Dropped Items and Materia

[Nakiamiie]

Hi,

the materia system is a cool way to get crafted items out of the game and keep crafters making items. The big problem with it, though, is that because Unique/Untradeable items cannot be melded, they are basically (with a few exceptions) worthless.

Some might point to the Ifrit Lancer, Marauder, and Archer weapons for an example of dropped items that are better than their crafted/materia equivalent. Unfortunately under the current system items like these eventually make the materia system useless.

Basically, with the materia system the way it is now, I see two possibilities in the future. Either A) Materia remains king outside of a few pieces of gear, giving a lot less incentive to do actual content when it's easier to just buy cheap crafted gear in town and gamble on forbidden materia or B) Future content drops actual good gear, killing off the materia system.

They're both bad choices, but if I had to choose between the two, I'd go with B since going and getting items with a group is a lot more interesting than playing the materia slot machine.

There is another way, though! If U/U gear is allowed to meld materia, both situations are avoided. The materia system stays useful since people will need new materia every time they upgrade their gear, and dropped gear is actually worth getting. Crafted gear can remain a cheap, quick option for leveling up and fresh 50s and it can still be converted into materia. If you want good gear, you'll need to go fight some bosses and clear some dungeons and buy/convert some materia.

Of course, a system to meld another person's gear through the bazaar will be needed, but that was going to be needed eventually anyway.

I really hope that the devs take this into consideration for 2.0.

I seriously doubt a dropped piece of gear would ever overpower 5 materia melded into an item.
Yoshi-P already said that crafted gear and materia will make the best gear ever. Dropped items and RARE/EX items are already very good. These items are useful for people who can't put materia into their gear or don't have the proper high tier materia they are looking for yet. Sometimes, the rare/ex items is better than a piece of equipment with a single materia in it. Nevertheless, materia is the way to have the most powerful items but comes with so much risk!

I think it is fairly balanced: easy and good = put a materia into your equipment
tougher and better = rare/ex items dropped
best ever = multiple materia into the equipment

[Brannigan]

I seriously doubt a dropped piece of gear would ever overpower 5 materia melded into an item.
Yoshi-P already said that crafted gear and materia will make the best gear ever. Dropped items and RARE/EX items are already very good. These items are useful for people who can't put materia into their gear or don't have the proper high tier materia they are looking for yet. Sometimes, the rare/ex items is better than a piece of equipment with a single materia in it. Nevertheless, materia is the way to have the most powerful items but comes with so much risk!

This is crappy. Items from real content just serving to tide you over until you can manage to convert enough mass-produced cloth armor into materia for multi-melds sucks.

[Radav]

It would seem that most would agree that something needs to happen to the materia system. Yoshi has already said that the crafting/gathering classes are not going to be considered a "main" class. So the focus in this regard should shift towards the adventuring classes. As many of you have mentioned with the right amount of money or luck you can put together a set of crafted gear that puts together most U/U gear to shame. It only stands to reason that U/U gear should allow for attachment. I believe that to make them stand out from the crafted gear there are a number of things you could do.

1. Someone had mentioned this earlier and I'd just like to repeat it because I like the idea so much. Allow the items to have a certain number of slots that you can place materia in. Random benefit to this could be to have the removal of materia on these items cost a significant sum of money for those people who like to play around with a variety of setups. Also as was mentioned before you could assign a max tier to the slots so that an Ifrit's Harpoon has the ability to take 2 tier IV materia, whilst one of the darkhold weapons can only take a 2 Tier IIIs.

2. Another thing that might be interesting to do with these U/U weapons would be to allow them to have 1 100% successful materia slot that allows the slotted materia to grow at a certain rate (ala FFVII). The growth system could be similar to spiritbond but have to do with the number of NMs you kill. You could build a daily quest system around this where during the completion of certain leves you accrue points toward leveling up your items. An interesting aside (this might be too overpowered but I liked the idea.) to this could be the ability to take materia that you've "grown" pay a large sum to remove and then sell. So for instance it could just grow whatever stat you have attached or the item could imbue it with something new like haste or debuffs. etc.

3. You could do something where you simply do not lose the weapon when you try and attach multiple materia. All of the same percentages could still apply you'd probably promote the crafting market and spiritbonding even more by doing something like this. Higher tier of U/U items could provide bonuses to attaching a certain number of materia. etc.

I could probably go on for a while with a couple more ideas but I think you see where I'm going. I think that any of these ideas above (sorry if I didn't properly credit anyone who may have happened to already suggest these but I didn't read the entire 13 pages before I posted this) would be welcome additions to our current materia system. For sure the current implementation of the system is a good start that can do more for the game then just promote the crafting market.



3.

[SnickleWhiskers]

1. Someone had mentioned this earlier and I'd just like to repeat it because I like the idea so much. Allow the items to have a certain number of slots that you can place materia in. Random benefit to this could be to have the removal of materia on these items cost a significant sum of money for those people who like to play around with a variety of setups. Also as was mentioned before you could assign a max tier to the slots so that an Ifrit's Harpoon has the ability to take 2 tier IV materia, whilst one of the darkhold weapons can only take a 2 Tier IIIs.

I like the ending idea right there added onto my idea about 2 auto sockets (dependent on gear). This would definitely be a better solution for tiers of materia actually meaning something.

[NoctisUmbra]

Take a 46 Yew Long bow, add Savage Might materia to it, and go to Ifrit, parce your damage and compare it to Mob Bow or Ifirt Bow. You base damage diference now becomes invalid as a point for this arguement. Single melds can become too close to equivalent and ouble melds or not expencive to do on cheap bows, especially when you make the bow yourself and have SB enough bows to have 22 savage migts to play with.

Is Ifrit Bow OP if a dex materia is slapped on it? you say yes, in my opinion, I say no. When anyone can get a crab bow and slap one matteria on it and be that dangerously close to ifrit bow in damage and definently better then mog bow. Well then it takes 20 dex to make ifrit bow even worth the effort.

I'm sorry but a single Savage Might, which is in my opinion easily not as effective a choice on ARC as on other classes, is in no way going to make up for the difference in base damage of Ifrit's Bow, let alone the +30 Attack Power and the Additional Fire Damage. No idea what you're on, and how you did your parses, but that's incorrect. I mean, you know SM simply increases your crit damage right? ARC isn't exactly a critting machine, and if it does it'll primarily be on Light Shots. Using Blindside on ARC isn't as effective either because it's counter productive in any fight that requires you to take advantage of your mobility and the fact that you're not restricted in combo directions. Even against a stationary opponent one SM isn't making up for Ifrit's Bow.

If they are comparable to 3 melds nothing will touch them (until level increase).

So if this does happen everyone will be wearing the same, materia items will become useless and we will be back to square one where crafters are complaining etc.

I will be kind of happy that blue items are finally superior, but sad that we only have one choice.

Well, the idea is they are only to be used while on the job. Understandable that thinking at an endgame pov that encompasses most of your time, but classes will still have their place. Also, I'm confident that we'll be getting meldable JSE eventually as well, whether it be crafted or not.

[Coglin]

I'm sorry but a single Savage Might, which is in my opinion easily not as effective a choice on ARC as on other classes, is in no way going to make up for the difference in base damage of Ifrit's Bow.

Thats all fine and dandy that you do or do not think its effective. You are entitled to think whatever it is you chose. A person can think the sky is red for 100 years, that does not make it so. I simply made the suggestion to parse the damage on a few non-U/U bows and check it out, you might be ridiculosly surprised at how close in comparison the damage is with the ifrit bow, surprised by what does or doesn't beat it out.

The thing is, Right now your making guesses and assumptions, telling eveyone and there dog how wrong they are. When you actually do not know. Interesting that you take such a solid stance, based on little more then conjecture.

[NoctisUmbra]

Thats all fine and dandy that you do or do not think its effective. You are entitled to think whatever it is you chose. A person can think the sky is red for 100 years, that does not make it so. I simply made the suggestion to parse the damage on a few non-U/U bows and check it out, you might be ridiculosly surprised at how close in comparison the damage is with the ifrit bow, surprised by what does or doesn't beat it out.

The thing is, Right now your making guesses and assumptions, telling eveyone and there dog how wrong they are. When you actually do not know. Interesting that you take such a solid stance, based on little more then conjecture.

While I will admit that I did not parse to test out the difference in Light Shot damage between Ifrit's Bow and a Crafted Bow equipped with Savage Might, it is already obvious in the parses I have done that an ARC crits naturally somewhere below and around 10%. Considering Savage Might only increases crit damage, and it doesn't do this drastically based on testing of the effect of that materia on crit damage that I have done, theoretically one can conclude that Savage Might will not increase your DPS on ARC by any remarkable value.

By testing parse results I will assume you are referring to a controlled test done by using both bows on the same mob of the same level by repeatedly shooting it with Light Shots and perhaps a WS of your choice for a large number of times and comparing the average damage.

Considering it is widely accepted that Ifrit's Bow is the best weapon even compared to melded, crafted bows and you are challenging this very truth I invite you to show such parse results to back up your claim. If I find myself convinced then I'll seek out someone smart enough to have melded a Savage Might onto a bow and repeat the test myself.

However, I will say this. While I may not have tested with the Bow, I have tested LNC weapons versus the Harpoon and found it to out damage even weapons that are double melded with enough STR and/or Attack Power to numerically surpass the effect of Attack Power +20 that the Harpoon had back then. It's even stronger now.

The base damage value being the single most potent stat by a large margin as far as the amount of damage a class does is a proven fact.

[Jinko]

It would seem that most would agree that something needs to happen to the materia system. Yoshi has already said that the crafting/gathering classes are not going to be considered a "main" class. So the focus in this regard should shift towards the adventuring classes. As many of you have mentioned with the right amount of money or luck you can put together a set of crafted gear that puts together most U/U gear to shame. It only stands to reason that U/U gear should allow for attachment. I believe that to make them stand out from the crafted gear there are a number of things you could do.

1. Someone had mentioned this earlier and I'd just like to repeat it because I like the idea so much. Allow the items to have a certain number of slots that you can place materia in. Random benefit to this could be to have the removal of materia on these items cost a significant sum of money for those people who like to play around with a variety of setups. Also as was mentioned before you could assign a max tier to the slots so that an Ifrit's Harpoon has the ability to take 2 tier IV materia, whilst one of the darkhold weapons can only take a 2 Tier IIIs.

2. Another thing that might be interesting to do with these U/U weapons would be to allow them to have 1 100% successful materia slot that allows the slotted materia to grow at a certain rate (ala FFVII). The growth system could be similar to spiritbond but have to do with the number of NMs you kill. You could build a daily quest system around this where during the completion of certain leves you accrue points toward leveling up your items. An interesting aside (this might be too overpowered but I liked the idea.) to this could be the ability to take materia that you've "grown" pay a large sum to remove and then sell. So for instance it could just grow whatever stat you have attached or the item could imbue it with something new like haste or debuffs. etc.

3. You could do something where you simply do not lose the weapon when you try and attach multiple materia. All of the same percentages could still apply you'd probably promote the crafting market and spiritbonding even more by doing something like this. Higher tier of U/U items could provide bonuses to attaching a certain number of materia. etc.

I could probably go on for a while with a couple more ideas but I think you see where I'm going. I think that any of these ideas above (sorry if I didn't properly credit anyone who may have happened to already suggest these but I didn't read the entire 13 pages before I posted this) would be welcome additions to our current materia system. For sure the current implementation of the system is a good start that can do more for the game then just promote the crafting market.



3.

I would go for a mix of 2 and 3, multiple slots per gear and not lose the item if the meld is unsucessful.

I say slots but it should be more like a vessel which you can fill, so tier 1 materia would fill the slot by 10% and a Tier 4 would fill it by 40%, so you could meld 2 x Tier 4 + 1 x Tier 1 or 10 x Tier 1's for example.

Obviously you could still remove the specific piece of materia like it currently is.

Like you suggest failure rate would increase as the slot became more full and depend on the tier of materia being used, this way it would still be costly and timer consuming but not at the expense of losing the item.

As for U/U well they could have a reduced vessel, something like 50% or lower, (Ie 1 Tier 4 + 1 Tier 1)

[UmJammerSully]

I say just allow complete melding on both green and blue gear, even then crafted gear won't become useless for 1 reason:

Crafting gear is still far easier to come by than U/U stuff. People will be much more willing to attempt x2, x3, x4 or x5 melds on crafted gear than on U/U gear. There's no way I would risk a double meld on an Ifrit weapon for example.

[Jamester]

I say just allow complete melding on both green and blue gear, even then crafted gear won't become useless for 1 reason:

Crafting gear is still far easier to come by than U/U stuff. People will be much more willing to attempt x2, x3, x4 or x5 melds on crafted gear than on U/U gear. There's no way I would risk a double meld on an Ifrit weapon for example.

Part of me want multi melds on primal weapons because I want to make the best weapons even if It is kind of inefficient/troublesome in current settings.

On the other hand, this completely remove the need for other non-primal weapons (except you level with it for a few hours). Because Primal Weapons (not the underpowered ones) requires at least 3 meld to be on level terms. With first meld being 100%. Other weapons including Aeolian Scimitar requires at very least 4 melds to be on level terms. Then second meld for Primal Weapons is at least 10% (Can be as high as ~25% depends on what you are aiming for). Success rate for a 3 meld for other weapons are already ~10%. Which one would you prefer to play with?