Better Materia System

[Okipuit]

Hey gang,

Thank you all for your feedback regarding materia melding/conversion. There are definitely some great suggestions and rest assured that we will be passing them along to the Development Team. I apologize that we cannot go over every point because things are still in development, but I brought along some notes from the dev. team that you may find quite interesting.

Currently, when converting high quality equipment into materia, there are no merits or bonuses for doing so. We would like to change this system and reward the use of HQ equipment in materia conversion in A Realm Reborn.

An example that we can talk about that was suggested by some of you, is we are looking into slightly increasing the rate in which higher tier materia can be created when converting HQ equipment or equipment with materia Melded to it, into materia.

We'll continue to work on improving the system so please let us know what you think!

[Shougun]

Hey gang,

Thank you all for your feedback regarding materia melding/conversion. There are definitely some great suggestions and rest assured that we will be passing them along to the Development Team. I apologize that we cannot go over every point because things are still in development, but I brought along some notes from the dev. team that you may find quite interesting.

Currently, when converting high quality equipment into materia, there are no merits or bonuses for doing so. We would like to change this system and reward the use of HQ equipment in materia conversion in A Realm Reborn.

An example that we can talk about that was suggested by some of you, is we are looking into slightly increasing the rate in which higher tier materia can be created when converting HQ equipment or equipment with materia Melded to it, into materia.

We'll continue to work on improving the system so please let us know what you think!

I like the fact that melded gear can be used as a step up~ Dont expect a response but something to maybe talk back to the devs about is whether the amount of the quality of the materia in the equipment changes anything.

3 level IV materia vs 1 level IV, something like that. Also there are different tiers within the same level of materia, like a +17 int vs a 15int.

Now I have to update my first page again.. XD - ill shamefully bump myself probably in a day or so.

[Hiruke]

I don't know that I see a lot of point in "slightly increasing" the chances of getting higher tier materia when converting HQ gear because the materia system is pretty terrible as is. Slight adjustments won't save it, and a "slight increase" over "almost no chance of getting anything good" is like increasing a 1% drop rate to a 2% drop rate. Is it technically better? Sure. Will anyone be gladded by it? Doubtful.

Honestly I think the problem is the entire system itself.

1) Materia is gained from converting old equips. Sounds okish in theory, but in reality this just means that people will be using "trash gear" to do various tasks. At best, they do this while farming mobs or something. At worst, people show up to your alliance raids in trash gear so they can convert some materia afterward. Maybe if the chances of getting good materia skyrocketed when using gear actual people might use for a fight, we might have something there. But either way, they'd still be "gimping themselves", because no one is going to SB their melded gear, right? The whole system incentivizes using subpar gear. What possible good can come from that?

2) Almost all grade I through III materia is essentially worthless. Period. No one is going to meld stuff while leveling up. They are going to focus on melding "end game" equips. So, nearly every time, converting something is going to produce something useless (wrong type, low grade, whatever).

3) Higher tier grade IV materia may as well not exist. For example, you have STR at 16, 17, 18, and 20 (or whatever). Almost every x2/x3 meld is going to be using mostly 16s and 17s, because the cost of using 20s (unless you sink a RIDICULOUS amount of time converting it all yourself) is so prohibitively expensive it's hard to put into words. Sure, technically you could have some sick STR gloves that are +100 STR, but the reality is that would probably bankrupt someone who had capped gil. Why even make something like this possible? Once achieved (after an infinity of heartache), the items in question are now severely unbalanced.

At least with crafting, there is some luck involved, but it still feels like you are doing something to produce a better result. If materia melding was more like traditional crafting, with a mini-game instead of a straight lottery, it might be better. Why not lower the potency of materia, make it a crafting mini-game, and instead of breaking EVERYTHING when you fail, you only break the most recent materia? I can only imagine it's all or nothing right now to "balance" against people making those fabled +100 STR gloves. But if you max it out at like +50 STR, maybe we don't need to smash everything when we fail, eh?

If we're to keep the same system, I'd really like to see the above paragraph become the new system and/or take away "tiers", and make it way more likely for higher level items to produce higher grade materia. Or I'd like to see materia produced in some other completely different manner. Like maybe every time you earn X number of xp, you can produce a materia (not that I think that's a good idea, just an example of something different than wandering around in subpar gear grinding out SB for no particular reason).

[Jynx]

Please don't nerf the difficulty of melding materia (RNG) It's pretty much the only damn thing you can do in the game when you are finished all the instanced content.

[Shougun]

[snipped to save space].

Can you read my first page and suggest something? I feel like we are running on a similar page.

small comments on your post, the numbers relate to yours ^_^:
1) The system is used to keep crafters an income, incentivising crafting (also is a great gilsink for the game in general), and is a time sink - money and time sinks in MMO's are required. This particular one is fairly obvious.. but it does work, crafters can make decent money off of some SB gear.

2) You can meld a bunch of threes easier then fours, they are also a good capper to a double meld. That being said, ones and twos are certainly useless. If they took a suggestion like mine by making each level harder to obtain, and by also making them carry on with you and work into the next tier, then lower tiers would then be more useful.

3) Indeed, I've seen some +50 intelligence hats. One of the things I, and many others have suggested, is a socket limit - this will create a predictable balance to materia and items.

Also mentioned somewhere in here is the fact that their materia system will cause later expansions to release items with 100+ stat items, which people dont want to see (like it is in WoW).

I've got to update my main page, but if I started now I might get too distracted to go back to reading my Mandarin homework lol. So.. later I will :P

[AmyNeudaiz]

Hey gang,

Thank you all for your feedback regarding materia melding/conversion. There are definitely some great suggestions and rest assured that we will be passing them along to the Development Team. I apologize that we cannot go over every point because things are still in development, but I brought along some notes from the dev. team that you may find quite interesting.

Currently, when converting high quality equipment into materia, there are no merits or bonuses for doing so. We would like to change this system and reward the use of HQ equipment in materia conversion in A Realm Reborn.

An example that we can talk about that was suggested by some of you, is we are looking into slightly increasing the rate in which higher tier materia can be created when converting HQ equipment or equipment with materia Melded to it, into materia.

We'll continue to work on improving the system so please let us know what you think!

This is awesome! I'll be sure to save my HQ mats for ARR ^^

[Nakiamiie]

Please don't nerf the difficulty of melding materia (RNG) It's pretty much the only damn thing you can do in the game when you are finished all the instanced content.

Just a quick reminder, we are moving to ARR pretty quickly.
You should have tons of content to tackle rather than artificially get yourself busy (and entertained... that's not entertaining) with RNG.

As for the topic of materia with HQ gear, I think it should automatically gives the highest possible materia for it (tier 1,2,3 or 4 depending on the optimal level -- then randomly pick a type of materia as usual).

[Shougun]

Please don't nerf the difficulty of melding materia (RNG) It's pretty much the only damn thing you can do in the game when you are finished all the instanced content.

You can make things difficult without using RNG - I hope thats what SE is aiming for in 2.0 . The RNG is really annoying, has no respect for hard work or skill - just about rolling dice.

[SmokeyTheSequel]

Hey gang,

Thank you all for your feedback regarding materia melding/conversion. There are definitely some great suggestions and rest assured that we will be passing them along to the Development Team. I apologize that we cannot go over every point because things are still in development, but I brought along some notes from the dev. team that you may find quite interesting.

Currently, when converting high quality equipment into materia, there are no merits or bonuses for doing so. We would like to change this system and reward the use of HQ equipment in materia conversion in A Realm Reborn.

An example that we can talk about that was suggested by some of you, is we are looking into slightly increasing the rate in which higher tier materia can be created when converting HQ equipment or equipment with materia Melded to it, into materia.

We'll continue to work on improving the system so please let us know what you think!

Thank you for the update!

[Coombah]

Hey gang,

Thank you all for your feedback regarding materia melding/conversion. There are definitely some great suggestions and rest assured that we will be passing them along to the Development Team. I apologize that we cannot go over every point because things are still in development, but I brought along some notes from the dev. team that you may find quite interesting.

Currently, when converting high quality equipment into materia, there are no merits or bonuses for doing so. We would like to change this system and reward the use of HQ equipment in materia conversion in A Realm Reborn.

An example that we can talk about that was suggested by some of you, is we are looking into slightly increasing the rate in which higher tier materia can be created when converting HQ equipment or equipment with materia Melded to it, into materia.

We'll continue to work on improving the system so please let us know what you think!

Need to better than slightly.