How would you change Specialization?

[OoglieBooglie]

The hardest part of it is balancing it. Do you make it so anyone can have a high chance of successfully hqing the recipe? Then there's no point for cross class skills. Do you make it so having access to the cross class skills AND the specialist stuff is not overpowered? Then the people without the cross class skills suffer for it.

My opinion is that the specialist system should give the skills, and the cross class skills would act as a small boost for it, maybe along the lines of 5-10% more for the skills. You'd still have access to the cross class skills on non-specialists, but specialists with the skills would just get the upgrade for slotting it in as a cross class skill. Specialists without the cross class skills would simply get the normal version of the skill.

[Lambdafish]

Then there's no point for cross class skills.

They are removing cross class skills from battle classes and revamping the system, no reason why they shouldn't do it with crafters.

[Culfinrandir]

I've never used the Specialist Abilities at all. They're not even on my hotbars. If I am able to craft everything using the abilities that come with levelling crafter up to lvl60 then I don't need to complicate my life further!

Of course, there's some excellent theorycrafters in this game who help everyone with the more complex parts of crafting. I always try to find my own rotations before using, say, Rath's 437CP wonderful creation. That's all part of the fun to me.

[MN_14]

I've never used the Specialist Abilities at all. They're not even on my hotbars. If I am able to craft everything using the abilities that come with levelling crafter up to lvl60 then I don't need to complicate my life further!

Of course, there's some excellent theorycrafters in this game who help everyone with the more complex parts of crafting. I always try to find my own rotations before using, say, Rath's 437CP wonderful creation. That's all part of the fun to me.

Pretty much. I don't normally use specialist abilities either other than when experimenting with a way for single class crafters to HQ the latest items. With cross class skills, you can can craft from 0-100% on all items released so far the majority of the time, with most other results falling to around 90-94%. Getting a mere 80% is a disaster that doesn't happen too often as it normally requires 5-6 misses.

Rotations are useful for beginners who haven't fully mastered the use of all of the crafting abilities. But they'll ultimately hold you back. You should actually be crafting with the mindset of doing whatever it takes to get that 11 stacks of IQ while building up ~7300 quality (or 6100 quality if you're able to add innovation into the mix). If it takes 8 touches, great. If it takes 16, that's fine too.

Ironically, in the absence of level 50 cross class skills, specialist abilities force you to take the harder non-rotation based approach. Free form crafting in the truest sense as even your timing/method for completing progress is unpredictable (for 3* and 4* anyhow).

[Solarra]

I started the game in HW and for me, the option to specialise came far too late in the game to be attractive.
I started out only intending to level 2 or 3 crafting classes, quickly realised it wouldn't work due to needing the cross-class skills and went down the omni-crafter route. By the time I'd levelled everything to 50, the option to concentrate on just 3 classes for the last 10 levels seemed pointless. Specialisation always felt like it was taking something away from me rather than offering something extra.

How would I change it?
-I'd offer specialisation much earlier, say around level 15. Put the quest in with the Guildmasters and let the Soulstone give the same boost to craftsmanship and control as you get now.
-I'd scrap the specialist abilities (I've never used them and I don't know anyone who does). Instead I'd do as Roth suggests above, let your specialist classes get access to all the cross-class skills as you level them. This would eliminate the need to level everything to 50.
-Annoying as the recipe locks can be at times, I'd keep them as it really does encourage you to make friends and cooperate.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

-Annoying as the recipe locks can be at times, I'd keep them as it really does encourage you to make friends and cooperate.

To be perfectly honest, all it has encouraged me to do is get and keep a small stack (10-ish) of the blank Soul of the Crafter, and then plan out what I want to craft so I do not need to return to a Specialist once I've left it. Plenty of time later on to rebuild that small stack. Right now, in anticipation of T4 materia needs for crafting, I've got 136 RCT. That would have been 14 more Souls of the Crafter had I wanted them. It is not hard to change specializations, merely somewhat time consuming to get the RCS.

The effectiveness of specialist abilities can be fixed, but I don't really see an easy solution for the competition aspect. Even if specializations have abilities that mirror cross class (quick and easy fix that is better than messing around with and balancing 2 different sets of abilities that can be used simultanously), there would still be complaints of omni-crafters dominating every market though more competitve pricing.

You can never fix that competition aspect, not with the current recipe design; with the exception of CUL, which has no materials refined by other classes, anyway. The simple reason is that an omnicrafter will always be able to make those refined materials more cheaply than someone who does not have the right class leveled to produce it, Specialist or no.

Locking recipes behind Specializations does two things. First, it stifles competition. Rather than having everyone able to produce it, you have less than 50% of people able to produce it (depending on exact Specialist breakdown). Second, it increases the cost of the goods to the board buyer. When you have fifteen people producing something and trying to get it to sell, you get into an undercut war. When you only have two people with the right Specialization trying to produce somehting and sell, your undercut war is far less likely to happen, meaning simultaneously a greater profit margin for the crafter, and a deeper gouge into the buyer's wallet.

[MN_14]

You can never fix that competition aspect, not with the current recipe design; with the exception of CUL, which has no materials refined by other classes, anyway. The simple reason is that an omnicrafter will always be able to make those refined materials more cheaply than someone who does not have the right class leveled to produce it, Specialist or no.

Oh I agree. In the idealized case, the locked recipes are supposed to force "omni-crafters" to buy materials/final products from single class crafters and vice versa. However, in practice, players can get around it through alts (uncommon) or by swapping specializations and then mass producing materials or even final crafts. Also, due to the unpopularity of endgame crafting in general, certain markets will invariably be controlled by one or two players (could in theory be a single class crafter which does solve the omni-crafter competition problem at the expense of all buyers). I don't think the developers considered the buyer angle or they only used the largest servers as some kind of benchmark in estimating market activity.

It's more or less impossible to design recipe locks in such a way without severely affecting one party (buyer) as they're intentionally designed to help a single-class crafter by removing their omni-crafter rivals from the equation. At most, you could solve the single crafter complaints about omni-crafter competition but you'd open the door to a flood of monopoly complaints.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Specialist abilities add an extra layer of RNG on top of things. This (as evidenced by a discussion some time back about the moves) makes for higher stat requirements to achieve the same results as an omnicrafter.

[Solarra]

Having read through what you've said, Roth and Minerva, I've changed my views on locking recipes. I'd like to see it go.

So far I've been lucky; I've been able to get friends to make things I can't and I've had something to offer them in return. I guess that rosy situation was part of what the devs had in mind.
However, I've only been able to craft 4* for a couple of weeks. When my friends are busy or there is nothing they want from me in return, I'm going to have use the MB and I've already noticed that the goods from the less popular specialisations are priced considerably higher than the goods that I can produce (since I chose three of the most popular ones).
Clearly, increased competition does drive prices down, so not locking recipes would benefit everyone. Omni-crafters could go back to being self sufficient and prices would be more favourable for buyers, both the single-crafters looking for materials and non-crafters looking for crafted goods.

[dspguy]

Other than scrapping specialization entirely (which they should), I'd be ok with them forbidding the sale or trade of anything made outside of your specialization that required specialization. Huh? What?

Prior to this patch, let's say I'm not a GSM specialist. But I want to make a scintillant ingot. Let me make it. Let it be bound to my character (not sellable). And anything I make with it... bound to my character. So if I want to make a scintillant staff for my BLM but I'm not a GSM specialist, I can make it for myself. I can't trade it.

However, that's just an idea. Honestly, I keep multiple souls of the crafter handy and I just swap whenever I feel like it.