Gear should grant passive abilities

[Deifact]

but, it would be too stressfull for the community.
how will people wear their incoming sephiroth's cloak if they need to wear something else for a .. pardon my confusion here.. but is the word "bonus"?
no, i just want my i100 items in the future to just have more str,vit,random stat. i feel i'm entitled to vertical progression forever.
this will keep things fresh, fun, interesting, kawaii, long term.

There's too many stats on gear already its too confusing. I think they need to just have one stat "power" and if you get over 9000 you win the game.

[Vactus]

There's too many stats on gear already its too confusing. I think they need to just have one stat "power" and if you get over 9000 you win the game.

Think you missed the sarcasm mate.

OT: yes, I agree with the OP.

[Edellis]

That was precisely what I was alluding to. >_>

While games like WoW, FFXIV, etc. get hit with the label 'gear-treadmill', PSO was what I like to call a 'Gear Collectible Card Game'.

Having a set up that promotes getting X to get Y to get Z (which is all you really cared about) is dull... Having a setup that promotes getting and using the entire alphabet is much more fun.

Absolutely agree. PSO is one of the first MMOs i'd ever played, and it has unfortunately stopped me from enjoying so many games because of how dynamic its gear system was

That would be along the lines of bringing interesting complexities to the game like player elemental damage and that's a no no. Don't want to be confusing the poor players little heads with things like basic depth.

Which is sad, because TBH so few games actually incorporate the sort of depth im talking about into their systems. I honestly can't think of a single one that does, including the sequels to PSO Ep1&2. I should mention, something like "+10 hidden dexterity", or "Randomly does 10 fire damage" is not the type of hidden abilities i'm talking about. Those essentially are no better than stat increases because they still only improve overall DPS, without much depth to them.

In regular MMOs, gear increase = DPS increase, while in PSO, gear increase = option increase. This is something that i've never seen another MMO do correctly, because their systems aren't pre-designed to incorporate the feature. You are the same character with a lv.9351 weapon as you are with a lv.1 weapon. You just do more damage.


So if FFXIV had abilities similar to PSO, i'd imagine it'd be something similar to equipping Additional job abilities on your character that just come from the weapon. Some help tons, some only help a little, but it's great to have direct control of them and use them when you want to.

[Pharacelcus]

There's too many stats on gear already its too confusing. I think they need to just have one stat "power" and if you get over 9000 you win the game.

adding up to 9000 is quite the task and might prove too stressfull.
let's just keep it at 'power' and you may get more, but the tooltip will be vague about what the bonus will be.. if any.
this way, everyone's thought or assumption will be right in their head.

Think you missed the sarcasm mate.

i resent that. sarcasm is the devil.

[Nahara]

I believe that there's an inherent problem when it comes to gear with trait-type bonuses on them.

Maybe not initially, but eventually you're going to run into the situation where the passive bonus provided by a piece of equipment turns out to be so good that no other option for gear in that slot will ever become viable until something even better comes around that replaces it.

The way gear is setup right now, you're not ever really going to have that problem, because even if there's not a whole lot of options, you still have some choice and room for personal preference. People will debate the benefits of +20 Crit. vs +20 DET, and both sides could be right, depending on the kind of build you're going for.

However, if one piece of gear gives +20 Crit. and the other provides a 20% boost to Full Thrust damage, you're always going to be wrong if you choose anything other than the 20% Full Thrust boost, which will forever be useful.

There's no choice anymore, you either have it, or you're bad. And that's not right.

I do think it would be cool to see set stat bonuses on some gear sets like SE currently does with the grand company gear.

[Edellis]

I believe that there's an inherent problem when it comes to gear with trait-type bonuses on them.

Maybe not initially, but eventually you're going to run into the situation where the passive bonus provided by a piece of equipment turns out to be so good that no other option for gear in that slot will ever become viable until something even better comes around that replaces it.
The way gear is setup right now, you're not ever really going to have that problem, because even if there's not a whole lot of options, you still have some choice and room for personal preference. People will debate the benefits of +20 Crit. vs +20 DET, and both sides could be right, depending on the kind of build you're going for.

However, if one piece of gear gives +20 Crit. and the other provides a 20% boost to Full Thrust damage, you're always going to be wrong if you choose anything other than the 20% Full Thrust boost, which will forever be useful.

There's no choice anymore, you either have it, or you're bad. And that's not right.

I do think it would be cool to see set stat bonuses on some gear sets like SE currently does with the grand company gear.

Thats why set bonuses like "+20 crit" and "+20 Det" aren't the type of set bonuses you should implement. At least, they aren't the types of ones i was talking about, because they still only provide linear DPS increases.
I was thinking more along the lines of, maybe an optional stance you can activate with the gear equipped, or things that allow you to completely change your playstyle.

"-40 STR, +100 Skill Speed".

"-800 TP, +300% Auto Attack damage."

"-40% MP, provide swiftcast"

"-50% TP/MP regeneration for 20 seconds, +30 Det for 10 seconds"

"+200 DET, -1.4% overall damage per missing HP%" (Ultima Weapon?)


Or, simply allow you to use completely unique abilities with different cooldowns or TP/MP costs that you usually wouldn't have access to on your class.

"30 Potency, 40% chance of Petrify"

"50 Potency, Recovers 100% of damage dealt as HP"

"370 potency attack if enemy is under 15% HP, at cost of 999 TP"


They don't have to all be useful 100% of the time, they could even be completely suboptimal, but depending on the weapon you have equipped, you could have benefits in some areas and detriments in others. It just adds some non-linear strategy for tackling content. The catch is to 1) not make these Passives but Actives, and 2) balance them around the weapons.

[Worm]

Weapons should all have special abilities/skills and cease to follow the path of vertical progression, IMO.
Won't happen though. :-(

It's really sad to hear the truth like this, but it's going to be awhile before games really get away from the tier system.

[Caraway]

Sets are poor game design for some of the reasons people put out here already: they make sets worth more than they actually are because people don't want to break up the set bonus.

I think a better option would be an expansion of the Materia system to be able to include "Special" material that can be slotted and unslotted (perhaps with a special, expensive reagent) that provides the special bonuses. In fact, there's so much that could be possibly done with Materia it isn't even funny. It could be so much more than just the +X to Y we have currently and if you were to do an actual sort of set bonus I'd suggest it be taken as part of the Materia system (say one Firaga Materia in all slots gives you a special set of fire abilities for example) that way you can take it with you as you upgrade to the next set of gear.

[ROOTFayth]

definitely agree with the materia thing, they could probably add some materia slots to the future better weapons and materia could add a ton of different buffs/abilities

[Xatsh]

The new mainstream community cannot handle decision making. ULTRA Linear progression ONLY!!!!

They had a system that worked towards the end of 1.0 and system that worked really well for 10yrs in their previous game... why they changed it no one knows. And to my knowledge not 1 forum post saying anyone wanted it changed.... and I spend too much time on here.

But yea gear progression in this game is probably the worst in the genre atm. Seriously I am having a hard time thinking of a worse game atm.