Why No Melds?

[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 It's outdated quickly: Why would I spend gil/time upgrading the gear if I will be replacing it in a few weeks?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

[KitingGenbu]

This thread is starting to turn into a conversation with a child that asks a question and continuously asks "why" regardless of how many answers you give. The bottom line is this: people don't want to do it lol. Regardless of how illogical it seems to the people saying they should, its irrelevant because there's no weight to it. Nothing is going to happen to the person if they meld or not assuming they don't do Savage. Sure, melding could shave them a few more seconds off of their roulette if and when they do them, but some people aren't that critical about it. I also understand that the people arguing for melding pretty much want the player base to care, but I see it like this: if people honestly cared about content as much as some people think they do, our Savage clear rate numbers would be higher. Just saying.

[Remus]

Hey man...them tier 4 materias are expensive

[Urthdigger]

Because we picked up the habit back in 2.0 when any materia worth using was like 300k at least. Yeah it's cheaper now, but old habits die hard, and we survived then and we'll survive now. Yeah it'll help boost kill speed by a little bit, but it's hard to suddenly tell people to start taking an expense they never needed to pay before just because it won't ruin them now.

A better question is why so many people don't use food. Far cheaper than materia's ever been, even the cheap stuff's a decent bonus, boosts vit that's likely already at the cap, and there's even incentive for folks to use it while leveling with the xp bonus.

[Dzian]

I find it a bit puzzling myself on why people would not use melds. Why would you not want to make your character stronger? Bottom line is you should use melds it does increase your dps.

It was a fairly hot topic recently that players do want to make there characters stronger. but Yoshi p responded and said he doesn't want that to happen. he wants players to focus on gear instead. the problem with this is that the gear is so short lived. Melding then doesn't make your character stronger at all. what it does is just make your gear stronger. that same piece of gear you will be throwing away in a couple of weeks because you've got some thing better. so there's no point in melding it.

it's kind of connected to why people don't raid because the rewards aren't worth it. the 240 midangear people got form clearing it was tossed for 250 crafted stuff soon as 3.4 hit. so seriously what value does gear hold? holds no value at all. and as a result it's not worth investing in. which is simply why people don't bother. glamour is a bigger motivator than strength.

would you invest in customising your car if you were gonna get a new one next month?

A better question is why so many people don't use food. Far cheaper than materia's ever been, even the cheap stuff's a decent bonus, boosts vit that's likely already at the cap, and there's even incentive for folks to use it while leveling with the xp bonus.

I don't use food either, because I never miss so I don't need accuracy. and my gear was 30 levels above the expert dungeons and 10 levels above creator before the patch was even installed. basically already out gearing everything.

the only time I've ever used food on a battle class was back in arr for coils.

as for the 3% exp bonus. it's negligible at best. whats that 1 maybe 2 extra trash kills in a dungeon. if it was that important i'd just kill the mobs everyone usually skips and get the extra 3% exp that way.

The problem for both food and materia is they simply aren't needed at all for what is something like 99% of the games content. because players out gear so much of the content even before it's implemented.

[SessionZero]

I don't raid, so I don't bother melding gear I'll be switching out in a few months anyway.

I had 12 Mhachi Matters saved up from VA runs that I never spent because materia is such a non-issue to me I literally did not know what the Mhachi matters were for. Lo and behold they give you grade V materia.

Now I have 12 grade V materia on the MB.

[Vaer]

A better question is why so many people don't use food. Far cheaper than materia's ever been, even the cheap stuff's a decent bonus, boosts vit that's likely already at the cap, and there's even incentive for folks to use it while leveling with the xp bonus.

Same reason really, food can get expensive. I only really see it used in savage raids. Plus no one cares in pugs if you aren't using food since most likely no one else is either.

To get the exp bonus you can buy some grapes from a vendor for pennies.

Anyways, I try to keep my stuff melded because I would feel dirty if I was playing a job that had empty slots. Don't bother with jobs I don't play.

You can get Tier IV's really easily from beast tribes but some people find that a chore and you have to actually get them to max rank first. Even if they do them they might just turn around and sell it for gil since housing/glamours/bardings/useful crafted gear in this game costs a lot.

[Dement]

I think upgrading gear every 3 months is too fast. Maybe every 6 months would be perfect.

For the most part, gear is upgraded every 6 months. 3.2 released a gear range of 220-240 which was the gear range until 3.4 came out 6 months later. Now the gear range is 250-270 until the expansion which we know won't be until Spring at the earliest.