Materia System

[Peregrine]

I agree, precisely why I was making my feelings heard about introducing more loading screens to 'compromise' for better zones. However your posts came across as though you were an elitist player yourself. The fact is, they perhaps don't want what gear you equip to be the most important thing in this game, as it was in FFXI. Maybe they want players to use a variety of gear to obtain materia just so that the game is more interesting.

Hell I don't even know if I like the proposed system, but come on... aren't you being more than a little harsh on it?

Truth is, I am an elitist player myself. I just control my behavior in-game. If I'm 75% elitist, I only start yelling when someone is just overtly failing the task they were recruited to. There's a whole other league of people who will not tolerate people wearing frankly IKEA-quality gear to performance arenas, and will not only not tolerate them, they'll pick fights with them. Even if it doesn't matter much. It didn't matter much in FFXI either and people went NUTS.

I don't want to see it, and there's no reason to even present the two sides with each other's conflicting opinions. Best foot forward, always. No godammit that war is using his trial axe kick him.

I don't want to hear the ensuing debate on how one should or should not equip materia grind gear out to party in. I just don't want to hear it. There is no reason to even create a system where one needs to hear that.

[charliesheen]

Truth is, I am an elitist player myself. I just control my behavior in-game. If I'm 75% elitist, I only start yelling when someone is just overtly failing the task they were recruited to. There's a whole other league of people who will not tolerate people wearing frankly IKEA-quality gear to performance arenas, and will not only not tolerate them, they'll pick fights with them. Even if it doesn't matter much. It didn't matter much in FFXI either and people went NUTS.

I don't want to see it, and there's no reason to even present the two sides with each other's conflicting opinions. Best foot forward, always. No godammit that war is using his trial axe kick him.

I don't want to hear the ensuing debate on how one should or should not equip materia grind gear out to party in. I just don't want to hear it. There is no reason to even create a system where one needs to hear that.

I understand your points, however they only highlight the underlying issue with this game and most other MMOs that ever existed, and that's the entire system. It takes a lot of effort to continually provide players with challenging, unique and imaginative battles, that require genuine skill. MMOs are persistent and players eventually get bored with the content they have before them. Rather than provide those kind of battles that depend on skill, almost every MMO relies on making the outcome of battles depend on what gear you have equipped and what your stats are.

Now I'm not proposing that stats should be removed from the game, however if a good middle ground is not met, that is all the game becomes. Maths skinned with graphics. Because of this, what you desire can never happen. There will always be people want to play a game, they don't want to watch calculations unfolding on their screen in an illustrated fashion. So they will wear gear you don't like regardless of the maths system they put in place, and the outcome will be the same - you won't be happy. It doesn't matter if it's trial weapons or just gear that isn't the best for their job. If the battle results are not dependent almost completely on skill, that is simply how it is. You aren't really complaining about anything new here. Like you said it's the same situation as FFXI really, and I think its fair to say if I turned on any MMO I can experience the same attitudes!

Oh yeah, and I'm talking about once you have a certain level of skill. Of course if the player wears silly gear and they suck at playing too, that's an automatic fail!