Enhances Ballads and other stats

[Sotek]

I read somewhere that Yoshi intended to implement this later though materia possibly, but I haven't been able to find the source for the life of me.

I hadn't heard that as something the devs put forward, though I do remember plenty of people suggesting it in beta. The one problem I found with that is that (currently) materia is very specific, as in you can only put it on crafted gear. There's also the rarity of it, people suggested something like Choral Shirt could be turned into Enhances Ballads materia, that being a 100% chance seems reasonable (instead of what we currently have with gear converting into almost random materia) but there is still one issue; how do you obtain more of it? Once you've melded it it's stuck to that gear and eventually as the level cap rises, you're going to want it on a new piece of gear, I guess taking Bard's Shirt and converting that could work, since you can reasonably obtain that again... I wouldn't want to reobtain Mythology AF though....

[blipples]

I definitely feel you there Sotek. I would much rather them put in unique pieces of gear that had the effects already on them. I thought the materia idea sounded interesting, but as you were stating above, I feel it would be awkward to implement. I'm hoping the extreme version primals that they're adding drop some gear that has a bit more substance to it than just higher numbers or a brighter glow. I didn't really see it being an issue while I was testing it since Alpha, but now I'm seeing how bland gear (although a lot of it does look sweet) could be a deal breaker for most people.

[Reiterpallasch]

Even "that other game" has unique ability enhancing effects on gear, and they did it in a way where you could still upgrade from that gear and didn't get stuck in it forever. I understand they wanted to simplify things here, but they went way too far with it.

[darkm0d]

Yeah I have heard that the dev team felt they would not have been able to implement the concept (gear with actual interesting stats) within the timeframe of them re-releasing the game.

That being said, I feel that the current gear is incredibly stupid. It's just all super boring -- I only NEED 2 drops from Bahamuts Coil (as a scholar). Just hands and the book. Every other item might as well be my Mythology gear, and even to that end, it's all just useless stat padding. It's totally unacceptable from a FF game imo, and it bothers me that the dev team is so hush hush on this.

[Taaku]

This is a great idea, I was quite disappointing that there where no skill enhancing. especially when many of the AF quests mention the armor as "enhancing a (insert jobs name) abilities" when it really doesn't, at least not literally.

[Sotek]

That being said, I feel that the current gear is incredibly stupid. It's just all super boring -- I only NEED 2 drops from Bahamuts Coil (as a scholar). Just hands and the book. Every other item might as well be my Mythology gear, and even to that end, it's all just useless stat padding. It's totally unacceptable from a FF game imo, and it bothers me that the dev team is so hush hush on this.

Did past Final Fantasy games actually have that much going on with gear? I mean, IX certainly did (and XI), and I guess VII had Materia slots to mix things up, there were usually accessories that did things as well like Ribbon (I particularly remember VI having a lot of effects on accessories), but general equipment? Hasn't that pretty much always just been a steady increase in stats? Some had other things going on I guess, Flame Mail reducing fire damage (though stuff like that got replaced on a dungeon to dungeon basis afaik), or weapons like the Chicken Knife, but for the most part gear has just been a steady progression in stats from what I remember...

Still, part of the reason I remember IX so fondly is because the gear system was so different compared to the other titles. It made equipment much more interesting, rather than just upgrading to the best in slot, I'd also have to think about the Abilities I want to unlock. Making equipment interesting is definitely something a MMO needs in my opinion, I think it would be really great for instances where there are two pieces of gear to pick (Mythology gear/Allagan) if one was the best in slot, and the other had a trait you want to unlock; OK, Argute Gown is the best body piece of Scholar, and maybe it has Enhances Adloquium II (going off my previous examples), but the Allagan Tunic Of Healing has Enhances Cure Potency, something else I'd probably really want to get on Scholar. While the Tunic might not be better, I still have reason to obtain it and equip it for a while. Usually I might actually see that as a needless grind, but given ARRs complete lack of grinding so far, especially at endgame (well, it is a grind, but with weekly lock outs), it's something I'd damn sure welcome...

[Shiyo]

This is one of the best gear ideas ever! Completely unique, works in the game, and super fun/interesting with lots of content added just by a simple idea! Love it so much.

Please do this, or something like it SE. It's REALLY REALLY annoying single player JRPG's have such fun/insane gear customization/options/upgrading and you picked the most boring, generic, safe way of gearing that requires NO USER INPUT OR THOUGHT AT ALL.

[Raminax]

<snip>

Final Fantasy X equipment was devoid of raw stats as well. Instead, they'd usually have abilities similar to FFIX, although they weren't permanently learnable for a set amount of AP. You could also use various materials to attach new abilities to your equipment. There were the fairly mundane things such as +X% Strength or Defence, while there also were more interesting things such as Half/One MP Cost, Counter, Gillionaire, First-Strike, Auto-Haste and so on. Actual combat stats were gained through the level progression/sphere grid system.

But otherwise I'd say you have the right gist of it. Outside of quirky things like Golden Hairpins reducing MP costs and Ribbons preventing most/all negative status effects, gear progression in most Final Fantasy games is fairly linear.

[Stanice]

This is a great idea and I definitely support it.

Turning those gears into materia with %100 chance (also suggested in this thread) is also a good idea but then there are issues like penta-melding creating overpowered gears, melding success chance and re-obtaining gears etc .. Too many issues.

Also FFIX is the best FF game ever.

[Alhanelem]

there's 2 threads about this on the front page and there have been several before already. I'm not really sure what makes stats "interesting" and "not boring". Stats are stats.

That aside, we are still running the first version of ARR. I fully expected the initial crop of gear to be basic (contrary to what some are saying, FFXI's gear at launch was pretty basic as well.), and more elaborate stuff to be added over time. The same was true for FFXI, where they added all kinds of things like set bonuses, ability modifiers, augments, a (crappy) socketing system, enchantments, and more.

Item level makes it more difficult to introduce fancy effects to gear because an item might become obsolete from its core stats but the special effect might make you hold on to it. Additionally, with no gear swapping in combat you have to choose what special effects you want to have the most, because you can't minmax every single ability via gear swapping. I think accessories will be more likely to bestow special effects as they contribute a significantly smaller amount of core stats.

What we do know is there are going to be a number of special effects on gear for PvP so we know they are adding more functionality for gear stats. It is just a matter of time until we find out exactly what comes of it.