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

[Payadopa]

I really love the concept. Options are a good thing, so I don't understand why some people seem to dislike it so much.

And I also don't understand why some people don't get Yoshi's letter. He was just explaining things in detail. Just because he didn't leak something doesn't mean the letter is a waste of space. The thought process is more than reasonable, if you ask me. And more than that, I really like his honest attitude.

Yes, even MMOs are *gasp* about making money. Of course you would want to appeal to a wider audience.

In the end it's all about preferences. If the good things overweight the bad, people will stay. By catering to both sides of the spectrum, while providing a solid balance, I don't see a problem here.

[weeble]

I really love the concept. Options are a good thing, so I don't understand why some people seem to dislike it so much.

And I also don't understand why some people don't get Yoshi's letter. He was just explaining things in detail. Just because he didn't leak something doesn't mean the letter is a waste of space. The thought process is more than reasonable, if you ask me. And more than that, I really like his honest attitude.

Yes, even MMOs are *gasp* about making money. Of course you would want to appeal to a wider audience.

In the end it's all about preferences. If the good things overweight the bad, people will stay. By catering to both sides of the spectrum, while providing a solid balance, I don't see a problem here.

in my opinion he did reveal something, he talks about hardcore and casuals like he knows most endgame seems to be going the dungeon 8man route rather then ffxi style large scale linkshell events that a lot of players probably bought the game thinking there would be.

his rambling explanation really was irrelevant to most cause we all see simple solutions to it, it's not his detailed explanation that was the issue they mock.

also in my opinion, weather u'r out for money, i think mmo's need to start appealing to specific audiences like other games. some poeple like one kinds some like another. but let me add this for certain, the one thing that does need to happen with mmo's is they create a law around it, stating a few laws about launching games empty cause this has happened a few too many times, fact my last 2 mmo's. they want to make money sure, but i think they should be faced with problems doing it the wrong way. also there should never be caps on class action law suits for when groups want to sue like our presidents try to instate cause they are corrupt people, not to far off from large companies.

on topic again, in the end it doesn't cater to either side, it is mediocre to both sides, leveling and gearing multiple classes seems like a waist of time, dungeons will get old and boring quick even if they keep adding new ones. casual or hardcore will all be sitting around waiting for content every few months while what doing hamlets that are like simple grind areas for most new mmo's now? these things are empty in other mmo's after they hit max level, do them as a endgame for what i bet company marks? meh.

all in all as u can see everything he spewed into his letter gives me flashes of a mmo that will be fail in a year of launch, kinda been pushed to very disappointed. but maybe i'm over reacting and completely off, but i doubt it.

[Darkvalkyr]

.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...

So all the jerks and showoffs will leave while I enjoy my game? Great. At least I know there will always be content for me and my friends to finish over time.

And also, I'm laughing at how some people seem to always think everything Yoshida's doing will fall short. It's like as if you can see in the future that content will come very sparsely (months time) in very tiny amounts. And all this talk about Tanaka polishing the game...remember who gave the call to release the game earlier. What sort of a game he envisioned - which was what exactly? I saw very little at the start, looking at what could've been a great game but it got spoiled by a bad business decision. Tanaka may have well been the reason the game is in the situation it is. If he had just waited and polished it it might've done a lot better...but Yoshida's here fixing something to save it from all the bad press. And I like the changes. Yes yes, Yoshida's doing stuff that Tanaka might not have wanted down the line, but after Tanaka's screw-up, I'm more likely to stick with a person who's very vocal about his plans and open to responses.

The game isn't about all one person...you have your tastes and opinions and that's valid, but so do a bunch of other people who want to play the game.

[weeble]

what will happen when they leave is simply this, automatically they will need to make events that casuals can start, lead and finish with the least amount of challenge to do this. casuals no matter how good a player or not, majority thing that makes them casual to me is simple they don't put things together, they don't invite players to do dungeons, or grind, in warhammer there could be 20people solo'ing getting killed for hours cause not one of them are willing to simply say party join on me so they can do the killing on the 6party up players killing them all. then content will keep moving in the slop of easyness, more and more will leave along with the HC as u put them so it will hurt the game in general.

no challenges, nothing worth staying in game for = gotta make easy content for whatever is left willing to stick around.

also with the tanaka thing u speak of, chances are he was forced by others to launch, why would 1 human being decide to launch a game when it obviously not ready. he was the yes man to control and force it to happen yeah but there i'm sure were other forces of nature, on top of that his job probably was on the line. i would go as far as him signing papers for his job to stay in the company and stay quite on top of it all. lol but i'm speculating none of this is fact, just an opinion since u think yours is the correct one. yoshi is just mister fix it to get the game moving in the direction of profit ... at any means possible. that is not a mmo that is a gathering of crappy ideas mushed together for the best possible profits. money is great but really when they gonna stop with the bad launches and buggy games.

[Shikyo]

I'm wondering what purpose it serves to offer low level gear as Company rewards when most players can simply purchase high level gear and coast with it for the rest of the game. It's never been made clear what reasons there might be to use equipment within your job's rank. Maybe they degrade faster, sure, but that hasn't been an issue for me so far and I've been wearing iron gear since level twenty.

So, my question is, what does the future hold for our gear? Will they ever be rank restricted, rather than rank suggested? Was gear ever meant to be something we upgraded slowly, over time, or something we could skip to the end of if we had that luxury?

Hopefully any and all future equip will be lvl specific that will solve the problem 100%

[AsterBarnivere]

Uh.. where did it say the armory system is going away?

I'm glad they are heading in the direction of mixing function with appearance. I'm sure most people hated wearing Walahra Turban/Optical hat when they were THE hats to wear. Opening up multiple avenues for getting powerful gear without having to look like a jackass or the same as other people sounds good to me. Crafters will stay relevant too if this pans out.

By the looks of what's being said, items being restricted to one class, gear restrictions if you're not this job or that job, NO YOU CAN'T WEAR THAT! sounds like the armoury system is going away to me.

[AsterBarnivere]

(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.

Blade and Soul challenges that comment..

[syntaxlies]

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.

IMO, it would defeat the purpose of the mages being the fragile creatures they are. Also certain immersion aspects rely on certain gear having the stats it does. I don't think it would ever make sense to have Mage gear with plate armor stats for the simple reason it's not plate armor.

[Caliburn]

By the looks of what's being said, items being restricted to one class, gear restrictions if you're not this job or that job, NO YOU CAN'T WEAR THAT! sounds like the armoury system is going away to me.

Weapons have always been restricted to one class.

[Dargoth_Draconia]

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.

You know FFXIV has been in the works for a couple years right? Tanaka had all his experience in MMOs with FFXI and messed it up badly. You liked it somehow majority did not. The game now is in a 150% better state than when it started and I had so much hope for this game with the team we had on it originally. He just failed on the delivery with too many "What Ifs" and "We will do that in the future", SE had to cut their loses and bring in a new team, Tanaka and Sage Sundi both admitted to failing because of what I previously said. The game did have great potential at first but lacked any content and everything that it needed to be successful. Now we got a developer who also has a massive vision even though some may not see it, and plans to make this game the success we all wanted originally. After all is said and done now at the very least FFXIV will reach the level of FFXI did and maybe if we are lucky it will surpass it.

Also I think you what you said from FFXI being good at ToAU+ is funny because that is when the game started going downhill for me. Also you call this game a copy/paste FFXI? I don't see that, it was by design from Tanaka more similar to FFXI than it is in its current condition. The FFXI playerbase didn't effect this game in the negative in the least, because they are the ones who actually are still playing this game and if it wasn't for those dedicated FF fans, many of which played FFXI, this game would truly be dead. You say it is the casual players that support this game but that ain't true, all the people I seen from day one the hardcore players are the ones I see majority of the time on whenever I log on. I consider myself a hardcore player but I have become more casual because of no content. I want this game to succeed and it is going down the right path but has not enough content to keep me wanting to play everyday. I know a lot of HC players that have drifted to casual play til content rolls out.