Why is materia capped/unusable on gear?

[Uriahnool]

As a BLM, my goal is to get items that increase my INT, spell speed, critical hit rate, etc. My goal as BLM is to get my attack magic potency up high so I can do more damage and be more useful in a party.

So I have a HQ weapon with:
INT +11
VIT +11
Spell Speed +18
Determination +8
O - materia slot
O - materia slot

Why can I not shove my int +3 materia into the slots, or a vit +3 materia or a spell speed? You know, something useful that I can benefit from with attaching materia. I want to increase my equipment's abilities with materia, which is what it is supposed to do. I meet the level requirements. I thought that was the whole point of the materia system.

I understand something about dungeon gear and how crafted or bought gear isn't allowed to be as good as dungeon gear because people who got dungeon gear might cry or something, but honestly, this is frustrating. I should be able to put any level materia on any gear as long as there is a slot.

Also, I would like to see HP +50 materia.

[Tupsi]

Your weapon is capped on INT, VIT and Spell Speed, especially if it's a higher tiered weapon. You have to put those items in other slots. People complained about melding in XIV so when he redid the system he made it more inline of some other MMOs (though a lot of others have near limitless slots, but they also had better itemization.)

We had lots of good materia to use, but he got rid of them as well as varying amounts per materia :\

[Lysandrus]

Each piece of gear has a max stat value it can provide, based on its level and type. HQ gear will always be very close to the cap for all stats already on it, so adding materia of a stat already present isn't viable.

[Uriahnool]

Each piece of gear has a max stat value it can provide, based on its level and type. HQ gear will always be very close to the cap for all stats already on it, so adding materia of a stat already present isn't viable.

I understand this. But what I don't understand is why there is a cap, and why bother with materia if the items you get will already be capped in the areas that matter? Is materia to be considered just another way to make an item HQ then?

[Lysandrus]

I understand this. But what I don't understand is why there is a cap, and why bother with materia if the items you get will already be capped in the areas that matter? Is materia to be considered just another way to make an item HQ then?

It's that way to prevent people from stacking a single stat at the expense of everything else. You can still do so to an extent by stacking as much as you can on your other gear that doesn't already have the stat in question, but just not to the extreme.

[Nero]

I understand this. But what I don't understand is why there is a cap, and why bother with materia if the items you get will already be capped in the areas that matter? Is materia to be considered just another way to make an item HQ then?

To prevent people from making pure op-items like this:



There has to be a cap, or you will have a system which is not balanced at all.

[Uriahnool]

To prevent people from making pure op-items like this:



There has to be a cap, or you will have a system which is not balanced at all.

Even so, gear like this would cost quite a lot of money to make and take a lot of trail and error. I would look at this gear as inspiration and to strive to that point, I wouldn't get mad or feel there was something wrong with doing this. If the example pictured was the issue, why not limit it to one or two slots max for that piece of gear and allow anything to go in it?

[Sumii]

To prevent people from making pure op-items like this:



There has to be a cap, or you will have a system which is not balanced at all.

With the way 2.0's melding system fails you can use that picture for your argument. What that picture doesn't show is likely how many times that person had to completely lose all materias, catalysts, and the armor itself in 1.0. When you failed in 1.x everything was lost, not just the materia/catalyst. Not to mention Tier IV melding on second chance at best was 16-20%. It was an exponential decrease in % every additional materia added. People that spent the time spirit binding endlessly and spending vasts amounts of gil to get that gear earned it by a huge cost of time/money/patience.

[Cicero]

Due to the stat caps existing, I am not sure why we have the various tiers of primary stat (INT, STR, DEX, MND) materia then. Your gear is going to already have your main stat, so why even have the materia in game if we will not be able to use them? I mean sure you could use STR materia on a BLM and not be blocked from the stat cap, but that makes no sense.

This issue is why things like STR III materia sells for like 400 gil, but the tier 3 crit materia goes for like 40k each on the market.

[Renala]

In 1.0 you used to be able to put any number of stats on them. Commonly to be a good monk/drg/blm you needed 50 int on your head slot or 50 str on your gloves. People always complained about that. Also, guy above me shows one of those str gloves.