Specialist System in 3.0

[Sibyll]

Restricting one person from being able to do everything just benefits the people with more time on their hands because alts exist.

This is kind of why I'm sick of them using time investment as the only gate. I like the idea of choosing between being jack of all trades, master of none and being a specialist in a few with strengths and weaknesses associated with each path except for the part where people with too much time on their hands being unaffected by any restriction and continuing to control the market.

I'd be happy to see something as simple as Specializations being the equivalent of Jobs where you only get to cross class with 2 DoH classes which would require unique rotations and strategies between specializations. It'd make crafting less homogeneous.

[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

[Gillionaire]

Hmmm I would've expected someone with your kind of forum presence and guides would be looking at money in the range of 0.1%.
But I guess it makes sense, most people that actually share knowledge and like to explore things are in the moderately wealthy range and not have making gil as their primary motivation.

Like Mithrie Menethil, he's surprisingly not as wealthy as he appears to be either, probably because he spends most of his time writing up guides or making videos etc.. Exploring things rather than just finding a niche and going with it until it is no longer profitable.

[Alx789]

That sounds good for you, but what about people who specialize in refined mats? (rose gold nuggets, dark steel nuggets, ingots, twinthread, hippo leather etc.)

These items HQ are not needed to HQ 2 star finals. They may be needed for 3 star products but in a very limited amounts. And there is no need of any specialization to nq such items - some shots with enough crship... "Specialize" sounds to loud for such activity. And prices ... You may find a lot of before lvl 50 items at 10-40K price diapason and get more profit.

With 3 star maths i don't understand such activity too. Wolfram ingot is harder to HQ than Wolfram Cuirass and can be sold in my world at 60K price and 25 for NQ (scheelite costs 5K, ferberite hq 20K nq 2k) i have a tonnes of terminus putty hq and can easilly use nq ingots for cuirass and try to sell it for 200-250k. And all maths exept putty will cost for me less than 2 ferberite hq i will need to hq 2 ingots. I checked sales - nobody buys hq ingots...

[Gillionaire]

snip

HQ mats still hold a place on the MB as a commodity because it gives people a peace of mind. Kind of an insurance policy if you will.. Not saying it's necessary, but if it's 20-30k extra most people will pay the premium to ensure they are protected from horrible RNG.

Also, reason wolfram ingots don't really sell is because people who need them can already make wolfram ingots. What they should've done to encourage cross class material trades was to diversify the materials for crafts instead of having GSM use gold and platinum for 99% of things, and BSM/ARM use darksteel/wolfram for 99% of things etc.

All that aside, there are people that make most of their gil by gathering and selling mats. Gathering is their main game, and they refine the mats to give it a little more value etc.. It's a lucrative portion of the market.

Besides, we're not discussing the viability of hq mats for 2-3 star crafts, we're discussing the value of the craft if one were limited to one or two of them.
To somebody who makes their gil by the means I described above, if they were forced to specialize in one or two of the classes, their market basically shrinks by more than half. Can you imagine trying to make gil by only selling rose gold nugget only? then move on to rose gold ingot then gold ingot into platinum ingot? That would be a very slow progression, if even possible with all the competition to come with it. Of course, you can say to diversify into gear, etc. But that argument just brings us back full circle..

This will apply even to people who sell gears. Of the people who sell artisan's gear on the MB, who only sells artisan's sandals/grinding wheel/spinning wheel? (taking CRP as example) nobody, if someone sells one artisan gear, they usually make and sell the rest of them too.

Such a change will affect everybody, think about how many types of final product you deal in.. It's usually 3-4 classes or more. Now, eliminate them by classes until one or two remain. Think about how profitable that'll be for you to all of a sudden cut your wares by 1/4th.

[Alx789]

Gil market is limited by world and it is very small to be stable. As understood each world can keep 2^16 or 2*2^16 players at the same time and 100-200K players total. This restricts endgame market positions to 1-2 sales/day if it's good. And not only endgame - positions with 10 sales day and more may be positioned as very active regardless it's level. Some positions may be spammed by a week or two - it happens regullary. Under such conditions limited crafter looses his profit for a valuable amount of time and will have no chances to change situation - it costs 9 levelups to 60 and 1-2 to 100.

I saw such situation in my world - only three! undercutters practicaly blocked sales at 1 star market for wvr and ltw. And what to do if you will not be able to go to another skill and have these two only?

[Gillionaire]

I saw such situation in my world - only three! undercutters practicaly blocked sales at 1 star market for wvr and ltw. And what to do if you will not be able to go to another skill and have these two only?

That's the same thing as what I'm talking about..
It is exactly what specialization will force people into. They will run into that ONE guy that has complete hold over the market and right now, if that happens you can jump to a different market. Do all profitable markets have that ONE guy? most of the time yes, but without specialization, you can always move over to a different item and work that part of the market.

If specialization forces people into one, and you happen to choose the wrong one where you're left to compete with one of "those" people.. you're pretty much screwed.

[RiceisNice]

....

HQing 2★ items without HQ mats is pretty standard for alot of crafters once they get the full melded artisan set (excluding the token items).

HQ Items for 4★ and forager/artisan 3★ equipment crafting honestly doesn't help much either because the quality pool gets pretty diluted. I mean it'll add a little bit of quaility, but the most it'll mitigate is that you need 1 less successful touch at the end, out of the 12~ that you need to ensure an absolute 100% (assuming no good on GS+inno+BB combo).

If they wanted to limit how much someone can craft (which I still disagree with espesically with our current model), there's so many things they need to adjust before stepping into it. The way we're looking at crafting now, BSM does nearly all the artisan tools, Weaver does two artisan equips, LTW does two forager equips. BSM and ALC are crying in a corner and GSM is off doing their best impression of Scrooge McDuck.

[Aeyis]

snip.

They are needed in mass production of certain items such as Artisans Gearss turn ins. HQ mats give an insurance that your macros will give you HQ products, so you wont have to manually craft for hours.
They are also incredibly important for crafters that are starting out. HQ 1 star mats at 10k each? That's likely still cheaper then the price tag of that Militia tool or AF equip you want to get.

[JonBigwood]

I am just guessing. I think specialisation may be related to FC crafting. FC will be able to craft airships, and different parts will have to be made by different crafters, and one player won't be able to have all the crafters leveled up high enough to make all the parts.

The goal would be make people co-operate with each other, and join a real FC with other players (and not a FC with just himself and his alts, to take advantage of the chest and be able to pass things from one alt to another.) Maybe I am completetly mistaken, though.