Specialist System in 3.0

[Nyalia]

To answer the questions above, I currently have a sub that only allows a single character, so no, I don't have alts for desynthing. My wife does play too though, so between the two of us, we have five desynth classes at 88+ (only three of ours are above 100). I have six crafting classes at the 4* level, but only one crafter Lucis (and only one gatherer Lucis). I don't spend as much time in this game as it seems - I troll the forums a lot, but only spend a few hours a day in game. Honestly, crafting isn't a source of money to me. Crafting earned me probably ~15m total net profit over the year I've been playing. Desynth, on the other hand, has earned me ~80m, and ~75m of that was just a single, vendor-bought item (I used to call it "printing money" though it's no longer profitable. I'd fill my inventory, queue, then desynth in dungeons between pulls. People would probably have minded less if I didn't main PLD at the time...). I could have made far more if I had spent all of my time doing it, but there were plenty of other fun things to do in game and you can only click the same button so many times before it gets monotonous.

I play this game to have fun. Crafting is fun, and, for me, being able to craft endgame gear for friends is extremely fun. I like being able to do (nearly) everything (I leave the cooking to my wife in game and IRL - she loves it, I start fires), and that's one of the reasons I really love this game. Desynthing being limited is really not much of a limitation. As stated, you can get nearly everything out of desynth with just three classes. To me, being able to desynth only 50% of dungeon drops just means I have an excuse to turn the rest into seals. I still get BC3s regularly as well as advanced materials, and I still get GC seals from the stuff I can't personally desynth. It's not like I have to be an WVR desynther to get, say, Allagan Silk. It's not only a dungeon drop, but LTW and CUL desynthable items can yield it too (yes, there's an Allagan Silk fish - Blood-red Bonytongue).

If specializations are like that, where the items unique to a specialization are craftable by multiple classes but with different mat requirements, and you can have a third of the classes specialized, then sure, that's not a huge deal. I could live with that and not have any complaints (my only complaint about the desynth system was back when we couldn't quite max three classes leading to super awkward situations when maxed out, but they fixed that). But that's unlikely. It's much more sensible to assume that only certain craft specializations can make a given endgame material and/or endgame gear, and the endgame gear requires items from the other specializations. That's kinda the entire point of a specialization system - making people need materials from others. However, that's simply not how this game has worked up until now. The economy is based around one person being able to do it all, which means that everyone has the same opportunities. Specialization more than anything favors people who spend all day in game because they have the time to level alts. For the rest of us, the time expense an alt costs is super expensive. Being able to make all your stuff yourself is inherently cheaper than working with other people. Those who do that will have more market control and it will give them the market power to edge out competitors who are at a disadvantage compared to them. The current system favors no one - any advantage one person has, another can get. This will change that dynamic significantly.

And no, I don't consider myself in the top 1% for crafters. I don't go around advertising my services and looking for work, I don't constantly craft stuff to sell on the MB anymore, and the majority of the items I make these days are for friends and I'm making them for free (or tips). I made enough money off ventures (got four Littlefoot minions in a row last week!) and desynth that crafting for profit just doesn't feel necessary, and I've stockpiled tons of materia, crystals, and basic mats so my expenses are low. But, I do have experience with endgame crafting, market manipulation, optimizing rotations, and I have made quite a lot of 4* items at this point. So, I feel I do know what I'm talking about (though I could still be wrong about the impact a specialization system would have, or about what the system will entail).


EDIT: To be clear, my wife and I probably qualify as Eorzean "1%ers" (we pool our money) given we have a large and a medium house next to each other. But, once we got the houses, we stopped really caring that much about making money and focused on the rest of the game. And, since the majority of my income was from desynth and not crafting, I don't consider myself one of the "top crafters" on my server, much less in the game. Sure, I have tons of random desynth knowledge (did you know that you can get the i70 Rose Gold Rings from desynthing Better Crowned Pies as a CUL? Or that if you're at dSkill 82, you have a 34% chance of desynthing an r90 item (increasable to 49% with HQ Tinker's Calm and HQ Bacon Broth)?), but that's totally separate from being a "top crafter" :P