Will a Specialist still be obsolete with the expansion?

[BoazJochin]

I have been playing FF since FFXI. I loved crafting there and I love it here. One thing that drives me crazy is the fact that a specialist is pretty much pointless. I can HQ any piece of gear based on my melds. The only thing a specialist does is allow you to HQ the 4 star easier/ faster.

What I liked about FFXi is that when you went to specialize only the people who were specialized in that craft can make the HQ or NQ of that specific item.

I wish that they would make it so only a specialist can do Mastercraft 3 and above crafts in that field. It would drive us to change more and be more specialized.

What do you guys think? I think it would be better if the specialist was actually treated as such instead of how it is now.

[Vidu]

No, thank you.

FFXIV started without specialists in ARR and the only thing stopping you from making everything yourself was gearing and melding all your crafters. So thats the system at least I'm used to - and I believe that goes for quite a few mastercrafters aswell...

HW introduced specialists, with heavy locking of recipes and as far as I can tell that wasnt well recived, so they went back on it in SB.
To me we achieved a fair balance: you can make almost everything but its easier for your specialists.

Please explain to me the benefit of having specialists enforced heavier. Because the only one I can see is less competition on the market board and greed just isnt a good reason to make this change. I think in HW they had this idea of people working more together, exchanging materials etc. But at least in my experience that didnt work out - we found all kinds of ways around that, from leveling up alt-characters for the sole purpose of having 3 extra specialists to aksing people who didnt like to craft if we could just level up their crafters, put them in appropriate gear, give them our macros and have them craft for us without them actually being intrested in this element to simply crafting certain items in bulk before switching our specialists for the week...
Non of that was fun or added anything to the gameplay. FFXIV is build around the idea that you can do everything with one character - that ARR started without specialists shows that this philosophy holds true for crafters aswell.

I dont know what it is that people miss about specialists - is it the idea of having to seek out a crafter to make something for you, is it this "social element" that you're missing? Considering that we have the market board, I'm not even sure how much that would be "enforced" through making specialists matter more...

So, all in all I dont see any fun or benefit in the whole specialist-system as you're describing it or as it was in HW. Its not fun, intresting or engaging to simply meld a second set of crafter gear, copy-paste your macros and ask your boyfriend if he can pick up the specialist-crystal for alchemist and hit those 2 buttons for 30 minutes (specially when he doesnt enjoy the whole crafting-stuff).

[DrWho2010]

people don't want specialization to lock out anything. that's what killed it. specialization was introduced party to alleviate the concern that some people didn't want to level every craft to max but still wanted to be able to do stuff in their given one that they did happen to level and become a specialist in (by using the specialist only actions to help hq stuff).

[TaleraRistain]

They did that, and people hated it, and that's why specialists are obsolete and hopefully will remain so.

Specialists were presented to us as an option for a single crafter to be able to function as well as an omni crafter in their chosen craft. This was good. But then it went a step further and punished you for being an omni, while also violating the idea in FF that you can do everything on one character, since you are limited to only 3. And they limit how often you can change.

I totally support specialists as a way to bring parity between single crafters and omni crafters. But not the rest of that nonsense.

[Flashgordon1975]

Personally I liked the specialist system in HW. Now MB's are basically dominated for all types of craft by the person who has the most time and ability to constantly update retainers. It also made alt characters relevant. Just my opinion though.

[Kabooa]

Specialist allow you to more easily HQ recipes with lower stat thresh holds. They also tend to lock current patch aesthetics and furniture behind them. Plenty of opportunity to make money from them.

[MistakeNot]

I think it would be best if they removed the Specialist functionality altogther. It serves little useful purpose, and goes counter to the general idea in FFXIV that a single character can learn everything.
They should also make it so one can max out desynthesis for all crafts at once.

[KageTokage]

If there was one good thing the specializations did, it was limiting how much of a presence bot farmers had on the market by restricting how many different things they could craft (Granted, some of them just made extra bots to get around that but it still was a deterrent to a degree).