Make Each Class Use Each Stat

[Saccharin]

Let's make each primary stat actually have an effect on each of the jobs.

STR could improve CRT
DEX could improve accuracy and determination
MND could improve spell speed/skill speed
INT could improve TP refresh/MP refresh

Well they did have mroe interesting uses for stats in 2.x. Dtreght would give parry and dex would get crit but they just amde them outright power increases in 3.0.

Wildstar when it released had four stats and depending on what class you picked you would get a different benefit.

For their free to play launch they reverted to the 'normal' combat rating type stats but they still have a fair few though.

The problem they faced was that it was complexity for the sake of complexity and generally confusing having one stat do this and do other thing for that other class and even more different for a third class.

The what they had it in 2.x was fine in my opinion.

FF14 has very boring stats and they just feel pointless: haste, crit and attack/spell power. /doze

EDIT: Alternatively, can we remove the 35 bonus attributes and have them automatic. 0 reason to pick anything other than your main stat currently.

It does have some use. Currently if you're a tank you can stat for vit or strength or a mizture. However in 3.2 it's likely going to be vit now.

For a BLM you might stat for some pie if you can get one more fire spell off until you regen.

Personally I'd like it if it was secondary stats including pie that you can stat for. maybe you need some accuracy, then stat for some of that. Are you a healer with mana problems - some pie then maybe some crit if you're a SCH etc.

[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)

[Nalien]

I'd like to see all Jobs use two or three stats, personally, just like in 1.23... Lets just stick with two, work it like how Tanks will work VIT and STR, and rework content/gear somewhat, and make that second Ring slot significantly less annoying to gear.

Paladin: VIT and MND, rather than VIT and STR, perhaps make Cure worth a damn with some added enmity gain on it to boot.
Warrior: VIT and STR, as is currently planned.
Dark Knight: VIT and PIE, with PIE enhancing Magic Defense somehow, damn I'd love a nice MP pool on Dark Knight though...

White Mage: MND and PIE, maybe VIT instead, IDK. White Mage and Monk always struck me as high HP Jobs.
Scholar: MND and INT, loose Clerics Stance, those DoTs are already OP.
Astrologian: MND and PIE.

Dragoon: STR and PIE, just like 1.23, because PIE boosts Magic Defense, and I expect knights trained in fighting dragons to be somewhat resistant to magic fire breathing lizards... Just sayin'.
Monk: STR and VIT, Monks thing was always a high HP pool.
Ninja: DEX and INT, since Ninjutsu is just silly hand magic.
Bard: DEX and PIE, more MP for the Songs Bard doesn't have... Sigh...
Machinist: IDK, DEX and MND? DEX and INT? You'd think the whole turret stuff would require some brain power... Given its the same as Bard, I'd like to see some difference, Bard could have Songs up for longer, for example, while Machinist could be more potent through INT or something.

Black Mage: INT and PIE, since you'd figure they'd be fairly immune to magic...
Summoner: INT and MND, same as Scholar.

When it comes to gear, you then drop VIT off most of it, in favor of their "new" second primary stat. We'd see less HP bloat as a result, DPS would be squishy (except Monk), like they should be. Obviously not going to happen considering everything is already balanced around the extra mountain of VIT gear provides everyone, though they could easily just slap +HP on all gear to keep us at the current level of HP... That really annoys me actually, currently VIT is literally just HP, PIE just MP, granted they're not a 1:1 ratio like INT/MND/STR/DEX are for Magic Attack Potency/Healing Potency/Attack Potency, but yeah... That really annoys me... Why do we have VIT/STR/DEX/MND/INT/PIE? We could literally remove them and just have HP/MP/Potency... At least if you have two primary stats to work with, your potency isn't exactly the same as your primary stat, for something like Ninja, Attack Potency would be a combination of DEX and INT...

Oh, and while we're on the subject of stats;

Change Critical Hit Rate to Critical Hit Power (which 3.0 also gave it), and make Accuracy double up as Critical Hit Rate. Currently Accuracy is just hit the cap and you're done with it, it's a worthless stat beyond that, but if I'm more Accuracy, surely I'm more likely you hit your weak point for massive damage? That's a Critical, Accuracy should improve Critical Hit Rate to make stacking it worthwhile beyond some arbitrary cap, while the Critical stat can improve the potency of Critical hits.

This would also give us a better sense of horizontal progression. Two i200 sets, for example, could have varying amounts of the two primary stats. A Monk could have a high VIT low STR i200 body, or a low VIT high STR i200 body, with which one you pick depending on which stat you've currently got the most of. The idea would be to balance the two out (building just pure STR would have diminishing returns unless you raise VIT as well, for example). So while we might currently look at something like Void Ark, and go "This is worthless to me since I've already gotten Esoterics gear", with a system like this in place, we'd get more use out of the Void Ark gear, because while i210 Esoterics might be "better", its left you with a low amount of your second primary stat which overall makes it weaker. Slapping on a high VIT/low STR Void Ark piece (for Monk) could potentially give you a higher attack potency than the i210 alternative, just because of how such a system would work. You'd lose some of your STR, but the higher VIT would make less STR go further. It would be a much better system to min/max than the current secondary stats, which have a very minimal impact.

[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 ?

[Cabalabob]

Here is an idea that everyone will hate! \o/ (except a few others like myself)

Let's make each primary stat actually have an effect on each of the jobs.

STR could improve CRT
DEX could improve accuracy and determination
MND could improve spell speed/skill speed
INT could improve TP refresh/MP refresh

Then

You could have a SCH who slots up STR accessories or the 30 points, for higher crit'd adlos if they so choose to sacrifice the MND

You could have a WHM slot in DEX to meet accuracy requirements

You could have BLM using MND for faster Fire IV's

You could have tanks slot in DEX for to meet the high frontal accuracy cap

You could have bards slot in STR for CRITs and bloodletter procs

You could have melee slot in INT so they wouldn't have to worry about TP woes on AoE heavy encounters

etc etc.

I think this change would couple well with the upcoming changes to Materia slots being added to more gear


EDIT: Alternatively, can we remove the 35 bonus attributes and have them automatic. 0 reason to pick anything other than your main stat currently.

This is how FFXI and 1.0 worked, each stat did its own thing that was mainly used by specific jobs but wasn't necessarily just for them.

STR increased physical damage (mages actually used to use their weapons)
VIT reduced damage taken and increased hp
DEX increased crit rate and accuracy
INT increased magic damage and reduced magic damage taken
MND increased healing magic and magic defence
PIE increased mp

Stats were also used as modifiers for weaponskills to increase damage, so if you used say red lotus (attack with fire damage) it had a STR and INT modifier.

Since all classes could cross class healing and offensive magic and mages could use physical damage, jobs wore gear with all sorts of stats on it based on what they were doing and could swap out gear pieces in battle. So you could wear your MND set to cast cure then swap to your STR set to weaponskill then to your VIT set to take a big hit etc. etc.

If you're looking for this kind of system I'd recommend trying ffxi, it is fun but it's not what they're going for in this game.

[Reynhart]

If you're looking for this kind of system I'd recommend trying ffxi, it is fun but it's not what they're going for in this game.

It's a good thing that this game is not like FFXI, but if they don't expand the effect of stats, why bother having them ?
And also, how will they make more jobs relevant if they all focus on the exact same thing ?

[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

[LineageRazor]

It's a good thing that this game is not like FFXI, but if they don't expand the effect of stats, why bother having them ?

This. With the direction FFXIV is going there's really no reason to have stats at all. Every job has every so-called "main" stat, but only two or three affect that job at all, and generally only one does the player bother boosting. You could pretty much straight up remove STR VIT INT MND DEX PIE from the game and replace them all with "Damage", "HP", and "MP", and the game would be otherwise largely unchanged.

Really the only reason we have them at all is that it's expected for those stats (or similar ones) to exist in an RPG.

It'd be nice if players were expected to balance their stats. For example, you want to max out your damage, but if you negelct your defensive stats too much you're a glass cannon and no use to anyone, so sacrifice some of that damage to build up your defenseive stats. In FFXIV, though, players have one option and one option only: pump up your main stat as high as it will go.

[Reynhart]

In FFXIV, though, players have one option and one option only: pump up your main stat as high as it will go.

Let me take something from a game almost as despised as FFXI (in the official forum )...FFXIV 1.0. /thunder

Back when class ranks and physical level were separated, every point of stat you had was a result of bonus points. It meant that you really could go the glass cannon way by putting nothing into Vitality. You had to find the good balance between those stats.
Even more, you kept the same stats for any class you level, so if you wanted to be good, you had to make choices...but it was poorly implemented, sadly

Now that gear provides more than 90% of our stats, while still only being chosen on ilvl only (Most of the time), stats don't do anything.