FFXI's gear swap was like having extra skills.

[Aenarion]

no the laziness is in worrying about what others say about u'r gear, or not wanting to gather multiple sets for different endgame or fights. then using that worry to rule out a very cool system that kept people interested in gearing up there main class. but also gear becoming useless and another set taking it's place also takes it's place in this to work. though i still wouldn't mind this, i am lazy in the thought that my gear would be replaced by time i get them.

oh ffs, it has nothing to do with laziness. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have enough room in my inventory to carry multiple sets of gears for every single fking class/job. Maybe you enjoy running around being 200/200 and 150/150 on both retainers (which is gonna get taken away anyway), but the rest of us sure as hell don't. It's a piss-poor system that was the accidental result of piss-poor game design

[JackieChan]

I loved the idea of gear swaps in XI. It seperated the people knew how to play from the ok players and before you ask i was a career whm with the best of the best pre abyss. I would love to have gear swaps in this game.

[weeble]

oh ffs, it has nothing to do with laziness. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have enough room in my inventory to carry multiple sets of gears for every single fking class/job. Maybe you enjoy running around being 200/200 and 150/150 on both retainers (which is gonna get taken away anyway), but the rest of us sure as hell don't. It's a piss-poor system that was the accidental result of piss-poor game design

erm did u read the rest of my post? why are u complaining about space, if the system calls for many gear sets, then they would need to give enough space for them. they already stated that mannequins that are on it's way at some point will not take up space. u put a set of gear on it and 0 inventory taken. giving us like 5 of these or more for each class and u'll never need space. they also said they adding ways and quests on getting multiples of mannequins as well. in ffxi i had 8 rank 75's and i never had space issues. ever. and all my gear stayed on my main, my mules only had crafting stuff and sellables. space shouldn't be an issue... though the time to pull gear out of inventory can be. i hated the time to pull gears in and out of inventory in ffxi. but like you said they gonna take away our 200spaces witch was the only confert i had in never having to pull gear from retainers. i keep all classes gear on me all day right now, the second they take it away again we are all back to swaping classes and gear sets again, but space wasn't really an issue in itself, simple sollution would be more space and faster swaping.

[Razor]

oh ffs, it has nothing to do with laziness. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have enough room in my inventory to carry multiple sets of gears for every single fking class/job. Maybe you enjoy running around being 200/200 and 150/150 on both retainers (which is gonna get taken away anyway), but the rest of us sure as hell don't. It's a piss-poor system that was the accidental result of piss-poor game design

Because wanting to maximize efficiency is piss-poor game design everything design.

Why do we own a variety of different clothes ranging from heavy winter coats to tank tops? Because a tank-top in winter does about as good as a winter coat does in summer. Why do winter-tires exist when there are all-season tires? Hell, why do cars even exist if trucks could get every job done? Why do shotguns have slug ammunition but also buck-shot?

Efficiency. One particular piece of equipment/etc is not going to work in every situation. Just like all-season clothes/tires, there are things that are tailored to work well in most conditions but fall short of their specialized counterparts. (ie: Tabards in XIV are designed to be a well-rounded compromise between heavy defense and DD capability but are inferior to Buccanneer's Shirt and Cobalt Plate mail in both categories.)

For people like you, the all-purpose things would work well. You obviously would sacrifice maximum efficiency for the sake of inventory space and that is OK. But for other people who wish to carry around multiple sets of gear to be better at every facet of our job, we should we allowed to. I should be able to switch to gear that maximizes the damage from Riot Blade (in effect maximizing the enmity+) in between the times where I am getting the snot beat out of me while wearing Sentinel's.

EDIT: Yoshi said that the Mannequinn system he has in mind would remove the Mannequinn'd gear from inventory and store it in a separate slot. (like how crystals have their own place).

[Aenarion]

erm did u read the rest of my post? why are u complaining about space, if the system calls for many gear sets, then they would need to give enough space for them.

yea... what "should" happen and what "does" happen doesn't always match... especially when it comes to inventory spaces in MMO. Frankly, I don't understand why there even needs to be any limit at this day and age, other as an incentive for people to buy mules and such.

Efficiency. One particular piece of equipment/etc is not going to work in every situation. Just like all-season clothes/tires, there are things that are tailored to work well in most conditions but fall short of their specialized counterparts. (ie: Tabards in XIV are designed to be a well-rounded compromise between heavy defense and DD capability but are inferior to Buccanneer's Shirt and Cobalt Plate mail in both categories.)

For people like you, the all-purpose things would work well. You obviously would sacrifice maximum efficiency for the sake of inventory space and that is OK. But for other people who wish to carry around multiple sets of gear to be better at every facet of our job, we should we allowed to. I should be able to switch to gear that maximizes the damage from Riot Blade (in effect maximizing the enmity+) in between the times where I am getting the snot beat out of me while wearing Sentinel's

Call me crazy, or maybe it's because of my mindset as an Eve player, I detest the idea that everyone should be able to do everything perfectly with no drawback whatsoever. It'd be like having a ship that can do max short AND long range dps, ewar, tackle, shield, armor, speed tank all at the same time. Not saying there should be zero flexibility, but it should come with a trade-off somewhere.

and saying that all-purpose would even be remotely ok is a bit misleading, in a system designed to function around gear swap, being all-purpose would be akin to a DD wearing mining gear now. Even the term all-purpose is misleading - a character atm is built around a certain role, it is in fact the opposite of all-purpose.

[Montijin]

The best part of the FFXI gear system was the gear swap.

Having to collect multiple sets of gear just added more playing time for everyone who wanted to maximize their class. Their is nothing wrong with being truly dedicated to your class to the point where you want to push your damage, defense or healing to the limit.

Most people who went out of their way to collect an evasion set for their thief or a dark magic set for their black mage probably had a great feeling of accomplishment once they finished that extra set of gear.

As far as blinking to change equipment mid-battle and ruining immersion; I'd love to see a visual style system comparable to DC Universe's system where you can lock in your character's gear style based off of the equipment that you've previously equipped. I know there is a lot of people who hate the look of their gear or love the look of a certain piece of armor to the point where it becomes "town gear".


I do agree though that gear swapping is unfortunately pointless in this game with the current stat system in place...but that is a different topic all together.

[Razor]

Call me crazy, or maybe it's because of my mindset as an Eve player, I detest the idea that everyone should be able to do everything perfectly with no drawback whatsoever. It'd be like having a ship that can do max short AND long range dps, ewar, tackle, shield, armor, speed tank all at the same time. Not saying there should be zero flexibility, but it should come with a trade-off somewhere.

and saying that all-purpose would even be remotely ok is a bit misleading, in a system designed to function around gear swap, being all-purpose would be akin to a DD wearing mining gear now. Even the term all-purpose is misleading - a character atm is built around a certain role, it is in fact the opposite of all-purpose.

Well, even with gear swaps things aren't going to be perfect. Jobs still have their limits but gear swaps allow for them to play out their role to the maximum. Take RDM for example in XI, I for one make a very strong effort to see just how melee I could go with RDM and as RDM/BLU could put out 900~ damage Vorpals on Decent Challenges with the right gear. However, I still couldn't really compete with a Warrior's Vorpal Blade so while I could solo efficiently I still wasn't an all-star. In a similar light, if XIV had haste gear then DDs would only have two(/three~) options. Go full Haste and max out melee attack dps, or go full STR/Attack and make up for those weaker hits with slow hard hits and powerful ws. (Or you could could be a flakey hybrid of the two but those don't always work out so well.) In this instance gear swapping wouldn't change the LNC to anything outrageous like a white mage, but simply allows them to perfect their role.


I'm not familiar with the game Eve but I would assume that you could outfit your ship with more than just one weapon, right? Maybe a long range sniper and either a short-range gun or perhaps missiles. You could just stack long-range if you were confident enough to take only 1 shot but especially for PvP the most logical approach would be to equip multiple weapons to cover as many blind spots as possible. Gear swapping is a lot like that, its less about turning yourself from a LNC to a THM on a whim, but making the most of what you have and being the best at what your job is.

[Aenarion]

I'm not familiar with the game Eve but I would assume that you could outfit your ship with more than just one weapon, right? Maybe a long range sniper and either a short-range gun or perhaps missiles. You could just stack long-range if you were confident enough to take only 1 shot but especially for PvP the most logical approach would be to equip multiple weapons to cover as many blind spots as possible. Gear swapping is a lot like that, its less about turning yourself from a LNC to a THM on a whim, but making the most of what you have and being the best at what your job is.

Indeed you can, but you cannot swap them out in the middle of a battle. As for mixing weapons - no, as a matter of fact, mixing long/short range weapon is actually a hallmark of newbies, as that's a surefire way of nerfing yourself and getting yourself killed, either by NPCs or other players, resulting in lol-killmails. In Eve, every good fitting for any ship is designed to perform a specific task/role, and their effectiveness outside of that role tends to drop off quickly - ie. a ship fitted for ewar gains the ability to jam enemies, but it sacrifices its dps/tank or other utilities.

To be fair, Eve is a far different game than FF14, or any other PvE oriented theme park style mmos. Still, what I was arguing against isn't so much of a situation where a LNC becomes a THM, but rather where a LNC can not only be a haste-LNC, a group buff-LNC, a DPS-LNC, etc., but be super-optimized for each and every single one of those roles with zero drawback.

ultimately, we're just arguing for different design philosophies. Under your system, a tanking MRD can keep its tanking gear on, and then switch to a dmg gear for a maim or storm's path, and then swap back in his tanking gear as if nothing's ever happened. Under my system, that MRD better decide if he wants to tank or deal damage before he fights. It's not that I don't see where you're coming from, I simply dislike those ideas.

[LazyBarakat]

i don't understand why many people don't want new things to be added, things that you don't want it then don't use it, no one ask you to bring tons of gears with you, gears swapping was very important in XI for mages, when nuking, enfeebling, healing gears ets. as a RDM i used to change gears alot by macros so the spell will have the maximum effect for each type of spell, why would i have one set of gears all the time that i'm not gonna use every piece of it when i nuke? should i only have INT and M.Attack gears only? what if i want to use sleep for example? it may fail coz my gears are not meant for enfeebling.

[Razor]

Indeed you can, but you cannot swap them out in the middle of a battle. As for mixing weapons - no, as a matter of fact, mixing long/short range weapon is actually a hallmark of newbies, as that's a surefire way of nerfing yourself and getting yourself killed, either by NPCs or other players, resulting in lol-killmails. In Eve, every good fitting for any ship is designed to perform a specific task/role, and their effectiveness outside of that role tends to drop off quickly - ie. a ship fitted for ewar gains the ability to jam enemies, but it sacrifices its dps/tank or other utilities.

To be fair, Eve is a far different game than FF14, or any other PvE oriented theme park style mmos. Still, what I was arguing against isn't so much of a situation where a LNC becomes a THM, but rather where a LNC can not only be a haste-LNC, a group buff-LNC, a DPS-LNC, etc., but be super-optimized for each and every single one of those roles with zero drawback.

ultimately, we're just arguing for different design philosophies. Under your system, a tanking MRD can keep its tanking gear on, and then switch to a dmg gear for a maim or storm's path, and then swap back in his tanking gear as if nothing's ever happened. Under my system, that MRD better decide if he wants to tank or deal damage before he fights. It's not that I don't see where you're coming from, I simply dislike those ideas.

Shows how much I know about EVE then :P I can understand though how coming from a more rigid system like that how it would be weird to be able to change up equipment mid fight. Having played XI for several years its just second nature to build multiple gear sets without even thinking, and even on a lot of other MMOs I've played there's some aspect of an auxiliary gear slot that holds specialty weapons (bow and arrow, great sword, etc) so we're just from opposite sides of the fence on this one. Luckily for you it seems that most of the forum has your side on this though (although I still feel that most other people's reasoning isn't nearly as well thought out and they're just too lazy to want to worry about auxiliary gear.)

In the long run, skill should always > gear and fortunately it looks like that is where XIV is headed. The statistical advantage days of XI have come and gone years ago in favor of more skill-based play but some of us nerds still like to do our calculations and scrap together pieces of armor to see how we can gear up the best haha. Hell, I haven't even really fooled with materia much because I've yet to see any calculations on the impact of VIT vs HP and STR vs Attack >.>

I think both sides would probably be quite satisfied if they brought back the concepts of pre-production where you could take on different stances (Aggressive vs Defensive) to alter your disposition mid-fight. I always thought that was a really awesome feature but I'm not sure if its even still on the table anymore