Botting is getting worse.

[Caitlinzulu]

Its not that hard to grind out 1000 shards, it takes a retainer 16 ventures, thats all. Getting crystals is even easier, with an ephemeral node can give you up to 200-300. I have got, without huge effort, 9k fire and earth crystals. The same nodes can also give clusters at a slightly slower rate.
So we dont need bots to get our shards/crystals/clusters.

[Welsper59]

Botting in SE games rarely ever goes punished, just because of the fact that it's more of a hassle than necessary. Bad behavior, outside of RL violations such as threats, is often swept under the rug in these games. Win-trading, for example, is practically encouraged here in XIV. Short of it breaking the game in someway (like the old marketboard one), hacks are also not a big concern of theirs and will often go unpunished, despite any feeble attempts to report it. Maybe the GM/STF are just being lazy due to how tedious and (often) impossible it is to track bots/hack attempts on what's likely a system that was not designed to do so... maybe they're being told to not really bother... who knows. Either way, people can and will almost always get away with cheating in SE titles, just because of how they poorly deal with in-game problems.

To be fair, without them the economy would likely crash for a good bit as no one in their right mind would sit and grind thousands of shards/crystals/clusters when that time can be invested elsewhere but i digress

That's actually where the devs would have to change things up, similar to how they did for crystals and clusters. RMT have long been the suppliers of very cheap shards across every single server (though not as rampant now, as it was before). As a result of that, the devs never really bothered to change how you obtain them since it is impossible to be rid of RMT presence in a game like this. It's kind of ridiculous that, given how necessary shards are/were for housing stuff, there's no efficient way to obtain them in a timely manner that can be considered worthwhile for their use.

Its not that hard to grind out 1000 shards, it takes a retainer 16 ventures, thats all. Getting crystals is even easier, with an ephemeral node can give you up to 200-300. I have got, without huge effort, 9k fire and earth crystals. The same nodes can also give clusters at a slightly slower rate.
So we dont need bots to get our shards/crystals/clusters.

Remember though that shards are used at ~10x the rate of crystals and clusters per synth. While that 1000 shards might sound like a lot, the length that it'll take you ends much shorter than the others tiers.

[Imsyu]

Its not that hard to grind out 1000 shards, it takes a retainer 16 ventures, thats all. Getting crystals is even easier, with an ephemeral node can give you up to 200-300. I have got, without huge effort, 9k fire and earth crystals. The same nodes can also give clusters at a slightly slower rate.
So we dont need bots to get our shards/crystals/clusters.

1000 shards would last me 15minutes, same for crystals and clusters lol unless they make it so you can obtain x10 like someone said then yeah thats not a practical way for crafters especially to obtain shards/crystals/clusters if they use x10 that a hour sometimes more then that a day

[Zeonx]

1000 shards would last me 15minutes, same for crystals and clusters lol unless they make it so you can obtain x10 like someone said then yeah thats not a practical way for crafters especially to obtain shards/crystals/clusters if they use x10 that a hour sometimes more then that a day

I mine crystals but cannot sit there for 1000 of them, I get extremely bored and mind begins to go numb, highest I get is like 300 or 500 before I have had enough.

Then you have people who mine up 9000+ crystals all down the board and I say no damn way they didn't do this legit, I do understand there are treasure maps that drop crystals and maybe they do that over time but then you check next day and they have same amount the next day then I say to myself time to find another source of farming GiL or undercut them.

[AsteriaStarfall]

I mine crystals but cannot sit there for 1000 of them, I get extremely bored and mind begins to go numb, highest I get is like 300 or 500 before I have had enough.

Then you have people who mine up 9000+ crystals all down the board and I say no damn way they didn't do this legit, I do understand there are treasure maps that drop crystals and maybe they do that over time but then you check next day and they have same amount the next day then I say to myself time to find another source of farming GiL or undercut them.

There is another better way. Go to an atherial node and mine it. Reduce it and depending on quality youll receive a nice chunk of crystals or clusters. Just tag a single node from the pair of nodes on opposite sides of the atherial and go right back and collect again. 15 minutes netted me about 800 fire crystals. I think it was fire...could have been water. Not sure now which one it was but you get the idea.

[Iagainsti]

I mine crystals but cannot sit there for 1000 of them, I get extremely bored and mind begins to go numb, highest I get is like 300 or 500 before I have had enough.

Then you have people who mine up 9000+ crystals all down the board and I say no damn way they didn't do this legit, I do understand there are treasure maps that drop crystals and maybe they do that over time but then you check next day and they have same amount the next day then I say to myself time to find another source of farming GiL or undercut them.

Or play the MB; over the last 2 years I've filled our FC CC and my own inventory to the rim with crystals and clusters just from buying low and selling high. I haven't farmed/ventured any in well over a year.