[dev1358] Materia Reform - Discussion.

[Sol_Aureus]

We received a lot of feedback in this thread regarding various things (like materia stats, materia slot placement, and other suggestions) that we compiled and passed along to the development team. The Item Team confirmed that they’ll look over the information and take it into consideration when planning further adjustments to materia (as well as new materia going forward).

In regards to manathirst materia specifically, our counterpart in Japan posted the following insight from the team. As stated here, and other language forums, players feel that the effects of manathirst materia are too weak, but the team disagrees. The current maximum MP recovery rate is 7.5% of the player’s maximum MP, so if their maximum MP is increased by 100 through use of manathirst materia, an additional 7 MP is recovered every tick (3 seconds). Therefore, the team believes that the effectiveness of manathirst materia is balanced alongside other materia.

However, as we said, we will continue to gather your feedback and comments and pass them along to the team for them to consider for future adjustment, so please continue submitting your feedback.

First off, thank you for the info Rukkirii, we appreciate the responses.

This information worries me though, if the development team truly thinks that 7 MP/tic is worthwhile at all, given the current MP costs of spells and the potency of in-battle MP recovery. This is one of the reasons the Darklight Cowl is practically worthless, the +3 Refresh is...a nice bonus I guess, but it's so negligible. It'd take 4 minutes and 40 seconds to get enough MP for one Cura, or 3 minutes and 30 seconds for one Thunder. Those are very basic spells for White Mage and Black Mage, and considering how long boss fights last, it's one, MAYBE two extra of those spells. I think the development team is putting way too much weight into how good they think the Refresh effect is.

Personally, it'd need to be a minimum of +10 for me to even consider using it, especially over the +7~10% extra cure potency I get from AF.

This includes the auto-refresh that WHM and BLM get as well, 3 MP/tic is negligible. Especially considering how easy it is to recover MP in battle as a mage. Stand in place. It takes 9 seconds for your first "resting" tic. With my current MP pool of 3299, that's 35 MP (without a Party Bonus). Next tic is 101 (12 seconds), followed by 200 where it caps (15, 18, 21, etc. seconds)

So for standing in place for 15 seconds, I get 327 MP (336 - 9 from auto-refresh trait). For Auto-refresh or the Darklight Cowl's 3 MP/tic to give me that much MP, it'd take 5 minutes and 27 seconds. 15 seconds versus 5½ minutes. This is the reason refresh and a lot of other MP recovery methods are practically worthless: that we can regain MP in battle very very easily. If we couldn't get MP back so easily, refresh would be much much more valuable. If it took, say, 30 seconds to get the first "resting" tic and it took longer to get to the higher values (instead of 35-101-200-200-200, have it go 35-35-35-70-70-70-130-130-130-200-200-200) then in-battle MP management might actually be an issue. I certainly don't really want to be out of commission for so long just to get a little bit of MP, it'd take 51 seconds to start getting substantial returns (the 130s) under this model. This would make me actually want to manage my MP during combat, it'd give more incentive to bring more Ethers and Elixirs, and refresh would actually mean something, as every little bit would help. As it is now though, the most effective way to get MP is to stand there and do nothing for a short period of time.

That being said, BLM would need something more for MP gains, or Parsimony needs to get buffed a lot (reduce to 45s cooldown, much higher MP returns? somewhere around 600-700 like Blissful Mind?) otherwise BLM's would be out of MP really quickly.

In any case, something needs to be done with in-battle MP regeneration, it's much too potent right now which makes other means of MP recovery practically obsolete. Please pass this concern along to the development team.

[Klive]

I can't figure out how to manage my mana, please tell the Dev team to fix this.

/sarcasm off

[Xeonerable]

I just want them to lighten up on all the silly slot requirements for materia.... or have no slot requirements entirely.

I was hoping materia would have more customization than it currently does. Not being able to meld things where we want and being confined to the same 2 or so slots... not so much unique to how we make it if everybody else is confined to melding in the exact same places too.

[Rogue]

We received a lot of feedback in this thread regarding various things (like materia stats, materia slot placement, and other suggestions) that we compiled and passed along to the development team. The Item Team confirmed that they’ll look over the information and take it into consideration when planning further adjustments to materia (as well as new materia going forward).

In regards to manathirst materia specifically, our counterpart in Japan posted the following insight from the team. As stated here, and other language forums, players feel that the effects of manathirst materia are too weak, but the team disagrees. The current maximum MP recovery rate is 7.5% of the player’s maximum MP, so if their maximum MP is increased by 100 through use of manathirst materia, an additional 7 MP is recovered every tick (3 seconds). Therefore, the team believes that the effectiveness of manathirst materia is balanced alongside other materia.

However, as we said, we will continue to gather your feedback and comments and pass them along to the team for them to consider for future adjustment, so please continue submitting your feedback.

i would estimate i recover an extra 250~mp from 15 ticks (~ a full mp bar) if i had +100mp from materia.

OR i could stack INT materia and wait an extra 3 seconds

but of course the devs realise this right? oh god i hope so....

[bobbygunz]

What's the point of materia anyway? Everyone just uses the same materia as everyone else, so it's not like it creates diversity or customisation as advertised. It's basically just a replacement to the age old HQ +3 process, only it takes up inventory space and is even more devastatingly dependent on Random Number Generator. I just personally never saw what the point of Materia was from the vantage point of the devs.

Obviously it's just such a nightmare to balance to the point where they have to be incredibly restrictive about it. And the restrictions that make it balanced are the same restrictions that make it redundant. Waste of dev time.

I can't believe they made all recipes dated and spent several patches of development just for this. Oh well, that's their prerogative I guess.

[syntaxlies]

Materia V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X will be introduced as the level cap rises. The Dev Team knows what they're doing.

the spells will cost more mp too which makes your point invalid.

[Treach]

The entire materia system could have been so much better, could have been like 7 where you level it up and get new abilities, extra stats, higher %, etc. I feel like they realized that we realized how pointless some materia is and in order to slow us down in obtaining the current best gear they decided to add more random materia to further decrease the chances of getting what we actually want from spirit bonding. Also while buffing enmity materia because mathematically it is the easiest to show how "near" useless it and due to slot restrictions only really one slot is usable, they tried to instill confidence in us that they are going to fix materia all together, but then they go and state MP materia is good and won't be buffed as an example.

[Holland]

the spells will cost more mp too which makes your point invalid.

And our total MP pool will also increase. The balance is there, some people just want over the top stats.

[syntaxlies]

And our total MP pool will also increase. The balance is there, some people just want over the top stats.

the balance is only there if you believe it is balanced now. I would have to side with the mp materia being next to worthless side, especially with -enmity materia finally getting fixed and being worth using. Ill take a -60 enmity belt over 60mp any day.

[Holland]

the balance is only there if you believe it is balanced now. I would have to side with the mp materia being next to worthless side, especially with -enmity materia finally getting fixed and being worth using. Ill take a -60 enmity belt over 60mp any day.

Hey, I like having a balance. I have manathirst, cure potency, mnd, piety, etc. on my gear. Manathirst is at a point where its up to anyone to individually decide what they want with their gear, instead of being the rule.