Materia on all gear.. Why not?

Why can't we attach materia on all gear? Crafted gear will always be needed and provides a player with the ability to go for triple melding it is just unfeasable to work on anything over a double from an instanced raid perspective. Give me a reason to enjoy the darkhold / faction gear content. And make the current coffer sets all very viable as possible BiS.

Someone give me a reason why they don't just let you meld and materialize all gear?

ex: coffer drop from Boss "Sipahi Shirt": Dexterity +5 Evasion +15 Magic Evasion +15
vs. "Raptorskin Harness (Blue)": Dex : +6, Mnd : +5, Accuracy : +4
/w materia: Bloodflight Materia III + Manaflight Materia III => +16evasion/+16magic.evasion

This scenario has a 30%+ chance of successfull forbiden meld this is going to take you 1hour tops to go to the wards spend under 100k on total materials including the materia and in the end you have a FAR SUPERIOR BODY in every way with more stats and even more defense. This makes the Sipahi Shirt a totally useless item that requires a full party of skilled players a minimum of a few hours to farm 1 or 2 tops.

If you could add materia to the sipahi shirt this all the sudden makes all coffer drops relevant and sudenly players have a plethora of avenues to gear up and not simply craft + a few specific coffers + ifrit

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Originally Posted by tachikoma

Someone give me a reason why they don't just let you meld and materialize all gear?

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I'll give you 3:

1. Materia system is new.
2. They're observing how people use the system in general.
3. Balance -- Adding it to even raid gear would be overpowering and pretty much kills the need for synthesis gear.

Those "plethora of avenues" are from crafted gear, which is always expanded and always adjusted in patches because there will always be more synthesis gear than raid gear in the end(which is absolutely fine.) Most MMOs just have a few sets of armor that you upgrade through various means and drop gear almost always become worthless compared to a fully upgraded x set.

Materia has only existed for 1 patch really, gotta give them time to get the system optimized.

It would be nice if they did. They could balance it by making the 1st materia attachment on said gear act as if it were the 2nd. I.e. have coffer drops start with a 30% or so success rate on their 1st attachment. It's up to you if you want to take the risk, but if you do and succeed you could at least have something that would be on par with crafted gear.

Why not all gear? Walking around in studded underwear would be really awkward :O

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

I'll give you 3:

1. Materia system is new.
2. They're observing how people use the system in general.
3. Balance -- Adding it to even raid gear would be overpowering and pretty much kills the need for synthesis gear.

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Also:

The only way you could attach materia to untradeable gear is by doing it yourself. This would restrict materia equipped gear to those who have 1) the gear itself, 2) the approprate job high enough to use it, and 3) the appropriate crafting job high enough to meld it.

It locks out a decent portion of the population from owning a single piece of lvl ~50 gear, much less multiple pieces.

To add materia to undtradeble gear properly would require a whole new system by which a crafter could attach materia to gear that remains in another persons inventory. They may implement a system like this in the 2.0, but I don't think they are going to drop everything to do it now when Yoshi-P has clearly stated his intended design for the hierarchy of gear.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

3. Balance -- Adding it to even raid gear would be overpowering and pretty much kills the need for synthesis gear.

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This is exactly why they should, right now there is really no reason for players to bother with coffer gear because it is so terrible compared to crafted items with 1 materia. If only crafted gear can be made into materia, then players will still by the crap that people craft.
Sorry, but I don't think crafting should dominate the game.

Hi Tachi,

It's a good question.

There've been a lot of people discussing the pros and cons of being able to meld Materia on Raid / Dungeon Gear. I personally agree with you that they should allow it.

I can see the pros and cons, of how Crafters prefer to have their crafted armor be the only meldable pieces to allow crafting to be viable, vs. adventurers / DoW / DoM wanting Raid / Dungeon Gear to be worthwhile to go after.

I definitely agree that many Coffer Drops right now can be exceeded by a craftable armor version + single or double meld Materia (relatively easy). And of course Dzemael Darkhold's drops have been pretty much nullified after 1.19.

Thinking back on examples like Sky Drops in Final Fantasy XI (early days)... I remember generally that all the high level players I spoke with (crafters included) were fine with the gameplay involved in trying to get a Kirin's Osode, or Byakko's Haidate.

Or earning the Dryadic Abjuration: Legs to help complete your Shura Haidate pants.

I don't remember people (in the early days) hating these quests and End Game activities. I had a blast with Sky and things like that. :)

So do Crafters and Adventurers nowadays hate the stuff we had in Sky back then? Is it so bad? I'm puzzled.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Also:

The only way you could attach materia to untradeable gear is by doing it yourself. This would restrict materia equipped gear to those who have 1) the gear itself, 2) the approprate job high enough to use it, and 3) the appropriate crafting job high enough to meld it.

It locks out a decent portion of the population from owning a single piece of lvl ~50 gear, much less multiple pieces.

To add materia to undtradeble gear would require a whole new system by which a crafter could attach materia to gear that remains in another persons inventory. They may implement a system like this in the 2.0, but I don't think they are going to drop everything to do it now when Yoshi-P has clearly stated his intended design for the hierarchy of gear.

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Dying and materia should simply be an optional thing for any player to use to customize or improve his or her gear.

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Originally Posted by Akuun

I want to remove crafting from the game

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Fixed that for you.

Sorry, but crafting and gathering are going to remain as a vital part of this game - much more than in FFXI (even if scaled back from Tanaka's original plan)

I'd recommend you get used to the idea.

It is both ways for me. I want raid gear the go to gear. I want crafted gear to ultimately be the best under harsh conditions, such as it is now.

The problem with current coffer gear is that most of it has stats that even one materia attachment can dominate. Make it like 3+ materia slots to make the crafted gear better. Make the crafters work hard for the better gear.

The main problem is lousy rare/ex. gear, that is all. Make the stats more worthwhile in rare/ex. gear, and balance will start kicking in. I will see how future rare/ex. gear holds up when more is released to properly criticize it.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Fixed that for you.

Sorry, but crafting and gathering are going to remain as a vital part of this game - much more than in FFXI (even if scaled back from Tanaka's original plan)

I'd recommend you get used to the idea.

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Look, when crafted gear dominates a game all it does is destroy the content with any drop items. That's usually the end game content. What is the point of a player working their ass off for a single item if the item they bought or crafted is already much better? There is a place for crafting, and if you look at my posts regarding ifrit dropping horn that is crafted into weapon, or addition of something similar to cursed gear in 11, you would then be able to remove your head from your ass and realize that i'm not against crafting, i'm against it being the most powerful class in the game. I want to see mat drops or combination of drop and crafted items, it's a good system, but most combat players, say fuck you uppity crafters, by the way, i'm sick of this fucking train wreck called 14.

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Originally Posted by Akuun

Look, when crafted gear dominates a game all it does is destroy the content with any drop items. That's usually the end game content.

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No it doesn't. Accuracy rings from FFXI didn't kill end-game content, nor did Hauergeon's and Scorpion Harnesses and they were better than a lot of gear you could obtain from BCNMs and even sky in some instances (better WS gear). Crafted gear (more specifically, highly infused 3-4 slot gear) is what dominates dropped gear. Raid gear can't be overpowered for the simple sake of it being raid gear...you're supposed to balance your game, not purposefully unbalance it. You personally dislike Synthesis that's fine, but Materia was introduced to give people the ability to push their crafted gear further.

Yoshida also said he wants to phase out gear very systematically simply because other MMOs does it, so being able to apply Materia to raid gear already goes against that plan.

Also:

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There is a place for crafting, and if you look at my posts regarding ifrit dropping horn that is crafted into weapon,

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There's so much gil in this game that a new person has almost zero hopes for obtaining these weapons/armors if the system was that way. The Abjuration system was pretty nice as it could be supplementary items, i.e Ifrit Drops his weapons and Cursed Haubergeon, but sadly I know there's lots of FFXIV people who would be against a good system like that simply because FFXI used it..

Well staying on topic with putting materia on ALL gear, Nero from the German forums has put up a thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...are-Ex-Materia) detailing an idea of his which appears to have gotten some positive dev. attention.

I've yet to have a German friend fully translate this for me so please correct me if I'm misunderstanding something that Google Translate told me xD

The basic idea from what I can tell is a U/U tier of materia (called Tier V) which can only drop from NMs, at a reduced drop rate, obv. This materia has stronger stat bonuses than what we have now, and even a suggested Haste-style materia. Since it's U/U, you would obv. need to have a bazaar meld request system put in, which we need anyways.

The special materia would only be able to be melded to U/U items, such as Ifrit's Weapons. Nero even had the % of success for forbidden materia on U/U mapped out (100%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%); assuming that it's so forgiving because of the difficulty of obtaining the materia/item in the first place.

I think that this would be a great idea, mainly for the following reasons:

1) It adds relevance to old NMs. You could add the first wave of Tier V materia to current NMs like Dodore, Great Buffalo, and Batraal, who are receiving less attention as of late since Ifrit's taking up the spotlight. New materia can be added to NMs from past patches as new content is released so that there's always a reason to go back and farm Ifrit or Batraal or Uraeus for a couple weeks, depending on what materia you want.

2) Gives U/U weapons/armor from NMs prevalence over crafted gear, but only if people work hard enough for it. HQ gear with forbidden materia will still be better than, say, an Ifrit's Harpoon. But, if someone decided that they're willing to farm certain NMs long and hard enough, they'll be able to add the special materia to their Harpoon, making it better than the crafted piece. This is especially important for NM/coffer U/U armor, which currently isn't better (with VERY few exceptions) than crafted pieces WITHOUT materia.

If you support the idea, I suggest you go to Nero's thread and rate it up!

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Originally Posted by Akuun

Look, when crafted gear dominates a game all it does is destroy the content with any drop items. That's usually the end game content. What is the point of a player working their ass off for a single item if the item they bought or crafted is already much better? There is a place for crafting, and if you look at my posts regarding ifrit dropping horn that is crafted into weapon, or addition of something similar to cursed gear in 11, you would then be able to remove your head from your ass and realize that i'm not against crafting, i'm against it being the most powerful class in the game. I want to see mat drops or combination of drop and crafted items, it's a good system, but most combat players, say fuck you uppity crafters, by the way, i'm sick of this fucking train wreck called 14.

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Tell us how you really feel...;)

I'm in favor of making crafting services crafting more accessible to everyone. There have been some really good suggestions to this end. (I am in favor of the Ifrit horn idea)

Here is how to make crafting work better for both crafters and general adventurers (*I apologize for stealing this idea from another poster, but it is very good)

In each crafting guild there should be an NPC who players can visit and create submit their own crafting leve and all materials and rewards that correspond to it.

For instance:

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Player A just fought Leviathan and received as a reward a U/U "Leviathan Spine". He then heads off to the Carpenter's Guild to have a lance crafted from it.

He looks up the recipe and gives all the required materials and crystals to an NPC there who creates a crafting Leve for him. He decides to offer a 24k gil reward for NQ result and a 40k gil reward for HQ (if applicable) result. He sets a minimum level for the Leve at 48 to ensure that only high level carpenters will attempt this leve. The Leve NPC asks how much insurance he wants on his materials @ 8k gil per attempt. The insurance means that if the crafter fails, the guild will replace all the mats for him up to the allotted attempts. Since the mats are very rare and expensive, the Insurance is well worth the cost in this instance. Player A spends 30k gil to insure 3 attempts.

Player B has just hit 49 as a Carpenter and she wants to make some gil. She goes to the Player Leve NPC at the carpenter's guild and sees that there is an order for a Leviathan Lance. She accepts the leve and begins to craft the item. The first craft fails. She checks the list and sees that the Leve is still available. She tries again and gets a NQ result. this nets her a reward of 24k and a guild experience bonus.

Later that day, Player A checks his mailbox and sees that the craft was successful and he now has a shiny new Leviathan Lance. Not HQ, but maybe if he offered a bigger reward more for a HQ version he might have a different result... but he has the Lance now with not much out of pocket and he is off to adventure more.

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This scenario would be ideal for all parties involved. It connects crafters with adventurers, it allows U/U items to become part of crafting. It incorporates crafting into endgame content like Primal battles, It is a gil sink (the insurance part). And it spreads the population of players around by making the crafting guilds a hub of activity for all gear and item creation.

I'll start a new thread with this idea because I think it needs more attention.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

Tell us how you really feel...;)

I'm in favor of making crafting services crafting more accessible to everyone. There have been some really good suggestions to this end. (I am in favor of the Ifrit horn idea)

Here is how to make crafting work better for both crafters and general adventurers (*I apologize for stealing this idea from another poster, but it is very good)

In each crafting guild there should be an NPC who players can visit and create submit their own crafting leve and all materials and rewards that correspond to it.

For instance:


This scenario would be ideal for all parties involved. It connects crafters with adventurers, it allows U/U items to become part of crafting. It incorporates crafting into endgame content like Primal battles, It is a gil sink (the insurance part). And it spreads the population of players around by making the crafting guilds a hub of activity for all gear and item creation.

I'll start a new thread with this idea because I think it needs more attention.

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Sounds like a 2.0 idea, realistically this could never work. I can only imagine the programming behind the scenes to pull this off. I do agree helping bring crafters and adventurers together would be great and I think this will happen when we get more SPECIALIZED crafters. Right now its way to easy to have multi 50's and be able to craft any item with a generic crafter set of gear. My LTW @ 50 HQ's just as much as my WVR @ 50 even though my WVR has a +75dex set from multi forbidden items and my LTW has a base set with no +VIT

The idea Yoshi talked about having crafters in the beastmen camps in order to craft special pieces of gear sounds like a nice way to really tie everyone together.

I hope crafters get access to a specialized tool/skill for only 1 craft max and this gives you access to a new tier of forbiden materia support this needs to be balanced with a proper gil sink but maybe it gives you a short 100% forbid success but you can only use it say once a week or once a day. Something special to prevent the all craft at 50 can do everything for everyone.

I agree that they should allow Green W gear to be meldable - along with a system to have crafters meld through the bazaar rather than requiring a trade.

Blue W gear should definitely not be meldable and should continue to have stats that put them well above most multi-melded gear - save for high tiered 4 or 5 melds.

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Originally Posted by NoctisUmbra

I agree that they should allow Green W gear to be meldable - along with a system to have crafters meld through the bazaar rather than requiring a trade.

Blue W gear should definitely not be meldable and should continue to have stats that put them well above most multi-melded gear - save for high tiered 4 or 5 melds.

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I think this would be fine with me but personally the only items that are strong enough to be blue are the ifrit weapons. Everything else is easily trumped with non U/U melded gear.

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Originally Posted by tachikoma

I think this would be fine with me but personally the only items that are strong enough to be blue are the ifrit weapons. Everything else is easily trumped with non U/U melded gear.

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Yep, which I'm hoping is a trend that continues. I would be perfectly content with thematic Blue W gear not being meldable so long as their stats are above that high standard. The Darkhold gear is basically obsolete, unworthy of it's blue-ness :P

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

I'll give you 3:

1. Materia system is new.
2. They're observing how people use the system in general.
3. Balance -- Adding it to even raid gear would be overpowering and pretty much kills the need for synthesis gear.

Those "plethora of avenues" are from crafted gear, which is always expanded and always adjusted in patches because there will always be more synthesis gear than raid gear in the end(which is absolutely fine.) Most MMOs just have a few sets of armor that you upgrade through various means and drop gear almost always become worthless compared to a fully upgraded x set.

Materia has only existed for 1 patch really, gotta give them time to get the system optimized.

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They should just make those Materials in raids "Special Materials". Remove the armor itself from raids and just toss out Materials. It would make same piece of gear but not ra/ex. This way this would benfit crafters and raids much better. It would also work better with the Materia System. Ra/ex gear still ok idea but should be aimed more for Under lv45.

Dropped gear should be more powerful than crafted gear because it usually requires a pulse to get.

U/U gear should be meldable because it should be the strongest equipment. It shouldn't be the strongest without materia because materia is a good way for crafters to make money and to take equipment out of the economy.

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Raid gear can't be overpowered for the simple sake of it being raid gear...you're supposed to balance your game, not purposefully unbalance it.

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Forbidden materia melding is literally just playing a slot machine. Raid/dungeon/dropped/whatever gear should be the best because it's the hardest to obtain and player skill is a lot more involved than when melding materia. Dropped gear being the best isn't "overpowered" it's the way things need to be if the game is going to work in the future.

Like Akuun said, if I can get the best gear without leaving town what reason do I have to go do Ifrit or Garuda or whatever more than once?

I think the best solution would have been to make dungeon drop materials instead of gear. That'd make the content last longer, and the material can still be re-used in later recipes to keep it alive.

Since it isn't the case, I was fan of the idea to be able to meld 1 materia into U/U gear, only allowing forbidden for crafted gear. We'd be able to customize U/U gear, making it more appealing, and comparable to 2-3 materia crafted gear as far as I know.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

No it doesn't. Accuracy rings from FFXI didn't kill end-game content, nor did Hauergeon's and Scorpion Harnesses and they were better than a lot of gear you could obtain from BCNMs and even sky in some instances (better WS gear). Crafted gear (more specifically, highly infused 3-4 slot gear) is what dominates dropped gear. Raid gear can't be overpowered for the simple sake of it being raid gear...you're supposed to balance your game, not purposefully unbalance it. You personally dislike Synthesis that's fine, but Materia was introduced to give people the ability to push their crafted gear further.

Yoshida also said he wants to phase out gear very systematically simply because other MMOs does it, so being able to apply Materia to raid gear already goes against that plan.

Also:



There's so much gil in this game that a new person has almost zero hopes for obtaining these weapons/armors if the system was that way. The Abjuration system was pretty nice as it could be supplementary items, i.e Ifrit Drops his weapons and Cursed Haubergeon, but sadly I know there's lots of FFXIV people who would be against a good system like that simply because FFXI used it..

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Did you even play XI?
Accuracy rings were not the best rings in the game, the story reward rings were much better.
Both the scorpion harness and the haubergeon required drops from nms and other content that would not make it readily accessible to someone that only gathers and crafts.
With the exception of sentinal gear (which can have materia attached, great if you're a mrd or gld), and a very select few were there is not much in the choice of materia the coffer gear is at best sub par to crafted pieces with one materia.

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Originally Posted by Chinook

I think the best solution would have been to make dungeon drop materials instead of gear. That'd make the content last longer, and the material can still be re-used in later recipes to keep it alive.

Since it isn't the case, I was fan of the idea to be able to meld 1 materia into U/U gear, only allowing forbidden for crafted gear. We'd be able to customize U/U gear, making it more appealing, and comparable to 2-3 materia crafted gear as far as I know.

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Would be nice, but from the reactions I received from players on my Ifrit horn crafted into weapon post, well it seems to me a lot of players feel screwed by crafters and want nothing to do with them. I hate to be negative, because I honestly want to see this game get better (if for no other reason than I bought it lol) but I think this game is going to crash and burn when they start charging to play in it's current state.

Is it really that difficult to grasp why the horns dropping to have weapons crafted idea is not a good one?

The top gear in this game already comes from crafters. Why do ALL gear have to involve crafters? Plain and simple. Balance.

While I find it very fulfilling to make my own armor and weapons from scratch as a crafter, I agree that gear found from raids, dungeons, NM's, etc. needs to be a lot stronger, or be able to also have Materia attached to it, simply for the fact that it takes a lot more effort to cooperate with an 8-person party to take down strong enemies than it does to gather or buy materials, and then repeatedly click on Standard Synthesis to make something. I was also hoping that I could convert my old lower-level Unique/Untradeable gear into Materia as well, because I have weapons like Flametongue and Warden's Dagger that aren't useful to me anymore as a Lv50 GLA. It seems like such a waste to just NPC sell them for 1 Gil or throw them away...

That said, I anxiously await the day when crafters can actually start building housing, airships, work on hamlet defenses, cooperate together in parties, etc. It'd make the jobs a lot more useful and fun.

SE said droped items and crafted items will be balenced so thats not gonna happen.