Please Fix Materia.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Reworking stats or materia in some capacity to actually make them interesting would mean that "wrong" choices would exist, even if it was only by a few percentage points, and we all know how averse the devs are to that concept.

To be fair, players are even more adverse to "wrong" choices and would be quick to kick anyone using a "unique" build instead of the "BIS" one. It's the same reason this community can't be trusted with talent trees (or cross skills when they existed).

IMHO it’s more like, devs are deathly averse to having players complain about anything at all. In their ideal image, we are supposed to consume whatever slop they dish out happily like good obedient, model citizens.

Players—anywhere & everywhere—will almost always find XYZ best/worst setups. It’ll happen in this game, it’ll happen in any game.

[Aidorouge]

Someone suggested to Yoshi-P about the issue of having to reapply materia upon upgrading gear. I think that should be addressed for sure. We should just have materia slots under our gear slots, and apply the materia to our character rather than the gear itself.

I could envision a system where you have a "materia bar" per job where you fill each one over the game's expansion with materia scattered across the world/different pieces of content. Like, a NIN's Savage Aim is found in one part of the new map, while RDM finds there's somewhere else. PLD gets their Savage Might from one vendor in the world, SCH finds theirs on another. By the end of the expansion each job has one of each materia equipped so there's no stat difference, but HOW you got the materia is where the engagement comes from, doubly so if acquisition specifically called on that job's skills. (That NIN materia I mentioned on the overworld? You got to Hide or Shukuchi your way to it, while the RDM has to smack some object with the correct amount of White and Black without going over to open the door.)

It makes the materia optional overall, since obviously you can beat the MSQ without it, but stumbling upon a piece and having one job be a little stronger making you want to switch up for a bit or providing an edge in normal fights that are more tuned around stat thresholds than pixel-perfect movement where the party with the higher stats gets some leeway from the one that hasn't found much or any materia yet, or going nuts and collecting over a 100 pieces of materia in the expansion because every job (including BLU & BST) has 5+ pieces out there hidden on some vendor, dropped in a piece of content, or found in the overworld (including FATEs that might be job-themed).

If there's concerns about locking a piece of materia behind something that's not popular to do and people feeling like their job was hobbled for it, some materia may have two options of acquisition so no one job feels gated behind undesirable content.

The min-maxers/high-end raiders will chase down whatever it is they need for their main so its not like they have to worry about coming up short for their content, it could even be a hard lock requirement. Don't have all of your materia for your job? You can't queue/join a PF where the materia is mandatory, and since the materia is scattered around day 1 of the expansion, everyone has ample time to find it before even the 1st Savage tier drops.
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IMHO it’s more like, devs are deathly averse to having players complain about anything at all. In their ideal image, we are supposed to consume whatever slop they dish out happily like good obedient, model citizens.

Players—anywhere & everywhere—will almost always find XYZ best/worst setups. It’ll happen in this game, it’ll happen in any game.

I would think minimizing complaints is a good thing rather than having ANOTHER reason for people to be whiny and kicky in PFs. People already look for every excuse in the book to accuse someone of being a "prog liar" without being given another checkbox to conveniently fill out. In that regards it's another case of "players create a problem for themselves the developers have to try and correct" and here we are. People can accuse them of "dumbing down" the game all they want by removing the other types of materia and cross skills, but you have to wonder who was acting like such a bunch of morons that Square-Enix felt forced to make things "idiot-proof".

Incidentally, the system I just proposed fixes some of that by literally denying anyone from waltzing into high-end content without having acquired mandatory materia for the job they want to play. Hardcores still get those funny little gates they like so much, but now its something the game decides for them because players have repeatedly proven incapable of properly (and politely) regulating themselves.

[ForsakenRoe]

I posted an idea a long time ago for trying to make Materia more interesting. Basically, by introducing a new type of materia, that can only be melded to the weapon (or soul crystal) so it's specific to each Job. Each of this new kind of Materia would have a special effect on one of your actions as that Job: For example, as WHM:

- Liturgy of the Bell now has only 3 stacks, but has no 'early detonation penalty' and a 90s CD (goes from 1000-2000p, to a guaranteed 1200p with half the CD)
- Plenary Indulgence now applies its 'bonus heal' effect as a Barrier, and said effect is 50% stronger (makes it a 300p Barrier effect)
- Divine Benison now leaves Regen on the target for 9s when it expires or breaks from damage

The key point is that none of the hypothetical bonus effects would grant damage, they'd all be utility-focused. No one effect would be 'BIS', because each of them (ideally) comes in useful at different parts of the same fight. For these example effects, take TOP. Each of the effects would be 'best' in a different phase of the fight.

Despite this, the overwhelming number of responses to the thread were 'pointless change, we would just use the one that gives the most damage'. The playerbase is too damage-focused to think about any change through any other lens, it's all just 'does this impact damage, and if so how can we get the most damage out of it'. So, I don't think SE could really do anything to change Materia as a system, even if they wanted to. The players would just try to minmax the hell out of it, even if it were entirely decoupled from damage

[Reginald_Cain]

Materia used to be much more complex and each job had different meld requirements and this was removed slowly to address people needing multiple caster and tank sets because warrior and black mage wanted different stats than their ilk. Materia as a reward sucks but replacing it as a reward would be preferable to making materia an inventory nightmare again.

[Aidorouge]

The key point is that none of the hypothetical bonus effects would grant damage, they'd all be utility-focused. No one effect would be 'BIS', because each of them (ideally) comes in useful at different parts of the same fight. For these example effects, take TOP. Each of the effects would be 'best' in a different phase of the fight.

Despite this, the overwhelming number of responses to the thread were 'pointless change, we would just use the one that gives the most damage'. The playerbase is too damage-focused to think about any change through any other lens, it's all just 'does this impact damage, and if so how can we get the most damage out of it'. So, I don't think SE could really do anything to change Materia as a system, even if they wanted to. The players would just try to minmax the hell out of it, even if it were entirely decoupled from damage

Same thing happens in PVP, where you rarely ever see anyone using the utility skills over the damage ones, and it's probably the same with Field Operations/Deep Dungeons/V&C Dungeons.

While part of that could be blamed on Square-Enix turning all fights into "race against the clock before the boss one-shots you" so damage takes priority, the playerbase doesn't really do anything to push against "only damage matters" with the way some of them let content live and die by parser worship.

[PyurBlue]

Reworking stats or materia in some capacity to actually make them interesting would mean that "wrong" choices would exist, even if it was only by a few percentage points, and we all know how averse the devs are to that concept.

This is already the case though isn't it? Having no materia melded at all is the wrong choice currently, but I don't see many complaints about this being possible.