Thread: 4.0 specialization

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

While it's not a perfect comparison (undergeared players CAN complete difficult content if they are skillful enough, whereas non-specialists can't even attempt the specialist recipes), but this, I'm sure, is what SE was aiming for, to make crafting a more cooperative endeavor, just as battle classes are. (And it's worth noting that, just as you did with crafting, some battle class players "cheat" this limitation by using alt characters to bypass the gearing restrictions.)

Again, I want to emphasize that I am not defending the Specialist system. I am merely trying to explain why SE did what they did - and why they may do similar things in the future. I hope, instead, that they bolster the abilities of solo-class crafters to bring them up to or near the capabilities of omnicrafters, rather than to stymie the abilities of omnicrafters to try to force dependencies on other crafters.

It's not what SE was initially aiming for. The point of the specialist system, and its abilities, was to make it easier for players with just a few DoH leveled to max level to be able to HQ things without requiring all other DoH jobs at max level. Something which was the case for 2.x, where you needed most of the cross-class abilities to HQ 3/4-star recipes. This is especially shown in how crafting was handled in 3.0, as there were absolutely no specialist recipes at the release of the expansion. The Soul of the Crafter didn't have the extra stats, and it only gave access to specialist abilities.

They messed up with those abilities, as players looked at the RNG involved in most of the abilities, decided that it wasn't worth the hassle, and kept on making rotations with most of the 2.x abilities (and the few 51+ cross-class abilities that were introduced in 3.0). The whole "forced cooperation" thing didn't come into place until 3.1, when they added specialist recipes. It was really just a bandaid fix to get people to use the specialist system.

I don't think forced cooperation among crafters has a place in XIV, especially since it wasn't around at the very start of the game. When I started crafting in 2.0, I liked the fact that I could just relaxingly work on everything, and given enough time and effort, be able to craft anything, without relying on someone else. It was something to progress on whenever I wasn't doing group content. Encouraged cooperation, on the other hand, is just fine. Something along the lines of what I suggested earlier, with specialists requiring less mats to craft (specialist) recipes. Players will be encouraged to find a specialist, so they don't have to gather as many materials, while crafters who want to be self-sufficient will still be able to do so.

Originally Posted by Nezerius

They messed up with those abilities, as players looked at the RNG involved in most of the abilities, decided that it wasn't worth the hassle, and kept on making rotations with most of the 2.x abilities (and the few 51+ cross-class abilities that were introduced in 3.0). The whole "forced cooperation" thing didn't come into place until 3.1, when they added specialist recipes. It was really just a bandaid fix to get people to use the specialist system.

To be fair, they were already discussing the possibility of specialist recipes back before HW launched.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ast_interview/

However, they weren't implemented immediately probably because they already had another mechanism in place: the favor system and gated red scrip gear. Both were designed to differentiate crafters by limiting their gear progression and they likely wanted to see how those went first. I don't think the specialist recipes added in 3.1 were so much to force you to use specialization, but rather they were introduced to achieve what the favor system failed to do (it simply killed crafting). At the same time, they began to nerf the favor grind and eventually phased it out more or less by 3.3.

Feedback is extremely important as FF14 2.0 and post launch FF14 seem to have been designed differently. Back before the launch of FF14, the developers designed the game based on what they felt the players would want. Post launch, however, most systems seem to have been introduced and balanced based on player feedback (crafting changes, savage raid difficulty, etc). Players asked for a method for single class crafters to HQ master crafts and got it (it wasn't good and failed). They asked for a way to eliminate or minimize an omni-crafters ability to dominate all markets and got that too, first in the form of a favor grind/gear lockout and then in the form of specialist recipes. Players asked for specialization to be more useful and then got the added stat boosts in 3.3.

I would say that specialist recipes are easily the "lessor of the two evils" but they aren't doing what they were intended to do anyways and have largely been met with criticism. With enough feedback, some of these changes might be slowly phased out like favors. From the sounds of it, Stormblood will remove the limit on spec changes, assuming that souls are still purchased using scrips.

Unfortunately, feedback from core end game crafters make up the minority of the feed back the developers receive. Poll non-crafters and they'd probably still ask for the same things that players in ARR asked for, only implemented differently...