STATS: A Question for the community.

Do stats matter?

I mean this in many direction but I start with one.
IF you remove (Det, Crit, Str, etc.) Would that change the game?

For example if CB3 just wipe all stats away but you still do the same damage, potency didnt change, maybe they up the dmg a bit to compensate the number difference but over no stats.

Would this change the game?

Now I'm not coming at this in bad faith but my answer is not really. Some people will say big number go brr. Yeah but overall I don't see it changing the game. In NO WAY AM I SAYING THEY SHOULD. This just to look at the stat system we have and ask is this what I want? is this fun? Would you put this in another game and enjoy it?

If people are gonna stay for another 10 years give or take. Do you like this? or want something a bit more active? If you do why? and if you don't why and what would be a good change?

Actually, l tried a max spell speed and piety build in ucob. It Feels really good. Not only l don't run out of mp ressing, max spell speed shaving off 1.2s cast time can be felt. So, l would say wiping out These stats will make the prog harder for me

This is a good point for spell & skill speed, I do feel the same way when I have a certain speed with VPR n NIN. I too think they should make this just haste but thats another conversation. Do you think all skill should be like this in the sense that they should affect your gameplay directly like skill speed?

Stats with proc rates like Crit and DH create variance which has some impact but how much of it you feel varies a lot by situation. On a boss with a lot of HP they don't change the feeling of gameplay at all because everything averages out. In a short DPS phase (adds, boss charging up a mechanic) a lucky string of crits can noticeably speed things up and can change the feel or combat, though I prefer when player agency is responsible for significant changes rather than rolling dice. If raising Crit/DH rates was only a potential burst gain and not an average damage gain they could have offered a way to tailor a character to certain situations but as it stats Crit and DH have no downsides so there are no choices to be made.

Piety gives the player a dial to turn to tweak performance (DPS) vs risk (running out of MP due to unexpected healing) so there is a choice to be made here. Again I don't think it's very meaningful though. All it does is raise your parse number which doesn't make gameplay feel better in my opinion. I also think that healing when things go wrong is the more fun part of healing so optimization in this case would make things more boring.

Tenacity giving a slight damage reduction can make a difference though it's the healer that will feel it more than the tank. I think tenacity would be more interesting on non tank classes, but at the same time, with the way damage works in this game it would be really hard to justify using. It's already hard to justify on tanks.

The speed stats are by far the best ones because they change how classes feel. From a gameplay perspective these are the only stats I care about. They also come with tradeoffs. Faster casting means more MP use and potentially less raw damage. Dealing with tradeoffs like this is one of the hallmarks of good stat design.

Overall I don't think the stats in FF14 matter very much. Speed stats are good. Piety and Tenacity are kind of OK but not valuable. Crit/DH/Det are the most important stats but very dull. If stats were changed to allow players to change the feel of classes I think it would be a better system. That stats would need more tradeoffs. Fight design shifting to something less scripted would also be beneficial.

so if you speak about base states like STR,vit,mind,into,dex well only for calculation of HP and some basic info not really but I get why they are a thing. In materia section those are better worked on and mean alot more overall to damage if we would have a other way for the other stats I think they would be more impactful in themself

Speed (and maybe Piety if shit hits the fan run after run) can be felt, yes. The other secondary stats? Pretty much only on fflogs.

I think they're better to have than not, even beyond just selecting GCD tiers per Speed being the only consideration (which could otherwise as easily be done via the weapon type of one's weapon glamour [as not to be forced into a single GCD tier by each weapon upgrade]), but I'd prefer a % increase with fewer points so they could feel more impactful.

I would also prefer to push Tenacity and Piety to a separate tier (e.g., "Tertiary Stats"), perhaps alongside changing Direct Hit into some sort of movement speed-related stat and return Det to the sole bigger hits/crits stat while Crit again just controls crit chance (with bonus damage only on already-guaranteed crits). No damage on Tenacity in that case, of course.

IMO no.

Since stats are stricly balanced in a dev-decided way (that is, there is virtually no or factually no player agency) they might as well just be removed.

However, they act as an important money drain, so I would assume that if secondary stats + materia are removed whole, repair costs in particular would have to go up quite a lot.

If SE just removed all substats, they would balance the equation by adding more main stat to gear or an across-the-board increase to potency or an across-the-board decrease of mob HP. All substats do, in my opinion, is allow them to have 2-3 options for gear for a certain iLvl that are "different" while not really being all that different. Oh look, this one has 300 crit and 200 DH while THIS one has 200 DH and 300 crit. Considering everyone seems to want crit/DH, in either case, it only really changes what you meld, but the end result is mostly the same.

They could drop all substats, but then what would be different about gear when gear of the same iLvl has the same vit/main-stat all the time, every time.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

They could drop all substats, but then what would be different about gear when gear of the same iLvl has the same vit/main-stat all the time, every time.

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Nothing, but I'd go a step further.

All you do collecting gear of tier X is prepare your character to challenge tier X+1. Functionally this is no different than requiring a certain number of clears of tier X before allowing you to do tier X+1. In other words, you could actually check for some achievement and having that raises your innate character stats. It's a reward from say, the "kill boss XYZ 5 times" (or 10 times, or whatever).

All gear would then be entirely statless and be just for glamouring, which, if we're being honest, is what most gear gets acquired for anyways, empirically speaking.

Yes this would not be a clean replacement of course, but it's to illustrate how little the actual gear progression we do matters. It could be removed in favor of a trait from an achievement, and you could balance that, with quite little change even I'd assume. Even ignoring that though, you could just have all gear have the same stats in each tier. They look different, and that's what ultimately matters to people far more. The stats are just something you get from a guide anyways.

If we had more mechanics that work like MNK chakras or old BRD procs that are tied to various substats like crit, or dh, then perhaps it could give back some meaning to those stats, and also give more variety to the incredibly stale "just meld crit > det=dh lol".

XIV really needs to overhaul their sub-stat system. It's not broken as it is, but not even having a viable flexiblity in how you can customize, via materia, it's almost pointless to even exist as an option.

I'd propose the following changes ideas for sub-stats

Left side of gear and weapons would have/meld only offensive stats
- Crit
- Determination
- Versatility: A new stat that changes depending on your job. For some it increases proc rates, others may increase over-time effects, dance partner's damage bonus, etc.
- Speed: Merge both SkS and SpS. If we ever see a world not as bound by a 2min meta, this could be interesting for more jobs, or even making Speed potentially affect cooldowns too.

Right side of gear, accessories, would have only innate VIT, and more sockets than we have today, to freely customize uility stats
- Tenacity: Repurposed to be used by all, it reduces damage taken and increase the potency of defensive actions like Shadow Wall, Heart of Stone, Manaward, Radiant Aegis, etc
- Vigor: Increases the duration and reduces the recast time of Sprint and job specific movement actions
- Resilience: Reduces the duration of Brink of Death, Vulnerability and Damage Down status effects
- Spirit: Adds MP regen for healers and potency increase from some no-healer utility healing actions like Second Wind, Curing Waltz, etc

The idea behind the utility stats is that you freely customize them based on your play needs, not your dps goals. For example, a blind prog player may prefer more Resilience, given that they would probably be dying more often. A more experienced one could stack more Tenacity to ease the healing checks. We would probably need some capacity of healer rework to put all the utility provided by other jobs to good use even after prog.

I’d be all for them revamping or whatever the substat system. Most of them just feel pointless, (mostly) everyone melds the same things anyway, and there’s not really any actual variety (“do you want damage up melds or damage up melds” lol). Something more interesting and flexible/versatile enough that players can make their own decisions.

Heavens forfend us getting any sort of individuality in this game, am I right? (Sarcasm lol do it now YoshiP or I’ll slap this Moogle)

Versatility/Mastery would be nice, even if it'd ultimately just be treated as something you're forced to stack and play around ("Oh no, even more of my contribution is dependent on having a 99th percentile BiS SAM in my party!"), as would having meaningful GCD tiers again.

The other major factor for me, though, is just wanting to see each point actually be able to do something, %-wise. By end of this expansion, a full-SkS build now, even with a 20% Greased Lightning and 13% Shifu instead of the 15% and 10% of old... still almost certainly won't be able to hit as low of GCD numbers we could already do in Heavensward and Stormblood. There's just less palpable impact from our stats than we used to have (and, imo, should have).

I think this doesn't go far enough.

I like the idea, but as long as stats such as "crit" are around, this'll never balance well either, in fact as per your example you have to force focus on secondary stat selection by excluding damage-gaining stats from the right side. Also, this again implies player agency is entirely removed from the left side as one stat will be supreme and you just slot that everywhere you can.

So what I think ought to possible is:
- Truly utility-based stats like your Vigor, Tenacity, Resilience and Spirit (I feel Resilience will become the go-to for DPS sadly, but eh, at least it's their own choice to not believe in themselves :P ).
- A variant of crit that decreases your hit chance (with no ability to fix it). Overall it'd be a damage gain, but you risk breaking your rotation mid-burst-window with this, so it's your choice. Higher average damage but risky?
- Something like your versatility could only work if it had no damage-benefit, as it's class-specific this can be done!
- Speed only if classes balance so that it's a player choice whether to play faster or not, say the faster you act, the less damage/healing your GCD cause? Maybe even offer the opposite, Impact? But make both a wash, "Select your own GCD speed"-stats?

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Also, this again implies player agency is entirely removed from the left side as one stat will be supreme and you just slot that everywhere you can.

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One stat will always be the mathematically better when playing perfectly in the manner most optimal for it. So long as the gap is smaller than what's consequent to typical random variance in otherwise identical simulations, though, that's hardly relevant. And yes, stats can be balanced that tightly, if a little effort is put into that process for a change.

The only salient point here is Speed, which would require any among (though could benefit from multiple among)

• job-by-job balancing, or better yet either among...
• an underlying resource that makes the outcome of stats more granular (as Speed otherwise benefits only by ratio), such as using Stamina and allowing anyone to, by toggle or by queue-override, snapping-preferences, or the like, overclock their GCD by up to 20% at cost to idle time later or
• an overlying resource being shared between multiple stats and players being able to determine exactly how much of Stat A (rather than B or C) they want to spend that shared resource towards in terms of output (e.g., which ratio of GCD reduction + whatever chosen amount of leniency).

For instance, let's say we just have... Red, Yellow, and Blue gear, and "Purple", "Orange", and "Green" stats.

Red gear carries some amount of "Essence" that you can then spend on Purple or Orange. Yellow can spend its stats on Orange and Green. Blue can spend its stats on Purple and Green. Naturally.

Purple might include...

• Speed (+GCD speed),
• Chain (+DoT tick speed), and
• Alacrity (+recast speed);

Orange would include...

• Precision (Crit Chance),
• Break (Crit Damage), and
• Power (General potency modifier);

Green would include...

• Strategist (+allows abilities to be used up to X% sooner or overcharge up to X% more at proportionately increased or decreased potency),
• Hero (+bonus LB generation from one's damage, mitigation, or healing and over time proportionate to player count), and
• Versatility (two among bonus mitigation, healing potency to others and natural regen speed for self, or damage, avoiding that of one's own role -- better for PLD's external heals than Precision/Break).

Accessories, meanwhile, might have just one option per stat color (thereby two options per item):

• Purple - Scout (bonus movement speed + like Strategist but for Sprint, at higher growth rate + X% leniency for positional snapping completing gap-closers/-makers safely and Y% of a yalm of lenience for snapping out of danger on non-split mechanics, etc.)
• Orange - Tenacity (bonus Defense and Magic Defense)
• Green - Vigor (bonus MP and HP recovery per tick)

A concept that's been rattling around in my head is one where players can open up their job's soul crystal, and assign stats to individual job actions. Players can do things like make an action crit more, reduce its cast/recast time, give it charges, increase procs, reduce MP cost, increase its healing, etc. Yeah, there would likely be a mathematically best set up per job, but it could open up a lot of room for experimentation.

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Originally Posted by mallleable

A concept that's been rattling around in my head is one where players can open up their job's soul crystal, and assign stats to individual job actions. Players can do things like make an action crit more, reduce its cast/recast time, give it charges, increase procs, reduce MP cost, increase its healing, etc. Yeah, there would likely be a mathematically best set up per job, but it could open up a lot of room for experimentation.

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It could. More than I'd personally want to deal with --especially compared to just having primary stats matter and making each kit draw from multiple of them, such that a DRG could be more purely physical, more based around Wyrmwind Thrust, Gierskogul, Mirage Dive, and Nostrond, etc., faster-hitting or harder-hitting even before [or in place of] Skill/Spell Speed-- but done right, it'd be pretty fun.