Allowing Gear Change in Active Mode

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Unless you actually hit the mob, then you have to wait for it to die or for you to lose hate. But it was a stupid mechanic in XI that should not make it's way into XIV, ever.

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yea, i was thinking of moogle fight when I heal i use a nuking wand sometimes then switch when im resting before flow.

Hated it in 11, I have enough problems with inventory space as it is without taking into account what gear I need to swap out for the next weapon skill.

It would be easy to implement manequin models for each job, and have them purchasable or questable. Idea: 2 manequins per job (yes this should be an advanced feature/benefit of jobs over class). You can setup the gear on the manequin and save the model as a single swap. Make the swap quick so you can efficiently change it up. Dungeons have at the very least 2 styles for each person, trash setup and boss setup. I have specific sets for each and I use the terrible macro system we have and deal with the pain. Would be great to click a manequin button in my hotbar and bam I'm set for boss.

I dislike our current macro system for gear swapping and its even worse with job changing. I am not a fan of swapping mid battle even though I loved it in FFXI, I think the system we have now is terrible. Would be great to have the manequins pop up on the main gear selection page above the players job slot area. Build up our set and click a single button to save the whole equip set on the manequin/slot for future use. The macro's are not fast enough for gear swaps they should be for spells and abilities only imo.

I loved the gear swaping in XI, a large part of the fun was min/maxing to make your character the best it could be. It also kept content and crafts relevant for a really long time instead of XIV's system of either new content is the best you can get and all your old is gear is trash, or the flip side all your old gear is better and there's no reason to do the new content.

I'm not sure if people are just having knee jerk reactions to it and not thinking about what they're typing, or they just were yelled at by someone in XI once for not gear swapping and were so thin-skinned about it that it's the worst thing in the world.

Removing gear swapping doesn't remove elitism. There are still best in slot items, and those BiS items are still going to make a difference between use them and using second, third, fourth best. Most gear swapping in XI between the best and second best came down to single point differences, and for the 6 years I played, 99% of the time as long as people saw you make an effort, that is what counted. It's when you refused to make an effort that people made it an issue, and it will be the exact same here. If you don't make an effort to make it appear as if you care about gearing your character appropriately, you'll be called out on whether the gear swapping system is in place or it isn't.

Changing gear prior to the fight or macro swapping during the fight is a silly argument when used in conjunction with "I never had inventory room". If you're actually a person who makes those decisions, then your inventory is going to suffer regardless whether you can gear change or not; you have to store those pieces somewhere. Regardless, the team could directly address the amount of gear swapping and the macro space required for it as I said on page 2:

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

It would be nice to see it come back once server latency is fixed and they corrected the problems third party tools had to fix in XI.

-Give each job a set number of mannequins designed for the player to set up for gear swaps.
-Let macros be able to execute gear swapping from the mannequin so macro line increases aren't necessary. This allows SE to not have to worry about botting by someone making an infinitely looping macro.

Until macro latency is fixed it's a worthless endeavor to pursue, but once it is it wouldn't be bad.

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They've already said equipment on mannequins won't count against your inventory so that removes that problem and actually frees up space. Unless of course people will say it's easy mode and they want less inventory.

You can gear swap on mages in pretty much every fight if you really want to.

Thundaga Macro with +120 Crit Potency staff has been really nice for Chimera.

Taco, you're looking at it in the wrong way. Sure, it was a benefit to swap gear in XI mid fight, but that doesn't change the fact that should not have been allowed in that game in the first place.

It's a stupid mechanic to begin with.

"Hey Mr Coin cointer, I'm going to kick your ass!"

/hits coincounter

"Wait, you can't hit me back until I change my armor."

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Taco, you're looking at it in the wrong way. Sure, it was a benefit to swap gear in XI mid fight, but that doesn't change the fact that should not have been allowed in that game in the first place.

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Why do you think we shouldn't have been allowed to?

Thanks but no thanks...

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

Why do you think we shouldn't have been allowed to?

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Because it's ridiculous. look up.

It's almost as ridiculous as jumping around like a wowtard in the middle of town just because you can't keep your heavily ADD afflicted fingers off the jump button.

i think ive com up with a solution that will benefit everyone. People that wanna gear swap go play f11 and people that don't just play ff14.

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Originally Posted by syntaxlies

i think ive com up with a solution that will benefit everyone. People that wanna gear swap go play f11 and people that don't just play ff14.

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Gear swaps can be done currently in this game, they're actually really good if you're only doing 1 or 2 gear swaps.

Just saying something is stupid doesn't make it so. Gear swapping was a huge part of XI's game mechanics and part of what gave that game such a long life since there was always something to go after to make your character better even just a little bit. I'll give you it's not very realistic, but when i'm fighting a 30 foot dragon with a team of cat girls I'm pretty sure we've lost realism a long time ago.

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Originally Posted by Scarface

Gear swaps can be done currently in this game, they're actually really good if you're only doing 1 or 2 gear swaps.

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yea i know, i stated before i switch in mog if im on cnj/whm. Its not the same as 11 though. Its just one swap in mid battle when im resting mp.

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Originally Posted by syntaxlies

yea i know, i stated before i switch in mog if im on cnj/whm. Its not the same as 11 though. Its just one swap in mid battle when im resting mp.

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Yep, not the same as 11, and I hope never will be. But being able to swap 1/2 gears for a specific spell is very plausible in the current system, and works really well. (Acc rings for sleep, etc)

I was hoping you would respond with someone reasonable and not stoop to realism as an argument.

Eorzea isn't real, Roegadyns are not in port towns, Chimerias aren't in sand dungeons, and Hippogryphs unfortunately are not running around my backyard (but god I wish they were :(). If your reasoning would have been it was unintentional exploit with the macro system as stated by SE, well, I would have asked for a link, but I wouldn't have had ground to disagree that the original intention was an absolute "no we shouldn't have been able to". I would have disagreed if they didn't think it was for the better, but that's an entirely different point.

It astounds me that people pull the RL card while at the same time playing a fantasy based video game. If you're going to halt your suspension at disbelief at changing a gear mid fight, you might also want to account for the fact that no one person could hold the amount of armor it takes for seven jobs, seven different weapons, accessories for all of that invisibly somewhere on their persons. Unless you would like to propose that we should only be able to carry invisibly what would reasonably fit in a small satchel.

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Originally Posted by Scarface

Yep, not the same as 11, and I hope never will be. But being able to swap 1/2 gears for a specific spell is very plausible in the current system, and works really well. (Acc rings for sleep, etc)

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for the most part so far there isn't much gear that would be worth swapping to, stats don't work like they do in 11. Now i see some people wanna use af for the bonus now but don't wanna sacrifice stats. Thats like having you cake and eating it too which i don't really understand cause why would i want cake if i cant eat it. Is there a way to eat it without having it first..... anyways, for the most part i think that once your prepped for battle you have to commit to it, with some simple exceptions like we've said.

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

I was hoping you would respond with someone reasonable and not stoop to realism as an argument. Eorzea isn't real, Roegadyns are not in port towns, Chimerias aren't in sand dungeons, and Hippogryphs unfortunately are not running around my backyard (but god I wish they were :(). If your reasoning would have been it was unintentional exploit with the macro system as stated by SE, well, I would have asked for a link, but I wouldn't have had ground to disagree that the original intention was an absolute "no we shouldn't have been able to". I would have disagreed if they didn't think it was for the better, but that's an entirely different point. It astounds me that people pull the RL card while at the same time playing a fantasy based video game. If you're going to halt your suspension at disbelief at changing a gear mid fight, you might also want to account for the fact that no one person could hold the amount of armor it takes for seven jobs, seven different weapons, accessories for all of that invisibly somewhere on their persons. Unless you would like to propose that we should only be able to carry invisibly what would reasonably fit in a small satchel.

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I said nothing of realism, I said it was ridiculous. Personally, it annoyed the crap out of me in XI when party members did it. I don't care if their doing so benefited me and the party, it was annoying as hell.

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

I was hoping you would respond with someone reasonable and not stoop to realism as an argument. Eorzea isn't real, Roegadyns are not in port towns, Chimerias aren't in sand dungeons, and Hippogryphs unfortunately are not running around my backyard (but god I wish they were :(). If your reasoning would have been it was unintentional exploit with the macro system as stated by SE, well, I would have asked for a link, but I wouldn't have had ground to disagree that the original intention was an absolute "no we shouldn't have been able to". I would have disagreed if they didn't think it was for the better, but that's an entirely different point. It astounds me that people pull the RL card while at the same time playing a fantasy based video game. If you're going to halt your suspension at disbelief at changing a gear mid fight, you might also want to account for the fact that no one person could hold the amount of armor it takes for seven jobs, seven different weapons, accessories for all of that invisibly somewhere on their persons. Unless you would like to propose that we should only be able to carry invisibly what would reasonably fit in a small satchel.

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Really?....lol I would love to say TL;DR, but I can't and I regret it.

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Originally Posted by syntaxlies

for the most part so far there isn't much gear that would be worth swapping to, stats don't work like they do in 11. Now i see some people wanna use af for the bonus now but don't wanna sacrifice stats. Thats like having you cake and eating it too which i don't really understand cause why would i want cake if i cant eat it. Is there a way to eat it without having it first..... anyways, for the most part i think that once your prepped for battle you have to commit to it, with some simple exceptions like we've said.

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Bards who full time in AF body are bad, it takes 2 seconds to swap to something 5x better.

I have a lot of macro's now for gear swaps. (MACC Setup for sleeps, Crit potency setup for excruciate thundaga's, etc)

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Originally Posted by Denmark

Just saying something is stupid doesn't make it so. Gear swapping was a huge part of XI's game mechanics and part of what gave that game such a long life since there was always something to go after to make your character better even just a little bit. I'll give you it's not very realistic, but when i'm fighting a 30 foot dragon with a team of cat girls I'm pretty sure we've lost realism a long time ago.

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If something like gear swapping mid-battle were to be allowed, the game should be entirely built around it as a gameplay mechanic. This game is not and thus gear swapping would end up as a needless, sloppy mechanic that people are forced into because it's the "best" way to go about things.

Personally I don't really like using macros as it is if I can help it, as such I'm focused on a lot of other things in the midst of battle. I don't want swapping my gear for every ability to be another one of those things. Between combos, positioning, buffs, managing TP/MP, occasional use of medicines and not dying there's enough going on in battle as it stands.

For a slower game or something turn-based sure, but this game is at the pace where something like swapping gear mid-battle would be more trouble than it's worth, especially for position heavy encounters like Ifrit.

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

I'm not sure if people are just having knee jerk reactions to it and not thinking about what they're typing, or they just were yelled at by someone in XI once for not gear swapping and were so thin-skinned about it that it's the worst thing in the world.

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I can honestly say this is tripe....I played 11, I had gear swap macros for every job I had leveled. (Quit @ Server merges time, well went pretty much non playing about 6 months before but still...)

Swapping gear 3 times for one action on an Odin fight as a SMN was stupid.

Swapping Gear on WHM Depending on which Cure I cast was dumb, swapping for Regen, Dumb.

Gear on THF going Evasion build for mass pullls/kiting made sense before pull, switching because I was stupid and took hate = dumb. Going Heca or Acc build for certain WS's again dumb....

Pulling a flute outta my ass cuz it enhance minuet = stupid, let alone the part where I have to jam it back in and pull a different flute out my ass cuz it boosted march or elegy or whatever.

I'm not gonna even mention the insanity with the Elemental Staves.

See where I'm going with this? Yea it's nice to min/max.....its not nice needing 30-40 gear pieces to play one job at a decent level. And thats without factoring in the skill elements.

I'm not saying this cuz I'm anti-XI. I'm saying this cuz its how it was, Gear swaps was nothing more than annoying, couldn't care less with regards to the min/max nor other peoples thoughts on "You need this item to play this job" mentality!

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__...s/b/b7/Req.gif

Bunch of wussies. Erza requips all the time.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

I said nothing of realism, I said it was ridiculous. Personally, it annoyed the crap out of me in XI when party members did it. I don't care if their doing so benefited me and the party, it was annoying as hell.

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So it shouldn't be allowed because it's ridiculous, and it's ridiculous because it's annoying. Is that about the sum of it?

I really don't see how there is any arguement whatsoever. The dev team clearly said no with a definate stance of not changing this in the future. That response directly from battle producer.

Clicky

I'll add in the key part again.

Edited for those with limited reading skills:

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Spoke with Battle Master Matsui to get the lowdown on the whole gear swapping question [...]
we're not planning to make it possible to swap gear in battle. This direction will not change in the future

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This is one of the few things they gave a very clear answer on.

I'd like active gear swaps to come to XIV, but I don't see it happening with these servers and XIV armory system. Active gear swapping in XI allowed you to tweak the effectiveness of your individual abilities you were using.. which makes for MUCH more dynamic fights than the spamfests we mostly been getting in XIV thus far.

Zerging, pulling hate, switching to eva+ build for survivability. Nuking in a single target phase, an add phase begins, switch over to enfeeb+ build for CCing. Even moreso, maybe a str+ build for opening battles and building TP, then a crit+ build to unload all ur WS combos, then back to the str+ build... Some of this we can sort of do now in XIV, but not nearly to the extent it was in XI. Having specific builds for specific on-the-fly situtions in XI was one of my favorite aspects of that game. I don't think it's necessary for XIV, mainly because the system is already so different, but it rocked for XI.

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

So it shouldn't be allowed because it's ridiculous, and it's ridiculous because it's annoying. Is that about the sum of it?

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Yep. You want my opinion, that's it.

Yoshi has pretty much cleaned this game up of all it's ridiculous and annoying mechanics. (here's looking at you fatigue and random sp!) He would be doing the game a disservice by adding this completely unneeded and annoying mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Yep. You want my opinion, that's it.

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Actually I wanted an intelligent discussion about the topic, but seeing as I'm just talking to someone who's sticking their fingers in their ears and lalalaing, I'll go ahead and move on.

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

Actually I wanted an intelligent discussion about the topic, but seeing as I'm just talking to someone who's sticking their fingers in their ears and lalalaing, I'll go ahead and move on.

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Answer my post at the top of the page then, haven't seen anyone discuss that.

I fail to see how gear swapping blocks you from combos and being active during battle. The server latency is crap i'll give you that, and i'll even give you that in the current state of the game gear swapping mid fight wouldn't work. When 2.0 rolls around though these problems are supposed to be fixed and a non issue, so whats wrong with swapping gear for actions in that situation?

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

Actually I wanted an intelligent discussion about the topic, but seeing as I'm just talking to someone who's sticking their fingers in their ears and lalalaing, I'll go ahead and move on.

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You want me to come to your side and agree with you that it's a fantastic mechanic and that everyone should do it. I'm not going to do that because the flashing characters annoyed the shit out of me in XI. Like or not, that's my reason for not wanting it in this game. The same crap happens in this game when you change gear your character flashes, which would again annoy the shit out of me if it were to happen in battle. The stat bonus is not worth the annoyance factor for me.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Didn't early dev interviews about FFXIV specifically say that gear swapping in FFXI was considered an exploit and bug by the devs, but they couldn't take it out because people already became so reliant and used to it?

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I Don't remember that being said exactly. But i do seem to recall hearing that they were kind of surprised about how much /equip was used. If they viewed it as a exploit that they couldn't fix. Well they did piss all about stemming the issue with there itemization.

Dev1: Wow, it looks like there swaping every single bit of gear they have. I was expecting them to swap in that Hmp staff to rest.
Item guy1: So do you want me to start designing some strong gear thats not hyper spesific so they don't have to do that?
Dev1: What? No make those gloves with 200% slow and 30 attack that we were talking about.

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Originally Posted by Denmark

I fail to see how gear swapping blocks you from combos and being active during battle. The server latency is crap i'll give you that, and i'll even give you that in the current state of the game gear swapping mid fight wouldn't work. When 2.0 rolls around though these problems are supposed to be fixed and a non issue, so whats wrong with swapping gear for actions in that situation?

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It doesn't stop you from using combos but it's just another action you have to worry about that can hold you up for even a split second too long for some things. I mean getting off buffs for parts of combos or even between combos can be tricky while also worrying about the proper positioning for them. Adding another action just for switching gear into that mix doesn't mesh well with the gameplay as it stands. Not to mention it's another action that could hold you in place for just a split second too long in a position heavy fight that could get you killed.

I just think the gameplay has enough going on currently that adding gear swapping wouldn't help anything, it would make add needless complexity. As it stands the game is built around choosing a set of gear and going into battle with that. To really make any kind of decent use out of something like gear swapping the game should be built around it as a mechanic that is intended for use. As the devs have stated, this is not their intention and they do not plan to make FFXIV into that kind of game.

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Originally Posted by Arcell

Answer my post at the top of the page then, haven't seen anyone discuss that.

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Agreed, I was quite happy to see someone respond with something other than "its dumb"!

As for the game is not build around it, I can agree with you to an extent. With AF they certainly implemented a lot of gear that's whole use tows the line of being a macro piece. I'm actually glad you mention Ifrit because that fight is one where I feel it downplays another mechanic they introduced which is combos. Frontal and side combos can be extraordinarily dangerous due to latency post Hellfire, and even as early as Plume stage depending on the person's connection. Now don't mistake this to mean "we got used to comboing Ifrit, we can used to gear swapping", but I do think there's precedent for them having a fight that (for awhile) undermined a mechanic they introduced.

As for swapping gear for every action, I can sympathize with that, which is why I mentioned limiting gear swapping to a limited number of mannequins they assign to us. This prevents what Blaize was talking about for needing to swap 3 times for one action, but still allows the choice to set up a mannequin for abilities. For macros, my play style is totally different and I utilize them for reactionary abilities, but I can understand someone who uses the action bar only (my wife does this).

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

As for swapping gear for every action, I can sympathize with that, which is why I mentioned limiting gear swapping to a limited number of mannequins they assign to us.

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It's going to be one mannequin per class/job, and since you can't change classes in battle the mannequins won't help.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

You want me to come to your side and agree with you that it's a fantastic mechanic and that everyone should do it.

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Not I don't.

As for the blinking issue, if the Windower team could create BlinkMeNot, I'm sure SE can too. I would actually like them to allow use to lock gear models on us anyway since I love the look of my entire BLM AF but I know full timing it is stupid.

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Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

It's going to be one mannequin per class/job, and since you can't change classes in battle the mannequin's won't help.

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Which was my point about introducing additional mannequins to provide gear swapping. Allow players to create sets without it counting against the players inventory, only allow gear swaps in active mode to happen from a mannequin, only allow X-amount of mannequins to allow players to gear swap, but not fine tune it to the point of Snapshot > Shot > Idle or whatever the three step set was RNG in XI.

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

Eorzea isn't real

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Depends on your definition of "REAL"
The servers "Exist"
My server (Karnak) exists... I personally think as time goes on we'll come to perceive digital space as a form of reality... I think the point you mean to make is that the natural and physical laws of the non-digital world don't apply to a digital 3D space..
and in that argument you are correct

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

Roegadyns are not in port towns,

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You've obviously never been to San Diego

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

Chimerias aren't in sand dungeons,

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Then where are they, genius?

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

and Hippogryphs unfortunately are not running around my backyard (but god I wish they were :().

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Why would you want that? really.. how could that be a good thing?

edit: Im just having fun with you Taco... NHF (No hard feelings)

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

Not I don't.

As for the blinking issue, if the Windower team could create BlinkMeNot, I'm sure SE can too. I would actually like them to allow use to lock gear models on us anyway since I love the look of my entire BLM AF but I know full timing it is stupid.



Which was my point about introducing additional mannequins to provide gear swapping. Allow players to create sets without it counting against the players inventory, only allow gear swaps in active mode to happen from a mannequin, only allow X-amount of mannequins to allow players to gear swap, but not fine tune it to the point of Snapshot > Shot > Idle or whatever the three step set was RNG in XI.

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And then you get into the inventory management problems...

As cool as you thought it was in XI, the problems of introducing this mechanic can all be avoided by NOT introducing the mechanic in the first place. Boy, am I glad the devs agree with me.

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Originally Posted by Rydin

Then where are they, genius?

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SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

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Originally Posted by Rydin

Why would you want that? really.. how could that be a good thing?

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Hippogryph > all and I would tame one and name him Duncan; although, someone questioning why wild hippogryphs roaming around would be a good thing really doesn't deserve an answer at all!

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Originally Posted by Tacotaru

Hippogryph > all and I would tame one and name him Duncan; although, someone questioning why wild hippogryphs roaming around would be a good thing really doesn't deserve an answer at all!

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touché sir

I really don't get why there's so much aggression towards this idea, even if they added a system that allowed us to change gear in active mode that doesn't mean you HAVE to use it. If you want to be the gimp who does everything in a single gearset that's your choice, no one is forcing you to make gear swap macros. However, for those of us who like to better ourselves, and become even more versatile in all situations, I think it would be a fine addition to the system.

And in regards to what CrystalWeapon said about the Dev. response to this topic, the XI Dev. team also said for years that they were never releasing a cap beyond 75 and they were very firm on that. Look how that turned out. Minds change with time and feedback, so this is no different, there's still a chance it can be implemented.