Sub-Stats: Variety and Tuning

[Kabooa]

I find substats to be lacking in variety, and the straight forward approach to them and the lack of consideration given the variety of combat mechanics lead to the most broad ones being more effective than the more niche ones. I'm proposing a significant change to the variety of the substats.

I. Substats are boring.

There, I said it. Substats are boring, even if their related effects can be fun. (Chain critting, which Critical Rate influences)

The process of gearing however is about as exciting as walking up steps. When the stats are both this simple and lacking in variety, gear upgrades are either direct upgrades or something you use until the actual piece you want can be bought / drops.

Currently, stat budgets allow you to either stack two stats, or stack one and have a healthy division between two, but this is nearly a universal selection among every job.

Crit, then Direct Hit or Determination or Speed depending on the job in question. Given that makes up literally all the substats to DPS roles and 80% of the tank/healers, this is an issue. It not only cheapens the gearing process, but it makes Det / Speed pieces for nearly all the jobs viewed with justified disdain. We won't even start with Piety, and Tenacity is just viewed as inferior Determination.

II. The proposal

Substats are instead divided into two categories. For the sake of the explanation, those two categories are Power and Utility.

Power is effectively the 'hurr durr damage' stats. In some way or another these directly affect your output, your outgoing damage / healing.

Utility represents everything else. Movement speed, MP Pool, Role Action Cooldown Reduction, basically everything we would ignore to get +.2% more dps.

Gear therefore is stat'd with Primary, Power, and Utility, with Materia slots likewise categorized for the stats that can be inserted.

Where the current division is 100 Primary, 100 1st, 70 2nd for gear pieces, instead the gear piece is 100 primary, 100 Power, 100 Utility. This sets the tone for the rest of this proposal - You must take utility. Because you can only receive one Power stat per gear piece, this allows us to both make Power stats more interesting, and more effective.

III. Power Substats

Haste: Formerly Skillspeed and Spellspeed, Haste is a consolidated stat. Haste reduces spell cast times, increases the frequency of Auto Attacks, and reduces the cooldown of Abilities. DoT / HoT effects gain additional duration at certain break points (+1 tick per X )

Instead of fudging with potency to make Haste not as big a loss for jobs that rely on DoTs, Autos, and Abilities, haste now influences every kit, by pushing more buttons more often.

Precision: Formerly Critical Strike and Direct Hit, Precision is a consolidated stat. Precision increases the chance of landing a Critical Strike, dealing 50% more damage. Once per 20 seconds, dealing a Critical Strike grants the player a 15s window to deliver an attack from either the enemy's Flank or Rear. Doing so causes the attack to do %increased damage based on Precision.

Criticals don't change, but the added Flank/Rear consideration rewards an attentive player to maximize their increase, while inattentive players will likely just benefit a small amount. This version of critical would scale Critical rate faster than current, with the 'crit damage' component focused into the flank/rear mechanic.

Determination: Determination increases the player's damage done and healing received, increasing as health lowers. Determination also greatly improves the beneficial effect of self cast Defensive actions such as Manaward, Third Eye, Fist of Earth, Shadeshift, and others in this line.

This version of determination incorporates the defensive aspect of Tenacity, but also aims to be a risk reward playstyle, best utilized with healers you both trust and who aren't fed up with you !@#%. As a baseline, Determination still provides a benefit, but extended lower health timeframes increase its effect, and the extra healing received allows a healer to bounce back relatively easily - Making precise timing very effective. For power fantasies, it's the hero who just doesn't stay down.

Berserk: Increases Potency, but increases Resource costs.

The potency gain on this stat would be higher, but counterbalanced by the increased Resource management required. In the cases of Jobs who have no resource limit in theory, increased resource costs (MP / TP) heavily impact rotations. (So Black Mage). TP becomes a concern, especially for faster baseline jobs such as Samurai, Ninja, and Monk, while dual resource jobs may have further considerations as well, such as Red Mage, Bard, Paladin, and Dark Knight.

IV. Utility Substats

Swiftness: Improves Sprint movement speed and reduces its cooldown.

Needler: Reduces the resource cost of [Weaponskill]. Changes based on job. (Shield Lob, Throw Dagger, etc)

Glutton: Food duration increases, healing and mana potion / elixir Cooldown reduced.

Perpetuity: Increases the duration or adds Overflow capacity of [Job Mechanic]. Changes based on Job. (Astral Fire / Umbral Ice, Dragonblood, Greased Lightning, Oath Gauge etc). Overflow capacity means passive bonuses of the job mechanic doesn't apply to the overflow. (120 beast gauge is still 10% crit, not 12%)

As Arcana require specific mention, this stat is primarily quality of life. In this regard, it would increase the Duration of Draw without increasing its cooldown. You could hold onto a Draw card for longer, with the duration over 30 seconds if held that long applying to the ability's cooldown. (so 36 seconds of holding the card, 24 second cooldown).

Deathless: Reduces the duration of Resurrection Sickness.

V. What Does It All Mean?

Primarily it's to make stat choices a more conscious choice than "Well that has more crit, it's an upgrade". In lieu of talent trees to differentiate one player from another, stat choices lean you towards a playstyle instead.

These are the power stats. They add a layer of gameplay decisions, to wholly dedicate to one, or try and min max break points between multiple ones to reach certain breakpoints, or fill in a more beneficial boost. They aim to fulfill certain power fantasies.

Haste: The speedy one. Machine-gunning fireballs, macross missile barrages, Dragon Ball flurry punches.

Precision: Abusing an opening. The skill, technique based combatant.

Determination: The one who just doesn't quit. most dangerous when backed into a corner.

Berserk: The reckless charge, going unga bunga till there's no more unga to bunga.

Utility stats instead add little bonuses that by themselves do little but with a certain direction in mind, can provide a meaningful edge.

VI. How Gear, Materia, and Progression change

Gear likewise changes to accommodate these stat changes. ilvl still matters. The gear's quality and level determines the amount of stat rating you get, just like now. Using contemporary gear as an example, i400 Gear in this system would give the same numerical rating as it does in the current iteration.

However, the gear stat block would instead look like this.

+X Primary Stat
+Y Vitality
[Power Stat]: +300
[Utility Stat]: +300

Materia - Power: [Power Stat]
Materia - Utility: [Utility Stat] <= Whoah wtf is this

This is the primary difference. Materia instead determines the gear's stat spread instead of being a pseudo choice of which secondary stat you want to increase (Usually in the same priority as what we want to start with).

So this means that when you do get your Skaven Ratsuit of Ninjutsu, you can yank out the Haste materia and put in a Berserk if you wanted - Because nothing says Ninja like a screaming ball of swirling wind magic.

"But wait, that means raid gear-"

We can still keep the carrot on a stick for raid gear. Currently we require both Tome / Raid gear for our mythical 'best in slot'. Watch this.

Omegle Catsuit of Casting
+X Primary Stat
+Y Vitality
[Power Stat]: +300
[Utility Stat]: +300

Materia - Power: [Power Stat]
Materia - Utility: [Utility Stat]
Materia - Visual <= Wait wtf is this

Visual Materia adds a visual effect to your gear. This would be a unique effect per raid tier. You wouldn't be able to remove it, and no matter what model you glamour to, the Visual effect granted stays. Probably have a toggle to turn it on or off on individual pieces I don't know.

"But"

Ugh, if it really matters that much, then the Raid gear can come with higher substats but the same mainstats. The same baseline level of power. Like, maybe a 1.1x modifier on substats. I don't know. I honestly don't care that much. I'm not here to tell you what -you- like. I'm here to propose what -I- like, and for you all to say how dumb it is.

VII. Conclusion
This is a significant lateral shift that I believe to be for the better for the game in the long run. Having the ability to play the same job in various, effective ways extends the lifetime of an RPG game, while having increasing ways to interact with each other due to playstyle choices is a must for any multiplayer game.

Often we look at other games, and see how many various ways a class can be played just from its selection of mechanics, and feel a little underwhelmed with the "Just play a different class" approach to FF14. I believe more varied substats not only solve this issue, but make the gearing process more interesting as well.

In your own opinion, do you think substats need a facelift? Do they just need minor tuning? Should playstyle only be determined by Job or should gear come into play as well?

[DrWho2010]

Nah. Gear is uniform becuase non-hardcore people don't have the time or energy to theorycraft the BEST solution or experiment with theoretical playstyles. the game comes down to the way it is due to player's own skill. If they can hack it yay - you get the best stuff. If you can't, well then keep at it with your schedule till you can or come back later when you're op 2 expansions down the line to get the shiny things or E/RP or whatever it is that other people do in the game. No need to make things overly complex. Keep that kind of stuff to single player RPGS.

[Kabooa]

Nah. Gear is uniform becuase non-hardcore people don't have the time or energy to theorycraft the BEST solution or experiment with theoretical playstyles. the game comes down to the way it is due to player's own skill. If they can hack it yay - you get the best stuff. If you can't, well then keep at it with your schedule till you can or come back later when you're op 2 expansions down the line to get the shiny things or E/RP or whatever it is that other people do in the game. No need to make things overly complex. Keep that kind of stuff to single player RPGS.

I'm well aware why it's this way.

For just about everyone else, you can literally just push all your points blindly into one or all around and trounce through the game as normal.

The game literally doesn't change for them.

[Shurrikhan]

Nah. Gear is uniform becuase non-hardcore people don't have the time or energy to theorycraft the BEST solution or experiment with theoretical playstyles. the game comes down to the way it is due to player's own skill. If they can hack it yay - you get the best stuff. If you can't, well then keep at it with your schedule till you can or come back later when you're op 2 expansions down the line to get the shiny things or E/RP or whatever it is that other people do in the game. No need to make things overly complex. Keep that kind of stuff to single player RPGS.

If that were the case, wouldn't it make more sense for the stats to be more tightly balanced in output, and less compositionally dependent in their performance, as not to have such wide deviations given that theorycrafting?

It would take only minute adjustments to achieve balance that would give hardcore theorycrafters far less of an advantage by making the stat interactions more intuitive (not to mention, transparent). Should we disregard those, too?

The breakpoint interactions of Skill Speed and Spell Speed are also far from minimal as is, and I mean that in a good way. There are stat values very, very worth achieving.

On topic / @OP :

All that being said, I don't see how these would make gameplay any more interesting.

The added movement speed, for instance, would have to be relatively minor at best, or it'd be obligatory among many a mid-skill group within certain fights to such a point that a party could make it to safety without having to know ahead of time which direction will be safe (standing instead just at center), while high-skill groups would still largely avoid it outside of slide-casting or fights with risky positionals. Berserk, likewise, may be useful to one class and worthless to another. Now, that in itself that bad, but poor optimization without player options for correction feels bad. It feels bad tier after tier that, say, a Summoner is subjected to Det- or SpS-high gear or a Warrior to DHit-Ten. And while it would make sense that the increased number of stats we can get "right", in due proportion, would balance this, MMO studies have usually found the opposite: satisfaction diminishes more with passive factors not optimized that it increases with passive factors that are optimized. That it to say, the negatives hurt more than the positives help. That won't be true for everyone, and I doubt it's true for you, but that is that statistical norm so far as we know.

Personally, I'd much rather see fewer but more gameplay-affecting stats. Aside from Critical Strike among Monks and Bards, Skill Speed and Spell Speed are our only gameplay-affecting stats. And both of those are notoriously ill-tuned: weak at first or among any oGCD-heavy job, strong at high amounts on jobs without oGCDs, and ever mutually exclusive to each other due to their high payoff breakpoints. Apply balance first, and then let's see what we can do with what we have, what we lack, and what might augment gameplay within actual damage categories. Damage augmentation shouldn't just be "hurr durr" stuff; breakpoint-affecting SkS certainly isn't, and there's no need for even a revised Determination to be, either.

But before we can really even get into those, we may first need to address the redundant or lacking systems stats might involve. TP and MP come first to mind; outside of hamstringing long-term physical AoE in a way casters are as immune to as old Sprint costs and adding a faint layer of attrition to (over-)healers, the two universal resource stats find good use only among the BLM playflow -- maybe PLD or DRK's. Similarly, why doesn't it matter at all when we deal our damage or how bursty it is. Our only current factors to make damage matter outside of the enemy eventually dropping dead are raid buff multiplicity and enrage-like add spawns. Is there more we can do with that?

[Sylvain]

@shurrikan I agree, sadly beside an eventual removal of TP I don't see any rework of mp being done anytime soon.

Regarding overhealing, it is true the t the current system makes mp for healer only a concern for the first few week of progression until they can get enough piety. After that it simply doesn't matter (unless you need to rez a lot, which I find to be a different issue)

I do think an interesting ressource system could be done for healer tho.
Perhaps if mp would regain faster but strong spell would cost MUCH more (and basic such as dps skill + cure being free). We could have an interesting balance where you could literally burst through your mp like you can with your Eatherflux.

That could also unlock more burst healing windows for raid design.

[Jollyy5]

So... What? If I crit with Disembowel I have to lose out on Chaos Thrust's rear bonus because the crit wants my next attack to land on the flank? Or did I misunderstand your meaning?

Also, let's NOT have Determination increase your damage at low health, I can already see all those people purposefully standing in AoEs to have lower health because "MUH DEEPS!"

Berserk? BLM would be virtually unaffected by the increased MP consumption, either finding a hardcap, sacrificing a single Fire IV cast in favor of the remaining Fire IV's becoming tactical nukes, and BRD/MCH would be an absolute must in any group, as if they weren't already.

While they are cute ideas, they just wouldn't work and would be impossible to implement at this point without remaking the game.

[Kabooa]

So... What? If I crit with Disembowel I have to lose out on Chaos Thrust's rear bonus because the crit wants my next attack to land on the flank? Or did I misunderstand your meaning?

Also, let's NOT have Determination increase your damage at low health, I can already see all those people purposefully standing in AoEs to have lower health because "MUH DEEPS!"

Berserk? BLM would be virtually unaffected by the increased MP consumption, either finding a hardcap, sacrificing a single Fire IV cast in favor of the remaining Fire IV's becoming tactical nukes, and BRD/MCH would be an absolute must in any group, as if they weren't already.

While they are cute ideas, they just wouldn't work and would be impossible to implement at this point without remaking the game.

Step on back a bit, homeskillet.

using Dragoon specifically, Precision proccing on Disembowel to go to the Side means you have 15 seconds to make an attack from that side; Not that your next attack -must- be from that side. In this case, you Chaos Thrust, Wheeling, and then move over for F/C to get that sweet precision bonus.

Also, 99% of the game is currently about as dangerous as slipping on wet, floofy grass. In harder content, a Determination build is to be coordinated with healers - much like it is now. Parties are left at lower HP for extended periods if no immediate healing is needed. The increased healing received also makes the bounceback quicker, though that's never been much of an issue.

Berserk requires tuning, and quite simply, the scaling would be sweet points all around. Black Mage can't just blindly stack it, but Black Mage is just one example. They might go for break points, Dragoon, being a slower class, could go more heavily into it. Should your team have plenty of team restores, Healers can go heavily into it, as well as more ability oriented jobs.

[Shurrikhan]

Personally, these are the only stat changes I'm itching to see:

Direct Hit

• Direct Hit chance growth per point reduced from 1% per 39.5 to 1% per 40. It therefore now contributes an added 1% of effective damage on average (4% chance of a bonus 25% damage), per 160 points, up from 155. This value, 160, will be the new standard for all secondary stats.
• Direct Hit can now also affect self-healing abilities such as Equilibrium.
  
  Determination
• Determination has been buffed slightly, to 1% of damage per 160 points of Determination. Direct Hit’s multiplicity with Critical Strike still gives it a slight lead over Determination, especially where benefitted by multiple simultaneous raid buffs, though Determination has the added benefit of affecting healing spells, such as Clemency.

Speed

• Skill Speed and Spell Speed combined into a single stat, Speed, which now affects Attack Speed, Auto-Attack Rate, Ability Damage*, and Periodic Damage.
  (*Does not affect the damage of abilities restricted only by resource generation, such as Shinten or Hellfrog Medium.)
• (Attack) Speed now additionally shortens animation times. What can double-weave at low Speed can now also double-weave at any amount of Speed.
• Speed now adjusts auto-attack rate, rather than auto-attack damage. This will improve its value to Paladin, Ninja, and Dark Knight.
• Speed now has linear returns, decreasing the character’s GCD by 1% of the remaining value for, at SB levels, every 160 Speed, rather than varying anywhere from 1% per 166 points at 2.49 seconds to under 130 by 1.9 seconds and below. This will decrease its power at very high amounts to oGCD-less classes but should ultimately make it more evenly useful for all jobs and at all stat levels.
• Speed's damage increase to periodic damage and the rate increase to auto-attacks now identically increase at 1% per 160 points, rather than following a unique modifier. In other words, that portion of contribution works identically to Determination.
• On the whole, Critical Hit and Direct Hit will still outpace Speed between rotational breakpoints when assuming perfect meta play, as the individual power of abilities will often be worth more than their nominal average power as through increased frequency, given that their best periods of use may be less frequent than access to the given skills, and due to the multiplicative nature of stacked raid buffs, but this should give Speed a far fairer chance. Put most simply, Speed over time allows for greater flexibility, while Critical Hit, especially, allows for highest possible maximization.
• Full List of abilities with damage and/or healing increased by Speed: Geirskogul, Nostrond, Jump, Spineshatter Dive, Dragonfire Dive, Mirage Dive; Steel Peak, Shoulder Tackle, Wind Tackle, Riddle of Wind, Fire Tackle, Earth Tackle, Howling Fist, Elixir Field; Hissatsu: Guren, Hissatsu: Seigan; Dream Within a Dream, Bhavacakra, Ninjutsu, Ten Chi Jin; Bloodletter, Rain of Death, Perfect Pitch, Empyreal Arrow, Sidewinder; Gauss Round, Richochet, Rook Overdrive, Bishop Overdrive, Flamethrower; Energy Drain, Bane (damage modifier), Fester, Painflare, Deathflare, Ahk Morn, <All Pet Commands, including Enkindles>; Fleche, Contre Sixte, Corps a Corps, Displacement; Assize, Tetragrammaton, Asylum; Lustrate, Indomitability, Exogitation, Energy Drain; Earthly Star, Essential Dignity.

Critical Hit

• Critical Hit now has effectively linear returns. Base cost per % of increased critical strike chance or critical strike damage bonus has been decreased, but costs now increase at the same rate by which critical strike chance and the critical strike damage bonus synergize for added returns per point, leaving its damage gains per point roughly equivalent to that of Direct Hit, Determination, and Speed at 160 points per % damage increase.
• Critical Hit still remains the lead stat for perfect play in meta compositions, but by an incredibly faint margin, while no longer falling short of Direct Hit at any point. This means it starts at identical value to Determination outside of raid buff compositions, identical value to Direct Hit in raid buff comps, and then gets faintly, faintly stronger at extreme amounts. Bards and Monks may be slightly curtailed at extreme levels of Critical Hit, as the linear scaling will pull back the effectiveness of Critical Hit at over ~2500 stat.

That said, I'd be even fine with losing Tenacity and Direct Hit, at least until such time as we can easily change one of the two secondary stats on each piece of gear, Tenacity is more significantly survival-oriented, and Direct Hit is more distinct from Critical Hit.

[Kabooa]

Personally, these are the only stat changes I'm itching to see.

I disagree with this block fundamentally because you work against your own post up there.

Speed still remains the only 'gameplay altering' stat. Everything else is just basically interchangeable with each other.

[Shurrikhan]

I disagree with this block fundamentally because you work against your own post up there.

Speed still remains the only 'gameplay altering' stat. Everything else is just basically interchangeable with each other.

Ultimately, I'd like more than those suggested changes, but as I said in my first post, that won't be possible without context.

You'd need systems like some manner of Stagger, where by the rate at which damage is dealt does matter, which in turn requires greater control in each toolkit. (At present, if a DRG wants to DoT a newly arrived add, it can take up to 10 GCDs for the DRG to be allowed to do so without utterly screwing over his sustained damage, at which point... it's typically not worth applying at all. Outside of single-target fights, they are controlled by their rotation more than they control it. Their last leg for flexibility was removed when Lance Mastery buffed the second dragon weaponskill and F&C and WT's base damage were increased. Prior to that they could at least choose to trim a doublet of dragon skills, ending the combo at FT or CT, if the BotD growth would be excessive, giving a maximum of 6 GCDs until they could respond.)

You'd probably need variable cooling rates, whereby cooldowns could be made to "cool" faster, stripping a flat amount off their cooldowns (which allows them to still sync up later) but in a continuous fashion.

You'd probably want ways that elements could actually act differently from one another.

You'd probably want elemental resources that could be spent in multiple ways. Wind, for instance, could offer increased movement when activated, or -- automatically --- allow a queued skill to automatically cause you to teleport forward into range enough to complete a strike upon GCD refresh (i.e. without loss of uptime) at proportionate cost or a cast to complete itself early when movement would otherwise cancel it (just) short or completion, again at proportionate cost.

You'd probably want the ability to push back mobs a bit and to be pushed back by them, giving tank and melee toolkits and their relevant stats more to leverage.

You'd probably want potency-based (or, potency-to-percentile) status effects and (de)buffs, so that the synergist arsenal can be augmented by stats in different ways.

You'd almost certainly want a pandemic or roll-over mechanic, such as by causing replaced buffs or debuffs to add the square root of their duration to that of the same-effect application replacing it.

You'd want combat that actually allows for and encourages the infliction of status effects.

You'd want combat in which not everything can be meat-shielded or even drawn off the non-tanks such that they might actually value survival stats (especially if all stats, at least by role total, had diminishing returns so that you're encouraged to hybridize).

I can go on for many a step more...

Every single one of those things holds back a stat, set of stats, or a system as a whole involving stats that I'd love to see but literally cannot get meaningful returns or augmented gameplay from until the context is set.

Saying you want this stat or that, or that you want customization in forms X, Y, and Z, does nothing if the surrounding game cannot yet support them. Your time would likely be better directed looking at the necessary systems, the excuses or selling points by which they can be entered into the game, and the roadmap that can see the best results most quickly.