Materia/Mutamix Complaints

edit - This is not a complaint about viability or complexity of materia, or lack thereof, but a complaint about materia in the inventory and mutamix's usability.

Materia should have its own dedicated inventory section.

Also, the game should remember which materia we just gave to Mutamix, so we don't need to reselect the same 5 repeatedly.

Materia takes up so much inventory space and the only "useful" method we have to get rid of it takes ages for any human to use.

It's not even practical to vendor materia anymore since the price was massively reduced.

Alternatively, all materia grades except the two highest grades could be removed, and loose materia could be made dead on a new expansion release.

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Originally Posted by Luin

Materia takes up so much inventory space

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I agree. Delete materia from the game. :cool:

Made a ton of money selling materia. The demand at the moment isn't great there are no new raids or gear sets but when there is materia can be a gold mine.

Just be glad it isn't as much of a space hog that 1.X's materia system was. Each grade materia had 3-4 different values, so each grade took up 3-4 item bag slots, and could only be put onto specific pieces of gear, not to mention there were atleast another 20 types of materia, including ones for aggro/hybrids/too many to go through.

I wouldn't mind if they allowed up to permanently increase stats of items we have with materia up to certain values, but there's achievements locked in to materia, as well as a challenge log.

It would make sense to do SOMETHING about it though, since anything that's melded loses all materia stats the moment you're sync'd down even by a single level, making it worthless in any older content (Unless you have ilvl appropriate gear for older raids/ect)

My gripe with Mutamix is how much dialogue there is the first time you talk to him, and the cutscene which triggers when you go up a level.

Honestly you figure if you have a level 80 crafter, you should be able to learn to transmute them yourself. I get this is a very special art, though at this point the Warrior of Light has worked with materials and techniques that are literally otherworldly... I think she is ready to take on some gobbie apprenticeship on the side. x)

Removing materia would break the Zodiac Novus Relic quest.

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Originally Posted by Angus

Removing materia would break the Zodiac Novus Relic quest.

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It's easily adjusted. You have to use alexandrite in that step too, so they could just alter it to use the alexandrite only while letting you select a sub stat to add in.... though this is also a pretty minor issue considering how few people have a need to go that far into the ARR relic quest.

Someone will have to explain to me the point of materia when there really isn't viable options for slotting more than one type to any said job and the materia itself is handed out like candy in the game.

Still waiting for that spell speed materia to be relevant.

Why can't we have materia like "+5% teleport discount", "-0.5 sec summon mount cast time", "-1 min Return cooldown", "+10% rested XP cap", "+1% sell-to-vendor price", "consume +10% EXP to repair durability", "always-yes to opening doors", etc?

I'm sure there's a lot of people who never raid savage, maybe not even extreme trials, who would love to use these materia instead.

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Originally Posted by Keramory

Still waiting for that spell speed materia to be relevant.

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Uhh...

SpS is very important for BLM. Healers and BLU use it too.

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Alternatively, all materia grades except the two highest grades could be removed, and loose materia could be made dead on a new expansion release.

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this is a terrible idea. it fails to account for blue mage runs of content and ultimates.

With regards to spell speed, I don't think it should be removed per se, though I do think spell and skill speed could be unified universally. Since it would marginally effect PLD this is something they would tune at the start of a new expansion, so now is a good as time as any.

I actually wished they removed all the elemental crystals for Crafters
and just made that the materia inventory
takes up less room
can still sell them

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Originally Posted by Keramory

Still waiting for that spell speed materia to be relevant.

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Don't touch my spellspeed materia! :O

*angry BLM noises*

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Originally Posted by Mavrias

this is a terrible idea. it fails to account for blue mage runs of content and ultimates.

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The materia's stats could scale to the gear's ilvl in that suggestion. And while this isnt the point of the post, the stats on gear is unsustainable, we cant just keep making bigger materia. This problem will become worse every expansion.

No need to have 8 grades when the materia could automatically scale to the ilvl of the gear it's in. If a quest requires a specific grade it would just now take the suggested materia.

As for SpS/SkS and Ten/Pie, these could change their effects job-specific. Currently materia takes 104 inventory slots. With my suggestions it'd take only 22 slots. Even players that throw away g1/2/3 would still see materia's space in their bags halved.

Or we could keep the current system and just give materia its own inventory like crystals.

Materia having its own inventory slot? 100% agree.

Kill Mutamix and just learn the skill yourself? Nope, Mutamix is fine as he is. Heaven forbid someone has to leave Limsa for 2 minutes to actually do something elsewhere in the world.

Honestly would rather something more interesting than materia post say... level 50. Keep pre-50 as is with the lower grades. Post? I dunno, I’d rather have visual effects or footprint trails than minor minor stats.

XIV has had boring stats for way too long. They need to take risks more and be exciting and stop being too focused on breaking the balance. The only somewhat interesting change since 2.0 began has been with Accuracy being converted to Direct Hit and even that isn't even that interesting. There's also Tenacity and Piety, but those just went from boring to "meh". Seriously, 8 years of pretty much the same stats on all gear. This can also be one of the reasons some just aren't interested in endgame raiding, there's no spark of intrigue to get people inspired to work on getting certain items. At the very least experiment with gatherers and crafters, no one cares about the balance of those as much!

Materia is a beloved staple of the Final Fantasy series, but XIV ran into the same issue that XI did - the number crunchers determined that each class had a best One True Build and those were the numbers everyone should be striving for. For most jobs that's piling on the crit hit, for others (like BLM) it's all about dat spell speed. (Back in XI, Haste was King, and thus some of the +haste items were worth millions of gil.)

However, what this does do is let each broader class share base gear and then add materia to get to their One True Build, making it so the dev team doesn't need to make unique BLM only gear or unique SCH only gear or BLU only gear - you can take the existing gear and slap on the materia you need to make it match your class's needs. In that respect, the materia system provides a useful function.

I wish they'd steal some of the ability materia from FF7 now that Remake has re-acquainted me with its existence, but given their preference for simplifying, I doubt that'll ever happen. Unlike the stat materia, it wouldn't need grades.

I don't think it should be removed, but as they are now, they have some glaring issues.

Other than BLM with spellspeed, everyone else go Crit>Det=DH... Even tanks.

Tenacity is a stat that has a honeyed description. Someone new might look at the alleged benefits, thinking it's an amazing stat for tanks, and melding as much Tenacity as possible.

But I keep doubting they would make materia choice more relevant by tuning how the jobs benefit from them, as it seems they are content on keeping the jobs in tight leashes when it comes to playstyle/customization.

Just remove everything please. It takes so much time to meld it into my gear or put them on the mb D:

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I don't think it should be removed, but as they are now, they have some glaring issues.

Other than BLM with spellspeed, everyone else go Crit>Det=DH... Even tanks.

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Blue mages use spell speed too. And monk uses skill speed, as does (I think) gunbreaker.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Other than BLM with spellspeed, everyone else go Crit>Det=DH... Even tanks.

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Currently, 5 DoM jobs out of 7 (if we include BLU) use SpS in their BiS, SMN/RDM are more of the odd ones out for DoM. SpS was also crucial for AST last tier.
Tanks and melees whose BiS have a faster GCD (usually for ping reasons) use SkS, WAR ignores DH as a general rule of thumb and uses TEN for tiering this tier.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

Currently, 5 DoM jobs out of 7 (if we include BLU) use SpS in their BiS, SMN/RDM are more of the odd ones out for DoM. SpS was also crucial for AST last tier.
Tanks and melees whose BiS have a faster GCD (usually for ping reasons) use SkS, WAR ignores DH as a general rule of thumb and uses TEN for tiering this tier.

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Even summoner needs to hit a certain tier (though I don't know it's exact BIS to know if it achieves that through melds or gear choices as its possible to entirely avoid spell speed on gear if you choose to) just to be able to get your full rotation in during firebird and bahamut trance phases.

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Blue mages use spell speed too. And monk uses skill speed, as does (I think) gunbreaker.

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monk absolutely does not use skill speed materia. they get their speed from their inherent ability of Greased Lightning, and only have a small bit of SkS from having it on one piece of gear which is the crit option

In a beautiful world materia would go away and we would get more unique gear at the same ilvl. Except SE can't afford to make gear sets. People would still min/max, but you would get same amount of choice more glamours and "potentially" reduced inventory. Or the other very simple thing is just move it to vendors. You can only put it into gear from a vendor menu. Poof less inventory bloat and an enormous gilsink. Or they could lock it into some sort of token that makes people fill out old content they hate like SE does with other content.

Materia melding is really a failed design because it is not about customizing your playstyle (it changes too little) but about creating a barrier of entry to end-game content (you need to look up a guide and meld accordingly if you want to raid seriously, or you need to do the generic meld rule-of-thumb if you're not raiding progression). So as a means to customize your gear, it is a complete failure.

The easy way out, really, is to detach materia from combat, make them utility only. Summon mounts faster, teleport costing less, etc. Make no mistake, I would prefer if materia would modify our rotation to create different playstyles, but eventually someone is going to do the maths and we're all just gonna end up with that one optimal meld+rotation for each job. To re-do materia balance every patch is not only a heavy burden to development, but also an unnecessary disruption to player experience.

So I seriously would push to revamp materia to be non-combat.