Enhances Ballads and other stats

[Sotek]

So... This will pretty much be a repost of a suggestion I posted back during beta... *ahem*

Right, so... Gear no longer has any remotely interesting stats what-so-ever. No more HP drain effect on Moogle weapons, on additional Fire damage on Ifrit weapons, no Enhances Ballads on Choral Shirt (also no Piety on that, which is odd given Piety = MP = Songs). While that is massively disappointing, I do understand why they've done so. Continuing the Choral Shirt example, Bard would effectively be stuck in that forever, same for all the Song enhancement AF pieces, for that matter... But, while I understand why such enhancements have been done away with, I don't think they should have been completely removed. Instead the developers should have found a way to keep such stats without making specific gear overpowered... So, my solution? Play Final Fantasy IX.

Done? OK. How gear worked in Final Fantasy IX, more or less, is exactly what I suggest the developers do here to bring back stats such as Enhances Ballads. For those that didn't play Final Fantasy IX go away, the system was simple;

• Each piece of gear had Abilities (called Abilities in the game, they're closer to Traits in XIV though) set to them.
• When you equip a character that piece of gear, you can use Ability Points (AP), which the character earns through leveling up, to set that Ability as an active ability.
• All of these Abilities also had a progress bar, AP dropped in battle would fill the bar, and once it is maxed out, you no longer needed that piece of gear equipped to set it. It was permanently unlocked on that character.
• This also included weapons, which occasionally had Actions on them (abilities in XIV, things like Steal for example). While these are permanently unlocked in the same way as Abilities, they did not require AP to set once they'd been unlocked.
• Some of the Abilities included things like Maneater, which increased your damage against humanoid enemies, High Tide, which increased the rate a character Trance (Limit Break) gauge fills, and more overpowered things such as Auto-Life, which automatically Raised the character when KO'd.

No really, go away and play Final Fantasy IX or never come back...

So, hopefully that actually seems quite familiar in terms of A Realm Reborn... Currently, we can equip pieces of gear, as we gain EXP we also fill up a bar to Spiritbind that gear... Currently we then turn that gear into Materia, but I'm sure you've all noticed not all gear can be converted into Materia; including AF gear. We also have an additional abilities selection... So, my suggestion is simple;

• Add an Additional Traits section to the Actions & Traits menu.
• Certain pieces of gear have unique Spiritbind Stats, which show up in the Additional Traits section and need to be set and can only be set while the gear is equipped.
• Upon getting 100% Spiritbind in such gear, that stat is unlocked permanently.
• The amount of Additional Traits you can set can be limited the same way the number of Additional Actions is limited.
• For example, Choral Shirt would have Enhances Ballads, which increases the amount of MP recovered by Ballad. Perhaps Bard's Shirt would have Enhances Ballads II.
• Relic weapons could also be included in this, as well as Primal ones. Bringing back the additional effects the Relics used to have and the additional damage effects the Primal weapons had. Relic weapons could also perhaps have additional abilities which can be unlocked...

This would (hopefully) achieve a few things... Firstly, making obtaining certain pieces of gear worthwhile while they're currently not so (why would I bother to get a Titan weapon when he just gave me a Relic?). Secondly, add some much needed character customization to the game; I set High Tide so we can build the Limit Break meter faster, you set Auto-Life because you can't dodge plumes, and so on. And finally... It adds something new to do at endgame... Going back and obtaining any gear for Traits you missed, repeating Turn 3 because you need to Spiritbind some iLv90 gear, etc. etc.. Simple enough suggestion (totally needed 4000 extra words of banter), I'm sure there are some balancing issues, but I at least think its worth the developers considering it. Also Final Fantasy IX is the best Final Fantasy and you should feel bad for not playing it that's more than enough reason for the developers to implement this.

tl;dr - Gear gets unique stats like Enhances Ballads again. Upon Spiritbinding that gear, you no longer need to wear the gear for that stat, instead you can set the stat on a new menu option similar to how subclass skills function. Gear gets to be remotely interesting again, without people being stuck in a single piece of gear for the rest of the game because of how useful that stat is. Unlike subclass skills, there would probably be a lot of such stats to unlock and set, adding some much needed character customization to the game.