shard yeilding

[whycantiusebetaforumname]

ok, am I the only one finding it extremely insane that shard yeilds is only 1/hit? i understand crystals and clusters at 1 a hit but why can't shards be at 5/hit or 10? it's harder to farm shards then the materials per craft, and I had 9999 shards in 1.0 now im struggling to get shards. Square Enix please fix it

This. It makes now damn sense to mine at same rate as a lvl 26 miner/bot as a lvl 50 on shards I pretty much stopped crafting all together because you make more money running wp and selling mats and sb gear lol.

[Hvinire]

Hello everyone,

Here's a slightly more in-depth follow-up regarding the shards and RMT activity.

We are not planning to address the RMT activity related to shards by making adjustments to game balance, instead we will be individually tracking RMT activity and handling them. Basically, removing profit gain from shards would not decrease the amount of RMT, they would move to some other item and some other way to generate gil.

However, we do understand that many of you are concerned and upset that reports of botting and other activity is not addressed immediately. Please understand that ridding the game of RMT is not something that can take place overnight, but we are working extremely hard to ensure that everyone can play comfortably and without concern for RMT. We will also continue to post news announcements about how RMT and cheaters are being handled, so please be sure to check periodically.

[Kosmos992k]

However, we do understand that many of you are concerned and upset that reports of botting and other activity is not addressed immediately. Please understand that ridding the game of RMT is not something that can take place overnight, but we are working extremely hard to ensure that everyone can play comfortably and without concern for RMT. We will also continue to post news announcements about how RMT and cheaters are being handled, so please be sure to check periodically.

Thanks for the update. I wonder though whether players might be more satisfied if you could at least confirm that you (the dev team) will do something proactive to better secure the game servers as dabatase and client communication so that the botting menace is controlled. Your reply above does seem to suggest that in fact you're not going to prevent the bots, but it's those very bots that people see and report all the time. It's also those bots that are becoming more and more intrusive to the game experience. So, without going into any detail, can you at least confirm that your team will be seeking to limit or remove the operation of teleportation, warp or underground bots in the game?

[LlenCoram]

Hello everyone,

Here's a slightly more in-depth follow-up regarding the shards and RMT activity.

We are not planning to address the RMT activity related to shards by making adjustments to game balance, instead we will be individually tracking RMT activity and handling them. Basically, removing profit gain from shards would not decrease the amount of RMT, they would move to some other item and some other way to generate gil.

Would have been nice if this was the attitude taken with fishing instead of "Nope, might be botted, gut the entire thing!"

[Highlanderx]

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.

Your balancing shards by the economic effect? They should be balanced so they have NO ECONOMIC effect. The FACT the you can sell the shards required to make low level items for more the HQ versions of the items, is a joke. Shards should be sold by a vendor for 1-2gil each.

Hello everyone,

Here's a slightly more in-depth follow-up regarding the shards and RMT activity.

We are not planning to address the RMT activity related to shards by making adjustments to game balance, instead we will be individually tracking RMT activity and handling them. Basically, removing profit gain from shards would not decrease the amount of RMT, they would move to some other item and some other way to generate gil.

Except no other items are as needed or unrestricted in gaining them. You need multiples for any craft that are not materials. They are available to be farmed at any level on almost any node always the same slot. So, they are easy to bot. you can hold up to and sell them 9,999 at a time in every retainer slot. They can farm crystals but they are not available every node, so not as easy to bot. The other items while they could bot 9900 at a time they are limited to selling them in stacks of 99, 40 slots max.
So forcing them to move from shards to anything else would be a benefit.

[ShinkuTachi]

Except no other items are as needed or unrestricted in gaining them. You need multiples for any craft that are not materials. They are available to be farmed at any level on almost any node always the same slot. So, they are easy to bot. you can hold up to and sell them 9,999 at a time in every retainer slot. They can farm crystals but they are not available every node, so not as easy to bot. The other items while they could bot 9900 at a time they are limited to selling them in stacks of 99, 40 slots max.
So forcing them to move from shards to anything else would be a benefit.

Off topic:

I understand what you are trying to say; however, I have an issue with three of those statements:

1. The mats are just as necessary as shards are. I seriously doubt something can be crafted with one of the mats missing; it doesn't matter how many shards you have. Also, they are restricted, you can only collect 9999 per element of shards.

2. Even botting with teleporting bots, it would take an absurd amount of time to do this. So much so that it's not even efficient. It's not like they tap one node once and instantly have 9999 shards. About all shards are good for, aside from crafting, is a small steady flow of income for someone with a lvl 1 DoL.

3. Normal mats are more limited as far as what you can carry and sell at once; however, many of them also generate greater revenue equally as fast or faster than shards.

Anyway, all this is beside the point.

On topic:

Please, support a change in the shard yielding process by clicking this link and 'liking' the question for Live Letter X!

Thank you, and have a great day everyone!

[Ksenia]

Hello everyone,

Here's a slightly more in-depth follow-up regarding the shards and RMT activity.

We are not planning to address the RMT activity related to shards by making adjustments to game balance, instead we will be individually tracking RMT activity and handling them. Basically, removing profit gain from shards would not decrease the amount of RMT, they would move to some other item and some other way to generate gil.



However, we do understand that many of you are concerned and upset that reports of botting and other activity is not addressed immediately. Please understand that ridding the game of RMT is not something that can take place overnight, but we are working extremely hard to ensure that everyone can play comfortably and without concern for RMT. We will also continue to post news announcements about how RMT and cheaters are being handled, so please be sure to check periodically.

If you want me to be 100% honest, I don't blame people for botting shards. I'd like to see developers go out and gather a thousand of each shard ATK and get back to us on the quality of the content.

As for RMT you know the way that works as well as I. It's the core reason publishers and developers avoid sandbox content.

[Simurgi]

Create a server tool which propagates a player in every zone. Any tells this player receives goes to a GM, or SE employee. As this player is not in the world, the only tells they will get is from BOTS cycling through the player list in each zone.

At this point, the GM or SE employee can right click their name in the chat box. They will have the option to BAN that account. A screen capture, or log of the offending RMT message will then emailed to the player showing why his account was banned.

This takes care of tells for RMT. Shouts could work similarly, except the players would have a right-click option to submit for RMT review that would then be forwarded to the GM, or SE employee.

The bot problem would still exist, albeit temporarily. With the outlets to sell the RMT transactions eradicated, there would eventually be no incentive to BOT for RMT.

[Mortechai]

Hello everyone,

Here's a slightly more in-depth follow-up regarding the shards and RMT activity.

We are not planning to address the RMT activity related to shards by making adjustments to game balance, instead we will be individually tracking RMT activity and handling them.

Right. And yet legitimate players must remain paranoid about making any money at all for fear of having all their gil taken and their accounts swept. A friend of mine whom I've been playing SE MMO's with for 12 years just had his account swept clean by SE because they THOUGHT he might have been engaging in RMT activity. I can say with 100% certainty that he would never engage in such behaviour and the continual persecution and punishment of honest players for simply playing the market and making smart economic decisions is only going to drive people away from the game.

[Cegiana]

Right. And yet legitimate players must remain paranoid about making any money at all for fear of having all their gil taken and their accounts swept. A friend of mine whom I've been playing SE MMO's with for 12 years just had his account swept clean by SE because they THOUGHT he might have been engaging in RMT activity. I can say with 100% certainty that he would never engage in such behaviour and the continual persecution and punishment of honest players for simply playing the market and making smart economic decisions is only going to drive people away from the game.

I agree completely, my wife and I put a TON of time into 10-1.23, 60+ hours per week combined (give or take) while it was out. We didn't do any synthing what-so-ever, not even 1 synth in the whole time that the game was out, so as a result, we ended up with 30-40 thousand of each type of shard, around a thousand of each crystal and a small amount of clusters (across 4 characters total.) We were afraid to sell the shards because we thought we would get banned since SE doesn't actually look at the individuals before banning, it's a software that looks at your actions and bans you, no human brain involved so we were afraid that we would be seen as RMT because of our high amount of shards. We finally caved in and made more gil that we thought shards would ever make us. Now we play the waiting game, will our legacy accounts be banned for playing 1.0 and selling the drops? Only time will tell...