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.