Do you want us to specialize or not?

First of all, I apologize for another red scrip rant, but this system is just so bad that it's made me just want to quit the game in all honesty.

The idea of specialisation really appealed to me. Level a class that you like without feeling like you have to level all the others just to be able to keep up. When I first levelled a crafter in 2.0 and got to 50, my excitement of being able to craft high level star items was rather short lived as I learned that you basically needed cross skills from all 8 crafters to have any chance.

Enter 3.0, the realm of choice. Level 1,2 or 3 crafters you enjoy and be able to do endgame. Awesome. Level a gatherer than you enjoy. Awesome.

So I levelled alchemist and miner. And now I'm being punished for it. Because I didn't level botanist, it takes me twice as long to get red scrips. 14 hours a week of node-waiting instead of 7 essentially. If you only levelled fisher, you're even worse off, since you have to rely on rng.

And my alchemist, the ONE item that I can craft for red scrips obviously uses a ton of mats from other crafts because **** you for specialising, so I have to buy those. At current MB prices, one craft will cost me 70k gil. And I need to make 22 of them to cap red scrips. Thats 1.5 million gil a week. Wasn't the point of scrips to get rid of the gil sink and allow people to get the gear gradually?

Am I alone in just wanting to throw down my ambelic and pickaxe and say **** it, its just not worth it?

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Originally Posted by OliviaBadger

Wasn't the point of scrips to get rid of the gil sink and allow people to get the gear gradually?

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Funny, that's the general impression I seem to recall having from the live letters that discussed the scrip system....... yeah. :/

On another note though: the whole "specialisation" concept is very weird to me. It's very weird to me in a game that seems to (or seemed to?) pride itself on its core Armoury Chest system, on this whole "be all on one character" idea. But, well, this specialisation is neither the first, nor the only such thing that's made its way into the game to instill a feeling of counter-intuitiveness on me.

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Originally Posted by OliviaBadger

Enter 3.0, the realm of choice. Level 1,2 or 3 crafters you enjoy and be able to do endgame. Awesome. Level a gatherer than you enjoy. Awesome.

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This still isn't true. The specialist skills are not even remotely a replacement for the far more useful and stronger skills of cross-classing, so you're still pretty much forced to level up every craft if you want to be successful.

In fact, I'd argue it's actually more important now. Goldsmith earns Maker's Mark at level 54 which makes Flawless synthesis actually useful. Whistles are simply rubbish. They rely too much on luck to use. They deplete only when a good condition occurs, and only make themselves useful when in multiples of 3, which is only 3 times total. Nymeia's Wheel is probably the only useful skill of the bunch, but it still requires you to have depleted a good number of stacks before it's worth using.

So, for all this talk about trying to do away with omni-crafting, this system actually supports it even more than before. I won't even get started on the scrip system. What seemed like a good idea on paper has turned into a seriously expensive grind. If I'm going to HQ a Hallowed Ramie Robe of Casting, I'd better damn well get more than 20 lousy scrips for it!

I liked being able to do all on one character. I'm getting close to 60 on all crafts and have not bothered with specialization.

I am not bothered by the leveling, but I can agree with TC - the red scrip system needs to be looked at...

Fisher is actually quite easy to get Scrips. I get 40-80, slightly more if I get lucky, in just one window for a fish that is listed. Sure it's slightly RNG based but it seems like we get one high tier that requires folklore and then one very easy to catch fish that gives slightly less.

Not really.
I find that very dull. I love omnicrafting and being able to be resourceful enough to make what I want. That was part of the appeal of the Job wheel in the first place.
Much as the Red scripts seem to limit us now, there looks like there's still good use from cross class skills, and general basic materials.

The only real point I can see from these limits is to slow down our endgame capabilities for some reason.

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Originally Posted by Gramul

Not really.
I find that very dull. I love omnicrafting and being able to be resourceful enough to make what I want. That was part of the appeal of the Job wheel in the first place.
Much as the Red scripts seem to limit us now, there looks like there's still good use from cross class skills, and general basic materials.

The only real point I can see from these limits is to slow down our endgame capabilities for some reason.

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It's kind of the equivalent of raid design where you're mostly time locked to gear up one Job at a time, but you can eventually get all to the same level.
I think that's the level of specialization they're promoting. You may give each crafting class a level of priority and order but there's not hard limitations to stop you from gearing all eventually.

Unlike the battle classes, though, it still favors omnicrafting due to how connected the cross classes are.
Cross Class with Jobs is much more accessible due to it being limited to only 2 other classes.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

It's kind of the equivalent of raid design where you're mostly time locked to gear up one Job at a time, but you can eventually get all to the same level.
I think that's the level of specialization they're promoting. You may give each crafting class a level of priority and order but there's not hard limitations to stop you from gearing all eventually.

Unlike the battle classes, though, it still favors omnicrafting due to how connected the cross classes are.
Cross Class with Jobs is much more accessible due to it being limited to only 2 other classes.

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I imagine the restriction will be relaxed in the future like with the tomestone restrictions. Because as of right now the time it apparently takes to gear up one class to endgame is over two months or 250million gil. (Though that's just personal hearsay, I haven't actually looked into it myself so take what I say with a grain of salt.)

I've stopped hating the script system. Which is saying something since as a fisher I have the absolute worst end of the deal where the scripts are involved. The way I look at it is simple. It's a way to separate the people who do full time crafting and gathering from those of us who only dabble in it as a way to support our fighting habits, (be it through gil, gear, helping friends, ect). Those who craft and gather full time should see it as a method to set themselves apart from the fighters, since they can use it to unlock stuff that the more casual DoH and DoL player would have to devote more of their dungeon running time to. I'm completely fine with the system since I started looking at it from that perspective......

EDIT: In the end, I fully admit that I'm a casual gatherer and crafter. I love the crafting system in this game, and fishing has been one of my favorite ways to pass the time, relax, and make gil since I first started playing. In the end though, combat is my specialty. I can't help my friends and FC mates as often in the gearing up aspect or leveling their non-combat classes, but I can hunt down monsters for materials, and be there to take down their foes in runs. I'm not expected to be able to do everything for them, and I'm fine with that. If everyone was fully self-sufficient, then we wouldn't even need things like the MB or the ability to give each other items.....

I like being able to specialize but the scrip system isn't the way to do it.

If they wanted to get rid of omnicrafting they'd give everyone all abilities and remove intercraft dependency on parts.

Like EQ2 did.

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Originally Posted by Allyrion

It's kind of the equivalent of raid design where you're mostly time locked to gear up one Job at a time, but you can eventually get all to the same level.
I think that's the level of specialization they're promoting. You may give each crafting class a level of priority and order but there's not hard limitations to stop you from gearing all eventually.

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I consider it an extension of what we already had prior to 3.0, people were still restricted in gearing up through foragers, supras and other such things with artificial time delays on how many materials you could farm from unspoiled nodes. Requiring x amount of those limited (unsellable and non-marketable) materials in order to continue gearing up. It was a little less restricted but it was restricted, I expect over time the script cap will rise and the materials cost dropped slightly but such changes always come shortly after new systems are implemented.

i will be blunt, they can't get out omnicrafting, for the sole reason that it's the principle of the game.... people saying that it must be stoped or controlled simply ignore this.

the game was sold as a game where 1 character can do all. the only limit is the time you will have to spend for reach this. even now the omnicrafting is almost mandatory for some of the most usefull skill of the game, specialization didn't change this. this mess is because they now, want to change this.... why? because the flow of the market was low on many server.... but the omnicrafting was responsable for this, the reason was how the craft was designed in the 2.x series....

let's start about this:
- a materia system that are barely usefull outside craft/gatherer and hardcore gamer, when the game try to appeal to casual... we had to wait the 2.5 for see a whole of equipement available, that wasn't recquiring materia.
- the desynthesis, one of the worst system i have ever seen, it cost tons of cash to level up it, since passed a certain level, you get your exp into it when you need to craft 1 -2 star gear for this. (or pray the rng god for dungeon loot)
- a system that did ask more and more rare material, leading to a toxic market board, where some item was sold to some outragous price...encouraging RMT profit.

and do HW did change this? no, it have gone farer! between leather that ask 3 skin with a very low drop rate (that an example) or item recquiring component rare or from time node/ they have make it a pain to craft, is not fun, is not even rewarding! exept for the FC airship or crafter and gatherer is most of it useless! only hardcore gamer will still continue to use some craft for get the small boost available... but hardcore are what? 5-10% of the community... but that not only limited to crafting, HW was made for hardcore gamer, indeed you can do alexander NM, true, your EX too.... but do the game have offer anything new for keep player to the game? nope...

it was asked for years now, to offer content with high replayability and fun... that are not raid... but i digress, the scrips system is simply the same system than token we have for combat class, nothing new, but that system is not adapted to the craft. and instead to work on give a true goal to the crafter, a true activity, they have decide to turn it into a hardcore system....

maybe time to think at the game from the midcore player base. because soo far nothing was done correctly. and it's not with the 3.1 that must be corrected, but ASAP! or the it will lead to some tragedy, like have done the V1. stop aim for hardcore!

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i will be blunt, they can't get out omnicrafting, for the sole reason that it's the principle of the game.... people saying that it must be stoped or controlled simply ignore this.

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And I'll be blunt.

It's not about removing it, it's about removing it's necessity.

We've already seen that they don't like the cross class ability thing. Was a nice relic from 1.0 from what I've seen, but it ends up with everyone taking the exact same abilities or you're "bad". The choices are also so limited that there's really no reason to take others even if there were more available.



If everything was available to all crafters and you had absolutely 0 need to level up all the other crafts.. well, nothing is stopping you from doing it, but it sure as hell wouldn't be necessary. Which is the biggest problem with it. It's required if you want half a shot in hell at crafting anything remotely worth a damn.

I don't have to level up all of my combat classes to max just to do something. In fact, even the classes I take cross class abilities from, for example, AST, I only need Thaumaturge to 26 for Swiftcast and Conjurer to 34 for stoneskin. My Scholar also needed those points.

Crafting though? God save you if you don't take Culinarian for SH II, for example.. and Byregot's Blessing at 50 carpenter is incredibly powerful.

Thought the point of specialization was to get out of omni crafting at least on one job, I can see the fun in having it, but imo if the point was to get out of omni and the best choices are still omni.. then they probably should buff the specializations. At least to the point that the one you have specialized in does not need or want omni crafting, as within that one specialization you would be good to go.

Getting into crafting and hearing "you need every class leveled up and probably every class geared too" is pretty daunting, and makes the economy pretty silly (can be controlled by few, making ridiculous pricing schemes). Talking as a consumer (not a end game crafter) specialization should allow you to craft for that particular craft with no interclass requirements (with a buff they should probably reduce the amount of specializations you can have at once, otherwise you might as well just make huge changes everywhere). Specialize much earlier in the game, be a dedicated goldsmith without also being a culinarian. Making switching possible but discouraged enough people don't switch whenever they need to craft from a particular class (standing by the switcher and just flying through the specializations as need be).

I know the crafters who hold the larger end game part of the market would probably be like "nooo don't take away the mountain that blocks them from me", but imo the game would be better if at least one class could have a fairly linear growth cost and not "level one, level them all - well".

I have a really similar experience to the OP here. I don't mind that "omnicrafting" is a possibility if people want to do it, but I never liked that I had to be able to craft everything before I was able to craft anything in my preferred crafts. So while I didn't want to limit everyone else, I was kind of interested in what they were talking about with specializations, because I was hoping it would allow me to be a "master goldsmith" instead of just a "master crafter."

Unfortunately these new systems, both specializations and the scrips, fail to accomplish any of that either way. Now we're specialists who can't make anything.

I feel like we need to see another patch before calling this system a dud. I think the spread between what a specialist can do and an omni crafter can do will only grow from here. Mats are in lighter supply because there are more people using them than gathering them. The progression looks like its hindered because of the unusual state of the economy. Once that starts to balance I think it will work well, but some things will still need to be tweaked.

I really didn't mind omni-crafters. I loved that I was able to just craft what I needed and offered my services.
Totally fine with that. The only thing I dislike is the fact that red-scrips...they're a little bit hard and far more expensive to obtain. ><.

Unless you get lucky with a craft that requires 1 adamantite ore per craft...and fairly easy to max out the collectible rate. Then :v. man.


-shrug-

Having capped both gatherer red scrips and crafter red scrips for the current week...
Gatherer: not really hard at all... and you can save up for future weeks ahead of time if you have the space. You can do a lot of other things between node pops so it's not like you camp the node all the time.
I still feel the red scrips gear is too expensive, and that favors should be moved to blue scrips.

Crafter: Useful to have all crafters at 60 as you then can select the optimal scrips/effort craft. Highly individual what you consider optimal. Also useful if you're able to collect all ingredients on your own. No gil spent, even if the market board value of the materials used is very high.
Ephemeral gathering nodes insanely useful to build up the necessary stock of crystals and clusters.
I feel that crafter materials should be moved to blue scrips, just like gathering favors, and that the scrips gear is too expensive.

Note: This is all from my own perspective where I will use the red scrips to obtain gear rather than materials to craft the gear.
In 2.x I had at best the Artisan set (token based one) with some melded accessories.
These accessories I still use as I don't want to remeld.

That's been my BIGGEST issue with FFXIV--crafting. I LOVE that it has gameplay elements in this game, but one thing I HATE is having to level all the crafters to do anything. I wouldn't mind if specializing a single craft meant you had to jump through fire and do a grind equivalent to the 2.x relic, but one thing I DON'T want to have to do is level all the crafters. It costs too much gil and time to level THAT many jobs AND be proficient in them. I'm so glad I held off on leveling crafting in 3.0, because it seems like nothing has changed which is a real shame because I was so happy to hear about the "specialization" system before the expansion came out.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

snip.

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You've just basically proved my point. You have all crafters at 60, and all gatherers at 60. So it takes you half the time it does for me to cap gatherer scrips, and you can pick and choose the cheapest item to cap crafter scrips.

My OP was about how choosing one or two classes is punishing

How I understand it is that specialisation mean only that non-specialised crafters can't craft everything, not that 1 crafter at level 60 is all what you need. There will be (or are already) recipes that only specialised classes can craft.

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Originally Posted by Felis

How I understand it is that specialisation mean only that non-specialised crafters can't craft everything, not that 1 crafter at level 60 is all what you need. There will be (or are already) recipes that only specialised classes can craft.

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I believe specialization is still in it's infancy in terms of only the most basic of basic foundations have so far been added. I fully expect over time specializations will branch further into unique recipes for specialists and SE will continue to try and counter omni-crafting at the top end of crafting spectrum but this will take a long time. Over time I also believe SE will improve the balance on things such as script material costs and script caps etc, I am very certain a lot more recipes will be added in the coming months too. It is just a case of being patient as with any newly added content which SE always tries to address such issues following it's release.

So....whats the problem needing to rely on other crafts to provide materials? In fact, whats the problem with needing multiple jobs to do something more effectively?

You can buy the mats off AH. Putting effort in multiple crafts makes it cheaper.
You can collect red scrips. Putting effort in multiple jobs makes it faster.

Effort <=> Returns

It is a matter of perspective. (Glass half full or half empty) You are not being punished for not leveling other jobs. You are being REWARDED for leveling other jobs.
Players these days appear to want a silver spoon to feed them everything.

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Originally Posted by tymora

So....whats the problem needing to rely on other crafts to provide materials? In fact, whats the problem with needing multiple jobs to do something more effectively?

You can buy the mats off AH. Putting effort in multiple crafts makes it cheaper.
You can collect red scrips. Putting effort in multiple jobs makes it faster.

Effort <=> Returns

It is a matter of perspective. (Glass half full or half empty) You are not being punished for not leveling other jobs. You are being REWARDED for leveling other jobs.
Players these days appear to want a silver spoon to feed them everything.

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Please look into how much work goes into one single 2 star. It's as much work as a hardcore raiders week schedule.

This point --> •


Your head --> (o.o)

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Originally Posted by OliviaBadger

You've just basically proved my point. You have all crafters at 60, and all gatherers at 60. So it takes you half the time it does for me to cap gatherer scrips, and you can pick and choose the cheapest item to cap crafter scrips.

My OP was about how choosing one or two classes is punishing

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Actually. I was doing only adamantite ore for turnins. I wouldn't gain 600 GP between chysal greens and the ores and didn't think of using cordials to speed things up.
Don't have any folklore books yet either.

Crafters you do however pretty much want all at 60 though.
The specializations though... Still can't figure out how to actually make use of them with or without spending blue scrips on that stuff that boosts the probability you get good condition.
Pretty sure they will be required for future high end crafting, but I'm really only interested in the looks of the gear at the moment.

i ll invest in mats next !!

the question is why choose? i means, you can level up all craft to 60 nothing it's against it.... it's more about you don't want. and there you are asking to punish people that will spend the time to level them all.

how specialization can work when getting skill from the other craft can offer more possibility and flexibility. it can't! that the whole point, force people to choice 3 jobs for get specialized skill was an error. the trouble is they try to change the game soo much for please people coming from game like WoW where it was nessecarity to choose (or you had to play an alt). now they are between two type of game and it's a mess. either they support the core mechanic of the game (1 character can do all) or they will need to change the whole game. but they can't stay like this.

but i want to say something that seems to be misunderstood. a crafter player will barely do fight, outside for gather some component, that why omnicrafting was more than welcome. by asking to tune down this you are simply denying the right to that type of player to have something for him....why that? because you are too lazy for level up other craft.... especially since now level up to 50 is extremely easy...

Definately disappointing to hear, it seems you're still forced to level everything to get things done :(

Forced Omnicrafting is the main reason why I quit crafting until very recently. Hell the only reason why I'm leveling Goldsmith is so I can meld ACC on the Healer accessories I'm going to buy.

A thought that comes to mind with a person who only has one gather leveled, they could add Blue Scrip Favors that allow you interact with a "Legendary" node but only for the purpose of collecting and the perception requirements would be higher than normal.

So as it stands it's currently Perception to have a decent chance of collecting them, but when you use the favor to force the node spawn, let's say it becomes 650. See as a person who only has one gather this wouldn't be bad because a minor difference between 3 gather and 1 gather is that the 1 gather is more likely to have their tool and offhand leveled and thus their ability to gather from these specialized nodes would be greater then those who haven't made that investment yet. Yes this concept would also make those with gil just be able to do it faster if they have 3 gathers but the overall idea is that this could potentially be a way to "reward" those who only have one class, that specialize purely on it and offer them the opportunity to make use of the melding of all their gear.

lol getting red scrips as a fisher is the EASIEST of all the gatherers. do some research

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Originally Posted by sackm

lol getting red scrips as a fisher is the EASIEST of all the gatherers. do some research

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Fishing is also boring as piss.

The problem with Crafting and Gathering is that SE is designing them around the MB instead of designing them to be fun. That's why recipees use so many materials now. That's why red scrip gear takes so long to get when compared to stuff like esoterics (and that's if you don't use them for mats).

The specialization system is pretty bad too. It's not fun to be locked-out of getting new abilities on most of your crafters. DoW and DoM don't have this problem with the exception of SMN/SCH to a much lesser extent, and people want that changed. So why do DoH have this system? The MB.

I disagree completely with doing away with omnicrafting though. Being able to craft everything is what makes crafting so much fun for me, well, made it so much fun until they started obsessing with MB prices and screwing DoH and DoL over. Players should have the option of being able to craft everything.

I think we might not understand what they mean by specialist crafting.

The new system is intended for people who craft and only craft, hence specialist crafting. Getting all 8 DoH to 60, even DoL x 3 to 60 makes you a specialist. It's all you do, hence you are a specialist.
I'll let you know if I ever make it in to the zone.