what's the point of specialist recipe?

[Kabooa]

Diadem says hi. These recipes are justified people to overcharge absurd prices for stuff. The system contradicts the whole getting more people to craft by LIMITING the amount of people in said craft. Plus the different schools of crafts barely craft the same things also. Where as dom/W there are really just 3 roles between 13 jobs. So it's not as cutthroat.

Diadem we kind of need to see if they raise the ilvl ceiling in 3.2 for it. Otherwise it's just another source of 'catch up gear' and hardly qualifies as being able to specialize in everything.

Absurdly stupid and randomly good catch up gear.

[Shadygrove]

The point of specialist recipes is to get people to specialize.

Because the skills by themselves weren't enough.

[MN_14]

Both the specialization system and its associated specialist recipes were introduced in response to player feedback about the accessibility of crafting.

The specialist skills are intended to allow those who are missing a lot of the level 50 cross class abilities to be able to craft the latest master recipes without having to level multiple DoH classes to 50+. If you already have the major cross class abilities, you don't even have to think about them unless you're completely CP starved and are willing to take a risk. Those skills aren't particularly aimed at omni-crafters.

The specialist recipes are intended to address the other complaint about single class crafters being unable to compete with omni-crafters. Increased private trading among players would also be a side effect but the main purpose of the recipes is to give specialists a market advantage by eliminating much of their competition.

Both skills and recipes are designed to make crafting more accessible by reducing the amount of work involved and creating some more exclusive markets. I don't think the developers see self-sufficiency as evil but if they see the same complaints coming repeatedly, they do try to address them if they believe that there is an actual problem.

[Ranzan]

To the post above: All it truly done was make crafting unnecessarily more tedious high priced. Plus doesn't the recipes contradict the whole "make crafting more accessible"? It's mind boggling how they can't solve any problems with crafting atm.

[MN_14]

To the post above: All it truly done was make crafting unnecessarily more tedious high priced. Plus doesn't the recipes contradict the whole "make crafting more accessible"? It's mind boggling how they can't solve any problems with crafting atm.

One side effect of specialist recipes is an increase in the price of certain (specialist) products as it is intended to benefit the specialist/seller, not the buyer. It gives a newer crafter a quicker means of earning more gil, allowing them to offset any of the high costs associated with crafting. If they can't afford to craft a final product because of the high prices of specialist materials, they can craft specialist materials and sell them to earn a pool of gil first before working on final crafts (that require materials that they can't craft) or choose specializations that allow them to craft a material and a final craft using it.

Yes, the ability to earn a lot of gil more quickly and easily is supposed to help with accessibility. If you remember from ARR, the cost of obtaining a supra and crafting all of the master book tokens was out of the range of a large percentage of players. Crafting 4* products was even more expensive (eg. allagan leather was 500k on my server for a couple of months after 2.4 and fell to a mere 200k for most of the remainder of ARR; a kirimu coat requires 5 of these things).

To be clear, I'm not defending this system and it remains to be seen whether it'll actually achieve what it was intended for, but I can see the reasoning behind it.

[Ranzan]

But that still doesnt make it any more accessible. Lock people out doesn't solve nothing out all. Hell prices are making people hate crafters even more. Let alone the barrier entry higher cause of cost. People in my FC wanted to start crafting build after seeing all those walls of entry (cost of mats, red scripts , specialist RNG skills) they threw their hands in the air like "nope". The reasoning may (nope) sound good but they looking horrible at economics atm.

[Ranzan]

They fail horribly cause this is actually make the wall of entry even higher with cost. I know FC mate that were trying to start crafting but they saw what was required now (red scrips, cost of mats, RNG skills that still need omniskills) they not going to try at all. Plus if cost doesn't benefit the buyer what's the point in buying? They need a lesson in economics badly.

Plus this current trend of everything is under specialist needs to stop. Things are going to get out of control FAST if everything from now on is specialist only.

[Granyala]

Both the specialization system and its associated specialist recipes were introduced in response to player feedback about the accessibility of crafting.

The main barrier to endgame crafting is not leveling all crafters to 50. it is
"Either contend with the stupidly retarded Overmeld RNG system" or "commit to an absurd red script grind that costs you millions each week unless you are an lv60 omnicrafter".

Want an example? Right now the Adamantium bait awards 9 red scripts. It requires Adamantium nuggets. Normal nuggets are around 11K a pop, HQ nuggets are around 16-20K and very limited in quantity.

To cap I would need 50 of them + 50 of them grindstones (3 ore per), which are around 1K per HQ ore.
Provided I don't fail a single one (fat chance with ilvl 130) that would cost me 16K*50 + 150K for the ore assuming I farm the Wind crystals myself.

That's 950K Gil + Wind crystal farming just to cap for ONE WEEK.

That is your: "entry barrier to high end crafting" right there.
Specialist recipes and skills do jack shit in alleviating that.

If they want more people to craft in endgame what they really need to to is alleviate the absurd grind crafters must endure to get to a point where they are even capable of attempting a ** craft.

[MN_14]

The main barrier to endgame crafting is not leveling all crafters to 50. it is
"Either contend with the stupidly retarded Overmeld RNG system" or "commit to an absurd red script grind that costs you millions each week unless you are an lv60 omnicrafter".

The specialization system was designed in response to ARR (4* crafting in particular). At that time, by far the most common complaints were leveling all classes to 50, overmelds, and omni-crafters forcing new crafters out of the market. Other complaints included master recipe ii tokens being too expensive and difficult.

Most of the things you've listed are additional barriers that they created after in response to the perceived problems back in ARR (possibly inadvertently in some cases).

As for excessive overmelding, the i180 gear is designed for you to be able to avoid that at the price of slower progression. If you want to progress faster, you'll need gil and the specialist recipes are supposed to create that opportunity. Unfortunately, the red scrip + favor grind appears to have been made extremely tedious to extend playtime and to transfer wealth from rich omni-crafters to gatherers.

[Granyala]

Unfortunately, the red scrip + favor grind appears to have been made extremely tedious to extend playtime and to transfer wealth from rich omni-crafters to gatherers.

I agree that there is a 0 too many in there.
But what really annoys me is that the red script stuff essentially requires you to be either omnicrafter yourself or be a gillionare / know how to make millions a week.

I only have 9 mil after a year of playtime because I am not the sort that actively plays the AH. I have neither the knowledge nor the necessary playtime in order to recoup costs in the realm of a MILLION gil per WEEK! (I'm sure it looks vastly different on JP servers like Chocobo that sell even the relic items for something absurdly cheap like 70K gil)

Bottom line: endgame crafting is inaccessible to me. No matter how much I like the actual process of crafting.