Melding on tomestone / raid gear

[Colorful]

snip

It's never going to be necessary, but why would a party leader take a guy in 220 gear without melding materia when they could take someone with it? I don't like this idea, never enjoyed farming for gil, never will. Grinding tomestones is enough, and now you want me to do something else like gathering that's infinitely more boring? I really hope they change this before 2.2's release, or make the acquisition of materia far easier and not so reliant on RNG.

[NovaLevossida]

Because if a special ability like one of those you named was BiS, you don't think it would be expected? Illusion of choice, choice of illusion, same deal. Expected regardless. At least I can have my dream of going all crit without killing my INT because I keep i180 on non-crit pieces or something.

Three things need only happen to make such a thing viable:

1. Don't allow additional effects on your gear to display to other people to nip "elitism" in the bud.
2. Make them of sufficient rarity so that it is a case of "use what you can get" first and foremost long before you can think of min / maxing.
3. Can't trade or sell them.

[Draxxion]

The points I took away from the live letter were
- 1 meld per piece depending on which items they give slots to (most likely accessories)
- No forbidden or pentamelding
- It is coming in 3.2 and it was just a thought of something they are considering doing. It isn't coming out in 3.1
- In most cases you may already reached max stats for primary stats on the pieces meaning just secondary stats like crit, det, skill speed, spell speed or accuracy. Not exactly fun or interesting choices as stat weights minus accuracy till cap for the content you are doing have all been gimped this expansion so much that any points you get really aren't going to add up to much. Most likely a percent of a percent.
- It really is only going to help Tanks and Healers. Tanks will be able to go strength accessories and slap in some vitality materia. Healers will be able to put in accuracy materia to help when they have to dps. Everyone else will most likely just go Crit.

The downsides though are what everyone else is talking about. People are going to use this as a way to judge other players.

[SchalaZeal]

It's never going to be necessary, but why would a party leader take a guy in 220 gear without melding materia when they could take someone with it? I don't like this idea, never enjoyed farming for gil, never will. Grinding tomestones is enough, and now you want me to do something else like gathering that's infinitely more boring? I really hope they change this before 2.2's release, or make the acquisition of materia far easier and not so reliant on RNG.

They could start by removing the stupid elemental materia, that have no use whatsoever anyway, besides being the "too bad, you lose" result of materia converting.

Otherwise, exploratory stuff will drop items that can convert probably to tier V, as well as letting you trade gear that's useless to you for other stuff, possibly straight up materia. Chests might also have materia. I predict the price of tier V will drop once other non-Mutamix methods exist and are commonplace. And the tier IV spike we saw this morning will be low again (maybe not 15k low) once people undercut each other to sell their spiritbond materia.

You'd be able to earn gil from spiritbonding, but nothing prevents you killing a few hundred cockatrice, or sending your retainer to do it, and sell the thighs on MB. Insert any other mat with good value that can be farmed with combat. Fleece and snurble tuft have stable prices on my server (lowest is 400, but they sometimes go fetch 700-800 for NQ).

[Ryel]

Players have been complaining about the lack of interesting itemization from the moment 2.0 hit, now that SE is finally doing something to attempt to change this players are concerned that people actually using the system will become "elitist"?

Am i seriously reading this correctly?

By that notion expecting someone to wear gear to content is considered "elitist" (although we already have tons of players with pitchforks ready to defend those who don't), however lets not pretend that this will have any effect on any aspect of the game except (endgame) raid content.

I doubt anyone will care about a player with an unmelded tome set as they run their Ex roulette for the umpteenth time.

The community felt it was perfectly acceptable for players to spend millions of gil to meld out Relics or create and meld crafted accessories for tanking raids yet somehow asking players to shell out a few gil or a bit of time spiritbonding to meld one piece of materia per gear slot is somehow an issue?

The potentials for what they could actually do with this system far outweigh the extra effort a few players will have to put in to maybe level a craft or run a few more dailies for gil.

[Makado]

In the response it said you can buy materia with exploration points. Don't see the problem here. It's gonna be sweet.

[iambanana]

people asking gear progressing and they deliver, you can desynth or convert the previous gear to materia so it can enchance your next gear

people asking for horizontal progressing and choice of gearing, they deliver with materia system of choice

people asking materia to be relevant again in gear, and they deliver.

now people complaining about materia will be relevant again.

you just want to buy a NPC gear and be top of the line?

you just want to exploring and doing one side of the game to be the best in whole game?

logic

and its not like everyone except you will have a normal IV meld/light overmeld, why so afraid you will be judged and kicked from party if whole party is not even full overmeld IV.

/rant

[Blood-Aki]

It's like 1 materia..that will hardly make very little if at all any difference, pretty much forcing a Tier V which will likely sky rocket in the already absurd price it is now.

[ElHeggunte]

I thought one recurring complaint was lack of attention to the materia system because it couldn't be used on the best gear. Now SE gives us the ability to put it on the best gear and people complain. I'm surprised Yoshi-P can maintain such a magnificent head of hair. If I were in his position the constant stress from all the rampant moving of the goalpost by players would have caused me to go bald ages ago.

[SchalaZeal]

It's like 1 materia..that will hardly make very little if at all any difference, pretty much forcing a Tier V which will likely sky rocket in the already absurd price it is now.

It has the absurd price it has now because we can't convert affordable stuff for V tier. Trying to use i180 combat gear to make tier V would be stupid because the gear is worth more than the best tier V you could get, due to the absurd price of red scrip mats. Exploratory will change that with easier to get tier V from spiritbonding the exploratory gear, maybe easier to get red scrips too. Right now there is no supply and no real demand.

In the future there'll be a high supply and a medium demand (mainly from crafters, not the tome people - crafters will pentameld the crafter combat gear, if its affordable gear).