How would you change Specialization?

[Fife_Muggins]

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.

This^

I don't really like the locks at all, but it seemed odd that the ironworks gear was gated for a patch. A crafter not being able to make all their own crafting gear? Really?

They already have the system in place. Just make it collectables so that we can wear our own stuff.

[Dzian]

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.

If they did implement it i'd hope it only applied to items made with specialist recipes that you weren't specialised in.

Using your example If i was a weaver specialist and i made that scillant ingot then sure lock it to my character so i can't sell or trade it. because i'm not a goldsmith specialist.

However if i use that to make a robe. then that robe should be tradable as that's where my specialist would be.

The specialist system should be scrapped entirely though. or implemented in a fashion like roth suggested earlier that allows ppl to only use one craft. but not punish those who use 8.

Also, due to the unpopularity of endgame crafting in general, certain markets will invariably be controlled by one or two players .

Personally the problem here is a lack of relevant gear to craft, patch 3.4 added the 250 crafted gear. the problem with it is that's it's ridiculously expensive for it's life time. at the minute star velvet robes of healing are 2 million gil on my servers market boards. most people won't even consider buying it. because chances are they'll replace it in 2-3 weeks. this is what destroys a big part of the crafted market. which in turn makes it look even less appealing to crafters which results in endgame craftings apparannt unpopularity.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

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.

This would only encourage alts. In your scenario, I simply would have my alt Goldsmith specialist make those Scintillant Rings and sell them on her.

Honestly, you cannot combat omni-crafters because by its very definition: they are hardcore. Whatever obstacle or grind you put in their way, most will push through. This has been the devs' mistake throughout Heavensward. What you do instead is make it easier for people unwilling to level multiple jobs/characters or give them a straight advantage. You would think the RNG aspect would be for non-Specialists yet they have it reversed.

[Millen1]

The specialist system needs to be scraped and the person that thought it was a good idea should be fired. When I craft something which I really use to enjoy doing in the game before this garbage system came out. I liked having my name on the gear. Now, I have the name of my main char, an alt, a main char from a second account and and alt there also leading to 4 different names when I craft any thing from any of the 8 crafts day one of patch to get around the system. It is stupid and with a touch of grind, it is useless at slowing me down. They need to go back to the way crafts were done in 2.0 when getting the crafting book was a challenge and you actually had to think for yourself. The specialist system and the scrips system that go with it are the dumbest thing I have ever seen to make content that is a lot of fun, not fun anymore. Slow clap SE.

[Shadygrove]

I'm a solid 3star crafter in 5 crafts.

I'm still sitting on the 3 blank ... whatever the things are you trade in for specalist stones.

My change? Scrap it.

[Driavna]

Crafting is victim of his Theme Park nature, it's not like SwG crafting where quaility of two items vary based on crafter skill/decisions and quaility of materials used, and a system that allow everyone to be everything. IMO at this point what they should do is make every profession fully independant outside final products, scrap specialization and allow players to setup their own workshops.

This workshop should act as a more fun way of specialization based on player decisions like:

- Hiring crafters to help you by taking orders.

- Furnishing the workshop.

So for example if I decided to fully commit my workshop to Culinarian I will gain certain bonus: massive culinarian crafting buff, more goods with less materials and having all my workes manufactoring components so I only have to use my time with final products. Something like this will put my in a position while a non specialized Culinarian can't compete with me dropping prices but also increasing potential buyers numbers so final income should be similar, while a regular culinarian still have acces to all recipes but probably It will be better for him to just buy my products too.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Ultimately I think it's fruitless to suggest things like "scrap specializations" or "overhaul the entire system". SE already made specializations so its highly unlikely for them to go away entirely or be changed dramatically. It's why my suggestions earlier in the thread were simple changes to skills provided by specialization. That's the most likely place SE will make changes if they change anything at all.

[MN_14]

In my opinion, specialization should equalize omni-crafters and single class crafters in terms of available skills. A slight boost to craftsmanship and control like it gives atm is fine as well. This will give a specialist a slight edge when it comes to crafting without breaking the balance.

One of the major issues with crafting is that there is no sense of achievement since everything is so easy and there is no benefit to learning the system properly other than crafting speed. In HW, you can HQ anything while essentially ignoring half of the crafting mechanics. This isn't much different than raiding while ignoring all mechanics other than your own class' battle rotation.

So I would completely drop the HQ and NQ system and introduce a system that is more similar to the collectible system. Everyone starts at 0 quality and you can have varying results based on what quality threshold you reach. The average semi-static rotation (with some on the fly modifications) user should have a decent shot at the threshold that gives full primary stats. Beyond that, there could be different thresholds with increasingly better secondary stats/other bonuses and finally an extra meld slot at the highest threshold. To add in a bit of challenge, they would have to greatly increase the quality requirements for the higher thresholds while increasing the inner quiet cap to 13 or 14 as those theoretical IQ stacks are routinely achievable now due to the new HW mechanics. This will allow casual crafters to craft powerful gear while more experienced crafters can benefit from acquired skill.

In addition, the developers could play around with lower threshold requirements for specialists while still making it as challenging to reach the highest ones.

[LineageRazor]

Pretty sure Roth has the best plan in this thread. Cross-class skills are THE biggest impediment to players who would like to focus on a single class or only a few classes. I've had several friends who have dabbled in crafting, but pretty much dropped it like a hot potato once they realized that to be effective at their chosen class they'd need to level all the others as well. If the specialist skills had been equal to - or even superior than - the cross-class skills, SE might have achieved this goal, but as we are all bitterly aware, they are not. Specialty-locked recipes were a Band-Aid fix once they realized that their original plan was wholly ineffective; Omni-crafters ignored the new skills completely and simply found ways to overcome the brutal recipe requirements with existing skills, leaving single-craft players as lost as they ever were.

SE is revamping the cross-class system. It's possible they could still turn the situation around, if they address crafting cross-class skills as well. We'll see.

[Khalithar]

The changes I'd make are a lot simpler than you might think.

1. Remove specialist lockout on recipes.
2. Drastically increase the price needed to change specialties and add a significant lockout timer.

From there I'd just change it so the only advantage of being a specialist would be a drastically reduced difficulty in HQing items for that particular craft.