Worst fears about specialist crafting are realized

[MeridaQ]

Hi, can I ask something? Do you need to be a ltw specialist to craft High House Halfoots? That's what I want in a long time, a nice heeled half boots. I asked around in my server and they got too secretive about it, why's that?

Yes it's LTW specialist, if you have the master books you can see all the specialist recipes, the ones that you don't have specialist for are just grayed out.

[StouterTaru]

You're talking about grinding for red scrips, not actually using them. And you say the Ixali was a grind while red scrips are cake compared to those, honestly you're just being argumentative for quote-bites.

I was responding to one of your reasons in an earlier post:

a red scrip system that was supposedly designed to help people gear up without spending tons of gil, but has failed to do so

The red scrip system has not failed to do as promised, you just have to be patient enough to wait for the gear. The amount of time I spend on capping red scrips each week is much less than it was doing Ixali quests, and most of that time is gathering stuff while I'm out getting maps anyway. There is nothing difficult in either one.

You're definitely underestimating the crafted gear in 2.x for the sake of your own argument. You're not even trying. You definitely come off as ignorant, did you even do raids in 2.x?

Yes. The pentamelds were OP for the first few weeks of a new raid for the world first crews. Then locked out gear became attainable, and only a few pieces were left as arguably BiS. It's been made abundantly clear this won't ever be the case again, after FCoB went down in the first week.

Sigh...all I can say is read my posts. You're definitely trolling because I've already answered this, multiple times.

Your response has made it sound like you really don't enjoy crafting. I was giving you time to reach there yourself, but I guess I just had to come out and say it. It's a theme park game; optional side content should be something you enjoy, or skip.

[Mindy_Macready]

Yes. The pentamelds were OP for the first few weeks of a new raid for the world first crews. Then locked out gear became attainable, and only a few pieces were left as arguably BiS. It's been made abundantly clear this won't ever be the case again, after FCoB went down in the first week.

You're proving my point about the difference between 2.x and 3.x.

Your response has made it sound like you really don't enjoy crafting. I was giving you time to reach there yourself, but I guess I just had to come out and say it. It's a theme park game; optional side content should be something you enjoy, or skip.

Did it ever occur to you that people would complain about something they enjoy because they want to see it improved? Instead of "leading" someone to say something you've jumped to as a conclusion, try using reasoning and common sense.

[AriaEnia]

Yes it's LTW specialist, if you have the master books you can see all the specialist recipes, the ones that you don't have specialist for are just grayed out.

Thanks, my husband actually able to craft it. He made me one last night, and now he plans to undercut the price of that shoes, because people were getting profits about 300%+ when selling them on market board and he doesn't seem to like it... :P

[CatfishCassie]

Anyone pining for the halcyon days of 2.x where high end crafting was useful to raiders has a skewed and possibly nostalgia-tainted perspective. The only end-game items ever that have been useful for raiders are food, jewelry, and (recently) primary stat buff potions. When the highest attainable ilvl was 90, the highest craftable ilvl was 70. When the highest attainable ilvl got bumped up to 110, the highest craftable ilvl got bumped up to 90. Crafting has not ever been on-par with dropped/currency items. On top of that, the original 2-star ilvl 70 items cost 1.5-3x as much as the currency-purchased ilvl 70 items. To say there was a market for such items is a joke... those items sold about once a month at most on my server. Even as a master crafter, when guild members would ask for ilvl 90 gear to catch them up so they could do CT (and get better gear), I told them to grind dungeons instead as even selling the items at cost would be far too expensive for them and not take an appreciably shorter amount of time than farming the tomestones for gear.

3.2 aims to change that, and I hope it's a change that sticks. Given the work that goes into high-end crafting, the rewards should be able to justify it. 6 months after launch I'm still grinding blue gathering scrips for folklore books and favors for materials for my crafting gear. If there isn't a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, I'm going to be more than a little upset.

[Rath]

Anyone pining for the halcyon days of 2.x where high end crafting was useful to raiders has a skewed and possibly nostalgia-tainted perspective....Crafting has not ever been on-par with dropped/currency items. On top of that, the original 2-star ilvl 70 items cost 1.5-3x as much as the currency-purchased ilvl 70 items. To say there was a market for such items is a joke...

I was selling HQ vanya for 1mil+ when people were melding it to do BCoB. il90 crafted gear was selling up until il110 crafted gear came out. There was a market for both of these items until the next tier came out. On my legacy server and your server (my beta char server Coeurl) these sold quite well.

[Mindy_Macready]

The original 2-star items were very useful for alternative entry-level gear into BCoB (with melds making certain pieces competitive with BiS while you waited for Myth/BC drops), and the crafted accessories were BiS for certain classes. To say there wasn't a market for those items is itself a joke, and an example of ignorance of how the market was back in 2.0.

[-BlueGreen-]

You can have 3 specialists equipped. If you want a different one, you must purchase it with Red scrips and throw away one of the original 3.

If they're going to gate things behind specialization, this is most of the problem right here.

To be fair, let's do the same for DoW and DoM. Limit everyone to 3 soul stones. Want to try a different job? Pay 480 Esos and delete an existing soul stone. Don't like your choice and want to switch back? That'll be another 480 Esos. Heck, we could even take it a step further and make it like desynthesis while we're at it. Every time you do get a new soul stone (even if you previously had it) you go back to level 30 (I'd say level 1, but obviously jobs start at level 30 for DoW and DoM). After all, since you're going to specialize in that combat class, you're going to need some experience with it before you jump into anything remotely hard. Releveling your job would be a good way to make sure you've had plenty of time to practice those rotations and such. (end sarcasm... I wouldn't want anything to think I'm actually serious about this)

This is my first sub-based game. I was attracted largely by the flexibility of switching between jobs so easily, the extensive crafting system, the overall quality of the game, and doing what I wanted when I wanted to on a single character while simultaneously having access to everything without dealing with a pay wall (often a RNG-based pay wall).

Since 2.0 release, we've gotten:
1. Mogstation exclusive items for sale (past event items are different as it is nice the events change from year to year, I'm talking about the stuff that can only be obtained from the mog station)
2. Desynthesis, which pretty much prevents you from doing everything on a single character.
3. HQ items handed out like candy by MSQs starting in 3.0 content degrading much of the purpose crafting held prior to that. It's not like you couldn't do a leveling dungeon in NQ gear, and I see plenty of people do it all the time.
4. A crafting specialization system that chips away at the awesomeness of the armory system.

The feel and quality of mechanics are starting to slip toward F2P land. I'll probably quit MMOs completely if that happens.

[Zojha]

To be fair, let's do the same for DoW and DoM.

And while we're at it: Synthesizing an item now takes four or more specialists at the same time. Also, you cannot use items you crafted yourself with one specialization to craft items with another, nor can you buy processed mats from the market board, you always need three other specialists to make the mats for any recipe on the spot. Also, crafting is now real time instead of step based and if you take too long, the synthesis fails.

Would you guys please stop making this stupid comparison? Even if you have all DoW/DoM jobs maxed and equipped(The latter being a small miracle with the lockouts), you still always need at least 3 other people for the vast majority of DoW/DoM related content, because you can only fill one role at a time. That's not the case for crafters. So believe me when I say you do "not" want to be considered equal to DoW/DoM.

[Moqi]

This is my first sub-based game. I was attracted largely by the flexibility of switching between jobs so easily, the extensive crafting system, the overall quality of the game, and doing what I wanted when I wanted to on a single character while simultaneously having access to everything without dealing with a pay wall (often a RNG-based pay wall).

Since 2.0 release, we've gotten:
1. Mogstation exclusive items for sale (past event items are different as it is nice the events change from year to year, I'm talking about the stuff that can only be obtained from the mog station)
2. Desynthesis, which pretty much prevents you from doing everything on a single character.
3. HQ items handed out like candy by MSQs starting in 3.0 content degrading much of the purpose crafting held prior to that. It's not like you couldn't do a leveling dungeon in NQ gear, and I see plenty of people do it all the time.
4. A crafting specialization system that chips away at the awesomeness of the armory system.

The feel and quality of mechanics are starting to slip toward F2P land. I'll probably quit MMOs completely if that happens.

Summed up my feelings perfectly.