Thread: Materia Changes in 3.2:

Originally Posted by Colorful

Regardless of that, you've disregarding the important question in how this actually improves the experience of a player in anyway.

I like the idea of having a way to continue improving a piece of gear I have outside of just "Hey I got this better item, now to switch it out." I loved that I could continue to improve my relic in ARR without having to hope for a drop from other content. Now that I can do that with gear I'm all for it. It takes some RNG out of the improvement process. Something you can slowly work toward knowing you will get it - not running and running and running and not ever getting an upgrade because RNGod hates the color of underwear your decided to wear that day two months ago.

I like some RNG, but I also like being given an option to improve my gear that has no RNG (and that isn't just "Hey I bought a new shirt. Time to trade it for seals/stuff it in the retainer in case I want to glamour it later".) As far as I'm aware, you won't be able to overmeld the battle gear, so that RNG is a non-factor.

A grind is only a detriment to enjoyment if you are focusing soley on the fact that you are grinding/you are only doing the grind.

For example, I didn't/don't see any of the crystal farming in FATES for the new relic quest to be a grind/detriment to my enjoyment because I can do it on any class I want. I am therefore using this golden opportunity to level up other jobs that have been gathering dust at <60. Other players aren't doing that, soley doing it on the one job at 60 so it seems like a grind to them.

The "unidentified" grind I don't see as a grind either, because I'm doing bits and pieces all over the place (roulettes of old content which I'm so glad I get to run again with a bonus of being able to use the stuff I get out of it, finally repping up the beast tribe quests that I've been wanting to do but the mount just wasn't enough incentive, leveling other crafters to help my FC mates.) I'm literally just playing the game and getting progression toward my relic stages.

I find the problem most people have is that they tunnel vision into "NEED THIS DONE ASAP, TO DO THAT I NEED TO GRIND OUT ALEX XXX/DO XXX BEAST TRIBE/XXX HUNTS" and it is that mindset that is a detriment to the enjoyment of a game.

So there is my answer to how this "grind" improves my personal experience of the game, and from my standpoint, it's a huge improvement.

Originally Posted by Ravnika

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I just wrote a wall of text and ended up closing my tab, dammit. Well I'll TL;DR it.

With 3.2 we're going to have the ability to "upgrade" the gear, but in a very linear way that isn't interesting and it still doesn't implement what players have been asking for, horizontal progression and meaningful stats. You said you disliked swapping out gear you just got a few months ago, and I agree, but this won't change that. We're still going to be changing out our gear everything even numbered patch. I don't dislike the concept of materia, but I dislike the implementation. I have no clue if you've played WoW, but you could upgrade, gem, and enchant gear. The first option was trading in a currency to get flat bonus on ilvls and stats which is no different from our materia system, but we have the illusion of choice. In reality if you were to use a useless materia on your gear, or anything that wasn't close to BiS you'd be considered a bad/uninformed player by anyone who inspected you.

Why'd I bring up WoW? In WoW the points you used could be obtained for daily tasks that you would do regardless, similar to the Anima (although I only log in to tend the garden and send out retainers for now, not interested in the Anima). Dungeons and raids, sure you could grind them in a dozen hours but that would be incredibly boring. In FFXIV it's spiritbond or do the Diadem, there isn't even an illusion of choice there as spiritbonding is faster in the Diadem. Now, if Materia was separate from the spoils I could jump in with the mindset "Hey, at least I'm working towards my Pegasus.", or "I'm making gil with the materials too." but that isn't the case, you're farming for the materia and nothing else. I won't argue that it won't improve your experience as you seem to enjoy "hidden" grinds, but it's not something I'd personally enjoy as I've had it up with everything they've implemented recently being focused on keeping people subscribed for as long as possible and not to have fun. I'll be taking people's advice and likely taking the materia thing very slowly, doing Diadem a few times a week and see how it goes, I don't exactly do anything that would require BiS gear (I really don't do much other than chat with friends in game and babble on these forums awaiting a permanent ban really).

Originally Posted by SnugglesD

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The forum exists for discussion and not a circlejerk about the almighty FFXIV, if something changes that I dislike I'll express that I dislike it. If you don't like my opinion you can ignore it, as my posts are optional and will not affect you in anyway as you've suggested I do with the materia system, or argue against it without resorting to "Deal with it" in a similar manner to Ravnika's posts. I don't exactly like how easy dungeons are, I want content that's a reasonable challenge but not too difficult without a static, which is why I'm glad they're bringing back Extreme primals with Sephirot, and that's obviously not going to be tuned with Tomestones of Transcendence(?) gear in mind. I'm more displeased with the way they implement fan requests, people asked for interesting stats, not more numbers of the boring stats.

Originally Posted by SnugglesD

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Well, I think that's the first time I've seen someone on these forums change their opinion. I don't think anyone "hates" crafters, they're just a little salty that everything costs millions of gil due to SE forcing specializations on everything, or when crafters sell a piece of low level crafted gear for 500% the value of the materials. I think everyone is guilty of thinking at one point in their life that a product was far more costly than it should have been ($200 for extra RAM on a Macbook, really?), it's like that. There's problem someone out there who legitimately hates crafters, but then that's their problem and no one should care.

Originally Posted by Ravnika

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I usually play multiple games at the same time, so at the "What now?" I go play something else (playing too much FFXIV will give me severe burnout like it did with WoW). I don't think I'll necessarily enjoy running the Diadem, already ran it enough to pay for my split of the house, but it will make it more bearable that's for sure. Just as I don't enjoy capping my Esoterics every week, but having that limit of doing it once per week helps me control any potential burnouts and thus the want to unsubscribe. But in the end, we clearly have different goals. When I feel I've had all the enjoyment out of FFXIV for the week I don't wonder what to do next, I play something else if I'm in the mood to game (still waiting on my MHX import .-.).