Why is materia capped/unusable on gear?

As a BLM, my goal is to get items that increase my INT, spell speed, critical hit rate, etc. My goal as BLM is to get my attack magic potency up high so I can do more damage and be more useful in a party.

So I have a HQ weapon with:
INT +11
VIT +11
Spell Speed +18
Determination +8
O - materia slot
O - materia slot

Why can I not shove my int +3 materia into the slots, or a vit +3 materia or a spell speed? You know, something useful that I can benefit from with attaching materia. I want to increase my equipment's abilities with materia, which is what it is supposed to do. I meet the level requirements. I thought that was the whole point of the materia system.

I understand something about dungeon gear and how crafted or bought gear isn't allowed to be as good as dungeon gear because people who got dungeon gear might cry or something, but honestly, this is frustrating. I should be able to put any level materia on any gear as long as there is a slot.

Also, I would like to see HP +50 materia.

Your weapon is capped on INT, VIT and Spell Speed, especially if it's a higher tiered weapon. You have to put those items in other slots. People complained about melding in XIV so when he redid the system he made it more inline of some other MMOs (though a lot of others have near limitless slots, but they also had better itemization.)

We had lots of good materia to use, but he got rid of them as well as varying amounts per materia :\

Each piece of gear has a max stat value it can provide, based on its level and type. HQ gear will always be very close to the cap for all stats already on it, so adding materia of a stat already present isn't viable.

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Originally Posted by Lysandrus

Each piece of gear has a max stat value it can provide, based on its level and type. HQ gear will always be very close to the cap for all stats already on it, so adding materia of a stat already present isn't viable.

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I understand this. But what I don't understand is why there is a cap, and why bother with materia if the items you get will already be capped in the areas that matter? Is materia to be considered just another way to make an item HQ then?

Due to the stat caps existing, I am not sure why we have the various tiers of primary stat (INT, STR, DEX, MND) materia then. Your gear is going to already have your main stat, so why even have the materia in game if we will not be able to use them? I mean sure you could use STR materia on a BLM and not be blocked from the stat cap, but that makes no sense.

This issue is why things like STR III materia sells for like 400 gil, but the tier 3 crit materia goes for like 40k each on the market.

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Originally Posted by Uriahnool

I understand this. But what I don't understand is why there is a cap, and why bother with materia if the items you get will already be capped in the areas that matter? Is materia to be considered just another way to make an item HQ then?

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It's that way to prevent people from stacking a single stat at the expense of everything else. You can still do so to an extent by stacking as much as you can on your other gear that doesn't already have the stat in question, but just not to the extreme.

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Originally Posted by Uriahnool

I understand this. But what I don't understand is why there is a cap, and why bother with materia if the items you get will already be capped in the areas that matter? Is materia to be considered just another way to make an item HQ then?

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To prevent people from making pure op-items like this:

http://s14.directupload.net/images/131014/tyrx43ip.png

There has to be a cap, or you will have a system which is not balanced at all.

In 1.0 you used to be able to put any number of stats on them. Commonly to be a good monk/drg/blm you needed 50 int on your head slot or 50 str on your gloves. People always complained about that. Also, guy above me shows one of those str gloves.

The fewer user variables there are the easier it is to keep classes balanced without hearing x is OP because some wise guy managed to find some combination the des didn't think about

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Originally Posted by Jarlax

The fewer user variables there are the easier it is to keep classes balanced without hearing x is OP because some wise guy managed to find some combination the des didn't think about

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Yet BRD is pretty OP even in this simplified environment lol.

Yep, as others have said, they nerfed the materia system in 1.0 which allowed massive stat stacking to OP levels and reduced it to what we now have in 2.0, which is a almost 100% useless, uninteresting and unintuitive system that no one really uses outside of ilvl 70 crafted gear.

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Originally Posted by Nero

To prevent people from making pure op-items like this:

http://s14.directupload.net/images/131014/tyrx43ip.png

There has to be a cap, or you will have a system which is not balanced at all.

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Even so, gear like this would cost quite a lot of money to make and take a lot of trail and error. I would look at this gear as inspiration and to strive to that point, I wouldn't get mad or feel there was something wrong with doing this. If the example pictured was the issue, why not limit it to one or two slots max for that piece of gear and allow anything to go in it?

I understand that there has to be a cap for stats and the amount of stats materia can augment but right now the caps are way too low. The caps are too low for both seen and unseen stats. The low caps make trying to meld materia very frustrating and to be perfectly honest, it defeats the purpose of the materia system.
The materia system is supposed to give us some sort of choice in how we augment our gear but because of the way the caps are it removes all choice from our hands. It's just too limiting and they need to change it.
Sure, x4 Tier IV materia on a single piece of gear (In FFXIV 1.0) is OP but one tier IV STR materia on a piece of gear isn't OP (even in 1.0), especially since tier IV materia doesn't give that much anymore... =_=; Tier IV materia gives +7 ~ +9 to a stat from what I've seen, depending on the stat. So... again, why are the caps so low?

Have you forgotten about Forbidden Melding? Someone with lots of time an materia could just infinitely spiritbond his accessories, and infinitely upgrade his gear.

Of course, this comes at the chance of failure, but the cost is only the catalyst and materia. This has been severely nerfed since your gear isn't at risk anymore. And consider the hypothetical chance that someone finds a bug (exploit) where Forbidden Melding doesn't fail. Worse has happened.

The way the system is now Materia is pretty boring. You can improve secondary stats on armor and accessories but there's no opportunity to prioritize the main stat. I understand why they limit them increase but I think it needs to be more flexible.

While they could make the stat caps = whatever the stats are on the same level dungeon gear... That would make it so you didn't have to grind dungeons. Can't have that now can we?

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Originally Posted by Nero

To prevent people from making pure op-items like this:

http://s14.directupload.net/images/131014/tyrx43ip.png

There has to be a cap, or you will have a system which is not balanced at all.

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With the way 2.0's melding system fails you can use that picture for your argument. What that picture doesn't show is likely how many times that person had to completely lose all materias, catalysts, and the armor itself in 1.0. When you failed in 1.x everything was lost, not just the materia/catalyst. Not to mention Tier IV melding on second chance at best was 16-20%. It was an exponential decrease in % every additional materia added. People that spent the time spirit binding endlessly and spending vasts amounts of gil to get that gear earned it by a huge cost of time/money/patience.

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Also, I would like to see HP +50 materia.

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It's called Vitality materia.

Also, the idea is that you add secondary stats, not your main stat (Though you could add main stat to an item, such as a vitality ring, that doesn't have it).

It's set up this way for balance.

meh.

I understand the need for balance, but current system is stupid. For example: Making mage gear, I literally cannot attach ANY vit/int/mnd materia into any piece of crafted gear. In fact, the only base stat that I can attach materia for is PIE.

Due to stat caps being this damn low, it takes any customization out of the question. I realize that people will always come up with a min/max scenario, but atm I don't even have an option. So, meh.