Future Endgame gear vs crafted gear with Materia.

[Arcell]

The game is supposedly balanced around single-meld gear. They didn't want force people to go above that. Additionally dropped/endgame gear tends to have stats you can't get through materia.

[Ksenia]

Crafting in FF14 actually matters. I hope they keep it that way. Not only do you need to devote comparable amounts of time to the gathering, the inventory management, the building of a craft based character, you need to devote your attribute points to crafting.

I've not yet done any comparisons to see if it factors in, how you build your meld bar influences what materia you get but the surest way to do that is also through crafting. For example if I put a Jacket on and get it to meld level doing nothing but lightening crystals, will I get a lightening based materia?

The thing I have noticed in FF14 is everything they have done while very subtle was with a purpose. I just need to figure that purpose out.

[Xikeroth]

Most people didn't obtain full sets because the abjurations were dropped by open world NM's, the Sky pieces were common. The NQ pieces were also very cheap, it was balanced aside from the Fafhogg side of things.



You may not personally enjoy crafting, but a lot of us do. If crafted gear is useless end game what point do we have taking any of those classes to 50? I currently make less gil crafting than I would selling the raw materials I mine in the current market. If SE decided to further reduce the usefulness of crafted items both my Armorer & my Miner would become completely useless.

Just imagine if they decided to remove the need for a tank & left your Paladin in it's current state to compete with the DD's. That's pretty much what you're asking them to do to crafters.

And apparently you completely misread half the post or didn't bother to read it at all, because you refuse to take fact and rather live in a world where FFXIV has a huge population, when it doesn't, The population of FF MMOs is so small in fact most companies laugh at square enix for running failures in their eyes, and to be honest FF MMOs 11 and 14 have fallen greatly behind. Maybe its time to change their model a bit.

They could EASILY keep crafting useful by helping to make better items as time goes on rather then only make basic items, materia should NOT be involved at all. If they keep materia then they need to either nerf it or make pve drops have insane stats. They could have the great items come from crafting, since in ALL SUCCESSFUL MMOs craftig is used as a boost all, not an end all. They boost players to be able to do endgame, but gear doesn't end in crafting.

Perhaps you want the game to keep the low population and have an early death, i sure as hell don't. What we have right now is terrible and a lot of the current ffxiv fans are pigheaded and think the game is perfect anyways and refuse to admit there is a problem.

It doesn't matter what the current players think is balanced, it matters what those people that have quit think, and I often invite new players to my linkshell and within a month they quit because the game is more focused on crafting then anything else. They have little to do, they want to be able to do more when they first pick up a game not run around killing mobs with no objective in sight. This doesn't help crafting this helps the game die. When people pick up an MMO the LAST thing on their mind is crafting, and nothing will change that.

I don't think you really understand how much larger MMOs work, they all have crafting and its still useful if you think it isn't maybe you should check them out or at least read about them. If SE thinks their current "balance" will work its because they are asking fanboys who think their game is perfect anyways rather then ask the people that have quit what they think and what they want. They vastly outnumber the people currently playing the game, and its them that will bring it back to life, not the current subscribers.

[darkstarpoet1]

my personal opinion is they need to do away with the unmeldable gear drops from dungeons and raids. i have the opinion they should have it to where both running the dungeon and then upgrading the gear you get afterwards is their way forward.

say for example running darkhold you get the alpine war jacket, but the way it is now it is worthless. make it to where in a future dungeon there's additional pieces you can get that will allow you to upgrade that piece to make a better piece of gear and then allow materia to be attached to it. it would keep the value of darkhold up and keep people wanting to run it and give them reasons to want to work towards a nicer piece of gear.

in other words, i don't think melded crafted gear should be the best over dungeon gear, but i don't think dungeon gear should be the best either. to me it should be a combination of both where you do dungeons, get gear, run more dungeons, upgrade gear, and add materia to the upgraded gear.

[Ricky]

I like the materia system, but it does take away the limelight from a lot of dungeon drops, they should just put sockets on every dungeon drop OR give us a method to add socketability to items

[Xikeroth]

Everyone, do we need to go further?

Troll, besides if you had any intelligence at all and actually had real fact and opinion at all that would say something constructive you'd say something real. Maybe you're blind or maybe you're just stubborn however i often see grade 3-4 melded on quite a bit. Maybe you should try to have some sort of intelligent opinion rather then troll. Or maybe you should check top endgamers.

[dragorian]

how is doing raids going to help when most ppl in ls dont want to doit most i see shout for thing alot by japan players in thier languge and majority want japan player only no english i heard that only seen 10 shouts for random things a day thats on riddill in order fo it to wrk put non english ppl on a server catered to thier launguge and mor things as content can b done and raids with the material drop but any way i hate creafting id rather fight spend hours leveling and not gaining much in levels its not like we can join exp pt to lev up

[Babydoll]

Hmm..I have melded plenty of double melds and triple melds...not sure if that is uncommon (I've done it for friends, etc) but anyway..I think end game gear should be superior to materia gear. It is more exciting and rewarding to fight an epic battle against a scary boss using battle tactics etc, vs kneeling down and hitting a button to wonder if I will "defeat" the random % chance of failure heh.

Now if they wanted to still use materia in end game..why not have end game mobs drop materia pieces, or items that guarantee 100% success of any meld? I dunno, just an idea.

[urtv]

They could EASILY keep crafting useful by helping to make better items as time goes on rather then only make basic items, materia should NOT be involved at all. If they keep materia then they need to either nerf it or make pve drops have insane stats. They could have the great items come from crafting, since in ALL SUCCESSFUL MMOs craftig is used as a boost all, not an end all. They boost players to be able to do endgame, but gear doesn't end in crafting.

in aion crafting is end game.dungeons drop weapons with comparable stats to the 2nd best crafted weapons but if you are into min/max then crafted gear is the way to go

[Xikeroth]

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.

I find it funny how defensive you're getting over a mostly dead game that SE is trying to fix, SE will NOT improve this game by listening to fanboys such as yourself that for some reason think the game is perfect and the overwhelming FACT that people starting this game actually quit partly to the fact there is nothing to do but the other facts are complaints with crafting and the fact they don't want to feel as though they have to do it. Which with the current setup they do.

Maybe you need to stop thinking with your nose up SE's backside and think in fact of broadening the population which the current model will not do(which will also mean you crafting fanatics will have less customers), and this games population likely will not grow unless they address the major problems as to why people are quitting.

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.

You're reading "whining" but its opinion, a constructive one pointing out one of the many problems with this game that will stall its population growth and actually harm the game in the long run. When people pick up an MMO the first thing they do normally is go fight something try to level up quickly, see what they can do at those levels and when they see nothing they basically get frustrated.

The second problem is when they go to the wards and ask why an item costs so much and what that shiny circle next to its name means its materia and when I tell them you need to have a craft leveled to a specific level to be able to do that, they actually think its kind of stupid and when people explain how the game is with crafting they kind of don't like it.

Lets take some better looks at overall populations... over 10 million people across the world play MMOs, of that not even 250,000 of them play a FF MMO right now. a lot of people bought FFXIV at launch, I'd be shocked if we had 50,000 active on FFXIV.

Now considering all of that, you're really going to tell me what they have now is best? You're really going to claim its great how it is? Clearly if it was there would be millions of people playing this game, but there isn't because millions DO NOT LIKE how this game is set up (even the people that came back for that welcome back campaign didn't stick around for the most part).

So the next time you post thinking the way the game is set up is great, take into consideration that far more people disagree with you then agree with you, however thanks to SE's policy they can not post on these forums without an active account.