Enhances Ballads and other stats

[Sylve]

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.

And in the end "that other game" got rid of those effects as people were ignoring new gear in favor of old gear because the bonuses on the old gear made the new gear worthless.

Putting things on a long time investment grind is a bad move. You would not only have to find and acquire the gear with the Ability you want, you then also have to equip it for a longish time to be able to use it.
FFTactics uses a similar system. You equip an item, it has an ability, after a while, you learn it.
Unfortunately, the items that had skills you need were often very very weak. Especially when you get a new character at a higher level, you needed to have that character suck for a long time before it finally got good.

While I'm all for discussion and brainstorming about making gear a bit more interesting, i am wholeheartedly against anything that causes a power rift between long time players and new players/alts. Which is what your proposal would do.
Not only that, but you'd be forced to wear much weaker gear for a while even when better gear is available to you, simply because you haven't finished spirit-bonding it, but you would need to finish spirit-bonding it in order to have the skill for the raid which you cant do because your item level is too low to put out the required damage/healing etc ...

I think the Materia system has promise for letting us customize our gear a bit. (Obviously changing the way Materia slots are handled) Example:
All gear has a Primary stat on it, these can't be changed.
But we get 3 Slots in which we can put Materias that grant stats based on the item level.
All gear starts with the Materias equipped providing what SE feels is a 'baseline' stat spread for any given tier of content.
We can then choose to remove the Materias and slot new ones in. So i could take the Orthodox Tunic of Striking which has:
STR 54
Vitality 60
Crit 34
DET 36

But i could, if i wanted to, remove the Determination, and replace it with Skill Speed, Or another Crit Materia at the cost of -x% for each duplicate Materia.

So essentially, all gear would have a "Square approved" baseline stat spread, but we players can shift around the stats for what we want. Or think we want. It'd be up to SE to ensure that DPS numbers wouldn't get out of hand by giving us the customization, But i think it would scratch the "interesting stats" itch that some people have while changing nothing for those that are happy to simply take the gear they're given.

[Nalien]

But i think it would scratch the "interesting stats" itch that some people have while changing nothing for those that are happy to simply take the gear they're given.

I don't think it would, because there is nothing really interesting about swapping out Determination for Skill Speed. That doesn't actually address the issue at all, all that does is give us out right gear customization; Rather than going for a mix of Tomestone and Raid gear, we're now only going for one and then customizing the stats on the gear to be optimal. If anything that would be making matters worse, we'd go from having 2~3 sets of gear to optimize between, to just getting our Esoterics gear and then customizing it to cut out all the excess Accuracy/etc. we don't need.

The AP system from Final Fantasy IX successfully gets around Final Fantasy XIs issue of interesting stats translating into overpowered gear that you wear for the next ten years. The limit on the number of stats you could even set with AP successfully gives SE a roof to balance to as well, you can effectively know that nobody is every going to be able to set more than X stats and balance around that, if balance is even required. I'd see it more as something like Food personally; Something entirely optional that provides a small bonus, but is by no means a requirement. The fact that it would be included on gear like Law and Esoterics gear outright means people would be getting some stats by default, as well.

That, if anything, is what they could balance it to. They already balance raid content around the gear set you should have for it, they'd just need to add to that the stats that gear set would have, because everyone doing the content would have that gear and those stats by default. It would be impossible to play the game and not have a handful of stats to the use AP to set, everyone would have something to set. Yes there would be an "optimal" series of stats to set for various encounters (facing lots of humanoid enemies? Man Eater is an obvious choice), but those kinds of stats would, arguably, be the weakest. The Job specific ones, which you'd expect to find on the Esoterics/Relic sets, which people will be playing with anyway, would be the stronger ones if anything. Stats like Man Eater and High Tide would offer a very marginal boost just to balance for the fact that you'll have (potentially) a whole party of them.

I really cannot picture a scenario where something like this would become a requirement outside what stats you'd already have from the gear you're already wearing. With a cap on how many you can set and everyone getting at least something just by playing, it would literally just be something for min/maxers to obsess over, and those of us who go OCD on this kind of thing. I think the comparison to Food is fairly apt, though unlike Food everyone is going to have some by default, which seems fairer IMO. The bonus provided by no means needs to be a requirement for anything, like Food it would just be something for the "elite" to work with to making things easier/faster.

[Shougun]

I like it, I like talent tree customization (orbs, blobs, grids, boards, whatever, so many systems). While opponents often say they offer the appearance of customization but don't, which is partly true, they still very often offer at least some customization (more than there was without).

Say that flavor of the month build happens, sure people want to switch but often there are at least one or two highly acceptable builds, or even multiple FOTM(s). The benefit from a system like this (and others that use slotting) is that you can customize without significant penalty for making the "wrong" choice or the "goofy and fun" choice. There is something in the sense of RPG when you travel down a path and you have to accept it, but imo with the amount of time put into MMOs over long periods of time and the way FFXIV works on jobs I would just prefer a system that won't beat me upside the head cause I thought x option sounded fun or better and was wrong. That I choose to benefit my solo play style but then I wanted to do a raid and be viable (hardcore RPG mechanics are still cool, imo, but FFXIV for the most part decided to not be that).

Besides the classic/hardcore rpg part of it could be having to earn the ability, which would promote old content and SBing* at least a little - adding more materia and taking some money from the bots. Though there are some dedicated SB players, most of the time I just see a crowed of bots (or people playing with a one macro button). The only issue I'd have with this is that any boss that clearly needs a certain slot (boss sleeps you every 10 seconds, must slot 75% sleep resist) is that SE ensures that the content does not become an ancient road/mountain block by doing a sort of relic update every so often (making abilities bond faster that meet certain requirements). Most likely the below extreme content would be happy with whatever you want, and extreme would have a few dedicated slots and then a freebie(depending on mechanics/how many slots we get). Also I'd like to be able to save slot sheets, or a auto macro button (makes a macro on a click).

*Technically doesn't need to "SB" to do this system, could always just have it tag it untradeable or something (D3 has a system a bit like this now through their Kunai Hordric Cube thing).

Our soul stones teach us about our jobs from the memories of past people, perhaps we can start to leave our mark on the stone too?

[Saziel]

I fully agree. This would be an awesome idea. I loved it in FFIX. We need more interesting, useful gear.

[MiniPrinny]

*snip*

I don't know how you found this thread, or why you made a post, but I'm glad you did so.

Our soul stones teach us about our jobs from the memories of past people, perhaps we can start to leave our mark on the stone too?

Yay, a lore reason. But yes, we need this so much. The system as a whole is something that feels missing from Final Fantasy XIV. We're the first Final Fantasy game since IV that has eschewed customization of player characters, and it is rather jarring. While yes, you can pretend that cross-class abilities are customization, they're an illusion of choice as to compared to a choice between say "reduces the enmity generated by skull sunder and butcher's block" and "thrill of battle heals you over six seconds for 20% of your maximum HP" as two abilities for Warrior. The first is obviously tuned towards making the Warrior a better off-tank, since they wouldn't have to worry about ripping off the main tank with those abilities, while the second is obviously a main tank's tool, and a powerful one at that. They're both equally good, one may be better in math, but not in practice, and I think that's the most important part.

[Felis]

Some of those stats coming back would be nice

It is sad that there is no enmity+ anymore on tank gears. Or enmity- materia for healers.

[Caelum_Dragguell]

Bump because 14 is boring in its itemization scheme and is alienating dedicated players due to its shallow formula and lack of rewarding content