Materia: the new Armory System

[Sol_Aureus]

Materia is an interesting idea in theory: being able to customize your armor and add multiple Materia to a piece of crafted gear to keep crafted gear relevant. Then again, so was the Armory system: being able to customize your character's abilities and add multiple cross-class traits and abilities to match your playstyle and reward those who level multiple classes.

Unfortunately, the way the Armory system was initially implemented didn't work out very well. I think the Materia system is in the same boat.

As it is now, Materia is straight up throwing money and time at a RNG. Granted, most every aspect of an MMO can boil down to this (anything with a drop rate, really) but the Materia system is missing one very crucial element: Skill. There's really not much of any skill involved in selecting your Materia, the item you want it put on, hitting the craft button and hoping it doesn't explode. The only "skill" I can see in the Materia system at all is having knowledge of what gear turns into what Materia, specifically making that type of gear and spiritbonding with a bunch of that gear. And even then, it might turn into the type of Materia you want which may or may not be the tier you want and could maybe be a good subsection of that tier (+16 STR vs +20).

Because of this lack of skill, there's much less of a feeling of accomplishment when you manage to succeed (at least for me and linkshell members and friends who I've talked to about this). There's still a bit of a feeling of accomplishment, sure, but does it compare to when you finally took down Ogre? Or Batraal? Or Ifrit? Or Good King Moggle Mog XII? For me, it doesn't even come close. I worked hard with my friends trying to overcome these obstacles which took skill, understanding of the battles, and teamwork to overcome. Now let's look back at Darkhold and when Materia was first introduced: I had gotten all the pieces of Darkhold gear since I had ran it so often, and I was pretty proud of my linkshell's accomplishments. Materia comes out and immediately ALL of my gear that we had worked so hard for became obsolete. 1 slotting most pieces of new crafted gear ended up being better than the Darkhold gear, let alone 2+ slotting. This really spoiled the accomplishment of completing Darkhold for me.

My concern is that because of the fact that they've already said that in regards to Materia-slotted gear, they're balancing new gear only based around 1 Materia being slotted and not taking 2-5 slotted gear into account at all (I can't find the source, if anyone happens to remember and can post a link I'd greatly appreciate it and I'll update this part of the post with the link), new gear is going to be released already obsolete. This takes away a huge part of the feeling of accomplishment for clearing endgame content as well: "All right! We finally cleared the Aurum Vale! OH MAN WE GOT LOOT! Hat with healing magic potency +30! Oh wait, my double slotted crown already has +35, and it has MP on it as well....oh." Granted, they could release stuff with stats that you can't normally slot onto it, for example a body piece with Healing Magic Potency+ on it, and yes, as a healer I'd probably rather use that than my double-slotted MP Felt Robe of the Mind. But as a healer, It's also going to be really, really difficult to ever outdo a double-slotted healer's hand crown or wand, so pretty much any new crown or wand is going to be obsolete on release for me as a healer.

Based on these issues, I think the biggest problem right now is that Materia allows almost all crafted gear to be better than gear obtained from endgame content, with very little skill involved. In my opinion, most crafted gear should be stepping stones, and the gear obtained from endgame content should be the end goal.

But Sol! One of the major points of introducing the Materia system was to keep crafted gear relevant!

But it does keep crafted gear relevant. Everyone will need gear before they can complete endgame content, so they'll have to get it from a crafter.

But Sol! When they do complete the endgame content and get their endgame gear, they can just use that gear to complete the next stage of endgame content that's released so after that initial set of gear, crafters still aren't relevant!

That's why I said most crafted gear should be stepping stones. Having crafted gear that are best in slot for specific builds (like Scorpion Harness or Hauby from FFXI) is a great way to keep crafted gear relevant.

But Sol! That won't be enough to keep crafters relevant enough to be a main class!

Well, to be honest, I don't think crafters (or gatherers for that matter) should have ever been main classes. The majority of the playerbase plays FFXIV for battle-related content, and in trying to balance crafted gear to make it so that crafters can continue to be a main class, the devs are inadvertently spoiling the battle-related content by making one of the main incentives to clear it (getting the gear) obsolete.

Now, how do these issues go about getting fixed? To me, it's simple: remove multi-slotting. Unfortunately, Materia is pretty well integrated into the game right now, you even have achievements and a crown based on multi-slotting Materia. So how can they go about fixing it? The same way they fixed dated gear: phasing it out. Now, maybe not quite as harsh as what they did with the dated gear, but there are many ways to phase it out. For example, give all pieces of crafted gear a certain number of slots for Materia. All current pieces of gear will have 5, so that those who have already multi-slotted stuff won't get their progress erased, but all new pieces of gear will have 1, but they'll also have much better base bonus stats and different stats as well that will incentivise people to get this new gear as opposed to just multi-slotting the old gear. With level cap raises will come better crafted gear and higher tier Materia, which will further phase out the old 5-slotted gear.

And that just about covers my opinions on the matter. Discuss away!

[RemVye]

I can't say anything in this thread because it would all be mean.

Well... nice signature.

[Syris]

I can't say anything in this thread because it would all be mean.

Well... nice signature.

Man... They need a thumbs down feature on this website.

On topic: My two cents in the matter is to change the approach to materia completely. This stat inflation-prone-RNG-gil sink feels rushed and poorly implemented. Here's an example of a materia system that I believe would support more thought and choice of customization rather than which stat is best in slot and how much you can afford to gamble.

Just off the top of my head...

Example: Chest slots

-% hp increase materia
-% damage reduction materia
-% chance to gain a short defence boost (20 defence points for 5 seconds)
-% chance to gain small mp regen when hit (10pts over 5 seconds or something with a 5 second cooldown)
-% elemental resistance [an assortment of 1-2% chance to resist a specific element]

Example: Weapon

-% increase of base damage [an example of a common materia]
-% increase of base weapon speed
-% chance to reduce enemy damage output by 2% for a short duration
-% chance to reduce enemy magic damage by 2% for a short duration
-% chance to inflict an effect (very low chance for blind, poison, burn or something)
-% [Rare materia] unlocks an WS of situational usefulness rather than huge amounts of damage. Long cooldown. Drops from bosses.

This is all hypothetical and I am not taking balance into consideration. In theory I think if players only had one materia slot [or maybe two at most for very rare pieces] then players would actually have to consider what materia they would choose from a variety of mutually beneficial materia.

[Khal_Drogo]

I can't say anything in this thread because it would all be mean.

Well... nice signature.

Gotta say...<3 Remvye -if everyone else would "turn the other cheek" like this, when they come across a thread they don't like, I think we'd all be a lot happier lol

Haven't gotten through the entire thread, but I hope you do/did decide to "jump in." I feel almost EXACTLY the same way as the OP. However, I do want to know what ppl's objections would be. I don't see why anyone would want to center their character's gear, ENTIRELY, around crafting.

If crafting took actual, tangible skill, then maybe I wouldn't mind. But I watched hundreds of ppl grind for hq gear in XI, and 9 times out of 10, there are the ppl who get insanely lucky w/ their crafting and have enough hq gear to fund any endeavor they may have; and you have the crafters who get completely shafted every time they push for something good.

They have the same gear, the same lvls, the same food, crafting on the same days, at the same times, pointing the same damn direction, and NADA. Meanwhile, their divinely-blessed, fellow crafter hits hq synth after hq synth. It's ridiculous. I don't know how to fix this kind of problem; but until it IS fixed, crafting should be waaaaaaaaaaaay down on the list of "must have" gear.

[Rau]

valid point guy has valid points. .. but I agree, as of now, trying to balance dol and doh with dom and dow is severely limiting the potential of gear and materia.

[Brigandier]

Signature:

Your signature makes your entire post invalid.

[Sol_Aureus]

Your signature makes your entire post invalid.

And that's why you're one of the great minds of our time.

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

[ObeiKinstar]

Someone else has made the point that they should make the dropped gear meld-able and convert-able

[Brigandier]

Someone else has made the point that they should make the dropped gear meld-able and convert-able

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ms-and-Materia

A week or so ago, 246 points were made regarding this same tired subject. This thread is different though!