I've said before and I'll say it again, there's a real problem with the way shards are obtained at the moment. First off, it favours the gil farmers who can endlessly bot away at this resource for hours on end, and secondly the sheer number of them required for crafting is excessive at present.

Right now there's only a few options for getting shards. There's desynthesis, which gets you maybe one or two per item and there's gathering which is an incredibly slow process.

Gatherers have limited GP, which regenerates REALLY slowly. Using this resource is the only way to get a decent yield, otherwise each swing gives only 1 shard, with only a few nodes being exceptions. Cordials allow us to restore GP, but these are on a 4 minute timer.

A good crafter can get through THOUSANDS of shards very easily. Especially given that some crafts can use up 99 of a shard type. Sadly, there just aren't enough shards to go around as shown by the insane price hiking done on shard prices. (Seriously, even the smallest stacks are now selling for over 100k!)

This has long been a thorn in players side since the game opened and NOTHING has been done to address the issue or even pay it lip-service. There needs to be a GAME left after all the grinding, and right now spending hours upon hours wacking a rock is not a fun way to spend that subscription time. Small wonder most turn to buying it from botters.

Make this game fun to play again, not just a grind on top of another grind. There's no reason for this vital resource to be so darned scarce, so it's high time that SE fixed the problem instead of ignoring it.