Newbie's Thoughts on Crafting

[Ceallach]

I think that specialist classes are and were a bad idea from the start.
This game is based around the idea that all characters can have all classes and do everything. To then force people to specialize in a way that prevents them from doing certain stuff goes against the basic design of the game.

I think specialists should be removed entirely from the game, and I am not exactly pleased that one cannot max out desynthesis skill on all classes at once either.

That's a fair point.

Well, here are my thoughts....

First, there's no point in discouraging "omni-crafting". The "original fun" of end-game crafting back in ARR came from mix and matching all your level 50 cross class skills, creating superior rotations that utilizes most of these super cool skills. But since leveling everything is a lot of work, and some people prefer to focus on 1 or 2 classes only, SE now fine-tunes the specialist system so that single-class crafting will at least have a better chance to HQ end-game items. However, this doesn't mean we should discourage omni-crafting, and omni-crafting will always have a slight edge (in both cross class skills and the ability to be self-sufficient) in order to justify the effort that those people put in. In fact, seeing how you have only a single CUL class at level 42 with no other DoH unlocked, I would strongly recommend you to push all the other classes to at least level 15 (especially ALC and LTW first). Getting them all to level 15 will only take you like 1 to 2 days' work, but will forever change you life as a CUL, making it much easier for you to craft anything, and assist you to level up more efficiently towards level 50. The power of lvl 15 cross class skills is not something you should miss out... since it's sooo easy to acquire. Have a taste of mix and matching these level 15 skills, and you may find crafting more fun than you thought!

Second, some classes will always be more lucrative than the others, but the trend change with patches. In the previous patch, Weaver might be in luck. Then in the next patch, Leatherworker may be the bomb digga. Carpenter is actually doing fine. A few patches ago when Shirogane housing was just released, I made a few millions gil within 2 days just by selling Fool's Portal. They sold so well... beating almost all other classes. In a recent patch, I also sold a few of that outdoor onsen, and those earned me quite a lot of gil too. Currently, Carpenter sells i350 choker and bracelets for battle classes, and the frequency of their sales seems to be doing quite fine as well (but the competition is hitting saturation now and the price is much lower than before). If there's one class that is suffering a bit right now, it's probably ARM... but I'm sure it will turn the corners soon.

Third, your suggestion of a crafted item of "class A" needing a desyn product being produced elusively by "class B" is a really scary one... On the good side, it'll make desyn useful. On the bad side, now you're forcing people to level up desyn... oh boy, needing to level up all classes to 70 is already a tough job that many don't want to do. If now everyone is mandatory to level desyn as well, it will be hell... especially because leveling desyn can be very expensive... Plus, some classes are much harder to level desyn than the others (due to certain classes lacking items of certain ilevels), which will create a even more serious imbalance problem among classes. To make certain classes (like ARM at the moment) more needed, it's probably easier for them to add new items to its master recipe instead of turning to its desyn... Otherwise, a lot of level 70 ARM may start screaming, since not every lvl 70 ARM has ARM desyn trained up.

Well, leveling all eight classes was part of the plan. I just recently finished leveling astrologian and got the God of Magic title, so I was able to get rid of most of my healer/caster gear to make room for the crafting gear I'll inevitably have to get.

Yeah, I had a feeling I didn't know what I was talking about. If the classes demanded change each patch so everyone gets a turn at being the most lucrative, that defeats a huge part of my argument. I was under the impression classes like leatherworker and weaver were always more lucrative.

But why is something in the game if it's not useful? They took out elemental resistances before adding the Forbidden Land, Eureka Anemos because they weren't useful for anything. When I asked about desynthesis a few months ago, I found out you could only max it out on three classes, which indicates to me that it could be used as a balancer to try to make every Disciple of the Hand class lucrative (again, I was under the impression some classes were just straight-up not wanted for anything).

Before you look for ways to discourage omni-crafting, would you care to explain why you want to do that in the first place?
I never really understood whats so bad about it that it needs to be hindered or discouraged - yes, it will lower your competion, but thats a pretty selfish and not very good reason.

And bringing up the point of some classes being more lucrative than others (even if those cycle through) should actually work against discouraging omni-crafters. If we look at the specialist-system for example that allows you to pick 3, you'll notice that there are certain "metas" with some classes getting picked way more often than other ones. So yes, you should be worried for the less lucrative classes, because those are being "killed" by this system - a bit exaggerating, someone will obviously always pick them and make a fortune because of less competition (and they've also improved on balance between what each class can make).

For desynth... no, no, no. Bad idea.
Desynth is 100% RNG - and while crafting is certainly some RNG aswell, its based on skill, knowledge and rotations. Lets keep pure luck out of that, shall we?
The balance between leveling desynth-classes is also waaay off - GSM, CUL; LTW and WVR having an easy time, ARM probably aswell, while the rest are struggeling more.
They did the "You need an item from desynth to craft this" once - in the ARR-relic-quest and I'm glad they never did that again.

But I mainly dont understand why you believe omnicrafting is such a bad thing - the big players on the marketboard will just level up a second character to pick those classes they're missing on their main. Suggesting to remove omnicrafting isnt going to hurt them but only those who do enjoy crafting and selling their goods on a smaller scale.

I suppose the idea behind this could be to encourage crafters to use the marketboard to buy goods aswell, but in reality its just annoying. You can ask a friend to pick 3 different crafters than you did. Ask a third friend and you're back to omnicrafting, only slightly more annoying, but with no increased MB-use.

If you're worried for certain, less fortunate classes - tell me how getting rid of omnicrafting would help those? Because it wouldnt, it would make matters worse since most people would pick the more lucrative/useful ones.

I guess I'm just used to how it was in FINAL FANTASY XI. Other than fishing and synergy, if you had one crafting skill level at 100 already and raised another past 60, the one at 100 would be reduced, forcing players to specialize and to train if they wanted to change their specializations. Upon hearing about how specialist classes in FINAL FANTASY XIV used to have their own recipes, I thought it unfair that some classes were just dead (I wasn't aware that the demand for classes rotated).