[ Dev's ] Gear Swaps Can I have It?

[Betelgeuzah]

Changing gear made XI's end game work.

Which is why even more important question is what their plans are for the gear progression. Situational upgrades won't work because, well, there are only a fraction of situations as opposed to XI. And if there's no situational upgrades, they'll be forced to make equipment obsolete often. Otherwise we have no reason to go after the new equipment, if it doesn't benefit us.

Gear swaps are a brilliant concept and there's no good argument against it. The small flaws in XI's system are easily fixed.

If they don't do something revolutionary (which isn't Yoshida's style) they will need to choose one or the other. And at this point the community is pointing them towards WoW, as opposed to XI with clear improvements (that is ultimately a better system, when executed correctly. Which isn't hard.)

[Jynx]

Changing gear made XI's end game work.

Which is why even more important question is what their plans are for the gear progression. Situational upgrades won't work because, well, there are only a fraction of situations as opposed to XI

Funny...I full timed multiple gear sets on my thief all the time. I had several sets of gear for different situations and it didn't always call for mid-battle swaps.

I had...

Accuracy set - Moderatly hard monsters
Powering set - Weak monsters
Evasion set - Strong accurate monsters

While I did have sets I would "Swap" for minor things like Ranged accuracy and weaponskill sets I'm still averse to having that style of play again.

[Physic]

Changing gear made XI's end game work.

Which is why even more important question is what their plans are for the gear progression. Situational upgrades won't work because, well, there are only a fraction of situations as opposed to XI. And if there's no situational upgrades, they'll be forced to make equipment obsolete often. Otherwise we have no reason to go after the new equipment, if it doesn't benefit us.

Gear swaps are a brilliant concept and there's no good argument against it. The small flaws in XI's system are easily fixed.

If they don't do something revolutionary (which isn't Yoshida's style) they will need to choose one or the other. And at this point the community is pointing them towards WoW, as opposed to XI with clear improvements (that is ultimately a better system, when executed correctly. Which isn't hard.)

different stats on different gear for different situations, swap your gear outside of battle, choose your gear based on the event you are goin into and what role you are playing.

Just because you cant be everything at once doesnt mean there isnt useful different gears.
for example
pug weapons with piercing dmg, pug weapons with blunt.
pug weapons with a focus on ATT and crit rate for bigger damage
pug weapons with a focus on parry and ACC for tanking
Evasion earrings gear if you expect to tank low ACC mobs
Defensive gear if you expect to tank high ACC mobs
Haste and speed gear if you want to be able to apply buffs/debuffs and set up BRs all at the same time

The point of different gear in FFXI wasnt to be a god all the time, it was to pick the gear that appropriately fit your skills and role, and made you better at the style of play you chose. The fact that people could use it all basically ruined those strategic choices.

imagine 1 rdm chose to be a stamina type with really high mp regen
another rdm chose to be a melee type with melee gear aCC attack and use enspells
another rdm chose to be a light BLM with back up cures

one monk chose to be a tank, and thus was full of ACC and counter gear, HP boosting gear and haste
another was all spike damage and went ACC ATTACK and STR and VIT for WS with a theif sub used kick attacks and kick damage boots.

people just did it all in one fight, your supposed to choose before you go into battle.

It the equivalent of swapping skills in battle out of your bar right now during a fight, without even having to put away your weapon, its just a work around to cheat the system. Oh im sure its cool, and makes having situational abilities more usefull, but that because you are cheating the system whereby you were actually supposed to choose your gear and skills BEFORE you went into battle.

[Betelgeuzah]

The point of different gear in FFXI wasnt to be a god all the time, it was to pick the gear that appropriately fit your skills and role, and made you better at the style of play you chose. The fact that people could use it all basically ruined those strategic choices.

imagine 1 rdm chose to be a stamina type with really high mp regen
another rdm chose to be a melee type with melee gear aCC attack and use enspells
another rdm chose to be a light BLM with back up cures

one monk chose to be a tank, and thus was full of ACC and counter gear, HP boosting gear and haste
another was all spike damage and went ACC ATTACK and STR and VIT for WS with a theif sub used kick attacks and kick damage boots.

people just did it all in one fight, your supposed to choose before you go into battle.

It the equivalent of swapping skills in battle out of your bar right now during a fight, without even having to put away your weapon, its just a work around to cheat the system. Oh im sure its cool, and makes having situational abilities more usefull, but that because you are cheating the system whereby you were actually supposed to choose your gear and skills BEFORE you went into battle.

You are making this shit up. Gear swapping functioned the way it did by DESIGN, which means it was working AS INTENDED, which means nobody was "cheating" the system. You can't say how it was "supposed to work" when the fact is that SE had no problem whatsoever with the way the system was functioning, otherwise they would have changed it.

The fact is that there will be a fraction of situational equipment to choose from, you did not disprove this (I never said there were none of them). To top it off, the game is changing to function in a way where everyone has a more clear cut role in battle, meaning there is less demand for exotic playstyles (if you're not a unique snowflake while gimping yourself that is) and thus less demand for specific gearsets (like tanking on a DPS oriented class).

In the end it'll be like trying to get a tanking set for Monk because you already have everything else that boosts your DPS, yet there's little incentive for it and you do it mainly to be a completionist, not for some great advantage in normal gameplay. What a great incentive for players to do the new mid-expansion situational gear dungeon.

[Kiara]

Hi All,

I'd agree with physic. While Gear Swapping in battle certainly added more strategy and more thought, and made use of more types of gear, there's nothing to say that we can't use different sets, they'd just be chosen before battle.

We can still have a High Accuracy Set, or a High Damage Set, or a Debuff Set or a Healing Set, and it'd be what you'd choose before a fight. Is this Boss something with High Evasion? Then you choose to go with your High Accuracy Set before the Boss fight.

Is this other Boss, slow, with Low Evasion, but High Defense? Then go with a High Damage Set, etc.

Also, we don't know the full extent of their new Combat System. Seeing their most recent work on Final Fantasy XIII and the upcoming FF XIII-2, they have a Paradigm System.

So perhaps, instead of Gear Swapping (manually with Macros like XI), who knows? Maybe we'll have the eventual ability to Swap Jobs (roles) in Combat, like Lightning swapping between Saboteur -> Commando -> Ravager mid-combat. I could see them developing the Job System so that you can swap your Job during a fight, which would then add more strategy and tactics back in, like Gear Swapping in XI.

Ultimately, I think it's a mistake for SE to leak only a small bit of information again (No Gear Swap), without showing us the full Battle Plan. I think it makes more people uneasy / angry / frustrated / confused, and only a portion of the Players happy (those that just didn't like Gear Swapping).

Let's see what it's like after we see their Full Battle System in place. Here's to hoping for good things!