Shard/Crystal Ceiling Price

[HakuroDK]

3. Beast Tribes? Some people don't want to even bother. Like myself. But ultimately I want to craft.

That's not a valid reason. Beast Tribes have been around for about a year now and the vast majority of players have had every chance to max them all out. Not only that, but Ixali beast tribe quests are integral to crafting due to Ehcatl Sealant and Xephatol Spring Water.

5. I leveled my crafter not through leves but farming zone by zone. Not shards but other raw materials. I would sell some then keep some. I leveled my crafts with my gatherers so what didn't get used got sold. I go gather all my own crystals. I would rather have the abundance that is on the market board.

You would rather have the "abundance" on the market board rather than being able to buy an infinite amount at a lower cost from an NPC merchant. What?

5. They won't level the job if they don't believe there is value in playing the job. Without seeing some tangible reward they will simply chose to not play the game for being un fun.

There is value in playing the job, that value has absolutely nothing to do with farming shards and crystals to sell, and doing so is the most un-fun thing I can think of in the entire game, nevermind when it comes to gathering. Cobalt, Electrum, Darksteel, Gold, Platinum, and a whole host of other items sell for a mint on the market boards because no one wants to bother with mining themselves. But if you're telling me that mining shards is more fun and lucrative at 40-60 gil each than Cobalt/Electrum at 400-600 gil each, Darksteel/Gold at 500-700 gil each, and Platinum at >900 gil each, that's ridiculous.

I know I'm just saying no when you believe you have an idea that you believe will improve the game experience, and it sucks to hear criticism of our ideas. Maybe SE will implement your idea, but if they don't consider this as a possible reason why.

It's not that you're saying no. It's the cynical attitude towards the development team and the undertones that botting is an acceptable practice that are getting me on-edge in this conversation. You're basically saying--and correct me if I'm wrong--"People bot, no one's going to do anything about it and your suggestion will hurt more players than it will help because shards and crystals are lucrative." Except they're only lucrative to players who soullessly grind for 8+ hours a day for a 100k gil paycheck at the end of said day that I could easily achieve 1.5-fold in less than an hour by doing Beast Tribes and selling Sealants.

[Nutz]

I do a lot of shard gathering myself (for personal use, typically while looking for a treasure map) and wouldn't have any sort of problem with this, except that it would make the bots target something else (what that something is I don't know). It might be all for the good because bots would have a difficult time finding another massively steady market. You can't simply farm electrum in the same quantities that they are currently farming shards and expect even a fraction of it to move, no matter how low they price it.

As others have said, shards are not a normal source of income for gatherers. You'd do better gathering just about anything because the bots have increased the supply so greatly. Really without the bots I'm not sure what SE would have done with shards by now. They'd likely be hundreds of gil a piece simply because the supply (provided by sane gatherers who are real people) could never meet the demand.

As it stands now, shards are gathered for personal use, by new gatherers who don't know what they're doing, and by bots. Making them purchasable will have a negative effect only on the bots, though the subsequent actions of the bots would probably have negative effects on legitimate gathering, unless they just eat the loss and sell for the NPC price.