Bonus stats are pointless

[Kaonis]

So I've been giving this some thought, and really the more I think about it, the more I realize the bonus stat system in the game is worthless. The biggest reason for this is because of how the stats themselves work, they are very streamlined in what stats do.

I'll use FFXI as a comparison. In FFXI the 2 big DPS stats for physical characters was STR and DEX. STR affected damage regardless if you punched things, bashed things, or shot things. DEX affected your ability to do crits and your accuracy. By comparison in XIV STR is damage for melee, DEX is damage for ranged and that's all they do. For a job in XIV you only want the corresponding main stat for the type of damage you deal (STR, DEX, INT), the other stats do nothing for you. So in XI as a DPS you balanced out DEX and STR, your ability to hit things vs your ability to do damage to it. In XIV you just load up on one stat and call it a day. So for example on my DRG I have 30 points into STR, because DEX, INT, MND, PIE do nothing at all for me. They are essentially worthless stats I just have.

Of course some people will argue you can at least put points into VIT, but even that I think most people find a waste of stats points. Firstly so many fights have hard DPS checks so every bit of DPS increasing attributes are beyond helpful to make so you can pass the check and push phases a little quicker. So any point in VIT is a loss of DPS. Secondly you get a good deal of VIT through gear, more than enough to do content. Most fights DPS shouldn't be getting hit to begin with other than a stray mistake here and there, or from big unavoidable attacks that your supposed to survive (i.e primals big signature moves). Often times if they DO get hit, no amount of VIT will help anyways, such as eating landslide, double wicked wheel, stacked plumes, etc. Too often the fights have just big hit attacks or knockbacks that make VIT irrelevant, it's a do or die sort of mechanic.

For tanks it's the same deal, you put all your points into VIT and call it a day. Tanks are about surviving, so they need to put points into stats that help them survive. A small increase in damage doesn't help them with this, especially when mobs hit extremely hard regardless of your ilvl. The only benefits tank wise STR and DEX give are an increase to block and parry, but because they operate on a long range to round up to a whole number instead of giving you decimal values, you would nee to pour in a lot of points into STR or DEX to see only a 1% increase of block/parry rate or mitigation. Something so tiny it can't over shadow an extra 700 or so more health.

Playing my tank in XIV the best way to tank is just to have a lot of health, there's not much else you can do to help mitigation as most of it comes from the parry stat, or cooldowns. Stat point wise all you can do to help with mitigation is have a larger health pool.

TL;DR version, stats are stupid simple in this game compared to other games and result in the bonus stats being 100% worthless as there's only 1 stat you should ever dump points into for your job.

So my question now, given how simplistic this system is why is the bonus stat points even allowed in the game? It only allows for people to risk wasting them in stats that serve little to absolutely no purpose, or even more importantly for classes like ACN that have 2 jobs, it forces the player to pick only 1 build (play SCH better or play SMN better), or to split their points in half and only play each at less than their full potential. This is a concern for those that like to play both SMN and SCH, and for all future classes that will get 2 jobs.

[Thyrel]

It's well known these 30 attribute points are worthless, nothing new here :/

[Mimilu]

While I think using FFXI as an comparison is a little off (considering XI runs on a skill-based system and stats are determined by race, job, support job, and equipment, so damage involves a lot more then you described), I do agree that this system is a smidge over simplified.

[Hiroradius]

The ability points currently are useless. If your a black mage and NOT putting your points into INT, something is wrong with you..

Now if they wanted to make them more useful, while people will probably bite my head off for saying this, BUT.. instead of having those points be per job/class, be just the 30 points per character, regardless of job/class. So if you put 30 points in INT because you were a black mage, then wanted to play as a warrior, you don't get a new 30 points to put somewhere, they are just placed into INT, that's it.

[Mimilu]

Now if they wanted to make them more useful, while people will probably bite my head off for saying this, BUT.. instead of having those points be per job/class, be just the 30 points per character, regardless of job/class. So if you put 30 points in INT because you were a black mage, then wanted to play as a warrior, you don't get a new 30 points to put somewhere, they are just placed into INT, that's it.

That would be horrible and completely defeats the purpose of being able to switch between classes/jobs.

[Mcshiggs]

That would be horrible and completely defeats the purpose of being able to switch between classes/jobs.

Wow someone actually dumped this in here before I could put that if they did Hiroradius' idea, then people would just complain about not being able to do everything on one character.

[Mimilu]

Wow someone actually dumped this in here before I could put that if they did Hiroradius' idea, then people would just complain about not being able to do everything on one character.

And that's a bad thing?
This would effect you, who has all battle classes at level 50, the most, considering it would nerf all but one of them at a given time (your main).

[Mcshiggs]

And that's a bad thing?
This would effect you, who has all battle classes at level 50, the most, considering it would nerf all but one of them at a given time (your main).

I wouldn't mind, it makes sense to me that someone that plays black mage most of the time would be able to do more damage than someone that plays monk most of the time but swaps over to black mage for things like Garuda Extreme because they can't figure out wicked wheel. I also know this won't happen, Yoshi-P has already said in some interviews that he has had to kill some of his own ideas for this game because it would force players to make choices that could take away the "everythingness" for one character, like his idea for gladiator, instead of branching to paladin and dark knight, having to make a choice between paladin or dark knight. I like the second idea personally, only put in a quest where you could swap, but maybe put a week long cooldown on it or something. You would still be able to do everything on one character, just not everything right now, and that is one of the problems with this game, people want everything right now, with as little work as possible, that's why there is so much whining about the stats being tied to class instead of job, they say you have to gimp one job or the other, which isn't true, you farm seals, buy hymns then you can swap your points at will, but then those people complain it is too much work, stupid and against the armory system letting you do everything, and they refuse to admit that a summoner with 15 less int is still a summoner, so the system isn't preventing them from being a max stat summoner, their laziness to not farming seals is.

[Hiroradius]

That would be horrible and completely defeats the purpose of being able to switch between classes/jobs.

No actually it would cause people to have a MAIN class, and the switching would be alt classes. Right now the way this game is designed, you MAIN everything. If they set it so the ability point would be the same between all classes/jobs, then yes people still could main as a Black mage, but sub as a white mage, they may not be as good as someone who main class is white mage but can do the job.

You can still buy the ability point reset option from you grand company in case you decide you want to main as a white mage instead of black mage.

This will also cause more tanks whether people believe it or not. The reason, if you rolled a Gladiator/Paladin got to level 50, then decided you were bored and wanted to play Archer/Bard, you could now be at level 50, people need a tank to run CT, and you decide you are a Bard tonight and run as that instead.

People would cry and complain if they made that change now, but if that was the way it was at the beginning, people would whine but people would also accept it and we would have people being more specific jobs. We would have more tanks AND people might then roll alts instead to be a different job (even though you could buy the stat reallocation potion), so they would have their Paladin character, and an alt Bard character.

[Kitru]

This will also cause more tanks whether people believe it or not.

No, it wouldn't because all of the people that main as DPS or heals but alt as tanks, which is a much larger portion of the tank population as a whole than those who main tank but alt as a healer or DPS, would be penalized when running as an alt tank, which ends up reducing the practical tank population. Having bonus stats applied to characters instead of classes would simply place a stigma on running any alt class, which is contradictory to the way the armory system works: you're supposed to be able to have a single character that can play any of the classes with equal aplomb (given that you have the gear for it). If you penalize someone for actually playing a class other than their own (or, more appropriately, penalizing them for playing a class with a different mainstat), it detracts from the given system.

We would have more tanks AND people might then roll alts instead to be a different job (even though you could buy the stat reallocation potion), so they would have their Paladin character, and an alt Bard character.

And why exactly should the devs try to encourage people to roll alt characters? The armory system is designed so that you can get the experience of rolling alt characters without having to do so. The only reason that you should ever *need* to roll an alt character is if you want to run weekly content more than once per week, since that's the only restriction applied to a character.