New Job Concept: Riskbreaker

[Seraphor]

I get that it's probably unecessary, however it does give flavour, and removing it at this point is probably equally as pointless as having it there in the first place. It would also take a load of effort to go back through everything and change every single item, and then you still have the issues I mentioned, having one armour set for X number of jobs, only now, it will be EVERY job.

[Jandor]

I get that it's probably unecessary, however it does give flavour, and removing it at this point is probably equally as pointless as having it there in the first place. It would also take a load of effort to go back through everything and change every single item, and then you still have the issues I mentioned, having one armour set for X number of jobs, only now, it will be EVERY job.

Well, I mean the split would be: 3/3/3/3/3. Tank, Healer and then heavy armor, medium armor and light armor DPS.
Assuming the leaks and hints are right, it'll most likely go to 4/4/3/3/3 in 5.0.

The only issue really IMHO is materia is currently linked to gear rather than job, but that could be solved by having materia melds be job specific.
I'd like materia altering even if nothing else changes to be honest, sharing melds across a role is already a bit awkward in some cases.

[Seraphor]

Well, I mean the split would be: 3/3/3/3/3. Tank, Healer and then heavy armor, medium armor and light armor DPS.
Assuming the leaks and hints are right, it'll most likely go to 4/4/3/3/3 in 5.0.

The only issue really IMHO is materia is currently linked to gear rather than job, but that could be solved by having materia melds be job specific.
I'd like something materia altering even if nothing else changes to be honest, sharing melds across a role is already a bit awkward in some cases.

I think such an overhaul of Materia is incredibly unlikely. It's intrinsically tied to various quests and functions.
Crafter classes are linked to melding materia to equipment, countless quests require it, and its integral to the concept if Materia itself.
They'd be more likely to introduce sonething entire different like Magicite.

[Jandor]

I think such an overhaul of Materia is incredibly unlikely.

I'm not really asking for an overhaul as such. If I'm wearing "chest piece of fending" on Paladin and I meld a bunch of stuff to it, when I equip the same "chest piece of fending" to Dark Knight or Warrior (or Gunblade maybe) it should be empty.

It could theoretically be just a gameplay thing that is never touched upon, but if it does require an explanation none of the current stuff has to be re-written, just add some lore fluff on top.

Like as our job stone becomes more powerful (at say level 70+) it's power and the large amount of aether we've imbued it with causes materia kept in its vicinity to bind to it, rendering that same materia inert and functionally not present (i.e slots reopen) when it's near a different job stone.

[Seraphor]

I'm not really asking for an overhaul as such. If I'm wearing "chest piece of fending" on Paladin and I meld a bunch of stuff to it, when I equip the same "chest piece of fending" to Dark Knight or Warrior (or Gunblade maybe) it should be empty.

It could theoretically be just a gameplay thing that is never touched upon, but if it does require an explanation none of the current stuff has to be re-written, just add some lore fluff on top.

Like as our job stone becomes more powerful (at say level 70+) it's power and the large amount of aether we've imbued it with causes materia kept in its vicinity to bind to it, rendering that same materia inert and functionally not present (i.e slots reopen) when it's near a different job stone.

Except the materia data is held on the item itself, not the job crystal.

It's the same reason we got lumped with the glamour dresser instead of something more like WoW. If they can't fix it for that, they're not likely to fix it for materia either.

[Jandor]

Except the materia data is held on the item itself, not the job crystal.

It's the same reason we got lumped with the glamour dresser instead of something more like WoW. If they can't fix it for that, they're not likely to fix it for materia either.

Appearance data is held on the item itself too.
Appearance data can also be held in glamour plates.

Stands to reason that a similar system can work for materia too then. Materia loadouts, created at the Materia melder NPC and applied in a similar manner to glamour plates.

[Seraphor]

Appearance data is held on the item itself too.
Appearance data can also be held in glamour plates.

Stands to reason that a similar system can work for materia too then. Materia loadouts, created at the Materia melder NPC and applied in a similar manner to glamour plates.

Hmm... good point.
You may have just convinced me on this. Materia loadouts could be acheivable. Although melding materia is a gil sink and comes with a failure rate above a certain threshold. Would "Materia Plates" work if you had to pay gil to apply them and they could fail to apply?
I suppose you could just increase the costs of creating the plate in the first place. You'd probably have to make materia rarer too.

Still, I wouldnt really want them to merge all equipment types. Would be too much homogenisation.

[Jandor]

Hmm... good point.
You may have just convinced me on this. Materia loadouts could be acheivable. Although melding materia is a gil sink and comes with a failure rate above a certain threshold. Would "Materia Plates" work if you had to pay gil to apply them and they could fail to apply?
I suppose you could just increase the costs of creating the plate in the first place. You'd probably have to make materia rarer too.

Still, I wouldnt really want them to merge all equipment types. Would be too much homogenisation.

I suppose the simplest solution might be to have 'Materia plates' as an actual item. Buy or make one, have it snapshot your equipped gear, then open it up and meld to it as if it was just normal gear.
When applying the plate, if the gear you're wearing and the snapshot on the plate are the same the materia will apply, if they're not it will fail.
If you want to update a slot on the plate you have to attempt to retrieve the materia, change the item in the slot, then re-meld it. Essentially the same as you do with actual gear.

At first glance that seems a pretty fair way of doing them to me.

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As for homogenisation, we'll have to agree to disagree I think.

The way I see it, in 5.0 we're likely get a tank and it's likely wearing fending, that means we'll have 4 tanks using 1 set of gear, and 4 melee DPS split over 3 sets of gear. For me as a mainly tank sort of guy wanting to dabble in all the tanks it's great, but if I was more a melee DPS sort of person having to get 3 gearsets while fighting tome caps and loot restrictions would annoy the hell out of me.

[Grimoire-M]

This isn't WoW. Main stats help to divide gear into cohesive groups the same way they do in WoW and act as flavor on top of that. It's aesthetic mechanical design. They do serve a purpose in being able to differentiate between stat reduction and damage type reduction as well, though we have yet to see SE exploit that in a raid (specifically referring to players getting debuffed here, not Addle/Feint/Virus) as far as I'm aware. Leave it at that.

As for the concept, I like the idea of trying to maintain Risk stacks in this manner, but I don't think Crit Rate is entirely appropriate. You're still going to stack Crit alongside this because of the damage modifier. Even if you force a cap on the rate. Maybe not as a main stat, but as a secondary for sure. Skill Speed and Determination are that bad.

I think a better approach would be to flatline the defence penalty to 10% regardless of how many you have and similarly crunch the crit rate boost, starting at 10% at 1 stack, then growing by 5% per each additional stack, up to a maximum of 30% at 5 stacks, letting you stack more on top of that from gear. That would be more fair and give you room to incorporate more into the rotation. You mention that this would be a mace/hammer user, but the way this feels (as far as I can tell) is a lot of little hits, very much like Bard, which ill suits a heavy weapon user. I think by making this reduction you can make more room for hard hitting abilities and pull away from the defensive kit a bit as well.

[Shurrikhan]

Those are types of gear, not roles. To be honest I find the value of maiming and scouting gear even existing rather questionable, nothing would really be lost by merging them with striking and aiming.

The job itself seems pretty interesting though, assuming you'd like it adding to the game (however unlikely that might be) it might be worthwhile finding an existing FF job you can merge the mechanics with .

While I too question the current value of Scouting and Maiming as distinct sets, I'd argue that the armor classes, rather than pure roles, should be the more aesthetic- and gameplay-defining element, and are ultimately of higher value as categories than direct roles. Simply put, Maiming, Striking, and Scouting, if done well, provide a much more real analog to styles of combat. To give an extreme example, I'd rather have a Maiming, Striking, or Scouting tank, or have a Fending DPS, than trim Maiming or Scouting. I hate that at present Fending plays less into any actual style of combat and instead just feels like "outlier: all tanks get shoved here", just as Healing and Casting, which are essentially identical in aesthetic and functionality in most cases, are always split. I'd rather just see Fending (not tanks only), Maiming, Striking, Scouting, Casting (all your traditional caster robes), Binding (your less mobility-hampering 'spellfencer' kinds of caster outfits), with no Role attachments. That's not a change I'd want to see until every armor class would thereby have access to two roles, but that's a more appropriate division of armor classes (by class, and the style of combat each allows, rather than by arbitrary role classification) imo. (Hell, I'd love to return to all primary stats being used to some point by each job, with combinations of primary stats granting our secondaries in player-chosen allotments, and, say, Monk being free to pick from Maiming, Scouting, or Striking where the stats on a given outfit are close enough together.)

Honestly, though, the whole issue of loot tables as they'd apply to these seems a... nonissue to me, easily correctable by dynamic loot tables as seen in other MMOs (e.g. loot of greater value to the present team has a higher chance to drop; loot of zero value to the present team has no chance to drop until the table has already been consumed from) and/or loot specialization (e.g. you go as one job of higher ilvl and set your loot to another of your job's to be weighed against its gearset).

Finally, either role-unique stats like Piety, Tenacity, and Direct Hit would have to go -- no loss, imo -- and/or materia "plates" or the like.