Materia System

[Elexia]

Problem:
Crafters may be able to double dip profits from this system, enjoying steady sales of their over-produced crap and charging ridiculous prices for materia inlaying and HQ inlaying.
Solution
Emphasize crafters' primary economic benefit to be to increase demand for their undesired final product production, not primarily from profit from materia activity.

Real Solution: Make gil worth something.

[Cairdeas]

Maybe I didnt understand it at all but why should a used weapon or armor turn into materia? i better like the idea of getting inactive materia from shops, monsters or chests and equip them in weapons or armor to get AP that activate the materia at 100%. i like the idea, but i just dont understand. More information would be great.

The way I think the Lore will work is

1. Items are crafted with crystals which leave a latent energy in the item.
2. As you use the item it absorbs energy from you and the monsters you fight, or from items you craft.
3. When the item is filled with as much energy as it can hold it becomes Catalytic.
4. You can then convert it into Materia with the Materia Catalyst.

[tachikoma]

The materia catalyst is for attaching materia to gear, not creating the materia from the gear. I expect an NPC who charges a fee (much needed gil sink) to turn your gear into materia.

[Rentahamster]

Real Solution: Make gil worth something.

Like this?

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Curb-Inflation

Not a total solution, but it might help.

[Drex]

Sounds annoying and unnecessary, I really don't like this. The last part that says "high risk failure" just makes it even worse.

Please don't implement it.

"high risk failure????.... omg pls no.. i want easy things!!" --;

Please implement it.

[Cairdeas]

"high risk failure????.... omg pls no.. i want easy things!!" --;

Please implement it.

Its only high risk if your trying to add a second materia slot.

[KumaAkuma]

Honestly I couldn't care less about this whole materia system if there isn't a noticeable difference with socketed items in actual combat.

I'm not going to skill up weapons to get better stats from the resulting materia if the only thing it does is adjust some numbers in the status menu.

This whole thing better not be a "barbie doll set" Do-Over! (And by barbie doll sets I'm referring to the 400 faction sets that only allowed you to play dress up with your character)

[Kirith]

So in the end this is the best desperate measure they could come with to remove gear from the economy? Gear transforming in stat bonus for other gear? It doesn't make sense to me as part of the game world and in the long run will probably become just another annoying factor to consider when balancing economy and battle.
I'd rather have stuff break from use than this...

If it were me i'd make material drops much more rare and make some of the materials used in making certain gear be recoverable when it breaks. Furthermore i'd make gathering materials from monsters an action you have to select and execute instead of it happening automatically. This way people who only care for fighting won't bother with low level materials and won't gather them from monsters they kill, which also solves inventory cluttering and removes some of the materials sold in the wards. To complete this i'd increase the skill points from a single craft so people don't need to craft so many items of the same tier et voilà, there are less useless items in people's inventories and less gear in circulation.
Regulating wear/break rate and drop rate to adjust economy as needed would be easy then. With the materia system it just becomes harder.

[Draco]

Lmao! The FFVII Card!! Ah SE! How have you fallen!!!

Eitherway, that materia system sounds a lot like the armor slots/get system we got in wow.

I like it, this game is more wowish each month :O

I cannot believe you people are comparing this system to WoW. And this is not just from FFVII either, they also did something very similar to this in FFIX and FFXI, except it was for abilities, not for stats, but it is the same idea. If I am not mistaken, FFIX was released before WoW. In FFIX Weapons and Armors would have abbilities and magic spells attached to them. The way you would go about learning those spells would be to fight with the weapon or armor on and earn "attatchment points". Once you unlocked all points you were able to use the spells and/or abilities granted from that weapon/armor anytime you wanted. In this sense, they are trading magic and abilities for an actual "skill orb" that you can attach to other items. That is pretty much the same idea, and while it is not magic or abilities, the name Materia makes sense, that and they said they were not set on that name anyway.

[Betelgeuzah]

"high risk failure????.... omg pls no.. i want easy things!!" --;

Please implement it.

At the end of the day it simply sounds like you're gonna have to work more after a certain threshold to attain better results.

In other words to apply two materia into equipment, you not only need to gather two materia but also due to the added value may need to work further to see the results. It's not a linear curve for effort/reward, but until we see exactly what is lost after a failure and what the rate is we won't know just how much the required effort goes up in the process.

I guess there could have been better ways to handle this, but as long as we don't have to deal with the craziness that is upgrading equipment in Korean MMO's (which can go up to +7 quality with .5% success rate...) this should be fine.