Why are people rewarded for cheating?

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Pretty much what was said; people want the path of least resistance, so they are going to take the easy way out. Frankly, i have no idea why shards and the like are even required for crafting to begin with.

[kyuven]

Pretty much what was said; people want the path of least resistance, so they are going to take the easy way out. Frankly, i have no idea why shards and the like are even required for crafting to begin with.

It's actually a feature in a lot of games, but most just use straight currency. To put it simply, in order to increase the "value" of a crafted item, there needs to be something lost on each and every combine, since you can never get crystals back once they're used. Think of it like a "utility" cost. Otherwise we wouldn't have the ability to have a chance of having supplies returned to us, and high end crafts would basically "cost" nothing but time. There's even less value in removing it now since returning crystals is a major plus of having a leveled desynth.
To give an example of this in other games, EQ2 had "fuel," which varied in cost depending on the tier, WoW usually had some sort of "thread" or "coal," TERA used "kits," and so forth. Basically things used only for crafting.
Plus from a lore perspective, crystals are what allow us to do things like sand wood or power stoves without a large set of complex tools. It's also a carry over from FFXI, which required the use of crystals to craft anything at all.