Materia system should be streamlined and based on FFVII.

[Airget]

:Current System:

Spirit Bond gear, obtain the follwing
1-30= Grade I
30-40= Grade I-II
41-50= Grade II-IV

Melding Rate:
1st Materia=Freebie
2nd Materia=Pray to God
3rd Materia=Sell your soul
4th Materia=Sacrifice your first born
5th Materia=Pledge allegiance to the Devil

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With that out of the way you can easily see that the issue with the current system is it's way to luck based, it just doesn't make it fun when it's main audience are those who either feel realllly lucky or have a lot of gil to spend. When you consider the variables it takes to even obtain a grade IV people are less reluctant to attempt to meld in fear that if they want to meld a 2nd time they may break it. Even though 2nd materia meld can make for a potent piece of gear it just doesn't leave the window open enough to make it a fun concept.

Where nearly half of the materia can be considered junk materia because people don't want to take the time to meld crappy pieces onto a piece of armor.

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Concept #1 Synthable Slots:

With this concept materia would work as followed Grade I-III would have no variables but Grade IV would still have variables.

With synthable slots based on the lv of the gear there would be a limit to how many slots they could handle

EX:
01-10=1 slot
11-20=2
21-30=3
31-40=4
41+==5

When a piece of gear is synthed it automatically starts with x number of slots based on it's lv so if you synth a Hart Guisrame it would start with 5 slots. The 5 slots would never be randomized and always be the same such as this:
1=STR/DEX/Heaven's Fist
2=DEX/PIE/Heaven's Eye
3=STR/PIE/Savage Might
4=Battledance/HF/HE
5=Battledance/SM/DEX

Basically you would be able to any of those materias into the specific slot.

When slotting materis you would have to start from Grade I and work your way up. For all slots the first I would always be 100% but as it follows on the success rate would work as followed:

2=90/85/80/75/70%
3=75/70/65/60/55/50%
4=50/45/40/35/30%
5=25/20/15/10/5%

When you fail the shance of break would be
2=5%
3=10%
4=25%
5=75%


When you break, you only lose the slot, but even if you lose the slot you can replace it with a new synthed slot and may even be able to alter the materia you can put on it.

The main basis of a crafters influence on materia would be the ability to make slots for the weapon when they break.

With the current system it creates two sinks for gear leaving the system, one is spiritbonding and the other is breaking a meld. But honestly you would not need the breaking from meld if you made the materia system better since then people would be more willing to spiritbond gear and said gear would be leaving the system faster then from the secondary sink aka breaking a meld attempt.


Basically this concept would encourage people to use materia they otherwise may not use because of the current system. In a system like this because of slto limitations players would be more willing to put a status eilment materia into a slot if it was the only option they had since it's better then adding nothing.

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There are other concepts in my head based on what's been brought up here, but I honestly think a system like this would be the best to allow people to actually customize gear rather then just make it a rich man's game.

[AtryxEtair]

if the purpose of the current system was to get rid of old gear. Then we could keep that. Have the materia we we currently get from gear be used for crafting/creating the materia that this thread is talking about. You have to collect so many bloodthirst "gems" to create an actual materia that was able to be leveled, swapped and what have you.

It honestly doesn't make much sense how it is right now. The essence of whatever your converting is stored into a materia and it boosts a specific stat? The stat has nothing to do with what was converted more times than it does.

But that's just me. I like to suspend disbelief when playing a game and blatantly illogical things keep me from doing so.

[Technyze]

I hate the materia system mostly because it only works in crafted gear and not end game gear. I think materia should be super super super rare and u can slot on materia into any piece of endgame gear. The idea was to get doh/dol more involved in the game but meh.

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

I think they should just make all gear going forward have a predetermined number of slots in it and putting materia into those slots has a 100% success rate all the time. Thus gear with more slots = better.

Make obtaining the gear hard, not putting materia in it.

For crafting make the recipes for multi-slotted gear progressively more difficult. 1 slot is a regular synth, 2 slot you need a lot of mats, 3 slots you need a lot of mats and you have to HQ the synth, 4 slots you can't even make it unless you have some recipe that dropped off a boss or something, 5 slots same as 4 but you need to HQ, and use a kobold forge or something.

Then have gear drop from raids with varying number of slots. Darklight type drop rate items has like 4-5 slots, and go down from there.

[Technyze]

I think they should just make all gear going forward have a predetermined number of slots in it and putting materia into those slots has a 100% success rate all the time. Thus gear with more slots = better.

Yay! and have some of those slots linked and can add materias that give skills! and "All" Materias to link with!

[Gukswar]

Not a bad idea, but kinda counter to the whole purpose of the materia system. It's all about cycling out old gear so that people have a reason to get more armor.

Also for the people saying they want to see some unique materia coming from boss drops, isn't that already the case? Doesn't materia like evenflow and the sounds come from Ifrit's?

True but they can always keep that materia system- Add a materia that Add's single slot double slot tripple slot quad slot to the equipment ------ 4 tier materia that add 4 materia to it------

and add the Idea that Darth mentioned maybe- then you would need to double meld tripple meld-
then have a chance of adding 1-4 OPEN slot for a new Materia system- or simply just tripple meld and not have a chance of adding these special materia that doesnt break-

[Gukie]

Add a materia that adds slot that can affix specific materia that doesnt break but can be remove how ever you preffer-

T 1 = add 1 slot
T 2 = add 2 slot
T 3 = add 3 slot
T 4 = add 4-5 slot

Slot materia would be 100% affixing Special Materia only that Dt mentioned maybe?
Just to keep the old recycle system-
You can double or tripple meld T4 getting up to 15 slot in materia-
Of course high powerfull materia such as Tripple Cut (FFXII) would use maybe 10 slot
hence you could auto attack x2 tripple cut if You had quad meld T4 materia adding 20 slot on your weapon
--- or you can always use old system and quad meld +20 getting you 80 str instead V_V

On top of that to keep crafting and Endgame Item such as Ifrit weapons-
Ifrit weapons and Endgame Gear should have Affixed slot materia of 10-
meanning you could put a single Tripple cut on ifrit weapon-
While you can try to quad meld slot on reguliar weapon giving you access to add 2 powerfull materia (Tripple cut x2)

[MrKupo]

It all sounds good and dandy to us, but that sounds like an absolute bitch to balance. And knowing the FFXIV fanbase, even the slightest flaw in balance will somehow merit a community outcry to abolish materia altogether. I speak in extremes, but it is sad that it isn't even that extreme.

[Sav]

I, too, was really hoping for something more akin to FFVII's system. That is, materia that grants you unique abilities, not a stat boost. Hopefully, they reconsider this sometime soon.

[Tetsaru]

Here's what I'd like to see:

- Materia that doesn't stat-stack, and provides actual abilities and spells.
- Different amounts of materia slots on different gear
- Materia can be equipped and removed freely to different gear
- Some slots are "linked," causing materia to combo together in various ways (think Thunder magic + All to hit all enemies, etc.)
- All materia starts out at Tier I, then gradually levels up to higher tiers when gaining experience and becomes stronger (Fire -> Fira -> Firaga, etc.)

...so yeah, pretty much what everyone else said, lol. You could still have your stat-stacking materia too, of course.

My only concern from there would be how DotH's and DotL's would be involved, as there probably wouldn't be much need for catalyst items or melding anymore. Perhaps they could keep the current melding system, but reserve it for when you want to meld materia to gear that doesn't have enough slots on it. You could still have the drawbacks of possibly destroying your items, having the materia stuck there until purged by the goblin NPC, etc.