Eh, "cozy" or not, it's a bit of a grindy game, and I figure as I myself have limited time, I'd rather remove part of the grind. The difference between a player prepared for winter on my server is like...10-20 crocks less than it would be on someone else's. But those 10-20 crocks are maybe 4 hours of real-time. It frees up an afternoon worth of crafting. It's not like it's Minecraft levels of easy, haha. As far as classes, I don't think opening up the recipes "takes" anything from anyone. You can still specialize into roles. You can still pick a class and get the bonuses and maluses too. But the recipes are fully open. It just means that if no one picks a tailor (and why would anyone pick that class outside of a large server)? We can have someone craft some of the better padded armors. Or make a bow without needing a flax farm or chicken ranch (seriously, it's one of the most primitive neolithic weapons made from tree branches and plant fibers, why does it take so much development to make the basic version?) so this addresses a lot of balance issues in a small community.
As Anthony stated, there's like three useful classes currently. The others have cool recipes, sure, but their maluses make even small group survival more difficult than necessary. If I was forced to choose a class, I'd definitely play Hunter all the time. Mining would suck, but I have enough starting clothes to fix for cold area exploration/survival without a tailor and of course easier access to longer range weaponry at both ends of the game (crude bow and arrows for beginning and recurve for end-game cave stuff).