Why is the Manipulation skill locked behind the crafting quests?

[Shibi]

The quests are short and if you actually did them methodoically when you level, they are quick because by the time you get to the 60s, they hand you all the mats on a silver platter for free. But if you snub them and go all the way to 80, of course you're going to spend hours.

Having done them both ways: I personally consider (at this point) it's easier, cheaper, and faster for me to do the ARR/HW quests when I've way outlevelled them (ShB desn't count as its free mats). You get the guaranteed HQ with the least time, work, and expense - especially on the second last, or was it last HW one that needs the aetherial reduction materials.

Doing another set of crafters at the moment, and 70 seems to be the sweet spot for me, to do them in the shortest time.

But this is me, everyone is different.

[Eien713]

Topic is really "I want to shortcut my crafters to 80 without the quest work needed"

God, can people read the whole discussion before jumping to conclusions? -.-

The quests are short and if you actually did them methodoically when you level, they are quick because by the time you get to the 60s, they hand you all the mats on a silver platter for free. But if you snub them and go all the way to 80, of course you're going to spend hours.

You don't get it. I had all the necessary cross-skills when I leveled my crafters back in ARR/HW. Crafting quests are mind-numbing and time-consuming, so I only did the ones necessary to get the cross-skills needed for decent crafting. I didn't craft much in SB, but I decided to give the restoration a shot now in ShB. But then with the changes they did to crafting, I lost that skill and had to redo the work to get it again on all the damn classes. It was quick for my main crafters, but for the ones whose cross-skills weren't useful back then and which I never used to craft high-level recipes, I had to go back and do them practically from the start.

[Vickii]

Yeah, I do remember that. I also got all the useful cross-skills back when they were a thing (expect for ARM and BSM(?), I think, since their skills weren't that useful). But when I hear people talking about crafting being dumbed down so much, what I understand from what they're saying is that crafting even with all the cross-skills at your disposal used to be tough. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I’m not too sure on the actual crafting being any harder than it is now. It was significantly more time investment, there were fewer efficient ways to level up and to get the skills you needed you needed to clear all the jobs.

As for the crafting itself I ‘remember’ it being harder. But that may just be less macros being available to get HQ even when you have bad RNG.

Majority of people claiming that crafting is too easy have a one/two button macro that they press and I’m not saying they didn’t exist before but I don’t think they were as common. It’s a shame that crafts have a solution such as this. I like the expert crafts, you can max quality them with luck but you can’t do it every time. You’re also destined to fail with bad procs. For me it’s a lot more interesting.

[Eclipse12187]

The skill “Manipulation” used to be the GSM 15 skill, the skill “Manipulation” we unlock at 65 quest used to be “Manipulation II” before shadowbringers. The skill at 65 was always locked behind the quest, same with the 70 trait. These are the only crafter skills ever locked behind quests and they were never changed from their inception. This is why Manipulation is still locked, it was never not locked.

[Eien713]

The skill “Manipulation” used to be the GSM 15 skill, the skill “Manipulation” we unlock at 65 quest used to be “Manipulation II” before shadowbringers. The skill at 65 was always locked behind the quest, same with the 70 trait. These are the only crafter skills ever locked behind quests and they were never changed from their inception. This is why Manipulation is still locked, it was never not locked.

I see. I didn't know that since I didn't really craft seriously in SB, so thank you for supplying an answer to my question. And was Manipulation II the only crafting skill we get from the quests back in SB?