Make Each Class Use Each Stat

[Defias]

Folks like to bash this game over the "lack of choice" / "illusion of choice" but honestly the devs have said themselves that if they did give us paths, choices and etc that everyone would still gravitate to the same cookie-cutter build.
And they are 100% correct. EQ1, EQ2, WoW, honestly almost every MMO that had these features went that way.

Arguing against the idea...
Why would you want say a WHM who is gearing fully for say accuracy and crit? That WHM's heals would then be laughable while the WHM job is designed to be a healer.

Arguing for the idea...
Some classes could really benefit. BLM being able to build as a quick caster ast the cost of some of the "umph" their spells pack is a very legitimate choice.
Many folks might actually like it as it could debateably give BLM more mobility and alleviate those moments where every AOE and mechanic targets the BLM and in effect CC's the BLM.

I'd rather they take away us speccing in main stats and let us spec in Determination, Crit Chance, Spell Speed, Skill Speed.
Or...
Just give us modifiers/choice in traits. Like a boost in the main or secondary stats or overall cooldown reduction.

Paths/Trees end with multiple traits that are:
1. Taken to unlock a "good" ability/skill
2. Stat increases you'd normally get during the leveling process if you did not have a tree.
3. 1 Tree that is found to be lackluster and thusbfrowned upon by 90% of the community.
4. Cookie Cutter specs.

@OP
I like the thinking out of the box. Honestly...I think if they homogenized/merged the secondary stats into the main stats theu could simplify things and just have main stats on armor & weapons and thus make gearing and nateria less of a PITA.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

Folks like to bash this game over the "lack of choice" / "illusion of choice" but honestly the devs have said themselves thay of they did give us paths, choices and etc that everyone would still gravitate to the same cookie-cutter build.
And they are 100% correct. EQ1, EQ2, WoW, honestly almost every MMO that had these features went that way.

They are 100% Incorrect.

Cookie cutter builds exist, yes, even in games like GW2 with relatively speaking no powercreep at all (absolute oposite of XIV) there are cookie cutter builds for dungeons/PvP/Alliance PvP (world vs world vs world). But outside that, you have an incredible freedom of choice, and in fact, something XIV has that GW2 is in dire need is of a profile collection system to easily change gearsets/classes which in XIV could be expanded into stats.

Maybe in high end savage level raids or extreme primals i would run the cookie cutter build, but i don`t see why an ultra skillspeed (incredibly low damage, 0.5s skill speed xD) or an evasion off-tank DRG don`t have a room in dungeons or overworld.

In fact i will always take in consideration Ragnarok Online, which of course had cookie cutter builds, but the freedom was so inmense and so fun that "for fun builds" were basically the motivation to raid/get incredibly rare gear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu24yfMuzDM

Of course build is radically diferent, but i don`t see why we can`t have for example a dedicated healer gladiator, and even more, such freedom would bring back the classes into relevance since you can cross much more skills. Make more skills cross-able and you would never need to add an spellsword class, make it yourself.

[Darkstride]

This just would not work in this current MMO age, thus it's a terrible idea.

Stats could still have been made more interesting than they are. They are reallllly bland.Using an example from a less popular game (with much more interesting gameplay, in my opinion):

The Secret World stats:

Hit Rating: determines accuracy. low Hit Rating results in Glanced attacks (lower damage and no procs) or can be evaded.

Critical Rating: increases Critical Hit/Heal%. Critical Hits can be Blocked, however, reducing their damage.

Critical Power: increases the potency of Critical Hits and Critical Heals.

Penetration: prevents attacks from being Blocked, and can cause hits to Penetrate, which ignores a portion of defensive stats dealing extra damage.

Evasion: chance to complete evade an attack and take no damage.

Block: chance to Block an attack and receive less damage. Chance to negate critical hits.

Defense: chance to have attacks against you Glance, reducing incoming damage and negating any additional effects such as procs.

Gear can be custom-made to include any combination of these stats, but they work together. You can make a high Critical build, but you might be Blocked a lot. You can make a Penetration build to avoid blocks altogether, but your critical hits will be less frequent. You can make a balanced build with some of everything. Tank stats can be mixed and matched or you can focus on one. Or, you can be a DPS-focused tank - one of the more popular builds stacks Penetration rather than defensive stays because a particular ability reduces enemy damage output by a large amount if you frequently Penetrate. Even certain Healers can male use of every stat as Leech healing requires DPS to heal your defensive target.

The game is designed to allow you to make these choices. I'm not generally one to compare one game to another, but in this case, I do think more interesting stats can work just fine in a current MMO. The problem is that FFXIV was designed to be waaaay too vanilla, and now it's probably too late to make any sort of massive changes to the core elements of the game. Heck, it's already been destroyed and Reborn once already.

[FoxyAreku]

Stats could still have been made more interesting than they are. They are reallllly bland.Using an example from a less popular game (with much more interesting gameplay, in my opinion):

The Secret World stats:

Hit Rating: determines accuracy. low Hit Rating results in Glanced attacks (lower damage and no procs) or can be evaded.

Critical Rating: increases Critical Hit/Heal%. Critical Hits can be Blocked, however, reducing their damage.

Critical Power: increases the potency of Critical Hits and Critical Heals.

Penetration: prevents attacks from being Blocked, and can cause hits to Penetrate, which ignores a portion of defensive stats dealing extra damage.

Evasion: chance to complete evade an attack and take no damage.

Block: chance to Block an attack and receive less damage. Chance to negate critical hits.

Defense: chance to have attacks against you Glance, reducing incoming damage and negating any additional effects such as procs.

Gear can be custom-made to include any combination of these stats, but they work together. You can make a high Critical build, but you might be Blocked a lot. You can make a Penetration build to avoid blocks altogether, but your critical hits will be less frequent. You can make a balanced build with some of everything. Tank stats can be mixed and matched or you can focus on one. Or, you can be a DPS-focused tank - one of the more popular builds stacks Penetration rather than defensive stays because a particular ability reduces enemy damage output by a large amount if you frequently Penetrate. Even certain Healers can male use of every stat as Leech healing requires DPS to heal your defensive target.

The game is designed to allow you to make these choices. I'm not generally one to compare one game to another, but in this case, I do think more interesting stats can work just fine in a current MMO. The problem is that FFXIV was designed to be waaaay too vanilla, and now it's probably too late to make any sort of massive changes to the core elements of the game. Heck, it's already been destroyed and Reborn once already.

This is what I support and what I wish they would do, more interesting secondaries, not messing with the foundation of main stats like this thread suggests.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

This is actually a very good idea. I applaud the OP for thinking outside the box a bit.

[FoxyAreku]

Personally I would prefer if they removed the primary stats and only kept the secondary stats.

That does not even make sense and is actually completely impossible without changing how the game works completely. >_>

[Reynhart]

That does not even make sense and is actually completely impossible without changing how the game works completely. >_>

Actually, it does.
Nobody cares about VIT and PIE, so you jsut have to set HP and MP values for each job/level.
And apart from that, you could just fuse STR and DEX into Attack, use Magic Attack for INT, and Healing Potency for MND.

And again, pretty much all stats just increase damage, no need to have tons of them...

[FoxyAreku]

Actually, it does.
Nobody cares about VIT and PIE, so you jsut have to set HP and MP values for each job/level.
And apart from that, you could just fuse STR and DEX into Attack, use Magic Attack for INT, and Healing Potency for MND.

And again, pretty much all stats just increase damage, no need to have tons of them...

And how would you code this?

It really is not that simple when the entire foundation, party buffs, and all ability calculation is made with these stats in mind.

(Also PIE is actually pretty important for healers since they went and tripled mana costs with heavensward release)

[Reynhart]

It really is not that simple when the entire foundation, party buffs, and all ability calculation is made with these stats in mind.

"All ability" calculation ?!
Name one where you absolutely need main stats.

Piety is important ? So why does every healer just use the highest gear they can, even though it can have less piety ?

[Cuervo78]

That does not even make sense and is actually completely impossible without changing how the game works completely. >_>

The difficulity would be more in rebalancing everything, from the coding point of view it shouldn't be that much of a challenge