Thread: 3.0's Coming... What are the Craziest Game Changes you can Think of?

Exactly what the title says. With a full version number update around the corner, imagine that you're sitting in that SE boardroom trying to think of the kinds of mechanic and rule changes that devs can only get away with at a time like this. They don't need to make sense or have any chance of being viable; they just need to be capable of shaking things up. Who's in? Here's my examples.

Stats and Gear

- Accessories are now class/job locked based on who uses the main stat primarily on them. STR goes to MNK/DRG, VIT goes to Tanks, etc.

- Doesn't it seem odd that Grade IV Main Stat materia gives more points of stat than Determination materia, considering the gaps between their benefits? Let's mess with that. There are no longer any Grade I Main Stat materia. Grade II is +1, III is +2, up to Grade V being +4. Vitality and Piety Materia are not affected.

- Crafted Accessories no longer have any guaranteed meld slots. Crafted Body pieces now has only one guaranteed meld slot. Crafting and Gathering gear is not affected by this change.

- Vitality is now the stat that primarily determines damage for Tanks. Alternately, both Vitality and Strength determine damage but Strength contributes less than Vitality.

- Parry is now on every single piece of Tank gear. Its allocation on gear will be "free", just like Accuracy on healer gear.

- Small amounts of Piety can now be found on Caster gear. It's allocation on gear will also be free.

- Dexterity is now found on Tank gear, in allocations equal to half of Strength. After all, what good is it to make a stat that explicitly benefits procs that only two jobs really use... and then not give it to those two jobs?

- Determination is removed from the game. It's too redundant.

- All secondary stats provide greater effects on healers in order to promote actual dichotomy between builds. Piety is not considered for these effects.

Mechanics

- In instanced content level 45 and above, any attack from a monster whose intended target is the player highest in threat will instantly kill that player unless the attack is mitigated somehow. Shield Oath and Defiance are considered to be mitigation for this purpose.

- Being outside of a Tank stance now halves aggro generation once a Tank Stance has been unlocked.

- Cleric Stance now reduces the heal potency of Eos and Selene's Embrace and Whispering Dawn.

- Fights which are built to require two tanks now properly enforce this property. If it is a stacking debuff that requires a swap, tanks will instantly die to the next attack at X number of stacks. If it is a debuff that makes a specific attack an instant kill, that attack eats through Hallowed Ground and Holmgang. If it is an attack intended to be shared between both tanks, then it will instantly kill everyone hit unless two of the targets are tanks. If there are adds that another Tank is required to grab, then they will gain significant damage up and vulnerability down buffs if they are too close to the boss.

- At Level 55, Black Mages can carry up to 3 stacks of Firestarter at once and 2 stacks of Thundercloud. However, letting any of them time out causes them all to be lost. Using one will reset the timer.

- At Level 55, Succor will be affected by Crits the way Adloquium is.

- The spell speed buff granted by critical hits from pets will instead increase critical hit rate for Summoners.

Raids

- Raid instances now feature a miniboss which drops a single piece of gear upon defeat. Regular bosses will still drop two. The difficulty of these minibosses will be tuned at approximately 66-75% of the proper boss's difficulty. There will be no miniboss in the last portion of a raid. Loot tables are split between all three chests in the instance.

- In addition to random drops from raid bosses, all players will be rewarded a token unique to that boss which can be redeemed for specific drops from that boss in high enough quantities(8 for body/pants, 5 for head/hand/feet, 3 for waist/accessory). If raids also drop materials to enhance alternate gear, then 2 tokens from any boss can be exchanged for right side pieces and 3 for left. Tokens are universal in respect to jobs and unique only in respect to the defeated boss. Weapon drops from the final boss of the raid cannot be obtained with these tokens.

- "Trash" monsters in raids are now actually dangerous and require strategy to defeat. Inexperienced groups may not actually reach the boss of a portion of the raid on their first attempt. Under no circumstances can these encounters be avoided or skipped.


So, um, well, I suppose that's a good enough start. Have at it. Be as silly and crazy as you want!

removing housing item limits inside and out for all sizes, allowing us to choose the gear (appearance) for NPCs in the house, embrace the housing glitch that allows people to place table top items anywhere and apply it to all items with the ability to resize objects as well.

Reduce Recast of Invigorate from 180 > 120
Change combo from: Heavy Thrust > Ring of Thorns to Heavy Thrust > Phlebotomize (when used in this combo DoT potency increased from 30 to 40) > Ring of Thorns (when used in this combo Ring of Thorns adds: 5 second Bind)
Have the decrease in Life Surge go from 90 > 50 to 90 > 45 (this allows for a cleaner combo "wheel" with virtually no delay between off global and global cooldowns)
Remove Keen Flurry from Dragoon (give it to any tank job honestly) replace with Speed Surge (next non-global cool ability used will have no recast time applied OR 30 second duration: Spell Speed/Skill Speed is increased by up to 25% [increased from traits 15% originally] cooldown: 90seconds)