STATS: A Question for the community.

[Vatom]

Do stats matter?

I mean this in many direction but I start with one.
IF you remove (Det, Crit, Str, etc.) Would that change the game?

For example if CB3 just wipe all stats away but you still do the same damage, potency didnt change, maybe they up the dmg a bit to compensate the number difference but over no stats.

Would this change the game?

Now I'm not coming at this in bad faith but my answer is not really. Some people will say big number go brr. Yeah but overall I don't see it changing the game. In NO WAY AM I SAYING THEY SHOULD. This just to look at the stat system we have and ask is this what I want? is this fun? Would you put this in another game and enjoy it?

If people are gonna stay for another 10 years give or take. Do you like this? or want something a bit more active? If you do why? and if you don't why and what would be a good change?

[Eastwall]

Actually, l tried a max spell speed and piety build in ucob. It Feels really good. Not only l don't run out of mp ressing, max spell speed shaving off 1.2s cast time can be felt. So, l would say wiping out These stats will make the prog harder for me

[Vatom]

This is a good point for spell & skill speed, I do feel the same way when I have a certain speed with VPR n NIN. I too think they should make this just haste but thats another conversation. Do you think all skill should be like this in the sense that they should affect your gameplay directly like skill speed?

[PyurBlue]

Stats with proc rates like Crit and DH create variance which has some impact but how much of it you feel varies a lot by situation. On a boss with a lot of HP they don't change the feeling of gameplay at all because everything averages out. In a short DPS phase (adds, boss charging up a mechanic) a lucky string of crits can noticeably speed things up and can change the feel or combat, though I prefer when player agency is responsible for significant changes rather than rolling dice. If raising Crit/DH rates was only a potential burst gain and not an average damage gain they could have offered a way to tailor a character to certain situations but as it stats Crit and DH have no downsides so there are no choices to be made.

Piety gives the player a dial to turn to tweak performance (DPS) vs risk (running out of MP due to unexpected healing) so there is a choice to be made here. Again I don't think it's very meaningful though. All it does is raise your parse number which doesn't make gameplay feel better in my opinion. I also think that healing when things go wrong is the more fun part of healing so optimization in this case would make things more boring.

Tenacity giving a slight damage reduction can make a difference though it's the healer that will feel it more than the tank. I think tenacity would be more interesting on non tank classes, but at the same time, with the way damage works in this game it would be really hard to justify using. It's already hard to justify on tanks.

The speed stats are by far the best ones because they change how classes feel. From a gameplay perspective these are the only stats I care about. They also come with tradeoffs. Faster casting means more MP use and potentially less raw damage. Dealing with tradeoffs like this is one of the hallmarks of good stat design.

Overall I don't think the stats in FF14 matter very much. Speed stats are good. Piety and Tenacity are kind of OK but not valuable. Crit/DH/Det are the most important stats but very dull. If stats were changed to allow players to change the feel of classes I think it would be a better system. That stats would need more tradeoffs. Fight design shifting to something less scripted would also be beneficial.

[Nero-Voidstails]

so if you speak about base states like STR,vit,mind,into,dex well only for calculation of HP and some basic info not really but I get why they are a thing. In materia section those are better worked on and mean alot more overall to damage if we would have a other way for the other stats I think they would be more impactful in themself

[Shurrikhan]

Speed (and maybe Piety if shit hits the fan run after run) can be felt, yes. The other secondary stats? Pretty much only on fflogs.

I think they're better to have than not, even beyond just selecting GCD tiers per Speed being the only consideration (which could otherwise as easily be done via the weapon type of one's weapon glamour [as not to be forced into a single GCD tier by each weapon upgrade]), but I'd prefer a % increase with fewer points so they could feel more impactful.

I would also prefer to push Tenacity and Piety to a separate tier (e.g., "Tertiary Stats"), perhaps alongside changing Direct Hit into some sort of movement speed-related stat and return Det to the sole bigger hits/crits stat while Crit again just controls crit chance (with bonus damage only on already-guaranteed crits). No damage on Tenacity in that case, of course.

[Carighan]

IMO no.

Since stats are stricly balanced in a dev-decided way (that is, there is virtually no or factually no player agency) they might as well just be removed.

However, they act as an important money drain, so I would assume that if secondary stats + materia are removed whole, repair costs in particular would have to go up quite a lot.

[dspguy]

If SE just removed all substats, they would balance the equation by adding more main stat to gear or an across-the-board increase to potency or an across-the-board decrease of mob HP. All substats do, in my opinion, is allow them to have 2-3 options for gear for a certain iLvl that are "different" while not really being all that different. Oh look, this one has 300 crit and 200 DH while THIS one has 200 DH and 300 crit. Considering everyone seems to want crit/DH, in either case, it only really changes what you meld, but the end result is mostly the same.

They could drop all substats, but then what would be different about gear when gear of the same iLvl has the same vit/main-stat all the time, every time.

[Carighan]

They could drop all substats, but then what would be different about gear when gear of the same iLvl has the same vit/main-stat all the time, every time.

Nothing, but I'd go a step further.

All you do collecting gear of tier X is prepare your character to challenge tier X+1. Functionally this is no different than requiring a certain number of clears of tier X before allowing you to do tier X+1. In other words, you could actually check for some achievement and having that raises your innate character stats. It's a reward from say, the "kill boss XYZ 5 times" (or 10 times, or whatever).

All gear would then be entirely statless and be just for glamouring, which, if we're being honest, is what most gear gets acquired for anyways, empirically speaking.

Yes this would not be a clean replacement of course, but it's to illustrate how little the actual gear progression we do matters. It could be removed in favor of a trait from an achievement, and you could balance that, with quite little change even I'd assume. Even ignoring that though, you could just have all gear have the same stats in each tier. They look different, and that's what ultimately matters to people far more. The stats are just something you get from a guide anyways.

[Valence]

If we had more mechanics that work like MNK chakras or old BRD procs that are tied to various substats like crit, or dh, then perhaps it could give back some meaning to those stats, and also give more variety to the incredibly stale "just meld crit > det=dh lol".