Dropped Items and Materia

[Stufoo]

Agree, I duno why you have to lose the item when you fail anyway, it would make much more sense to lose the materia and the catalyst.

Yeah but forbidden stacking is already ridiculously rewarding, simple, and accessible, that would trivialize it even further. Rare/ex gear doesn't need forbidden but they need access to a materia slot to get the bare functionality, and utility of the system. Some materia you can't just overpower with another stat, like enmity, or huge numbers of STR, and even one meld is enough to level the field, not only in terms of viability but customization as well.

Has this still not received even a single nod from the devs or mods? The materia system is neat and adds a lot to items, and we really just want to use it. Forgive the lack of faith in your itemization, but you really haven't shown much to be hopeful for. It's awful to know that an entire patch is devoted to artifact gear when it's either going to be completely terrible and there's no reason to use it, or it will invalidate every materia slot in the entire game.

[Kiara]

The fact that the probability of getting a triple+ meld is low doesn't even matter, and in some ways simply adds to the problems with the materia system. My complaint is that the majority of the BEST items in the game (currently) come from easily obtained materia and mass produced, boring, common, crafted items.

The materia system rendered Darkhold gear obsolete. The vast majority of the newly added Stronghold gear is obsolete. The upcoming job gear will be surpassed by multiple materia melds in quality.

Ignoring achievements and first kills, how often do people do Darkhold? How often do players seriously attempt to kill or farm Stronghold bosses? Rarely. Why? Because in comparison to even a single materia meld, the items these events reward are worthless. If brand new content is instantly rendered obsolete by the materia system, why should we expect future content, about which we know next to nothing, to be any different?

The reason I am posting on these Lodestone forums is not to argue with people who range from argumentative to willfully ignorant; I post here to make my opinion known to the devs in the hopes that they take notice and factor it into their future game changes.

So here's my opinion, as simply as I can put it:

FFXIV would be more fun if we had cool, unique, u/u gear to work towards and endgame events that MATTER, rather than simply churning out materia'd items. If SE can find a balance between the two isolated systems (u/u and materia), great. If SE can, instead, have the two systems be interconnected, even better! Right now, there is neither a balance nor any interplay between the two systems. It is heavily weighted towards materia. I do not like this. I hope that in the future, u/u gear takes on more importance and thus gives players a REASON to do actual challenging events that require planning, strategy, and skill (perhaps even... other people!).

Well said.

I hope the Community Reps pass along this post (and sentiments from Chadwick, Brannigan and all of us in favor of some Materia Melding on Unique / Untradeable Raid Items).

I appreciate the Materia System and am glad that Crafted Items are actually selling and being used (to convert into Materia) now. It's better than the stagnant Markets we had before Materia.

But there needs to be balance.

And as some have said, allowing Materia to be melded onto Raid / Dungeon / NM Gear would still make the Materia System *needed*: People will still need to buy crafted Gear to turn into Materia.

And they'll need Crafters to help them meld.

And I'm fine with Yoshida-san going back to having NMs / Dungeons drop *Materials* that Crafters can take to make into some Top Tier Items (like Dodore Doublet, etc.). That would involve both sides and provide some synergy.

We just need a real change with the current system before it gets too late.

Thanks.

[Brigandier]

Yeah but forbidden stacking is already ridiculously rewarding, simple, and accessible, that would trivialize it even further. Rare/ex gear doesn't need forbidden but they need access to a materia slot to get the bare functionality, and utility of the system.

Not giving them full access to the materia system is just going to lead to the same thing down the road. Currently it's just more of that Tanaka logic of "Limit the player as a quick fix" instead of giving us a good system and increasing mob difficulty to match it.

Ultimately this should be the question concerning materia: Is this going to be too powerful for current content if we allow melding on U/U gear? If so, increase the difficulty of current content to scale with the power increase.

Don't get me wrong though, allowing melds on U/U is most certainly going to have to do away with gear breaking on failure. In order to allow this they'll have to lower success rate or something. But in the end, imagine the prestige you could have standing there with your triple melded Ifrit weapon, a product of hard work (the fight and the gil).

[Stufoo]

It seems like I remember Yoshi or a dev mentioning eventually adding melding via bazaar. Does anyone else remember this, or know where this was said (if it was said)?

We're very happy to see that you are enjoying the new repair feature!

We let the dev. team know that you would like materia requests to resemble a system like the repair feature and they informed us that they are currently looking into a system that will make materia melding requests easier to do.

It's coming, but still no attention on this thread.

Not giving them full access to the materia system is just going to lead to the same thing down the road.

While I know what you're saying I will also disagree, because it is true that dropped items are higher quality, they will be more complete pieces stat wise in their base form, or instead of just fighting stat vs. stat, rare/ex items will use more exotic attributes, and ideally one materia meld to level the playing field. I am fine with four and five melds being better than rare/ex items with one meld, but two and three melds are a joke to obtain.

Let's consider lancer hands again, for the sake of argument. Currently, they are using Cobalt Mitt Gauntlets, and the relevant stat on there is STR+3. This is very weak for a base item, but due to forbidden materia, you could theoretically get upwards of 80~103 STR. I can postulate the implementation of a "blue quality" drop piece of rare/ex hand gear, with the base stats of 15 STR, 5% double attack rate. Due to no risk involved, you would likely use perfect IV materia on these items, so let's assume +20 for that one meld. This would bring the item to a total of 35 STR, 5% double attack. That's a very hefty piece of gear, and although a double perfect IV meld on the Cobalt Mitt Gauntlets will bring you to 43 STR, I believe damage-dealing performance favors the theoretical "blue gear". It's only until you add a third do you equalize, or a fourth and fifth STR materia to the Cobalt mitts that you will surpass it, and for that effort I believe it is okay. People who want rare/ex drops can do their thing, people who want to materia spam do theirs, and there's a mild balance in the middle.

As I've said before though, materia is not so clear cut, and adds a lot of versatility and choice to items, and makes things adaptable to certain situations. Positive and negative enmity stats are useless in solo situations, or harmful in dual role classes, such as Marauder/Warrior, so adding these stats as the main focus of all items just to retain their relevance to the current state of gear and materia is bad. Having choice in gear selection for different situations lets you optimally adjust performance and use different rare/ex gear within their element (which means varied drop items, instead of the WoW style upgrade-every-patch + every-item-has-every-stat-and-mastery system.)

[Brigandier]

I can postulate the implementation of a "blue quality" drop piece...

Hopefully your postulation becomes a reality, and if it does I will most certainly agree with you; however, SE is going to have to create some insanely good pieces to create that "okay, you don't get to meld it (or only meld it once), but you get alllllll this" effect that makes it seem like a worthy exchange. As a thaum I can say without a doubt that Ifrit's Cudgel isn't giving this effect, but I could handle U/U or meld once items if the incentives were right.

[Brannigan]

Really, just a single materia would be enough to make it so you don't ALWAYS have to have (for example) +enmity on tank belts or weapons. If items had different numbers of slots (for example a winglet having two tier III slots and Ifrit's Blade having a IV and two IIs or something) it'd be best, but it's too late to implement something like that now.

[Stufoo]

Really, just a single materia would be enough to make it so you don't ALWAYS have to have (for example) +enmity on tank belts or weapons. If items had different numbers of slots (for example a winglet having two tier III slots and Ifrit's Blade having a IV and two IIs or something) it'd be best, but it's too late to implement something like that now.

I'd rather feel pigeonholed into having to put +enmity materia on those two items forever than not being able to ever use a non-Rare/ex sword or belt ever again.

About that weird slot system though, low level materia are really ugly, don't advocate their use!

[Brannigan]

Flame Sergeant's Skirt Unique Untradable Pants
Suits All Classes
Required Level 50 Defense: 132
HP：+32 STR：+7
Evasion: +9

32 hp, 7 str, 9 eva

Felt trousers are HP +23, Vitality +6, Strength +4 and can take materia (HP, +2stats)

Who will ever buy these?


edit:

oh also

Flame Sergeant's Thighboots Unique Untradable Shoes
Suits All Classes
Required Level 50 Defense: 56
HP：+24 VIT：+4
Evasion: +12

Bloodflight IV materia is super cheap and you only need a tier 2 (I think) bloodthirst double meld along with it to beat these boots.

[Stufoo]

Who will ever buy these?

Obv it's for the evasion, since evasion materia can't be put on pants!!!! #AGoodSystem

[Brigandier]

Who will ever buy these?

Gimps.

Starting to think maybe SE is throwing these items in like the super cheap easy to obtain Abyssea NPC gear in XI.