given that there is no restriction on supply that is pretty much impossible for them.

[Jackofham]

Yeah sometimes they have really weird names and othertimes i'm too busy to have to open a blacklist, memorize the complete gibberish these guys PUT in their names, and type said gibberish into blacklist. If im getting spammed by tells i obviously have to take the time to do that, but if Square Enix would simply add an option to right click -> blacklist i wouldn't be experiencing this problem.

Type /blist add <r> and that will stick the last person who sent you a tell to you blacklist. Doesn't work for shouts though.

[CianaIezuborn]

I had an FC mate mention how high shard prices were on the market boards the other day and thought well yeah but they've always been high. I made it a point to farm my own crystals for crafting ever since shards topped 20 gil a piece. I have a few spots for the shards I need where I can hit about 600 in an hour so I considered it ~10k profit per hour farming my own shards, which is still a substantial amount of gil to me even with a 50 crafter.

I pulled the auction house up, EVERY shard was at least 40, where multiple ones were at 50. And the lowest price deals people were laying them out in stacks of 1000+. So the prices were now DOUBLE what I considered to be a ridiculously high price for something I needed in the thousands upon thousands just to level crafting. So I took about 10 stacks of 100, put them up on the AH for about 5 under the lowest price each, about half at 35 per and the other half at 45 per. I had about 2000+ in all elements except ice which I'm constantly running dry from 50 Armorer. I sent my retainer back to market, ran over to a vendor to clear my inventory of trash, before I could even sell half a bags worth of stuff I had already sold ALL of the crystals. 20k gil turned over in less than 2 minutes.

So I tried it again, and it worked again. Then I dumped crystals down to about 400 in each as a reserve, and in about 15 minutes came out 250k richer. That is the most money I've turned over in a day even targeting the market with HQ armor and crafting tools.

So this all sounds great, right? Well it is for me personally, I've now learned I'm probably better off just selling shards until the market on them lowers again as they'll turn over instantly compared to HQ gear that might take a few days to be sold. I can still craft requested gear for FC mates and myself, but just crafting gear to put up on the market seems like a lot of work now.

The bad thing as I see it is this. I can pull about 600 shards an hour, up to 700 if I use the 400gp ability and I'm farming shards that I have the ability for (only have miner past 20 atm). But my potential will not increase from this point onwards at all. And I hit the potential to do 600 shards an hour at approximately level 5 in miner, which took me all of 30 minutes and some level 1 starter hear to hit.

So my highest profiting action that I can do, I was able to do after a day of game time at about 90% of my maximum speed that I will ever be able to do, even with all characters at 50 and bis gear in every class. And it's not an engaging activity, it's a simple, boring, and repetitive one. One that is extremely easy to create a bot for. And one that is actually increased to a higher output through the use of hex editing teleporting between nodes by these bots.

And there's the crux of the problem, the activity that I can make the greatest amount of profit at with a level 50 crafter, a almost 50 paladin, and multiple gathering and crafting classes in the 20s is an activity that you can do after a few hours of gameplay. In fact, no matter how much I improve my character, no matter how much I refine my crafting route, I will NEVER be as good at this activity as a teleporting level 5 mining bot.

And that's a RMT organizations wet dream. A game that the maximum earning potential can be gained by characters with a few hours set up and easily automated. A game that 95% of the accounts hacked can immediately be put to work making profit. A game where 95% of the profitable activities are repetitive and mundane and where the engaging activities requires support from these mundane activities, prompting people to say fuck it and buy gil/shards from them.

So what's my point? It is that when you make a game where repetitive, boring, time consuming activities(such as level 5 node shard gathering) are greatly more profitable than engaging activities (high level combat, high level crafting, basically anything that requires non automated feedback) you create an environment in which RMT organizations can develop easily. Then when you create as much of a reliance on the repetitive, boring, time consuming activities to succeed at the engaging activities you create an environment in which RMT organizations thrive.

How do we fix it? I'm not sure, I'd think multiples of shards at higher level nodes might help, but I'm not sure that might not just prompt the bots to level higher and seek out brave new zones. Having some type of moderation by SE would be nice, which I do believe will come once they've got a handle on server problems and the general overcrowding which I'm sure is an infinitely higher priority. I heard someone mention really using the tiers of shards, crystals for 25-40 recipes, clusters for 41-50 recipes and adjusting nodes to hand them out.

Truth is though I don't really have a solution, it's always easier to point out an issue than to fix it. My personal solution is going to be to continue to farm shards for about an hour a day and sell anything over what I need for personal use on the board until the prices drop below 20 gil again, if ever. But until they drop I don't see much point in crafting HQ gear to put up unless I see major inflation in those prices also.

[Conradus]

Have *you* ever played FFXI? I quit about two years ago and even I remember that EVERY ENEMY IN THE GAME dropped crystals as long as you had Signet/Sanction/whatever up.

In this game, only Miner and Botanist get crystals. It doesn't compare.

Not true. If the mob was <<Too Weak>>, you got no crystals from it, so there could be some some difficulty soloing them once you were past the very first levels. And anybody can be a Miner or a Botanist that can gather crystals; all you have to do is visit the guild and you can go out and get shards more easily than you could get crystals from mobs in FFXI.

BTW, the one you're forgetting is Sigil. Signet in the original FFXI areas, Sanction in the Aht Urhgan areas and Sigil in the Crystal-War-of-the-Past areas (Wings of the Goddess). Looking things up, I see that Seekers of Adoulin has apparently added "Ionis". I weep for the loss of the alliteration.

[Rex]

What?

So your saying crabbing a pick axe as a level 1 miner and farming 300+ shards an hour is difficult and not efficient?

Man... Ever played FFXI? In ffxi the only way to get crystals was off Elementals (Sprites) that spawned in various places under certain weather conditions and every crafter needed 1 crystal per synth just like this game...

This game is 100000* easier when it comes to getting shards...

"Give an inch, want a mile" I guess.

Didn't they drop off enemies that were even match and above too?