Gear should grant passive abilities

I think that would provide some nice variety and make wearing full sets worthwhile.
For paladin, full allagan comes with SOS wall, which lasts 1 minute and negates 5% of damage when HP is below 20%.
For warrior, full allagan comes with life fabric, which grants a 1% chance an auto attack will return the damage dealt in HP.
For WhM, Sacred Light which has a 5% chance of cutting a CD in half.
Etc, any others agree?

And crafted gear/materia done correctly can create some effects rivaling that of allagan, making crafters a more important aspect of the economy and making the overall game somewhat more interesting :) it's great already, could be even more awesome!

Used to - people complained about it though because it forced them to think about the gear they use and think about what gear they truly need. It also created a rush for gear drops where people spent time farming the gear and never replacing it, compared to now where you replace pretty much everything until i70-i90 and even then you still do.

Relics for example granted passive abilities that enhanced certain job abilities, but Yoshi said this stresses players so he went with a simplified approach.

Weapons should all have special abilities/skills and cease to follow the path of vertical progression, IMO.
Won't happen though. :-(

Would be nice to see sets of gear or something along the lines of passive abilities, it's going to get old if we just keep seeing "of Fending" and "of Maiming" etc from here on out

Anyone ever played Phantasy Star Online ep1&2?

Endgame gear was stronger than usual, but the strongest gears were usually the result not of the weapon's raw stats, but because of a special active feature you could use in combat. For enemy-related weapons, this would usually be some elemental-based attack or projectile. For the highest endgame weapons, it got pretty crazy.

The point was, for about most of the abilities, their superiority was situational, so in most cases, higher stats wouldn't cause you to abandon an older weapon. FFXIV works a bit differently, since you aren't allowed to swap weapons during combat, something PSO was designed for. I certainly think the same type of mechanic could be applied for weapons, though. Maybe a weapon skill button (similar to the limit break button) which does something specific if your weapon has a special ability.



Nothing game-breaking, just a nice, functional ability to keep equipment progression from being completely linear. The idea of specific weapons either enhancing abilities you already own, or providing you with completely new ones is something that really can never get old if implemented correctly.

That would be along the lines of bringing interesting complexities to the game like player elemental damage and that's a no no. Don't want to be confusing the poor players little heads with things like basic depth.

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Originally Posted by Edellis

Anyone ever played Phantasy Star Online ep1&2?

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That was precisely what I was alluding to. >_>

Once you got past a certain point pretty much any rare weapon was viable, as were a number of normal weapons. Each weapon felt distinct and worthwhile, so it fostered a desire to collect all of them and use whichever you enjoyed the best.
While games like WoW, FFXIV, etc. get hit with the label 'gear-treadmill', PSO was what I like to call a 'Gear Collectible Card Game'.

Having a set up that promotes getting X to get Y to get Z (which is all you really cared about) is dull... Having a setup that promotes getting and using the entire alphabet is much more fun.

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Originally Posted by Edellis

Anyone ever played Phantasy Star Online ep1&2?

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Or FFXI. Or heck, even 1.0. :P

Yeah, the gear selection in this game is so disappointing and boring.

but, it would be too stressfull for the community.
how will people wear their incoming sephiroth's cloak if they need to wear something else for a .. pardon my confusion here.. but is the word "bonus"?
no, i just want my i100 items in the future to just have more str,vit,random stat. i feel i'm entitled to vertical progression forever.
this will keep things fresh, fun, interesting, kawaii, long term.

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Originally Posted by Pharacelcus

but, it would be too stressfull for the community.
how will people wear their incoming sephiroth's cloak if they need to wear something else for a .. pardon my confusion here.. but is the word "bonus"?
no, i just want my i100 items in the future to just have more str,vit,random stat. i feel i'm entitled to vertical progression forever.
this will keep things fresh, fun, interesting, kawaii, long term.

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There's too many stats on gear already its too confusing. I think they need to just have one stat "power" and if you get over 9000 you win the game.

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Originally Posted by Deifact

There's too many stats on gear already its too confusing. I think they need to just have one stat "power" and if you get over 9000 you win the game.

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Think you missed the sarcasm mate.

OT: yes, I agree with the OP.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

That was precisely what I was alluding to. >_>

While games like WoW, FFXIV, etc. get hit with the label 'gear-treadmill', PSO was what I like to call a 'Gear Collectible Card Game'.

Having a set up that promotes getting X to get Y to get Z (which is all you really cared about) is dull... Having a setup that promotes getting and using the entire alphabet is much more fun.

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Absolutely agree. PSO is one of the first MMOs i'd ever played, and it has unfortunately stopped me from enjoying so many games because of how dynamic its gear system was

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That would be along the lines of bringing interesting complexities to the game like player elemental damage and that's a no no. Don't want to be confusing the poor players little heads with things like basic depth.

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Which is sad, because TBH so few games actually incorporate the sort of depth im talking about into their systems. I honestly can't think of a single one that does, including the sequels to PSO Ep1&2. I should mention, something like "+10 hidden dexterity", or "Randomly does 10 fire damage" is not the type of hidden abilities i'm talking about. Those essentially are no better than stat increases because they still only improve overall DPS, without much depth to them.

In regular MMOs, gear increase = DPS increase, while in PSO, gear increase = option increase. This is something that i've never seen another MMO do correctly, because their systems aren't pre-designed to incorporate the feature. You are the same character with a lv.9351 weapon as you are with a lv.1 weapon. You just do more damage.


So if FFXIV had abilities similar to PSO, i'd imagine it'd be something similar to equipping Additional job abilities on your character that just come from the weapon. Some help tons, some only help a little, but it's great to have direct control of them and use them when you want to.

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Originally Posted by Deifact

There's too many stats on gear already its too confusing. I think they need to just have one stat "power" and if you get over 9000 you win the game.

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adding up to 9000 is quite the task and might prove too stressfull.
let's just keep it at 'power' and you may get more, but the tooltip will be vague about what the bonus will be.. if any.
this way, everyone's thought or assumption will be right in their head.

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Originally Posted by Vactus

Think you missed the sarcasm mate.

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i resent that. sarcasm is the devil.

I believe that there's an inherent problem when it comes to gear with trait-type bonuses on them.

Maybe not initially, but eventually you're going to run into the situation where the passive bonus provided by a piece of equipment turns out to be so good that no other option for gear in that slot will ever become viable until something even better comes around that replaces it.

The way gear is setup right now, you're not ever really going to have that problem, because even if there's not a whole lot of options, you still have some choice and room for personal preference. People will debate the benefits of +20 Crit. vs +20 DET, and both sides could be right, depending on the kind of build you're going for.

However, if one piece of gear gives +20 Crit. and the other provides a 20% boost to Full Thrust damage, you're always going to be wrong if you choose anything other than the 20% Full Thrust boost, which will forever be useful.

There's no choice anymore, you either have it, or you're bad. And that's not right.

I do think it would be cool to see set stat bonuses on some gear sets like SE currently does with the grand company gear.

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Originally Posted by Nahara

I believe that there's an inherent problem when it comes to gear with trait-type bonuses on them.

Maybe not initially, but eventually you're going to run into the situation where the passive bonus provided by a piece of equipment turns out to be so good that no other option for gear in that slot will ever become viable until something even better comes around that replaces it.
The way gear is setup right now, you're not ever really going to have that problem, because even if there's not a whole lot of options, you still have some choice and room for personal preference. People will debate the benefits of +20 Crit. vs +20 DET, and both sides could be right, depending on the kind of build you're going for.

However, if one piece of gear gives +20 Crit. and the other provides a 20% boost to Full Thrust damage, you're always going to be wrong if you choose anything other than the 20% Full Thrust boost, which will forever be useful.

There's no choice anymore, you either have it, or you're bad. And that's not right.

I do think it would be cool to see set stat bonuses on some gear sets like SE currently does with the grand company gear.

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Thats why set bonuses like "+20 crit" and "+20 Det" aren't the type of set bonuses you should implement. At least, they aren't the types of ones i was talking about, because they still only provide linear DPS increases.
I was thinking more along the lines of, maybe an optional stance you can activate with the gear equipped, or things that allow you to completely change your playstyle.

"-40 STR, +100 Skill Speed".

"-800 TP, +300% Auto Attack damage."

"-40% MP, provide swiftcast"

"-50% TP/MP regeneration for 20 seconds, +30 Det for 10 seconds"

"+200 DET, -1.4% overall damage per missing HP%" (Ultima Weapon?)


Or, simply allow you to use completely unique abilities with different cooldowns or TP/MP costs that you usually wouldn't have access to on your class.

"30 Potency, 40% chance of Petrify"

"50 Potency, Recovers 100% of damage dealt as HP"

"370 potency attack if enemy is under 15% HP, at cost of 999 TP"


They don't have to all be useful 100% of the time, they could even be completely suboptimal, but depending on the weapon you have equipped, you could have benefits in some areas and detriments in others. It just adds some non-linear strategy for tackling content. The catch is to 1) not make these Passives but Actives, and 2) balance them around the weapons.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

Weapons should all have special abilities/skills and cease to follow the path of vertical progression, IMO.
Won't happen though. :-(

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It's really sad to hear the truth like this, but it's going to be awhile before games really get away from the tier system.

Sets are poor game design for some of the reasons people put out here already: they make sets worth more than they actually are because people don't want to break up the set bonus.

I think a better option would be an expansion of the Materia system to be able to include "Special" material that can be slotted and unslotted (perhaps with a special, expensive reagent) that provides the special bonuses. In fact, there's so much that could be possibly done with Materia it isn't even funny. It could be so much more than just the +X to Y we have currently and if you were to do an actual sort of set bonus I'd suggest it be taken as part of the Materia system (say one Firaga Materia in all slots gives you a special set of fire abilities for example) that way you can take it with you as you upgrade to the next set of gear.

definitely agree with the materia thing, they could probably add some materia slots to the future better weapons and materia could add a ton of different buffs/abilities

The new mainstream community cannot handle decision making. ULTRA Linear progression ONLY!!!!

They had a system that worked towards the end of 1.0 and system that worked really well for 10yrs in their previous game... why they changed it no one knows. And to my knowledge not 1 forum post saying anyone wanted it changed.... and I spend too much time on here.

But yea gear progression in this game is probably the worst in the genre atm. Seriously I am having a hard time thinking of a worse game atm.

Scratch my original gear idea. Materia it is. Just make all gear have options for materia, and materia can grant stat boosts, passive abilities, or even some active abilities...maybe even party passive abilities, like increasing the rate at which all allies recover health at the expensive of your rate being cut in half.

I think it is stupid that you cannot put materia onto "special" armor. Now you should not be a let to increase "main" stats for your job/class but you be able to add resistance type materia or alt stats for your class. I think they have really under-developed the material system in this game.

If there's going to be any "bonuses", then it should be akin to WoW's set bonuses; Not exactly how they do it, but the same vein of thinking.

What i mean is, you got a bonus if you got 2/5 pieces of a gear set, and then 4/5 pieces of a gear set. For example, when a person got 2/5 pieces of the Cyclopean Dread set for DPS spec'd deathknights, one of their triggered abilities "Killing Spree" gave a bonus of 500 mastery or haste in addition to it's regular buffs.. While the 4/5 bonus gave you a bonus that any special attacks made while under the buff "Pillar of Frost" impaled the target on the a pillar of ice. Then when the next batch of content is released, you start augmenting your gear and perhaps forgetting about old bonuses for new ones.

Basically, what i'm saying is that SQE should never make weapon or equipment bonus that will be timeless. They need to create a progression style and weapons/armour need to be left behind when new things come out, but they need to put in some decision making.. Higher stats with this non-set piece, or a little lower stats but the proc when paired with this item can be very good.

The only thing that's wrong with this whole argument though is that there will -always- be a "best" way to spec, so there won't be any decision making at the end of the day anyway... if you don't have the min/max gear setup, you will not be as good as the other person who has that set up and can pull better damage/heals/mitigation; And no amount of "skill" will make the difference, because no matter how good you are, there will be always someone else who is just as good with the proper combination of gear.

Also.. a P.S to the devs... Choosing proper gear is not stressful, it never has been and never will be, so i don't know where you got your information from. There will always a plethora of sources out there to form a proper opinion and groups like "Blue Garter" or "Elitist Jerks" to pave the way to find the best set-up there is, or just player's intuition to try new things that work best. Be honest in admitting that you are not making bland gear upgrades for -our- benefit, but rather you're making it for your own because you do not want to take the time to balance non-stat upgrades.

Well we do have GC gear, which grants set bonuses and Sanction. People made fun of me for maximizing crit with sets and sanction at ilvl50, so I moved on to boring old darklight.

Yes dear god. That was one of the best things about FFXI and the removal of that kind of thing in Diablo 3 made the loot suck.

I would actually enjoy if normal pieces of gear, didnt just strictly raise
main stats, and secondary stat, but did other things as well.

enhances cures, enhances fire spells, double attack +1% etc

Yes I'd love something like this! I'd love to have to think about which gear is more suited to each battle, or what which would hold up best in a particular dungeon. Instead you check ilvl and go with that.

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Originally Posted by Nahara

I believe that there's an inherent problem when it comes to gear with trait-type bonuses on them. . .
if one piece of gear gives +20 Crit. and the other provides a 20% boost to Full Thrust damage, you're always going to be wrong
if you choose anything other than the 20% Full Thrust boost, which will forever be useful.

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Hopefully if they do implement a bonus stat system the choices wont be so black and white.
+20% full thrust damage vs +5% blood for blood damage vs +10sec blood for blood duration
Each one has its own flavor with pros and cons.

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Originally Posted by frostmagemari

...when the next batch of content is released, you start augmenting your gear and perhaps forgetting about old bonuses for new ones.

Basically, what i'm saying is that SQE should never make weapon or equipment bonus that will be timeless. They need to create a progression style and weapons/armour need to be left behind when new things come out

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The problem with this is that it completely invalidates any early game content and new players feel even more left behind and useless than they already are, which doesn't exactly encourage new people to sub when they realize they will be ignored until they hit max everything. In games like PSO, even low level or undergeared players could still be credit to team because even the low level weapons had interesting abilities (the Frozen Shooter, one of the very first unique drops, was highly useful all the way to endgame for its chance to freeze on every shot even though its damage was pitiful). They also had an elemental system on top of an affinity system on top of a status system on top of the gear. I don't recall anyone ever being frustrated by the game being complicated.

You're also assuming that the only reason anyone plays the game is to get new loot, which is not true. Many people would love to keep their gear, either because they enjoy the playstyle it allows them to use (in the case of unique equipment) or for aesthetic reasons (which a well-made vanity system would address, but let's be real... it won't be well made.) and play the new content to experience a new environment, or to know the next chapter of the story, or to face a new challenging boss, or just to have fun with their friends. A good game is one that's worth playing even when there are no "rewards" to be had. One of the most fun ways of playing PSO was to go in naked and only use what gear you found during the run, and it was completely feasible to beat the game this way.

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The only thing that's wrong with this whole argument though is that there will -always- be a "best" way to spec, so there won't be any decision making at the end of the day anyway... if you don't have the min/max gear setup, you will not be as good as the other person who has that set up and can pull better damage/heals/mitigation; And no amount of "skill" will make the difference, because no matter how good you are, there will be always someone else who is just as good with the proper combination of gear.

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The answer to this is to do the opposite of what they're currently doing: Make the game less accessible. Again using PSO as an example, the drop rates on the best items (orochiagito, sealed J-sword, etc) were akin to winning the Powerball while being struck by lightning. Everyone knew this, and this meant that the majority of (legit) players came to accept that they would likely never see those insanely overpowered Super Best Unparalleled Weapon over their career in the game. So there was never any pressure to bring the best gear, in fact nobody really cared WHAT gear you brought because chances were it would still do the job. The game was also made so that you didn't HAVE to have the best of anything to beat it, you just had to know what you were doing. IIRC, there was only 1 boss with an unavoidable attack that required you to have a certain amount of HP to survive it, and that was in the harder modes only.

For gear to be interesting and balanced, the rest of the game has to be built around it to accommodate horizontal progression, and that's the real reason we won't see it in ARR. This game was built strictly to be a gear treadmill and they've gone too far to go back and change it now.

This topic, I also think we need more set bonuses (anything with a name should at least give a bonus for having the full set, not just GC sets)