Forbidden Materia, meant for the hardcore or just the lucky?

[Victor]

Right, and I don't think anyone would disagree with this statement. This is very similar to the process of creating relic weapons in XI, at least with the approach I'm taking.

However, spending 5 months to complete a relic in XI meant you had a weapon that would last you years. In XIV, spending the same amount of time for a mid-level 5-materia piece of gear only yields a finished item that will be made obsolete within a few patches.

And just like relics in XI, the gil isn't the issue. It's the supply of materia (currency) and incredibly low success rates (which I guess would be fine if there was a constant supply of materia) that slows the process down. By the time you're done with an item, it's already obsolete, making the whole process seem pointless.

Seeing how the materia system is still in Beta phase, it's open to many adjustments in the near future. I'm just trying to make suggestions to balance the risk vs reward for items like these. Because right now, items like these can easily cost 100m to make, but even in today's economy, they would be extremely difficult to resell for that price, let alone for profit. As time passes they'll be worth less and less.

All I'm asking is to speed up the process to a reasonable level, or, make the time investment absolutely worth it. That could be done in many ways. Increasing the amount of materia available for purchase, decreasing the amount of attempts needed by adjusting success rates, or even giving bonuses on gear with 4-5 melds on it to make it worth the large time investment involved.

Whatever it is, I don't care, but 5 months (on average) for an M5 piece of gear that can be rivaled by an M3 piece of gear in a few months time, possibly before the M5 is even complete, does not seem worth it. And this will always be the case.

I agree with this, like earned. Materia is a waste of time and most importantly, your Gil. Stay away from it for now.

[MeowyWowie]

I'd have to say I agree with you, Kiara. I too love large time investments in MMOs. I would actually prefer to keep the amount of time it takes to make an M5 item currently, if it meant the final result was really worth it.

Adding bonuses to items with 4 or 5 melds would be enough. An example would be a percentage bonus to one stat. The value would be 50% of the cumulative tiers you have on the piece of gear on an M4 meld, and 75% on an M5 meld. For example, a 4 meld glove with T2+T2+T3+T3 would have an 5% bonus(2+2+3+3*50%) and a 5 meld glove with T3+T3+T4+T4+T4 (yea right, keep dreaming lol ) would have a bonus of 13.5%, rounded up to 14% (3+3+4+4+4*75%).

These bonuses would be obtainable after speaking to an NPC and starting a quest chain. At the beginning of the quest, you will be asked which stat (of the ones melded onto the gear) you wish to enhance. After finding some rare items, defeating a few difficult bosses and perhaps bringing the NPC some rare materia, you would be awarded the stat boost on that piece of gear. The stat boost percentage would be applied to your base amount + amount from gear.

Example: I made the pair of gloves I'm going for with T2 STR + T2 STR + T3 STR + T3 ATT + T3 ATT. I speak to the NPC and choose ATT as the stat I want to boost. After completing the quest I will get a 9.75%%, rounded up to 10%, boost to my base + gear ATT (570 for example) to come to a total of 627 ATT, a 57 ATT increase. This effect would obviously be bound to the gloves.

I think this would make the whole process worth the effort and reward you with items that last more than just a few patches.

But if that's not possible, then I would suggest that they change the process of creating forbidden gear, something like what you suggested. That way, at least it's a fun process and rewards skill, not pockets lined with gold, and you wouldn't feel so bad when eventually that gear gets replaced because you'll be looking forward to doing it again on future pieces of gear.

Or, at the very least, if they won't consider either of the two suggestions above, they'd need to adjust how quickly materia can be obtained or adjust the success rates on melds to make the process shorter overall.

Edit: Adjusted bonus values in accordance with meld difficulty.

[Teakwood]

Each trial is statistically seperate from each other trial. If you gather a million materia and then somehow manage to M5 it on your first shot in a stroke of dumb luck, you'll probably feel pretty silly with a massive stockpile of gathered materia! (On the other hand if you wind up with two M5 items you could probably sell the other one for a ridiculous pile of gil, so there's that.)

Statistics isn't 'relative', there's nothing about it that depends on the person.

On-topic I don't know /who/ forbidden materia past M2 or M3 is even supposed to be for. I have a feeling they'll keep rebalancing and tweaking it. I can see going for an M3 item as something to grind, I just... past that gets statistically ridiculous. Best of luck to you and anyone else actually going for it.

[Shaedhen]

Hi Meowy,

In answer to your OP, I'd say it's a time sink, for those that are bored, rich enough, or just gamblers.

I would personally prefer a Long Term, Time Sink Goal that rewards player effort, where everything you do is a positive increment towards that goal:

* Like Final Fantasy XI's Relic Weapons.

At least for Relic Weapons (early days), every time you went into Dynamis, you were making positive progress towards the goal of completing your Relic Weapon (by earning more Special Currency). You were putting in the effort and your work was being rewarded. It didn't have a chance to "blow up" (lose all your progress) only to start over again.

With the Multiple Melding Materia System here, it's far more based on Luck. It's the Player standing around and pulling a "slot machine" or "rolling the dice." You attempt a Multiple Meld, roll the dice, and see if it exploded or passed. Repeat.

I'd love to see Yoshida-san and team allow *some* way to integrate Player Effort and Skill towards Multiple Materia Melding. As I posted before, here's an example:

* Complete a series of engaging, challenging Quests ending with a challenging Boss Fight that allows you to gain a Blessing from one of the Twelve, which can either grant you a Materia Slot or at least gives you a Bonus to Succeed in Melding.

Because at least in this case, the Player is rewarded for making a real effort and utilizing their skill towards this Materia Melding, instead of just rolling the dice in town (or paying someone to try and roll the dice for you).

And most importantly, as you say, Yoshida-san and company are not on a good precedent right now: Our previous "top end" equipment seems to be getting invalidated with every patch so far.

To be fair they were revamping recipes (huge change) and revamping the Job System (which influences weapons / armor), so I'm holding out hope that this is just an aberration and that we *will* get a stable set of Equipment to work towards that lasts more than just ~2 - 3 months.

We'll see where this goes in the coming few patches (e.g., if Moogle Weapon drops or Garuda Weapon drops, or new Recipes in 1.20 or 1.21 just invalidate the best gear we had for 1.19 well...).

This.

I believe materias are a very nice addition but they should change the system a bit. A gear should be able to hold 2 maybe 3 materias top. More will result in some totally overpowered items hold by random players who didn't even know what they were doing when melding their materias. And this is definitely not rewarding for those who will put effort into this without any results.

[Ryans]

I wish people would stop trying to compare the challenge of getting materia 5 to obtaining relic weapons. If someone believes a crafted item in any way, shape, or form should be comparable to a relic item, you are spitting in the face of classic final fantasy. If/when they implement relics, you can complain about the time sink of obtaining them not being equal to the quality of the item.

The way I look at it, all the patches from now until 2.0 are going to make the older content dated. Even if dark moogle doesn't make ifrit gear look useless, anything after 2.0 will. The next year of content is going to be axed and replaced so don't expect any of you hard work to pay off in the long run.

[AlexSag]

Although the supply of materia is low now, that'll probably change in the coming months. It may take 5 months right now on your server, but in 5 months I'm sure it'll take a lot less time. If you were to compare it to relics( and I totally agree that you shouldn't). You'd have to compare it to the amount of time it took for the first few relics vs the amount of time it takes now. The materia system is still really new, so I don't think we can judge what supply will be like once the system has been out for a while. Personally I think a large portion of the materia is meant to part players with their money. You can't really call it hardcore when there's no actual skill involved its more about how much money you're willing to invest than your actual skill.

[Montijin]

This is the only big issue I've had with the direction of the game since Yoshi was made director....but, it is a HUGE issue that has a serious potential to destroy the game should 2.0 put it back on its feet.

If the current system stays in place then this game's endgame will be a joke.

There is no skill involved in getting the best gear in this game.

There is no reason to do any endgame raids.

There is no boss fight for the best gear in the game.

The only way you will get the best gear in the game at the moment is farm gil or buy it from RMT.

Why the community isn't more up in arms about this is puzzling to me. I guess most people aren't looking at the materia system in a broad picture.

I wish they could just do away entirely with the forbidden materia system... but that can't happen now after months of the system already going live.

If they are really set on a system of attaching multiple materia with low success rates; they should consider implementing items from raids or bosses that increase the chance of success for forbidden materia...so endgame content they release won't be useless.

[MeowyWowie]

Just two things I wanna clear up real quick.

The comparison between the materia system (the way it is now) and relics (when I still played XI) is very similar. I don't mean stat-wise, because frankly, M5 gear pales in comparison and really isn't worth the effort. The similarity is that both take/took forever to complete because of the low supply of materia/currency. The only real difference, at the moment, is that materia is luck based, while relics were guaranteed after accumulating all the required currency and r/ex items. I'm well aware that the materia system will change as time goes on, I said it in the OP. It's one of the reasons I started this thread, for suggestions on how it could be changed.

Yoshi P himself said that forbidden materia was meant for the more hardcore players. I wish I could find the quote right now but I can't remember where it was mentioned and I really don't feel like digging through past dev posts to find it. As the title of the thread suggests, I believe that forbidden materia is for the lucky few, not hardcore players as we were told. I would prefer if it was more skill/dedication based than the way it is now. I'm not a big fan of the RNG, this system was made for people who like to gamble, not hardcore players that are willing to spend a lot of time working on a goal.

So to recap real quick on the whole point of my OP..

• The forbidden materia system is meant for the lucky, not for the hardcore as Yoshi P said.

While this can be fixed in many ways, it very likely needs a complete overhaul to do so. Chances are, SE will not be willing to go this route. Regardless, suggestions on how it could be fixed are always welcome, I'm sure.

• The average amount of time and gil needed to create an M5 piece of gear is not worth the gear itself, and as time spent working on this equipment passes, the finished gear will be worth even less.

This can also be fixed in many ways, and seems to be the more likely approach SE will take to do so. Spirit Bond rate adjustments in 1.20 are a good example.

Overall, the process either needs to be shortened or the benefits of creating items like these needs to increase. Possible solutions have already been posted in this thread and there is no need to repeat them.

[Madruk]

It doesn't really take a hardcore player to get double materia, which is already better than pretty much anything else.

I'm in a wait and see mode, since pretty much all of this content means nothing until 2.0. We can voice our opinions till then and see what happens. Since currently nothing is really what I'd deem a real raid, content like the upcoming Crystal Tower multiple alliance raid might have gear worth the incentive to work for. Also ifrit weapons give me slight hope, as some of them are better than what you can get with materia (barring 4 slot materia Tier IV).

[grandm]

This is the only big issue I've had with the direction of the game since Yoshi was made director....but, it is a HUGE issue that has a serious potential to destroy the game should 2.0 put it back on its feet.

If the current system stays in place then this game's endgame will be a joke.

There is no skill involved in getting the best gear in this game.

There is no reason to do any endgame raids.

There is no boss fight for the best gear in the game.

The only way you will get the best gear in the game at the moment is farm gil or buy it from RMT.

Why the community isn't more up in arms about this is puzzling to me. I guess most people aren't looking at the materia system in a broad picture.

I wish they could just do away entirely with the forbidden materia system... but that can't happen now after months of the system already going live.

If they are really set on a system of attaching multiple materia with low success rates; they should consider implementing items from raids or bosses that increase the chance of success for forbidden materia...so endgame content they release won't be useless.

in short the reason not so many ppl are, "up in arms" as you put it. is because as new content is released, it is released with new and better gear, new content bring better gear that makes old gear obsolete, there is no reason to believe what is to come in the future won't be better than materia. materia came after the dungeons that are out so it is better. but 1.21 will have newer stuff that will be better again. if not then complain