Materia Melding Idea

Ok so I have an idea (actually 2 ideas, but I'm not sure of the viability of one of them) regarding materia melding. This by no means is set-in-stone or anything, I'm just putting this on the forums to allows player feedback. As such, please be courteous and respectful of opinions (I hate that I have to say this) of other's input(s), including my own.

I believe that materia in this game was designed as sort of an afterthought. That is to say that materia is not truly important in this game, but something that was added to ease certain things. For instance, battle classes do not NEED materia melds (notice I said "NEED" not want; yes this applies to tanks) to complete content. In fact, before the recent-ish information about materia changes that should be coming in 3.2, it was severely underutilized. The Novus step of the old relic process used materia, but otherwise it just sat on the MB or in inventories. However, there were 2 class-types that used materia fervently. They were crafting classes and gathering classes. In those regards, materia played an IMPORTANT role in the success of those classes. This is especially true when we remember that to craft/gather certain items, one needs to meet a specific stat threshold which could only (in some instances) be gained with the use of materia. This item of note brings me to my actually purpose for this thread. Feel free to respectfully debate my proposal.

1. This is the option that I believe is quite viable and, possibly easy to implement. I would propose that when melding crafting or gathering materia melds become easier. This can be done by giving crafting/gathering materia a bonus success rate when melding. For example, when overmelding the 1st overmeld is always 35% (I'm not actually certain that is the case, but let's say it is for this example), then when melding a Control IV the success rate is boosted +15%. Therefore, the 1st overmeld is would be 50% success versus 35%. This can be the same +15% for all crafting/gathering materia. So the 4th overmeld would 22% instead of 7%.

2. This option I would rather have instead of the option 1, but I don't know if it is viable or something that can be implement quickly enough to make an impact. This idea is to change the way materia melding is done. The idea is that melds are done in such a way that 10% chance mean you will ALWAYS succeed one out of 10 chances. To do that, however, a system must be in place to account for all the past failures. A scenario would be: If you wanted to meld Control II into the 5th and final meld spot. Let's say that has a 9% success rate. If you fail the first time (and we all know you will), the next time would be 9%+9%, so it would be 18%. Again, you'll probably fail, so add another 9%. Eventually, at the 11th try, you'll be at 99%. BY now, you should have already been successful, but supposing you haven't been, which is very likely in the current system, if you aren't successful this (11th) try, the additional 9% would place you at 100% (since you cannot be over 100%) thus you know you will succeed.

I will say that the 2nd idea would need a massive overhaul of the materia melding system, almost to the point of making it instanced. It would have to take into account that the materia cannot be changed, so no switching to a higher tier materia on the attempt you know will succeed. I guess that could be done similar to the mini-cacpot in the Gold Saucer; basically, once a meld fails, an option would display asking to try again, if not selecting "yes" then the entire system would reset to default values. So if you run out of materia or carbonized matter, or you select "no" on accident, or anything else besides meld, you're SOL.

Again, these changes would only apply to crafting and gathering materia. Moreover, I think this would ease the need for an excessive amount of materia just to meld one piece of gear. The issue I see with this is the economic balance. However, I would say that it is incredibly difficult to reasonably gain crafting/gathering materia since 3.0 with the previous avenues (Urth's Fount) lessening their effectiveness.

Please, feel free to respectfully debate, offer suggestions, or criticize my proposals. I understand there will be push-back regarding how this will affect markets. Likewise it may make crafting too accessible to everyone, which I actually don't think is a bad idea. I'm just thinking of a way to help casual players, or those new to crafting/gathering, to be able to achieve the necessary requirements to actually make/gather items.

TLDR: Ease crafting/gathering materia melds by (option 1) adding a bonus percent to success rate OR (option 2) take into account all attempts to melding, so a 10% is truly 1 out of 10, by adding the initial success percent to the current success percent.

A flat increase to the chance to overmeld probably isn't going to happen, for the simple reason that it would be a really simple change to make so the reason why it's the way it is is almost certainly a deliberate game-balance decision.

I support the concept behind your second idea, but the execution needs work. If you increase the chance every time then you're affecting the average number of attempts it will take. Using a back of the napkin probability estimate, if you start with a meld that has a 10% chance of success and increase it by 10% with each failure, you'd average about 4 tries per meld (since 10% + 20% + 30% + 40% = 100%. Not rigorous calculation, I know, but ballpark is good enough for the sake of discussion.)

What I'd love to see is the ability to put multiple materia into a single meld attempt and increase the odds that way. So for a 9% chance you could opt to jam 11 materia at the slot in one go to get a 99% chance of success. This would consume all of the materia regardless of what the RNG roll is, so you'd still be using up the same number of materia as you otherwise would on average, but it lets people opt out of the risk/reward aspect of trying them one at a time. (You can't get the first-try awesomeness that happens periodically but you also avoid the 37-failure streak.) If they wanted to encourage people to use the current method and take risks, they could make each extra materia have diminishing returns when adding to the success rate (to some minimum point, say 5%.)

Because I'm a pedantic nerd, here's some numbers for the "start at 10%, increase by 10% per failure":

- Hole in one: 10%
- Got it in two: 18% (=28%)
- Third time lucky: 21.6% (=49.6% -- so expected value is "3 or fewer attempts", surprisingly low considering you're still at 30% chance!)
- Four attempts: ~20% (=~70%)
- Five attempts: ~15% (=~85%)
- Six attempts: ~9% (=~94%)
- Seven attempts: ~4% (=~98%)
So what started as a simple "1 in 10" has become "very likely within five, almost certain within seven, guaranteed by ten", which is insanely unbalanced.

(Also, I just imagined what it must be like from a data storage perspective to save "attempted melds" for each piece of gear, and my server admin side cringed)

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Originally Posted by Niet

(Also, I just imagined what it must be like from a data storage perspective to save "attempted melds" for each piece of gear, and my server admin side cringed)

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If it only stored the attempts for the type of materia that was attempted most recently (e.g. if you change up what you're trying to meld, you lose the bonus) then it wouldn't be that bad. Store a pointer to the type of materia and the number of consecutive failed attempts so far. It would be about the same as if each item had two more materia slots on it (or less, if you're willing to do tricks like bit-shifting the pointer so you can store both pieces as one value.) Not that this would be a trivial amount across all items, mind.

Alternately, it could be done as a buff of some sort to avoid having to store it to the gear. Fail a meld and you get a stack of "The RNG feels sorry for you" buff that lasts for 30 minutes. But there probably wouldn't be a good way to tie that to a specific piece of gear and type of materia, which would make it heavily abusable.

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Originally Posted by PirateCat

A flat increase to the chance to over-meld probably isn't going to happen, for the simple reason that it would be a really simple change to make so the reason why it's the way it is is almost certainly a deliberate game-balance decision.

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Part of me agrees, but the other part says that balanced is already out of wack considering that fact that melds are actually important to crafting and gathering, while completely optional for battle classes. I do realize the melds for crafters and gatherers isn't as needed since you can always get Red & Blue Scrip gear, but that gear doesn't have much CP/GP.

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Originally Posted by PirateCat

What I'd love to see is the ability to put multiple materia into a single meld attempt and increase the odds that way. So for a 9% chance you could opt to jam 11 materia at the slot in one go to get a 99% chance of success. This would consume all of the materia regardless of what the RNG roll is, so you'd still be using up the same number of materia as you otherwise would on average, but it lets people opt out of the risk/reward aspect of trying them one at a time. (You can't get the first-try awesomeness that happens periodically but you also avoid the 37-failure streak.) If they wanted to encourage people to use the current method and take risks, they could make each extra materia have diminishing returns when adding to the success rate (to some minimum point, say 5%.)

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Solid suggestion. I think this could be implemented easy as well. I would just wonder if it would be done for ALL materia melds or just the crafting/gathering ones.

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Originally Posted by Niet

Because I'm a pedantic nerd, here's some numbers for the "start at 10%, increase by 10% per failure":

- Hole in one: 10%
- Got it in two: 18% (=28%)
...
- Seven attempts: ~4% (=~98%)
So what started as a simple "1 in 10" has become "very likely within five, almost certain within seven, guaranteed by ten", which is insanely unbalanced.

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Not gonna lie. You lost me on that math. I took Statistics in college, but I was by no means a stat wizard.

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Originally Posted by PirateCat

If it only stored the attempts for the type of materia that was attempted most recently (e.g. if you change up what you're trying to meld, you lose the bonus) then it wouldn't be that bad. Store a pointer to the type of materia and the number of consecutive failed attempts so far. It would be about the same as if each item had two more materia slots on it (or less, if you're willing to do tricks like bit-shifting the pointer so you can store both pieces as one value.) Not that this would be a trivial amount across all items, mind.

Alternately, it could be done as a buff of some sort to avoid having to store it to the gear. Fail a meld and you get a stack of "The RNG feels sorry for you" buff that lasts for 30 minutes. .

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The "RNG Buff" would seem highly unbalanced, I recognize that. However, I think you might be onto some sort of idea though. The "pointer" you mentioned is actually in the game already in a sense. Currently there are mini-games in the Gold Saucer that use a pointer if you win, that ask if you would like to "double down." Thus, the idea of using a pointer in this reference shouldn't be unfeasible.

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Originally Posted by DBthaONE

The "RNG Buff" would seem highly unbalanced, I recognize that. However, I think you might be onto some sort of idea though. The "pointer" you mentioned is actually in the game already in a sense. Currently there are mini-games in the Gold Saucer that use a pointer if you win, that ask if you would like to "double down." Thus, the idea of using a pointer in this reference shouldn't be unfeasible.

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Materia melding - the mini game - coming to the gold saucer in patch eleventy billion! ;p

Having had 4 materias in a row at a 35% chance fail... I'd like anything that boosted the chance at increasing the meld rate... Being able to try and auto meld with multiple materias would be nice as well.

Give CUL/ALC a Materia equivalent of Tinker's Bacon. That should alleviate the problem.

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Originally Posted by ruskie

Having had 4 materias in a row at a 35% chance fail...

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Try 42 attempts to get a 22% overmeld to work ;)

these are good ideas.
but i think makes more sense to keep IV with a lesser chance of sucess than grade I, simply because it keeps the lower grades in use, (you need 9 craftmanship to cap most will opt by III + II instead of a IV+I, because the III will cost less/more sucess). the "certain sucess" after xx breaks would be nice and balance it out though.
i would love to have a "meld until sucess/out of materia choosen" option when melding.
or a materia fragments system implemented -> meld fails -> materia breaks but you "recover" xxx materia fragments (amount depending on grade of the materia lost), then having a npc that accepts said fragments and gives you a materia of your choice.

Wouldn't it be easier to create a melding stat upon crafter gear...and some materias to boost this stat ?