Gathering shards takes to long.

[Itseotle]

As someone who got all crafts to 50 as a fresh 2.0 player, I can honestly say that shards are fine as they are. The only time you require massive amounts of shards is if you are leveling via grinding without leves, and even in this situation you CAN profit if your smart about what you make. Once you hit 50, you won't need piles of shards to be productive as a crafter, as much of the higher level items require some crystals and even clusters to craft, and less shards.

Gathering shards in the numbers necessary for significant crafting work becomes astronomically tedious and drawn out as you approach level 50. Most things in the last ten levels of crafting recipes require several multiple-tiered material crafts each, pushing shard requirements for something like, say, a full set of Patrician's crafting gear (which is only five items for the main gear slots) up to a grand total of 179 shards.

179 shards for 5 pieces of equipment is not an issue at all. As others have already stated, it only takes an hour to gather 1,000 shards, and with 1,000 shards you can craft 25 of those items you shown as example. It takes about 5 mins to mine the electrum, 5 to harvest the flax for the linen, and probably 20-30 minutes with travel (and rng) to get the fleece and snurble tufts for the Wool and Felt. Your looking at less than 2 hours to make 25 pieces of lv50 equipment, and you think it takes to long? To me it seems pretty balanced as far as time<>reward, considering you can create those items using a single finger on your keyboard while watching tv (ie. it doesn't take any effort at all, just some time)

EDIT: if you listed Patrician gear as an example of something you would level off of, then this is why you are having issues. Level off of an easier recipe instead. I highly recommend leve quests for those last 10 levels.

[Penguinmayhem]

words words words

If you personally feel that's okay, then that's your opinion. I don't. Many many other people don't. Many people feel that this amount of harvesting shards is tediously unpleasant and not enjoyable. However, while you claim that you can do all that with one finger, in my experience, harvesting things in this game is just involved enough that I can't do it while doing something else, but not engaging enough to not be staggeringly dull. Then again, the fact that gilsellers are making such vast amounts of money from marketing shards and that people are willing to buy them should be proof enough that I am far from the only one who finds gathering shards absolutely horrible.

No, I don't level-grind by making patrician's gear. I'm materia grinding because you need stupid numbers of materia to make anything i70 at all and the melding RNG is an asshole.

And as to the comments about retainer harvesting, and for that matter, how spending two whole hours getting a single outfit together isn't very long, maybe we should stop and consider that not all of the people playing this game have quite that much free time. What about the people who can only play for an hour or two a day, at most? That's a return on retainer harvesting of, at best, thirty shards a day. That's enough for five bowls of dagger soup. A day. Is that really 'okay'?

[PROBOUND]

as much of the higher level items require some crystals and even clusters to craft, and less shards.

As a crafter with all 50's, i would assume you were aware that X-Stat Potions require 15 shards per synth.

Whoever thinks you wont need PILES of shards as a crafter to be productive is seriously mistaken. The 2 most profitable classes atm are the Consumables (CUL/ALCH) both of which need TONS upon TONS of shards to consistently turn a profit.

TLDR: Keep grinding away on those DOL's or fuel the Bot Storm and purchase from the AH.