Materia Stat (Number) Ranges - Do People Like or Dislike?

[Kiara]

Hi All,

One thing that's always felt a little off since the launch of Materia, and revamping the Classes is in the Numerical Range (Bonuses) that Yoshida-san and company chose for granting Bonuses.

On a high level, if one of the key points in the Class Revisions was to make Statistics *mean* more (make them more valuable),

1. Why are the Bonuses for Materia seemingly "doubling" and "tripling" what we had from the early days? (i.e, a +7 STR Ring was one of the "best" accessories you could get for STR, and after Materia launched, we can now fuse a Tier IV STR Materia that's... +20(!) STR)

Wouldn't it be better to make each Stat Point more valuable and instead of making "+20 STR the Max" you make it, say, "+10 STR = Best Bonus on a Materia"?

Especially with Patch 1.20 (newest one), all of our HP and MP are seemingly skyrocketing with 2 - 3,000 Pools and our +MP Materia is only... +35 MP for the best Tier IV?!


2. The Numerical Ranges (Min / Max) for each Stat for Materia are wildly different:

* HP and MP Bonus Materia I can understand (up to +70 HP / +35 MP) being different, and then you get...

* STR, DEX, VIT, INT, MND, etc. +20 Max
* Elemental Magic Potency (Fire, Earth, Ice, etc.) up to +30 Max
* Elemental Resistance (Fire, Earth, etc.) are only up to +15 Max
* Critical Attack Power up to +50 Max
* Parry up to +25 Max
* Gathering, Perception, etc. (Gathering) +6 Max
* Control, Magic Craftsmanship, etc. (Crafting) +6 Max
* +Enmity up to +12 Max
* -Enmity up to -8 Max only


I don't need every stat to be the same range, but currently do people feel the ranges are somewhat "random" feeling?

For myself, I have no real understanding of how good, say, having +13 DEX is vs. +38 Attack Power vs. + 4 Craftsmanship vs. - 3 Enmity, in terms of how "great" each bonus is overall in the game.

The Min / Max Range is so wildly different.

Would people want to see a little more uniformity? (at least have stuff like +Enmity and -Enmity be in the same range for Materia, so it feels like these are affecting the same order of magnitude.

Thanks~

[Frein]

I do think materia gives too high stat bonuses compared to what's already on equipment. I also think the ranges are too wide with too many quality levels. Finally, the melding process is unnecessarily complex and risky.

[Jynx]

I like the materia system as is.

It could use a few tweaks but it runs the risk of breaking itself in the process of said tweaks.

As it stands materia gives hardcore players a long term goal and casual players a mean to power themselves up with little to no effort. I doubt many casuals will be slotting beyond 2 slots, and many hardcore players will spend a long a lot of time/resources achieving any "power gap" from a casual player.

Unfortunatly the system suffers from players feeling it's unfair that weapons and materia have the risk of breaking, I personally think it's the only factor allowing it to catter to both crowds and should remain as is.

[Raldo]

Due to the fact that you can socket certain materia in so few pieces of gear (STR is weapon/tool + hands ONLY), I do not believe that the bonus is too large.

[chocothief]

I like the materia system as is.

It could use a few tweaks but it runs the risk of breaking itself in the process of said tweaks.

As it stands materia gives hardcore players a long term goal and casual players a mean to power themselves up with little to no effort. I doubt many casuals will be slotting beyond 2 slots, and many hardcore players will spend a long a lot of time/resources achieving any "power gap" from a casual player.

Unfortunatly the system suffers from players feeling it's unfair that weapons and materia have the risk of breaking, I personally think it's the only factor allowing it to catter to both crowds and should remain as is.

I agree.

[Kiara]

Hi Jynx,

Yah, I like many aspects of the Materia System.

Just curious if you like the wild ranges of the various Materia Categories (point #2 in my OP)?

I would like to see a *bit* more evening out of the min-max ranges so we can gain a perspective on relative strength and potency amongst Materia Bonuses for Crafting, Gathering or Battle.

[Vaymathias]

I'd like them to simplify it a bit. Add a few more tiers but remove the range in each tier. I also think the crazy risk vs reward is too much. Maybe separate the risk of item and materia. Make it so you can add extra slots for materia into weapons at a rate based on current slot number (1-5), and then materia has to be fixed to be able to be set into those slots, allowing whoever has the materia and weapon with slots to be able to affix and remove materia at will.

[Bahn]

Not a fan of the number ranges, but I do like the concept of the system.

Like was stated in an older thread - there needs to be SOMETHING to make tier 1-3 mats useful - something that will allow us to "Horadric Cube" our way to a Tier 4 mat, as right now every 1-3 tier mat I make gets sold to the NPC.

[Kiara]

Not a fan of the number ranges, but I do like the concept of the system.

Like was stated in an older thread - there needs to be SOMETHING to make tier 1-3 mats useful - something that will allow us to "Horadric Cube" our way to a Tier 4 mat, as right now every 1-3 tier mat I make gets sold to the NPC.

Hi Bahn,

Yah, I think in principle Tier I, II Materia are fine to help lower level equipment and new players, but with the super fast leveling pace right now, very few players have the time to even appreciate trying lower level Gear + Tier I or II Materia before they've outgrown it and are focusing on higher level equipment and Tier IV stuff.

I'm just curious as to why they made the Number Ranges so vastly different, across so many different categories. It indirectly imparts a feeling of "unimpressive" or "uncertainty" at times...

Like I see that I got a Tier IV Materia that gives +5 Control, but in light of focusing most of my attention on combat Materia (with +20 Bonuses, or +50 Bonuses), it *feels* like that crafting Materia with +5 isn't all that "great" so to speak, when in reality it's "good" for its relative category.

[Orophin]

I think it'd be nice if they could just come up with a set number for each tier. This would make them stackable and reduce inventory clutter. They also need to rework the tiers a bit to where tier I doesn't encompass levels 1-30.

Otherwise I think the difficulty involved with trying to meld multiple materias to one piece of gear and where each materia can go gear wise is balanced.