Enchanted Materia

So this is an attempt to add more interest and variety to gear while adding a reason to hunt/acquire specific gear pieces (through all content including crafting) for reasons other than glamour. I propose adding an enchantment type system without the need for a new profession, by amending the materia system we already have.

Currently the materia system we have now is used to allow flexibility to stat allocation on crafted gear, and it works well in that regard. However, and of course this is just opinion, I think it would be interesting to see stats like: "increased movement speed", "5% chance your next WS or Spell will have reduced TP/MP consumption", or "on successful parry/block your next auto-attack is a guaranteed crit". You could even go so far as creating materia that allow a shield to proc or reflect damage.

These types of stats could be placed on rare dungeon drops, S-rank hunt drops, HQ crafted gear, and raid drops. They should be generic enough to not be job specific, useful but not OP, and on gear that is semi-difficult to obtain. You can obviously just equip the gear and get the bonus, or upon getting 100 SB you can Convert the gear and have "a chance" to get that bonus attribute in "enchanted materia" form. This new materia would be untradeable, and require no profession to meld (think Nexus). Most gear will need to have a specific meld slot added only for "enchanted materia" that will limit it to one per item.

Enchanted materia can also be limited by equip slot; for example: you can only put run speed on shoes, only put parry/block materia on gloves, and WS/Spell related materia on your weapon. This system is not about, being OP, one more thing to grind, and definitely not about gear swapping. It's about having a reason to continue doing existing content and looking forward to new content, because new tome = new gear = a few more stats is already growing old.

Similar systems have been proposed and this for those that played WoW this might sound like nothing new, but if varies in a couple keys ways and I look forward to hearing the communities opinions on it. Negative or otherwise.

Been suggested many times and the team said they don't want to do this because it might encourage players to not take another player with them if they don't have a specific shield because it doesn't have a specific enhancement stat or gives less flexibility on BiS builds.

Yeah, the problem with stats like these that are not ubiquitous is that it can make a piece be "required". You only need look at FFXI for an example of what that causes. Individual drops highly contested, used far beyond the point where most of their stats are useful, just because of one specific stat that's so desired.

I see what you are saying about people being discriminated against because they don't have such and such enchant. But I don't see how that is different from not taking another player because they don't have a certain ilvl or don't have a specific cross-class ability. Would you want a White Mage w/o Swiftcast? I don't see how it creates "less flexibility" on BiS than what we currently have. Right now there are three tiers of gear Raid>Tome>Crafted and for some slots depending on whether or not you can afford penta-melded ilvl110 crafted may trump tome gear. It's pretty obvious what is BiS and that's what makes it easier to discriminate. As long as there are "haves" and "have nots" there will be those that discriminate against the latter because they aren't geared enough. But I think most people endgame realize that player skill trumps gear score everytime, so I think SE should give us more flexibility to differentiate ourselves.

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Originally Posted by Barboron

Been suggested many times and the team said they don't want to do this because it might encourage players to not take another player with them if they don't have a specific shield because it doesn't have a specific enhancement stat or gives less flexibility on BiS builds.

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So SE dont wanna add any gear enhancement or customization because they fear that a minority of the playerbase will deny other players?

Isnt that whats alrdy been happening with PF demanding kill exp or players leaving groups the moment they realise someone is new to the fight.

Its always going to happen but such behaviour still belongs to a minority group of bad individuals.

Alltho OP:s idea may or may not be the right way, SE still needs to give us something more then a new tome type to grind once every major patch.

The individual drops would be sought after and that's the point, as opposed to drops now that nobody cares about. It's either something cool and worthwhile and people will the run the content until they get it or it's crap and ignorable and people will avoid that content like the plague. It's not "contested" like NMs in FFXI, everyone has an equal chance of obtaining the drops, just as much as anything else that drops in game: hunt logs, ilvl 90 antiquated gear, ST drops, sands/oils, and Allagan gear drops. And the gear will be useful for little while, but you aren't going to wear ilvl90 shoes because they give 5% run speed, but you might SB them to 100 and convert in hopes of getting that stat on a materia.

Anyone sick of me linking this yet? Yes? Good.

Why do people want more Materia? Materia is one of the worst aspects of this game, though maybe that's the Sphere Scroll talking.

Materia is a not a bad system but it's in rough shape right now. One - because you can only meld crafted gear. Two - because to spiritbond efficiently it becomes its own activity (apart from the rest of the game and very boring). Three - most gear you'd wear in endgame content is in fact not convertible. Four - the placement of secondary stats only is pretty boring and your choices on secondary stats is itself fairly limited by the usefulness of stats for your job, and the stat caps themselves. Five - there is a bit too much randomness on both ends, in the obtaining of the materia and the melding of the materia and there should be better systems in place to increase your odds of success on both fronts.

OR... They could just add a materia combine system that is actually useful and is less annoying to use to upgrade a tier 1 to tier 4.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Anyone sick of me linking this yet? Yes? Good.

Why do people want more Materia? Materia is one of the worst aspects of this game, though maybe that's the Sphere Scroll talking.

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My idea though similar is different for some key reasons:

They Said - •Add an Additional Traits section to the Actions & Traits menu.
Not needed with materia sytem.
They Said - •Certain pieces of gear have unique Spiritbind Stats, which show up in the Additional Traits section and need to be set and can only be set while the gear is equipped.
No traits to set, you get the passive bonus (like a Sanction bonus on GC gear), while wearing the gear, or melding the materia equivalent
They Said - •Upon getting 100% Spiritbind in such gear, that stat is unlocked permanently.
Nope, it's not permanent you upgrade your boots and they had an enhanced materia on them, guess what, you need to reacquire that materia, so use it wisely.
They Said - •The amount of Additional Traits you can set can be limited the same way the number of Additional Actions is limited.
You'd be limited to one enchant materia per equipment (not belt or accessories), that leaves - weapon, off-hand, head, body, hands, pants, feet.
They Said - •For example, Choral Shirt would have Enhances Ballads, which increases the amount of MP recovered by Ballad. Perhaps Bard's Shirt would have Enhances Ballads II.
I am not advocating any stats that are specific to a job or ability, more generic passive bonuses that give the slightest of advantages, or just make your life simpler.
They Said - •Relic weapons could also be included in this, as well as Primal ones. Bringing back the additional effects the Relics used to have and the additional damage effects the Primal weapons had. Relic weapons could also perhaps have additional abilities which can be unlocked...
Nope, that would advantage one type of player (Relic wielder) over the other.

They Said - tl;dr - Gear gets unique stats like Enhances Ballads again. Upon Spiritbinding that gear, you no longer need to wear the gear for that stat, instead you can set the stat on a new menu option similar to how subclass skills function. Gear gets to be remotely interesting again, without people being stuck in a single piece of gear for the rest of the game because of how useful that stat is. Unlike subclass skills, there would probably be a lot of such stats to unlock and set, adding some much needed character customization to the game.

I Say - Generic passive bonuses that are obtained through the acquisition of unique gear drops from past content that could be passed to current tier gear through a new materia system. This keeps old content relevant, gives customization to new gear, and will give people something look forward to obtaining while slogging through, yet another roulette, or hunt, or ST.