While shards are limited you also have to think about how much xp those shards give to crafters. Yes a single craft can cost 5+ shards but you can also get 5k+ xp as crafter from one synth. So I'm not sure if it's ok like this.

But I do understand the pain. In my opinion it would be graet when higher level nodes would also yield shards so people can at least level on them. This should definatly drop the prices on shards.