Dear Devs; please move the "Off-hand" and "Soul Crystal" slots to the top of UI

Right now, the standard character-sheet is lop-sided. It displays 5 pieces of gear on the left, and 7 pieces on the right. TWO of those pieces on the right, however, shouldn't even be there; those are the "Off-hand" slot, and the "Soul Crystal" slot.

Just like your Weapon is literally a job-defining piece of gear, so too are the Soul Crystal and Off-hand slots. In fact, I would display them as such:

FIRST in line (left to right) should be the Soul Crystal, since thematically, it is the most important piece of gear on your person. Next would obviously be your Weapon. The third "Off-hand" slot, however, I would actually HIDE ENTIRELY, unless on a job that specifically uses it. Which, to my knowledge, are literally just low-level BLM's and WHM's, meaning it's effectively a PLD-exclusive equipment slot. Which, whatever, that's fine; only display it for those characters, then.

In terms of the Armoury Chest, I would display them in largely the same order, but move ALL of the icons to the left side of the window, and move Soul Crystals ABOVE the Weapon slot, and Off-hands BELOW the Weapon slot. That would actually perfectly align them, using the exact same amount of space.

I know these probably sound like trivial changes -- and make no mistake, for most players, they are -- but as someone who REALLY values a clean-looking UI, and likes for things to be displayed in a way that makes sense, these changes would really clean things up a lot.

That's all I've got! I hope you guys get a chance to forward this to the Devs. I know it sounds a bit complicated, but if you look at my post while you're actually in-game, looking at your character-sheet (or Armoury Chest, where referenced), I think you'll agree these suggestions would really look a lot cleaner.

A simpler approach that I've seen a fan-made mock-up of is to leave the offhand slot where it is, move the main hand slot down to where the headgear slot is (and pushing all the left-side gear down a notch) and moving the soulstone to where the main hand weapon currently is.

Alternately the soulstone slot could stay where it is and the current weapon slot location could become a decorative icon like the ones that are used if you set a gearset to a hotbar.

Personally I think both slots should be removed. Soul crystals are almost totally irrelevant when jobs are tied to weapons instead and the class system should be abandoned. And does anyone actually like the fact that every DoH needs *two* weapons, the offhanded one almost always being bulky and ugly? Does PLD really need two slots when every sword/shield combo is priced the same as a single weapon or drops simultaneously in loot? If jobs like NIN, MNK, RDM had actually utilized the two-hand system I could see a stronger case for keeping it, but as it stands the off-hand system only exists for the sake of PLD which imo is just clutter and waste.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

Personally I think both slots should be removed. Soul crystals are almost totally irrelevant when jobs are tied to weapons instead and the class system should be abandoned. And does anyone actually like the fact that every DoH needs *two* weapons, the offhanded one almost always being bulky and ugly? Does PLD really need two slots when every sword/shield combo is priced the same as a single weapon or drops simultaneously in loot? If jobs like NIN, MNK, RDM had actually utilized the two-hand system I could see a stronger case for keeping it, but as it stands the off-hand system only exists for the sake of PLD which imo is just clutter and waste.

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Outside of relic weapons, most weapons for jobs that evolved from classes still have the classes listed on them—so if you were to equip just the weapon, it won’t actually equip your soul stone since, technically, a GLA can use that level 87 weapon you just got from the dungeon. They’d have to go back and reprogram all of that (even though I wonder why they kept it as such to this day, but I’m not a dev so idk what’s going through their head). That said, classes are obsolete but I doubt they’ll remove them outright at this point. Would involve too much retconning of the class lore, and they’d have to go back and redesign the first 30 levels of play for all classes so that they now function as their respective jobs. Too much work for a part of the game that passes so quickly these days is probably how they feel about it.

I'm in the camp of nuking one or both slots for two reasons: 1) The presence of soulstones as a physical item in our inventory serves no practical purpose and 2) getting rid of belts allowed expansion of two pages of inventory...getting rid of one or both of these as separate items might allow for more expansion of the inventories that matter, or maybe even more glam plates.

I'm aware of the effort involved, I also think the potentially huge QOL upgrade would be worth it.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Outside of relic weapons, most weapons for jobs that evolved from classes still have the classes listed on them—so if you were to equip just the weapon, it won’t actually equip your soul stone since, technically, a GLA can use that level 87 weapon you just got from the dungeon. They’d have to go back and reprogram all of that (even though I wonder why they kept it as such to this day, but I’m not a dev so idk what’s going through their head). That said, classes are obsolete but I doubt they’ll remove them outright at this point. Would involve too much retconning of the class lore, and they’d have to go back and redesign the first 30 levels of play for all classes so that they now function as their respective jobs. Too much work for a part of the game that passes so quickly these days is probably how they feel about it.

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That's what I mean though. The soul stones are an additional, needless, clunky step to swap jobs that are effectively tied to weapons. And yes, they should go back and reprogram it because it is janky and redundant af.

I don't think it would be difficult to just rename a few fields/tags so that levels 1-30 and experience points are now just "jobs." And I've seen it suggested elsewhere that we don't really need to retcon class lore...just make the quests optional content. They would still give "lore" backstory for the process of becoming the jobs, they just wouldn't need to be nominally represented as distinct from them in mechanics anymore. For example, you could still experience "marauder" lore with the implicit understanding that marauders are identical to or just less-developed warriors. Players pretty much treat them as one and the same anyway so there's really nothing wrong with the game equating the two.

The only jobs that would potentially need some tweaking are the arcanist jobs, and:

1) I think even independent of this issue SCH and SMN deserve some retconning to be completely independent of each other and would be worth the effort alone in a vacuum;
2) I don't think it would take too many changes to accomplish; and
3) I think the cost-benefit would be more than fair as far as tweaking two jobs in order to eliminate systems so clunky and obsolete as classes and job stones.

Delete the soul crystal items entirely, make them an icon in the center or something, and spread those inventory slots out over everything else tbh

Or get rid of soul crystals altogether. You equip your weapon and that acts as the soul crystal. If you unlocked your upgraded class then it automatically uses that class. The soul crystal is still with you lore-wise but it's not visible in the menu. It would also clear up room so they could use it for something else like more armory storage or something.

Edit: lol, looks like the person above me thinks the same way. I had this tab opened for a while and forgot to submit. xD

Even Yoshi-P has said he's not fond of the job/soul crystal system. It's a weird relic of 1.0. Unfortunately, getting rid of it would require rewriting a lot of job quests (several of them, including black mage and dark knight, explicitly use the soul crystals as a plot device), and redoing how summoner and scholar split off the same class. It's just one of those things they want to work on but can't prioritize over new content.

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Originally Posted by Avidria

Delete the soul crystal items entirely, make them an icon in the center or something, and spread those inventory slots out over everything else tbh

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I love this idea. It makes little sense to have soul crystals take up space in the inventory.

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lol, looks like the person above me thinks the same way. I had this tab opened for a while and forgot to submit. xD

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Happens to all of us, Eriane. :D

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Even Yoshi-P has said he's not fond of the job/soul crystal system. It's a weird relic of 1.0. Unfortunately, getting rid of it would require rewriting a lot of job quests (several of them, including black mage and dark knight, explicitly use the soul crystals as a plot device), and redoing how summoner and scholar split off the same class. It's just one of those things they want to work on but can't prioritize over new content.

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Soul crystals don't need to be a part of it in inventory and can easily remain as a part of the lore. The only difficult thing would be telling the difference between scholar and summoner for example. But, I'm sure that's just a UI button they can have to toggle between the two classes.

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Originally Posted by Terin

Right now, the standard character-sheet is lop-sided. It displays 5 pieces of gear on the left, and 7 pieces on the right. TWO of those pieces on the right, however, shouldn't even be there; those are the "Off-hand" slot, and the "Soul Crystal" slot.

Just like your Weapon is literally a job-defining piece of gear, so too are the Soul Crystal and Off-hand slots. In fact, I would display them as such:

FIRST in line (left to right) should be the Soul Crystal, since thematically, it is the most important piece of gear on your person. Next would obviously be your Weapon. The third "Off-hand" slot, however, I would actually HIDE ENTIRELY, unless on a job that specifically uses it. Which, to my knowledge, are literally just low-level BLM's and WHM's, meaning it's effectively a PLD-exclusive equipment slot. Which, whatever, that's fine; only display it for those characters, then.

In terms of the Armoury Chest, I would display them in largely the same order, but move ALL of the icons to the left side of the window, and move Soul Crystals ABOVE the Weapon slot, and Off-hands BELOW the Weapon slot. That would actually perfectly align them, using the exact same amount of space.

I know these probably sound like trivial changes -- and make no mistake, for most players, they are -- but as someone who REALLY values a clean-looking UI, and likes for things to be displayed in a way that makes sense, these changes would really clean things up a lot.

That's all I've got! I hope you guys get a chance to forward this to the Devs. I know it sounds a bit complicated, but if you look at my post while you're actually in-game, looking at your character-sheet (or Armoury Chest, where referenced), I think you'll agree these suggestions would really look a lot cleaner.

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I agree with you that it should be moved around but FYI basically every crafter uses the off-hand slot as well

I totally support removal of the soul stone slot. It wouldn't even really be that hard as I think it could be done with these changes:
1. If you equip a weapon usable by both class/job, and you have the job unlocked, then you change to the job, otherwise you change/stay the class. Except for one CNJ quest I know of (the one for the unicorn mount), there's no good reason to deliberately unequip your job stone anymore. For that one quest, just open it up to WHM as well, and that should solve the problem.
2. Remove SCH and +mind from all books currently equippable by ACN/SMN/SCH.
3. For books level 30+ that are currently usable by ACN/SMN/SCH, create SCH-specific versions of those same books that have +mind instead of +intelligence. This wouldn't be very many as every book I'm aware of level 50+ already has SCH-specific versions separate from the ACN/SMN ones, and even some below level 50 are like that (e.g. the level 41 drop from stone vigil). This mostly impacts just the few crafted books from 30-50.
4. Delete DoH specialties. They've been made more and more pointless since their introduction. They were a mistake just like the previous limits desynthesis that prevented you from maxing out more than 3 classes at once. One of the core appeals of this game is that you're able to do just about everything from a single character without the need for alts. DoH specialties work against this even if you are able to change them almost at will now that it basically boils down to a smallish fee in crafting scripts.
5. Move the soul stones to collections. That way they're still an item you have and can look at as far as the plot goes.

On the other hand, I don't support removal of the offhand slot. Sure, it's a shame that only one combat class (currently) gets to utilize it, but I wouldn't mind a mace/shield and/or possibly even 1H-axe/shield tank in the future. It could even be opened up as a glamour slot to customize the left-hand weapon appearance separate from the right hand for dual-wielding classes (NIN/DNC) and perhaps even for certain parts of some 2H weapons (e.g. a BRD's quiver and the crystal the RDM holds in the left hand). On a more practical note, all DoH and DoL (except FSH) currently use the offhand slot potentially for glamour while crafting, but also as another thing to meld materia in to. The max 5 slots that adds isn't much, but they still provide some wiggle room for customizing your melds, especially if you ignore crazy-expensive BiS guides and go for a more economic route tailored to your specific goals as a crafter. When belts were removed, I found that I suddenly no longer have the ability to craft 4-star level 80 crafts without redoing some of my melds because of the way my belts had been melded. It's no big deal now because level 80 crafts are obsolete and upgrading to level 90 gear will also make the stat requirements no longer a problem either for level 80 crafts should I have reason to craft them again.

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Originally Posted by Eriane_Elis

The only difficult thing would be telling the difference between scholar and summoner for example.

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Easily fixed by duplicating all the Lv30 to Lv49 books (there aren't that many of them) and making one set SMN only and one set SCH only.

Honestly, I'm down for a number of these suggestions. I'd probably still keep the Off-hand slot (simply because there's no no easy substitute for it), but I would definitely ONLY display that slot when playing Jobs that actually USE it.

But honestly, removing the Soul Crystal slot makes a lot of sense. In terms of storytelling, nothing really needs to change, we can still obtain the Soul Crystals, but just like so many key items in the Story, there's honestly no reason they need to clog up inventory space.

I don't even care about getting a bigger Armoury Chest or anything like that; maybe if we can find more ways to clear up more space, maybe they'll be able to do things more often like add new Housing wards, etc?

Completely in favor of.

Though realistically, it needs to be said, probably won't ever happen.

All of it is holdover from 1.0's mess. Cleaning all of that up and recoding everything is probably a developer nightmare. ARR was made in such a short development time, that the amount of technical debt they had to incur by using 1.0's assets and code still affect us to this day.

Example: They finally JUST removed belts, something that was in the game in ARR to now only because they existed in 1.0 and had to be able to port over legacy characters' gear. Visually they did nothing, they were a stat stick, and it took them this long to rebalance the stats and remove the item.

I think if they were going to do it, doing it when they did the stat squish for EW would've made the most sense, as they were already elbow deep in the code.

I'd absolutely LOVE to see the lower level 1-30 stuff revamped in this form and soul crystal removed all together as an equipped item, I just highly doubt the devs would devote the time to doing it.

Also before someone inevitably says "I'm in coding blah blah blah it's not a lot to do it", none of us have any idea the actual work involved in messing with this game's spaghetti code. It could very well be easy, or it could be a technical nightmare for the devs. We just have 0 clue what would be involved.

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Originally Posted by ArkenaeuxBelmont

Also before someone inevitably says "I'm in coding blah blah blah it's not a lot to do it", none of us have any idea the actual work involved in messing with this game's spaghetti code. It could very well be easy, or it could be a technical nightmare for the devs. We just have 0 clue what would be involved.

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It does sound like a technical nightmare for the devs.

And as much as I would wholly support a total overhaul, update, and streamlining of the code for a new decade in lieu of new expansion content, it pretty much won't happen. They will keep squeezing out regular content as best they can, even if they are running a janky old engine into the ground.

HOWEVER. I will say that the game is extremely successful and making a lot of money. And it's not like there is a finite limit on a number of developers they can employ or contract with. If I were in SE's position, given the long-term potential for this game to become a sort of legacy experience the way WoW has for over 15 years, I would be looking to find a third party developer to undertake the process of an engine update. Much of that could happen totally independent of new content development, and with proper communication between studios could be synced up incrementally without causing too much of a release delay.

As a matter of clunky interfaces and dated models/textures, I think this is a necessary change if, as they say, they want to keep making content for another 10 years and expect FF XIV to remain an industry standard without falling into post-content maintenance mode. And frankly given how much XIV drew from every title in the series and succeeded on intertextuality, another FF MMO is not going to be as successful. It will either take a new direction that will not resonate and gather the same fanbase, or it will attempt pretty much the same thing with updated graphics/mechanics and be criticized for being unoriginal. Increasing the longevity of FF XIV is pretty much the only responsible decision by SE at this point in the MMO genre.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Easily fixed by duplicating all the Lv30 to Lv49 books (there aren't that many of them) and making one set SMN only and one set SCH only.

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After thinking about your proposal, I think it would be difficult because of the anima weapons and other things that are unlocked / achievement bound. I think a toggle would be the simplest alternative approach. It could just be at the top corner of your avatar preview in the character window that only appears on classes that share the legacy class evolution thing.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

It does sound like a technical nightmare for the devs.

And as much as I would wholly support a total overhaul, update, and streamlining of the code for a new decade in lieu of new expansion content, it pretty much won't happen. They will keep squeezing out regular content as best they can, even if they are running a janky old engine into the ground.

HOWEVER. I will say that the game is extremely successful and making a lot of money. And it's not like there is a finite limit on a number of developers they can employ or contract with. If I were in SE's position, given the long-term potential for this game to become a sort of legacy experience the way WoW has for over 15 years, I would be looking to find a third party developer to undertake the process of an engine update. Much of that could happen totally independent of new content development, and with proper communication between studios could be synced up incrementally without causing too much of a release delay.

As a matter of clunky interfaces and dated models/textures, I think this is a necessary change if, as they say, they want to keep making content for another 10 years and expect FF XIV to remain an industry standard without falling into post-content maintenance mode. And frankly given how much XIV drew from every title in the series and succeeded on intertextuality, another FF MMO is not going to be as successful. It will either take a new direction that will not resonate and gather the same fanbase, or it will attempt pretty much the same thing with updated graphics/mechanics and be criticized for being unoriginal. Increasing the longevity of FF XIV is pretty much the only responsible decision by SE at this point in the MMO genre.

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The problem with that, at least from my understanding, is that SE doesn't give the developers back the budget they deserve for the amount of money the game is making. I'm fairly certain I read an interview with YoshiP somewhere or another where he was talking about what other games achieve with bigger budgets then they are allotted. It sounds like, at least from the surface, that the devs could stand to have more capital infused into their department. SE being a production company as well a developer, however, has to fund all their different projects. It would be no stretch of the imagination to deduce that the money FFXIV generates gets used primarily elsewhere in the company, as plenty other of their projects do not do as well as XIV, or the Final Fantasy brand itself. Marvel Avengers was one such flop, for instance.

You'd think that SE would funnel back a good portion into the game but, as we all know, Corporate Side =/= Devs. I'm sure with more money, resources and manpower they could accomplish a lot more with the game.

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Originally Posted by Eriane_Elis

After thinking about your proposal, I think it would be difficult because of the anima weapons and other things that are unlocked / achievement bound.

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There are no shared SCH/SMN weapons after Lv49, so I don't understand why you think it would be difficult. Only Lv30 through Lv49 books lack a SCH only version.

Just get rid of soul crystals and have the level 30+ weapons be locked to the jobs with the base classes unable to equip them.
Obviously, the job unlock quests would give you a level 30 weapon to get you started.
This frees up the inventory space taken up by job crystals, and it prevents those situations where someone queues into a dungeon/raid without their crystal equipped.
This would even work for SMN/SCH as they already use different types of books (Grimoire and Codex). Just equip the appropriate level 30+ weapon to switch to your desired job.

Doesn't the Soul Crystal have Relevance though?
Like, we are using the memories of Past Users to Teach us the Skills we are using.
And in tern, we are instilling our Knowledge and Experience into the Soul Stone.

--Spoiler--
Even Alphi when he becomes a Sage, is given a Soul Crystal to instill him the knowledge and Skills to use those Weapons.
So in case we have forgotten, Endwalker Reminds us why we have them in the 1st place

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

in case we have forgotten, Endwalker Reminds us why we have [soul stones] in the 1st place

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No one forgot. Gameplay mechanics and lore do not have to match literally. The lore can indicate that we are using soul stones for their accelerated learning via memory transference without the game system requiring us to carry and equip them as literal inventory and equipment.

It's quite possible that the spaghetti coding can't let them make soul stones unequippable or able to be hidden from the equipment menu. It seems like an obvious thing to streamline if they could.