About the armory system, gear and cooperation

[Lakshmana]

This post about the armory system, gear and abilities and how to make them more interesting and give more depth to the battles.

We'll start with an important premise:
In order for the system to have depth, it must involve CHOICE, this meaning that, in configuring his character for a battle, a player won't be able to get ALL the things in his arsenal. He will have to choose what he takes into that battle.

This should go for a lot of aspects for the game, but we'll focus on two
1. Gear
2. Cross-class abilities

1. Gear
a. There MUST NOT exist a concept as an overal Best In Slot item for ALL situations
Or at least not for all slots. Different pieces of gear should be better in different situations.
This doesn't have to be extremely extened so that each player has a ton of gear, for a ton of situations. Things must be a bit more situational then now.

Examples:
- gear with elemental resistances. Stack on fire resistance to allow you to tank a fire boss (like Ifrit)
- gear with resistances to certain statuses (resistance to Heavy, to Paralyze etc.)
- gear giving bonuses to damage agains certain enemies
- gear giving TP/MP regeneration
- gear giving bonuses to certain actions done by other party members (for instance, gear which increases the cures you receive)
- gear reducing certain type of damages
- gear increasing speed of movement (for better avoidance of AOE)
- etc.

b. Bonuses to gear pieces can be accompanied with bad things
Examples:
- gear that greatly increases damage, but reduces movement speed
- gear that greatly increase critical chance, but reduces skill speed
- gear that makes "Cover" last longer, but reduces its range
- gear that makes "Medica" more potent, but reduces its radius
- etc.

The entire idea is to create situations in which a player can say: "Hmm... what is the best thing for THIS fight?". The answer may be the same for 80% of the fights, but even if in just 20% of the fights the setup will be different, it will still feel a lot better than now.

2. Cross-class abilities
There are a couple of rules here, in fact quite simple:
a. The number of really useful cross-class abilities for a certain job must be significantly HIGHER than the number of cross-class slots available

How much higher? A good point of start would be something like 2X, meaning:
- 5 cross-class slots
- 10 cross-class abilities that you really want

Again, this goes back to the need of choosing the combination of abilities, depending on what you're about to face. Something that hits hard: stack on defense abilities.

b. Some traits should be cross-class, taking a cross-class slot as well
This just helps on having more useful things to choose from. Allow my PLD to get a trait from a mage that increases my MP, so that I can spam Flash if a certain fight requires me to pick up a lot of adds. Just an example...

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These aside, there's another important subject:

3. Cooperation
I really think we need jobs to interact with each other in a more interesting ways. This means there should exist mechanics that force the players to cooperate in order to reach maximum efficiency.
Simple examples:
- Let's say MNK would get an ability that guarantees that the next hit is a critical with 2X damage if the enemy is stunned. And 3X damage if the enemy is stunned and blind. So all of a sudden there's a collaboration between a PLD and a MNK.
- Let's say DRG woud get an ability that allows him to deal HUGE spike damage to the mob, but only if he has hate on the mob. So DRG takes Provoke and turns the mob on him, tank uses Cover, DRG does his huge damage, tank uses Provoke, mob is back on him, but closer to death.
- Also we have the example of Sneak Attack and/or Trick Attack (some of the greatest mechanics I've seen in a battle)

It's this type of collaboration that gives depth to the battle. Some stuff shouldn't be that obvious, since the pleasure is to discover this type of strategies.

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Sorry for a long post

-Lak

[Shakarlyn]

1. Gear
a. There MUST NOT exist a concept as an overall Best In Slot item for ALL situations
Or at least not for all slots. Different pieces of gear should be better in different situations.
This doesn't have to be extremely extend so that each player has a ton of gear, for a ton of situations. Things must be a bit more situational then now.

This game is too young and far too little content for this to be discussed too deeply right now. There are various opinions and some different BiS setups for classes, but you have to consider that there's very little to pick from the pool at this time.

Resistance mechanics are a double edged sword. Please be careful what you wish for.

2. Cross-class abilities
There are a couple of rules here, in fact quite simple:
a. The number of really useful cross-class abilities for a certain job must be significantly HIGHER than the number of cross-class slots available

While I think it would be nice to have maybe 1 more slot, certainly not 5 more. They might as well auto-grant the abilities instead of crossing them over if you asked for this and we'd likely lose some of the abilities that can be crossed over. I respectfully disagree, sir.

b. Some traits should be cross-class, taking a cross-class slot as well
This just helps on having more useful things to choose from. Allow my PLD to get a trait from a mage that increases my MP, so that I can spam Flash if a certain fight requires me to pick up a lot of adds. Just an example...

There's too much room for abuse on this. The benefits would have to be pretty small. =.(

3. Cooperation
I really think we need jobs to interact with each other in a more interesting ways. This means there should exist mechanics that force the players to cooperate in order to reach maximum efficiency.

You're pretty much asking for FFXI's Weaponskill system. There would be +/- to this. One of the biggest things that is likely to happen is job bias, because the playerbase would want to make a "perfect" group that works well with their skills.

[Azoryl]

OP, the gear idea is horrible. The majority of people do not want to carry around 10 sets of armor for one class. What about people who have all 50's? They would have to carry around a ton of gear... way more then the system allows.

I agree about cross class skills needing to be buffed. Maybe allow the passive traits to carry over.. or something.

[Lakshmana]

OP, the gear idea is horrible. The majority of people do not want to carry around 10 sets of armor for one class. What about people who have all 50's? They would have to carry around a ton of gear... way more then the system allows.

The Armory chest is quite big, but even ignoring this, the idea is not to have 10 sets of armor for one class. Just more than one, which is best at everything, meaning all the rest is disregarded ^^
Further more, there's no need to carry ALL the sets with you, since you're not facing ALL the fights/situations at once.

-Lak

[Lakshmana]

You're pretty much asking for FFXI's Weaponskill system. There would be +/- to this. One of the biggest things that is likely to happen is job bias, because the playerbase would want to make a "perfect" group that works well with their skills.

No, not something that specific, requiring a certain pair of jobs, something much more open. For instance, the example I have with the DRG and PLD doesn't work just with that pair of jobs. The idea is for the system to offer options and be open, not to be locked on Job X works only with Job Y (which the skillchain system was about, with all the negatives coming from that).

-Lak

[Lakshmana]

While I think it would be nice to have maybe 1 more slot, certainly not 5 more. They might as well auto-grant the abilities instead of crossing them over if you asked for this and we'd likely lose some of the abilities that can be crossed over. I respectfully disagree, sir.

I think that in fact we are in agreement. What I was saying was that the number of available abilities to be higher than the number of SLOTS. So let's say we get 6 slots, but there are like 10-12 abilities that are useful. With this, it means I have to choose what to get with me in the next fight.

Right now on my PLD I have 5 slots and only like 4 kind of useful abilities to put in there.

So definitely I do not want more slots. Here we agree. I want more abilities, while the slots remain limited, to force us to choose.

-Lak

[Arkista]

SE really dropped the ball in this game with their gear. The number problem I see is Elemental Materia. Why give us Elemental Materia and it have no uses? Elemental Resistance should be used in this game Fire to reduce Ifrits Plumes/Eruption, Earth for Titans Landslides/Tumults, Wind for Garuda Slipstream/Friction. There are other elements, I guess we would need to wait for Ramuh, Shiva, and Leviathan.

Maybe when SE adds Super Crazy primal fights they will be of some use.

I would love to have some gear on my MNK that gives some TP Regen, Maybe Bonus DMG added to Flank/Rear attacks.


And that crap I heard that Yoshi said he didn't want to Elemental Resistance is Total BS. He doesn't want Jobs being left out "Someone who does Earth DMG on Titan" Doesn't BLM get fire/ice spells?

[synaesthetic]

And that crap I heard that Yoshi said he didn't want to Elemental Resistance is Total BS. He doesn't want Jobs being left out "Someone who does Earth DMG on Titan" Doesn't BLM get fire/ice spells?

As a black mage, I assert that you have no idea what you're talking about. Ice spells are for our recovery phase. Our DPS is vastly reduced when we use ice spells. The goal of playing BLM properly is to make sure you stay in ice phase for as little time as possible and maximize your time in fire phase for optimum DPS.

If Ifrit, for example, was immune to fire damage, then BLMs would simply be completely excluded from that fight. We'd all have to switch jobs to do the fight, and then how would we get our relic?

[NyneAlexander]

re: gear and cooperation

Did you play FFXI? Remember how much of a nightmare it was to carry 3 pieces for every slot to be useful? No thanks! Having 4 DoW/M jobs, 2 DoL jobs and 6 DoH jobs geared, I'm already having a bit of an inventory/armory chest nightmare.

And in terms of cooperation, I would love to see some ideas like you mentioned. But again, I'd like to refer to FFXI, specifically the THF job. Trying to get the party to position properly for SATA damage was like pulling teeth out of a shark. It was a huge pain in the butt and if you said anything about it to the pt, there was a strong chance someone was gonna bite your head off.

Also, there was a tank in one of my ls's who has lots of gils. He HQ'd an entire tank set and put nothing but earth materia in slots for the sole purpose of tanking titan. While he said it did make a difference, it was highly impractical for two reasons: 1.) the gear set was literally only good for one fight and 2.) the highest ilvl available (currently) for materia melding is ilvl 70. Having ilvl90 gear completely negated any advantage of having a "titan" set with +earth resistance.

[Lakshmana]

re: gear and cooperation
Did you play FFXI? Remember how much of a nightmare it was to carry 3 pieces for every slot to be useful? No thanks! Having 4 DoW/M jobs, 2 DoL jobs and 6 DoH jobs geared, I'm already having a bit of an inventory/armory chest nightmare.

Yes, I played and yes, you are right. But in FFXI it was a nightmare also because going back to your home and to the battlefield was taking ages. I think there's much more convenience in FFXIV in this respect. Still, I understand what you're saying. I just simply feel that if every job will have just ONE set of armor, used for everything, everywhere, the game will lack depth and customization, while also meaning that crafting will reamain pretty much doomed for eternity and we all hope it will recover and become useful again.

And in terms of cooperation, I would love to see some ideas like you mentioned. But again, I'd like to refer to FFXI, specifically the THF job. Trying to get the party to position properly for SATA damage was like pulling teeth out of a shark. It was a huge pain in the butt and if you said anything about it to the pt, there was a strong chance someone was gonna bite your head off.

You are right again, indeed. Maybe guys in FFXIV are a bit better at positioning, though, since a big part of the fights is about where you standing and how you move. They may be more willing to accept things like this and it would really bring something cool in the battle/party mechanics IMHO.

Also, there was a tank in one of my ls's who has lots of gils. He HQ'd an entire tank set and put nothing but earth materia in slots for the sole purpose of tanking titan. While he said it did make a difference, it was highly impractical for two reasons: 1.) the gear set was literally only good for one fight and 2.) the highest ilvl available (currently) for materia melding is ilvl 70. Having ilvl90 gear completely negated any advantage of having a "titan" set with +earth resistance.

Indeed, the fact that you can't meld materia on the highest items is mind boggling to me. There'so much depth to be found in the materia system and right now it is completely useless. I really don't understand why they did this. Hopefully it's just something done because of rushed content and it will be better in the future. I would love to be able to increase the power of my gear while employing the services of some crafters (or do it myself).

As a side note, it would be really cool to have coop-melding, meaning two crafters working together to meld a single materia on a piece of item, so that we're not always 100% independent, to increase/force cooperation between the players ^^