All 4.2 new gear

[era1Ne]

Another asian-like gearset and nothing special from Omega. Oh look, its recycled Void Arc Gear and the good old Relic Weapon from ARR (without glowing stuff). Its not like that SE doesnt have enough inspiraton from two previous gear design contests with over 400 entries (and more)...

With all due respect towards the artists taking part in the contest, most of the sets didn't even look like gear, which belongs to the asked role. A few sets were amazing, though. But still, they imo had an much easier job to suprise people, because...

• we never saw anything of those fan artist before. We know the artist working on FF14 very well by now, since they designed over 1200 sets already.
• they didn't had time constrains. At least not harsh ones.
• they didn't had to stick to a theme and could design what they wanted.

for example. In my opinion artist working for a company have it much harder and then there is also the fact that gear set are subjectiv. You dislike them, but others think they look good. As an artist you can't satisfy everyone.

[Caitlyn]

With all due respect towards the artists taking part in the contest, most of the sets didn't even look like gear, which belongs to the asked role. A few sets were amazing, though. But still, they imo had an much easier job to suprise people, because...

• we never saw anything of those fan artist before. We know the artist working on FF14 very well by now, since they designed over 1200 sets already.
• they didn't had time constrains. At least not harsh ones.
• they didn't had to stick to a theme and could design what they wanted.

for example. In my opinion artist working for a company have it much harder and then there is also the fact that gear set are subjectiv. You dislike them, but others think they look good. As an artist you can't satisfy everyone.

You re absolutely right.

Point 1: Sure, most entries doesnt look like a tank or healer gear. But maybe thats the point! People WANT something different. Having something fresh and new, outside of hundreads of traditional white robes for healers or plate armours for tanks. Why not break those limits a little bit and give us something new? Maybe a light plated armour for mages? Who knows?

Point 2: The problem about the current gear is, that you have too many seperated gearsets for the same role. You have ONE (!) Tank-Gearset. But you have THREE gearsets for melee DPS (MNK/SAM, NIN, DRG). Instead of having 4 different (lets just mix ranged DPS together), role-specific sets, you have to design 7 different sets. Thats alot!

Point 3: Compared with Heavensward, it feels we got less variety here. I totally agree, that SE's gear designers are doing a pretty good job. But the upcoming gearsets doesnt feel like something special. Its recycled or asian gear right now, just like the gear we got last year. If you really want to stay on the asian theme, why not bring some fresh ideas into it? Instead of the 10th battle armour, why not something creepy, demonic, noble, ninja-like or asian-fantasy-like (like Blade and Soul?)?