What if Critical Hit was crit chance and Direct Hit was crit damage?

[Shougun]

On one hand I feel our items are pretty boring, on the other hand when I think of crit damage and crit chance I think of how Diablo 3 and 4 had been running from their superiority for a long while (Diablo 4 I believe made some major balance changes semi-recently on that though so perhaps they've found the sweet spot, though I'd say the sheer variety of stat types they have is just @_@;; "5% more damage when wet, the monster is hot, your fries are cold, and the moon is full- only on a Tuesday". Though comparing to D4, we are nearly to the point that you could just have ilvl and no stats, and materia might just add more ilvl when equipped lol. There is some nuance, especially if you have a sweet spot for skill / spell speed as you can feel the difference at that point. That said, I'll give credit in that they 'do something' are still don't destroy balance, which is a feat. Balancing in a multiplayer setting, of a roleplay environment, is one heck of a task.

Personally the more interesting things to do with items would not even be stat related but effect related. Could be an interesting pro and con for ultimate players but say brining FFIX equipment passive system (and similar FF, like FF7 Rebirth), with materia potentially related mechanics, into a system akin to WoW Season of Discovery runes and Enchanter (WoW isn't unique to these ideas, I just mentioned FFIX, but another reference simply for those who need it). I'd aim more for a permanent / horizontal like system. But that was a massive tangent to what people think of crit and crit chance. lol

[TheDustyOne]

I'd honestly be happy with substats in general changing to normalized percentage values, it prevents crit from becoming too powerful as the expansion goes on and makes syncing down more consistent. Item Level is still relevant because of the main stats and defences, so the need to gear up is still there. The biggest loss from normalizing the substats in this way would be the different tiers of Materia, I don't see the need for 10 different levels of Materia with normalized substats.

Anyway, for the main topic, yes I think Crit should affect only chance or power, not both, and Direct Hit should affect the other. Having both Crit and DHit as they are only makes the RNG on big potency attacks worse. While we're at it, merge Skill Speed and Spell Speed to a single stat, having them separate only hurts PLD and DRK for no good reason and disincentives them from picking up those stats at all. Speed has other issues as well that should be addressed, such as ability cooldowns not getting affected, likelihood of those cooldowns drifting in certain speed tiers, etc.

Piety and Tenacity could also be merged into a single stat that changes based on role, we'll call it Expertise or something along those lines. As a healer, it increases MP regen rate and healing potency, as a tank it increases defence and damage dealt, as a melee DPS it also increases defence and damage dealt, as a ranged DPS it increases movement speed and damage dealt, and as a caster DPS it reduces cast time (not recast time) and damage dealt. I'm sure others could create better effects for this new stat, I mostly just wanted to merge Ten and Pie while also providing something unique to all the DPS roles.

[Shougun]

I'd honestly be happy with substats in general changing to percentage values, it prevents crit from becoming too powerful as the expansion goes on and makes syncing down more consistent. Item Level is still relevant because of the main stats and defences, so the need to gear up is still there. The biggest loss from normalizing the substats in this way would be the different tiers of Materia, I don't see the need for 10 different levels of Materia with normalized substats.

Anyway, for the main topic, yes I think Crit should affect only chance or power, not both, and Direct Hit should affect the other. Having both Crit and DHit as they are only makes the RNG on big potency attacks worse. While we're at it, merge Skill Speed and Spell Speed to a single stat, having them separate only hurts PLD and DRK for no good reason and disincentives them from picking up those stats at all. Speed has other issues as well that should be addressed, such as ability cooldowns not getting affected, likelihood of those cooldowns drifting in certain speed tiers, etc.

Piety and Tenacity could also be merged into a single stat that changes based on role, we'll call it Expertise or something along those lines. As a healer, it increases MP regen rate and healing potency, as a tank it increases defence and damage dealt, as a melee DPS it also increases defence and damage dealt, as a ranged DPS it increases movement speed and damage dealt, and as a caster DPS it reduces cast time (not recast time) and damage dealt. I'm sure others could create better effects for this new stat, I mostly just wanted to merge Ten and Pie while also providing something unique to all the DPS roles.

I quite like the expertise idea. Tenacity is interesting stat in that when I recall the breakdown (a while ago...) it was barely any damage lost but quite a decent amount of defensive power gained. Hilariously makes healers life even more boring though lol.

Spell and skill speed being the same makes a lot of sense, if there was a benefit to their separation that called for it then I'd agree but in this case it just makes the materia less attractive for two classes, which would definitely impact how you're going to meld in general if you share gear (due to two tanks not gaining as much benefit, sks/sps are less ideal).

[Fyrebrand]

The stats in FFXIV are almost just flavour text. Jobs don't have talent trees or sub-classes that can lead to varying play styles. They play how they play, and it's just a matter of how well you can do mechanics and optimize your rotation/cooldowns. Whether your gear has crit, direct hit, determination, etc., it's not going to change anything about how you navigate your kit.

Even if they reworked direct hit to be "crit chance," this still would change nothing gameplay-wise. In other games where you might have special buffs or effects that can trigger on a critical hit, then sure, that's a consideration you can theory-craft around. But in this game, crits just do more damage.

At this point, they might as well just hide the stats and simply say "This is item level 640 Scouting gear."

[Jeeqbit]

Skill/spell speeds need to be merged

Some jobs have both spells and weaponskills, so benefit from both. I agree it should be merged as well. It should just be called Skill Speed or Action Speed and work for both, changing effect based on if it's a weaponskill or a spell to consider the fact that casts affect your ability to do auto-attacks.

Piety/tenacity being more "utility" focused sounds good on paper but the benefits of them are so low

Tenacity is good, just not needed when tanks can survive some savage mechanics unmitigated that other roles cannot, so boosting the mitigation of cooldowns wouldn't help either. The most likely way they could get anyone to use it now is to make the damage equal to Determination's.

Piety right now could only be remotely useful if a healer is having MP management issues tbh. I don't want to say that veteran players don't have these issues because I'm not a healer main... but I don't have these issues personally. I even healed an extreme trial that can be a bit demanding on healers the other day and didn't have any issues and my build lacks Piety. Boosting max HP might be an appeal for healers that worry about dying, but even healers dying is less of a concern now that we have Red Mages and Summoners are more popular than ever. I'm not sure what else they could do for Piety that would make people want it other than just boringly increasing damage.

Piety and Tenacity could also be merged into a single stat that changes based on role

I don't agree with that because using that logic, we could also merge all the main stats into Mastery like happens in other games ie. Intelligence, Dexterity, Strength, Mind. I don't support that because it would make the stat system even more boring and is more hand-holdy than even casual players require.

I mean we have stats in single players games and people have always worked with them, we really don't need to go so far as to combine them all into one.

[Shougun]

Some jobs have both spells and weaponskills, so benefit from both. I agree it should be merged as well. It should just be called Skill Speed or Action Speed and work for both, changing effect based on if it's a weaponskill or a spell to consider the fact that casts affect your ability to do auto-attacks.

Tenacity is good, just not needed when tanks can survive some savage mechanics unmitigated that other roles cannot, so boosting the mitigation of cooldowns wouldn't help either. The most likely way they could get anyone to use it now is to make the damage equal to Determination's.

Piety right now could only be remotely useful if a healer is having MP management issues tbh. I don't want to say that veteran players don't have these issues because I'm not a healer main... but I don't have these issues personally. I even healed an extreme trial that can be a bit demanding on healers the other day and didn't have any issues and my build lacks Piety. Boosting max HP might be an appeal for healers that worry about dying, but even healers dying is less of a concern now that we have Red Mages and Summoners are more popular than ever. I'm not sure what else they could do for Piety that would make people want it other than just boringly increasing damage.

I don't agree with that because using that logic, we could also merge all the main stats into Mastery like happens in other games ie. Intelligence, Dexterity, Strength, Mind. I don't support that because it would make the stat system even more boring and is more hand-holdy than even casual players require.

I mean we have stats in single players games and people have always worked with them, we really don't need to go so far as to combine them all into one.

If PIE and TEN did something for the other jobs I'd agree but they don't so I'm not sure how it damages anything besides reduced clutter and actually increased opportunity. I don't think comparing it to main stats is quite right given main stats usually have purpose even in single player games, like even for the jobs that don't focus that stat. For example in D4 they do things for all jobs, or in DND like games there is a reason you might hybrid even just a little.

I suppose they don't have to be combined but given I have limited inventory id take more for less than more for more lol. Is it a roleplay concern? Might see that, given it reduces the concept of consistency of affection for QoL.

[ty_taurus]

If PIE and TEN did something for the other jobs I'd agree but they don't so I'm not sure how it damages anything besides reduced clutter and actually increased opportunity. I don't think comparing it to main stats is quite right given main stats usually have purpose even in single player games, like even for the jobs that don't focus that stat. For example in D4 they do things for all jobs, or in DND like games there is a reason you might hybrid even just a little.

The same is true for the main stats excluding Vitality. Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Mind all exist in a vacuum. Every single action on any given job scales to exactly to one of those stats. The only exceptions are that discipline of magic auto attacks scale off I think Strength, and Summoner's physick. It would make things a lot cleaner to merge them all into one singular stat: ability power, and then possibly remove auto attacks from disciplines of magic entirely if we do not want them scaling off autos as well. That also allows for a much more flexible gearing system that also results in less items to create.

[Jeeqbit]

If PIE and TEN did something for the other jobs I'd agree

PIE used to work on other jobs, so you could boost MP on BLM, SMN or PLD to do more magic for example. DPS jobs used to have Tenacity's former iteration, Parry, as actual abilities. So they don't have to be role-restricted; it was just a decision by SE to help hand-hold players a bit and make it clear who the stat was really intended for.

I don't think comparing it to main stats is quite right given main stats usually have purpose even in single player games

The same argument can be made for substats like TEN and PIE, but currently the main stats are in the exact same boat as TEN and PIE in that they are only useful for specific job roles.

It would just make the stat page look so tiny and boring compared to when it released and was full of RPG stats.

Vitality
Attack Power
Rolestat
Crit
DH
Det
ActionSpeed
Defense
Magic Defense (why not merge defenses if we're doing this...)
Item Level

That would be the entire character page if this happened and would strip it of almost any sense of RPG, even if it's just a visual thing and already like this in practice.

[Oizen]

This would probably just force people onto Determination. Materia is so fucking dull in this game to begin with

[Eraden]

This would probably just force people onto Determination. Materia is so fucking dull in this game to begin with

Is true. Peoples would still stacks crit buts now them would be doings it with two stats.