Crafter 'Specialization'

[Reika]

Pretty soon, as time goes by, everyone and his dog will be a r50 crafter in every or almost every craft. No one will need anyone else for any crafting need.

However a good way to prevent this is to have craft 'specializations'. A one time choice of one or two crafts to specialize in, increasing stats, success, and allowing synthesis of 'specialist only' materials, equipment, and goods.

Everyone will still be able to do every craft, but have those one or two crafts they can make everything in, including advanced items.

Ex: A specialized culinarian would be able to make foods that give higher stats, and more than 2 stats (the current food amount)

[Shinigami]

yeah i see a lot of botters...cough cough.... i meant high level crafter reaching all 50's but majority of people still have only 2 or 3 class to 50. and i dont see the issue of people reaching finally the end. I dont like games where you can never reach the cap, it advantage too much people that spend more time compared to casual gammers. for exemple a casual gammer finally reached 50 alchemist... oh wait he is still worthless cause hardcore players are 50, +specialisation

[Wynn]

My thoughts: In XI, people just created mules and leveled those to cap in each craft. In XIV a person can use one character to do the same thing. What's the difference in the end, really? So anyone can level to 50 in any craft, it isn't like the majority of people are ever going to do that. Some don't have the patience, some don't have the interest, and most don't have the time.

[Amineri]

Another alternative is to have crafting specialization follow a "branching model". Posted idea here.

Basically after 50 split each craft into a multiple subcrafts, each of which has to be ranked up separately.

Crafting jobs x 8 just means eight times as long to rank up EVERYTHING as to rank up a single one. Branching means exponential time to rank it all up, but still allows a player with more limited to time to specialize and reach high rank in a single craft.

For those that want the arithmetic...
Suppose each craft branches into 3 specialties at rank 51, and each of those branches again into 3 more at 71, and again into 3 more at rank 91. Each original craft ends up with 27 specialty branches at rank 99. Since the majority of the SP required is at the far end, this means to get all 27 specialties maxed out is 27 times as long as that required to max out just 1.

For eight current crafts, 8 x 27 = 208 times the time. So, if it takes 2 months to one specialty branch maxed, now it takes 34 years to max them all out.

And it's not hard to tweak the numbers more. Add 2 more crafts. Make the branching factor 4 instead of 3. Now its 10 x 64 = 540 times the time. Reduce the time (for some insane powerleveler) to max a single branch to 1 month. Going to take 45 years to max out all 540 craft specialties.

Thoughts?

[Peregrine]

Crafters can already specialize by what subs they choose to level.

[Amineri]

Crafters can already specialize by what subs they choose to level.

This is true, but it doesn't address the following issue:

The current crafting system is too easy for everyone max out every crafting job. I already personally know someone that has five of the eight crafting jobs at 50.

I see three alternatives to prevent this. Either increase the SP required to max out a crafting job (thus making it deadly for those 'casual' players with less time), go with a branching model as I suggested, or place a limit in the way that Reika suggested (ala FFXI).

I'd love to hear further options, though.

[Reika]

They hardly need to increase crafting SP, they are actually going to increase it somehow with the materia system. I dont see how ranking up a sub causes you to become a specialist in a craft either. lvling another class just means you get closer to not needing anyone else in that class anymore. you dont even have to get all classes to 50 to be self sufficient, R40 and you can craft and repair everything. It doesnt set you apart from other crafters.

Specialized Item making would work too, but they dont have some trainings for equipment you could specialize, like axe training, sword training, Doublet Training, etc. They would have to add a bunch of training books, add training to every recipe, and change the way training books work. Since they lack a whole lot of training books (I don't know why you dont need training for some things..).

A better way is just to specialize classes. A blacksmith specialist would be able to make weapons stronger than the current R50 ones, with stats on them for example.

Also, instead of changing the way training books work, they could add 'Specialist Books' like 'Weapon Specialist' or 'Cloth armor specialist', and make it so you can only obtain one or two. Goes along with the item craft specialization.

Or as mentioned in that other post as well, add jobs for crafters. however, you can change jobs, so that might defeat the purpose.

[Amineri]

The thing I like about branching and specializing crafting classes is that it keeps people from maxing out all crafting classes without eliminating the sense of "I could do more"

The XI system people maxed out as far as they could (and even would use multiple characters to get around it), but then the crafting 'content' (I use the term loosely) ran out.

If it take 36 years to achieve mastery in all crafting specializations, a person that enjoys continually progressing can just keep doing so. I'm not sure, since I didn't play EVE, but it's my understanding that EVE uses a similar skill-branching system. I know that the MMO Ryzom did (not that is necessarily a great endorsement, since that game was eclipsed by other 'theme-park' MMOs released at the same time).