Please reevaluate the balance between crafted and U/U items.

[Physic]

I suppose we can just agree to disagree on what a crafters standpoint in the game is and how skilled you need to be to HQ items as I am not going to budge on my standpoint. In the first week I played the game one of my linkshell members with nothing but mining and goldsmithing leveled Hq +2d and Hq +3d an ornate silver scepter in about 2 and a half minutes worth of time and ended up making about 25 million a week later from this. Sure it took him a bit of time to gather those materials, but I can guarantee you I couldn't have farmed anything in this game, then or now where I could have made 25 million gil in the time frame it took for him to level and gather those mats.

The only true solution to this problem that I could see that would benefit both sides at this point would simply be for there to be no Unique/Untredeable gear at all and all raids drop materials which can be used to make items. This will solve the problem of materia not being able to be added to unique untradeable gear but this opens up another can of worms however, where every single item in the game is sellable because of this fact and no one would really have the need to experience the content for themselves because they can simply buy the items but that is a whole other argument.

Furthermore, this still doesn't solve the dillemma we currently have where all of the NMs are worthless, most of the chests in strongholds are worthless, and Ifrit is more than likely going to be worthless in a months time. The only way for this to truely work is for them to completely overhall the darkhold drops, the nm drops, and the current ifrit drops because sooner or later this content wont be worth doing because of the fact you can't add materia to them. They will also need to make the moogle fight drop only materials as well which can be crafted into the weapons.

the item crafting from drops is one solution, but i think overall the plan is have some be from monster drops, and some others be dropped in case form. i think the most powerful items will be materiad monster drop items, like how the silver tricorne is probably the best in slot for certain classes. As far as some of the NMs not offering best gear possible, a lot of the NMs are extremely easy.

Personally i think darkholds drop design is flawed from the get go, they have some items that are a lot harder to get, but are on the same teir as other drops within the same dungeon. Also, some of the drops are extremely easy to farm, basically only involving running in there and fighting nothing. Before they can properly give the items worth, they need to structure what chests drop what items based on difficulty of obtaining said chests. So regardless DH needs a rework reward wise.

far as content making old content obsolete, i wouldnt be too sure of that, most of what occured was due to a shift in itemisation, and also probably the developers looking at how rare certain items were, combined with changing roles, and stats and all that at once. Basically i dont think the gear that comes out in 2.0 will be hands down better than all gear before it. i think it will fill in some gaps, and offer some more horizontal options, some items will probably have their stats altered, or maybe thier conditions.

I do definately think that SOME of the UU gear needs to be tweaked to increase thier value.

[Naylia]

Whoever said "Set Bonuses" - that is a great idea! Would balance U/U items very nicely against materia.

[Orophin]

That's easy, it's because the other pieces are untradable. The real question is why are some of them untradable while rest are not.

That's what I meant to say. :P Just seems silly that you can trade/sell/socket most of the sentinel pieces and nothing else. I'd love to use those sipahi pieces on my pugilist but I know I can make the craftable gear better for tanking.

[Aenarion]

In the first week I played the game one of my linkshell members with nothing but mining and goldsmithing leveled Hq +2d and Hq +3d an ornate silver scepter in about 2 and a half minutes worth of time and ended up making about 25 million a week later from this. Sure it took him a bit of time to gather those materials, but I can guarantee you I couldn't have farmed anything in this game, then or now where I could have made 25 million gil in the time frame it took for him to level and gather those mats.

and for every one of lucky people like your ls member, how many other crafters spent untold amounts of time doing ungodly numbers of synths and got jack shit for their effort?

here's a hint, a crap ton more.

If you want to judge and balance the crafting system based on a couple lucky synths someone you know did, then I guess we should also rebalance things like Ifrit weapon drops based on those lucky few who got all 7 weapons with no duplicates in a few dozen tries, obviously massive nerfs are needed in both cases amirite?



the way I see it, the issues of previous contents being rendered worthless isn't so much a U/U vs. Crafted gear issue, but rather one of overall game design. SE made the conscious decision of rendering older gears and contents obsolete, and as long as they stick to that design paradigm, this will always happen, even if you delete crafting all-together from the game.

[Molly_Millions]

That's what I meant to say. :P Just seems silly that you can trade/sell/socket most of the sentinel pieces and nothing else. I'd love to use those sipahi pieces on my pugilist but I know I can make the craftable gear better for tanking.

It was definitely was a really odd choice. My best guess is that something went wrong during implementation. Possibly, it wasn't a conscious decision. Maybe the discrepancy was caused by a communication issue between teams or individual developers. Honestly, the only thing I can come up with is that it's a mistake.

[Req]

and for every one of lucky people like your ls member, how many other crafters spent untold amounts of time doing ungodly numbers of synths and got jack shit for their effort?

here's a hint, a crap ton more.

If you want to judge and balance the crafting system based on a couple lucky synths someone you know did, then I guess we should also rebalance things like Ifrit weapon drops based on those lucky few who got all 7 weapons with no duplicates in a few dozen tries, obviously massive nerfs are needed in both cases amirite?



the way I see it, the issues of previous contents being rendered worthless isn't so much a U/U vs. Crafted gear issue, but rather one of overall game design. SE made the conscious decision of rendering older gears and contents obsolete, and as long as they stick to that design paradigm, this will always happen, even if you delete crafting all-together from the game.

That was my whole original argument to begin with. I never said getting a craft hqed is easy, I said it was a complete crapshoot and doesn't really have much to do with skill at all and that is why I don't believe that a system where crafted items are the end all be all is the way to go.

[Aion]

U/U gears should have a learnable abilities...just like FF IX system...if crafted can turn into materia, then U/U gear can produce us abilities

[Rhomagus]

I'm with the second poster. Truly unique gear shouldn't give the same, or even similar, effects as materia crafted gear. I think there should be reasons to have and covet both types of gear and at worst, materia gear should be a hurdle on the path to obtain unique and untradeable gear but I don't mind forbidden materia gear being overpowered. They should focus more on reducing ability timers or boosting ability effects rather than just stat bonuses or perhaps, have equipment specific abilities such as a certain weapon skill that can only be used with a specific weapon (not weapon type but individual weapon).

You could apply the same concept with armor. Maybe you could have an enchanted eyepatch that grants you access to the "Scan" ability or a breastplate that gives you the 2 hour ability "Invincible". Naoki Yoshida mentioned that quests would determine a jobs progress and gear, he didn't necessarily say that those two had to be mutually exclusive. This could be a neat idea. The downside would be that it favors heavily in the direction of job/class identity rather than personal identity.

[Frein]

I'm with the second poster. Truly unique gear shouldn't give the same, or even similar, effects as materia crafted gear. I think there should be reasons to have and covet both types of gear and at worst, materia gear should be a hurdle on the path to obtain unique and untradeable gear but I don't mind forbidden materia gear being overpowered. They should focus more on reducing ability timers or boosting ability effects rather than just stat bonuses or perhaps, have equipment specific abilities such as a certain weapon skill that can only be used with a specific weapon (not weapon type but individual weapon).

You could apply the same concept with armor. Maybe you could have an enchanted eyepatch that grants you access to the "Scan" ability or a breastplate that gives you the 2 hour ability "Invincible". Naoki Yoshida mentioned that quests would determine a jobs progress and gear, he didn't necessarily say that those two had to be mutually exclusive. This could be a neat idea. The downside would be that it favors heavily in the direction of job/class identity rather than personal identity.

Making U/U gear simply different won't solve anything. One or the other is still going to be just better for whatever task you want to do and the fact that one of them has an exotic stat is completely irrelevant if it's less effective overall.