Ability to Downgrade Elemental Crystals into Shards.

[NyarukoW]

Why stop at shards and crystals? How about sands into logs, oil into logs, logs into allied seals, seals into solidery, poetics into soldiery, soldiery into poetics etc. etc. You get the idea.

SE must have a good reason to have these distinct item and currency types. Why make them convertible? Why not keep them distinct? And why are some convertible in one direction only? There has got be better reason than I want to be able to get shards more easily. If that is all you wanted you can just boost the skills to get +5 instead of +2. But there must be balance reasons why it is where it is.

[HakuroDK]

Why stop at shards and crystals? How about sands into logs, oil into logs, logs into allied seals, seals into solidery, poetics into soldiery, soldiery into poetics etc. etc. You get the idea.

SE must have a good reason to have these distinct item and currency types. Why make them convertible? Why not keep them distinct? And why are some convertible in one direction only? There has got be better reason than I want to be able to get shards more easily. If that is all you wanted you can just boost the skills to get +5 instead of +2. But there must be balance reasons why it is where it is.

Until I can hear the good reason that SE isn't doing this (As much as Grekumah tried explaining it, it wasn't an adequate explanation), I can't really accept your reasoning.

Also, there's a precedent for converting shards <-> crystals <-> clusters and that's FFXIV 1.0. We're not saying to convert everything into everything else (though funny you should mention the tomestones, considering obsolete tomestones actually do have a conversion system into the next highest stage), but to help non-crafters better understand the necessity of this, it's like if potions were critical to combat classes, all potions were restricted by level (Hi-Potions req. Lv15, Mega Potions req. Level 30, X-Potions Req. Level 50), and for some odd reason, low level players kept getting X-Potions and Mega Potions, but their regular potion and hi-potion stocks were pretty much empty.

That is, thankfully, not the case with combat classes/jobs because the mainstream playerbase is essentially combat classes/jobs, and said classes/jobs doesn't have a reliance on keeping item stores up like crafters do. If we have no shards while leveling, we can't craft. Like, it's not a bonus to HQ or anything. We literally cannot craft without them. Even if we have all of the necessary materials to craft otherwise. And sometimes we're broke and can't buy more. For about an hour of mining shards with the shard yield buffs, I'd say that it would allow for 15, maybe 20 minutes of crafting tops.

[kyuven]

snip

It's actually worse than you let on. It's more like the old days of MMOs where skills required reagents (EQ1's gemstones for buff spells, FFXI's ninja tools, EVERY fantasy game's arrows, etc.) but for some bizarre reason the ones for mega uber ultra skill were more common than the ones for basic skills. Like exploding death arrows being more common than basic ones.
Although in actuality, since crystals drop from elementals over lvl 30 and clusters only come from very specific tasks, it's a bit more lopsided...

[craig_meredith2003]

Why stop at shards and crystals? How about sands into logs, oil into logs, logs into allied seals, seals into solidery, poetics into soldiery, soldiery into poetics etc. etc. You get the idea.

SE must have a good reason to have these distinct item and currency types. Why make them convertible? Why not keep them distinct? And why are some convertible in one direction only? There has got be better reason than I want to be able to get shards more easily. If that is all you wanted you can just boost the skills to get +5 instead of +2. But there must be balance reasons why it is where it is.

You didn't play 1.0 i guess. also if irc in 1.0 we had the mats and shards required for leves handed to us. Which would help with the people using leves leveling up.

[BobbinT]

You didn't play 1.0 i guess. also if irc in 1.0 we had the mats and shards required for leves handed to us. Which would help with the people using leves leveling up.

I've not even doing alot of leves back then, and shards just piling up fast on me that I had to sell them cheap.

Wish I didn't do that, knowing that I desperately need them now... ; ;

[HakuroDK]

You didn't play 1.0 i guess. also if irc in 1.0 we had the mats and shards required for leves handed to us. Which would help with the people using leves leveling up.

Just as an aside, leves that handed over mats and shards for crafting would be amazeballs.