Materia system should be streamlined and based on FFVII.

[DardGhalawad]

In 2.0 they are pretty much making Materia useless, and no, I'm not happy about it.

Making the ratio RNG of the character status and gear into 1:1 is the same for a fail game!

Altough there is alot of good ideas in this thread, along with bad ones. It's just a matter of filtering them.

In this case I'm with the ideias of aditional slots for gear, but, the gear should be divided on 5 tiers:
1-10 : Tier I ( 1 slot )
10-20 : Tier II ( 2 slots )
20-30 : Tier III ( 3 slots )
30-40 : Tier IV ( 4 slots )
40-50 : Tier IV ( 5 slots )
Also the HQ versions of gear and weapons shouldn't have an aditional bonus slot!! Aditional bonus slots should be going to the Primals weapons and NM gear/weapons, but, their lvl is also linked to the Tier of slots, for example: a lvl 15 weapon/gear dropped from a NM, instead of having 2 slots it should have 3 slots.

The meld system of 5 materias in one slot should be abolish! Instead SE should just allow us to input the materia along with the catalysts, these can be stil be used for materia input and output in the slots. Since catalysts are used to input materia they should be used also to output the materia of the gear/weapon.

I like also the ideia of having the materia growth system, but the spiritbond for these should be more slower, and the tiers II, III, IV, V of the materia should be removed. Instead of converting materia into tiers: I, II, III, IV, V; the converting system should be only grant a "tier I" materia with a random status like we usually get from any materia convert, and the spiritbond with the materia should increase the tier allowing to give a better booster of its status than the previous status of the lower tier. And this is the downside of materia growth system (spiritbond) the spiribond for the next tier is equal to the amount of exp gained from 1-20 (tier II ),20-30 (tier III), 30-40 (tier IV), 40-50 (tier V). Because spiritbond gear/weapons is so easy and materia spiritbond should be a challenge!

For these changes to be put in game, they should be followed with a few quests from the Goblin outside "Uld'a", along with the craftermanship guilds.

Hope these can help with this thread!

[Mijin]

I don't totally disagree with what they plan on doing, my problem is this:

What are players who already spent exorbitant amounts of time obtaining +1 triple melded gear supposed to do when it all suddenly becomes next to useless? Walk it off?

[Viritess]

More materia on an item will still mean more stats. Thus likely better. I really don't mind using crafted items with materia. As nice as it would be to get all your needs as you go i think its very important to keep crafting, and crafted gear important to battle classes.

Inter-dependancy does alot for a community. SWG had a very good crafter-combat community because both needed eachother. (didn't play long at all, but the relationships we're visable)

Materia for FF14 cycles gear, and thats important. But there are definately some things that could helps alot to lower some randomness of melding. And put to use some lesser used materia. So i'll toss a few options out that i think could be helpful. Though not all of them should/need to be implimented together.

1st option: Allow players to combine like materia to get a better version. If you have a STR +18 and 2 STR +16. Allow players to use a +16 to add +1 to the 18. By using 2 you can thus make a +20. (keep the +20 as the cap, or whatever the top value for 2.0 would be) If this option is used while the materia is on a piece of gear, you can involve the crafters and keep them in the fold.

2nd option: Allow people to use non-alike materia to increase chance of meld. Higher tier and value can add extra chance of success. It would depend on the numbers as far as how high a chance SE would want to cap it at. But this would not only give additional use to Materia people don't need (and thus keep SBing going so crafters can still move product) But this would increase the chance.

(i'm not the biggest fan of RNG as far as drops go, but this is one aspect in which i agree with the inclusion of Randomness. If there was a way to give 100% chance of meld, few if any person would meld without getting to 100% chance first. That would undermine one of the systems goals.)

3rd Option: Limit stacking of materia per item. Instead of 2-5 STR materia, limit it to 1 of any type per item. Then a Single meld (under the current stat system) is perfectly fine for most content. And any additional Melds are almost bonus.
This option would also keep somewhat in check ever growing stat stacking. And also give some additional use to the materia everyone throws out because it is not optimal.

Your FAR more likely to see any multi meld be the very same materia placing huge amounts of a single stat per item. And because of this you see many non crafted armors lose out totally to melded. However if the max meldable STR on cloves you could get is +20. you could then decide if you wish to chance another meld for say, Dex. or stay with your +str. If you make it to +20 STR and +20 Dex. You have less of a driving need for that 3rd meld because you can't push a single stat up. As you lower your chances of adding a meld, the stats are somewhat less desireable for the risk.

I suppose that sounds counter intuative for the %risk of loss. But it would actually be a fair medium between Crafters still moving their product, and players not feeling the absolute "NEED" to triple or quad meld items for MOAR STR/INT etc.

4th option: Raise the %chances or meld greatly. 50% for 5th meld. But Lower the stats of materia greatly. Tier 1 is +2 STR, Tier 2 is +3 STR Tier 3 is +4 str till Tier 4 is +5 STR.

I understand the desire for a less Explosive materia system. But as a poster said earlier, we should keep in mind that the current system of materia is not just for stat padding, its for cycling gear into and out of exsistance. And because of that i think asking for greater success of melds is asking for worse stat return on them.

You may find that what your asking for will relegate Materia to a total afterthought. And then marginalizing not only materia, but Crafting and Gathering with it.

TL;DR If i had my choice of systems i'd take Option 1 combined with Option 3. With a bit of Option 2 added in. That would give us the ability to "grow" materia to the best of the tier (but still using materia, thus still removing a crafted item from the game. Give use to less desireable materia, so even though theres less need to go past a double meld. The option is still there and you can benefit from the risk if your willing to take it. And using any other materia you don't need to bump up your chances a tad (while still cycling out Crafted items)

Thus crafters keep crafting. People still make some materia. But we as a whole feel less need to stack up a single stat to 3-4 melds and get angry that it blows up. Double melds become the cake, and anything else becomes icing.

[DardGhalawad]

I don't totally disagree with what they plan on doing, my problem is this:

What are players who already spent exorbitant amounts of time obtaining +1 triple melded gear supposed to do when it all suddenly becomes next to useless? Walk it off?

Simple, they will have the same disconnected feeling that I'm starting to have because of the ridiculous amount of time, not to mention materials and the gathering for those, expended for a shabby triple melded gear that will be soon obselet. And stop playing.

And I'm one of many casual gamers, so think about what not only I think about the so called "materia melding system", but also what the other casual gamers think about that.

When SE told about the introduction of materia and melding. I supposed like the majority of players that still play and that played this game, that this time they would introduce a similar materia system like the one used in FFVII, wich to my experience is an excellent system. But the part where we get to turn our gear/weapons into materia in this system isn't bad at all, since its purpose is to cycle trough unused gear and the old gear, not to mention to keep the economy markets stable. It's excellent also.

The only part where I can give a score of 1/10 is the melding system of materia ( and I'm being soft about this score ranking ), wich deteriorates not only the pleasure of playing but also the patience to play the game.
The melding system is equal, with some modifications aka addictions in the same slot, to the evolith system. What SE is thinking of introducing a previous system with a slight modification ( you can merge 5 materia in 1 slot ) and call it a new system?

If its materia melding or unmelding it should have more than 1 slot! And I'm mean 5 slots are enough for NQ/HQ gear/weapon. If the purpose is cycling gear/weapons, thats one point down.

The issue here is, if SE is trying to call FF fans, with an half-hearted system that was taked from FFXI and slightly modified to allow more than 1 merge till 5 merges in 1 slot.
And now they come with a new modification because they think we have unbalanced melded materia gear/weapons? In my point of view... They have failled in making a good system for materia or even to implement it in FFXIV!

The materia and melding system should be going trough changes, and those changes should be more similar to the FFVII. Altough the converting system should stay has it is. By these the gear/weapons should be able to cycle, you could convert them even with materia attached to it, to be able to get an unique materia, so that wont be an overflow of materias in the market

The score I still give for this game is still a 6/10... but the materia melding system (or its mechanics) is downgrading it.

If the development team created a system like this, the game would have more casual gamers playing. Hence more income for SE profits, but it seems that they arent interested of introducing a perfect but old system mechanics for materia. So they will be still struggling with this failled materia melding system.

[Jacien]

I just wanna mention Xenoblade.


Okay, mentioned.

[morpheus]

Don't remember any RNG involved with the materia system in ffvii. Best gear in the game should be obtained through skill not luck.

[DardGhalawad]

Don't remember any RNG involved with the materia system in ffvii. Best gear in the game should be obtained through skill not luck.

Actually its both!
But in FFVII there wasn't any RNG involved with the materia system. Actually u could buy the normal ones, but the rare ones where only obtainable through quests, side-quests or hidden places and where unique.

But since we can make materia through the convertion of gear/weapons, wouldn't be better to make the rare type materias come through the convertion of a certain gear/weapon with certain materias attached to it? If SE wanna correct their mistake with the melding system and put additional slots on both gear and weapons. That would be considered having skill and some "luck (based on attempt and error)".

[elreed]

Just give us slots. Done deal

That, will make game easier, FFVII had it, if you have WoW issues, and yes that will definitely add balance in the game, better gear more slots, one thing that i would love is having materia that really helps different playstyles, whats the deal on having restrictions where i want to put my materia, if i want to be a STR god let me be that, although we will have attributes caps, so if i want to waste 100 STR let me do it by giving me the freedom to put the materia in every part of my gear if i want, we would be using more gear, different gear than what we use right now.

[elreed]

I don't totally disagree with what they plan on doing, my problem is this:

What are players who already spent exorbitant amounts of time obtaining +1 triple melded gear supposed to do when it all suddenly becomes next to useless? Walk it off?

We need to move on, even if some players are damaged, they could make a temporary system to trade those gears to an NPC for a good amount of gil or seals, to compensate the damage.