shard yeilding

[Camate]

Greetings,

There has been a lot of discussions and feedback regarding shards and I’d like to respond to what I can.

• Shard yield
  The development team understands the shard yield amount to be an extremely delicate issue. They are very carefully looking into whether they increase the amount of shards yielded and how much they would increase it as they give consideration to the economic effects.
  
  
• Methods of obtaining shards
  Looking at the current shard yield and the amount of shards used in recipes, we are currently looking into new methods of obtaining shards; however, we will not be making it so they simply drop from monsters.
  
  
• Crystal and cluster breaking
  There have been some comments about the feature in 1.0 where you could break down crystals and clusters, but we do not have plans at the moment to implement this. The concern is that it will become difficult to control the prices of individual shards if they can be produced from crystals and such.
  
  For example, in the future if there are requests to increase the cluster yield, being able to break these down into shards would overflow the market, and as a result it becomes much easier to use clusters, but the prices of shards would drop.
  
  
• RMT issue
  We understand that there are RMT issues surrounding shards and the STF is after them every day.
  
  We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating].

[Alhanelem]

Honestly I don't think they should increase shard yield but rather decrease the number of shards needed for some recipes, mainly consumables and parts. Finished non consumable products needing several shards/crystals/clusters is fine but things people NEED to make lots of, not so much.

They could also decrease the GP cost of the elemental Ward abilities and add shards back to fishing (and/or make the Ward abilities actually have an effect on fisher, such as adding a chance for shards of the given element)

[Gilthas]

Honestly I don't think they should increase shard yield but rather decrease the number of shards needed for some recipes, mainly consumables and parts. Finished non consumable products needing several shards/crystals/clusters is fine but things people NEED to make lots of, not so much.

Pretty much this.

Gathering shards isn't really a problem. Its a money maker for some players (and the RMT obviously), and SE shouldn't kill it for the legit players just because a part of the playerbase wants to get shards faster.

But they should adjust the shards required for some crafting recipees. Especially for the recipees for consumables and parts.

And while I have no big problems with Wards and think they should stay the same, I'm all for Fisher being able to get shards. The class is pretty bare-bones at the moment.

[Estellios]

Honestly I don't think they should increase shard yield but rather decrease the number of shards needed for some recipes, mainly consumables and parts. Finished non consumable products needing several shards/crystals/clusters is fine but things people NEED to make lots of, not so much.

They could also decrease the GP cost of the elemental Ward abilities and add shards back to fishing (and/or make the Ward abilities actually have an effect on fisher, such as adding a chance for shards of the given element)

Yea this is really my only beef with shards too. To be fair, making food last even upon death is a huge improvement but I think higher tier food could still have their shard costs reduced or even changed to crystals.

[ShinkuTachi]

snip

Thank you for taking the time to respond and acknowledge our grievance. I look forward to the news that comes forward regarding this.

I ask that you please deliver my question to Yoshida-san, in case he is possibly ready to reveal something during the live letter.

I ask my forum mates to please like my "question post" if it is something that matters to you.

My question can be found, HERE!

[Kyronex]

Greetings,
We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating]. [/list]

Any plans to improve the reporting process? Like right-clicking on a player and choose "Report". The current process of filling out the form is very time consuming: manually typing in player name, server name, location... etc. I see so many botters, cheaters, RMT spamming, that I've stopped reporting them all together because it takes so much time away from me actually enjoying the game. In an hour I see probably around 20-30 cheaters, there's no way I'm going to spend that much time reporting all of them. I created a macro to black list the last RMT seller that sent me a tell but now that is useless because my list is full at 200/200.

Also, how do you report cheaters you can't even see?? I'm talking about all those teleporting underground miners/loggers where they're completed hidden and can't be targeted. All you can see are their gathering "swing" animations.

[Kosmos992k]

We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating]. [/list]

Yes, we know, and yet almost everyone can talk of having reported a bot that is still there a week or more later, gathering shards and destroying the economy one shard at a time. It often feels like nothing is being done when we report, leaving little incentive to actually take the time to report. It is also extremely difficult to target the bots that harvest underground, making is impossible to report them by name.

Can you tell us whether the Dev team/STF are doing anything proactively in the game itself to prevent the obvious and widely abused teleport/warp/position coordinate exploits being used by the bots?

[Radamanthe]

We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating].

It would help us a lot if you made a bearable UI to do so in the first place. I gladly report every RMT/bots/scroungers in any MMO, but I won't do it in FF14 until this is implemented in a way that respect me. Still waiting...

[Kyana]

• RMT issue
  We understand that there are RMT issues surrounding shards and the STF is after them every day.
  
  We’ve mentioned this many times already, but if you notice any suspicious activity it helps us a lot if you could make a report by going to [System Menu] -> [Support Desk] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating].

I've reported every bot user I came across, but these players are still running around.
One of them, which I reported ~6-7 weeks ago for using a speed hack and bot to gather from the trees west of Dragonhead, got up every crafting class to 50 in the meantime and is running around like nothing happened.

Another ones bot was messed up at Nophica's Wells in Western Thanalan, running and spinning on a spot for over 30 minutes, not reacting to tell.

Oh, and the character which was porting around between mining spots in Central Thanalan while using the sneak skill is still in the game too.

And I still see retainers selling 5-10+ stacks of 1000+ shards every day.

[Kyana]

• Shard yield

The development team understands the shard yield amount to be an extremely delicate issue. They are very carefully looking into whether they increase the amount of shards yielded and how much they would increase it as they give consideration to the economic effects.

How about using the existing things like gathering stats?
We already have nodes providing a bonus depending on elemental resistance or main stat.
How about increasing the yield of shards depending on perception or gathering stats?
Let characters with ilvl45 gear gather 2-3 shards, players with ilvl55 gear 3-5 shards and players with melded HQ ilvl55 gear and buff food 4-6 shards.

The ammounts of shards required for synths are fine except for cooking and maybe alchemy.
It would be better if meals would use crystals for lvl40-45+ items instead of high ammounts of shards.
I'd rather use 2-3 crystals instead of 10-12 shards.