Materia - Best Use Cases across FF, and How You'd Like to See it in XIV

Two questions for you all:

1. What's the best use you feel any FF game has made of Materia or similar features (be they power-granting, skill-unlocking, or consumable)? What did it do, and how did it feel in that game? (And, if could have been improved further there, how so?)

2. Assume XIV's concept of Materia is entirely scrapped. How then would you like to see Materia, in however wild or different a form as you like, added to XIV? (If XIV's current Materia feels bloated to you, but nothing like Materia --or, say, IX's Ability / AP system or VIII's Junction system, etc.-- would seem to fit, what other means of customization might you like for the game?)

<Reserved for future use / summary of posts thus far>

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Two quick questions for you all:

1. What's the best use you feel any FF game has made of Materia? What did it do, and how did it feel in that game? (And, if could have been improved further there, how so?)

2. Assume XIV's concept of Materia is entirely scrapped. How then would you like to see Materia added to the game?

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The Materia data center is very weak. I waited 20 mins for a expert que. We need data center travel to save Materia.

I'm not avid FF player, but effects that are immediately noticeable, like haste, significant elemental or other conditional bonus, active effects and other things which actually do affect the gameplay, will always be miles ahead than some boring +100 critical hit (aka 0.1% damage increase). Materia in FFXIV is really just a badly designed gold sink and nothing would significantly change if they removed it.

As for second question, I think that current state of game is incompatible with the idea of relevant and fun to use materia. I don't think there is simple solution which wouldn't be metagamed in days and would allow creativity like in other games. After all, no one cares that you don't use meta build in single player game, and you're free to just experiment and fuck around, but it's different story in an online game where your performance affects others.

The fact that plenty of people (single pullers and similar) don't care is irrelevant, those people won't care about anything anyway. So once again, only people who want to improve and don't want to be carried will suffer.

Materia was used in only one game, it's not a reoccurring thing. It was how you gained spells and abilities in FF7. FF7 didn't really have jobs though as pretty much every character could do anything and only differed by their limit breaks.

While the current implementation is dull due to poor stat balance and caps leaving you with the same stat priorities for almost every job, I don't think FF7's system would work in a job based game with it's level of customization, and combat would have to be completely redesigned and rebalanced.

Materia in FF7 allowed you to equip spells, weapon effects, stat boosts or summons. There was also some other materia that effectively made it a bit like coding, such as All materia that made materia affect all targets.

So there was Cure, Fire, Ice, Lightning, Ultima, Shields, the sort of things healers and casters do in this game. Weapon effects such as multiple hits or counter-attacks. Materia that buffs HP or MP. Summons such as Ifrit, Ramuh, Shiva, Phoenix, Odin, Bahamut or Knights of the Round, most of which we just fight as our enemies in this game.

You could level them up so that they became more powerful and effective. But if you bought a brand new Fire for another character it would start again from a low level.

After experiencing that, it's hard to adjust to any other Final Fantasy game doing it different because there isn't as much freedom in a lot of the others. In FF9 certain characters could learn certain attacks or spells from their equipment but it was more restricted who could learn what. Then this game as well was hard to accept it was different.

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Originally Posted by Espon

Materia was used in only one game, it's not a reoccurring thing. It was how you gained spells and abilities in FF7. FF7 didn't really have jobs though as pretty much every character could do anything and only differed by their limit breaks.

While the current implementation is dull due to poor stat balance and caps leaving you with the same stat priorities for almost every job, I don't think FF7's system would work in a job based game with it's level of customization, and combat would have to be completely redesigned and rebalanced.

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VIII's Junction system was kind of similar (equip spells to stats based on what GF that character had equipped in order to get a stat boost) but it wasn't very intuitive and it also made casting spells a bad thing, limiting gameplay. (；´д｀)ゞ

It has been a long time since I played, but it was a PSP title - Crisis Core? The materia in that game built on the FFVII materia system. I don't remember the finer details, it's been 10+ years since I played it. But, I think you made your own materia(?) by growing other materia and combining it into materia with new effects.

As for FFXIV? Materia really only plays a role in crafting/gathering. For DoW/M gear, the difference between melded/unmelded gear is minimal. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have the extra Crit/DH/etc on there. But, the DPS difference is small, albeit, important for raid content.

For DoH/L, melded vs unmelded is the difference between having to HQ all the subcomponents first, the ability to even craft the item in the first place, the ability to harvest something from the node, and the ability to get the node bonuses (like integrity, boon chance, etc).