Materia: the new Armory System

[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.

[Rydin]

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.

I hate you and I hope you choke on a chicken wing today....
nah... i just said this in a thread only to realize you said it an hour before I did....
jerk

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

I hate you and I hope you choke on a chicken wing today....
nah... i just said this in a thread only to realize you said it an hour before I did....
jerk

but wouldn't it be a nice thought to say aloud, "Great minds think alike?" Not only would you be doing me a favor by validating my magnificent mind, but you will also be able to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself what a great job you're doing.

[Rydin]

but wouldn't it be a nice thought to say aloud, "Great minds think alike?" Not only would you be doing me a favor by validating my magnificent mind, but you will also be able to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself what a great job you're doing.

hahaha... touche'

[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…

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

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…

This isn't a new idea. People have been suggesting this since the very beginning. It doesn't make it a bad idea though. In fact, I think this is a pretty good idea and also prevents builds to look samey.

[TerahValeth]

I'd like to thank the OP for saying what I've been feeling ever since I started playing around with the Materia System; feelings which have only strengthened with my continued experience w/ the Materia System. I've seen a lot of great ideas for how to balance Raid gear w/ crafted gear, but that fails to address the problem presented by materia in this game. Ideas such as having Raids/Bosses drop mats exclusive to that Raid/Boss that can then be used to make better equipment is a great way of keeping the crafter involved (materia is NOT). All materia does is make it harder to balance crafted vs. Raid equips, and cause endless amounts of grinding to Spiritbond equips to get the desired materia, which will likely be lost in a multi-slot attempt. The crafter's skill isn't taken into account, it's all pure LUCK and gil-sink, so any pride the crafter takes in succeeding is hollow, and all the DoW/M had to do to obtain the item is cash in his/her savings. What SE has done by adding the Materia System, is not adding anything unique and customizable or enjoyable (like the Materia System from FFVII), but a simple way to keep people occupied and the market flowing while they crank out new content. We should not become so easily sated; I'm actually offended that SE thought they could dangle this ball of yarn infront of us to make us happy (but apparently it worked for some).

[Khal_Drogo]

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…

I do like the idea of getting "special" materia rewards from chests/quests/missions/leves/dungeons or w/e. Also, though, I think what might help balance things out (made a thread for this like 4 months ago) is Materia for U/U gear. Materia for U/U gear would work the same way as it does for normal gear, BUT with one really enticing quality. U/U gear cannot "explode." You can lose all the materia you put into it, but the gear stays every time. It's simple; and shouldn't be too hard to implement.

P.S. I don't like the idea of making U/U gear convertable, cuz then you'll have lots of ppl getting the gear, converting it, and wanting it again later on another run...not that you're the one who mentioned it, but just to put that out there.

[Jinko]

Agree, I can't see how SE are going to keep people interesting in replaying content when it has little to no purpose in completeing it to begin with.

Most MMO's survive on dungeon/raid loot grinding, I will be interested to see how Yoshi-p solves this issue and yes he will have to at some point.

Ifrit and Moogle are both great content but the rewards are pretty poor (Ifrit less so) especially when you compare it to 2+ materia pieces.

[Roaran]

I think the OP made a good point. If only crafting gear can be melded, and gear with multiple materia is to be superior, there would be little or no reason to battle for gear. The only way currently to do this, is to offer gear that caters to those who do not meld multiple pieces or offer side grades to the multiple materia gear (Ifrit weapons for example). Ofcourse they can add more crafting gear which would only start the whole process again without addressing the need to battle at all.

However, I think you are very mistaken in thinking the only or the best solution is to get rid of the materia system. I think the OP is very thoughtful on this matter, yet I do not think to have considered every possible remedy.

That said, I would suggest, instead of phasing out the materia system, do the following:

Make all gear crafted. No more exclusive items. Instead of dropping items directly, bosses will drop an abundance of materials. For example, Batraal, instead of dropping 1-3 items from a chest, his death will produce various pieces of hide and bone, even possibly a broken blade that can be refurnished into a sword for paladins. The abundance of items will allow people to get drops reliably, and then allow them to reliably turn them into gear and meld over and over. Thus, those who complete the dungeons the quickest and with the most ease are able to acquire the most materials and most chances for success in melding materia.

This system would actually impose skill into getting the best gear melded with multiple materia, it would keep crafters necessary and make the materia system more interesting. In addition, it would allow the current problem of terrible droprates to be eliminated, favoring players to get drops quickly and reliably each time, so they can then attempt multiple melds.

It would also allow groups of players to earn gil by selling these items to crafters and players who wish to meld themselves.