Can we just remove shards from the game?

[Kyana]

Why not gate shard farming?
Gatherers can get a new tool and head to increase their stats high enough to farm the new nodes.
A bot won't be able to do that so easy.
Why not put rare "shard/crystal boxes" in these nodes which, once you open them, give you a number of random shards or crystals.
200 water shards and 50 earth crystals for example.

I think high level gatherers should get a bonus for farming shards and maybe even crystals.
But giving them a simple bonus would enable bots to use them too.

[Riko_Futatabi]

I think this has been mentioned already, but in FFXI(And maybe XIV 1.0?) you were able to break Clusters down into a random amount of Crystals(No Shards in XI though).

So for example: I go mine a single Cluster and break it down into 5 Crystals and those 5 Crystals can be broken down into a total of 25 Shards.

All the above example needs is a little randomization with the amount you would receive per break.

It's really that simple of a solution to make shard gathering less of a mind-numbing chore. We don't need a new Crafting Class for this or a new crafting recipe or new gathering abilities.

Keep it simple, as it should be!

[Moqi]

I don't mind shards, I'd rather tjey improve gathering them or make all drews available from sylphs (i am not at lvl4 yet so i don't know if this is already true).

[Myrhn]

I think this has been mentioned already, but in FFXI(And maybe XIV 1.0?) you were able to break Clusters down into a random amount of Crystals(No Shards in XI though).

So for example: I go mine a single Cluster and break it down into 5 Crystals and those 5 Crystals can be broken down into a total of 25 Shards.

All the above example needs is a little randomization with the amount you would receive per break.

It's really that simple of a solution to make shard gathering less of a mind-numbing chore. We don't need a new Crafting Class for this or a new crafting recipe or new gathering abilities.

Keep it simple, as it should be!

In 1.0 Alchemist did that. They break cluster into shards or crystals. Also they break down fish into shards too. The problem was that the Wards were so overflow with shards that they cost nothing even comparing to ARR prices.

[Riko_Futatabi]

In 1.0 Alchemist did that. They break cluster into shards or crystals. Also they break down fish into shards too. The problem was that the Wards were so overflow with shards that they cost nothing even comparing to ARR prices.

I don't see shards costing almost nothing as a problem. If my suggestion of reviving an older way of obtaining shards came to be, I doubt people would even care about shard prices. Most would probably be glad that they could gather their own shards relatively quick compared to the current pace.

[MythToken]

Its actually very beneficial to the market to have a low and steady (low volatility) price on shards. Since literally every crafting recipe's profit/loss and cost is based around them.

[Dhex]

1 Cluster -> 100 Crystals -> 1 Crystal -> 100 Shards

1 Cluster = 1000 Shards

Kills the RMT "bot" advantage in the market.

[seorin]

Another interesting way to "solve" the problem would be to put shards and crystals for sale on vendors to provide a price ceiling. They've done this with a number of previously scarce items when adding beast tribe vendors, like blue landtrap leaves for growth formula gamma. Have the amalj'aa vendor sell fire shards for 40 and fire crystals for 100, water shards and crystals on the sahagin vendor, etc.

[LineageRazor]

Another interesting way to "solve" the problem would be to put shards and crystals for sale on vendors to provide a price ceiling. They've done this with a number of previously scarce items when adding beast tribe vendors, like blue landtrap leaves for growth formula gamma. Have the amalj'aa vendor sell fire shards for 40 and fire crystals for 100, water shards and crystals on the sahagin vendor, etc.

While I haven't put a lot of thought into whether or not this would be wise, it WOULD mesh neatly with the whole "rebel beastman faction" theme. The "bad" beastmen want to summon Primals and need crystals to do it. The "good" beastmen want to stop it, and so probably spend some of their time taking those crystals away. What to do with those crystals, then? Sell them to adventurers, of course!

[Shinkyo]

Personally, my main issue with shards is the crappy wards skills we have to increase the amount of shards we gather...
I hate buying things on the market that I can gather myself but then there's no way I'm spending hours of gathering shards at a rate of 1 shard per hit with only x3 boost every 4 minutes on a single node... It's also stupid that the benefit of the ward skill is the same for shards, crystals and clusters since you pretty much gather them at the same rate but you require much more shards for crafts. I'm at a point where I need 1000 of multiple shards to get my master main hand tools and obviously, in the current state, I'd be buying them of the MB for 80K gils per stacks of 1000, directly supporting RMT...
I think they really need to redesign this skill and the associated traits so that the skill is based on duration (or X number of nodes) and the trait is

Something like that:
-(Skill) XXX's Ward: Increases shard yield by two for the next 60s (or whatever the duration, should be enough to last 3-4 nodes).
-(Trait) Ward of the Twelve I: Extends gathering ward increases to Crystals and add 1 additional yield to shards.
-(Trait) Ward of the Twelve II: Extends gathering ward increases to Clusters and add 1 additional yield to shards.

So in the end you'd have a skill that would be active for about 3-4 nodes and would yield:
- 5 shards per hit effectively giving a boost of 64 shards every 4 minutes (assuming the skill lasts 4 nodes). I'm expecting you'd gather a bit more than 100 shards in 10 min which decent.
- 3 crystals per hit effectively giving a boost of 32 crystals every 4 minutes (though it'll be less since only 2 nodes per set gives crystals)
- 3 clusters per hit, will remain as-is since the node is only available at certain time.

Personally, that would make life much easier and I'd definitely be more willing to gather shards for myself or to sell.
And since the skill and traits are only available at mid/high level, bots would be less likely to benefit from it.