Why No Melds?

[Atoli]

"Nope, I'm going to turn down a free upgrade to character strength that only requires a few minutes of my time every few months"

You make it sound as if we are not getting the materia.
That is not the case.
Close to everyone who responded to this thread who does not/only selectively meld materia said they do not MELD it.
Not one word about not GETTING it in the first place.
We just choose to sell it instead, to spend the money on things that are more worthwhile to us

[Fyce]

"I get stronger because it is an RPG"? Makes no sense to me at all.

This is how RPG work pretty much since pen&paper roleplaying games were invented. Telling your buddies around the table "no, I don't want this neat sword we found in that cave, I want to remain as weak as possible" is not something you hear in a regular basis during a game of D&D.

You are trying to make a rule out of an exception.

[Claire_Pendragon]

This is how RPG work pretty much since pen&paper roleplaying games were invented. Telling your buddies around the table "no, I don't want this neat sword we found in that cave, I want to remain as weak as possible" is not something you hear in a regular basis during a game of D&D.
You are trying to make a rule out of an exception.

Your example isnt comparable to her statement.
You're comparing getting something for free, or already in your possession, that has no penalty for use, to having to go out of your way, stop doing the content/adventure you want to do, or stop trying to get even BETTER gear/stronger, to work on a minor upgrade.
While I like doing every step along the way usually, these are 2 different things.

I'm pretty sure that's a made up statistic. You know every 30 points or so of crit is worth 1 weapon damage. Full melding gives over 120 additional crit. That's 4 points worth of weapon damage. Not melding at all is like using a i230 weapon instead of i250. It's a significant difference.

Also, world first statics manage to bypass gear/dps checks with pentamelded gear in the past, because secondaries you meld are not to be underestimated.

I'd say not melding is more a 6% dps loss rather than 1.5%. You're gimping yourself pretty hard and causing runs to go slower.

I as well noticed a rather massive difference in my threat generation when I came back in 3.3 getting all my gear melded.
As DRK and undergeared compared to everyone else, I would need to use my threat combo (against those with full melds) roughly 5-6 times to maintain it for weeping city boss fights.
Once I was fully melded, I only needed 2 enmity combos for 99% of runs, and a 3rd for the rare MNK/BLM who were really geared compared to me.

[MomomiMomi]

This is how RPG work pretty much since pen&paper roleplaying games were invented. Telling your buddies around the table "no, I don't want this neat sword we found in that cave, I want to remain as weak as possible" is not something you hear in a regular basis during a game of D&D.

Yet becoming stronger is not the focus of a pen and paper roleplaying game. So playing an RPG and not caring about making your character as strong as you can makes perfect sense.

There's a word for those players who do focus on that. It's a derogatory term, too.

[Fyce]

Yet becoming stronger is not the focus of a pen and paper roleplaying game. So playing an RPG and not caring about making your character as strong as you can makes perfect sense.

There's a word for those players who do focus on that. It's a derogatory term, too.

Who said it was "the focus"? I'm just saying it's a core concept of fantasy RPGs since... pretty much forever.
So, yeah. "Your character gains power because it's a RPG" is a completly valid statement. Saying that this idea "doesn't make sense at all" is completly absurd.

Your example isnt comparable to her statement.
You're comparing getting something for free, or already in your possession, that has no penalty for use, to having to go out of your way, stop doing the content/adventure you want to do, or stop trying to get even BETTER gear/stronger, to work on a minor upgrade.
While I like doing every step along the way usually, these are 2 different things.

This has absolutly nothing to do with what I said. I was specifically answering the very part I quoted, saying that yes, "RPG = character growth" more often that not.
If people don't understand that, then they have no idea what are fundations on which RPGs were built on to begin with.

[Bdyer]

I sell it all that way I can shove the pile of Gil in other peoples faces >

[MomomiMomi]

Who said it was "the focus"?

The person who started the discussion on the topic.

I don't know why you would play an RPG and not care about making your character as strong as you can.

The thing you quoted was saying that this statement makes no sense. Yes, you get stronger over time in an RPG. But that's not the goal. It's a means to an end. You need not get any stronger than required to reach that end.

[Claire_Pendragon]

This has absolutly nothing to do with what I said.

Telling your buddies around the table "no, I don't want this neat sword we found in that cave, I want to remain as weak as possible"

I was specifically answering the very part I quoted, saying that yes, "RPG = character growth" more often that not.
If people don't understand that, then they have no idea what are fundations on which RPGs were built on to begin with.

I'm pointing out the example used to defend your argument that getting stronger is what most people define as an RPG.

Let me use a counter argument, using your examples logic, that makes your example non applicable.

"Guys, this sword has crazy stats, but if I steal it, the nations most powerful guards will attack us, and perma kill us!"
or
"Guys, this sword has crazy stats, but if I steal it, our neighboring city will be blamed, and cause all kinds of issues within the story we are ROLE PLAYING."

(1) Stats/leveling are one part of a whole for what makes RPGs their own genre.
(2) Sometimes there are RISKs or COSTs that arent worth the effort of upgrading.

Your example compared a "Does not come at a cost action" to a "Comes at a cost action", when trying to defend the idea everyone thinks of RPGs as character growth games. (And this statement is only being made to counter the original statement someone doesnt view RPGs as character growth only, which was argued as a reason for not upgrading gear.)

What you needed to say was that everyone imagines an RPG to have "character growth" gameplay mechanics. And only use examples of that would have been applicable to what you said, but then it wouldnt have been applicable to what it's trying to counter.
So then you would need to change it to something along the lines of;

"I would like to get this sword, for its higher stats, but we need the gold to afford enough food to survive the trip through the mountains."

Which would be accurate to the character growth system, but also proving the original person you responded to, as also being correct.
You didn't pick your words at complete random, you picked an example that would try to put ur perspective in a twisted light, to try and win people over to your view of the subject.

You even phrased your counter point back at me in a manner to do the same. (In regards to trying to win people over, not the twisting part.)

[Musashidon]

the same reason why i watch netflix while i run content, because i can.

[Fyce]

-snip-

You missed an important part of this discussion, making your point almost completly moot:

You make it sound as if we are not getting the materia.
That is not the case.
Close to everyone who responded to this thread who does not/only selectively meld materia said they do not MELD it.
Not one word about not GETTING it in the first place.
We just choose to sell it instead, to spend the money on things that are more worthwhile to us

There's no "trip in the mountains" involved, the item is already there, in their inventory, they just decided to sell it for personal profit instead of using it to improve their chances of succeeding in combat (not to mention that the "profit" is quite small, which somewhat contradict your idea of cost/reward). Because Atoli thinks that the odds of succeeding doesn't matter if they are at least above zero.

If I can beat it on a very low level, why would I bother getting stronger than that?

That's the main point being made.
But as I said in my very first post, this isn't an usual player behavior. RPG players usually don't want to stay at the minimum chances of beating a fight, because that implies failing an awful lot before finally (if ever) succeeding. Players who constraint themselves that much are deviants, they aren't the majority by any stretch, which makes my analogy correct: if a group playing a RPG have access to something which would increase their chances of succeeding, they will use it. That's how RPG are made since the pen&paper ages. And if someone in the group tries to be the greedy and selfish one, it usually backfires quite rapidly.

The issue is that, in multiplayer games, if you aim for the minimum, you drag everyone else in your group down. By purposefully not doing your best to increase the chances of success for the whole party, you are the one who has to be carried through the fight. Others have to make up for your lower performance.

Doing auto-attacks in a dungeon is "enough" to clear it, so, with Atoli's logic, why bother doing more? If I can beat the last boss with a butter knife, even if it takes 30 hours to do so, why bother improving?
Aiming for "the least" forces you to draw limits in order not to fall in such absurd things. But then, they become arbitrary and subjective limits. Which is why, when multiplayer is involved, players usually aim for the best. Especially if the ressources to do so are easily accessible and cheap, which includes Materia IV in FFXIV.