Materia on all gear.. Why not?

[Akuun]

Fixed that for you.

Sorry, but crafting and gathering are going to remain as a vital part of this game - much more than in FFXI (even if scaled back from Tanaka's original plan)

I'd recommend you get used to the idea.

Look, when crafted gear dominates a game all it does is destroy the content with any drop items. That's usually the end game content. What is the point of a player working their ass off for a single item if the item they bought or crafted is already much better? There is a place for crafting, and if you look at my posts regarding ifrit dropping horn that is crafted into weapon, or addition of something similar to cursed gear in 11, you would then be able to remove your head from your ass and realize that i'm not against crafting, i'm against it being the most powerful class in the game. I want to see mat drops or combination of drop and crafted items, it's a good system, but most combat players, say fuck you uppity crafters, by the way, i'm sick of this fucking train wreck called 14.

[Jennestia]

Look, when crafted gear dominates a game all it does is destroy the content with any drop items. That's usually the end game content.

No it doesn't. Accuracy rings from FFXI didn't kill end-game content, nor did Hauergeon's and Scorpion Harnesses and they were better than a lot of gear you could obtain from BCNMs and even sky in some instances (better WS gear). Crafted gear (more specifically, highly infused 3-4 slot gear) is what dominates dropped gear. Raid gear can't be overpowered for the simple sake of it being raid gear...you're supposed to balance your game, not purposefully unbalance it. You personally dislike Synthesis that's fine, but Materia was introduced to give people the ability to push their crafted gear further.

Yoshida also said he wants to phase out gear very systematically simply because other MMOs does it, so being able to apply Materia to raid gear already goes against that plan.

Also:

There is a place for crafting, and if you look at my posts regarding ifrit dropping horn that is crafted into weapon,

There's so much gil in this game that a new person has almost zero hopes for obtaining these weapons/armors if the system was that way. The Abjuration system was pretty nice as it could be supplementary items, i.e Ifrit Drops his weapons and Cursed Haubergeon, but sadly I know there's lots of FFXIV people who would be against a good system like that simply because FFXI used it..

[TheFatHousecat]

Well staying on topic with putting materia on ALL gear, Nero from the German forums has put up a thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...are-Ex-Materia) detailing an idea of his which appears to have gotten some positive dev. attention.

I've yet to have a German friend fully translate this for me so please correct me if I'm misunderstanding something that Google Translate told me xD

The basic idea from what I can tell is a U/U tier of materia (called Tier V) which can only drop from NMs, at a reduced drop rate, obv. This materia has stronger stat bonuses than what we have now, and even a suggested Haste-style materia. Since it's U/U, you would obv. need to have a bazaar meld request system put in, which we need anyways.

The special materia would only be able to be melded to U/U items, such as Ifrit's Weapons. Nero even had the % of success for forbidden materia on U/U mapped out (100%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%); assuming that it's so forgiving because of the difficulty of obtaining the materia/item in the first place.

I think that this would be a great idea, mainly for the following reasons:

1) It adds relevance to old NMs. You could add the first wave of Tier V materia to current NMs like Dodore, Great Buffalo, and Batraal, who are receiving less attention as of late since Ifrit's taking up the spotlight. New materia can be added to NMs from past patches as new content is released so that there's always a reason to go back and farm Ifrit or Batraal or Uraeus for a couple weeks, depending on what materia you want.

2) Gives U/U weapons/armor from NMs prevalence over crafted gear, but only if people work hard enough for it. HQ gear with forbidden materia will still be better than, say, an Ifrit's Harpoon. But, if someone decided that they're willing to farm certain NMs long and hard enough, they'll be able to add the special materia to their Harpoon, making it better than the crafted piece. This is especially important for NM/coffer U/U armor, which currently isn't better (with VERY few exceptions) than crafted pieces WITHOUT materia.

If you support the idea, I suggest you go to Nero's thread and rate it up!

[Zantetsuken]

Look, when crafted gear dominates a game all it does is destroy the content with any drop items. That's usually the end game content. What is the point of a player working their ass off for a single item if the item they bought or crafted is already much better? There is a place for crafting, and if you look at my posts regarding ifrit dropping horn that is crafted into weapon, or addition of something similar to cursed gear in 11, you would then be able to remove your head from your ass and realize that i'm not against crafting, i'm against it being the most powerful class in the game. I want to see mat drops or combination of drop and crafted items, it's a good system, but most combat players, say fuck you uppity crafters, by the way, i'm sick of this fucking train wreck called 14.

Tell us how you really feel...

I'm in favor of making crafting services crafting more accessible to everyone. There have been some really good suggestions to this end. (I am in favor of the Ifrit horn idea)

Here is how to make crafting work better for both crafters and general adventurers (*I apologize for stealing this idea from another poster, but it is very good)

In each crafting guild there should be an NPC who players can visit and create submit their own crafting leve and all materials and rewards that correspond to it.

For instance:

Player A just fought Leviathan and received as a reward a U/U "Leviathan Spine". He then heads off to the Carpenter's Guild to have a lance crafted from it.

He looks up the recipe and gives all the required materials and crystals to an NPC there who creates a crafting Leve for him. He decides to offer a 24k gil reward for NQ result and a 40k gil reward for HQ (if applicable) result. He sets a minimum level for the Leve at 48 to ensure that only high level carpenters will attempt this leve. The Leve NPC asks how much insurance he wants on his materials @ 8k gil per attempt. The insurance means that if the crafter fails, the guild will replace all the mats for him up to the allotted attempts. Since the mats are very rare and expensive, the Insurance is well worth the cost in this instance. Player A spends 30k gil to insure 3 attempts.

Player B has just hit 49 as a Carpenter and she wants to make some gil. She goes to the Player Leve NPC at the carpenter's guild and sees that there is an order for a Leviathan Lance. She accepts the leve and begins to craft the item. The first craft fails. She checks the list and sees that the Leve is still available. She tries again and gets a NQ result. this nets her a reward of 24k and a guild experience bonus.

Later that day, Player A checks his mailbox and sees that the craft was successful and he now has a shiny new Leviathan Lance. Not HQ, but maybe if he offered a bigger reward more for a HQ version he might have a different result... but he has the Lance now with not much out of pocket and he is off to adventure more.

This scenario would be ideal for all parties involved. It connects crafters with adventurers, it allows U/U items to become part of crafting. It incorporates crafting into endgame content like Primal battles, It is a gil sink (the insurance part). And it spreads the population of players around by making the crafting guilds a hub of activity for all gear and item creation.

I'll start a new thread with this idea because I think it needs more attention.

[tachikoma]

Tell us how you really feel...

I'm in favor of making crafting services crafting more accessible to everyone. There have been some really good suggestions to this end. (I am in favor of the Ifrit horn idea)

Here is how to make crafting work better for both crafters and general adventurers (*I apologize for stealing this idea from another poster, but it is very good)

In each crafting guild there should be an NPC who players can visit and create submit their own crafting leve and all materials and rewards that correspond to it.

For instance:


This scenario would be ideal for all parties involved. It connects crafters with adventurers, it allows U/U items to become part of crafting. It incorporates crafting into endgame content like Primal battles, It is a gil sink (the insurance part). And it spreads the population of players around by making the crafting guilds a hub of activity for all gear and item creation.

I'll start a new thread with this idea because I think it needs more attention.

Sounds like a 2.0 idea, realistically this could never work. I can only imagine the programming behind the scenes to pull this off. I do agree helping bring crafters and adventurers together would be great and I think this will happen when we get more SPECIALIZED crafters. Right now its way to easy to have multi 50's and be able to craft any item with a generic crafter set of gear. My LTW @ 50 HQ's just as much as my WVR @ 50 even though my WVR has a +75dex set from multi forbidden items and my LTW has a base set with no +VIT

The idea Yoshi talked about having crafters in the beastmen camps in order to craft special pieces of gear sounds like a nice way to really tie everyone together.

I hope crafters get access to a specialized tool/skill for only 1 craft max and this gives you access to a new tier of forbiden materia support this needs to be balanced with a proper gil sink but maybe it gives you a short 100% forbid success but you can only use it say once a week or once a day. Something special to prevent the all craft at 50 can do everything for everyone.

[NoctisUmbra]

I agree that they should allow Green W gear to be meldable - along with a system to have crafters meld through the bazaar rather than requiring a trade.

Blue W gear should definitely not be meldable and should continue to have stats that put them well above most multi-melded gear - save for high tiered 4 or 5 melds.

[tachikoma]

I agree that they should allow Green W gear to be meldable - along with a system to have crafters meld through the bazaar rather than requiring a trade.

Blue W gear should definitely not be meldable and should continue to have stats that put them well above most multi-melded gear - save for high tiered 4 or 5 melds.

I think this would be fine with me but personally the only items that are strong enough to be blue are the ifrit weapons. Everything else is easily trumped with non U/U melded gear.

[NoctisUmbra]

I think this would be fine with me but personally the only items that are strong enough to be blue are the ifrit weapons. Everything else is easily trumped with non U/U melded gear.

Yep, which I'm hoping is a trend that continues. I would be perfectly content with thematic Blue W gear not being meldable so long as their stats are above that high standard. The Darkhold gear is basically obsolete, unworthy of it's blue-ness :P

[Venat]

I'll give you 3:

1. Materia system is new.
2. They're observing how people use the system in general.
3. Balance -- Adding it to even raid gear would be overpowering and pretty much kills the need for synthesis gear.

Those "plethora of avenues" are from crafted gear, which is always expanded and always adjusted in patches because there will always be more synthesis gear than raid gear in the end(which is absolutely fine.) Most MMOs just have a few sets of armor that you upgrade through various means and drop gear almost always become worthless compared to a fully upgraded x set.

Materia has only existed for 1 patch really, gotta give them time to get the system optimized.

They should just make those Materials in raids "Special Materials". Remove the armor itself from raids and just toss out Materials. It would make same piece of gear but not ra/ex. This way this would benfit crafters and raids much better. It would also work better with the Materia System. Ra/ex gear still ok idea but should be aimed more for Under lv45.

[Brannigan]

Dropped gear should be more powerful than crafted gear because it usually requires a pulse to get.

U/U gear should be meldable because it should be the strongest equipment. It shouldn't be the strongest without materia because materia is a good way for crafters to make money and to take equipment out of the economy.

Raid gear can't be overpowered for the simple sake of it being raid gear...you're supposed to balance your game, not purposefully unbalance it.

Forbidden materia melding is literally just playing a slot machine. Raid/dungeon/dropped/whatever gear should be the best because it's the hardest to obtain and player skill is a lot more involved than when melding materia. Dropped gear being the best isn't "overpowered" it's the way things need to be if the game is going to work in the future.

Like Akuun said, if I can get the best gear without leaving town what reason do I have to go do Ifrit or Garuda or whatever more than once?