Raid gear set bonus

[Zojha]

Whatever SE does it can't be random, but abilities can work in a strictly vertical, horizontal, rare, common, perma, temporary system that's all I'm really gunning at.

Yes, it can. But the issue is and remains:
Every choice is a real choice if and only if it is balanced with and against other choices.

The HOW is irrelevant. Special effects and raw power stats can yield equivalent results - in that case, the choice is a balanced one and you can pick either. If any one choice is superior over others, it becomes a non-choice. And if the difference between the two is significant, then the superior choice becomes community enforced. At what difference exactly a choice becomes enforced depends on the community.

So if SE was to introduce special abilities, they'd need to convert the usefulness of it into raw stats for comparison. For example, if you have a 20% chance proc at dealing 1000 damage on autoattack, you can calculate that this adds 200 damage per autoattack on average, calculate the added DPS from that and then compare it to the weapon damage/main stat value that would give just as much DPS to an average player, put the item with the proc and the one with the raw stats on the same tier with the same item level and be done. Result? Exceptional players would go for the raw stats, bad players for the proc and mediocre players would be able to freely choose either.

[Shougun]

Yes, it can. But the issue is and remains:
Every choice is a real choice if and only if it is balanced with and against other choices.

Definitely~ And in part why I think it will probably add an extra layer of challenge for the devs.. but even then I still enjoy seeing them haha. Of course before we still had these conversations of BiS and like "oh you don't need that tome x y z, because raid q r s do this" but it was much simpler comparisons and materia at some points could help out. So I wouldn't say the issues are brand new, they're just harder to understand sometimes - which I think you did describe well especially at that last paragraph.

I know some people might be like "but if its harder to understand I dont want it!" but I guess for me, it's still worth it (due to previously listed reasons like being able to experience the lore of an item in action, change of pace of things you've been doing for hundreds of hours already, and just the fresh fact that you get to read and attempt to comprehend something unique rather than +1 strength). If people want it to be massively simple though may I suggest we just treat all gear like costumes and no gear has stats beyond it's ilvl. At least currently to me comparing skill speeds and strength is about as fascinating as judging gear by ilvl lol (not that much), that is of course an imo~.

Most of WoW's abilities I think could be readily converted into effective damage/healing as well, which is probably how they view them when making balance decisions. Some of them are more difficult to fairly gauge but those are fun too (but are usually designed to be flavor then), for example:

Norgannon's Foresight: Standing still for 6 sec grants you Foresight, allowing you to cast while moving for 4 sec. This duration begins when you start moving.

Might be a bit harder to evaluate than:

Rethu's Incessant Courage: When an enemy is within 8 yards of you, you heal for 2% of your maximum health every 3 sec. When no enemies are within 8 yards of you, your movement speed is increased by 15%.

Although there is something to consider is that they may want specific items to be defacto BiS (like they may already do that sometimes, there have been curious stat arrangements on some gear that feels like they intended for it /not/ to be BiS), I'm not sure how the community feels about that - probably mixed, but its part of why I'm not really describing one specific system and rather that it could work under any system (so long as it isn't shoe horned in and rushed into a doom train lol).

Well, it's less of a "This idea is stupid!" and more a "Game design is complicated and this is why they can't exactly just put in effects like this easily."

You're right in that they COULD implement things like this into a vertical progression system. A lot of the cons that I mentioned only crop up if gear doesn't get replaced, that's what causes newer gear to be invalid upon release and leads to horizontal progression schemes that require low drop rates to keep people still doing content. The problem is that when you add in ability augments the balancing becomes MUCH more difficult to do, especially since you may need to not only balance the new gear coming out to ensure it's an improvement over the lower level gear, you ALSO need to keep an eye on balancing low level gear that may have some unforeseen synergy with newer equipment. Adding in such a system not only makes items harder to balance on an individual level, but also increase how many items they need to balance at a given time. I know when the difficulty of balancing has been brought up before, people tend to say "Well just do your damn jobs and work on it SE!" I don't think they're quite grasping how much harder it is. And the unfortunate downside is if they fail to balance it properly, it leads to all those downsides I've mentioned before.

Now, as far as the ability sharing in the FFIX system idea, a thought did occur to me. Considering that these abilities would come off of gear, an easy solution would be to have each ability still tied to the slot that piece occupies, and only be able to equip one piece per slot. So, in this sort of system, if the +20% speed on crit and spear cannon swap both come from weapons, then they wouldn't be able to both be used at once.

As an aside, I actually really enjoy debating about this kind of stuff. Game design fascinates me. However, I also understand that development time can be a limited resource and game design can often be an ungodly mess even before adding in additional features. So, I tend to err on the side of solutions that are easier to implement, and try to help my fellow players understand why certain much asked for features might not get implemented very soon.

I readily admit I'm not looking for the easiest solution :P, although I wasn't looking for any solution in specific but just trying to open as many gates as possible so SE can walk into any one of them lol. I am not opposed to easier solutions :P. I can definitely tell we're not at odds now, originally I wasn't sure if you were trying to suggest it /can't/ be done and I was like "well.. it can.. but its harder" and that's pretty much exactly what you're saying too. .

I would also add that I very rarely have any sort of deadline expectation - which I don't really mention but I imagine the standard assumption people have for those who want things is "NOW" which is not really my thing. I'm not against difficult solutions but am aware harder more expensive things take a lot more time, and everything is already pretty complex (I'm not master at what goes on, but I do understand that even simple things can take a lot longer than what an individual may expect - like if I in an indie setting wanted to change some icons and text vs international massive company). If they didn't do it for another expansion year I wouldn't really care, but I absolutely do want to see it at some point (for all the reasons already listed a few times now haha).

I /love/ collecting things so a collect gear for glamour and affixes would pretty much mean I'd always have something to do that I like, if I don't want to go work on relic I can just go fill out my item log some more lol. That and collecting lore affixes is awesome, so I'd have the great gear with a story and then an affix with inspiration. /drool.

[Dyce1982]

Why not just add an extra slot to which you can gain an item to add the gear bonus you would like? Something akin to the job crystal slot.