Dropped Items and Materia

[Brannigan]

If you really think that adding a single materia to any of the Ifrit weapons is going to trivialize anything in the game then I don't know what to tell you. That 0.5% increase in DPS isn't really that amazing.

More content will be added to this game. Content will have drops since this is an MMORPG. Among those drops many of them will probably have blue names and good stats. Things with blue names will not necessarily be limited to certain slots as they are now. If these items with blue names are better than anything that player can reasonably get from materia, then materia is now useless to that player in whatever slot that item occupies. You can see this now with Lancers, Marauders, Pugilists, and Archers who have Ifrit bows - they don't care about weapon-slot materia.

There's also the other side, where dropped items can't compete with materia - this happens right now with classes like Gladiator and the mages. A +hate materia is better than anything you'll get from an Ifrit or Moogle weapon, so you basically don't need to worry about getting those swords.

Finally, as for my comments about destroying game current game balance - the point is not to say that they should intentionally wreck whatever balance there is now, but that this game is pretty much still in an extended beta phase. I'm far less worried about what the state of the game is now than what it will be in the future.

[NoctisUmbra]

If you really think that adding a single materia to any of the Ifrit weapons is going to trivialize anything in the game then I don't know what to tell you. That 0.5% increase in DPS isn't really that amazing.

That's a question of stats not working as they should. The fix for that is to revamp stats and for content to use more gear-checks, not further trivialize them with a "what the hell, they don't work anyway so let's toss em around everywhere!"

More content will be added to this game. Content will have drops since this is an MMORPG. Among those drops many of them will probably have blue names and good stats. Things with blue names will not necessarily be limited to certain slots as they are now. If these items with blue names are better than anything that player can reasonably get from materia, then materia is now useless to that player in whatever slot that item occupies. You can see this now with Lancers, Marauders, Pugilists, and Archers who have Ifrit bows - they don't care about weapon-slot materia.

I never said the Blue W loot should be better than anything in game. They should be very good for a certain type of fighting scenario, and great from a standpoint relative to crafted and Green W gear, but should be beaten by 4-5M gear or perhaps even 3M gear that stacks a single stat/attribute in some cases. The unique effects keep them desirable even if they lack sheer power. Allowing them to be melded on top of this already present appeal will make them undoubtedly best in slot and render everything else obsolete. Now that seems like a problem to me.

There's also the other side, where dropped items can't compete with materia - this happens right now with classes like Gladiator and the mages. A +hate materia is better than anything you'll get from an Ifrit or Moogle weapon, so you basically don't need to worry about getting those swords.

Well, the Ifrit's weapons work quite well for mages when they want sheer power. The Mogstaff is very nice for a THM to prevent their nukes being resisted, and allow greater crits. Devs also said they were looking into making the additional effect of weapons proc on attack spells as well - meaning the Mogstaff would grant a THM return in MP which is something they can use a lot of. The Mogsword is also desirable due to the HP proc. Mind you the proc on these additional effects seem to be quite frequent: ~70%. Is it the best for every scenario a GLA will face? Of course not - but it sure is great for King Moggle Mog! When a GLA wants to dish out greater damage? Ifrit's Blade stands on top easy due to swords not being able to slot the materia that would make them a competitor in that field.

See where I'm going with this? Options. Thematic loot. Best in some cases, never well-rounded. Allowing them to be melded can effectively make them best in slot by stacking more of what they have, or cover a weakness and make them well-rounded and best overall effectively discouraging the use of a variety of weapons.

Finally, as for my comments about destroying game current game balance - the point is not to say that they should intentionally wreck whatever balance there is now, but that this game is pretty much still in an extended beta phase. I'm far less worried about what the state of the game is now than what it will be in the future.

The point is they are implementing everything with the future in mind. Current in-game balance already is a secondary concern as we can tell from the released content. Yoshi-P says himself that he is laying only the fundamentals down now so that the team can get creative and innovative later. Everything they add to this game is with 2.0 in mind.

The point is, there exists so many weapons and armors that can be melded with so many different materias. Allowing Blue W gear to be melded will undoubtedly come with a nerf on their stats if the team has any respect for the stats they laid out and recently revamped - and I'm sure they do. Considering they recently went the route of further buffing the Ifrit Weapons, I'm going to say they have no intention of making them meldable. Let's put those aside and agree that the Green W loot definitely needs to be made meldable. Those are in a confused state where some are meldable and some are not - even in cases where they are obtained the same way.