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

[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.

[Giantbane]

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!

Take the i110 crafted vs. i110 tomestone gear. Tomestone plate chest costs 895 sld, wootz plate chest costs 1350 sld worth of materials AND a bunch of other stuff.

My point was that the vast majority of people that hadn't played in a while will be able to earn the Soldiery for an entire set of i110 gear faster than they could raise the money to purchase all the pieces of a crafted set, let alone melding it. If it's supposed to be catch up gear, it's too expensive for that purpose. Most people who want to get caught up don't have that kind of $$ lying around.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

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?

First of all, situations where even with full i130 you still want to use a crafted piece here or there come from the fact that stat assignment on premade gear is arbitrary and blind. So you end up with gear you can't use due to accuracy requirements or just gear that doesn't benefit your class (Summoners anyone?). Of course i110 melded is better than plain i110. That's the whole point of materia - to exceed the stats given. You might notice that meldable 110 was not in the game until level cap was raised so it's all fair game. I haven't heard of anyone who was proclaiming that "Oh no, this gear is too good, I don't wanna raid now because this gear helps me raiding too much!"

All we have on the devs stance regarding crafted gear is an uncertain account from a twitter user. Supposedly somebody asked Yoshida and he said that the gear was meant for catchup. But there's no video account of him saying that or an official interview so you'll excuse me if I'm hesitant to take that information as fact. And if developers really think that i110 crafted gear is meant for catchup, then they're hopelessly and completely out of touch with their own game, because the price and availability of this gear is utterly disproportional with its usefulness. With how many rare mats it requires, and how you need a well-equipped crafter to make it, it's hard to see i110 crafted gear as anything but customizable pieces that can give you an edge over regular 110. Not to mention that only crafted i90 with Vitality melded allowed players to tackle Savage SCOB back in 2.3 at all!

I honestly don't see how crafted gear in any way undermines the value of raiding any more than obligatory gear reset does. What you propose will destroy high-end crafting.

[Lamentations]

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.

I do not understand where you keep getting this opinion from, the number 1 crafter beef since the game launched is how they do not have enough stake in endgame or near it.

Also "catch up gear" is simply what you describe after this in your post and is "factually not" more powerful than the highest ilvl raid gear, Yoshi will not now/never will change this system as it would show casuals the front door and tank sub revenues, it is a foundation of his all content accessible philosophy.

Your post above referencing the all available crafted pieces being better than raid gear hypothetical is patently something Yoshi-P has said he is not interested in doing.

You also did not "hypothetically" state that over melded gear was more powerful than endgame raid gear, but instead stated it as "fact", consider dropping some screenshots of endgame melded gear/accessories that trump the mentioned ilvl 130 gear in actual comparison as proof, or rephrase the claim to the actual hypothetical.

"Reaching the situation" isn't a concern because of his sentiments on this subject, more than existed at I90, which was more than existed at I70, is his system working as intended in the spirit of "catch up gear".

If the melding system in Xiv was as grossly imbalanced and broken as you claim, the outcry from long established MMO vets would have been heard long before this.

Your suggestions for and misrepresentations of over melded gear sounds much like "purist ffxi reloaded", and with the current day gamer philosophy and sentiment would kill Xiv dead as Lester Moore.