Skill-Specific Gear

[Eagleheart]

A combination of minor modifications on certain pieces of weapons and armor, and a customization system utilizing skill-enhancing materia would be a fine idea.

Yoshida said he feared that skill enhancements on equipment would take away player choices in gearing.

Yoshi P, I love you forever, but sir, what choices?

i70: Crafted, Darklight, Darklight Equivalent in Expert
i80: CT gear
i90: Myth, Allagan, Crafted
i100: Weathered Soldiery
i110: Soldiery +1, High Allagan

That is it.

We are not awash in choices, and we are not awash in gear, either. A group farming up to turn 08 will generate six 110s a week among eight players, plus the Oils. Can farm one accessory from Soldiery a week, or most of (but not all of) an i100 primary armor a week.

We do not have a five-star restaurant menu of choices going for us here. Dev Team fears boxing themselves in, but they need to remember two big things:

#1: They are bound only by imagination. This game is their oyster. They can take any crazy number of ideas from these forums, BG, or hell, reddit, or dream up their own. They need not make the modifications excessive or game-breaking, merely interesting. Situational. Remember when stuff was situational? I do. I loved that. o.0

#2: Taking the OP's first concern up, so what if a particular piece of, say, 150 gear is slightly outstripped by a 140 with Brutal Swing: Stun Duration +1s in someone's view? If it is worth it to them, let 'em do what they want. People do this already, utilizing i90 crafted gear to load up on secondaries and using that gear in Coils instead of certain 100s, or even some 110s (though in my opinion, ya gotta be crazy to skip a 110 for crafted breadth of secondaries.) Player choice is not a bad thing, and Spineshatter Dive: potency+50 is not going to annihilate all balance in the game. We already have folks sequence-breaking Coils simply by piling on the damage faster than Dev Team imagined they would, or solo healing turn 9. C'mon.

[Saccharin]

I like the idea of set bonuses like other games do but it leads to a case where the gear with the set bonus is the best no question and it leaves all other drops of the same tier deemed useless even if they have better itemisation.

[Gormogon]

what choices?

stat specific choices you aim for.

Det
Crit
Speed
Balance
Hybrid

It's not amazing choices but they are there. Skill enhancing would be more enticing but the balance around it isn't simple especially if it's on gear since it gets constantly replaced.

[AlrikRouge]

They have already done set bonuses with lower level GC gear, and with the sanction granting and sanction item (again GC lower level gear and item). But yes, only affects main stats.

Maybe with the expansion (or sooner though doubtful) they could add such a thing (item or whatnot) that boosts job specific actions? Could still tie it in with GC to keep that theme going, but make it a tank/DPS/healer enhancement item, boosting tank/DPS/healer abilities (shorter CDs, stronger effects, more potent attacks, etc). But specifically affecting skills as opposed to stats (or really it would just be another fancy item aside from but no different than food).

[Moqi]

They could make skill-speficic gear that can be converted into skill-specific materia - to be infused in your relic weapon, if they worry everybody will have all of them at some point, although I don't mind, plenty of ways to restrict it.

[Eagleheart]

stat specific choices you aim for.

Det
Crit
Speed
Balance
Hybrid

It's not amazing choices but they are there. Skill enhancing would be more enticing but the balance around it isn't simple especially if it's on gear since it gets constantly replaced.

Again, what choices?

No, seriously, there are specific builds that are the best for each class already, they were extrapolated and posted literally three hours after 2.2 went live. This point you bring up is further diminished by the existence of that new rotation simulator now available on the internet, with adjustable parameters producing thousands of averaged results of that particular rotation with varying stat sets in seconds, so that the player may optimize even faster. We cannot pretend that there are not BIS or Best Builds.

Additionally, your point about gear constantly being replaced actually cuts down the thrust of your post, which is that further itemization may be game-breaking - how is it game-breaking if it is swiftly replaced? (Also, aren't Balance and Hybrid the same thing?)

There will always be The Best™. Using this as reason to avoid further customization of the stat system is a disservice to everyone involved.

Look at it another way: every piece of gear looks the same. Nothing is unique. Nothing makes you raise an eyebrow and go o.ô {hmmm.} In 2.3, there will be new gear with... lower numbers of the same stats that are on every other piece of gear. Nothing unique. Nothing role-enhancing. Nothing that makes you say "in this situation, I could..."

Nothing that makes a piece of equipment, skill, or a player stand out. We are totally and completely homogenized. o_O This is not a good thing.

With no skill trees and no builds to pursue, there's nothing there to interest people.

[Renik]

None said set bonuses in the live letter, the question was about specific stats, not set bonuses, you need to have this clear before making assumptions.

[Eagleheart]

This topic requires additional exposition.

For what reason are relics at i80 purple? Can anyone tell me?

A weapon released down the road for crafting at i80 will have the same DMG rating as an i80 relic, and it will have the same statistic caps... the crafted will actually be a little better, because it will have materia slots that the purple i80 does not.

So, a white i80 will be superior to a purple i80. Likewise, blue and purple i100s are the very same thing. What point, the pretense of difference or rarity?

Typically, colored icons are used to denote an item of superior quality, with greater stats, special effects, or just generally boosted damage. None of that exists in XIV right now. Six months from now, when expansion is released and I am crafting 110 HQs to toss on the market boards, I will chuckle looking at how a white crafted HQ is actually exactly the same as a "rare" blue or purple 110.

It's kind of silly when you stop and think about it. O.o Not that I want crafted items to be pointless - so don't misunderstand that point, please and thanks - but that I am saying there is no effective difference between 'levels of rarity'.

An item with a level of rarity marked on it ought to exceed a standard item of that level. Nothing else makes sense. How far, how much? Up to Dev Team's interpretation, but the way things stand right now is completely nonsensical.

By golly, if you're going to make an item purple and shiny, let it be worth the purple and shiny.

And while you're at it, toss some rare materials into the next tier of Binding Coil, so I can try my hand at crafting a rare and shiny blue item.

[rhemi1]

So, what, tier set bonuses?

I'd be cool with that, actually. We need some more customization in this game, even if it's just illusion of choice.

[Garlyle]

Yoshida said he feared that skill enhancements on equipment would take away player choices in gearing.

Yoshi P, I love you forever, but sir, what choices?

You're misunderstanding the meaning of choice here.


When you offer a greater variety of effects of choices, it's inevitable that certain ones outstrip others. Consider just for a moment that we're talking about support skills, because in a way, they're equippable. Say every class was only afforded one. What would happen to a Marauder that didn't take Provoke? How would developpers handle the existance of Warriors without Provoke? Do you create content that never involves Tank Swaps, or do you still go ahead with it on the assumption they will have that?

Obviously, gear isn't as significant in terms of its effects - but let's face it, unless it is really significant, it won't satisfy the crowd who're hoping for it. Otherwise it falls into the "tiny number tweaking for min-maxing", which is what we already have. The more variety of significant choice you give players, the more that certain choices prove superior to others; to continue responding to those stronger existances, you end up having to design challenges around that, which means players who don't make that choice lose out. You don't actually get real choice - you get a right choice and a wrong choice. You don't have three choices for iLvl 90 body armor - you have one right choice, and two wrong ones. Nevermind if those three are things like "Water Resist +40" which you'll want for Leviathan EX and another is "Paralysis Null" which you'll want to ease up ADS nonsense, and another is "+15% HP recovered" which you want on for everything else - now you don't have a choice between all three iLvl 90 pieces, you need to get them all. I'm being a bit extreme, but you understand the risks, right?

Players already hate the effects that we do have because they "don't feel significant" - which is a completely fair assesment - but so long as they aren't significant, it really doesn't matter which of the iLvl 90 pieces you use unless you are really, really interested in getting that 5 extra DPS. That's a margin that can be balanced around.

So there's three levels you end up at now:

1. It's all basically the same - the differences are functionally so tiny that the balance doesn't really change much, overall power remains constant and expectable. (We are here)
2. Flavour differences - You have a whole lot of different tasting flavours, but realistically, they're such minor changes you wouldn't ever really notice. There's a lot more variety here, and I think people might overall be happier here, but you still don't have real meaningful variety. (We should probably be here, and I think this is what Yoshida is willing to start looking into based on his answer)
3. Significant differences - What I think a lot of people would like to see, but it runs huge risks of False Choice, forcing players to acquire and carry assloads of situational equipment, being extremely difficult to create content around, and other problems. (Yoshida doesn't want to be here, and going here would be a pretty significant philosophy change for XIV).