3.0's Coming... What are the Craziest Game Changes you can Think of?

[Donjo]

No thanks. Tank crafted accessories are crap for my WAR and I love my slaying stuff

The accessory thing addresses imbalances that currently exist with the stat systems and helps to prevent confusion over which accessories one should be wearing. Would you want your WHM wearing a full set of VIT accessories? It also speaks of awful, awful design when the meta for a particular role calls for them not to use the gear that's explicitly assigned to them.

It's because it's secondary stat, and scales well with the other secondary stats's materias. Besides, I'd like to have grade V materias when 3.0 comes

The point is that 7 "Main Stat" confers so much more of a benefit than 6 Determination that it makes absolutely no sense that the main stat materia would provide more raw points. Determination materia is fine where it is but the main stat stuff should be scaled back.

No thanks. Or you ease SBing by like 1000%, because it's a real pain in the ass as it is now

Right now, crafted gear is grossly overpowered. Unless you have some method in mind by which materia melding can be changed to be based on skill rather than pure RNG, then something like this is literally the only way to dial it down.

wouldn't work. I could somewhat agree on a "vitality increases your defense" like the stamina stat works in other games, but damage is not what vitality brings

Wouldn't work? It already worked in the STR and VIT determines damage paradigm in 1.0 for Warrior, which people are tending to agree was a more robust and flexible stat system. It likely wasn't removed for any reason resembling VIT not making sense as a damage stat, but rather as a part of simplifying the stat system as a whole for ARR. Now that we have this solid base under us, the devs did express a desire to look into possibly adding more complexity into things again. Besides, I fail to see how a "hardier" person can't swing a weapon harder than someone who is less so.

apart forcing us to have parry, what does it do ? Just rework parry to actually be useful instead.

The other option is certainly making parry useful, but that is actually impossible when one considers the scope secondary stats are currently taking. As I said, these points of parry wouldn't count toward gear allocation. You'd just get parry because you're a Tank. There's literally no room to whine about it because it's free: you lose absolutely nothing for having it. If Dark Knight is truly a Dodge/Parry tank, then something like this will be necessary for anyone who wants to play as Tanks other than Dark Knight once in a while.

only benefits SMN, and wouldn't be fitting. Also, WMN will be reworked for 3.0 with changes on Spell speed, so that may not even be necessary.

Sure, it might be unnecessary, but that's not the point. The point is to be silly and/or crazy here.

Dexterity has no use for tanks except increasing parry rate by a bit. While being an increase, it's not fitting.

"It wouldn't work" and "it's not fitting" seems to be a running trend with you. If giving Dexterity to the tanks is not fitting when it provides a benefit that only they would use, then what is the point of it providing that benefit at all?

removing a stat in a game where the few stats present are already boring is just bad design.

You know what's also bad design? Having more than one stat that does exactly the same thing. When we count together Weapon Damage, Main Stat, and Determination, we have three stats that do exactly the same thing. This point also assumed that perhaps they'd add additional stats in 3.0.

unnecessary difficulty is just dumb. Leave instant kills and tank busters in raids, they do not belong in dungeons.

The only increased difficulty here is a harsher benefit for losing hate... which some people desperately need if they're ever going to grow as tanks and some DPS need in order to learn that aggro is actually a thing that exists. This point, though, primarily serves one purpose and one purpose alone: preventing Tanks from "tanking" something outside of the Tank Stance while in party based content.

and again, no point. If you steal hate as OT, you're bad or your MT doesn't know how to 1-2-3. period.

If the MT is full VIT and the OT is a Paladin in full Strength, that MT is going to lose hate to the Paladin. But, this is really just another method of discouraging tanking outside of the proper stance.

it already does if you summon a fairy while in stance

The idea is that if you slip into the stance while the fairy is already out, the healing potency decrease hits the fairy right then and there.

No. Balance should prevail, and this throws balance out of the window.

None of us have any business stating what will or will not be balanced at levels above 50. We should leave that word at the door for now.

these two stats have nothing in common. Please be serious.

They have nothing in common? If anything, what currently exists has nothing in common: it makes no sense that a critical hit from a pet would increase the master's spell speed. Isn't that odd on its own? It already makes more sense for a critical hit to enhance more critical hits.

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And finally...

- Skill Slot system. 2 per skill. The slots can be filled with skill-based materia. So instead of stat points, this Materia has skill-related bonuses. "TP Regen on hit", "Chance to critically hit +%", "Potency +", "Defense +" would just be a few of the basic materia. Then you'd have SPECIAL materia you could gain in other ways, like quests or high-end raids. Those special materia augment things like, "Jump distance + 5 yalms", "Goad effects all party members, less TP regain", "Trick Attack duration +5 seconds".

Now this is a cool idea. Let's hope something like this actually happens! Progression would become more than just gear

[Nominous]

Now this is a cool idea. Let's hope something like this actually happens! Progression would become more than just gear

Yeah, I wish I could make some design recommendations for them. It's not so hard to implement balanced, and fun customization choices for people.

[Pterois]

The accessory thing addresses imbalances that currently exist with the stat systems and helps to prevent confusion over which accessories one should be wearing. Would you want your WHM wearing a full set of VIT accessories? It also speaks of awful, awful design when the meta for a particular role calls for them not to use the gear that's explicitly assigned to them.

The kinda of people who benefit largely off wearing cross class accessories are the kinda of people who study (or at least read a little) about the full implications of wearing such gear. Start examining obvious end-game raiders (people who at the moment are wearing FCOB gear) and you will notice that for the most part the gear was created by the same person... which you could also assume they melded it as well... not just willy nilly putz'ing about on the MB and buying all the things cuz their rich... and then max melding them with vit I materia lol. But scaling the RIDICULOUS masterbook II wall and them pushing that gear to its highest level to reach caps.

Everything you said about these accessories (and even stuff about stats in general) is completely wrong. The people who equip this stuff know exactly which one they should be wearing how to maximize its full potential through melds. Even if you don't use it for that purpose, and want to use it how it was intended then its pretty clear that the tank should wear fending, blm caster, whm healing... And if you are to stupid to figure out anything i just said then you have no place at end game accessories and REALLY hope they dont start designing this game towards them.

edit: oh and making meld's even more of a gil sink (no 100% spot) would not stop people form doing exactly whats being done already... just piss em off because you dangled that spot in front of them then took it away.

[Ashkendor]

The accessory thing addresses imbalances that currently exist with the stat systems and helps to prevent confusion over which accessories one should be wearing. Would you want your WHM wearing a full set of VIT accessories? It also speaks of awful, awful design when the meta for a particular role calls for them not to use the gear that's explicitly assigned to them.

The only people that I see that may be confused about what accessories to wear are newbies that don't really understand how their stats work yet. I don't see what imbalances you're talking about, honestly. o.O

The only increased difficulty here is a harsher benefit for losing hate... which some people desperately need if they're ever going to grow as tanks and some DPS need in order to learn that aggro is actually a thing that exists. This point, though, primarily serves one purpose and one purpose alone: preventing Tanks from "tanking" something outside of the Tank Stance while in party based content.

Yeah... making it so the target gets one shotted unless they're mitigating is overdoing it a bit.

I honestly don't see why there's such a problem with tanking things in Sword Oath if you can hold aggro.

If the MT is full VIT and the OT is a Paladin in full Strength, that MT is going to lose hate to the Paladin. But, this is really just another method of discouraging tanking outside of the proper stance.

Not necessarily. If MT has a significantly better weapon than the OT, or if their gear is about the same and OT is out of their tank stance, it's not too hard for the MT to keep aggro while the OT puts some DPS on.

The idea is that if you slip into the stance while the fairy is already out, the healing potency decrease hits the fairy right then and there

You seem to have a real problem with non-DPS classes wanting to add some DPS... -.-

[Donjo]

Oh, you were SERIOUS about those accessories changes and weren't just proposing CRAZY things that SE might do to piss off their players.

Those changes to accessories are AWFUL

Making the accessories more random and frustrating to meld is absolutely no way to fix the problem at all.

Seriously, the whole stat system and how it relates to materia is screwy. Elemental materia are completely pointless. Main stat materia are ONLY good on accessories (and really, only STR/VIT have much if any purpose, DEX/MND/INT are borderline useless too), and you pretty much want to kill that off.

1. I never said anything about SE making changes intended to piss people off or posters in this thread only submitting ideas they wouldn't like to see implemented. I'm not quite sure where you got that.

2. Crafted Accessories themselves are awful for game balance.

3. The only other way to address the problem is to eliminate crafted accessories from the game entirely or make main stat materia either non-existent or nigh-useless. At least this way the most persistent can make their god piece eventually.

4. Yeah, that's why it needs an entire rework. It's so hopelessly broken that it's better off removed than existing in such a state.

The only people that I see that may be confused about what accessories to wear are newbies that don't really understand how their stats work yet. I don't see what imbalances you're talking about, honestly. o.O

Yeah... making it so the target gets one shotted unless they're mitigating is overdoing it a bit.

I honestly don't see why there's such a problem with tanking things in Sword Oath if you can hold aggro.

Not necessarily. If MT has a significantly better weapon than the OT, or if their gear is about the same and OT is out of their tank stance, it's not too hard for the MT to keep aggro while the OT puts some DPS on.

You seem to have a real problem with non-DPS classes wanting to add some DPS... -.-

1. I explained the imbalance a few posts ago. I hope it's pretty clear.

2. Yeah, possibly, especially if Tanks are forced to stack VIT.

3. Sure, play around with whatever you want in the dungeons. That's all fine and dandy because they're supposed to be facerolls. In Coil, being out of your Tank Stance should always be nigh suicide. The ways people are doing the "hardest" encounters exposes so many mistakes in encounter design it's not even funny.

4. As I said, if the OT is a Paladin and has significantly more strength than the MT, it's very possible to steal hate because the only thing a Pally can do to DPS as OT is Halone.

5. Not necessarily. What I'm sniping at with the Cleric Stance change is that Scholars can add their DPS far more easily than a WHM can because of their fairy healing at 100% throughput while they're in Cleric Stance. If that is removed, they're on equal ground in this regard. Regarding the Tanks, it's that the current tank meta exposes massive failures in stat and encounter design that brutally killing the aggressive tank would be a side effect of fixing.

[Ashkendor]

3. Sure, play around with whatever you want in the dungeons. That's all fine and dandy because they're supposed to be facerolls. In Coil, being out of your Tank Stance should always be nigh suicide. The ways people are doing the "hardest" encounters exposes so many mistakes in encounter design it's not even funny.

What you need to remember is that the people tanking FCoB in Sword Oath are people that are pretty much already overgeared for FCoB and have the timing on the fights down pat by virtue of the fact that they have the turns on farm. People that are still progressing through FCoB are most likely using their tanking stances as normal. How much time you spend in your tanking stance depends on the comfort level of your healers in whatever content you're in.

5. Not necessarily. What I'm sniping at with the Cleric Stance change is that Scholars can add their DPS far more easily than a WHM can because of their fairy healing at 100% throughput while they're in Cleric Stance. If that is removed, they're on equal ground in this regard.

One word: Holy. White mage can deal massive damage AND reduce tank damage in one fell swoop. WHM is better for mass pulls, while Scholar excels at single target DPS (I rarely leave cleric stance on a lot of trials).

They seem pretty even to me when you take that into account.

Regarding the Tanks, it's that the current tank meta exposes massive failures in stat and encounter design that brutally killing the aggressive tank is just one step in resolving.

Honestly, I don't get what you have against the "aggressive tank" meta. It makes playing tanks a lot more fun. Probably the worst part about playing a tank is the feeling of utter futility when it comes to solo play. Everything is a battle of attrition - you mayaswell just leave yourself on autoattack and go afk for all the fun you're having dealing 100-200 damage at a time with your skills. Sure, you aren't really killable but neither is whatever you're fighting. Let's face it, mobs in the overworld aren't really even a threat for squisher classes anyway so all you're doing is slowing yourself down if you run around in a fending set.

[Giantbane]

1. I never said anything about SE making changes intended to piss people off or posters in this thread only submitting ideas they wouldn't like to see implemented. I'm not quite sure where you got that.

No I just assumed that's what you meant, given that's all those changes accomplish.

2. Crafted Accessories themselves are awful for game balance.

3. The only other way to address the problem is to eliminate crafted accessories from the game entirely or make main stat materia either non-existent or nigh-useless. At least this way the most persistent can make their god piece eventually.

4. Yeah, that's why it needs an entire rework. It's so hopelessly broken that it's better off removed than existing in such a state.

Crafted items are super narrow in their usefulness. Only crafted accessories are really decent for anything and those are already nerfed in their usefulness by both removing the 3rd stat and the fact that they get released a full patch cycle after everything else does.

The "problem" is very limited to the highest tier of guilds. "Fixing" the problem by destroying crafted items is no way to fix it.

A better solution would be to put VIT on all accessories and then balance around that so that there's not so much discrepancy between the two.

Even better, give tanks another secondary stat that actually reduces incoming damage in some way and/or make parry better so that tanks WANT to stack defensive stats, instead of ignoring them like they often do currently.

[Donjo]

Is this a spot-a-person-who-doesn't-really-raid thread?
Awful, awful ideas.

Crafted gear isn't superior to the top tome/raid gear available. The fact that it allows to progress faster however is a good thing. It allows players even if unintentionally to find unconventional ways to tackle content, overcome it through the use of mechanics outside of the actual battling. This makes the game feel whole. If you want all balance all the time might as well remove all the gear and preset all the stats. That's gonna be fun.

Scholars and White Mages are NOT gonna be on equal ground if you gimp the fairy through Cleric Stance because White Mages have Regen. Also Scholars tend to DPS more not only because of the fairy but because they have easier ways to restore MP and a super useful tool called Lustrate.
(Also no, it doesn't matter if you summon the fairy while in Cleric Stance, her stats aren't altered)

Two-tanking is already properly enforced in FCOB, very creatively, by multiple mechanics. There's no need for every enemy move to be a tankbuster.

Nobody likes to fight trash. Especially not when the raid goes on farm. The content is built around the idea of repeatability and pretending trash is anything but a minute obstacle is just gonna get on people's nerves. Trash right now is used to wake people up for the raid essentially and that's a pretty good use.

There are far too many situations where crafted gear is superior to the highest iLvl gear. From the mouths of the devs themselves, crafted gear is meant to be "catch up" gear. Use it as it comes and it's equivalent to last tier's raid gear. Put any materia in it and it's now better than last tier's raid gear. Any situation where the fully melded piece actually exceeds the highest iLvl is a mistake. Take a look around and witness all of the BiS builds which consist of crafted gear for over half of the pieces. Then, wonder how much more people would want to stuff in if VIT caps weren't an issue. It's undermining the value of raiding, and if it goes too far a lot of people will stop raiding altogether.

EoS spamming Embrace while under Cleric Stance should be roughly equal to Regen. They're quite equal here.

I'm not just talking about Two Tanking in FCOB; I'm talking about two tanking everywhere. If a fight was ever designed to have two tanks, it should be literally impossible to circumvent that design. The Tank population is low enough without people deliberately excluding a slot normally reserved for them.

People might enjoy trash if it was actually fun to fight. But, then it wouldn't be called trash, would it?

What you need to remember is that the people tanking FCoB in Sword Oath are people that are pretty much already overgeared for FCoB and have the timing on the fights down pat by virtue of the fact that they have the turns on farm. People that are still progressing through FCoB are most likely using their tanking stances as normal. How much time you spend in your tanking stance depends on the comfort level of your healers in whatever content you're in.

One word: Holy. White mage can deal massive damage AND reduce tank damage in one fell swoop. WHM is better for mass pulls, while Scholar excels at single target DPS (I rarely leave cleric stance on a lot of trials).

They seem pretty even to me when you take that into account.

Honestly, I don't get what you have against the "aggressive tank" meta. It makes playing tanks a lot more fun. Probably the worst part about playing a tank is the feeling of utter futility when it comes to solo play. Everything is a battle of attrition - you mayaswell just leave yourself on autoattack and go afk for all the fun you're having dealing 100-200 damage at a time with your skills. Sure, you aren't really killable but neither is whatever you're fighting. Let's face it, mobs in the overworld aren't really even a threat for squisher classes anyway so all you're doing is slowing yourself down if you run around in a fending set.

Overgeared or not, it still shows how stupid the "fluff fluff fluff BUSTER! fluff fluff fluff" design is. Just pop into the Tank Stance for one hit and then carry on? We as players need something new to play with here.

I was more thinking of "what is the healer's ability to heal while they're in Cleric Stance?" angle. Scholar has their fairy in their full glory. WHM can Regen before switching stance and gain a bonus by Divine Sealing it. Either way, SCH has the stronger healing in Cleric Stance.

It's not exactly that I'm against the aggressive tank as a whole. I'm against the flaws in the game that its extreme viability has revealed, as well as the mistakes that let it exist in the first place. Go ahead and look at my lodestone and you'll see that I'm using pentamelded i110 on my Tanks. If it works, it's a disservice to one's party not to try and be the best one can be. I'm just hoping for the day that SE wakes up, realizes they screwed up, and goes to bring jobs to parity statwise, whether it be by bringing Tanks down to the level of everyone else or raising the others up. Either one should solve the issue when proper encounter tuning is attached to it.

Crafted items are super narrow in their usefulness. Only crafted accessories are really decent for anything and those are already nerfed in their usefulness by both removing the 3rd stat and the fact that they get released a full patch cycle after everything else does.

The "problem" is very limited to the highest tier of guilds. "Fixing" the problem by destroying crafted items is no way to fix it.

A better solution would be to put VIT on all accessories and then balance around that so that there's not so much discrepancy between the two.

Even better, give tanks another secondary stat that actually reduces incoming damage in some way and/or make parry better so that tanks WANT to stack defensive stats, instead of ignoring them like they often do currently.

Every job has a BiS sitting around somewhere that heavily utilizes crafted gear, and it's not just the accessories. This problem has been getting worse every single tier. As I said above, crafted gear is meant to be used to catch up. It was never supposed to be as powerful as it is and devs are seriously considering the balance of it right now.

Regarding your solution, do you mean VIT on literally all accessories or just put both STR and VIT on tanking accessories. If it's the first, then we'd just need bosses to do more raidwide damage to compensate for a partywide increase in health. If it's the second, then they'd probably need to be class locked to Tanks so that MNKs and DRGs don't start using them. Either way, wouldn't it greatly invalidate the purpose of crafted accessories anyway?

After all of this mucking with the meta, the only way most Tanks nowadays would willingly stack a defensive stat is if it were actually necessary to survive a given battle. Given the way that secondaries currently work right now(they seem deliberately designed to not make too much of a difference just as long as you aren't egregiously wasting them on Accuracy or something), something like that seems unlikely.

[Giantbane]

Every job has a BiS sitting around somewhere that heavily utilizes crafted gear, and it's not just the accessories. This problem has been getting worse every single tier. As I said above, crafted gear is meant to be used to catch up. It was never supposed to be as powerful as it is and devs are seriously considering the balance of it right now.

Catch up to what? Previous tier gear is catch up gear. If crafted weren't as powerful as it is now, it wouldn't be used at all outside of glamour. It's too expensive and provides too little benefit. For most people it's easier to wait for the current tier tomestone gear than to make the amount of money required to buy it or skill up your crafter/get all the mats so you can make it yourself. It's not a problem.

Regarding your solution, do you mean VIT on literally all accessories or just put both STR and VIT on tanking accessories. If it's the first, then we'd just need bosses to do more raidwide damage to compensate for a partywide increase in health. If it's the second, then they'd probably need to be class locked to Tanks so that MNKs and DRGs don't start using them. Either way, wouldn't it greatly invalidate the purpose of crafted accessories anyway?

VIT on everything. The only real balance issue I see is a few very hardcore groups able to clear final coil a week or two after it was released. But it wasn't just because of tank accessories, they had everyone in crafted accessories so that healers and DPS had enough VIT to meet HP checks. With VIT on everything, you balance the raid damage against the higher amount and you would have the discrepancy between crafted and normal gear that's causing the imbalance.

If Crafted accessories were then restored to just being a normal last tier accessory with materia slots (akin to what belts are now), then they would still ususally be BiS for some classes, but they have to sacrifice some VIT to do it (like belts are currently). The difference would also be very small, so it would not be that big a deal.

You could even make the crafted have 3 full secondary stats and no primary stats. This would at least give the primary stat materia some purpose.

After all of this mucking with the meta, the only way most Tanks nowadays would willingly stack a defensive stat is if it were actually necessary to survive a given battle. Given the way that secondaries currently work right now(they seem deliberately designed to not make too much of a difference just as long as you aren't egregiously wasting them on Accuracy or something), something like that seems unlikely.

Tanks don't stack defensive stats because the current ones are of limited to no use at all. VIT doesn't mitigate damage, it just allows you to take bigger hits. Once you have enough VIT to take the biggest hits, there's no reason to stack it anymore which is why a lot of tanks stop bothering with it after a specific threshold. What would really be bad about tanks being forced to take VIT only accessories is they they would becomes VERY low priority upgrades since they'd be mostly pointless upgrades at that point. How fun is it to be forced down a pointless upgrade path? Of course you could also make tank only acc STR + VIT, which would be the only good way to do it if you were going to force job specific accessories.

Parry is different because many tanks don't find it useful at all. They don't feel it changes healer behavior and parries will just lead to overheals (that's a separate debate).

If tanks had stats that actually made them take less damage in a somewhat reliable fashion, I imagine those would be more popular than VIT/Parry currently is.

[Donjo]

The things(best not keep making replies that are 9000 pages long now...)

Catch up was what the crafted gear was intended to be. It is not currently what it is. It's not expensive because the materials are particularly hard to get... it's expensive because people really want it because of how powerful it is. To actually get to crafting it? Well, you could put a price on the time it takes to get there but there's no true skill involved... just time and RNG. I think the dev's original idea was that someone who hadn't played for a while could just buy a set of the crafted gear and instantly be ready to hit the next raid. This is clearly not what happened!

Hm... putting VIT on every accessory. I could actually see this naturally happening as a matter of course as the numbers climb ever higher. But, if SE puts VIT on all accessories by default, then encounters will be designed with that in mind. I don't think it would make the hardcore groups clear things any faster. I agree that having crafted gear that is at the peak of super melding and praying to holy RNGesus is probably okay being slightly better than the raid piece. You'll look at both, squint, and possibly realize that the crafted piece is better somehow, but the raid piece you have is way more than enough to clear things. I personally think that crafted stuff should be just below raid gear rather than just above, but that's just subjective.

The current Tank stats are not only limited in usefulness... they're also unnecessary at the moment. Well, except VIT to the point as you've stated. Regarding the unfun "your only upgrade is useless HP! Enjoy!" path, that's why I suggested making Vitality determine damage, whether alone or together with Strength. That way, even if you can't stack Strength, seeing the Vitality number go up is still an increase in all of your capabilities. I'd personally like for more meaningful defensive stats to appear, though. It'd help me balance out being tanky with being able to return the punishment. Parry... isn't quite enough for that.