Remove the specialist lockout on recipes

[Zfz]

But then what would be the specialist advantage for glamour/housing items that don't need HQ? We do want to give specialists a definite and significant advantage, don't we?

[Masekase_Hurricane]

I think it should remain I like specialist recipes as they are. If you want to be able to do more of them level an alt or swap specialists 3 times a week. I have also crafted all my own gear swapping specialists. Also what's the point being a specialist if you can craft everything without it.

[aesteval]

/shrug

I was a bit disappointed at seeing specialist locked recipes again, but then I realized that each single recipe is locked behind at most two specialists at a time (ALC and whichever job the recipe is for.) The intermediate mats (wood, cloth, leather, metal) otherwise are not specialist locked this time. The restriction is milder this time around - you can set up your specialists so that you can personally handle the entire pipelining of a particular item. You just have to change weekly to cover all range of crafts, but you can keep being able to make everything that goes into the finished item. This isn't as bad as the scenario when the 250 crafted gear came out.

[-BlueGreen-]

We do want to give specialists a definite and significant advantage, don't we?

Isn't being able to craft all the recipes in your chosen specialization without needing to level every other crafting class to 50+ advantage enough? It takes significant investment to level all 8 crafting classes as opposed to just one. As I understand it, the purpose of specialist being introduced was to lower the barrier of entry for people to do end game crafts in a few crafts without feeling like they must become omni-crafters to do so. Increase the number of players participating in end-game crafting and end-game crafts become more available, presumably so that if they go and lock relic stuff (or other cool things) behind end-game crafting again, there will be more supply to meet the demand for them.

Of course, it didn't really work in HW because the specialist skills were viewed as weak and insufficient to do that job, so what did SE do? "Create" an advantage by taking something away from omni-crafters. End result? Most specialists are actually omni-crafters that went along with it.

In SB, I noticed that they greatly improved the skill advantages to the point where they actually start looking significantly better than the omni-crafter array of cross-class skills. Consider for a moment that in SB not one new cross-classable skill was added, 4 of the skills gained by level up are "improved" (due to CP costs added, 3 are debatable, but I personally find that I prefer them to the cross-class counterparts even as an omni-crafter) versions of cross-class skills, every class gets a "turn 1 only" skill (Initial Preparations) that works considerably better for a specialist than an omni-crafter, and a trait was added that for a specialist works sort of like an added stat to your specialist stone (bonus CP to go with the previous Craft/Control bonus) that for omni-crafters is locked behind very unreliable RNG.

From what I've read on the topic, and my own understanding of the changes SB brought to specialization, a specialist in SB has so many skill/trait advantages that they can do end-game crafting with as much reliability (if not more) than an omni-crafter with fewer steps to the point that they're more likely able to utilize macros if they wish to mass-craft at HQ.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

But then what would be the specialist advantage for glamour/housing items that don't need HQ? We do want to give specialists a definite and significant advantage, don't we?

To be fair, I think a better advantage would be higher stat totals, access to all role skills regardless of other craft levels and better specialist skills overall. Gating recipes just promotes alts or for two friends to cover all bases, not foster a craft community of any sort.

[Zfz]

I haven't touched specializations so I'm just genuinely curious.

To learn more about the system, I dug up an old interview (Famitsu 2015/03/14, keywords "PAX EAST 2015") with YoshiP and indeed, he stated that the specialization system was added so that players can choose to go omni-crafter play or specialized play as they wish and not feel the need to always go omni. In that sense, locking recipes behind specializations goes off on a wild tangent from the stated intent.

Specialization doesn't need an advantage in actual crafting; it should actually be equivalent to an omni-crafter when crafting recipes of the specialized craft, because that was the original design goal. So the suggestion above on specialization allowing the use of all cross-class abilities regardless of leveling is a great solution.

I can get behind on removing locked recipes now.

[Aster_E]

Specialists already get +20 to Craftsmanship and Control, as well as, upon completing the lv 70 quest, a 100% guarantee with a trait that grants 15 cp. This, plus the opportunity to use those somewhat inferior Specialist abilities so you don't HAVE to level the other classes for cross-class skills is nice for some people. That should be plenty.



The lockout was annoying as heck in Heavensward. It didn't really force crafters to go out and meet new people, from what I was able to observe. Solo players with dual-boxing or their own FCs could bypass the restriction, and I met a couple that ended up dominating the market anyways on a few crafts. THEN you have free companies with the same three or four people doing all of the crafting between them. Meanwhile, those of us who just want to be self-reliant without resorting to alt characters are left unable to do squat outside of our three Specs until a patch or two later when the lockout is lifted, but oh hey the items we wished to make for ourselves are now so damn cheap we might as well just buy it now. To make matters even more grating, this was all back when a new soul crystal would cost 480 Red Scrips--it still does--but the cap was 450 for a week.

Back then, it was clearly designed to try to rein in the omnicrafters, but it only affected those of us without alts that we could fully utilize; and the effect was negligible for those cliques I mentioned where the same few crafters provided a circular service to one another.

Fast forward to now. The extra 20 points to those two stats should already be nice for the 2.5 star recipes. There is no red scrip cap, so someone could make off with a bunch of soul crystals and just do whatever they need or want before switching to the next Spec, and then the next, and the one after that, and so on... Before 4.1, I'm sure a great many of us were happy to not see those lock-outs because we were free to make stuff for ourselves and our friends, and let the economy play out for the week or three of new items' relevance (as then the demand would dip far enough below the supply for prices to plummet). Yet, we have lock-outs.

All that has done is given some of us a headache, make some do extra work to get new crystals, and the cliques to go back to doing their thing. This fixes nothing that was broken.

So seriously, why have the lock-outs at all? It's outdated nonsense, and I challenge anyone to find a valid reason to keep it going.

[Vasala]

I would really love to see specialist locked patterns permanently removed. All it does is lead to extreme gouging on the marketboard since materials needed to craft are specialist locked.

[RojGardoth]

Nothing is really locked if you can buy 3 Soul of the Crafters and swap out every week...