The game would be better without stats

[Larirawiel]

Parasitic game design?

It seems, you do not get it what "parasitic game design" is. It is basically a game mechanics, which steals player's time and adds nearly nothing to the game. The stat system in FF14 fits perfectly into it.


Cheers

[Sensui]

The melds are pointless because it gives you a false sense of choice. There is no choice. Just the right thing or the wrong thing. That's what makes them pointless.

[Sinstrel]

Have you ever considered letting your thoughts develop beyond the "I've just had this thought" phase?

Wow, this guy is demeaning and condescending right out of the gate in the very first reply, and 16 others co-sign this post. Interesting.

I agree with BabyYoda here. Stats were removed from PvP and the mode feels even better to play since its more about player skill/experience instead of getting a lucky critical/direct hit. I think the same could be done about PvE to be honest. As it stands, a casual/newbie in high stats gear can do better damage than a highly skilled player doing the latest community/scientific rotation but wearing old gear with worse stats.

What purpose does the current stats system serve? Personally, I only did Savage raids for the sake of doing a more challenging PvE content. The only point in getting the gear was to be able to dye it for glams. If they got rid of all the stats, people would still try to maximize rotation and get up to the #2 on the threat meter in alliance raid/normal raid/savage raid (I'm making an assumption that thats what others care about stats for).

Aside from crafting requirements, what do others enjoy about having stats in this game?

[Sensui]

Gear system needs help. Gotta do savage to get savage gear to do savage. Wtf is the point to any of this.

[elioaiko]

Stats are really just "meld as much crit and direct hit as humanely possible and maybe determination sometimes."

It's sad. Piety as a whole is bad bc on paper yes, it gives you more comfort in having MP to save runs only to realize that better managing your MP abilities is better. Piety is a dead stat pass prog and even then, most mechanics will wipe the party immediately to even justify melding it.

Lowering healer's ability to have a stable MP economy is also bad as well, bc all that does is push the healers with the best MP economy to the front while punishing healers who have to to rely on piety.

AST was this way in SB and ShB (although SB had unlocked MP numbers). In ShB, you had to switch pieces or even meld piety to even be competitive with SCH/WHM for mp usage.

WHM got hit with this issue in EW when all healers got the 1.5s cast times and the nerf to Thin Air (which is ironic bc it's supposed to be more flexible with charges).

In the end, all stats end up being "which one is the best for damage?" The games obsession with 2 min burst windows and reliance on dps timers to balance jobs is hurting job identity and forcing jobs to be more or less carbon copies of one another.

[Jeeqbit]

no one understands the game engine and its capability other than the developer CBU3..

Sometimes they openly share what it's capable of. The libraries and technology it uses are displayed in the credits (and we know what said libraries and technology are capable of). Also, FF16 stands as an example.

There are things that can be done in any engine that are independent of what engine it is. You can know what these things are if you understand how to code. This knowledge can also give you a good understanding of what the issues might or might not be.

And when you've played the game a long time you get a good feel for it which gives a good sense of what limits the game runs into. Not that those are entirely relevant, because they could be changed.

There are just likely reasons they are not changed though, such as keeping within system requirements, or actual spaghetti code where 10 years of the game is built ontop of it and they don't want the stack of cards to fall down. Cases like the stack of cards falling down are often easy to observe in the game... such as changing the battle system when all the old content is designed around it. But you will still see players demand things that would break the rest of the game.

Sometimes there are cases where changing something is desired, but would take a long time and involve overhauling a lot of stuff. And that can be another reason to put it off or just not do it (I am sure they run into this and can even think of examples where they have).

Overall, I don't agree that you need to be a developer to make detailed suggestions. Most suggestions are possible, even if there would be reasons why they'd never do it and even if there would be technical reasons they wouldn't bother (including it involving too much work such as overhauling the entire game just for a person's suggestion or it causing the game to exceed system requirements).

[TBerry]

I'm afraid the system is so rigid that changing that would not be possible.
But.... what if it were like the Fate RP system, where every clas/job has a certain set of skills on which skills and abilities would be based on?

[Absurdity]

Ah yes, the usual, a system has become vestigal over the years so obviously it needs to be removed...as if that isn't exactly what brought us this bland gameplay sludge in the first place.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

I'd argue they should make stats feel more impactful (and have more information on the character sheet) then removing them entirely, I feel that the devs/players are far too gung ho about removing stuff, the game is barebones as it is, stats are a small way to optimise your character and make you think about gearing. I would prefer more engaging interactions beyond just stacking crit and reaching a particular speed.

At that point, might as well remove MP, casting, repairing, melding and positionals so the game is even less engaging. With how watered down the systems have become over the years, I'm finding less and less reason to log in. Streamlining is fine, but there is a point where its just too much, I'd argue removing stats would cross that line.

[TheDustyOne]

I'd argue they should make stats feel more impactful (and have more information on the character sheet) then removing them entirely, I feel that the devs/players are far too gung ho about removing stuff, the game is barebones as it is, stats are a small way to optimise your character and make you think about gearing. I would prefer more engaging interactions beyond just stacking crit and reaching a particular speed.

At that point, might as well remove MP, casting, repairing, melding and positionals so the game is even less engaging. With how watered down the systems have become over the years, I'm finding less and less reason to log in. Streamlining is fine, but there is a point where its just too much, I'd argue removing stats would cross that line.

I'm of this opinion; Square has a habit of just removing things because we deem them "pointless" or "annoying" (see TP, most positionals, most DoTs, tank stances) instead of thinking of how to make those systems engaging. Rather than removing the stats entirely, give me reason to want stats that aren't Crit/DHit.

Want to make Piety a stat that isn't entirely pointless? Give healers a second filler nuke with a higher MP cost and higher potency, now we not only give healers actual MP management in their damage kit, but Piety now indirectly gives extra damage via more casts of their higher damage nuke. I'd go even further with this and have most jobs use MP in some form, and remove the healer restriction on Piety, making it a universal stat that could affect your rotation in some meaningful way.

Want me to meld speed? Have the speed stat also affect other damage cooldowns so I don't get punished with drift because I wanted to go fast (there's a lot of other problems involved, like the strict 2 minute cooldowns and GCD alignment over those 2 minutes to ensure you get as much potency during those bursts).

Want Tenacity to have some meaning? Reducing the natural defensive power of the tanks and give Tenacity a boost in defence to make up for the loss in natural defence. Another option would just be to greatly increase auto and buster damage (and frequency of busters), but that would give roughly similar results. This would give Tenacity a little more meaning as both a prog stat and "insurance" stat. Ideally the change should be enough to reduce the amount of healing spells needed to keep a tank up so it could act as an indirect damage increase, but that would require a lot more changes to encounter design and healer kits.

The answer to the stat system being bad and pointless is to make them not bad and pointless. Easier said than done, but this game doesn't need more things removed, it needs more depth.