Future Endgame gear vs crafted gear with Materia.

[Xikeroth]

I'm going to agree with waht a couple of people have said.
Bring in Abj's.

For a long time in xi things like heca, shura, dalmaticas & zenith were incredibly sought after pieces. and they required buying a cursed dalmatica and then going out to kill odin or I forget which hnm to get the abjuration to purify it. required high level crafters and a decent group of people to do the fights. in many ways the perfect system.

Other examples included things like the scorpion harnesses and haubies etc. considered incribly strong pieces and required drops from various hnm/ksnm kinda stuff. all crafted items and for along time amoung the best available. still crafted but often required a fight somewhere to obtain the materials

The major problems with crafting gear for top performance is that other game content gets left out since "oh well this enemy doesn't drop an upgrade" idea comes into peoples minds so they tend not bother with any of that content. Which is the problem, like not ALL slots will get replaced but only allowing endgame gear to count for 2-3 of your gear slots out of EVERY PIECE is a terrible policy to follow.

Ajbs were a decent idea but imo if they allow that sort of thing it needs to be world NMs nothing inside of a raid. and it should at least balance things out a little since you need to go to endgame as well as as get crafted items, however don't forget that out of everyone that played FFXI very few people even got to see full sets of that stuff out of the entire population.

I do like the whole system of sky from FFXI some of my fondest memories of FFXI endgame were there and I won't argue against that concept and I do like it but at the same time we do need a lot more options to keep things fresh to help everyone tell the difference between FFXI endgame and FFXIV endgame. We can't just clone it.

[morpheus]

They need to get rid of the RNG in the game. That includes the stupid melding rates as well. Right now the luckiest person can be the best geared. That's not the way it should. Skill should be rewarded not luck. There's ways of involving both crafted gear and content gear in the game at the same time without having it based all of horrible RNG.

[Xikeroth]

Honestly, there needs to be a healthy mix of boss/dungeon drops, GC gear, and crafted equipment all vying for BiS. XIV is balanced around progressing multiple jobs, some of which have multiple roles. When leveling a second, third, or forth job, gearing each one the same way would get dull rather quickly. If you need to raid to gear your DPS, craft and meld to gear your mage, seal farm to gear your tank, and perhaps hamlet for your crafting classes, well, that keeps all varieties of content relevant, while cycling players through each one.

The thing with my post is that SE has said multiple times they want to bring in a huge population of players and in order to properly do that they need to realize very few people in the global MMO population even care about crafting or gathering, they want to fight endgame bosses, raid and PvP more then craft and gather. They want to fight big NMs or do raids(no time limit that is actually something that stops people from wanting to bother with raids) or beat the crap out of each other in pvp, they don't want to spend half of their time crafting. Crafting is actually something people mostly don't want to do and its what SE needs to pick up and notice.

[Xikeroth]

They need to get rid of the RNG in the game. That includes the stupid melding rates as well. Right now the luckiest person can be the best geared. That's not the way it should. Skill should be rewarded not luck. There's ways of involving both crafted gear and content gear in the game at the same time without having it based all of horrible RNG.

Crafted items should really only help people get up to speed to the point they are able to do endgame content it shouldn't exceed endgame rewards. Lets face it, SE isn't in the position to try anything new. They did and it almost completely killed this game.

[Xikeroth]

All they have to do is create Raid-specific Materia that only drops from there (high % drop if not 100%).

In addition to that, they could make U/U items from the same dungeon meldable WITH the exception that if the meld fails, it doesn't break the armor, but instead just disposes of all the materia attached to it.

Then you would have people spamming endgame content trying to get their 2, 3, 4? melds to endgame gear. This would be greatly beneficial to everyone in the LS who might still need to get the base armor drop.

Materia melding isn't the answer its still going to make people feel forced to level a craft when they shouldn't have to.

[Xikeroth]

SE cant make crafted gear suck or no one will level the crafts anymore. right now everything is almost the same dungeon vs crafted vs GC gear. as long as they keep that balance there will be no problems its will also give you more choices to what you can equip vs the heavy cookie cut games.


dont mean it will be god like the normal mode might not give everything, then hardmode might give the other stuff.

That's why as content gets released SE releases either upgraded versions of the items or makes new items for crafters to make Most MMOs do that Its VERY EASY for the MMO developer to keep crafting involved. Tanaka was a terrible producer as far as crafting balance(even job balance) comes into play. I do believe that Yoshi-P will be able to keep up since he actually looked into other MMOs before diving into it blind without knowing whats going on.

Most MMO devs upgrade crafted gear or release new ones that can rival old endgame content so that people can get into the newer stuff easier or replace slots they didn't have a chance to finish.

It might be a strange concept to people that only touched SE MMOs but those that played others have seen this often and it works.

IF crafting became useless its the dev team being lazy. It still should never exceed top endgame content.

[Xikeroth]

I disagree. In fact, I think the current balance between raid/primal gear and melded crafted gear is pretty good. Some slots are skewed more one way or the other, but overall you see people with a mix of crafted and non-crafted gear.



I don't wander around Uldah examining random people, but I've never seen a quad meld. I have no doubt it's out there, but I bet it's rarer than the rare Darklight pieces. Triple meld is hard enough to deserve its place as some of the best gear in the game.

Its fine you disagree, however keep in mind that the majority of MMO players don't want to only get half-rewarded for their efforts in endgame by having a lot of the items they get replaced by crafted stuff with materia.

The global MMO community would disagree with crafted items getting a top slot, gotta remember when it comes to 10 thousand subscribers and 1 million subscribers its down to what the rewards from content, not from what some guy can make when he never leaves the city walls.

The MMO community that vastly outnumbered the FFXIV community (the one that basically kicked SE in the jaw when the huge amounts of account cancellations began after launch) wants to see top rewards from difficult bosses, not from someone that never leaves Ul'dah. They want to see more combat-related content. Lets face it, how many people only have gatherers and crafters leveled and nothing else? They can pull out a weapon once in a while.

I am NOT saying crafters should have NO slots they excel at making items for. However endgame content needs to hold some sort of value for drops and dictate the majority of equipment slots. No one wants to raid for belts or bracelets or stuff like that however the major slots should ALWAYS be endgame drops.

There is something seriously wrong with the game when crafting plays one of the top key roles. It should always be a supporting role much like gathering.

[Chardrizard]

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Almost every player I see wearing materia gear has at least 3 materia melded onto it. Often 4, rarely 2...

Everyone, do we need to go further?

[Wobi]

I am reading far too much whining in this thread. Most endgame and the majority of AF gear has stats abilities that cannot be modded on. Materia excels in only a few slots if you happen to be very lucky ~5% for Quad meld, on anything decent you deserve to have that top something you walked into a raid for 30min of your time and lucked out to find in a chest. Take the feet slot for example, the only things you can add worthwhile to a DD is HP. Darklight boots, most AF and even the Explorer's Boots are far better options. The current balance is pretty good as far as I'm concerned.
Technically dungeon/NM gear is crafted gear, perhaps by some talented blacksmith from the previous era with access to some ancient materia we have yet to come across.
If 2.0 brings back a sizable increase in the population the % of crafters/gatherers to the general population will be marginalized. The only reason we have so many currently was due to the dearth of content early on in the game. But there needs to remain a balance, so quit whining if someone can make an item better than what you happened across in a chest.

As for those that want to be able to meld U/U items, they better be able to break. No risk, no reward. No one got to be the best by playing it safe.

Sidenote: Crafting is still the only thing that serves the needs of crafting/gathering jobs with the exception of the few new items that come in Hamlet defense.

[Nero]

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Almost every player I see wearing materia gear has at least 3 materia melded onto it. Often 4, rarely 2...

Pic's or it didnt happen.