Dropped Items and Materia

[Nakiamiie]

Hi,

the materia system is a cool way to get crafted items out of the game and keep crafters making items. The big problem with it, though, is that because Unique/Untradeable items cannot be melded, they are basically (with a few exceptions) worthless.

Some might point to the Ifrit Lancer, Marauder, and Archer weapons for an example of dropped items that are better than their crafted/materia equivalent. Unfortunately under the current system items like these eventually make the materia system useless.

Basically, with the materia system the way it is now, I see two possibilities in the future. Either A) Materia remains king outside of a few pieces of gear, giving a lot less incentive to do actual content when it's easier to just buy cheap crafted gear in town and gamble on forbidden materia or B) Future content drops actual good gear, killing off the materia system.

They're both bad choices, but if I had to choose between the two, I'd go with B since going and getting items with a group is a lot more interesting than playing the materia slot machine.

There is another way, though! If U/U gear is allowed to meld materia, both situations are avoided. The materia system stays useful since people will need new materia every time they upgrade their gear, and dropped gear is actually worth getting. Crafted gear can remain a cheap, quick option for leveling up and fresh 50s and it can still be converted into materia. If you want good gear, you'll need to go fight some bosses and clear some dungeons and buy/convert some materia.

Of course, a system to meld another person's gear through the bazaar will be needed, but that was going to be needed eventually anyway.

I really hope that the devs take this into consideration for 2.0.

I seriously doubt a dropped piece of gear would ever overpower 5 materia melded into an item.
Yoshi-P already said that crafted gear and materia will make the best gear ever. Dropped items and RARE/EX items are already very good. These items are useful for people who can't put materia into their gear or don't have the proper high tier materia they are looking for yet. Sometimes, the rare/ex items is better than a piece of equipment with a single materia in it. Nevertheless, materia is the way to have the most powerful items but comes with so much risk!

I think it is fairly balanced: easy and good = put a materia into your equipment
tougher and better = rare/ex items dropped
best ever = multiple materia into the equipment

[Jamester]

In no way implying the current way of leveling crafts or the materia system is fun. It is...frustrating and I would love SE to make it more fun and requires player skill. Reward (= have a part to play in end game gears for me right now) is the only thing that motivates me to continue to play DOH now and that's why I want a replacement before that reward is removed.

Allows multi-melding on currently non-meldable gears adds diversity bar primal weapons. So players don't have to run in similar gears because choosing other gears significantly reduce their stats, making old gears useful.

It's kind of pointless to allow primal weapons to be meldable because they are already powerful in their area of focus (currently better to go with ifrit weapons for physical DDs than trying a 4th meld) or should be more powerful (ifrit mage weapons). I understand not all classes get the best out of the primal weapons right now such as conjurer, but be patient, it will come and hopefully in 1.21.

[Coglin]

So take the weapons that are already for the most part best in slot, and allow them to be melded? You believe that this wouldn't be broken or overpowered?

Take a 46 Yew Long bow, add Savage Might materia to it, and go to Ifrit, parce your damage and compare it to Mob Bow or Ifirt Bow. You base damage diference now becomes invalid as a point for this arguement. Single melds can become too close to equivalent and ouble melds or not expencive to do on cheap bows, especially when you make the bow yourself and have SB enough bows to have 22 savage migts to play with.

Is Ifrit Bow OP if a dex materia is slapped on it? you say yes, in my opinion, I say no. When anyone can get a crab bow and slap one matteria on it and be that dangerously close to ifrit bow in damage and definently better then mog bow. Well then it takes 20 dex to make ifrit bow even worth the effort.

[Radav]

It would seem that most would agree that something needs to happen to the materia system. Yoshi has already said that the crafting/gathering classes are not going to be considered a "main" class. So the focus in this regard should shift towards the adventuring classes. As many of you have mentioned with the right amount of money or luck you can put together a set of crafted gear that puts together most U/U gear to shame. It only stands to reason that U/U gear should allow for attachment. I believe that to make them stand out from the crafted gear there are a number of things you could do.

1. Someone had mentioned this earlier and I'd just like to repeat it because I like the idea so much. Allow the items to have a certain number of slots that you can place materia in. Random benefit to this could be to have the removal of materia on these items cost a significant sum of money for those people who like to play around with a variety of setups. Also as was mentioned before you could assign a max tier to the slots so that an Ifrit's Harpoon has the ability to take 2 tier IV materia, whilst one of the darkhold weapons can only take a 2 Tier IIIs.

2. Another thing that might be interesting to do with these U/U weapons would be to allow them to have 1 100% successful materia slot that allows the slotted materia to grow at a certain rate (ala FFVII). The growth system could be similar to spiritbond but have to do with the number of NMs you kill. You could build a daily quest system around this where during the completion of certain leves you accrue points toward leveling up your items. An interesting aside (this might be too overpowered but I liked the idea.) to this could be the ability to take materia that you've "grown" pay a large sum to remove and then sell. So for instance it could just grow whatever stat you have attached or the item could imbue it with something new like haste or debuffs. etc.

3. You could do something where you simply do not lose the weapon when you try and attach multiple materia. All of the same percentages could still apply you'd probably promote the crafting market and spiritbonding even more by doing something like this. Higher tier of U/U items could provide bonuses to attaching a certain number of materia. etc.

I could probably go on for a while with a couple more ideas but I think you see where I'm going. I think that any of these ideas above (sorry if I didn't properly credit anyone who may have happened to already suggest these but I didn't read the entire 13 pages before I posted this) would be welcome additions to our current materia system. For sure the current implementation of the system is a good start that can do more for the game then just promote the crafting market.



3.

[SnickleWhiskers]

1. Someone had mentioned this earlier and I'd just like to repeat it because I like the idea so much. Allow the items to have a certain number of slots that you can place materia in. Random benefit to this could be to have the removal of materia on these items cost a significant sum of money for those people who like to play around with a variety of setups. Also as was mentioned before you could assign a max tier to the slots so that an Ifrit's Harpoon has the ability to take 2 tier IV materia, whilst one of the darkhold weapons can only take a 2 Tier IIIs.

I like the ending idea right there added onto my idea about 2 auto sockets (dependent on gear). This would definitely be a better solution for tiers of materia actually meaning something.

[NoctisUmbra]

Take a 46 Yew Long bow, add Savage Might materia to it, and go to Ifrit, parce your damage and compare it to Mob Bow or Ifirt Bow. You base damage diference now becomes invalid as a point for this arguement. Single melds can become too close to equivalent and ouble melds or not expencive to do on cheap bows, especially when you make the bow yourself and have SB enough bows to have 22 savage migts to play with.

Is Ifrit Bow OP if a dex materia is slapped on it? you say yes, in my opinion, I say no. When anyone can get a crab bow and slap one matteria on it and be that dangerously close to ifrit bow in damage and definently better then mog bow. Well then it takes 20 dex to make ifrit bow even worth the effort.

I'm sorry but a single Savage Might, which is in my opinion easily not as effective a choice on ARC as on other classes, is in no way going to make up for the difference in base damage of Ifrit's Bow, let alone the +30 Attack Power and the Additional Fire Damage. No idea what you're on, and how you did your parses, but that's incorrect. I mean, you know SM simply increases your crit damage right? ARC isn't exactly a critting machine, and if it does it'll primarily be on Light Shots. Using Blindside on ARC isn't as effective either because it's counter productive in any fight that requires you to take advantage of your mobility and the fact that you're not restricted in combo directions. Even against a stationary opponent one SM isn't making up for Ifrit's Bow.

If they are comparable to 3 melds nothing will touch them (until level increase).

So if this does happen everyone will be wearing the same, materia items will become useless and we will be back to square one where crafters are complaining etc.

I will be kind of happy that blue items are finally superior, but sad that we only have one choice.

Well, the idea is they are only to be used while on the job. Understandable that thinking at an endgame pov that encompasses most of your time, but classes will still have their place. Also, I'm confident that we'll be getting meldable JSE eventually as well, whether it be crafted or not.

[Brannigan]

Because it is more difficult (time & gil) to get a tri-meld than getting Ifrit Battleaxe(s). And that tri-meld is inferior hence requires even more effort (time & gil) to surpass that battleaxe. From my experience, getting that fourth meld is much more difficult than getting the 7 ifrit weapons and I don't think I am lucky or unlucky in both case.


http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...209#post447209

You don't have a craft level above 15. Keep your opinions about how materia requires no player input to yourself if you haven't try it by "your own."

Hi,

Brainless grinding and feeding money into a slot machine is not difficult. Multi-melding requires no player input because once you gather the items there is nothing you can do to increase your chance of success. The idea that I couldn't know this because I haven't leveled a craft is laughable - it's a single button press. Ifrit and Moogle (and Darkhold for that matter) may not be extremely hard fights, but they require more player thought and coordination than AOEing down Natalan wolves and then pressing confirm on the meld menu.

I have no problem with items crafted from "HNM" (lol) drops being decent items - killing these mobs, easy as they are, actually requires players to form a small group now and go get them (unlike when a thm could solo most of them). They probably shouldn't be the best items, since they're from pretty simple fights, but whatever. A HQ Winglet shouldn't even approach being the best in the game - everything involving it takes common materials and runs them through a slot machine (RNG for HQ, RNG for materia attachment). Right now, however, it is! Ifrit and Moogle weapons have no tanking stats and their procs are negligible on bosses because of Gla's low autoattack damage. Materia gives tanking stats (enmity, vit, dex) and a single attachment can pull a winglet ahead of any dropped sword.

If a player wants to make great items because they leveled a craft to 50 then good for them. That doesn't mean that they should be able to make great items from common materials just because they can get lucky with the materia slot machine. Great items should require great materials - not great luck.

[NoctisUmbra]

Hi,

Brainless grinding and feeding money into a slot machine is not difficult. Multi-melding requires no player input because once you gather the items there is nothing you can do to increase your chance of success. The idea that I couldn't know this because I haven't leveled a craft is laughable - it's a single button press. Ifrit and Moogle (and Darkhold for that matter) may not be extremely hard fights, but they require more player thought and coordination than AOEing down Natalan wolves and then pressing confirm on the meld menu.

I have no problem with items crafted from "HNM" (lol) drops being decent items - killing these mobs, easy as they are, actually requires players to form a small group now and go get them (unlike when a thm could solo most of them). They probably shouldn't be the best items, since they're from pretty simple fights, but whatever. A HQ Winglet shouldn't even approach being the best in the game - everything involving it takes common materials and runs them through a slot machine (RNG for HQ, RNG for materia attachment).

If a player wants to make great items because they leveled a craft to 50 then good for them. That doesn't mean that they should be able to make great items from common materials just because they can get lucky with the materia slot machine. Great items should require great materials - not great luck.

Luck is a very important aspect of any RPG, especially MMORPGs. While I agree there should be a balance, I also feel like the fundamentals for that balance are in place.

If someone manages to get 5 tier IV materias onto a single weapon, I wouldn't mind at all if that weapon blew every content drop out of the water. It comes down to numbers. The probability of obtaining this result is microscopically low, regardless of the means in which it is achieved.

Dropped loot on the other hand of course deals with strategy and teamwork - aspects not directly present in melding. Due to this the drop rates on the gear based on their value is much more manageable. The probability of obtaining this epic drop loot is proportionally higher due to the process in which you get it not being based entirely on luck.

Let's take a LNC for example. The common weapon used for a LNC is the [item=4080407]Hart Guisarme[/item] or the [item=4080109]Champion's Lance[/item]. Comparing the stats on it to Ifrit's Harpoon one can conclude that the either of the crafted weapons would have to be melded with roughly 4 tier IV materias to surpass the damage dealing ability the Harpoon gives from its higher base damage, Attack Power +30 and the Additional Fire Damage effect proc. Comparing the % chance of obtaining both one can easily conclude the Harpoon is much more accessible - and rightfully so.

This same argument can be made for a number of classes at the moment, however as mentioned before we've only had 2 sets of weapons drop thus far and therefore some classes are yet to see a looted rare weapon that appeals to them so profoundly.

Although forbidden materia-melding is a process almost entirely based on luck, so long as the probabilities remain balanced with its potential, there is no problem. If anyone has an weapon melded with 5 tier IV materia, they earned it just as much as I earned my Ifrit's Harpoon that I got on my second kill while a comrade of mine got it on their 100th.

[UmJammerSully]

I say just allow complete melding on both green and blue gear, even then crafted gear won't become useless for 1 reason:

Crafting gear is still far easier to come by than U/U stuff. People will be much more willing to attempt x2, x3, x4 or x5 melds on crafted gear than on U/U gear. There's no way I would risk a double meld on an Ifrit weapon for example.

[Coglin]

I'm sorry but a single Savage Might, which is in my opinion easily not as effective a choice on ARC as on other classes, is in no way going to make up for the difference in base damage of Ifrit's Bow.

Thats all fine and dandy that you do or do not think its effective. You are entitled to think whatever it is you chose. A person can think the sky is red for 100 years, that does not make it so. I simply made the suggestion to parse the damage on a few non-U/U bows and check it out, you might be ridiculosly surprised at how close in comparison the damage is with the ifrit bow, surprised by what does or doesn't beat it out.

The thing is, Right now your making guesses and assumptions, telling eveyone and there dog how wrong they are. When you actually do not know. Interesting that you take such a solid stance, based on little more then conjecture.