The Fast Mage Problem

For most jobs, Crit is king. Critical Hit gets to double-dip on effectiveness because it improves both odds OF a crit and bonus damage FROM a crit. When you can go all-in on Crit with your melding, this surpasses the X * Y * Z math that would normally even things out a bit.
For Summoner, Red Mage, and Pictomancer, Crit is way out in front.
For Black Mage there's a viable build - often called Fast Mage - focusing on Spell Speed. Because you can't focus entirely on it, Crit doesn't really get going and actually has lowest priority in that build.
Except that Black Mage shares its gear with these other three, and they don't get near as much value out of Spell Speed.
Making multiple top-end outfits wouldn't be an inherent problem; It's not so different from everyone who's doing the work of making an extra outfit to raid as both Viper and Pictomancer. But it does hit an extra snag in the fact that you're only allowed one copy of most top-end gear. If you want to play both Fast Mage and Red Mage, you'd need to find an entire alternative max-ilvl outfit.
This is both a really weird problem to have and a signifier of an ongoing...dangling issue left over from older days of FFXIV's design ethos.
Personally I don't have investment in the direction they go to solve this, but I'd like them to solve it.
Three directions I see offhand:
1) Eliminate the pretense of gear specialization. There's a reasonable argument that almost none of the community gets actual value/enjoyment from fiddling with materia. And by and large the math/game logic of "what set of materia on this job gives the best output" is a solved problem. Cons: Materia has thematic value. Also, you'd be removing an entire class of treasure.
2) Double down on gear specialization. Having truly interesting materia that could really impact your rotations would hypercharge the players' creativity in builds and give a "play your way" feel. Cons: Would require its own balance team, most likely. Also, the more impactful a system is the more players feel penalized if they don't engage with it. It's neat to have a cool materia but also if you don't find the materia system interesting it sucks to feel hobbled if you haven't bothered to focus in on it.
3) Focus on QoL for the existing setup. Making it possible to save preloads of materia arrangements on your gear as part of the gear, such that changing to Black Mage would just swap in the Spell Speed materia to replace the Crit, would solve the above problem at least. Cons: This would require dropping the materia break chance from current-content materia, which is used as a currency sink.

Personally I think option 2 has the...swingiest value. It has the greatest chance to be outstanding but also the largest cost and risk. Options 3 and 1 are comparatively easy to implement, with 3 having less impact on economic systems, but neither feels like it adds something huge to the game in the course of fixing the existing issue.

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Originally Posted by Karishi

Having truly interesting materia that could really impact your rotations would hypercharge the players' creativity in builds and give a "play your way" feel.

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Nope, what will actually happen is what WoW and many other MMO have been trying to do. Giving players agency and option to be creative by having choice in the matter.

The result is always the same. One meta emerges, everyone follows the meta.

Y.P isn't wrong on that. Why waste time, energy and money on developping specialisation if for 99% of the population to ignore it and just play "the meta".

They'll just design the job to be "meta" from the get go, end of the story.

For PVE, there will always be a mathematically better option. ESpecially in FF14 whose combat are so rigid.

Not saying current materia are fun, but what you propose is simply impossible.
It isn't a solo game where someone can do something they prefer, altough less effective, because they prefer it. Peer pressure is strong.

You could fool yourself into believing that materia would be different, it wouldn't. There'd be a meta build, or maybe multiple like "dungeon build" and "savage build" or whatever, but people would still notice you "making the wrong choice".
You'd have a set of choice, you might try out a few things, then at some point you'll learn what's best... and you'll equipe that.

You can understand someone "playing wrong" because they struggle with the rotation. But something like materia tend to have people be less patient.

Just run a dungeon as an Ice mage or a full tenacity tank, see how long before some people call you out on this.

This :

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

The result is always the same. One meta emerges, everyone follows the meta.

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And this:

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

Just run a dungeon as an Ice mage or a full tenacity tank, see how long before some people call you out on this.

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The combination of both is the bigger problem here, people being sheep and following the "meta" instead of developing their own style and shaming people that actually try to create a style of their own.

Your average player most certainly doesn't get value between having the choice between Determination, Direct Hit, and Crit, because if you want to understand how these function in a meaningful way, you have to go outside the game to get it. And even once you understand the system, you don't really have a meaningful choice: all you want to do is deal more damage, so your choice is between the actual optimal choice and two sub-optimal choices. Player choice!

It's an opaque and inaccessible system that doesn't even manage to be meaningful. The game would be in better shape if these stats were removed and there was just a single "damage" stat.

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Originally Posted by Gilihere

This :


And this:



The combination of both is the bigger problem here, people being sheep and following the "meta" instead of developing their own style and shaming people that actually try to create a style of their own.

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The problem with that logic is 14 enforces its “correct” rotation and melds so hard you are actively griefing the party if you don’t follow it

Blizzard wizard isn’t a “style” it’s doing 15% of the damage you could be doing even doing a botched attempt at the correct rotation

Square even actively removes optimisation choices that people develop when they decide they don’t like them. Non standard BLM, smuggle WAR and Freeform loop SAM are all examples of style/optimisation the devs have quashed

Wouldn't another potential solution be that they can remove the 'Unique' modifier on sets of gear? This would allow someone to have an entire other set optimized for another materia set, granted it might suck to have to buy the same pieces, but I think these players might appreciate the ability. I personally got every piece ahead of a few expansions for BiS and that's where I encountered this issue most often, do I'd like the ability to say least.

This would have the con of players that might need on gear they already have, but this could be limited by still locking e.g. alliance raid gear, where the actual raids have swapped to a coffer system so it's entirely within the hands of the players at this point where it really counts anyways.

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Originally Posted by Post

Wouldn't another potential solution be that they can remove the 'Unique' modifier on sets of gear? This would allow someone to have an entire other set optimized for another materia set, granted it might suck to have to buy the same pieces, but I think these players might appreciate the ability. I personally got every piece ahead of a few expansions for BiS and that's where I encountered this issue most often, do I'd like the ability to say least.

This would have the con of players that might need on gear they already have, but this could be limited by still locking e.g. alliance raid gear, where the actual raids have swapped to a coffer system so it's entirely within the hands of the players at this point where it really counts anyways.

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If you were playing only one job ever and the game was designed around that instead of you being able to play multiple jobs on one character then something like that might work.

3 is what I would like most, with the extract destruction chance still applying anytime you're removing the materia to actually put it on another gear piece.

My ideal, however, is for a complete rework of Skill Speed and Spell Speed because the amount of finagling to hit a comfortable gcd per class is absurd. I'd far prefer, for example, a toggle per gear set to transmute x of some other substat into Speed, with no gear having it naturally. Most jobs within a role have different preferences for the ideal amount of sks or sps; playing PLD with DRK melds can be icky.

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Originally Posted by Sylvain

Nope, what will actually happen is what WoW and many other MMO have been trying to do. Giving players agency and option to be creative by having choice in the matter.

The result is always the same. One meta emerges, everyone follows the meta.

Y.P isn't wrong on that. Why waste time, energy and money on developping specialisation if for 99% of the population to ignore it and just play "the meta".

They'll just design the job to be "meta" from the get go, end of the story.

For PVE, there will always be a mathematically better option. ESpecially in FF14 whose combat are so rigid.

Not saying current materia are fun, but what you propose is simply impossible.
It isn't a solo game where someone can do something they prefer, altough less effective, because they prefer it. Peer pressure is strong.

You could fool yourself into believing that materia would be different, it wouldn't. There'd be a meta build, or maybe multiple like "dungeon build" and "savage build" or whatever, but people would still notice you "making the wrong choice".
You'd have a set of choice, you might try out a few things, then at some point you'll learn what's best... and you'll equipe that.

You can understand someone "playing wrong" because they struggle with the rotation. But something like materia tend to have people be less patient.

Just run a dungeon as an Ice mage or a full tenacity tank, see how long before some people call you out on this.

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You say that for PvE there will always be a mathematically better option and "everyone" will go for/demand it, but people are still playing Black Mage in Ultimate content in spite of the presence of Picto. They're clamoring for BLM to get a buff, but they're playing it.
I do think there's a difference in scale between balancing 20-30 strictly-regulated jobs to one another and 100-300 potential do-it-yourself specs. WoW "handles" this problem by...not balancing those specs to one another and acting like it's not a problem, leading to the power level being found by the community instead of set by the devs and everyone needing to follow the meta just to be close to the power level. But that's not the only way to run things. City of Heroes has multiple orders of magnitude more builds - seriously, tens of thousands to millions, depending on how you're counting it - but doesn't have the same issue because their entire organizing principles for high-end content are different.
But I respect Y.P.'s logic: Basically, generating a whole bunch of specs is spending work-hours to produce the problem of having to then balance all those specs.

As someone else pointed out, Ice Mage is just ignoring a bunch of the buttons you got that give you more damage. But Tenacity Tank, it actually could take years before anyone calls you out. Outside of extremely top-end content the core stats on your gear give you everything you need to succeed; You can get away with melding nothing at all.