Can We Get Rid Of The "Unique" Status On Gear?

[Magic-Mal]

I've been wondering this for ages. What's the point of the Unique status on gear? What does it do? All I've seen it do so far is cause problems and restrictions. There are so many good things that can come out of getting rid of this lock..

Unique Glamours for gear(even though that's more of a band-aid), more customization for individual jobs, easier desynths, easier GC turn-ins and more..

If I had the ability to buy more than one of the same castimg Creator piece I could.. create the best gear combo for each job or make glamours for each job! You can buy multiple gathering pieces or any other gear and make a bunch of combinations with those so why not tome/raid/dungeon gear?

Honestly I think for the sake of dungeon drops the Unique status should be reworked where you no longer have the power to Need on the piece you already have that drops and only allow Greed. That sounds fair.

For some jobs you might want Critical Hit on the piece for that class but Spell Speed for this class but you can't do it because you can't buy duplicates. Want to wear a BLM glamour and a RDM one? Can't because you can't buy duplicates. Now, obviously it would require extra slots, but it only makes that way.

So can this be changed?

[Zfz]

But how do you justify being able to NEED only once on something that you might want to meld differently for different jobs? You legitimately NEED two of them. Isn't the one-need rule just as arbitrary as the Unique attribute in reducing loot competition?

[Rakiria]

I'm pretty sure it's made so thing aren't as simple. Same with the weekly token cap.

[NolLacnala]

There isn't enough weekly tomes or inventory space for this

[Serilda]

I think they simply apply labels too liberally sometimes (see also: gender-locking hats just because they can). The unique flag makes sense on dungeon drops. It makes absolutely no sense on things like tome or PVP gear where you voluntarily want to buy extra copies, harming nobody, but cannot because the game wants people to have suboptimal materia for other jobs or carry around a bunch of mismatched gear pulled together from other sources. It's most silly with rings for obvious reasons.

[Zojha]

But how do you justify being able to NEED only once on something that you might want to meld differently for different jobs?

How do you justify being unable to need on gear you want to sell to the vendor?
You NEED that gil for a house!

You can spin that into IRL, too. How do you justify being disallowed from stealing from your neighbor when you're hungry? You need food to survive!

Rules are all arbitrary. Behind them lies the desire to protect a claim deemed legitimate from another party. In the RL case, it's the property rights of your neighbor. In the loot case, it's the person who hasn't gotten the piece yet - "Let everyone take a slice before you go and get your second."

And depending on the general moral code of society, those rules will change. "Cull the Weak" societies are downright a trope in fiction.

Moreover, all "Need" only exists together with a "Want". You don't need to sustain your body if you don't want to live. You don't need better gear if you don't want to play content that requires it. You don't need an airplane if you don't want to fly. You don't need a mount if you don't want to go faster. Need and Greed are essentially the same thing in the first place, they're Wants, desires to have something.

Separating the two is arbitrary - It's an attempt to distinguish "Higher Wants" and "Lesser Wants", both as deemed by the underlying moral code. And ultimately, this is also what the unique tag tries to achieve. In addition, it historically was also used to prevent players from making overpowered characters by equipping/slotting multiple extremely powerful items, though that function isn't exactly applicable in this game.
What baffles me is that it's also pasted onto token and vendor armors - best I can think of is a protection against buying the same piece you already had by accident. It can't really serve a different purpose there. But for all I know, they just pasted it there because other MMOs do it and they never really thought about it. /huh.

[ErryK]

I don't see why this should be a thing.

[ovIm]

I dont mind the fact that lootable gear is unique (though, this can be cheesed by storing things with a retainer and then looting them again), but I dont understand why things you buy with tomestones need to be unique. Let us at least buy duplicates of those items (looking at you, tomestone rings)

[technole]

You can have "two" tombstone rings, you just have to upgrade one to 340. So get cracking on O2S already, heheheh.

Healers this tier it's better for damage to have a 330 tome and an upgraded tome 340 ring over the O1S 340 ring + 340 tome ring.

[BillyKaplan]

You can effectively get around this restriction already, so I don't see them removing it on their own (because this will make things too easy for us). With the exception of rings, and while it is a hassle, you can have as many copies of an item as you have retainers (not including the one you can keep in your inventory because you need an empty space otherwise you won't be able to take anything out).