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

[Shougun]

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.

Haha, that is true. When I was thinking of core stats I was thinking of games that actually cared to have interesting stats and mentally immediately foregone FFXIV. They were a bit easier to balance given type of game though.

Honestly the primary stats in this game is a bit just of a word for thematic sake, and thematic sake only. I wonder if it is even important if the primary stat is present at all. Given that they, where it maters, essentially scale off item level.. you're already expressing the power in that way. Just purge primary stat and say your attack and ability power directly scale with the item level of equipped gear.

It's akin to what you're saying except we just skip the whole line item altogether since we are already expressing it, in 98% of cases, by item level. If I recall there are some items that might be for other 'things' that have item level that may seem weird, but if anything this would just smooth out those issues so players aren't wearing things that give them item level but are entirely useless stat wise (and I can't recall if this was already fixed entirely, it might have been more of a 1.0 / early 2.0 thing, it's certainly not a 6.5 "current content" thing, given all gear is either restricted or level 1 glamour).

Vitality and defense could honestly be the same, tank's HP just taking into account the item level of defensive equipment.

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.

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.

That's a fair concern.

On one hand our stats are so straight forward that you could just have "item level" and "secondary stats" describe your character effectively, and on the other hand you'd have very basic very empty page. Either a façade or boring truth lol. I laugh but I am not knocking the idea that sometimes a façade can be better than the truth. I think that will be down to player preference, if they prefer a pretty fake wrapping or the direct truth.

Part of me doesn't like how meaningless it is, and so I appreciate the simplicity of showing reality, but I think the romantic and dreamy side would not only lean towards keeping it 'full' but actually giving a bit more reasons to "something" about that page. Given SE's conservative approach it would just be some more interesting secondary stats and perhaps a minor excuse to stats, such that 'MAYBE' you might see intelligence potion used on a Dark Knight or something because it actually did 'something' to the point someone is thinking about the stat as value even if it's a niche situation. My more pipe dream would be honestly akin to classic RPGs with varied and thematic stats and effects, which are significantly greater hell to balance.. to be totally fair (and my middle ground of hell and balance would be something akin to what I suggested earlier, with interesting effects you earn and set).