Quote Originally Posted by Quesse View Post
I don't really get it, the only reason I'm hearing is because drops look cooler.

I think its awesome really. It provides a path to great gear for different types of players. Some people don't care to party and do Ifrit/Mog/Garuda about 20 billion times. They can gather/craft/make gil and get some really nice comparable gear.

Its a fantastic compromise. I think people only whine about it because it breaks the whole status/caste system of having leet gearz come from drops only.

Honestly some of the best melds probably take just as much time and effort as killing ifrit endlessly. So what's the problem?
I hate the fact melded gear beats almost all dungeon gear, tell me why do AV/CC/Primals if you can just farm/gather/craft your whole playtime and get better gear? This is a gear driven MMO better gear = better stats therefore you do your job better (as long as you know how to play your job) therefore if the better gear is from the wards with a few materia melded there is no reason to do the content.

FFXI had a very good way of doing this, leveling took a while (pre-abyssea) you needed new gear as you leveled and crafters made a good income, especially from HQ gear. Then when you got to 75 you would buy the entry level gear from the AH, then after some endgame runs you would start to get the better gear.

The problem in FFXIV has been that leveling is extremely fast, and to level efficiently all you needed was a new weapon whenever you could (see the naked/santa/bikini Ifrit runs) so people didn't mind if their armour was outdated, couple this with fast leveling where changing gear every 10 levels isn't worth it and crafters made little to no money, which is why the materia system came in, so people were blowing up loads of gear, they might not have crafts leveled so they have to buy gear just to blow up making the crafters loads of money. The problem is current endgame (yes for now it is endgame) obsolete as soon as it comes out because the high end double melds and triple melds beat the "new" gear.

The exception is the slots that no decent materia can be melded to (see head for DDs) and whilst darklight does beat the most common melds, it really isn't that hard to beat it with melds, I ran the numbers on the corselet set a while ago and I worked out to beat the pure stats of darklight it only takes mid level triple melds (I think it was high end tier 3 materia mostly) and there was the occasional tier 4 needed.

In ARR if this isn't sorted people will be complaining that to get some of the best gear available all they need to do is farm, farm and farm some more and people will quit over it. This is the only game I have played where crafted gear > endgame gear.