Skill-Specific Gear

[NovaUltimatum]

Yoshi was asked about having gear that boosted specific skills (e.g. an individual ability lasts longer or is stronger with this gear attached) rather than relying on main stats we currently get from gear.

His response at the time was that he felt groups would require their members to have all the related gear before trying harder content (or something to that effect) so he wasn't sure.

However today during the E3 Chan event it came out as:

Although the idea of introducing gears with skill-specific stats is enticing, a lot of thought and planning would need to go into it first to ensure balance is maintained.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...short_summary/

This sounds more like he's willing to try it out with some planning rather than abandoning the idea. Although the idea of skill-specific gear sounds great, two potential problems come to mind:

1. We can't swap gear during battle, so we'd want the gear we wear to have all of the skill-specific gear + main stats. (You'd end up seeing lots of description for a piece of gear if it listed every main stat + list of skill boosts)

2. If the system was changed so we could swap gear/stat types, this would (probably) cause inventory issues.

Can anyone think of a way to provide skill-specific gear without requiring multiple gear sets/inventory issues? Not sure if this has been suggested before but why not try using "adaptive materia slots" where the skill-specific bonuses come directly from materia and can be equipped / unequipped on those slots. (sort of like how FF7 handles materia to gear).

[Anty]

sounds like another "no" to refreshing changes - surprise. I have no clue where you can see that they are not abandoning the idea?
It's just their polite way to say it, but it's far away from a yes, we are looking into it.
(and even looking into it is like a chance of 10% that it happens or less).

[Gormogon]

Skill enhancing materia over skill enhancing gear.

Though obviously there has to be a way to make sure players understand where that materia goes and can be solved by being categorized as the following.

B: Body (defensive skills) Example. (Featherfoot, Keenflurry, Bulwark, etc)
F: Feet (movement skills) Example. (Shoulder Tackle, Elusive and Spineshatter Jump, Repelling Shot, etc)
G: Gloves (buffing skills) Example. (Blood for Blood, Raging Strikes, Internal Release, Bloodbath, etc)
H: Head (utility skills) Example. (Fluid Aura, Sleep, Freeze, Repelling shot, Tri-disaster, Leg Sweep, Brutal Swing, etc)
S: Shield (Mitigation skills) Example. (Manawall, Stoneskin, Rampart, etc)
W: Weapon (Damage skills) Example. (Combo finishers and job damaging abilities)

Should be easier to manage, balance, and look over than gear that's ever changing.

[NovaUltimatum]

sounds like another "no" to refreshing changes - surprise. I have no clue where you can see that they are not abandoning the idea?
It's just their polite way to say it, but it's far away from a yes, we are looking into it.
(and even looking into it is like a chance of 10% that it happens or less).

It's been a while since I saw the english translation, I think he acknowledged it was a request from the community but he didn't make his response clear enough to deny implementing it. Whether it's polite to say "We're not sure" when he wants to say "No" I'm simply not aware. Perhap you're right. Assuming he does consider it though, what would you say to how it's implemented?

[Monsalvato]

A system like FFXI's would never work here.
Something like WoW's tiers set bonus could work instead. Not necessarily bound to a set bonus, but a similar concept.
Each job gets a specific bonus from the current "best" tier. Once a new tier is released, new bonus arrive.

As long as this remain something small that isn't too game changing, I could see it working.
But something like FFXI... meh, as cool as it would be, it would never work in a game structured this way.

[silentwindfr]

the trouble with piece of armor giving skill boost, will make the piece mandatory and will often be choose over a piece that give more stats.
but maybe we will see set bonus later.

[Starplayer]

One of my biggest gripes with this game is this reluctance to add interesting stats to gear. It's SOOOOOOO boring to upgrade your gear when all it offers is a boost to the main stat. Many games, including Diablo, WoW and TESO use a system where each piece of a set adds boosts to certain skills or adds new ones. This is such a cool system since it encourages you to get the rest of the set, either for the abilities or for vanity. Why can't we get something like this?

EDIT: Already mentioned while I was typing

[Starplayer]

Something has to be done about gear, this dull, boring main statfest is really getting old

[Itseotle]

How about instead of skill specific gear which would get replaced, how about Skill Specific Materia that can be bound to any gear? <.< Just make it so each gear can only have 1 of these materia bound to it.

[Renik]

Specific stats are a good thing, and it should be bound to gear, stats bound to gear means more gear choices, less importance to gear tiers and more content to obtain certain gear, i don't mind having to change gears before a battle, the system is too mindless as it is now. having to chose the right gear before a battle adds more deep and strategy.

Also Yoshi said they want to implement it w/o affecting the balance, so i don't think it'll be mandatory in any way.

Your potential problems are just laziness, not real issues.