Better Materia System

[Onisake]

System:
Firstly, you can no longer break equipment by melding* materia to that item.
Secondly, each piece of equipment will have a set number of slots – this will make gear easier to balance and you can then allow rare, and rare ex items to last longer in their usefulness by letting them have materia (craftable items will thusly have an average of more slots then dungeon finds – but a lower base stat, dungeon items have a lower slot count but higher base stats (on average)).
*We should also probably not use the word meld, in the case of this system.. :P

I like idea of a set number of slots very much. However I would like to add a few things.

I agree that certain materia should only go on certain peices of equipment. to help immersion with this, I would propose either Tiers or types of slots. the only downside is it can add considerable complexity to the system. and this may not be desirable. as many are confused with the current system.

I think +1 gear should have more slots. but maybe not at first.

As you spirit bond with gear, it should increase in power. as you use a particular tool in real life, you learn a few things that make it unique. while a sword is a sword is a sword, depending on who crafted it the balance, grip, etc. may be slightly different. as you gain familiarity with a piece of equipment you become more proficient with it. I think this should be reflected in spirit bonding.

as an example:

NQ swords start with one materia slot. once spirit bound it gains a special status as a spirit bound item. At this point you can take the sword to an NPC and for a fee they will add another materia slot. allowing you to further augment the weapon.

Alternatively I have a Maelstrom LT bow. once this one is spirit bound the delay is decreased by .1 or perhaps i gain an additional bonus to AP with the set bonus active.

I also think melding a piece should reset it's spirit bond gauge. once melded, spirit bonding increases/augments the materia you have bound to the weapon. you can only spirit bond with a weapon X number of times.

this gives players a choice.

Lets say you can spirit bond with a weapon 3 times. if you trade it in while it is spirit bond with no materia, you gain another materia slot.

However if you trade it in while a materia is bond to that slot, it instead augments that materia.

Because I dislike tiers of materia, this is a way to further increase certain stats. you can add a STR materia to your lance. spirit bond it 3 times and have a "Tier 3" strength materia.

Alternatively you can add 3 more slots to the weapon by spirit bonding with nothing it it several times. and you can add multiple affects with a lesser affect. IE: tier1 att, str, crit, pie. or you could go to two slots and then ultimately have tier 2 str/pie or any combination of appropriate materia.

How to get materia:
Materia will no longer spawn from spirit bound gear – however essences of the gear will be taken from gear that has been spirit bound. These essences may be melded together with a catalyst to MAKE a materia (a process of compounding and compressing while mixing in different environments and ingredients). However, materia –may- drop from monsters who already made them which may have different values then player made ones as they are made from unknown processes, and or are found (meaning made over long long periods of time - Gaia materia rather then synthesized materia). Rare, and Rare EX materia’s ? Yes.

I don't think essences should come from weapons/gear. I'd rather them come from other places.

Quests: perhaps daily quests. While I find these annoying it could make sense.

Gathering: a botanist out in the woods is harvesting mushrooms. while they are digging they feel a strong 'earthly' presence and find a VIT/Earth essence. need to complete a quest before you can harness said essences.

Dropped from mobs: lingering energies are absorbed by the wildlife and you can harness this essence similar to how DoL do it. again a quest should be completed before you can do this.

Gardening: hey, you have a big yard now! let's put in some plants that will have a chance to produce an essence.

I like the idea of taking an essence and using a catalyst to produce a materia. this makes sense to me and sounds like a good system. However you should be able to buy catalysts from npcs and they should be untradeable, with the exception of certain rare high level materia. I think the production of materia should be handled by NPCs and not PC crafters. a fee should be associated with it.

How to place materia:
Just put it into the equipment. Materia will grow as you gain experience, after reaching its cap exp it will gain a bonus to its stats and will also become a better ingredient in another synth (yes using a materia, a catalyst, and some ingredients, this would make an easy recipe to make HQ and higher tier materias).

I think this should be handled by SBing as i mentioned previously.

Crafting of materia:
This calls for a new crafting class, awww yeah. Unlike other crafting classes however materia will take time to craft – that is… Literally your recipe will be over a period of time. Much like gardening in FF11 took time. When beginning a craft you would take a catalyst – something that the essence can bind to (different essences would work differently, and or better with different catalysts). Once you have started the synth this would begin a project.

In the absence of true gilsinks, i think this should be handled by NPCs and not PCs. by removing this from player hands the game has another chance to take money back and keep the economy more stable. stronger materia should be more expensive. etc. etc.

this also keeps it under control somewhat, and gives a more realistic option for players. because it's no longer a gamble more people will do it. and it will be more accessible and less likely that people will overcharge. the worth of a certain piece of materia is more concrete.

of course i'm of the opinion that materia should be untradeable. but if you don't like to craft you need to be able to make money somehow. you can farm essences/materia from mobs and sell that.

I would greatly prefer theses projects are conducted in our mog houses coming in 2.0 – that way they are physically placed down in the environment where you can watch and come back to your project (I imagine something like the metriod’s are contained in the cylinder machine – or some container you can look into).

When you begin your project you can set its environment (temperatures, and liquids that it is submersed in) – applying the settings successfully would require a craft/gathering like minigame (getting you exp which would grant you abilities and better control over settings). After initiated you can come back at whatever intervals you choose** – however giving the project time to work naturally will increase the quality of the synth*.

For example if you work tirelessly right from the start you will lock out certain qualities of materia from forcing the process (and may even fail if you force it too much and are not a high enough level)*. However also waiting too long (past its golden time) would also reduce quality and may lock out certain tiers or materias (this is to prevent players having to synth for too long of a time – and making a weird economy)*. **

Notes:
*While I said synthing too fast will lock out some possible materias I would also recommend that some materias become available only when you synth fast.
** All of the quality, past applications on the project should be easily available so tracking the project is not guess work. I repeat, not guess work – if you have experience you should know what you will get.

You can discover recipes by yourself or learn them from NPCs. Recipes would work by telling you what catalyst and what ingredients to use and when – thus creating a consistent way to create particular materias.

The time windows (the interval to check) should be consistent and easy to figure out. Also while I know many wouldn’t jump on this idea – I think your projects (if they are in the mog house) should be able to be checked and modified through an official app (online and for smart phones). That way you can easily work on your project and not feel entirely bound to log into the client just for 5 seconds.

As mentioned before i think materia should not be synthesized by players. we should need to gather the materials and then have an NPC make them.

I would concede and say free companies can purchase the equipment needed to synthesize materia.

Some possible Materials:
Catalysts, other materias, complex apparatuses (blacksmith, goldsmith can work together to make these devices), liquids for incubation (alchemy), ingredients (essences from spirit bound and collected gear, and perhaps other ingredients found in the wild or crafted).

-The above is to prevent an intense surplus of materia, keeping materia cool and to make solo materia finding less stressful (Random Number Generator is mean npc..). Again would like to mention you can make your own materia (and following a recipie you would know which one you will get (besides HQ, no to very little randomness)) and you may also find materia's off monsters like coblyns, humanoids and special ones off some bosses.

if you want to prevent a surplus it must be difficult to obtain. If we've learned anything recently, is if people can find a way to mass produce something, they will. and if you allow PCs to be able to produce materia you can bet sure as anything someone will figure out a way to bot it and abuse the system.

because this is a way to further augment out stats, and will mainly be for endgame (or capped content if they add it) I think all materials involved should be U/U. or at least untradable

people who do not wish to be involved with materia will have alternatives to augment equipment through spiritbonding dungeon and/or GC gear.

Ultimately the differences between the options should be the same. IE a fully mastered and spiritbound LT weapons should be roughly equivalent to a player customized weapon of equal level. customized weapons will, of course, be more flexible in power as you can add in a ton of attackpower or str or w/e.

the ultimate potential of a given piece of equipment should be a combination of how difficult it is to obtain and it's base level.

if you want nice stuff i think you should have to work for it. simply being able to buy the best materia in the game because you are rich does not sit well with me.

However because you have earned a lot of gil (either through RMT or in a more legit fashion) you should be able to enjoy higher potentials AFTER working for them by SBing.

[Shougun]

[snipped for space]

I left in spirit binding gear and weapons because its good for the economy - since crafters can make gear to change into materia materials in my system. this doesnt mean essences can -only- come from these places, however they should be a main source to keep crafters jobs . We dont want to have homeless crafters lol. Also I think that other ingredients non essence would be great to come from other sources, like gardening as you said - its just important that we keep a form of spirit binding for the economy.

If you remove that then you have removed a fairly large chunk of the economy.

I understand your feelings though - somewhere in my post I say "I wish to remove this part, but the repercussions would be too great".

Near the end I also mentioned getting materia from monsters, quests, and the things similar. So the only way is not from crafting (though the major source except for some unique named materias should be from the players - to keep the economy turning).

Since this system lets you equip materia at any time a low level quest or monster could reward weaker materia you could use immediately and take with you with and over time level up - materia level up maybe I didnt specify but yes I think they should go with EXP (or perhaps specific actions for rare materia like a blood materia would require you to kill X monsters regardless of exp reward).

This system easily allows for rare ex materia's as you could add and remove them (hence putting it into something doesnt screw you to that weapon till you get rid of it).

I think this is what you were talking about.

Yes I would like materia to be special so we have to prevent a surplus, hence there will be time elements, and a lot of personal effort. Obviously exact values would be easiest to discuss if we actually had a testing bed. So I left things somewhat vague as values would be known best from testing.

I also want each tier to be progressively harder to get - so people really go WOW!! when they see a max tier materia. Since they dont break, this wont be a problem as if you did it in the system currently in 1.0 (current system falls apart in some aspects, and is ready to fall apart in others).


Thank you for the reply btw! ^_^