Enhances Ballads and other stats

So... This will pretty much be a repost of a suggestion I posted back during beta... *ahem*

Right, so... Gear no longer has any remotely interesting stats what-so-ever. No more HP drain effect on Moogle weapons, on additional Fire damage on Ifrit weapons, no Enhances Ballads on Choral Shirt (also no Piety on that, which is odd given Piety = MP = Songs). While that is massively disappointing, I do understand why they've done so. Continuing the Choral Shirt example, Bard would effectively be stuck in that forever, same for all the Song enhancement AF pieces, for that matter... But, while I understand why such enhancements have been done away with, I don't think they should have been completely removed. Instead the developers should have found a way to keep such stats without making specific gear overpowered... So, my solution? Play Final Fantasy IX.

Done? OK. How gear worked in Final Fantasy IX, more or less, is exactly what I suggest the developers do here to bring back stats such as Enhances Ballads. For those that didn't play Final Fantasy IX go away, the system was simple;

• Each piece of gear had Abilities (called Abilities in the game, they're closer to Traits in XIV though) set to them.
• When you equip a character that piece of gear, you can use Ability Points (AP), which the character earns through leveling up, to set that Ability as an active ability.
• All of these Abilities also had a progress bar, AP dropped in battle would fill the bar, and once it is maxed out, you no longer needed that piece of gear equipped to set it. It was permanently unlocked on that character.
• This also included weapons, which occasionally had Actions on them (abilities in XIV, things like Steal for example). While these are permanently unlocked in the same way as Abilities, they did not require AP to set once they'd been unlocked.
• Some of the Abilities included things like Maneater, which increased your damage against humanoid enemies, High Tide, which increased the rate a character Trance (Limit Break) gauge fills, and more overpowered things such as Auto-Life, which automatically Raised the character when KO'd.

No really, go away and play Final Fantasy IX or never come back...

So, hopefully that actually seems quite familiar in terms of A Realm Reborn... Currently, we can equip pieces of gear, as we gain EXP we also fill up a bar to Spiritbind that gear... Currently we then turn that gear into Materia, but I'm sure you've all noticed not all gear can be converted into Materia; including AF gear. We also have an additional abilities selection... So, my suggestion is simple;

• Add an Additional Traits section to the Actions & Traits menu.
• 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.
• Upon getting 100% Spiritbind in such gear, that stat is unlocked permanently.
• The amount of Additional Traits you can set can be limited the same way the number of Additional Actions is limited.
• 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.
• 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...

This would (hopefully) achieve a few things... Firstly, making obtaining certain pieces of gear worthwhile while they're currently not so (why would I bother to get a Titan weapon when he just gave me a Relic?). Secondly, add some much needed character customization to the game; I set High Tide so we can build the Limit Break meter faster, you set Auto-Life because you can't dodge plumes, and so on. And finally... It adds something new to do at endgame... Going back and obtaining any gear for Traits you missed, repeating Turn 3 because you need to Spiritbind some iLv90 gear, etc. etc.. Simple enough suggestion (totally needed 4000 extra words of banter), I'm sure there are some balancing issues, but I at least think its worth the developers considering it. Also Final Fantasy IX is the best Final Fantasy and you should feel bad for not playing it that's more than enough reason for the developers to implement this.

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'm assuming you're referring to Final Fantasy XI (11) not Final Fantasy IX (9)

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Originally Posted by AridElf

I'm assuming you're referring to Final Fantasy XI (11) not Final Fantasy IX (9)

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9 was the one where weapon/armor had abilities you could get and then spend AP points on.

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Originally Posted by AridElf

I'm assuming you're referring to Final Fantasy XI (11) not Final Fantasy IX (9)

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I am not. Final Fantasy IX (9) has the exact system I'm talking about. Here is a list of all the Abilities...

They're mostly overpowered, but it's a single player game, they just need to balance it for the MMO format.

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Originally Posted by Amberion

9 was the one where weapon/armor had abilities you could get and then spend AP points on.

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Yeah I'm aware of that but the whole thing about using gear 'forever' for a certain stat has a very XI vibe to it. Adding skills via spiritbonding would be sweet and I'd support it.

Interesting idea. I never played before 2.0, but I was kind of sad noticing that a lot of gear had lost such interesting properties, such as relic weapons increasing Flare or Holy damage, instead of just being stat sticks. :p

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Originally Posted by Raminax

Interesting idea. I never played before 2.0, but I was kind of sad noticing that a lot of gear had lost such interesting properties, such as relic weapons increasing Flare or Holy damage, instead of just being stat sticks. :p

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Even AF was superior to what we have now in some regards - If they had better base stats and their old "Enhance" traits no one would complain about people using AF lol. Sadly yoshi says we don't need stats like +/- Enmity, TP management, Trait/skill enhancers and so on.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Even AF was superior to what we have now in some regards - If they had better base stats and their old "Enhance" traits no one would complain about people using AF lol. Sadly yoshi says we don't need stats like +/- Enmity, TP management, Trait/skill enhancers and so on.

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The good thing about this is that they wouldn't really be stats, just traits you unlock through gear. With all the stats they removed, plus some from IX, there should be a fair amount of customization to have with such a system, depending on how many you can actively set at once.

Arguably it might result in "You don't have X set? GTFO", but that's pretty much already true for things like Swiftcast, and while that is occasionally an issue, it's hardly a damning critic of the subclass system. Actually, since all you need is the gear to temporarily set something, I'd say that would be less common if anything... You don't have to fully Spiritbind Choral Shirt to set Enhances Ballad, but it will mean you'll be in Choral Shirt instead of Darklight.

I agree, I think the biggest problem I have with this game is that the gear is just bland. They need to bring back unique effects on gear like in 1.0, such as decreased skill cool down or buffs to certain skills. I read somewhere that Yoshi intended to implement this later though materia possibly, but I haven't been able to find the source for the life of me. I don't see why this wouldn't be implemented, it really is a no brainer that stuff like this should have been included since launch considering they were already in the game pre-2.0. If they don't end up implementing unique gear into the game, I feel it will really be a blow to the overall game in my opinion.

I definitely support this idea. Early levels/gear could have simple Traits like +2% damage increase, +crit, +strength, etc...

Assignable traits could also be limited 1 for every 10 levels so it doesn't become super unbalanced. I would even think that multi-class/job gear could give traits that work for each class/job that can equip said gear. So DoW gear could give traits that ALL DoW could use.

Then as OP suggests, AF and JSE could give class/job specific traits.

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Originally Posted by blipples

I read somewhere that Yoshi intended to implement this later though materia possibly, but I haven't been able to find the source for the life of me.

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I hadn't heard that as something the devs put forward, though I do remember plenty of people suggesting it in beta. The one problem I found with that is that (currently) materia is very specific, as in you can only put it on crafted gear. There's also the rarity of it, people suggested something like Choral Shirt could be turned into Enhances Ballads materia, that being a 100% chance seems reasonable (instead of what we currently have with gear converting into almost random materia) but there is still one issue; how do you obtain more of it? Once you've melded it it's stuck to that gear and eventually as the level cap rises, you're going to want it on a new piece of gear, I guess taking Bard's Shirt and converting that could work, since you can reasonably obtain that again... I wouldn't want to reobtain Mythology AF though....

I definitely feel you there Sotek. I would much rather them put in unique pieces of gear that had the effects already on them. I thought the materia idea sounded interesting, but as you were stating above, I feel it would be awkward to implement. I'm hoping the extreme version primals that they're adding drop some gear that has a bit more substance to it than just higher numbers or a brighter glow. I didn't really see it being an issue while I was testing it since Alpha, but now I'm seeing how bland gear (although a lot of it does look sweet) could be a deal breaker for most people.

Even "that other game" has unique ability enhancing effects on gear, and they did it in a way where you could still upgrade from that gear and didn't get stuck in it forever. I understand they wanted to simplify things here, but they went way too far with it.

Yeah I have heard that the dev team felt they would not have been able to implement the concept (gear with actual interesting stats) within the timeframe of them re-releasing the game.

That being said, I feel that the current gear is incredibly stupid. It's just all super boring -- I only NEED 2 drops from Bahamuts Coil (as a scholar). Just hands and the book. Every other item might as well be my Mythology gear, and even to that end, it's all just useless stat padding. It's totally unacceptable from a FF game imo, and it bothers me that the dev team is so hush hush on this.

This is a great idea, I was quite disappointing that there where no skill enhancing. especially when many of the AF quests mention the armor as "enhancing a (insert jobs name) abilities" when it really doesn't, at least not literally.

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Originally Posted by darkm0d

That being said, I feel that the current gear is incredibly stupid. It's just all super boring -- I only NEED 2 drops from Bahamuts Coil (as a scholar). Just hands and the book. Every other item might as well be my Mythology gear, and even to that end, it's all just useless stat padding. It's totally unacceptable from a FF game imo, and it bothers me that the dev team is so hush hush on this.

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Did past Final Fantasy games actually have that much going on with gear? I mean, IX certainly did (and XI), and I guess VII had Materia slots to mix things up, there were usually accessories that did things as well like Ribbon (I particularly remember VI having a lot of effects on accessories), but general equipment? Hasn't that pretty much always just been a steady increase in stats? Some had other things going on I guess, Flame Mail reducing fire damage (though stuff like that got replaced on a dungeon to dungeon basis afaik), or weapons like the Chicken Knife, but for the most part gear has just been a steady progression in stats from what I remember...

Still, part of the reason I remember IX so fondly is because the gear system was so different compared to the other titles. It made equipment much more interesting, rather than just upgrading to the best in slot, I'd also have to think about the Abilities I want to unlock. Making equipment interesting is definitely something a MMO needs in my opinion, I think it would be really great for instances where there are two pieces of gear to pick (Mythology gear/Allagan) if one was the best in slot, and the other had a trait you want to unlock; OK, Argute Gown is the best body piece of Scholar, and maybe it has Enhances Adloquium II (going off my previous examples), but the Allagan Tunic Of Healing has Enhances Cure Potency, something else I'd probably really want to get on Scholar. While the Tunic might not be better, I still have reason to obtain it and equip it for a while. Usually I might actually see that as a needless grind, but given ARRs complete lack of grinding so far, especially at endgame (well, it is a grind, but with weekly lock outs), it's something I'd damn sure welcome...

This is one of the best gear ideas ever! Completely unique, works in the game, and super fun/interesting with lots of content added just by a simple idea! Love it so much.

Please do this, or something like it SE. It's REALLY REALLY annoying single player JRPG's have such fun/insane gear customization/options/upgrading and you picked the most boring, generic, safe way of gearing that requires NO USER INPUT OR THOUGHT AT ALL.

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Originally Posted by Sotek

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Final Fantasy X equipment was devoid of raw stats as well. Instead, they'd usually have abilities similar to FFIX, although they weren't permanently learnable for a set amount of AP. You could also use various materials to attach new abilities to your equipment. There were the fairly mundane things such as +X% Strength or Defence, while there also were more interesting things such as Half/One MP Cost, Counter, Gillionaire, First-Strike, Auto-Haste and so on. Actual combat stats were gained through the level progression/sphere grid system.

But otherwise I'd say you have the right gist of it. Outside of quirky things like Golden Hairpins reducing MP costs and Ribbons preventing most/all negative status effects, gear progression in most Final Fantasy games is fairly linear.

This is a great idea and I definitely support it.

Turning those gears into materia with %100 chance (also suggested in this thread) is also a good idea but then there are issues like penta-melding creating overpowered gears, melding success chance and re-obtaining gears etc .. Too many issues.

Also FFIX is the best FF game ever.

there's 2 threads about this on the front page and there have been several before already. I'm not really sure what makes stats "interesting" and "not boring". Stats are stats.

That aside, we are still running the first version of ARR. I fully expected the initial crop of gear to be basic (contrary to what some are saying, FFXI's gear at launch was pretty basic as well.), and more elaborate stuff to be added over time. The same was true for FFXI, where they added all kinds of things like set bonuses, ability modifiers, augments, a (crappy) socketing system, enchantments, and more.

Item level makes it more difficult to introduce fancy effects to gear because an item might become obsolete from its core stats but the special effect might make you hold on to it. Additionally, with no gear swapping in combat you have to choose what special effects you want to have the most, because you can't minmax every single ability via gear swapping. I think accessories will be more likely to bestow special effects as they contribute a significantly smaller amount of core stats.

What we do know is there are going to be a number of special effects on gear for PvP so we know they are adding more functionality for gear stats. It is just a matter of time until we find out exactly what comes of it.

while the beta, the question have arise a couple of time and we had an answer:

they want to balance the actual stat before put more different one, like boost of technique and other.

Cool idea! could make crafting more relevant too. Gear is so boring right now, it annoys me too.

Threads on this topic are becoming more and more common, because this gear is very very bland. The only reason my warrior doesn't want to wear my valor surcoat is because *it can't*. There's nothing Paladin-ish about it other than the 1 job listed.

It's very lame.

I would like to see something like this. I currently have a stored collection of Garuda weapons and AF for all jobs I'd like to get use out of instead of space cloggers. I wouldn't want the increases to be monumental though to end up being required. I think it would be fine for small increases to give added perks/incentive.

@E3

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Although the idea of introducing gears with skill-specific stats is enticing, a lot of thought and planning would need to go into it first to ensure balance is maintained.

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So, can we get this thread implemented now? Certainly seems like an easy way to balance the stats.

This is a good idea and definitely workable.
Though, I'd rather see the existing cross class system become useful before we think of using another method to distribute traits and abilities.

EDIT: Oh, great. Sorry about the necro. I didn't read the date of the final post until just now.

First I'm saving the rest of 9 for a 6 hour flight I have Wednesday..so from what I read this is a very nice idea. It would mean going back to obtain gear, spiritbond in it to learn the abilities? That can be placed on whatever gear you level up to next..I really like this idea.

It would make leveling more fun along the way to 50. So just thinking, for example taking up Gladiator / normal gear gives some basic traits / dungeon gear could give something like Rampart -2s recast or +2 seconds duration. GC gear could give out traits that increase a set bonus..mind you I'm thinking low level not jumping right to 50 where you get Double attack...would add something to the game that isn't over powered. No one is going to say "You don't have that 5s duration to Rampart?!...get out of my party..." well..I hope not. But..sorry just thinking..could make it very complicated where say a Cotton Cowl has traits only a thm or arcanist can level but cross classed to the other..or that might create too much chaos. Anyways I'm done thinking out loud my horrible ideas but enjoy the OP's original idea.

I wonder if they'd even be able to implement something like this in the 1-50 range anymore... For starters it'd be a lot of work to go back and adjust the majority of gears to facilitate such a system, and then it would also make content which wasn't balanced with such a system in mind inherently easier... They might be cool with that though, they do throw out Echo all the time after all... Seems more manageable to just limit it to 51-60 at this point, I'd hope Heavensward finally gives us some Enhances stats at least, it's very long overdue and the new cap is the perfect opportunity to add such things if they're worried about balance.

The only thing i want is. Make it independent from the crafting jobs. srsly couple it with the crafting and crafter will bleed raiders dry. not funny....

Or make em passive traits...

I think this would also solve some complaints people have about rushing gear/gear taking too long to get - when all gear is a verticle upgrade with no use to horizontal pieces except glamour, then of course people want to rush it because it's only going to be useful for like 3 months.

I see people moaning about the people complaining about the alex normal loot system and how gear in XI could take weeks/months just to get 1 piece while ignoring that that piece was also probably going to be useful for 1+ years. This is a huge difference in terms of the feeling of effort:reward.

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Originally Posted by Reiterpallasch

Even "that other game" has unique ability enhancing effects on gear, and they did it in a way where you could still upgrade from that gear and didn't get stuck in it forever. I understand they wanted to simplify things here, but they went way too far with it.

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And in the end "that other game" got rid of those effects as people were ignoring new gear in favor of old gear because the bonuses on the old gear made the new gear worthless.

Putting things on a long time investment grind is a bad move. You would not only have to find and acquire the gear with the Ability you want, you then also have to equip it for a longish time to be able to use it.
FFTactics uses a similar system. You equip an item, it has an ability, after a while, you learn it.
Unfortunately, the items that had skills you need were often very very weak. Especially when you get a new character at a higher level, you needed to have that character suck for a long time before it finally got good.

While I'm all for discussion and brainstorming about making gear a bit more interesting, i am wholeheartedly against anything that causes a power rift between long time players and new players/alts. Which is what your proposal would do.
Not only that, but you'd be forced to wear much weaker gear for a while even when better gear is available to you, simply because you haven't finished spirit-bonding it, but you would need to finish spirit-bonding it in order to have the skill for the raid which you cant do because your item level is too low to put out the required damage/healing etc ...

I think the Materia system has promise for letting us customize our gear a bit. (Obviously changing the way Materia slots are handled) Example:
All gear has a Primary stat on it, these can't be changed.
But we get 3 Slots in which we can put Materias that grant stats based on the item level.
All gear starts with the Materias equipped providing what SE feels is a 'baseline' stat spread for any given tier of content.
We can then choose to remove the Materias and slot new ones in. So i could take the Orthodox Tunic of Striking which has:
STR 54
Vitality 60
Crit 34
DET 36

But i could, if i wanted to, remove the Determination, and replace it with Skill Speed, Or another Crit Materia at the cost of -x% for each duplicate Materia.

So essentially, all gear would have a "Square approved" baseline stat spread, but we players can shift around the stats for what we want. Or think we want. It'd be up to SE to ensure that DPS numbers wouldn't get out of hand by giving us the customization, But i think it would scratch the "interesting stats" itch that some people have while changing nothing for those that are happy to simply take the gear they're given.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

But i think it would scratch the "interesting stats" itch that some people have while changing nothing for those that are happy to simply take the gear they're given.

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I don't think it would, because there is nothing really interesting about swapping out Determination for Skill Speed. That doesn't actually address the issue at all, all that does is give us out right gear customization; Rather than going for a mix of Tomestone and Raid gear, we're now only going for one and then customizing the stats on the gear to be optimal. If anything that would be making matters worse, we'd go from having 2~3 sets of gear to optimize between, to just getting our Esoterics gear and then customizing it to cut out all the excess Accuracy/etc. we don't need.

The AP system from Final Fantasy IX successfully gets around Final Fantasy XIs issue of interesting stats translating into overpowered gear that you wear for the next ten years. The limit on the number of stats you could even set with AP successfully gives SE a roof to balance to as well, you can effectively know that nobody is every going to be able to set more than X stats and balance around that, if balance is even required. I'd see it more as something like Food personally; Something entirely optional that provides a small bonus, but is by no means a requirement. The fact that it would be included on gear like Law and Esoterics gear outright means people would be getting some stats by default, as well.

That, if anything, is what they could balance it to. They already balance raid content around the gear set you should have for it, they'd just need to add to that the stats that gear set would have, because everyone doing the content would have that gear and those stats by default. It would be impossible to play the game and not have a handful of stats to the use AP to set, everyone would have something to set. Yes there would be an "optimal" series of stats to set for various encounters (facing lots of humanoid enemies? Man Eater is an obvious choice), but those kinds of stats would, arguably, be the weakest. The Job specific ones, which you'd expect to find on the Esoterics/Relic sets, which people will be playing with anyway, would be the stronger ones if anything. Stats like Man Eater and High Tide would offer a very marginal boost just to balance for the fact that you'll have (potentially) a whole party of them.

I really cannot picture a scenario where something like this would become a requirement outside what stats you'd already have from the gear you're already wearing. With a cap on how many you can set and everyone getting at least something just by playing, it would literally just be something for min/maxers to obsess over, and those of us who go OCD on this kind of thing. I think the comparison to Food is fairly apt, though unlike Food everyone is going to have some by default, which seems fairer IMO. The bonus provided by no means needs to be a requirement for anything, like Food it would just be something for the "elite" to work with to making things easier/faster.

I like it, I like talent tree customization (orbs, blobs, grids, boards, whatever, so many systems). While opponents often say they offer the appearance of customization but don't, which is partly true, they still very often offer at least some customization (more than there was without).

Say that flavor of the month build happens, sure people want to switch but often there are at least one or two highly acceptable builds, or even multiple FOTM(s). The benefit from a system like this (and others that use slotting) is that you can customize without significant penalty for making the "wrong" choice or the "goofy and fun" choice. There is something in the sense of RPG when you travel down a path and you have to accept it, but imo with the amount of time put into MMOs over long periods of time and the way FFXIV works on jobs I would just prefer a system that won't beat me upside the head cause I thought x option sounded fun or better and was wrong. That I choose to benefit my solo play style but then I wanted to do a raid and be viable (hardcore RPG mechanics are still cool, imo, but FFXIV for the most part decided to not be that).

Besides the classic/hardcore rpg part of it could be having to earn the ability, which would promote old content and SBing* at least a little - adding more materia and taking some money from the bots. Though there are some dedicated SB players, most of the time I just see a crowed of bots (or people playing with a one macro button). The only issue I'd have with this is that any boss that clearly needs a certain slot (boss sleeps you every 10 seconds, must slot 75% sleep resist) is that SE ensures that the content does not become an ancient road/mountain block by doing a sort of relic update every so often (making abilities bond faster that meet certain requirements). Most likely the below extreme content would be happy with whatever you want, and extreme would have a few dedicated slots and then a freebie(depending on mechanics/how many slots we get). Also I'd like to be able to save slot sheets, or a auto macro button (makes a macro on a click).

*Technically doesn't need to "SB" to do this system, could always just have it tag it untradeable or something (D3 has a system a bit like this now through their Kunai Hordric Cube thing).

Our soul stones teach us about our jobs from the memories of past people, perhaps we can start to leave our mark on the stone too?

I fully agree. This would be an awesome idea. I loved it in FFIX. We need more interesting, useful gear.

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Originally Posted by Hypie

*snip*

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I don't know how you found this thread, or why you made a post, but I'm glad you did so.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Our soul stones teach us about our jobs from the memories of past people, perhaps we can start to leave our mark on the stone too?

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Yay, a lore reason. But yes, we need this so much. The system as a whole is something that feels missing from Final Fantasy XIV. We're the first Final Fantasy game since IV that has eschewed customization of player characters, and it is rather jarring. While yes, you can pretend that cross-class abilities are customization, they're an illusion of choice as to compared to a choice between say "reduces the enmity generated by skull sunder and butcher's block" and "thrill of battle heals you over six seconds for 20% of your maximum HP" as two abilities for Warrior. The first is obviously tuned towards making the Warrior a better off-tank, since they wouldn't have to worry about ripping off the main tank with those abilities, while the second is obviously a main tank's tool, and a powerful one at that. They're both equally good, one may be better in math, but not in practice, and I think that's the most important part.

Some of those stats coming back would be nice

http://www.mystina.ffxivmaps.com/Mat...%281.22%29.png

It is sad that there is no enmity+ anymore on tank gears. Or enmity- materia for healers.

Bump because 14 is boring in its itemization scheme and is alienating dedicated players due to its shallow formula and lack of rewarding content