High Materia: A concept to allow for some player agency, without destroying balance

[Burmecia]

It doesnt matter if the DPS gain would be just direct. The BIS high materia would be the one giving the best DPS increase.

[Shougun]

You want agency go play a single player game where you can build the way you want to play. This is a cookie-cutter MMO style game. The only thing that counts is player skill.

I give you a lot of credit for not 1 uping my quip, even if you don't want it lol, as I thought the response would have been. Though I do disagree with the idea that only single player games should have agency, yet this response is a workable discussion on OPs idea. Should it be cookie cutter to the point the greatest agency is the job choice only.

While not perfect, certainly..., WoW imo is a functioning example of agency. At times there are hilariously bad options but there are usually multiple options per 'job'. Sometimes they have good patch frames where most are good. We have to be fair and say sometimes it's not all. FFXIV does show 'all options are good options' more regularly, which may be a pro to some people. To myself it's becoming a negative, but mathematically it's an achievement.

For myself I like agency, but what I like most out of this idea is that big flavor. Jobs are such a narrow beam that I'm losing the ability to feel that great of a difference between most. Though when there is so little agency I can easily see how people are trying to get it anywhere they can. We are really at the point that gear doesn't need stats.. just give it ilvl, you'd lose exceptionally little doing that. :/

[ty_taurus]

It doesnt matter if the DPS gain would be just direct. The BIS high materia would be the one giving the best DPS increase.

Which is why literally none of OP's examples have anything to do with DPS, though I would argue that there is nuance to how you approach ways to augment damage dealt. For example, let's say that you had an upgrade branch to choose from with Sage's Phlegma.

Swift Phlegma
- Decreases the recast timer by 50% (20 second recast timer)

Impact Phlegma
- Increases the damage dealt by 25%

The swift option is, on paper, a higher damage output since you're doubling the amount of Phlegmas you can cast in a fight, but that's not exactly a 100% increase in damage output for Phlegma. In a 2 minute window, you would get 6 Phlegmas instead of 3, but you also get 3 less Dosis casts. Using the current potencies for Dosis and Phlegma, that means you're actually seeing an increase of 270 potency per 40 seconds, rather than an increase of 600 potency, or an 810 potency increase per 2 minutes. Additionally, having twice as many Phlegmas also means twice as many instances of instant cast spells, improving your mobility, and since you'll have more Phlegmas to burn between buff windows, you can also utilize them more often as mobility buttons outside of reserving charges for the buff window.

Meanwhile taking the impact option changes the potency from 600 to 750, less than the 810 gain on paper, but you get larger returns on buff windows because the potency is higher. You can still only use 2 Phlegmas during a burst window, so we can take the potencies entirely at face value: 600x2 or 750x2 during buffs can mean that this option can actually be stronger while raiding. You also have a larger crit variance swing, though, whereas the swift option offers more consistency with lower potency and more frequent attempts at scoring critical and direct hits.

[ty_taurus]

I don't play sage because i don't like it, but you guys are seriously overestimating most people who play the game. We're not going to sit here and spreadsheet everything. And then you'd have people getting kicked because they didn't know they had 3 less dosis casts and were supposed to be doing 3 phlegmas.

Who's getting kicked? My point was, at the end of the day, they are very similar in output with small nuances of difference. I don't get where this community paranoia surrounding getting kicked from raid groups comes from when that simply does not happen.

[Dorito_Burrito]

So basically this would just be changing materia to function like World of Warcraft's glyphs before Blizzard shifted them towards cosmetic effects?

[Colt47]

I don't play sage because i don't like it, but you guys are seriously overestimating most people who play the game. We're not going to sit here and spreadsheet everything. And then you'd have people getting kicked because they didn't know they had 3 less dosis casts and were supposed to be doing 3 phlegmas.

But apparently this is the end game of every single MMO because they all inevitably want to cater to that audience even though it usually is a bad idea. When content is kind enough to let someone screw up and not wipe a group, it is to the benefit of the entire community playing the game. When the only content that matters is content that demands near perfect execution simply because of rewards provided, it usually comes at the expense of the community as a whole.

But thankfully the idea here from the OPs post is basically like having Bozja and Eureka in the normal game, which is something that we sort of needed, honestly. Being able to adjust the support skills at the very least on different roles can help a ton for letting people play the jobs they want to play without worrying about the job restrictions. If anything, this kind of materia idea would save DPS hours of time in PF.

[Lieri]

As long as the effects are diverse enough and add variety to gameplay without breaking the balance then sure.

The thing is its hard to do. Just like in other MMO with talent or trait systems, players will often flock to the one that deal most damage when they are imbalance.

I doubt they can do it. In Endwalker they have screwed the balance multiple times without anything new... they wanted 2 minute meta and even that they struggled with. Let alone a fully customizable gameplay.

[ForsakenRoe]

So basically this would just be changing materia to function like World of Warcraft's glyphs before Blizzard shifted them towards cosmetic effects?

To an extent, yes, but only the not-damage-affecting ones, so think of healer ones like 'Holy Light hits allies near the target for 10% of the healing dealt to the primary target' or 'Judgement of Light lasts for 30 stacks instead of 20' or whatever (I only know the HL one off by heart). If we got anything that directly affects damage like 'Dragonfire Dive is now 50p stronger' then yes, 100% agreed, one would be 'the best' and everyone would just run that. But that is why I specified that 'This system would not provide direct damage gains. Any damage gains would be indirect, and require skill to capitalize on, much like 'optimizing your healing GCD plan'. If a group finds a way to gain ONE healer GCD by taking X over Y, then that's fine by me. It's one healer GCD. Making out like 'one group managed to save one healer GCD with X effect, so it's the locked-in best choice and the others are garbage' is ludicrous, especially because a different group may well ALSO save a healer GCD elsewhere, by using Y effect instead

But thankfully the idea here from the OPs post is basically like having Bozja and Eureka in the normal game, which is something that we sort of needed, honestly. Being able to adjust the support skills at the very least on different roles can help a ton for letting people play the jobs they want to play without worrying about the job restrictions. If anything, this kind of materia idea would save DPS hours of time in PF.

Note: this comparison is valid only with the utility Lost/Logos Actions. Protect or Bubble or that weird one that makes everyone run really fast, those kind of ones. Not Chainspell, Lost Font of Magic, Assassinate, etc.

I keep coming back to it, but the SCH/BRD comparison encapsulates the concept pretty well, IMO. If you have a SCH, you can do a strat that makes use of Expedience's sprint. if you DON'T have a SCH, you cannot, currently. With a system like this, the BRD could provide that Sprint effect via Peloton and enable the strat for the group, at the cost of that being 'their chosen High Materia'. But even with a SCH present, that doesn't mean the BRD HAS to remove that Peloton effect, they could choose to take it and have twice the Sprint access, or allow the SCH to move Expedient to a location where they get use of the sprint AND the Mit at the same time, etc. It opens up different options on how to tackle the content, giving multiple solutions to the dev's created encounters instead of the 'do it right, or just die' we sometimes see. IIRC, O12S' Hello World had 7 different strats that all worked differently in some way, but all resolved the mechanic 'correctly'. I know of at least two for Pangenesis this tier, and 2 for Caloric 1 that are completely different from each other in execution. Having multiple ways to solve a mechanic is good design, not bad

This all sounds really cool and all, but a simulation in my mind makes it think the game wouldn't be any different. I need somebody to explain like i'm 5 how this would change game play THAT much to be worth all the effort of implementing.

There's a lot of things we could argue that reasoning (what makes it worth the effort of implementing???) but they get implemented anyway. We've had how many versions of Diadem and 'Diadem Sequel' now, 5? And it's not like Deep Dungeons have their gameplay 'change' all that much between incarnations (missed opportunity, IMO, hope 7.0's is a lot more roguelike with wacky passives that don't care about 'imbalance' since it's side-content and shouldn't be limited in that regard)

Joking aside, an example I could give (aside from the SCH/BRD one above) is healer pairings. If a fight is hard with how much the tanks need healing, the healers (lets say a WHM and SGE comp) could discuss this and make a decision on which effects to take, such that one 'specializes' in ST healing a bit more, while the other takes more 'partywide' approach. For example, the WHM stuff on the OP. If they're going to be 'the ST healer' for the fight, they would go for the 'Benison gives Regen when it breaks' effect. If they're more AOE focused for that fight, they could take the 'Lilybell is useable more often but is a bit weaker' effect and rotate between it/Asylum more frequently. And conversely, the same applies to a SGE cohealer. They can focus singletarget healing with 'Soteria has no CD, and applies a shield when Kardia heals' to smooth out the tank damage intake more. If they're the AOE focusing healer, they could take the 'Pepsis can heal 'after the shield breaks', reactively' to help keep party HP stable, especially with things that demand constant re-application of shields (cough Harrowing Hell). And then on top of that, the tanks could chime in with 'We can take X or Y, and that will help our selfsustain more so you can actually both take party-healing stuff, and we'll focus more on keeping ourselves alive' with something like the DRK's 'Salted Earth is 100% uptime but lower damage, and provides a constant small Bloodbath effect when you stand in it', or GNB's 'Brutal Shell is a bit stronger'

Being able to work together and discuss how to tackle the fights, rather than just 'link raidplan, call position, ok go', would be a good thing for raiding IMO. Maybe I am too trusting that people in an MMO, with a TOS that explicitly gets you banned if you're toxic in chat to anyone, would be cordial and cooperative with such a system instead of just bullying each other for 'not following the meta'. A meta for a system explicitly designed to be 'meta-resistant' mind you since you'd have to be like, 90% parsing player skill (estimate) to actually make any use of the potential 'gain' that it'd provide, and said gain being presumably so minimal that it can be undone multiple times over because of Crit RNG screwing you over

[IMG]but you guys are seriously overestimating most people who play the game. We're not going to sit here and spreadsheet everything.

No, instead we're going to watch as people who are not skilled enough for any of the 'balance concerns' of the current game, let alone this hypothetical, to affect, take the 'spreadsheet everything' that clever maths people do, and then parrot that 'my class suck SE pls fix' when the reason their damage is low is something as simple as having sub-80% GCD uptime, or letting their CDs drift out of their burst window (despite SE making everything 'press it at 2min')

As long as the effects are diverse enough and add variety to gameplay without breaking the balance then sure.
The thing is its hard to do. Just like in other MMO with talent or trait systems, players will often flock to the one that deal most damage when they are imbalance.
I doubt they can do it. In Endwalker they have screwed the balance multiple times without anything new... they wanted 2 minute meta and even that they struggled with. Let alone a fully customizable gameplay.

That's the main concern, really, EW has had both very good, and simultaneously AWFUL balancing at various times. Melee are incredibly well balanced against each other in this final tier. But at the same time, Abyssos happened. The Casters and Ranged are 10% behind because 'they can attack without worrying about their range' despite hitboxes being galactically large (you had to TRY to be out of range in P7S, for example). Somehow BLM is excluded from this 'ranged tax' despite being ranged. So it's a very valid question as to whether SE could actually balance any effects, so as not to throw the 'balance of jobs' out of whack. Which, again, is why I suggest, and will say again in bold so it gets through (hopefully):

These effects should not provide direct damage increases. At best, they should gain you a very minimal indirect damage increase, made possible by capitalizing on opportunities made available by the effects, but requiring player skill to do so. Anyone not in the upper skill levels of players, would not even be able to capitalize on these opportunities. I doubt that I'd be at that level of gameplay either.

If there are some players that go 'I will take X effect on WHM because IcyVeins says it's the best one' then that's not somehow a reason to say 'no we shouldn't have a system like this', because it doesn't matter what IcyVeins or TheBalance or whoever says is 'the best', it's 'the best' only to exceptionally skilled (far more skilled than me) players. Anyone who says 'oh you have to take X over Y on RDM (or SMN) because Y is dogbad and X is BIS' for example, would find their damage more impacted by learning how to play BLM, given that it's 10% ahead. But we don't see people swapping en masse to 'the best choice' when it comes to SMN or RDM vs BLM, do we? No, so I fail to see how something as small-impact on damage as this (wow you saved the shield healer 2 or 3 GCDs in a 10min fight by taking the Magick Barrier shield effect so they don't have to Succor as often, this is massively imbalanced!) would be that big a concern. We've got much bigger problems than this would create, that are already in the game. Like how you can CritDhit a Hyosho for literally double the damage of a noodled-Hyosho, which instantly negates the aforementioned healer GCDs worth of damage gained

[ty_taurus]

Here’s the thing, this resentment of “spreadsheeting”, which is already an exaggeration mind you, confuses me, because the concept which is more accurately known as non-maxing exists in every game in existence. But nearly none of those games demand the player min max. “Not everyone’s going to spreadsheet the best outcome…” okay then, don’t. No one’s going to force you to.

[Aravell]

Here’s the thing, this resentment of “spreadsheeting”, which is already an exaggeration mind you, confuses me, because the concept which is more accurately known as non-maxing exists in every game in existence. But nearly none of those games demand the player min max. “Not everyone’s going to spreadsheet the best outcome…” okay then, don’t. No one’s going to force you to.

I do enjoy how people confidently claim that people would get kicked out of PFs for picking the non-optimal choice and losing out on 1% dps value. Like how every single PF right now is kicking out any caster that isn't a BLM? Oh wait....