Quote Originally Posted by Velo_Vandore View Post
Do you think the existing Materia system could be put to better use in endgame? I was disappointment by the limited situations Materia could be used in this game, and also the lack of flexibility. Perhaps the disappointment comes from the fact that I was expecting something similar to FFVII's Materia system, where you have a huge variety of options, including stat boosts, spells, skills, and other special affects.

Without requiring additional raids to be released simultaneously, why not give the end game raid gear materia slots, with special raid level materia that also drops from the raids / ex primals. I think the materia would need to be un-tradeable to ensure players aren't able to buy top level gear, however I see no issue with DoH being involved to meld.

If the materia will be special raid class, why not even throw in some interesting options like enhancements to specific job abilities, instead of just secondary stat boosts. I'm thinking along the lines of the options in Lord of the Rings online for enhancing the legendary weapons. Perhaps tomes gear could have the same thing too.

I understand balancing content is harder the more variables you add. For example, we don't want a situation where you're given multiple options for gear enhancements, but not really free to do so - like one particular enhancement makes certain instances too easy to beat cheaply, or not having a particular enhancement gives a massive disadvantage in certain instances. I think this can be achieved however, by allowing each player to achieve the same goal in different ways. For example, to increase dps by a set amount, you could choose to reduce the cooldown of one skill, increase a stat, increase the potency of a particular skill, add an additional effect to a particular skill. Through testing each option should be adjusted so that any combination can achieve a similar dps output. This way the player is truly free to make choices based on their own personal play-style.
I've thrown some pretty tame ideas out in this thread in the past about how they could add gameplay depth with minimal effort but really the addition of any variables whatsoever would be welcome. As rough as 1.0 was before they started fixing it, I never felt this pigeonholed. The materia system was closer to how you've described and you could make choices with your gear to optimize different things for different situations. People do argue that it's harder to balance, which is true, but this isn't a tiny company. We pay a hefty subscription and their current model requires pretty much zero effort to go into maintaining game balance on account of there being only one "correct" way to play any job at any given time. Every job is pretty much a reskin. They axe murdered any concept of situational gear or abilities. Even killed the elemental wheel, a staple of RPGs and JRPGs alike. Kill Ifrit with Fire! Kill Ramuh with Raiton!