For those that want skill bonuses on gear: How would you do it?

[alimdia]

I'm not sure whether having them as materia would be the way to go.
Otherwise you just choose the highest ilvl or the highest stat weight item and just remeld the materia.

It should be in built into the gear itself. But as you said, don't have a dozen of the same item with different effects. Simply just have 1 special effect on each gear per tier. This way devs don't have to spend ages inventing new
stuff and each new effect is considered 'new'.
E.g. relic weap has bonus, raid weap will not. raid ring has bonus, token ring will not. token belt has bonus, raid belt will not etc.
Not all pieces of gear need them. Limiting them to the above (or any other 4 pieces is fine)

Bonuses can be whatever, but the idea is that in certain turns, the token ring for example will be better than the raid ring for some classes and so on.
This encourages swapping of gear sets between different content.

[Amaranths]

I think by adding the Merit Point system from FFXI would be the best way to do it each class has its own, I think in ffxi it was every 10k exp you got 1 point but in ffxiv it would be maybe every 100k exp for a point that way we have lots of customization for our jobs. so once you hit the level cap you start earning merit points every 100k exp could put points into VIT SRT. able to add things like stun DoT's Paralyze Slow etc to skills or less CD more dmg to some skills make some traits better. BLM could some one for like Ice Potency and fire to make fire and ice spells do more dmg. its endless

[Brannigan]

I think materia is the way to go. Have them drop from bosses and low level/story roulette when there's a new player involved, new battle content, etc. Though I'd really like them to just go nuts with gear/effects, they won't. I do think they might consider effects that deal with something that isn't a job's primary role. For example: tank effects that buff their support or mobility, healer buffs to toughness and maybe utility, and stuff like that - especially if you have to give up multiple materia slots to get good effects. Just some thoughts off the top of my head would be stuff like increased movement speed during fight or flight, longer duration for cross-classed mantra, longer duration on storm's path, parries "activate" reprisal for longer, shroud of saints increases defense, or whatever.

The game just needs something to make gear interesting at all. Materia was a step in the right direction, but I still feel pretty much nothing when I get a new item. I'm almost done with gear for this patch (if my group ever kills brute justice) and I don't care at all.

[The_NPC]

The "Materia melded into gear" way sounds best but dependant on "what" materia is used. Slight trait buffs is okay, full ability changes arn't but would be okay if they were only allowed to be melded to the soulstone (3 max if lv60 maybe) u could even use both types & call them "Skill" & "Trait" materia just make it so u need something special for the "Trait" ones as a Soulstone is diff then gear. It would at lest add a twist to what u'd meld into the new system they added for tome/raid gear provided they keep this system for future tome/raid gear (by new I mean they added materia slots & no over-melding on them)

They could even troll us a bit by adding a "Materia Recovery" system where the gear is destroyed to recover the materia on it (great if u melded raid gear with "trait or skill" materia but would suck for tome gear cause of the upgrade system it always has)

[Canadane]

We had special effects and skill bonuses on gear in 1.0.
We have it in XI as well.

But the thing is, neither of those are as linear as XIV is now. To properly do this, you'd want to get rid of the vertical climb, and instead offer challenges that give people marginally different stats, rather than marginally higher stats. At the end of the day, there's always going to be a BiS so even with a drastic change to gear progression, not much will change.
Personally, I'm all for this. But I could imagine many not wanting it.

[MiniPrinny]

It never occurred to me in my response, but, I think that the idea of placing these materia on our soul crystals would be probably the best way to implement such customization. Having a full assured five slots of materia on each soul crystal that we could meld onto them would be amazing for customization. You keep the market for these materia healthy by regularly introducing new changes to abilities and having the materia do what all materia does when removed, be destroyed along with all of the other materia in the item.

[Felis]

We had special effects and skill bonuses on gear in 1.0.
We have it in XI as well.

But the thing is, neither of those are as linear as XIV is now. To properly do this, you'd want to get rid of the vertical climb, and instead offer challenges that give people marginally different stats, rather than marginally higher stats. At the end of the day, there's always going to be a BiS so even with a drastic change to gear progression, not much will change.
Personally, I'm all for this. But I could imagine many not wanting it.

If the effects are on materias then there is not really a problem with the vertical gear climb. You can just transfer the effect to your new gear with farming the materia again.
It will be only a problem if the effect is fixed on the gear itself.