Situational Gear

[Yugl]

SE has increasingly released situational cast time gear and, given this game's limitations, it seems quite pointless for them to do so. Why don't you change all gear to either Black Magic/White Magic/Blue Magic/Bard/Ninjutsu/Summoning/Fast Cast instead? You only give us six line to change gear, so it's pretty ridiculous to shower us with a ton of "Wind Element Bard Stuff Cast Time Reduction ONRY" type gear.

- Even with "other measures", some of this gear is so situational that even they cannot effectively handle the specificity of this gear
- Inventory limitations will always mean that these situation pieces will be the first to go

There is really no excuse for releasing that kind of gear. I know SE has a habit of releasing "trash" gear to go along with the good stuff, but that excess gear, especially in this circumstance, is pointless. Do consider changing specificity of these pieces, thanks.

[Jerbob]

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Inventory space is a pressing concern for anyone doing their best to build the best sets of equipment that they can, but I think the part that annoys me the most is, as you say, the macroing. Situational gear is best made use of by people who can cheat their way into equipping several whole sets of gear in the time it takes to cast spells or use job abilities and weapon skills, and that's not even mentioning things like latent effect equipment that can be automatically equipped when the conditions are right.

As a White Mage the best example I can think of is casting Cure optimally. People can cap fast cast/recast reduction/cast time reduction, enmity reduction, cure potency, use an obi appropriately and use the Empyrean +2 body using a single macro. There's no way I can physically do that. I do the best I can with whole books of macros I've painstakingly optimised, but the fact remains that SE balances their "new" "content" around people who achieve the most - and those people cheat using all this situational equipment, which means SE ups the difficulty and creates more situational equipment... a vicious cycle.

Then you've got the irritation of SE doing insane things like nerfing Pet TH into the ground but saying they'll compensate with equipment... why? Equipment that enhances cursna, equipment that increases potency of Protect and Shell recieved... it boggles the mind.

Sorry for the rant. 100% support.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Cheat really isn't the right term to use.

[svengalis]

This brings up a good point. Well i don't know how anyone can be the best bard they can be because of all the different gears for bard. Its not that fun to me and has wàaay to much gear if you want to be a good bard. All this new situation gear they are adding I am just like where are we supposed to put it.

[Jerbob]

Cheat really isn't the right term to use.

Urgh. I wrote a proper response to this but the forums decided it wasn't to be and proceded to eat it for me. Oh well. Here we go again.

I can appreciate that there are different "levels of severity" of cheating, and that extended macros (I don't know what they're technically called but that will do) are not on the same level that some hypothetical "press button to recieve items of your choice" hack might be, but in a game where effective use of equipment is extremely important, making equip swaps easier, more reliable and having them work with a certain limited degree of automation is undeniably very powerful.

Some things are simply not possible without extended macros, like the example I gave above. Some are possible but invite error in the form of mismashing of keys during 3-4 step macros (which, if you need something done fast or under pressure, is quite possible regardless of care taken), the intrinsic sluggishness of the interface when chaining macros, the time it takes and so on. We've all been in a situation where you use a few macros too fast, but correctly, and the book/set swaps haven't worked properly. This is before discussing features that automate situational effects that are otherwise awkward or very difficult to do manually. It's not just convenient to use extended macros - it's indisputibly better, which is unfair on those who cannot or do not use them.

SE may not be good at taking on board all the feedback our forum representatives dilligently provide for them, but they do recognise how capable the playerbase are - how they react to that, in our favour or otherwise, is another thing entirely, of course. People who are just that little bit faster, who are able to make use of this or that situational piece of gear, and who are able to optimise every action by a fraction, add up to being more capable as a whole and are going to be the "top end" of the playerbase in SE's eyes. SE will gear difficult content (and new equipment, including slews of new macro only stuff) to that level of ability. If the developers are designing content with this in mind then cheating becomes part of the game proper, at least in expectation - and that's just from the developers, let alone players towards each another. Again, it's not fair.

I don't dispute that making these macros takes a lot of skill - probably more than standard macros - but that's not the point. Not only is it not an option that not everyone has, it's also explicitly not permitted by the rules that we all agreed to. As I said before - sure, it's not creating ???s that dispense free level 99 relic weapons, but it is an unequal advantage and it isn't permitted. The effect on performance is significant, and in my eyes that is practically the definition of cheating.

[Camiie]

When we get stuff like this, you know they've gone way too far:

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Blenmot%27s_Ring

[Yugl]

Let's acknowledge that the use of certain programs are violations of the TOA and leave the ethical question of "cheating" out of this thread. What is important here is that you cannot effectively utilize a variety of gear even with aforementioned violations available to you. The only difference the ethical question makes is the degree to which SE should trim down how situational the gear is. That debate can come later. For now, I think we can agree that there is too much diversity in the "situationalness" of the gear. Especially, when we consider cast time reduction pieces. Observe:

White Magic
White Magic with certain buffs up
Black Magic
Black Magic with certain buffs up
Blue Magic
Summoning
Song
Ninjutsu
Fire
Earth
Water
Wind
Ice
Thunder
Light
Dark
Fast Cast
Dark Magic
Elemental Magic
Enfeebling Magic
Enhancing Magic
Healing Magic
Divine Magic
Stoneskin
Cure

I know that gear does not necessarily exist for some of these, but the fact that they have managed to distinguish between Element, Skill, Fast Cast, and Spell name suggests that they can make gear that narrow. It's obvious there is a problem here and that they should aim to collapse these pieces into broader categories, if not, change them all to Fast Cast for each piece.

This is just for cast time reduction pieces (My example since these pieces of gear can interfere with proper equipping). The additional "Receive X" gear they've release furthers the general point.

[Jerbob]

The only difference the ethical question makes is the degree to which SE should trim down how situational the gear is. That debate can come later.

Fair point, apologies for my derailment.

[Arcon]

When we get stuff like this, you know they've gone way too far:

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Blenmot%27s_Ring

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/11753/emphatikos-rope

[Bulrogg]

Maybe I'm wrong in thinking this... but if people took the time to properly learn how to use the "macro book/set" commands they too could use the situational gear.

Yes it may take you a some time to work out the kinks and yes it would require you pushing the same macro button over but it can be done. A great example (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/15954-SMN-macros?p=211818&viewfull=1#post211818) can be found in the SMN job forum. I've been using them since then and have not had any mash-up mess ups.

[Sparthos]

Maybe I'm wrong in thinking this... but if people took the time to properly learn how to use the "macro book/set" commands they too could use the situational gear.

Yes it may take you a some time to work out the kinks and yes it would require you pushing the same macro button over but it can be done. A great example (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/15954-SMN-macros?p=211818&viewfull=1#post211818) can be found in the SMN job forum.

Yet at the end of the day there are inventory limitations and the silliness of certain pieces of gear can make even linked (legit SE sanctioned) macro mashers blush.

How about a simple ability to combine certain pieces of gear via an NPC once you get X number of similar pieces? All those stoneskin pieces should be able to be combined into one piece of gear because as it stands it's ridiculous given the 80 cap on inventory.

I can easily cap inventory on BLU, BRD and SCH simply by using skeleton sets of gear (Idle, Cure, Nuke, Debuff, Buff, PDT/MDT) nevermind the extremely situational stuff that I just ignore because it'd be impossible to work in like AGI sets, stoneskin recast, aquaveil and whatever else SE deems worth designing.

I guess SE just wants you to choose what's important or not but some pieces could surely use combination like the Rainbow Staff we've yet to see.

[Jerbob]

I think most people here do. For myself, my White Mage macros span 3 books in blocks of 5 sets (for incremental swapping in of MND gear as MP gear is used up - a relic of level 75 play, I will admit, but it's come in handy), and my Summoner ones are slightly less extensive but similar. The difficulty lies in the fact that there's not space to hold all this stuff at once. I have a full set of gear for Stoneskin, but Aquaveil would be pushing it. People have to prioritise, which if they're anything like me they don't like.

Situational gear would be fine with infinite inventory and with less clunky macros, but unfortunately FFXI has neither of these things. SE must be acutely aware that people have inventory issues and yet the gear keeps getting more situational. I think the point is not that the gear can't theoretically be used (and be useful), but that it's simply not even remotely practical to do so.

[SpankWustler]

Maybe I'm wrong in thinking this... but if people took the time to properly learn how to use the "macro book/set" commands they too could use the situational gear.

Yes it may take you a some time to work out the kinks and yes it would require you pushing the same macro button over but it can be done. A great example (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/15954-SMN-macros?p=211818&viewfull=1#post211818) can be found in the SMN job forum. I've been using them since then and have not had any mash-up mess ups.

For many pieces, such as weather-specific items, this is true. For less potent or just plain weird situational pieces, not even third party programs that work differently and infinitely better than macro pages can make them worth using even if the program can use them satisfactorily.

This is because using highly situational stuff brings on the inventory part of this issue. Inventory, even including a sack and a satchel, isn't infinite. Plus, not all spell or situation specific stuff is as easy to deal with as avatar-specific or weather-specific pieces and thus can't just be taken in and out of one's sack or satchel. As Yugl put it:


- Inventory limitations will always mean that these situation pieces will be the first to go.

It doesn't help these pieces that some are only slightly better or even worse compared to a far less specific or situational piece.

Maybe many of these pieces are meant to be mediocre, because the Development Bros certainly do enjoy creating mediocre equipment, but this mediocrity seems worth mentioning just in case somebody thinks this stuff is just super-awesome and worth dragging around.

[Ophannus]

I win

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/13248/flagellants-rope

[Sparthos]

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/10962/lavalier-1

lolwut

[Hayward]

I tend to follow the KISS rule for macros and equipment--Keep It Simple Stupid. I very rarely bother with gear that I won't use more than 25% of the time on any job. As I am on a PS2, 3rd party programs are unavailable to me (even if it was, I'd want no part of it), so I do the best with what I have.

In the case of melee jobs, I'm not so egotistical that I waste gil and time trying to outparse someone by .001%. That hyper-competitive junk never appealed to me in any way. As long as I'm doing enough to damage an enemy, I'm fine with the equipment I have.

In the case of mage jobs, I tend towards gear that improves my job's overall performance. As a Summoner, I pass up those pieces of gear that favor only one avatar. That has always been a ridiculous concept, in my view, as I don't use Garuda/Diabolos/Ifrit for the entirety of an event or in every situation. Nor do I really care to switch out my Caller's +2 gear for Summoner's gear when my Magian Staves are enough to reduce BP time. As a Blue Mage, I have enough gear laid out as it is for the multiple spells I have and too many macros in reserve for each and every spell that I may want to use on short notice.

In short, all this situational gear does nothing but confuse people and make people overthink their jobs.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/10962/lavalier-1

lolwut

It's not even that situational since you can't gear-swap when charmed, Silly SE.

[Camiie]

Here's another winner:

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/10792/saida-ring

Hold on, WHM! Don't cast Cursna yet till I hit my "I've Been Cursed" macro!
What? You don't have one of those?

No wonder they don't have time to create new expansions, make meaningful adjustments, etc. They're using up dev cycles making crap like this.

[Raksha]

How about a simple ability to combine certain pieces of gear via an NPC once you get X number of similar pieces? All those stoneskin pieces should be able to be combined into one piece of gear because as it stands it's ridiculous given the 80 cap on inventory.


The problem with this is that it wouldn't replace all of that gear, it would just replace what you previously used in that slot.




I can easily cap inventory on BLU, BRD and SCH simply by using skeleton sets of gear (Idle, Cure, Nuke, Debuff, Buff, PDT/MDT) nevermind the extremely situational stuff that I just ignore because it'd be impossible to work in like AGI sets, stoneskin recast, aquaveil and whatever else SE deems worth designing.


amen -_-

[Rohelius]

This game is heavily gear based, thats just how it is..

Reason i love skill base games more then gear base games. That and the fact i have more time to play then to run around the world to get +5 more STR then the other guys..

[Anapingofness]

I agree with OP. They seriously need to streamline gear. All of this situational and marginal gear needs to be reevaluated end of story. -_________-; And it needed to be altered so that it doesn't reek of stupid like 9 years ago ffs.

[Duelle]

...wait. People are complaining about situational gear? We even have one person saying it was stupid all along?! What's this I don't even--

On topic, agreed. I'm glad to see people are recognizing that situational gear and swaps that come with it are the main culprit behind inventory bloat. Now whether SE will do something about it...

[Luvbunny]

You know, they could easily do a "gear infusion" type of thing where you combine those "situational" accessories and transfer the stats to one another, say one main ring to keep while the other 2-3 are destroyed but the stats are added to the main one. This way you can create 2-3 optimal situational gears and give some usage on those craptastic void watch loot, people will fuse the stats and there will be a high demands for it. Is it possible? YES!! they did this already, look at FX13-2, same principle, and they already have the augmented gear thing, but it's so overly complicated process...

[Sparthos]

Sounds like Synergy gear if it wasn't complete ass.

BRB gearing up my vs. birds set for yall.

[Jerbob]

I think styling a new system as an extention of the evolith system would be a fairly solid starting point, at least thematically.

Create a new NPC that can reduce a selection of equipment - the "excessively situational" - into evolith. Unlike standard evolith, these new stones cannot be placed onto gear using Synergy and they retain the "magical resonance" of the slot of the equipment they were refined from. Then introduce a new item called an "evolith pouch" that acts almost like a Moblin Maze tabula - evolith can be transferred into the item and show up as part of a new interface, which destroys the evolith item and frees inventory space.

From this point, a new command "/evoequip" can be used to "equip" any item in the Evolith Pouch, using the name of the original item. Whilst "equipped", some magical technobabble causes the stats on the evolith to replace those of the item equipped in the evolith's "resonant slot" - it would be a gear swap in effect, but without the actual gear itself. Whether SE actually causes a graphical gearswap to occur is up to them, I suppose. A subsequent "/evoequip" or "/equip" to the same slot would remove the evolith's effects, just as a standard gear swap.

For the sake of completeness I suppose all existing evolith could be given a "slot value" and be treated in the same way - MP+2 evoliths being incredibly valuable, as they are. Perhaps make the same NPC "reintegrate" any specified evolith into gear by trading a craftable, generic level 1 "Blank [gear item]" and specifying the evolith to "reintegrate", yielding the same item originally refined into evolith.

The only problem would be where to draw the line - just accessories? Just tradable gear with an "Enhances XX" effect? All gear? It could get kind of silly if every piece of gear could be "evolithified".

[Tsukino_Kaji]

This game is heavily gear based, thats just how it is..

Reason i love skill base games more then gear base games. That and the fact i have more time to play then to run around the world to get +5 more STR then the other guys..That's one of the things I like about Diablo and mages. All the otehr jobs end up gimp unless you have the gear to back it, but mages. Sorc/wiz can fill every single slot that have with magic find gear and be just fine. lol

[Meyi]

When we get stuff like this, you know they've gone way too far:

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Blenmot%27s_Ring

I'm at a loss for words. Who...why... I...

...

Well, it's a good thing to know where my $15 this month is going.

[Kitkat]

This topic brings me back to the old "shit is situational" debates when someone listed a piece of gear and if it was worth the effort to macro in. Granted these still exist to some extent, but before the windower macros came around this was something people looked at: Is the piece really that optimal given the burden of swapping into it when using x spell/ws/ja?

Now you have players who can fully utilize the equipment (on pc anyway) and the players who can't (console players) only agreeing on one point: All the situational gear requires too much inventory to be exceptionally useful. Personally, I would have liked to see something along the lines of a customizable option that allows you to add specific stats onto the equipment. The option would be in the form of a key item, so it doesn't take up space, and requires that in order to set it you have to be at a specific NPC. A sort of Socket system similar to what I've seen on other MMO that allows you to find the specific item/KI then take it to an NPC and have it infused with a known set stat increase.

Evolith/Synergy alterations made a step in this direction, and to a lesser extent ToM...but at the same time it wasn't exactly what I would call a worth while time sink given the requirements and possibility to not get exactly what you want. I can already see possible flaws or pre-existing arguments against the proposition, but given the heavy gear dependancy of FFXI as it currently stands, not to mention the various acceptable role functions of several jobs, it is hard to think up a system that would really work better without making others obsolete....unless they totally revamp Evolith/synergy augment systems.

[hiko]

It's not even that situational since you can't gear-swap when charmed, Silly SE.

-mob readies charm move
-player equip neck
- player get charmed

[Daniel_Hatcher]

-mob readies charm move
-player equip neck
- player get charmed

Maybe I should have been clearer.

It's not Realistically situational.

[Nala]

any one mention the cure/waltz potency received gear yet? cause like the charm neck its pointlessly situational.

"just one sec hitting my getting cured macro, whoops that's my PDT macro, one more sec ah crap hit my MDT macro instead..."

just making light of it but seriously...

[Tsukino_Kaji]

any one mention the cure/waltz potency received gear yet? cause like the charm neck its pointlessly situational.I've never even seen a pld use it in their self cure macros.

[Kristal]

When we get stuff like this, you know they've gone way too far:

http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Blenmot%27s_Ring

What is so bad about it? Holy Water has a chance to remove Doom, and this ring would increase the chance, I reckon. Can't hurt to macro it in on a HW macro against Doom spamming NMs like Chloris or Bukhis.



Maybe I should have been clearer.

It's not Realistically situational.

Mayhem Lantern, Fanatic Dance, Danse Macabre, and a bunch of other stuff all inflict aoe Charm. So yes, it does have a situational use. It's not a particularly good item though, even for it's intended use. It's missing Charm:Earth-50 Wind-50 at the very least.

I'll agree that it's crap. It's not even worth the inventory slot it's occupying. But if you ARE fighting a charming NM in a duo, and all you got is SMN/RDM to sleep your partner, AND it's darksday, AND you have a Xsaeta II, AND you have an avatar out to tank the NM, then Lavalier +1 will be worth the 5k you spent on it on the AH. You might -maybe- actually sleep your charmed partner!

[Nala]

the only people that could take advantage of such situational type gear are those using windower based plug-ins, in the case of cure potency received or charmga you'd need 2 of such plugins at once even then i'm not sure if the second can respond to outside actions.

the window of opportunity to put that type of gear on is very small to be able effectively put it on in time, making it so incredibly situational that they might as well not exists, and yeah cure potency received gear only jobs i can see befitting it are jobs like pld and dnc and only when casting on themselves, though given how gear based both jobs are you'd be lucky to have enough additional room for potency received gear.

That is the other reason people are complaining about these heaps of steaming dog #$%@.

[Sparthos]

-mob readies charm move
-player equip neck
- player get charmed

The window to gearswap on some charmed mobs is incredibly short meaning unless you have 3rd party tools you aren't going to be swapping that choker on nearly as many times as you'd think.

You're better off simply being dealt with by the people who arent charmed (sleep, break, grav, bind) or not using movement+ gear in those battles so people can run away from you until the charm drops.

It's a dumb item all around.

[Camiie]

What is so bad about it? Holy Water has a chance to remove Doom, and this ring would increase the chance, I reckon. Can't hurt to macro it in on a HW macro against Doom spamming NMs like Chloris or Bukhis.

Holy Water Macro? I just spam them from the menu. It would have made much more sense for them to create a synth for Holy Water+1 or gear that enhances a caster's Cursna. If I was that worried about Doom I'd bring a Doom Screen and an extra stack of Holy Waters.

[Raksha]

The window to gearswap on some charmed mobs is incredibly short meaning unless you have 3rd party tools you aren't going to be swapping that choker on nearly as many times as you'd think.


I figure they expect you to full time it whenever you know you're about to fight something that charms.

Yes I realize how retarded that sounds.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Here's my candidate:

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Refresh_Earring

All Garrisons but one are capped at 50 or lower.

[Byrth]

There is a level 75 Cape Terrigan Garrison.

[Ganukay]

Holy Water Macro? I just spam them from the menu. It would have made much more sense for them to create a synth for Holy Water+1 or gear that enhances a caster's Cursna. If I was that worried about Doom I'd bring a Doom Screen and an extra stack of Holy Waters.

Holy Water +1 (http://www.ffxiah.com/item/5306/hallowed-water)
Gear that enhances a caster's Cursna (http://www.ffxiah.com/item/10790/ephedra-ring)

[Neisan_Quetz]

I'm not convinced that ring does anything for Doom.

[Ganukay]

I'm still not sure yet, haven't fought anything that dooms people recently to test it. On that note, is there anything that's easy and dooms frequently enough to do some mass testing on it? nothing comes to mind

[Arcon]

On that note, is there anything that's easy and dooms frequently enough to do some mass testing on it? nothing comes to mind

Pancimanci is about as easy as it gets. Only it takes voidstones to spawn. Alternatively could pull Chloris far away from its spawn point so no one steals it (far east for example), and hold it there. It's easy enough to hold when weak, so a zombie strategy would work well here and wouldn't have to be afraid to lose a pop when you get doomed.

[Camiie]

Holy Water +1 (http://www.ffxiah.com/item/5306/hallowed-water)
Gear that enhances a caster's Cursna (http://www.ffxiah.com/item/10790/ephedra-ring)

Oh good so that ring is even more pointless. Thanks!

[Ganukay]

Oh good so that ring is even more pointless. Thanks!

not with the new cure formula >.>

[Camiie]

not with the new cure formula >.>

The new cure formula affects Holy Water?