Why does this game hide essential character info?

[ValerianA]

So, when you open the character page in FFXIV, you will see ton of primary and secondary stats. Strength, tenacity, direct hit, etc.
You can see their numerical value, yet these numbers are meaningless without context, without feedback for my character.
What is my chance to crit? Exactly how much extra damage/healing/dmg reduction do my tanks get from their tenacity? How much damage reduction I gain from my defense values?

I have never seen this in any other MMORPG. I've been playing them for over a decade, I have high level characters in 5 MMOs and I dabbled in many others, and I can't remember not being able to see such basic, essential info like what is my crit chance.

I guess there are some fan-made online calculators where I put my stats and see the desired info, but that's kinda my point, I shouldn't have to rely on fan-made third party resources to see such basic stuff.

Why does it matter?
- its impossible to make any character/gear optimization, theorycrafting, without being completely reliant on player-made guides.
What is my best secondary stat? Is this piece of gear with slightly higher ilvl, but lesser amount of materia slots better? Who knows?
- it can lead to outright wrong choices when gearing up. For example, going by ingame description, Tenacity seems like such a wonderful, all-in-one stat for tanks, and new player might be tempted to stack it as much as possible. Yet when you read any tanking guide, every advanced player will tell you that tenacity is bad and you should stack CRIT and DH as tank.
- character and gear progression feels much less satisfying in this game compared to other MMOs. Yet "the loot hunt" is one of the main reasons to keep playing MMOs once you've completed the story and hit max level.
Sure, my lvl80 SAM with rankVIII materias has much more CRIT, DH, DET, than my lvl 68 DNC in Shire gear with V materias, but ultimately this tells me nothing.

The only stat whose progression you can easily see is Vitality, where you can see your HP increase with each item you equip. Everything else is hidden for some reason. Why? And why aren't more players concerned with this?

[RoyalBeef]

Yeah, that was one of my first thoughts when I started and I still feel like it. If you can't look at a piece of gear and instantly tell if it's better than what you currently have or not without consulting theory crafting sources first, the system failed.
In other games, getting new gloves, you felt a difference, no matter how minor it was. In FF14 your whole ilvl can go up 20 levels and the only difference you notice is you have more hp, everything else feels exctly like it did before and you'd have to use 3rd prarty tools to even see if your damage out put in increased or i there are more crits than before.

[Shurrikhan]

And why aren't more players concerned with this?

Plenty are. They just asked this question repeatedly back in ARR, and, having been repeatedly given no answers, eventually stopped asking.

[ValerianA]

Well maybe if we keep bombarding the devs (politely ofc) they might change it, or at least give us their reasoning?
Like players kept bombarding them with male bunny outfits, playable Viera, in-game parsers etc., and either we got what we wanted, or at least we got a reply why it cannot be done.
This is first day I am posting on forums, but I have been playing since HW, and I visit the forums almost daily (Lurky McLurker at your service) and I have never seen this being discussed.
Recently we had a big Q-A session with the devs, and again nobody brought it up.

[Rilifane]

It was really off putting for me aswell when I started this game. It still is, I just roll with it because after years of no change to this despite many people asking for it, it's likely never going to change.
But it does still irk me. I'm not against looking up things myself and I enjoy theorycrafting but seeing so many meaningless numbers ingame because the game itself provides absolutely no context aside from "This number is higher. It's probably better" still bothers me.

[Enkidoh]

The interface does give some explanation as to what each stat does in general terms if you hover the cursor over it in the character screen. However, they're deliberately not going to explain in detail what the mathematics do under the hood as that sort of information players would then use to exploit the game deliberately. And even keeping it secret has not stopped players already doing just that. Unfortunately, you're not going to get an in-depth explanation from the development team about this I'm afraid.

[Commander_Justitia]

players would then use to exploit the game deliberately. And even keeping it secret has not stopped players already doing just that.

"Exploit" has a rather negative attribute. I don't know what should be so malicious about knowing what your stats do. Isn't it a good thing to know what your gear does?

[Fhaerron]

they're deliberately not going to explain in detail what the mathematics do under the hood as that sort of information players would then use to exploit the game deliberately. And even keeping it secret has not stopped players already doing just that.

So the fact that I know that I have to meld Direct Hit on my PLD to get the most DPS out of my gear is an exploit?

How?

[Nora_of_Mira]

So the fact that I know that I have to meld Direct Hit on my PLD to get the most DPS out of my gear is an exploit?

How?

on the flip side of the argument, they could be hiding exactly how useless Tenacity is and hiding it is the only reason it's not 100% ignored.

but in reality, its more so that stats as such as Tenacity/Determination affect different values whereas Crit/DHit are pretty straightforward in what they increase. Players are always smarter than the devs anticipate, so I can only assume they're hiding lacklusterness of these substats.

It's generally because the numbers don't actually do anything anyway. they get higher as you level sure but they don't actually do anything..

a level 50 blm with 350 spell speed has pretty much the exact same cast time as a level 60 with 800 or a level 70 with 1100 or a level 80 with whatever a level 80 blm has.

it's been the same forever even things like crit. the number keeps on going up and up and up but the crit rates essentially stay the same....

this is...very not true.

[Dzian]

this is...very not true.

Are you sure? GCDs for example aren't really any faster now even when players have skill/spell speeds in the thousands than they were way back in ARR.

You can go look at logs of like gordias savage for example and compare average crit rates from jobs to what the average crit rates were for midas, creator, delta, sigma, etc etc... and see they really don't change that much at all despite the stats getting higher and higher with every tier of gear..

Speed is the same thing. Why is it that if you get synced down to say 50 and lose over 1000 points of spell speed your flare cast or your fire 3 cast isn't really any slower?
Because the stat makes no real difference at all. It just keeps getting higher and higher and doesn't really do anything.

This is why they can't make stats transparent, because they have no consistent value or effect. If you make a comparison to FFXI as an earlier posted said it was exactly the same there. In as much that stats effects were hidden yes they were.
However the effects in FFXI were measurable and consistent. You could easily work out that the 15 dex stat on Byakkos Haidate would result in a 3.75% increase to your ninjas hit rate because stat effects were consistent 1 accuracy would always result in a 0.5% boost to your hit rate. 2 dex would always equate to 1 accuracy for a 1 handed weapon user. the same was true with pretty much every stat. although hidden the effects were measurable with a high degree of precision.

It just doesn't work in 14 because the stats don't have a consistent value. A few jobs have demonstrated it quite well over the course of the game since ARR.. Where magic numbers for skill or spell speed would allow you to squeeze that extra heavy shot into something like a raging strikes window. But then suddenly you can't do that anymore because now you don't have enough speed.... So you need to pile on even more speed stats just to do what you used to be able to do with less points in that same stat...