In what direction are armor, weapons, and other equipment heading in the future?

[Caliburn]

I still don't understand why people are so bothered about the uniqueness of their character. I've always had an attachment to my characters in MMOs, whether they're wearing the same gear as everyone else or not. If you can't find that attachment without running around with random gear which doesn't make sense to your class, with a "unique" skillset which party members do not know how to work with and which in the end doesn't really aid anyone but yourself and your vanity, then that's a shame.

My character's uniqueness comes from their physical appearance - i.e. their face, body, skin colour, hair style, hair colour, eyes, etc. No, I don't want to be forced to play how every single other player plays, but at the same time I'm not really thinking about how every single other player plays. Part of the fun with an MMO is learning how to play your class as skillfully and effectively as everyone else. I don't want to be unique, I want to be skillful and I want to perform well and be proud of that. Whatever "bond" I have with my character is not based on him/her being completely different to everyone else just for the hell of it.

I'm not like that in real life and I don't want to be like that in-game.

I'll be proud of wearing that high-level armour which I see all the skilled, high-level players wearing. And, in all honestly, it's never been the case in any MMO I've played that I see everyone looking identical to each other anyway. There is always choice in equipment. And we can always choose what skills we are going to use for a given situation.

I just don't see the problem with gear restrictions. They make sense. They enable class balancing to occur. They add a certain feel to the game world - i.e. Eorzea is not meant to be full of mages running around in plate, neither is it meant to be full of warriors running around in robes.

Players throw around words like "immersion" (oh god, kill me now) and for some reason don't want to see themselves "immersed" in any pre-determined world. They want to break every mold. Well, get over yourself. The developers are trying to create a game with a framework that - key word - works. If they just let you do whatever the hell you want, how do they create their vision of the world and how do they solve class/gear balance?

Get over it. Let the game be created. Let rules and restrictions stand as part of the gameplay. You're not going to look identical to every other character regardless of said restrictions and if you've played any decent MMO before you should know that.

There is also nothing wrong with achetypes, as in mages always wearing robes. Especially not in a Final Fantasy game. AF gear in particular is what has always defined the series and created continuity.

(Note: I'm not responding to any particular post in this thread - I've just noticed a lot of talk on the forums about people wanting uniqueness and to "play how they want" and thought this was a suitable place to put these thoughts. If you want to play exactly how you want in every way possible go develop your own game.)

tldr: restrictions are part of any good game, stop thinking restrictions mean you can't have any "uniqueness" in your character and start supporting having a game with some sort of proper framework which is obviously still going to let you have choices anyway.

[Rorix]

Well, I actually like how you can wear any gear as long as you like it, the only downside, is that you do get a HIGH penalty on stats if you are not close to the req. rank and it makes the point of wearing the items you like totally useless when you still get way better defense from you optimal gear, even if you don't like it. :/

I don't mind gear being rank locked but let us wear whatever piece of clothing we want.

[Zantetsuken]

Yoshida mentioned Monster Hunter.

Why not go down the same road?

Cumulative bonuses and penalties on gear gives freedom and individuality. If every piece of gear granted a penalty as well as a bonus, It would solve most of the problems he outlined.

For example:

• Steel Plate Mail: +4 VIT | -2 DEX | +20 HP | -4 PIE | -20 MP | +4 Earth | -4 Lightning | MP Recover -5 | Bind resistance +4
• Silken Cowl: +4 INT | +4 MND | +50 MP | -4 DEX | +4 Wind | -4 Fire | Magic Potency +4 | Accuracy -4 |
• Skirmisher's Harness : +4 DEX | +2 STR | -8 PIE | | +4 Water | -4 Ice | Ranged Accuracy +4 | Evasion +4 | Magic Potency -4

Of course, there would be generic gear that has only slight bonuses and penalties for people who change classes often. But the most distinct looking gear would be very focused towards one particular class. Of course Artifact/Relic gear would be need to be locked to a job, but that's about it.

Under a system like this, there is no need for 'favored' classes.. It's pretty obvious that if you wear plate mail as a Mage, you won't be half as good as another Mage who is wearing a cowl. But at the same time, players have the freedom to wear what they want.

[Corrderio]

This is rather dumb and ignorant comment any way you look at it. I'm very disappointed.

What? It is boring doing the same thing over and over again until a mob decides to put out. It wasn't fun farming Dio/Water for hours in Sky, it wasn't fun killing a mob for months for a piece of L35 armor from salvage, and it wasn't fun camping (read: botting) HNMs for years.

I'm not saying everything should be 100%, but god awful drop rates for a false sense of accomoplishment isn't fun either. I quit XI because of that crap, it started to feel like a full time job with little to no pay. One of the main reasons I picked XIV up despite it's horrible ratings was because Tanaka was going to base the game around casual gameplay this time.

[OmegaNovaios]

I'm a little surprised that there was no mention of the possibility of a system like Aion's, where you can change the look of a piece of equipment without changing it's stats. For example, say you liked the look of the iron plate armor, but want the stats of the Revolutionary's Bliaud. Bring both items to an NPC, the "looks" item (in this case, the iron plate armor) would be lost, but your Bliaud's model is now that of the iron plate armor (this service would cost a small fee as well). The same NPC can restore the Bliaud's original model for a fee.

Now, obviously something like this would require a tremendous amount of time and resources to implement, but given the ideals laid out by Yoshi-P's post, it seems like something that would be ideal, and might be a possibility for the dev team to consider.

I like this idea. O.O Then I can finally wear my awesome looking (but inferior stat wise) Mosshorn Scale Mail again.

[Ava]

Greetings! This thread seems like a good place to drop another major posts from Yoshida, as it deals heavily on the armor and equipment in FFXIV.

I saw a hint in there about relic-type items in the future. I'd just like to throw my opinion out about this.

If the developers choose to implement something similar to relic items from XI, they really need to make two key considerations.

1) Relics are/were VERY hard to obtain, they should last a very long time. In XI, the equipment performance curve wasn't really... well, it wasn't a curve. People wore level 24 gear (Emperor's Hairpin) and level 7 gear (Leaping Boots) for a long long time. What this meant was, they could make the relics a sort of "Emperor Hairpin", vastly superior to other items because of it's unique characteristic (the weapon skill). Even after new gear came out, the relics were still better because the item team on FFXI didn't continually leapfrog gear like every other MMORPG in existance does.

2) If the developers do want a tiered item system where each new dungeon is better than the last, then in my strong opinion, there NEEDS to be a "Trial of the Magians" type system in place that is easily extensible and can be added onto when new tiers come out.

Personally, I'd love to see a "Trial of the Magians" with tiered loot. While I loved the system in XI where I could find an Emp Pin and say to myself "YES!!! I got my Pin! I'm good for headgear until 70!", I think a tiered system is both easier to manage and easier for the players to find their equipment goals.

[Mindx3]

WoW's current system solves all the problems he mentioned with better versions of the same gear from the same content at a higher difficulty. That casual player will get that shining rod and so will the hardcore, the hardcore version is better but even the hardcore player needs to get the 1st version of the rod (Gear Score) before the player is allowed to enter the harder version of the same dungeon. As well as flooding the market with cool unique looking gear. Everyone hates on this game but every game can learn from it

[Falcus]

It has always been clear that equipment stats are significantly penalized when your rank isn't high enough for it. Equip something rank appropriate and watch your stats get higher.

From my experience it doesn't.
I remember testing it out on goldsmith.

I equipped a rank 26 doublet at rank 25 and then switched to Dodore Doublet... EXACT SAME STATS!
Once I hit rank 26 (the optimal rank for the rank 26 doublet) I was then gaining more stats from Dodore than I was from the one optimal for my rank.

Go figure, but no, wearing stuff way above your rank will not give less stats.

[Dargoth_Draconia]

Well...so long life to e-peens and bye-bye armory system? This is indeed a shame. Once again this 1.19 just looks like the end of eorzean freedom. I want to see all these e-peen being added and those who asked them so much not even being playing anymore or migrating to one of the other MMOs that are about to release... :/

It could be so simple...a win-win deal by leaving the restricted stuff on NMs and endgame and leaving craft alone...but now seems like craft will also be f'ed up...

I don't know why i still come and read these posts expecting for good news...i feel like those dumbasses that hit the face at glass door every single day and still keeps using that door.



Can i have the original FFXIV released as a spin-off game? I'd love to have a chance of going back to that Eorzea...even if it meant buying a new game.

Why would they leave crafting alone? They have to balance the system to make it all work in harmony. I don't get what you are complaining over though since they said they are going with two options instead of one extreme. There will be some items with level/class restrictions and some without. Unless you read something that I missed somehow.

Personally I don't see how anyone would want to play FFXIV in its original state. It lacked any character uniqueness other than maybe equipping plate armor on a mage and look like a complete moron and that really destroyed the Final Fantasy feel. Final Fantasy XIV at launch did not deserved to be called Final Fantasy anything. You have your personal preference but if you like to play in garbage then go have fun dumpster diving.

The fact is there should only be a handful of basic styles of armors that everyone can wear and use the optimal rank system. Majority of the other armor should be only wearable by certain classes (similar to FFXI), the ability for all armor to be wearable from the start by anyone was a cool idea at first but really robbed the game of having the sense of achievement when you obtain that really special armor.

[Lienn]

Why would they leave crafting alone? They have to balance the system to make it all work in harmony. I don't get what you are complaining over though since they said they are going with two options instead of one extreme. There will be some items with level/class restrictions and some without. Unless you read something that I missed somehow.

Personally I don't see how anyone would want to play FFXIV in its original state. It lacked any character uniqueness other than maybe equipping plate armor on a mage and look like a complete moron and that really destroyed the Final Fantasy feel. Final Fantasy XIV at launch did not deserved to be called Final Fantasy anything. You have your personal preference but if you like to play in garbage then go have fun dumpster diving.

The fact is there should only be a handful of basic styles of armors that everyone can wear and use the optimal rank system. Majority of the other armor should be only wearable by certain classes (similar to FFXI), the ability for all armor to be wearable from the start by anyone was a cool idea at first but really robbed the game of having the sense of achievement when you obtain that really special armor.

Well, yes i guess i should go do some garbage diving then...because IMO that was the MMO with biggest potential i saw in years and the FFXI playerbase messed it up. While people always talk about the bad release and all that s#!t, no one actually gave time for it to develop. Yes, it was a premature and terrible release...but if wasn't the butthurt of FFXI playerbase i bet the original game would be MUCH bettter than the current one.

And now we have a copy/paste of FFXI, a halfdead MMO...and the thing is...those who maintain the MMOs are the casual players, not the HC ones and this "everything for HCs and let the leftovers to the casuals" would just speed up this game's death. Tanaka took a few years to learn this in FFXI and, when he did, FFXI finally became a pleasant game (ToAU+). He brought all the concepts regarding FFXI flaws to this game but actually had no time to pollish them...and now the dev team is putting every concept he brought down...one by one...because i believe that Yoshida might understand the meaning of being hardcore, but not the behavior of them...but he will once the next wave of MMOs pop...because HC players are like a grasshopper swarm...they come in band, ge all they can while the population is mainly "underleveled" and, when the population become developed enough for their e-peen not being valuable enough (like the silver tricorne was at start...it was WAY more valuable e-peen-wise than any of these raid gears because of the amount of LS capable to actually atempt getting it) they just migrate to another recently launched MMO and start all over there...they rush to cap and start searching the e-peens before many others can at least atempt obtaining them...just for then to stay AFK at game main cities, showing-off his gear.

So yes, i still have hopes up that someday (maybe now...maybe in 1 year...maybe in 3 years) they will relaunch the original FFXIV as a spin-off FF game...or maybe not even as a FF game...and you know what? I would certainly buy it once again...because that game was worth having...a game balanced in every aspect of it that was just unfortunate regarding its playerbase.