Materia: the new Armory System

[Madruk]

AF gear is still what can be considered one groupable, so won't be really comparable to what we really care about: raid gear.

I've said in multiple threads that pure crafted gear should only in very rare cases trump gear obtainable through raids. Crafted should be the stepping stone to harder content. Suggestions have been said over and over on how to integrate the two and I won't rehash it here. Since we won't be seeing raids till 2.0, all we can do is wait.

[Matsume]

Self Quote to Bump Thread:

I'm going to add 2 gils worth:

Gil 1) Make melding like repairing: Adventurer X has Materia Y and Gear Z to which he wants meld. Adventurer X sets up the demand + reward + catalysts (instead of dm, duh) through a UI not ulike the gear repair menu. Random Crafter X performs meld without having to trade gear.

This has two main benefits:
-No adventurer can be ripped off by random crafters who do not trade back gears or materia
-My next point, which has been brough up by a number of posts:

Gil 2) Make U/U gear meldable. Obviously this con ONLY work synergistically with my first sugggestion.

This will also have several obvious beneficial effects:
-It will give U/U gear the potential to be on par with multi melded crafted gear.
-It will greatly increase the Replay Value of all instances, raids, coffers, NM/HNM/Primal fights that drop U/U gear seeing as multi melded U/U gear will become the desirable end game gear to have, and no doubt countless will be lost in the process- necesitating another visit to said destination.
-It will add uniqueness to peoples garb. This way every mage in town wont be wearing the same multi melded piece of crafter gear.
-Pride and Accomplishment. People will have tales to tell about their trials and tribulations attempting to 2x or 3x that damned Revolutionary's Bliaud or Solid Scale Mail etc.

[Brannigan]

[Syris]

I can't say anything in this thread because it would all be mean.

Well... nice signature.

Man... They need a thumbs down feature on this website.

On topic: My two cents in the matter is to change the approach to materia completely. This stat inflation-prone-RNG-gil sink feels rushed and poorly implemented. Here's an example of a materia system that I believe would support more thought and choice of customization rather than which stat is best in slot and how much you can afford to gamble.

Just off the top of my head...

Example: Chest slots

-% hp increase materia
-% damage reduction materia
-% chance to gain a short defence boost (20 defence points for 5 seconds)
-% chance to gain small mp regen when hit (10pts over 5 seconds or something with a 5 second cooldown)
-% elemental resistance [an assortment of 1-2% chance to resist a specific element]

Example: Weapon

-% increase of base damage [an example of a common materia]
-% increase of base weapon speed
-% chance to reduce enemy damage output by 2% for a short duration
-% chance to reduce enemy magic damage by 2% for a short duration
-% chance to inflict an effect (very low chance for blind, poison, burn or something)
-% [Rare materia] unlocks an WS of situational usefulness rather than huge amounts of damage. Long cooldown. Drops from bosses.

This is all hypothetical and I am not taking balance into consideration. In theory I think if players only had one materia slot [or maybe two at most for very rare pieces] then players would actually have to consider what materia they would choose from a variety of mutually beneficial materia.

[Jinko]

Funny, I was just talking about this issue earlier today, even before I knew this thread existed. I 100% agree that materia causes too much of an issue now, and I think SE should have waited to implement it (possibly even after 2.0). How is AF going to be significant with 2/3+ slotted materia gear as an alternative? Sure it will look cool, but functionality-wise, they're going to have to add some nifty stats to AF if they want it to compete with what's available now.

Yup agree with this, I think its time Yoshida sat down and decided which he wants in this game, Materia or U/U gear because they aren't going to co-exist.

I was really excited for materia when they first suggested it was coming, but they did it so badly, I would much prefer it to work like VII's system where you can put pieces into pre allocated sockets. (pay the goblin to remove them, destroying the materia in the process)

I also agree about itemisation being extremely poor but its not just this, its characters base stats being too high, there is a lack of thought and balance gone into many aspects of the game, hopefully they will be ironed out and rebalanced before 2.0.

Does Yoshida even consider there a problem though ?

I've said in multiple threads that pure crafted gear should only in very rare cases trump gear obtainable through raids. Crafted should be the stepping stone to harder content. Suggestions have been said over and over on how to integrate the two and I won't rehash it here. Since we won't be seeing raids till 2.0, all we can do is wait.

People are making a lot of sense today

[Asiaine]

I love materia... Always have, always will.

I think the problem here is NOT the materia. The problem really is in the Loot vs Craft system. Poor Materia is just the victim.

Whether it be a nobler thing to equip an Iffy Blade, or go to the local shop buy one off the shelf, toss a materia or two on it, and be just as good (if not better) equipped.
That is the question. And therein lies the problem.

What to do what to do? How about solving the underlying problem:
You can't get an iffy blade... BUT.. you can get an Iffy Tooth, which can then be crafted into an Iffy blade, and have some materia thrown on it.

Best of both worlds, everyone is happy (except Iffy). Even SE is happy as we have to keep farming Iffy for materials so we can tripple meld the blade!

[Firon]

I posted this in another thread instead of going materia route with U/U gear they should use raw mats from dungeons where equipment dropped from to upgrade it.

What they should do is for U/U items is make an upgrade system for u/u items. This idea could also make old content have use once more. Take the Blade dancer boots from Darkhold I think its like 3 dex and 3 evasion or something like that.

Basically what they could do is make you use items from the respective dungeon to upgrade U/U item's to make them better than materia items. So Lets take those blade dancer boots from darkhold with 3 Dex and 3 evasion and see what they could look like upgraded.

No upgrade: 3 dex 3 evasion

Lv. 1 6 DEX 6 Evasion

Lv. 2 9 Dex 9 evasion.

Lv. 3 12 Dex 12 evasion

Lv. 4 15 Dex 15 evasion

Lv. 5 18 Dex 18 evasion. ??? bonus stat. (5+ str)

Now the items to upgrade them should drop from the sub or main boss from the instance raid or open world dungeon or HNM. with this system you could make almost all the content in the game right now more desirable than it ever was.

1. This system would make U/U and U gear more worth while.

2. This system could make content last much longer.

3. Add's long term goals to the game.

Some of you might argue I could just dbl meld 2 evasion materia on my shoes but, you can't put dex on that. I feel that are plenty of good items in the game if only they had better stats on them.

One more example to show an upgrade. Blade dancer boots upgrade from Lv. 3 to 4 you would need 5 Batraal Skins (think i spelled that right) and 1 Batraal horn and 6 batraal wings to make the upgrade.

[Matsume]

I dare you to go for 5x

[Matsume]

Yup agree with this, I think its time Yoshida sat down and decided which he wants in this game, Materia or U/U gear because they aren't going to co-exist.

Jinko, I'm going to stop you right there. I don't see any reason whotsoever why Yoshida and the dev team cannot make U/U gear Meldable. If melding is done in a like fashion as repairs, other players could meld materia from your inventory that you choose onto an item that you've chosen, reap a reward, and no change of hands would need to be made. All SE would have to do is put certain restrictions on these U/U gears. For ex: Green Gear can be melded up to 4x Maximum, Blue Gear up to 3x Maximum, Future Orange Gear up to 2x Maximum, Future Purple Gear only 1x Maximum - given that the base stats on these gears are equivalent to single/multi melded gear.

This generates an incentive for these gears, as well as replay value since people will undoubtedly break many of these in the process of melding (except Purple which should be so hard to obtain that breaking it on single meld would be ludicrous). I don't understand why this would be so hard to implement. Sure it would require looking over each U/U piece o gear individual, but this isn't hard at all considering there aren't thaaaat many.

[Matsume]

I love materia... Always have, always will.

I think the problem here is NOT the materia. The problem really is in the Loot vs Craft system. Poor Materia is just the victim.

Whether it be a nobler thing to equip an Iffy Blade, or go to the local shop buy one off the shelf, toss a materia or two on it, and be just as good (if not better) equipped.
That is the question. And therein lies the problem.

What to do what to do? How about solving the underlying problem:
You can't get an iffy blade... BUT.. you can get an Iffy Tooth, which can then be crafted into an Iffy blade, and have some materia thrown on it.

Best of both worlds, everyone is happy (except Iffy). Even SE is happy as we have to keep farming Iffy for materials so we can tripple meld the blade!

Nice shakesperean reference