Should you have to be wearing gear you attach to for Materia making?

[Peregrine]

You shouldn't have to wear gear that you're attaching to. Here's why:

1. Matsui's new battle system supposedly focuses on wholehearted play, where effort is rewarded and halfhearted devotion struggles.

2. Attachment points are a grind-based system, where many hours of activity goes toward gaining attachment. Thus, you will spend a lot of time with that gear you aim to turn to materia.

3. Gear that will be turned into materia will economically be the cheapest piece that will result in the desired materia.

4. Combine points two and three, and you have people wearing the cheapest pieces for long amounts of time.

5. Point 4 sets up a system where players are encouraged to wear lower quality gear than they actually own, to benefit from materia grinding.

6. Or, alternatively skilling up materia on their own time in grind solofests, which is boring gameplay.

7. If players bring cheap gear out to performance venues to get materia on, like SP parties and raids, that lack of gear quality inherent to the materia grind undermines Matsui's goal.

8. At that point, you have people not putting their best foot forward on purpose just to achieve a gameplay mechanic goal. This is counter to the spirit of Final Fantasy. It is not "Final Fantasy" to not put your best foot forward on purpose, nor is it final fantasy to whack moles for hours just to wear down gear on purpose so you can convert it.

As such, it is better for attachment of gear to be independent of you equipping it, that you can choose ANY gear to attach to.

Four benefits you can't get otherwise.

1. Players have every reason to put their best foot forward in battle, at all times.
2. Players can still grow materia through activities at the peak of their performance abilities.
3. Players will not need to grind materia on their own time in meaningless time-extending gameplay.
4. This method eliminates potential conflict between players who would rather perform at their best than get materia and those who would rather perform less than their best, but with the ability to get materia.

With this system, it simply becomes everyone performing their best, and everyone getting materia.

There are no downsides. There are only positives. You should not have to equip gear to materia it.

The gut reaction is to balk and say of course you should have to equip gear to attach to it. RESIST that urge and critically think about what that makes players do, for no real reason.

[Perrin_Aybarra]

I do see where you want to go with this topic that you are also defending in another thread but honestly a lot of what you are assuming is just that, assumptions. You/we don't even know what gears can be turned into materia, how long it takes, which gear gives which materia and so on. Is there a set list of materia or if your gear has +3 vit and +3mnd you get to choose between several materia which gives +3 vit, +3 mnd or +1 vit/+2 mnd, etc? we were just told the barebones of the system and you go all out on these assumptions that you seem very frustrated and blinded by your own aggressivity toward this.

What I want to say is just to sit back and relax, take a deep breath and wait for further details/testing before crying out loud all over the forums.

No hard feelings.

[Peregrine]

There are no forseeable circumstances in which what we know will result in a system that is not what I just described.
Pre-empt the inevitable mistake, so it doesn't have to be fixed like the rest of the game.

You all think this isn't predictable, but it completely is.

All you need to know is that materia is grown from gear that is equipped.
That renders the gear equipped as cheap as possible for the desired effect.
This equipped gear will be less than optimal.
And you shoot yourself in the foot.

For you to be correct in your assumption that we can't tell where this system is going, you would have to propose a system that defies that.

If you propose that system, I'll tell you exactly why the developers can't implement your system.

Most people will counter-argue that maybe the best gear is going to make the best materia.
I'll tell you exactly why that can't work if you don't already see. It would make the problem that materia aims to address even worse if that were the case.

This is actually inevitable unless you don't have to wear materia-attachment gear.

I am tired by systems done poorly the first few times, because no one sees the obvious.

[Perrin_Aybarra]

well good for you if it is, myself I will not argue on it until I have it seen or described in full by the dev. You can pretend all you want that there is only your outcome that is forseable but you don't have even half the details of how it actually work, you just assume that's how it works.

[Peregrine]

Once they describe it in full, it's too late.
This is the POINT of the forums.

[Perrin_Aybarra]

Well ok I will try to go in that direction.

Even if we have to actually wear the gear, since we do NOT know how long we have to grind with it to convert it to materia actually takes, we can only but give second hand feedback.

So assuming that you wear the gear, of course you won't be wearing you materia-grinding gears for actual content, you will have to take some time to grind on mobs or other activities (since we again don't know what will affect the affinity to rise). And again, since you are only but assuming that it will take hours upon hours to make materia, you cannot give any good feedback.

Maybe the more you outrank a gear, the faster you will create a materia out of it and the slower you will if you are under the rank or just slightly over, that way for better materia you actually wear gears closer to your rank and by doing so you are not so gimped so that if you do leves you do not put your group in any danger, but you put your best gears when you go for dungeons or harder end-game content.

So all your complaining, even if you try to say this is feedback, is all for nothing because you don't know how they planned it. Maybe they already thought about it and the grinding time is adjusted in relation to your rank with the gear rank you are transforming into materia.

so who knows? the dev team. Why can't we give constructive feedback? because we only know half of the system at best.

[Peregrine]

"since we do NOT know how long we have to grind with it to convert it to materia actually takes"

Time is irrelevant. If less time, you simply bring more low-grade gear to wear.

"of course you won't be wearing you materia-grinding gears for actual content, you will have to take some time to grind on mobs or other activities"

It is by no means a guarantee that people won't try to do performance events in materia farm gear. They tried to sp in trial weapons in XI. You have no precedent here. And are we really that stupid as to ask square enix to add an event so poorly designed that you have to skill it up on your own time? Is that fun? Is that entertainment? Do you like mindlessly plowing? Is that the BEST the developers can do? Materia on your own time? No, I say materia on everything you do. Why anything less?


"Maybe the more you outrank a gear, the faster you will create a materia out of it "

Encouraging unter-level gear wearing? That's counter Matsui.

" that way for better materia you actually wear gears closer to your rank and by doing so you are not so gimped"

But you're still gimped, so it's an inferior system to wearing your best gear always. You have no benefit to your argument. I have all the advantages.

I do know what is planned. This is the only logical conclusion of that plan's mistake.

Gear should not have to be equipped to be turned into materia. It is counter-goal.

I would rather you disagree and try to argue that gear should be worn, since the argument to "wait and see"...irrelevant. No lol... That's not the point of these forums. Be efficient. Be useful.

[Peregrine]

Tell me why gear should be worn to be attached to. Try. You can't! Because it makes sense? It doesn't make any sense. It's just what everyone expects has to be like it has to be because that's the way everyone expects it to be. It makes no sense at all.

The more you think about such an idea, the worse it sounds. Go ahead and try to argue it!

[Perrin_Aybarra]

the gears has to be worn because as they described it you build up affinity with the gear to convert the energy built into materia. How do you build up affinity with gears lying around in your bag?

Anyways it's just so riddiculous trying to have a discussion with you on this subject and clearly you have you mind set on this exact outcome. Like I said earlier and even if you tear down my post and give the same arguments over and over, you don't know the whole system and you are not a dev at SE. so until we get more revealed your complaint and call for arms is moot. It's nice to voice your concerns and you did in several posts. Clearly no one really agrees or care about arguing this point with you with the little information we got so far as no one but me tried to answer this post.

Regardless, have a nice evening!

[Peregrine]

the gears has to be worn because as they described it you build up affinity with the gear to convert the energy built into materia. How do you build up affinity with gears lying around in your bag?

They code it like that. Gee, that was easy. How does that work in Eorzea? Well Aetheryte attuning. The 12 allow it.
There you go.
See, the thing you fail to realise is that they can do whatever they want. THERE IS NO SPOON.
The attached gear doesn't even have to be in your inventory at all. See? Outside the box, man.

Argue why it has to be worn to be attached to. Again, it's just a bad idea that intitially sounds like it's naturally got to happen when it DOESN'T.

What you're saying is you have no response to why gear would have to be worn to be attached to. Or that you don't like me. Or that you don't want to provide relevant feedback.

Oooookay so if you can't tell me why gear should have to be worn, and I just told you precisely why that's a dumb idea, then case closed.

Gear shouldn't have to be equipped to turn into materia unless someone can provide any more relevant discussion than, "you don't know" yeah I pretty much do and it's going to be hamstringing itself by confusing Matsui's goals with counter-goals that conflict.

Don't get me wrong, that's on par with the way things have gone thus far, to design a system that antagonizes everything about the OTHER new system.

But come on now. Time to straighten up and fly this ship right. Negative on this feature. Don't do it. Doooon't do it.