High Materia: A concept to allow for some player agency, without destroying balance

[ForsakenRoe]

you are talking about small materia vs a giant change to the system which would fundamentally change how people play the game.

heck before they changed it so adding main stats have a cap on gear people expected tanks to use str instead of vit cause more hp was useless things like this have already happened before if you change the system to have thing that can actually give you a hefty boost people will expect it.

If you mean 'people used STR accessories instead of VIT accessories', then some people did use them at the cost of tankiness, yes. But not everyone did, and those who didn't were not getting kicked from parties, nor were they getting called out for their lower damage. In fact, I have a distinct memory of people complaining that people WERE chasing the damage, because it required using out-of-date accessories from the previous expansion, resulting in them being a lot squishier while progging a new fight (Susano and his TB)

If you mean 'people melded STR to accessories as tanks instead of VIT', that is because VIT on them was capped. Conversely, people would meld VIT to accessories as DPS to help survive raidwides. I remember seeing a meme where someone had opted to skip the VIT meld for more damage (by melding a Crit there instead). They were overkilled by the final raidwide spam of O12S by less than 100 damage, which the VIT Materia would have provided a couple of times over. Turns out blindly chasing 'more damage' might not be the best choice in every scenario, hmm?

I'm also not seeing where the 'hefty boost' (specifically in damage either for the player or the party as a whole) is coming from. Sure, you save the healers 2 GCDs each in P12S P2 by using the Esuna-Intervention effect as a PLD. Four total healer GCDs in a fight that is 8:45 (or whatever it is) long? What a gamebreaking 'hefty boost' to the group, around 1200-1300 total potency! One non Crit-DH Hyosho from your Ninja, and that whole 'gain' in RDPS is gone. Crit Variance will always, always, be a bigger impact on your damage than any system I could come up with, and unlike stuff I come up with, the damage swing caused by Crit Variance is already in the game, mangling the oh-so-precious 'job balance'

[Musashidon]

If you mean 'people used STR accessories instead of VIT accessories', then some people did use them at the cost of tankiness, yes. But not everyone did, and those who didn't were not getting kicked from parties, nor were they getting called out for their lower damage.

funny cause they were it happened to me plenty of times during it. you can say it didnt happen but it did. its a big reason we got the change in general most of SE big balance changes were cause players actively cause problems over optimal play like stance dancing.


while variance is a big thing if you can change the baseline dps of a player by a decent amount it wil become mandatory SE has gone way out of its way to prevent exclusion from content and a big change to materia can become a problem.

i will also say though that balance isn't always a reason to not put something in the game, but i am just here to say that it's not unreasonable to know that players will exclused/kick/harrass players for playing unoptimally especially if it because a big difference and not a small one.

[Aravell]

while variance is a big thing if you can change the baseline dps of a player by a decent amount it wil become mandatory SE has gone way out of its way to prevent exclusion from content and a big change to materia can become a problem.

i will also say though that balance isn't always a reason to not put something in the game, but i am just here to say that it's not unreasonable to know that players will exclused/kick/harrass players for playing unoptimally especially if it because a big difference and not a small one.

I'm confused, did you even read the suggestion in the OP? In what part did any direct increase if baseline damage even get mentioned? Where is this "hefty dps gain" from augmenting support abilities? No one's going to kick you because your Passage of Arms isn't a circle.

[ForsakenRoe]

while variance is a big thing if you can change the baseline dps of a player by a decent amount it wil become mandatory SE has gone way out of its way to prevent exclusion from content and a big change to materia can become a problem.

I agree, that's why any 'gain' that a system like this would provide should be lower than the amount you can get screwed out of by Crit Variance, a system that already exists in the game

That'd be cool, but it's clear they don't want this theme park MMO to have anything really thought provoking, I was thinking about it the other day, how we have some sets with set bonus's for wearing pieces, for instance the Loyal Housemaid's Uniform/Loyal Butler's Uniform/Far Eastern Schoolgirl's Uniform they're paid sets now but they all have the bonus (5 Equipped: Intelligence +5 under level 30) I don't see why we can't have either:

A) Materia set bonuses or additional effects
B) Gear set bonuses+additional effects for 2-3-4-5-10 piece bonus or something

I've considered the same, but the problem with such an idea is that, were the gear sets that provide these effects from the 8man raids (example), you could end up with a situation WOW has run into at times, wherein it's decided that it's 'better' to run an old tier's set for the effect, skipping over new gear in favour of lower-ILVL (less stats less HP) gear, all for the sake of keeping a certain effect active. By having such a 'bonus' attached to something gear-agnostic like Materia, where you can just use the same Materia on the next gear upgrade too, it avoids that.

As for actual Set Bonuses, ones that DO affect damage directly, I'd personally implement them (if I worked for SE) in a specific way: Exploratory Content. We have the Eureka set giving Elemental Bonus (flat stat bonus basically), and Bozja's sets give Haste. Both quite bland, really, aren't they? Instead, what if we had, as an example:

WAR:
2 pieces of set: When you use a Beast Gauge spending skill, you reduce the CD of Upheaval by 5 seconds.
3 pieces of set: When you use Onslaught, you gain a stack of 'Rampage' for 10s. At three stacks, becomes 'Explosive Rampage', doubling the Beast Gauge gained by all weaponskills that generate Beast Gauge.
5 pieces of set: When you use a Beast Gauge spending skill, you gain a stack of 'Beast's Deliverance', increasing your Haste by 1%. Stacks up to 20 times. You lose all stacks upon exiting combat.

If we're in side content like a Bozja or Eureka, we can be a lot less beholden to job balance, and go all out on crazy effects that only activate in said side content. With this, for example, you would turn into a Fell Cleaving, Upheaval-uppercutting machine gun of blows, getting faster and more uncontrollable as the fight goes on and you build more stacks, which feed back into making you go even faster. Maybe at max stacks of the Haste thing, you'd end up with a GCD speed so fast that it cannot go lower, because the game engine cannot handle it. You can actually try that, btw, if you go in Bozja. Just be MNK, equip the Bozja Earrings, and use the banner that requires you dodge three attacks to trigger a big SKS buff. It sets you to the fastest GCD speed the game allows via Skillspeed modification, 1.5s. It's quite uncontrollable in an actual fight, but going fast is very fun. For maximum 'uncontrollable', you can also use Lost Fair Trade with a stack of like 99 potions in your bag. They will only do 50p, but throwing them is considered a weaponskill despite LFT being OGCD, which means that if they crit, you get a Chakra from it. And LFT has only a 4s CD, so... every 2nd GCD you're weaving something

Anyway, I'd tie a 'relic armour set' of sorts to it. And by upgrading it through several stages (as we do with the relic weapons), we could buff the effects at each stage to allow it to give a feeling of progression beyond mere stats. For example, the 5 piece bonus could be 'stacks to 10/15/20' depending on how many upgrade levels the armour has gone through. And every other job would have their own crazy effects that only kick in when you're in this side content, like GNB could become a crazy blur of button-presses by adding Continuation effects to more skills, like maybe you can Continuation after your regular 123 hits, or after Double Down. Maybe MNK gets the ability to press Anatman for a 50% damage boost, and cause giant spectral fists and feet to crush the enemy like the Rhalgr fight, allowing them to attack from range for a time idk

[Musashidon]

I'm confused, did you even read the suggestion in the OP? In what part did any direct increase if baseline damage even get mentioned? Where is this "hefty dps gain" from augmenting support abilities? No one's going to kick you because your Passage of Arms isn't a circle.

i'm confused how do you not understand that changes to abilities can have adverse affects in places you didnt know it could?

great you have an example of 1 skill that just changes the area of the skill but what happens when you change say cover to have longer range? or a passive that gives even just 5% damage reduction you only think of a few skills or a few things and if you even just added 3 new materia of augmentation to the line for each job you can easily add something to a job to cause exclusion if you dont do it.

once again this isn't about shuting down the idea but when a person says it will cause a problem like exclusion or make a meta saying no thats not true is wrong. there is a huge balancing act to do the whole time this is being made and implemented and players will go hog wild to find things with it.

[Aravell]

once again this isn't about shuting down the idea but when a person says it will cause a problem like exclusion or make a meta saying no thats not true is wrong. there is a huge balancing act to do the whole time this is being made and implemented and players will go hog wild to find things with it.

And it's been pointed out multiple times that it's needless fearmongering. BLM is the meta caster pick at the moment because of their obscene dps lead over the other casters, is BLM enforced in every party?

Until BLM gets enforced in every party because of their sizeable dps lead, you have no proof that minor improvements to utility will lead to mass lockouts of certain jobs, it's just fearmongering at best and misinformation at worst.

[Musashidon]

And it's been pointed out multiple times that it's needless fearmongering. BLM is the meta caster pick at the moment because of their obscene dps lead over the other casters, is BLM enforced in every party?

Until BLM gets enforced in every party because of their sizeable dps lead, you have no proof that minor improvements to utility will lead to mass lockouts of certain jobs, it's just fearmongering at best and misinformation at worst.

literally gives you the answer proceeds to say well blm is by far better than the other dps well sad news it isnt.

[AmiableApkallu]

once again this isn't about shuting down the idea but when a person says it will cause a problem like exclusion or make a meta saying no thats not true is wrong. there is a huge balancing act to do the whole time this is being made and implemented and players will go hog wild to find things with it.

"If you make something idiot-proof, someone will just make a better idiot."

There will always be a meta. That's just math. No one's denied that.

But limiting design to accommodate the idiots that can't be bothered to understand why something is meta, when the meta applies, and how much of a difference the meta actually makes in any given piece of content… that simply leads to a downward spiral of simplification and boredom.

[Aravell]

literally gives you the answer proceeds to say well blm is by far better than the other dps well sad news it isnt.

You're clearly not understanding my point, so I pointed out the biggest balance discrepancy in the game and pointed out that no one is being locked out of parties for it. What makes you think that a minor 5% boost in mitigation will imbalance a job to the point of forcing everyone to lock out every other job in the role when a very clear 10% difference in caster dps at the moment isn't enough to force BLM to be a lock-in for every party?

I cannot make this any clearer.

Edit: You have also yet to point out where the hefty boost or the baseline damage increase would come from in such a system when all the proposed system does is augment defensive/utility abilities.

[ty_taurus]

The only players who complain about the fear of job lockouts are the people who either: don’t actually raid at all and have no idea what they’re talking about, or they do raid and got kicked by some group because they have not grasped a mechanic in x amount of attempts and then blame their job balance for why they always died to limit cut.