Overmelding is not fun

There are many threads talking about how frustrating it is to delete 100 materia. I agree.

I have been thinking on this for quite some time, and I wanted to come up with a solution. I am not 100% sold on it, as it would require 6 more bits of data for every piece of gear stored on the server. So, here's my idea:

Once the player passes the average number of mateira destroyed, the %chance of success goes up, linearly, until twice the average, ending at 100%. Here are a few examples of what this could look like:
https://i.imgur.com/H87ADfi.png
6.67% and 16.67% included because I don't know if the 7/17% is rounded.

Pros:

• It is deterministic. If we want to keep randomness involved, lets at least guarantee someone will get it, eventually
• You can't cheese this by intentionally sinking low-tier melds, as the %chance resets after successfully melding a materia. Sure you can gamble with the low-tier materia, but how many of the high tier melds would you realistically save? And since low-tier materia have a higher meld chance, you can't really save that many.
• It's not hard to communicate to players that the chance will increase after many materia have been lost, up to 100%, eventually.
• The algorithm is not complex, and simple enough for those more math-hardened players.
• It works with melding one at a time and bulk-melding.

Cons:

• The algorithm gets a little wonky when the base chance is above 50%, but it works out just the same.
• Since the piece of gear needs to store (internally, probably) how many materia have been lost into it, we need 6 bits of data to store this. I don't know how their data model works. So this could be a deal-breaker. We need 6 bits because, at the moment, the lowest chance is 5%, and 39, the highest number of broken melds, requires 6 bits to represent.

Here's the algorithm in C# for those interested:

Code:

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float newRate(int numBroken, float baseRate)
{
    float newRate;
    float meanNumMeld;

    if (numBroken <= 0)
    {
        newRate = baseRate;
    }
    else
    {
        meanNumMeld = 1 / baseRate;
        if (numBroken - meanNumMeld <= 0)
        {
            newRate = baseRate;
        }
        else
        {
            newRate = (numBroken - meanNumMeld + 1) * baseRate;

            if (newRate > 1)
            {
                newRate = 1;
            }
        }
    }

    return newRate;
}

---

Pretty sure its not supposed to be. You get enough materia slots to rival and even be better than the early raid gear stats. Its a huge advantage so its supposed to be difficult/expensive to do.

Overmelding is already largely irrelevant for anything outside world first and week 1 last floor clears. You really don't have to interact with the system at all if you dislike it so much.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Pretty sure its not supposed to be. You get enough materia slots to rival and even be better than the early raid gear stats. Its a huge advantage so its supposed to be difficult/expensive to do.

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I mean, I get it. It is an advantage to have early on, and Crafters need to have a good expense to bar their entry into "endgame" for them, especially with the profits to be made.
My simple point is this: You can have a large expense and also have it not be a soul-sucking, un-fun experience.
I love this game, and I want to see it grow and improve. With the heavy push for "make it fun" from the development team, I think it is valuable to share my opinions about areas I think could use some improvement.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Overmelding is already largely irrelevant for anything outside world first and week 1 last floor clears. You really don't have to interact with the system at all if you dislike it so much.

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It is still relevant if you want to craft your own food and pots. ...Which is where it hurts the most, because that is where there is such a large expense.
Also, if I am going to be honest, phrases like "don't interact with that system if you don't like it" is not really conducive to a productive conversation in a feedback-oriented discussion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Datachanger

It is still relevant if you want to craft your own food and pots. ...Which is where it hurts the most, because that is where there is such a large expense.
Also, if I am going to be honest, phrases like "don't interact with that system if you don't like it" is not really conducive to a productive conversation in a feedback-oriented discussion.

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This is a common misconception. At the beginning of an expansion, yes, prices can get quite high. By this point though, everything has plummeted because getting materia is incredibly easy. With a system as generous as you've purposed, materia would become even less valuable due to there being less people needing it despite the massive volume. In other words, it may as well not even exist because they'd be bordering on 3k a pop if that.

Nonetheless, the devs are unlikely to ever change overmelding because materia is among the very few consumables we have in this game. They need something to stuff in Bozja or Deep Dungeon loot boxes.

I don't overmeld DoW/M gear much at all, due to me mostly being a crafter/gatherer so I don't have much to add there. But as a crafter/gatherer I can say that no one who is even remotely serious should be paying Gil for materia, and the assumption that you must is just false. The stuff is thrown at us from every direction but mostly from just doing what we do. Spiritbonding and Scrips my loves, that is the way. I haven't spent a single Gil on overmelds since HW I wanna say, nor have I ever sold any. Short term gains and all that. Regardless, I doubt we'll see any changes to the system, imo it is "working as intended". We may not like it but RNG is a big part of the necessary roadblocks that the grind consists of. It's easy and cheap to implement and effective, and also not going anywhere.

I can empathize with the OP. Years ago, when materia was still expensive, I went through 161 Strength Materia IV on the last slot of an accessory for my tank. Melds that defy the odds do happen and it stinks.

With that said, I don't think they need to change the system. This is the nature of randomness. Melding DoWMHL gear is entirely optional. There are guaranteed slots. When it comes to DoW/M gear - in some cases you can obtain gear better than gear obtained via running dungeons (drops/tomes) by overmelding. There should be a price for that capability. Bear in mind, that price is a lot less than it used to be. Materia comes from many different sources, not just spiritbonding where you lose the piece of gear. For DoH specifically, the cost to meld is very low in comparison to what it used to be. There was a time when you had to meld 4+ slots of every piece in order to just hit the thresholds to even attempt the craft. Those days are gone. Sure, if you want to use the meta-macro to craft, then you'll pentameld. But again, that's entirely optional.

I tracked my materia melding in Google Sheets. I used to sell pentamelded gear on the MB. I had a lot of data points. Remember that 161 attempts at a 5% meld? 14 attempts @ 5% should yield a success 50% of the time. That time it went way over. But over the course of thousands of meld attempts on gear - that 161 was evened out.

In other words, I find the RNG they use to be pretty good over the long term. We always remember the 161 fails. But how many times do we have a 5 or 7% meld succeed on try #3? How many times does a 17% meld succeed on try #1? It all evens out.

I have my sad but hilarious overmelding story too, as we all do. But let's not hear it now. Or that time I bought cheap materia upfront by thousands and didn't even need 15% of that haul. Anyway.

I don't really think pentamelding is supposed to be fun. Rather, way to move materia maybe out of the game in skin of a skinner box?

Overmelding (and materia in general) has been getting updates as the game ages so its disingenuous to think it won't continue to do so.

Once upon a time a failed overmeld detroyed the item and the materia. Then, it became only the materia was lost.
Once upon a time, materia was obtainable only from spiritbonding and you didn't extract materia from the item, you turned the item into materia, losing the item in the process.
Once upon a time there were elemental and primary stat materia. There was also everyone's favorite "Accuracy" materia.
Once upon a time you had to meld each materia individually. Not "until you succeed or run out".

While I don't think overmelding is going to be removed (at least not anytime soon), I see it continue to get updates and QoL changes as the game continues to age. Biggest thing I'd like to see is an overhaul to the currently available materia. I don't bother overmelding DoH/L so I don't know if this is true for them, but anything beyond the two most recent materia releases for the expansion serves virtually no purpose in the game. A change to make all materia worthwhile at all stages of the game would be good to me, such as making certain materia only usable in certain slot numbers.

I did a few hunt trains before the Savage fights got released and was able to overmeld my full gear.

Also made a few million Gil by selling everything I don't need.

I can do the same next raid tier without a problem.

Overmelding ist not difficult or expensive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

This is a common misconception. At the beginning of an expansion, yes, prices can get quite high. By this point though, everything has plummeted because getting materia is incredibly easy. With a system as generous as you've purposed, materia would become even less valuable due to there being less people needing it despite the massive volume. In other words, it may as well not even exist because they'd be bordering on 3k a pop if that.

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This is a really good point. And where I think tweaking could be done by the game designers.
I did some simulations where I with one million successful melds, and here were the results:
https://i.imgur.com/XVApuZA.png
There is a substantial change, here. At 5%, there would be 35% less materia used, overall. This is a wide swing, and your point is valid.
I think I'd have to give a delta, here. However, no matter the new system, I still think it should be deterministic, so you can plan to farm a specific amount, and feel safe, so you can be more like this guy:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arrhin

I don't overmeld DoW/M gear much at all, due to me mostly being a crafter/gatherer so I don't have much to add there. But as a crafter/gatherer I can say that no one who is even remotely serious should be paying Gil for materia, and the assumption that you must is just false. The stuff is thrown at us from every direction but mostly from just doing what we do. Spiritbonding and Scrips my loves, that is the way. I haven't spent a single Gil on overmelds since HW I wanna say, nor have I ever sold any. Short term gains and all that. Regardless, I doubt we'll see any changes to the system, imo it is "working as intended". We may not like it but RNG is a big part of the necessary roadblocks that the grind consists of. It's easy and cheap to implement and effective, and also not going anywhere.

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I also try to do this as much as possible, keeping my expenses down. But you know what hurts? When your stockpile you spent weeks on is evaporated in one meld. Out of all the times I have stockpiled, there was always at least 2 specific materia I ran out of. Sure, I could go farm another 200 materia. But We raid tonight (the night new crafted gear is released). So, I need to be able to craft my stuff, today. I don't have time to go farm that out to recuperate my bad RNG.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

With that said, I don't think they need to change the system. This is the nature of randomness.

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Of all the RNG systems in the game, I don't think I have ever seen anyone praise systems which have excessive RNG behind it. Eureka's Logograms have RNG on getting the crystal, and then there's RNG on getting the mnemes you want. I remember reading many threads about the frustrations behind trying to get the actions you need, especially the ones to attempt BA. In Bozja, if you want any chance at defeating DRS, you need the Lost Actions, which is a better System than Eureka, but man does it suck to have to Spend 200k+ gil to buy 10 Fragments and only get 1 lost blood rage.

The loot system, which used to have more RNG behind it, has undergone great improvement with the chest system. It cut a layer of RNG. While there are some complaints about "{X} gear dropping every week" the books still make it deterministic. You can still have RNG, but having layers of RNG, and with it not being deterministic really just sucks the fun out of it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dspguy

I tracked my materia melding in Google Sheets. I used to sell pentamelded gear on the MB. I had a lot of data points. Remember that 161 attempts at a 5% meld? 14 attempts @ 5% should yield a success 50% of the time. That time it went way over. But over the course of thousands of meld attempts on gear - that 161 was evened out.

In other words, I find the RNG they use to be pretty good over the long term. We always remember the 161 fails. But how many times do we have a 5 or 7% meld succeed on try #3? How many times does a 17% meld succeed on try #1? It all evens out.

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It does, yes. However, that presumes you have the stockpile to be able to eat those giant losses in the first place.
And sadly, as you mentioned, Negativity Bias is a thing, too, thus people will remember the bad times more often than the 5% meld that hit in 3 attempts. This leaves the players looking at the system negatively more than positively. If that's what people tend to remember of the system, is it a good system?

Time spent farming materia could be spent earning gil which can be exchanged for any type of materia. Then you have a near limitless stockpile on the MB.

Tbh I think overmelding is mostly fine as it is. You can go into savage on week one without overmelding and do completely fine; half of my static didn't overmeld at all and we cleared the first two fights in like a week and a half. We did have some crafted gear, but that's honestly pretty easy to get week one, and you can farm ex trials/normal raids for gear prior to the tier if you don't want to craft/pay.

For doh/dol, honestly you don't really need to meld much right now? Most of my friends are barely overmelded (like just 10s in the first overmeld slot and nothing else), and they can all craft the expert recipes just fine. When you have crafting food + pots and even fc actions if you're really struggling stat wise, you barely need to overmeld to craft endgame pots/food/gear with like 95%+ hq chance, not even accounting for having hq mats and so on. Like idk if it's just me, but it feels like the stat requirements are lower this time around.

I do think they should add some sort of pity to the system, though. I don't mind losing like 50-60 materia when I'm trying to meld, but there is a point where it's just ridiculous. My luck was so terrible this time around that I ran through about 300 materia on a single slot, which was..... not really fun lol. It's admittedly a really rare case, but that fact that it can happen at all is kinda sucky, since I'm pretty sure with what the marketboard prices were at the time that was like 9mil gil of materia. on a single meld :/ so I'd be all for having a guaranteed meld after a certain amount of failures.

Shitty luck aside, for the most part, it's really easy to get materia. Farming legendary nodes with squadron spiritbond manuals + spiritbond potions basically flings gathering materia at you; hunt trains give you a huge amount of combat materia for a relatively low time investment. crafting materia is a little more annoying, but farming scrips for it is decent.

Instead of making it scale linearly, why not require a set number of materia for a guaranteed meld? This also prevents having to perform multiple attempts, and gives you a very quick and direct method. For example using 40 materia just guarantees the meld to succeed, but also means you always lost 39 of them. Sure, the value for this could be a bit harder to decide if you want it to be somewhat fair with randomness, but i think that it doesnt matter too much. If people truly care about saving some materia, they might do the calculations themselve to see how likely randomness is going to be viable, while many will simply not care and go for the quick method.

Randomness in bulk systems with low percentages has always been an issue in many systems, because randomness is not a reliable method for a balanced distribution (some players will be very lucky, some very unlucky).

These points keep getting brought up.

As a savage raid leader, I, personally, told my team that you don't need to overmeld. Just do your 2 melds, and we'll be fine. And I am fully aware of my 200+ crystals built up from hunt trains.
I know spiritbonding for Gatherer materia is the way to go. Let's say I farm up 300 of each materia. But what happens when you need significantly more of one materia? You now have burnt through 300 of one materia with 200+ of the rest just sitting there. You can't target-farm Gatherer materia, this way.
Crafter materia IS annoying. Even the mid-tier melds, which is about as low as you can go to macro-craft the food/pots, is still a penta-meld. Going less is effectively trading one form of RNG for another (matiera RNG for HQ RNG).

But these points and my responses to them are ...more or less... irrelevant. Please stop bringing them up as they aren't addressing the fundamental flaw that this person brings up:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

Randomness in bulk systems with low percentages has always been an issue in many systems, because randomness is not a reliable method for a balanced distribution (some players will be very lucky, some very unlucky).

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I can understand talking about a system in the context of other systems, but is it so hard to criticize a system without someone saying, "But you don't have to do it"? Yeah, there are ways to try and mitigate the issue, which many of you have brought up. Regardless, seeing your hard work blown up in smoke with nothing to show for it feels bad as a player. And that is worth mentioning.

P.S.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

Instead of making it scale linearly, why not require a set number of materia for a guaranteed meld?

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I've thought about this, too. And I'd happily take such a system. I felt that this solution, while good, doesn't quite keep the spirit of the overmeld system as an RNG-based system. But honestly, if there is going to be an improvement to the system, this is likely to be the implemented solution. As it is probably the simplest to implement from a development perspective. But if someone can think up other deterministic solutions, as well, I would definitely be interested in discussing them!

Overmelding really doesn't bother me. Materia is too easy to get now.

But that leads to something I'd like to point out. It's rather silly that SE chose to compensate for the high failure rate by flooding the game with more and more systems that can generate materia. It would have made more sense to keep the number of systems low and reduce the RNG so supply and need were more in balance.

A high failure rate, with higher materia generation is a system that can balance itself. With too much materia being generated, lower chances means more get consumed. And if not enough is generated, you can increase the chances. Early on after an expansion, materia might be lacking, but later on this becomes more common. Giving very poor rates however makes this take longer. You can balance this quite well since even though it involves randomness, from the overal perspective on the entire playerbase, you will know very well what the average consumption rate is going to be. And as long as you know you need more than what players can effectively apply, this system will preserve itself for a long time.

Its very effective on that part. But currently not ideal, simply because its a hassle for players to make use of the materia effectively. Clicking through an interface 500x doing the same over and over is simply not fun (and i think 500 is even a low estimate if you consider 10 pieces of gear). Quick synthesize is for that same reason a blessing for crafters. And i think melding needs a similar solution.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

A high failure rate, with higher materia generation is a system that can balance itself. With too much materia being generated, lower chances means more get consumed. And if not enough is generated, you can increase the chances. Early on after an expansion, materia might be lacking, but later on this becomes more common. Giving very poor rates however makes this take longer. You can balance this quite well since even though it involves randomness, from the overal perspective on the entire playerbase, you will know very well what the average consumption rate is going to be. And as long as you know you need more than what players can effectively apply, this system will preserve itself for a long time.

Its very effective on that part. But currently not ideal, simply because its a hassle for players to make use of the materia effectively. Clicking through an interface 500x doing the same over and over is simply not fun (and i think 500 is even a low estimate if you consider 10 pieces of gear). Quick synthesize is for that same reason a blessing for crafters. And i think melding needs a similar solution.

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SE added bulk melding mid-ShB...

I get the idea that its annoying to bust a lot of materia but the bigger picture is unless its the .0 patch you have 6-8 months to get materia for the next set. If you run your daily expert or you do hunt trains you will overflow so much materia that you wont need any more. If you run low, just overmeld a single 10 on each item the extra 2/3 9s are not gonna be a deal breaker in 99% of situations or do you use 5 different jobs to raid and all need 5/5 melds in full crafted.

6.0 + 6.1 is same crafted gear and so will be 2 and 3 etc. you also likely use some tome or raid gear which cant be over melded, so this is really only a problem for players who play a lot of jobs or want to day 1 savage on the first patch cycle with new materia.

This also works for crafting and gathering btw, do your weekly custom deliveries and stack up the materia once you bought all the items you wanted.

Once the upgrade items for 590 Tome gears are added to Hunt points, players will swamp out materia on the market because its by product of Hunt trains and this will effect the prices all the way up to 5.5. Hunt Trains are the easiest way of continues upgrading for tome gear after all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Azuri

Overmelding is already largely irrelevant for anything outside world first and week 1 last floor clears. You really don't have to interact with the system at all if you dislike it so much.

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Yeah, right. As a crafter, I totally agree. /s
SMH
Try any of the latest recipes in any patch without an overmelded gear and check your success rate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ard_Xiol

Yeah, right. As a crafter, I totally agree. /s
SMH
Try any of the latest recipes in any patch without an overmelded gear and check your success rate.

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Crafters and Gatherers suffer lmao. Always offering my condolences to whoever overmelds in limsa and loses 99 materia just after purchasing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ard_Xiol

Yeah, right. As a crafter, I totally agree. /s
SMH
Try any of the latest recipes in any patch without an overmelded gear and check your success rate.

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Youre responding to someone 3 years ago talking about overmelding crafted COMBAT gear. And yeah, combat overmelding is only really relevant at the very beginning of the patch and only if youre pushing savage. The bonus they get is so small, and all the gear will be replaced with tome/savage stuff soon enough. Of course its different for crafting.

As long as its necroed ...

I like blowing materia up. I think its fun! I have no expensive hobbies anyway and little else to do with my gil.