[Dev Request] 5.0 Materia

:Attention: READ FIRST
If you are fine with the current system I respect your decision.
Rather than discredit the thread let’s work together to evolve the battle system and Materia.

Alright so first off this is just a rough outline on how I’d like Materia to be changed for 5.0.

New System:
Materia slots stay the same on gear, however weapons can get an additional slot for Command Materia. Only one per main arm.

Deathblow
Multi - Hit
W - Magic
W - Item
Sense

Main Arms & Armor can only meld Independent Materia.

HP Plus
MP Plus
Damage Plus
Counter
Magic Counter
Haste
———————————————
Tenacity (Tank Exclusive)** No longer Materia
Spirit ( Healer Exclusive)** Mind stat no longer Materia
———————————————-
Accessories can only meld Support Materia.
Blessing
MP Absorb
STAM Absorb
MP Turbo


Command Materia:

Deathblow - Weaponskills and Spellcasts have a chance to deal a colossal amount of damage.

Multi-Hit - Auto Attacks have a chance to strike more than once on a single target.

W - Magic - The last offensive spell casted has a chance to hit a second time for partial damage.

W - Item - Certain consumable potions can be used twice for double the effect in battle.
(**Recast is increased**)

Sense - Grants the ability to see the enemies ability queue

Independent Materia:

HP Plus - Increases Max HP

MP Plus - Increases Max MP

Damage Plus - Auto Attack damage increased

Counter - Chance to reflect physical damage taken with an Auto Attack

Magic Counter - Chance to retaliate magic damage taken with any spell at the cost of no mp.

Haste - Reduces weaponskill cast time and recast time, spell cast time and recast time

Tenacity - Affects the amount of physical and magical damage dealt and received, as well as HP restored. The higher the value, the more damage dealt, the more HP restored, and the less damage taken. Only applicable when role is Tank. **( No longer Materia. Main stat instead of STR)**

Spirit - Affects the amount of physical and magical damage dealt, as well as Healing potency. The higher the value, the more damage dealt, the more Healing potency, and less MP cost. Only applicable when role is Healer.
**(Subject to change. New healer Main stat instead of Mind)**

Support Materia:

Blessing - Faster HP and MP refresh rate in battle. Weakness debuff decreased duration.

MP Absorb - MP Received on damage dealt.

STAM Absorb - TP Received on damage dealt

MP Turbo - Deal extra damage at the cost of mp


Tier Structure:
MHW armor skill system. Fixed value that increases in tiers the more it’s melded. Each Materia = One Lv. (Bar Command Materia)

Independent Materia:
HP Plus
Lv.1 Max HP + 10%
Lv.2 Max HP + 20%
Lv.3 Max HP + 30%

MP Plus
Lv.1 Max MP + 5%
Lv.2 Max MP + 10%
Lv.3 Max MP + 15%

Damage Plus
Lv.1 Auto-Attack Damage + .7%
Lv.2 Auto-Attack Damage + 1.4%
Lv.3 Auto-Attack Damage + 2.1%
Lv.4 Auto-Attack Damage + 2.8%
Lv.5 Auto-Attack Damage + 3.5%
Lv.6 Auto-Attack Damage + 4.2%
Lv.7 Auto-Attack Damage + 5%

These actually sound pretty neat!

love this idea, we need more variety for gearing...kinda boring when we use almost same formula for materia.

hope it will implemented at 5.0

So materia from FF7? I'm all for any idea that add versatility. I would like to use materia to create different builds for jobs but outside of soloing it wouldn't really work because of the game design of dps/tank/healer. (I miss the sub job aspect of XI)

Sense is useless since all fights in this game have a strict ability queue you can memorise fairly easily.

Define "colossal" damage? Basically I'll get to the point, while neat to think of, if these changes were implemented people would math out what does the most damage regardless of everything else and that would be the go to, rendering the rest of the materia useless.

Edit: for example, literally everyone would just run whichever command materia gives more damage, and as much "focus" and "damage plus"/"haste" as possible, like we do now with crit/dh/det/sps.

I would really like to see more utility materia, but it is a balancing nightmare. The problem is it has to be balanced to where it’s strong enough to be worth taking over a dps increasing materia, but not so strong that it becomes mandatory. This can be seen with tenacity where they have failed miserably to balance it against direct hit, a stat tanks aren’t even supposed to be using but is so much better than tenacity that what little of it we can get from materia is still better than anything else.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

Sense is useless since all fights in this game have a strict ability queue you can memorise fairly easily.

Define "colossal" damage? Basically I'll get to the point, while neat to think of, if these changes were implemented people would math out what does the most damage regardless of everything else and that would be the go to, rendering the rest of the materia useless.

Edit: for example, literally everyone would just run whichever command materia gives more damage, and as much "focus" and "damage plus"/"haste" as possible, like we do now with crit/dh/det/sps.

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This is absolutely right! I left numerical values vague because honestly I can’t balance this alone. Hypothetically speaking I could say that it does anywhere between 150 to 250% damage at a fix rate. However it is up to us as a community to steer the dev team into where that trade off should be.

So with the new Materia system the design philosophy is that damage altering Materia will require significantly more to get the the full effect.( I will reflect this in an update).
What I mean by this is that there are 13 total slots currently on left side and 5 on the right. HP+ only requires Lv.3 (3 slots) to get the full effect while Damage+ will requires Lv.7 (7 slots.) You have a choice between equipping multiple different types of Materia or refining on a few.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

Sense is useless since all fights in this game have a strict ability queue you can memorise fairly easily.

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Yes and no. If the system works the way it does now where you can retrieve materia (with a high %), then a sense materia would have more merit. Basically you could use the sense materia during progression until you have learnt the fight, and then swap it out for more damage. Think of it as the RDM of materia.


On another related note, I'll be really cruel and suggest a materia that allows you to see your outgoing DPS ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jhett_Magnum

:Attention: READ FIRST
If you are fine with the current system I respect your decision.
Rather than discredit the thread let’s work together to evolve the battle system and Materia.

Alright so first off this is just a rough outline on how I’d like Materia to be changed for 5.0. That being said I’d ask that if you strongly feel a certain way about something but some one already posted a similar idea simply like the comment. We’ll use majority vote on what’s added or taken away based on most liked comment.)

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I know you didn't want me to discredit the thread, but nearly (if not every) single example you provided would do nothing to change gameplay. They're all just passive modifiers which leads to just the same nonsense we have now.

Materia should be a gameplay changing system. Yeah I know people will say math this, math that, but you can design it to work, it's just challenging.

Honestly, I'd rather see the devs make jobs have more specific niches, and let Materia be a system to fill gaps in the kit for various content forms, while simultaneously improving chosen aspects.

For PLD:

Here are some examples of how Materia could impact the PLD's Shield Lob skill.

• Hit additional targets (if X number are hit do Y effect).
• Hit a target past X yalm - allow combo ender/oGCD to be used for free
• Increase move speed after hitting target (for on demand burst mobility)
• Enemies hit are pulled towards you

Then you assign different colored materia to effects and have different gear come with different number and colors of sockets. For instance maybe throughput effects are considered Red materia so you're limited to how many you can have.

The idea would be that you could socket different materia for different effects and they'd even synergize with each other.

Like you could equip the materia that enables the oGCD/combo ender if further than X yalm, and the one that pulls towards you and boom you have a shield lob that has 2 new effects on that work in tandem.

The issue becomes how absurdly difficult this is to balance in a MMO setting. Utility like HP or MP plus will be likely deemed useless with current fight design. Only Ultimate raiders even look at Piety as moderately desirable outside prog. And HP only matters up to a certain point, especially with how predictable damage is in this game. Basically, the entire fight design needs an overhaul to accommodate changes like this lest they boil down to "this does the most damage, therefore it's the best. Ignore everything else" ala Crit.

Without going into how this won’t change combat much, I want to go into your material ideas rather than the ideas themselves.

Deathblow- sounds too much like an instant kill. Also, sounds like a Direct Hit/ Crit... I’d be fine with a stat that increases both’s chance to hit at the same time slightly, but I feel like that can already be done to a pretty decent degree without something like this.

Multi-hit - I’m not against something similar to this. This sounds fine. I’d just change the name because FF7’s Materia names were really simple and unappealing.

W - magic - I see a lot of people having issues with this seeing as casters are already some of the highest damage dealers.

W - Item - I’m not sure about this one? I feel like it’s pointless.

Sense - First I’d change the name to Scan since that’s a common spell name in the FF series... but even then, it’s kinda a pointless buff.

HP - Plus - we have this. It’s called Vitality.

MP - Plus - we have this. It’s called Piety. I wouldn’t mind it if Piety affected more than just healers however, personally.

Damage Plus - once again, not opposed but I think having it be a full stat and give it a more appealing name would be better.

Counter - this would make Vengance pointless on Warrior, but if they find a way to rework parry and make it a counter system I wouldn’t be opposed... I’m just not sure everyone else will be okay with it.

Magic Counter - make this one stat with above, call it parry

Haste - Skill Speed and Spell Speed, already exist. Now if they made them better again, sure.

Tenacity - I would actually like this better than Vit mainstat. It does something compared to Vit.

Spirit - you literally just renamed Mind and added a reduced MP cost thing. I’m not sure how that would work, but okay.

Blessing - sure. I guess. I don’t know.

MP/STAM Absorb - no. I feel the systems are fine as is.

Focus - Wait, isn’t this essentially the same as “Deathblow”? Oh wait, it I crases how much they do? Sure? I feel like others won’t like it but fine whatever.

MP Turbo - many MANY people would be against this one I feel. I’m not sure myself.

Your “need ideas” ones sound like they won’t work.

As for your “upgrade system” I feel you’ve played too much FF7 and not enough online games. But that’s just me.

Don’t take this as an insult or attack on the post as a whole, this is me criticizing what I see and how I see people reacting to it.

I like all OP's ideas, they sounds far more interesting than our nonsense set up we have now. Unfortunately, the way the battles play out in this game everyone is just going to stack DPS boosters and possibly speed increases anyway. It's more about killing things as fast as possible at the expense of others stats, hoping not to need much healing or defensive increases in the first place.

I pray this changes in 5.0 but I'm not holding my breath.

This all sounds amazing to bad it will never happen and even if it did it would be done in a way that no one wanted. But yeah it sounds good but..... so does communism.

Would like and have ask before long time ago myself, but they can barely do the very basics of balancing with the already over simplified version we have know which is the same stats that has a cap already in place. It's one reason I don't even do end game content anymore gear is such a bore I mostly play story now and move to another game. /Shrugs

Materia in the current form is just plain boring. Everyone pretty much slots the exact same stats in most cases. It's the same as the bonus stat points we used to put in from leveling. How did the devs decide one was pointless and not see the same flaw in materia?

Deathblow: We already have both Direct Hit and Critical Hit. You want a third version of Crit when we already have two? I don't really see how it adds much to the game.

Haste: Again, it's redundant. We've got both Skill Speed and Spell Speed already. (It seems a little odd to have them separate when they do the same thing—just for different jobs, but I'm guessing that might have to do with keeping demand in line with other materia.)

HP Plus / MP Plus: Why rename Vitality and Piety that we already have? I like their current names better.

A few, like maybe multi-hit, sound interesting (though it would have to be pretty rare to avoid being OP), but it looks like a lot of these are pretty much like what we already have, and most of the others are too OP to be easily balanced.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Haste: Again, it's redundant. We've got both Skill Speed and Spell Speed already. (It seems a little odd to have them separate when they do the same thing—just for different jobs, but I'm guessing that might have to do with keeping demand in line with other materia.)

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I’d definitely like to see spell speed and skill speed just combined into haste or speed. For the most part jobs either use spells or skills and these stats are essentially the same thing. But there are some examples that break the mould, PLD, DRK and RDM. DRK and PLD get no spell speed on their gear and to slot spell speed materia would be silly. So Holy Spirit, clemency, flash, abyssal drain, unleash and unmend are all stuck being unaffected by PLD and DRKs version of the speed stat for no real reason and vice versa for RDM with skill speed and their weaponskills, and this trend will just continue as more hybrid jobs get implemented.