Worst fears about specialist crafting are realized

[AnnietheCat]

Would you guys please stop making this stupid comparison?

Except it isn't a stupid comparison? A vast majority of this game is solo content. From leveling a new class to doing story instances. However, if you spend a majority of your time in dungeons/trials/raids, it would be different for you. A vast majority of my time is spent crafting, because that's what I choose to do with it. Just as a raider chooses to raid, career crafters choose to. I put a metric ass ton of work, time, and gil into becoming an omnicrafter only to have this new system go "lol nope, no omnis allowed". If specialization actually worked for it's intended use instead of punishing those of us who legitimately enjoy crafting for the sake of crafting, this wouldn't even be a topic. The whole point was to make it so that you don't need to omnicraft in order to gain footing in crafting. However, when you unlock specialist skills at level 50something, that plan isn't going to work. You still need cross class skills to even get up there in the first place, which is what SE claims they were trying to fix. So maybe if they made the new skills actually useful instead of saying we can't omnicraft, people would stop making this comparison. I mean, the major draw of this game was the lack of a need for alts. People can do everything on a single character. Except now that isn't the case and we either have to make extra alts, level them to HW areas and then level crafting or be at the mercy of others in order to get items we can craft ourselves(so either waiting for them to come back from hiatus or dealing with them charging an arm and a leg as a "tip" for crafting it, etc). This is an unnecessary gate; their intent was to encourage new players to craft, not convince old players to quit. But they failed at the former and exceeded expectations in the latter. I get the desire for wanting people to function as a community, but prior to this system we could make the choice to. Now we don't have a choice. And forced interaction only serves to create resentment.

[Zojha]

Except it isn't a stupid comparison? A vast majority of this game is solo content.

Let's see for DoW/DoM: Leves. Open world mobs. Hunting log (Until 50, Not repeatable). Quests (Not repeatable, except beast tribe). Low ranked hunts/FATEs.
Contrast to: Every dungeon, raid and trial, the diadem, PvP, guildhests, high rank hunts/FATEs. All of which are repeatable.

Fun fact: You cannot progress in the MSQ as pure solo player, because you have to do the dungeons/trials and you cannot do them all alone. Forced interaction much?

It is a stupid comparison. Stop making it. Feel free to complain about the specialist system all you like (and you sure do seem to like it a lot), but don't make stupid comparisons to support the point.

[-BlueGreen-]

Let's see for DoW/DoM: Leves. Open world mobs. Hunting log (Until 50, Not repeatable). Quests (Not repeatable, except beast tribe). Low ranked hunts/FATEs.
Contrast to: Every dungeon, raid and trial, the diadem, PvP, guildhests, high rank hunts/FATEs. All of which are repeatable.

Fun fact: You cannot progress in the MSQ as pure solo player, because you have to do the dungeons/trials and you cannot do them all alone. Forced interaction much?

It is a stupid comparison. Stop making it. Feel free to complain about the specialist system all you like (and you sure do seem to like it a lot), but don't make stupid comparisons to support the point.

It's a perfectly fine comparison, honestly, as it is centered around the forced cooperation between crafters. By adding this in, they're making crafting more like the dungeons and such that DoW/DoM classes face all the time as that requires cooperation as you are now essentially required to work with other crafters. Problem is, crafting never was, and never should be as important as DoW/DoM. Could you imagine the grief if they included some plot twist like "Cid dies, and you have to craft the world saving device?"

Fun fact: You can get to level 60 in a DoW/DoM class or even job without ever setting foot in a dungeon, let alone completing the MSQ.

Point is, solo activities have never progressed the MSQ or even helped much at all with end game progression/raids and such. All of that stuff requires cooperation at some point or another. However, even with this, crafters will get the forced cooperation, but still don't serve any purpose in the end game, and if they do make crafted gear ever viable, that opens its own can of worms that most people don't want to see happen (again). It takes the fun out of omnicrafting for the people who did enjoy it. I make the comparison because there are plenty of people out there who like to play every DoW/DoM job just for fun, even if they only realistically use only one or two of them when they do any serious content.

If they're not going to make crafting a critical part of the MSQ, then it's going to continually be hard to find enough willing and cooperative crafters in the first place to work together. For example, my FC has about 50 members, of which only about 5 craft (and of those, I'm the only omnicrafter as the other one has essentially quit). There's probably a good chance of a decent margin of error in such a small sample size, but I don't imagine that the server wide statistics are too far off (I often look up search info of people I run dungeons with, so I have a pretty good idea). The market board hardly makes up for such troubles, either, as you can't negotiate with another player's retainer. Imagine being forced to run dungeons, but the party chat and emotes are disabled. That's sort of what it's like to try to have cooperative crafting via the marketboard.

So my choices become:
1. Deal with the market board, where I'll probably get ripped off with no way to negotiate or really barter. (You make me X, I make you Y kind of thing)
2. Search for the needle in the haystack of a player who will not only talk to you, but has bothered unlocking crafting, has leveled crafts other than the ones you did, and has actually gotten it high enough to be of use. Better yet, good luck working with them regularly. Crafting statics anyone?
3. Beg one of my friends to get into crafting and level up specific specializations that I don't have. Begging is usually a good way to lose friends, so this really isn't much of a choice.

So please, let's remove all of this forced cooperation from crafting.

[Rath]

2. Search for the needle in the haystack of a player who will not only talk to you, but has bothered unlocking crafting, has leveled crafts other than the ones you did, and has actually gotten it high enough to be of use. Better yet, good luck working with them regularly. Crafting statics anyone?

So please, let's remove all of this forced cooperation from crafting.

We are both on the same server, just an fyi. There are daily shouts from FC leaders that are craft-heavy FCs. You also see PFs from Omni-crafters offering their services for below MB rate. Most of those PF posters also have crafter LSs that they constantly recruit for. Also, a lot of the Omni-crafters place items up with their signature on it (some hide behind "obtaining signature" to undercut). I have gotten many requests from people reading my signature, as I am sure others have as well, you just need to try.

[PROBOUND]

(some hide behind "obtaining signature" to undercut).

Wait what!? We can do this willingly? Please exlain. I was under the impression that was a glitch in the game not people exploiting it?

[Espritduo]

Obtaining Signature just means the person hasn't logged in since the last maintenance, or is no longer on the server. There's no way to have that as your signature purposefully....unless you craft the item on an alt and then purposefully not log into that alt for a long time.

[AnnietheCat]

snip

Okay but why should we have to pay for what we've literally been doing on our own all this time? Why should we have to rely on people we don't know in order to get things done? The whole intention of specialization was to give skills that would make it so new players don't have to get all the cross class skills in order to progress in crafting. But SE missed the mark and gave us skills that you get too late to be of any use(as in, you need cross class skills to even get to specialist level. and they skills are pretty much useless compared to those cross class skills) and a system that punishes omnicrafters by denying us the ability to continue omnicrafting. The system could be fine if they just did what they claimed it would, but instead they just decided "screw omnis, but this is pretty much useless so let's add specialist only recipes to force people into it". Forced socialization never works. They just seriously dropped the ball.

[-BlueGreen-]

We are both on the same server, just an fyi. There are daily shouts from FC leaders that are craft-heavy FCs. You also see PFs from Omni-crafters offering their services for below MB rate. Most of those PF posters also have crafter LSs that they constantly recruit for. Also, a lot of the Omni-crafters place items up with their signature on it (some hide behind "obtaining signature" to undercut). I have gotten many requests from people reading my signature, as I am sure others have as well, you just need to try.

I've seen those same PF things, too, but they're usually few and far between (as in I can easily go a couple of weeks before seeing another). I also saw them before 3.0 at basically the same rate. If the point of specialization was to somehow increase socialization between crafters, it's certainly not working then. Besides, it's not finding an omnicrafter that's the problem, it's finding one that specializes in something other than what you do. Especially given how uneven certain things are, you'd probably have a much easier time finding a weaving specialist over an alchemist one.

And thinking of it, I don't think I've ever seen a shout from a craft-heavy FC (at least not in a very long time), but I wouldn't leave my current FC for anything anyway.

Also, I like to keep myself available for helping my FC mates, so many of these forced interactions are a no-go for me. My crafting/gathering activities need to be something I can do randomly and quickly with frequent interruptions. If I spent time trying to socialize over crafting, I'd be seriously cutting into my ability to socialize with my own FC.

[Rath]

Obtaining Signature just means the person hasn't logged in since the last maintenance, or is no longer on the server. There's no way to have that as your signature purposefully....unless you craft the item on an alt and then purposefully not log into that alt for a long time.

This is an easily done thing that a lot of crafting FC have figured out. It allows them to dump items onto the market without the drama of their competition knowing who it is from. On my server this has become a common name lately for 2 star crafts. Maintenance is just one of the reasons for this signature bug.

I've seen those same PF things, too, but they're usually few and far between (as in I can easily go a couple of weeks before seeing another). I also saw them before 3.0 at basically the same rate. If the point of specialization was to somehow increase socialization between crafters, it's certainly not working then. Besides, it's not finding an omnicrafter that's the problem, it's finding one that specializes in something other than what you do. Especially given how uneven certain things are, you'd probably have a much easier time finding a weaving specialist over an alchemist one.

And thinking of it, I don't think I've ever seen a shout from a craft-heavy FC (at least not in a very long time), but I wouldn't leave my current FC for anything anyway.

Also, I like to keep myself available for helping my FC mates, so many of these forced interactions are a no-go for me. My crafting/gathering activities need to be something I can do randomly and quickly with frequent interruptions. If I spent time trying to socialize over crafting, I'd be seriously cutting into my ability to socialize with my own FC.

You can join a crafter LS too. Ask any of the Omni on our server if your FC is lacking in crafters and you don't want to change. LS are far more active then a majority of the FCs around. Just put up a PF asking to join a LS for crafting purposes.

Okay but why should we have to pay for what we've literally been doing on our own all this time? Why should we have to rely on people we don't know in order to get things done? The whole intention of specialization was to give skills that would make it so new players don't have to get all the cross class skills in order to progress in crafting. But SE missed the mark and gave us skills that you get too late to be of any use(as in, you need cross class skills to even get to specialist level. and they skills are pretty much useless compared to those cross class skills) and a system that punishes omnicrafters by denying us the ability to continue omnicrafting. The system could be fine if they just did what they claimed it would, but instead they just decided "screw omnis, but this is pretty much useless so let's add specialist only recipes to force people into it". Forced socialization never works. They just seriously dropped the ball.

You do not need to level any other classes to get to 60 in a craft. Yes the specialist skills do not help you out pre-50, but SE designed them with HW crafting in mind. They can facilitate making HQ items, they just don't really work with set rotations. They also rely on having more HQ mats as the specialist versions of skills are not on par as those gained by mastering multiple crafts. I do not think anyone should not be an omnicrafter as it is more affordable to level them with leve together anyways.

As for the actual specialist recipes, I think specialist recipes are a good thing, just not the way they are. Requiring mats from one specialist to craft on another is just a lazy way to give each specialist a recipe. They should have each had a few items that do not require another specialist craft. that being said, buying the specialist mats just means your cost is slightly higher and you sell for higher as a result. The cost is passed along anyways so there is no real loss. These recipes do not prevent you from omnicrafting, they just prevent you from omnicrafting everything. If SE did not create specialists, they may not have even created these items. If we get more selection as a result of them creating specialists, I am all for it.

[-BlueGreen-]

Kind of full on linkshells for other purposes. Besides, this being a game I'd have more fun crafting everything myself. It's just not as enjoyable to going to someone else, no matter how low of a price they might charge, knowing full well that a stupid artificial barrier is preventing this. A barrier who's only purpose is to try to boost the importance of a system that was so poorly designed it hardly gained much positive attention for its own merits.

It might be a different story if it had been this way since 2.0, but then again, I also might have never even gotten the game if it had.