Why No Melds?

[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.

[Jynx]

The easy explanation is this.

How often have you had to meld or use materia in the game prior to being capped? The correct answer is never because your gear outdates so fast if you ever melded gear it would be worthless in a matter of hours. Regardless of cost there are also several anoyances within the system that push people away from using materia. So let's break it down to see the key issues with Materia.

1. It's outdated quickly: Why would I spend gil/time upgrading the gear if I will be replacing it in a few weeks? You will see people start to meld up once Ilvl's start hitting their casual caps.(Alex gear and whatnot)

2. There are skill caps and several tiers of useless materia you need to know before even melding: For such minimal gains there are a large number of reasons it's anoying to purchase materia just to find your capped allready or can't efficiently use your materia. So people tend to just sell/avoid using it to not bother with needing a encyclopedic knowledge of materia caps for all their gear. Let alone even knowing what materia is best to use these people aren't going to reddit looking for BIS melding guides they want to know this stuff at a glance.

3. Inventory space: Who wants to lug around 10-20 kinds of materia when inventory space is at a premium

4. Melding NPC's are new and not widely known about: You would be amazed at how many people didn't even understand how to meld materia or what it was for when you needed a crafter to meld for you, now that there is a NPC to do it...they still don't know it's an option. Very simple information for us core players tends to sail over the heads of more casual players due to them not being as invested in the mechanics of the game itself.

I mean I could go on for hours about how sloppy the whole system is, it's like allot of things in XIV it's overly complex with no real reward for even managing to understand it. The people who know about it also undsertand it are still marred by the convuleted steps to get the blasted stuff into the gear...and for what it to be wasted investment a few weeks later and be expected to meld again?

[LunarEmerald]

When you go to meld gear, it now tells the stat caps. You no longer need a third party source to tell the information.

You're also not gonna be quickly replacing tome gear. Unless you raid, you're gonna be stuck with the piece for several months before they put the upgrade material somewhere else. You've got no excuse not to be melding gear bought with tomes.

Purposely halfassing something because you're too lazy to look up information/do something is a sign of a bad player. It's irrelevant that it's not needed. You don't need to be a competent player period to clear casual content. So arguing that it's not needed is a moot point. What it does do is help speed up the process. Make up whatever excuse you want but by being lazy and purposely not melding gear when it's super simple to do, just shows to others that don't really care about your performance. It makes you look bad.

I certainly don't expect everyone to meld Vs but IVs are another story. You don't have a good excuse for not melding those. When you show up to extreme primals with all unmelded gear, it makes you look like a n00b that doesn't know the importance of secondary stats. And if you raid and still don't meld your gear then you're insulting your group.

[Atoli]

I could get behind a stance of "I get stronger because it is a MMO, since that will make it easier on the other people I play with" but "I get stronger because it is an RPG"? Makes no sense to me at all.

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? Which is why, when multiplayer is involved, players usually aim for the best.

Now you just went on to prove my point..

Also, even in D&D, you don't get stronger because it just naturally happens, you do it for social reasons (since it is multi-player too) or because it is required to achieve the set goal. It is called RPG for a reason, not "GSG" (Growth Simulator Game) or something, no matter how integral some people want to view growth in RPGs when that is NOT the 'goal' but means to an end.
If you look at single-player RPGs, there is literally no reason at all to get stronger than what you need to beat the game other than your own comfort (aka "would I rather grind for hours to have a 100% chance at winning or try the fight for the same amount of time with my current level/gear but with a winning chance below 100%?")

In FFXIV, that is even more true, since a good performance as a player has a much larger role than good gear in terms of what leads to success in combat.
Also, standards are clearly set by SE: do mechanics and you rotation right and wear XXX ilvl gear, and you WILL succeed. That's a pretty straightforward standard.

Anything beyond that is to make it go faster, smoother, not slow others down who just want to rush through, etc., and I can totally understand and support that (although I still have my personal standard of "If my performance is on par/higher than my teammates, it's enough"), but those are reasons that are native to social situations and not native to the RPG system itsself