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.

[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!

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

Having U/U gear be single slotted would be wonderful. Hmm... perhaps make U/U materia specifically for this type of system would be a great option to allow them to better balance the two instances of this system of the crafted and the U/U.

[Allistar]

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 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.



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.



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!

This is something I posted not too long ago...its not as in depth as your post but the general ideas are the same...
New idea for Materia...
I love the whole materia idea, although I do think that possibly scaling down the materia to just 3 tiers instead of IV is a system that could work better when it comes to U/U gear and rare gear drops from NM or dungeons, this way it still gives gear the ability to be almost on par with U/U and doesn’t take away the power of U/U gear. I also think some materia orbs could be rewards from chest found during guild leves, rewards from side quest or even rewards from behest, the orbs would be scaled according to level/rank of the quest or mission or leve.
Thoughts…