FFXI's gear swap was like having extra skills.

[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.