The goal of crafting materials as a monster drop is to fill the role of an item that you are generally interested in picking up as loot so you very rarely leave completely empty handed. Showing the players what that is and interacting with it gives you a chance to register specific materials that you might be hunting for and can prompt crafting sessions. It also helps teach new players what mods and affixes are available. It also directs new players to the crafting system organically as reading instructions and tutorials is a super power held only by a select few.
Auto-pickup of crafting materials completely breaks down all of this.
In response to players feeling overwhelmed with clicks with regards to crafting materials, we added a vacuum so that it picks up all the shards around one picked up shard.
In response to players feeling that they were taking up too much inventory space, we added a special inventory for them to live in.
Edit: This was hopefully to show that we are already part way down a very slippery slope and we are trying to make a careful and controlled descent.
Maybe not in this thread (yet) but that request does come in. I would be completely floored if this ever is included.
I’m really not a fan of bandaid solutions and this one has the unfortunate downside of just being auto-pickup in disguise because you just run an auto-presser and suddenly it’s auto loot for crafting materials.
It is not a dead topic and we do read the feedback on it. We will continue to discuss feedback on the matter going forward.
We are currently happy with the system in the current version of the game.