Thread: From Scratch: 6.0 Progression Systems

Sure Shurri.

Quick explanation of how Materia /Substances in FF7 worked for anybody here who might have not played 7, but plays 14...
In 7, Materia wasn't gained by just destroying equipment you used, you were able to simply buy it either, or found it as loot, or from killed enemies as reward at the end of the fight.
Then you putted the Materia into a Slot of your gear and from then on the Materia gained with every killed creature also its own Experience and gained higher tiers so more you leveled up the Materia. At Max Level the Materia reproduced itself and you obtained a fresh new version at Start Level, so that you could theoretically get this way over tiem the same materia multiple times, if you wanted to give it more than one character of your party, like for example Summons..

Materia in FF7 came with several different types of Materias, each having a different color to visually differentiate the Materia Types.
Red was for Summons, like Summon Ifrit, Shiva ect. to deal massive Damage
Green for Magic Spells, like Cure, Fire, Bolt ect.
Yellow for Combat Commands/Skills, stuff like Steal, Bluemage SKills, Quadrupple Strike to hit with attacks multiple times
Blue for Support Effects, stuff like All, to turn Single Target Spells into Multi Target Spells
Purple for Independent Effects, these were the classical Stat boosters for example, basically what we have now here in a super dumbed down way, biut also other interestign stuff like Exp Plus, to gain more experience, making leveling less of a grind, Gil plus to increase more gil with kills, protect, to be more of a tank, getting attacked more, than other characters that dont have this materia on or Speed, to increase the efficiency of the Limit Gauge filling up with your attacks faster
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With this explanation, Id like to describe now, what Id like to have for FF14 with such a system.

Materia in FF14 should be also obtained by either finding it from killed enemis (we do that already in Dungeons, so why not everyhwhere in the game), or buying them from NPCs as some kind of Gil or MGP sinks.
Same as in FF17 we should be able to improve our obtained Materia when we use them in our gear, this way these tons of useless higher tiered versions can be removed, players don't have then anymore to constantly remove and put in Materias into their equipment to replace low tier versions with high tier version.
Every Materia you use with your character, should consistently be used always with any gear you use, unless you manually remove the Materia from your Materia Slot List, so that it doesn't receive Exp then anymore.
By making a Materia Max Level, it should also reproduce itself, but Max level Materia can't be sold, only Materias at their lowest Tier, this way would everyone have to work for their Materia Progression, and nut just have to be rich ingame to just buy you everythign in an blink of an eye ...
The Reproduction should be just the little reward for maxing a Materia out, so that you don't have to buy a new Materia, if you wanted to use more of the same Materias within your character(s).
Just like in 7, should have Materias based on their effects here also own different categories.

Red for Summons - Putting a Red Summon Materia into the Materia Slot, would allow the player to use specific Summon Spells as alternative Limit Breakers, so that the LB Feature becomes a bit more interesting ancfun and more FF original by making it possible to call iconic summons for aid (after you beat them first), these Materias would drop from Primae Fights for example only) and based on at which LB Tier you use them, the summon performs different LB skills.

Green for Spell/Skill Traits - Putting Green Materias into your List, will add Effects to your Spells/Skills, like turning your Dot from a Bio into Toxin, letting the DoT be stronger, by letting your Bio stack now with that Materia up to x times, making your lots on long lastign fights alot more effective, or it increases the duration

Yellow for Abilities - Ability Materias allow you to perform actions in combat, when you either active a Skill, or when you automatically attack an enemy, or improve for example Basic Features, like increasing your Run Speed, or increasign your Maximum Jump Height, or, or let you swim/dive faster or to places, that you wouldnt be able to reach without them

Blue for Spell/Skill Modifications, that affect the target number, the skill range, the radius of an aoe, add elemental resistances, or effetcs to your attack for additional elemental damage that could hurt alot, if the enemy is weak to that element (Eureka System), Absorb Effects for negative effects, or skill/spell cost reduction/ reload/cast tiem reductions for specific skilsl/spells

Purple is for Character Based Effects, like Exp Buffs, MGP buffs, Gil Buffs, Currency Buffs, Potion/Food Duration/Efficiency Buffs.

Maximum Number of Materia Slots a player should have is limited to 5 Slots per Gear Item type. Sword/Shield is separated into 3/2 as max, so that they have also max only 5 Slots like all others.
Now comes the point where its different out of balance reason, cause in FF7 all this works, because its a single player rpg.
Here in FF14, the Matera Slot List would have a limitation - called Materia Rank Limit.

The MRL is a number, which defines, how much Materia you can have maximum with you. Each Materia has a Rank from 1 to 5.
If you have a Materia, that you want to stop gaining exp, so that its rank doesn't ris,e you have to "seal" it, and if you want to raise its exp again, to "unseal" its powers.
This is basically as gil sink replacement, for not having to remove and put back in materias anymore, and to balance the amount of Materia naturally players can have with them.

The MRL does increase automatically every 10 Levels of your Character by +5.
So at Level 70, we woudl be able to have maximum either 70 Rank 1 Materias with us, or up to maximum 14 Rank 5 ones.
Players will naturally most likely habe rather as many maxed out materias with then, than tons of lower ranked ones, but the uption to split up your materias into many weaker ones, enables to to finetune eventually your characters into ways, that wouldnt be possible, if you just put only maxed out materias into your Slot List and limitate yourself with this to only maximum 14 effects you coudl have with you within the various categories.

Not every materia effect do you want to use maybe forever, some will become less useful eventually also over time and you will want to replace them perhaps, with some other materias of lower ranks, that provide still maybe more useful effects for you at the moment. So max at Level 80 with shadowbrigners woudl be to have then up to 16 maxed out Materias in your list.
And the amount of useable Materias with variosu effects could get constantly increas,e so that players always have somethign to exchange out, to differentiate their "Materia Builds" to their personal likings/needs.

Thats kind of the basic concept, how id liek to see the FF7-version getting reused for FF14