Suggestions: New Gear and Alternate Dungeon Mechanics

[Aodh]

I know that the community team sifts through here (hi!) but if there's a better place to drop off suggestions, let me know.


I've been locked in a discussion with a crafter friend who's convinced that crafted gear is a waste of time. Yoshida has said that the best gear will always come from dungeons, but I have a proposal to get the best of both worlds. First, the crafter makes a level 90 item (which they already can do) which is incomplete. This would be the equivalent of the weathered soldiery gear. There would be no materia slots on it, instead the gear would require oil, sands or some other item from the dungeons to have it completed and upgraded to a level 100 item. From there you could use a system similar to the novus upgrade of getting a catalyst and melding the materia you want for the secondary stats to complete the item's final form of 110. This would be a similar upgrade path of Atma to Animus to Novus.

tldr; Crafted iLv90 gear + Oil/Sand/??? > iLv100 + catalyst + materia > iLv110 with customs stats


The second point relates to the mechanics in dungeons, which basically boils down to instant death dance-dance-revolution. Let's look at allagan rot as an example, since even with full echo buffs, people still bypass the mechanic with the rage mode. Why? Because one person in 8 who does the wrong thing will kill everyone. That's not a challenge, that's punishment. Yoshida said he has to have the dungeons scripted, because if the same move happens back to back to back, it could wipe the party instantly making it seem unfair. But that's only because most mechanics are massive damage/instant death.

Why not have rot have an effect similar to Ifrit EX's Searing Wind. If you fail the mechanic, you start doing damage to those around you, for example. Or on Turn 5, stepping on the edge of the platform gives you weight and pacification/amnesia. Or zero out your TP/MP making you useless until it regenerates, also putting you at risk of hitting the rage timer. Titan and Leviathan could knock you to the edge so you fall off, but are still holding onto the edge so that someone can run over and help you back up, putting themselves at risk of being knocked off while giving you the chance to recover. This kind of thing makes the battles challenging and fun while remaining difficult.

tldr; Don't use only instant death and massive damage as consequences for failing mechanics. Zero TP/MP, determination down, pacification/amnesia/silence, searing wind from Ifrit EX, other debuffs that make the fight challenging while allowing more randomization/less scripting.

[peaches]

I'd love to see some more use out of crafting. As it is, I don't even use my crafters now other than to gear up other classes, and to make myself the odd bit of food or something. When Mythology gear was the top tier and everybody was running around in Darklight, I always went the extra mile to get myself crafted i70 gear, just so I looked different and had something to work towards. Now considering how easy it is to fully deck yourself out in Mythology gear and how much more Myth tomes it takes to get i90 crafted, I don't bother for my alt classes and just buy their Myth stuff. If I had a way to craft my gear for my main, I totally would.

Those are actually some nice suggestions for removing the insta-death mechanics. While I find those fights fun, it's only because I don't get killed by the insta-death, and the second I see someone else knocked out permanently I know the fight is now either lost, or going to be very very difficult. Good job thinking of a solution rather than just saying you don't like it!

[abzoluut]

While we're at it: let crafters make "sets". Three or so for each job. This gear will not have any stats on it. Its sole purpose is to be used for the glamour system.

When the design team comes op with great looking gear, people would want these for sure. Jobs look too similar at the moment. We want to actually use the glamour system.

@ OP. Great concept. However I think people will flame doing more fates since that would be one way to get the item to upgrade with other than Coil/CT.

I'm all with you: craft Item > upgrade > upgrade. Especially when they have different stats to their high allagan equivalent.

[Xystic]

People would like this possibility of trying to recover from failing the mechanic by having near death mechanics over instant death mechanics, however, the problem is that near death mechanics will eventually become obsolete as you get stronger as you progress in most MMOs. Literally tanking and spanking the encounter. These instant death mechanics require people to not day dream even if the the DOT/Burst damage mechanics are now just tankable but the instant death mechanics remind people to keep alert at all times.

At first high spike burst damages or DOTs can be good punishes but eventually, they will no longer be very punishing as you continue to progress, while instant death mechanics will always be punishing.

MMOs like world of warcraft had encounters like in Molten Core, where 1 person could take many if not all 40 people, depending on your strategy. In this game, only 8 people need to dodge an instant death mechanic. I can see complaints about it in larger raid games but not in 8 man raids because the possibility of being punished is decreased significantly.

[TheCurls]

I've been locked in a discussion with a crafter friend who's convinced that crafted gear is a waste of time.

Crafted gear with penta-melds is how a lot of the groups cleared T9 so early. It's not a waste of time if you do it right and have the resources.

[Schaeffa]

Titan and Leviathan could knock you to the edge so you fall off, but are still holding onto the edge so that someone can run over and help you back up, putting themselves at risk of being knocked off while giving you the chance to recover.

That's such an interesting twist—I love it! =D

[Aodh]

Crafted gear with penta-melds is how a lot of the groups cleared T9 so early. It's not a waste of time if you do it right and have the resources.

I know, and I agree with you. But since iLevel is an important factor in the game, having the max craftable iLevel 20 levels below the highest possible armour is a big difference. If they respected the materia and gave penta-melded items a new iLevel that would be a different solution, but I was just proposing an alternative to make crafted gear an end-game alternative.

[Aodh]

At first high spike burst damages or DOTs can be good punishes but eventually, they will no longer be very punishing as you continue to progress, while instant death mechanics will always be punishing.

While I agree with your point about requiring people to pay attention, my point is that there are other effective ways to do that without instantly dying or just dealing damage. Right now, SE's solution is to give the echo buff to everyone, which alone is making the high burst damage and dots less punishing, but zero-ing TP/MP or using the wealth of status effects already in the game, or new ones could make the fight always challenging. Make the failure for the mechanic bad, really bad, just not instant death. Hard rage timers make speed and avoiding the mechanic very important.