Legitimate reasons why many of you do NOT like Gear Swapping

[illriginalized]

This is another good point, I hated having to lug around certain boots or wands/staves just for their stats in XI. Hugh... Let me attach these stats to something else, that would be nice.

Ok so swappable materia on the fly. How about that?

Look I think it's silly that I have to be stuck wearing PLD AF (which is horrible... HORRIBLE) the whole time during a battle... when in reality all I want those AF pieces is just for the ability boosts it gives me. For example I'd macro in chest piece just for cover use... why the hell would I wear the af body the whole time when I have something much much much much better? It doesn't make sense.. it is illogical.

[rekijitsu]

It's clunky, and was part of the reason I left FFXI. Playing a game like WoW, you don't have to see your character stutter to swap gear.

What I WOULDN'T be opposed to, is weapon swapping for given situations akin to Guild Wars (Conjurer Wand/Staff swapping for given situations, shield swapping for PLD, etc.). But the animation has to be fluid. It's also kind of silly when you think about it... "Oh hold on let me change clothes for one second to do this Weapon Skill, then change back into my other clothes for DPS".

No thanks, there are more interesting ways of adding depth to combat than clunky swapping.

Many others reasoning is good too.

[ThePatriarch]

Well, I apologize for whatever misunderstanding there was. Since I see you're competitive, which is a different category in itself, and one I definitely fall in line with, I guess we're on common grounds!

No need to apologize sir. When I post, I post under the assumption that I will have several people attack my ideas.

I don't promote, nor do I like to be around people who rub their successes in the faces of others.

But when I play, I want to play at the highest possible level. If that is above others, and I get labaled as a "douchebag", ok.

More on topic though, what I am getting from this thread:

We should never need to swap gear. One set of gear should serve every possible purpose, regardless of enemy type, elemental resistances, etc.

[Kiroh]

Ok so swappable materia on the fly. How about that?

Look I think it's silly that I have to be stuck wearing PLD AF (which is horrible... HORRIBLE) the whole time during a battle... when in reality all I want those AF pieces is just for the ability boosts it gives me. For example I'd macro in chest piece just for cover use... why the hell would I wear the af body the whole time when I have something much much much much better? It doesn't make sense.. it is illogical.

Stopping mid-battle to add new materia to your gear makes less sense.

Materia is centered around crafters in this game, as SE designed it to be in order to keep crafting relevant after the market has been flooded with the items they can create. (Both as a way of removing items from circulation by converting them into materia as well as needing a crafter to meld the materia itself.)

Also, the fact that you don't "like" PLD AF doesn't suddenly make gear swapping "logical". It just makes it what you want because you don't like the AF.

[rekijitsu]

It also adds uninteresting choices.

Oh do I have to choose between making my Burst damage higher with WSes or my DPS higher? My heals or damaging spells higher? Oh I guess I don't.

[Lux_Rayna]

We should never need to swap gear. One set of gear should serve every possible purpose, regardless of enemy type, elemental resistances, etc.

No. You choose a set of gear that best protects you from what you will be up against. No one is stopping you from having multiple sets of gear. But that is a choice you should have to make before going into a dungeon. In other words, ppl are saying that everyone should have the responsbility and wearing the right gear to the right dungeon, to the right boss. There is just no logical reason to switch mid-fight except for the fact that someone didn't wear the right gear for the right fight.

When you go out to battle you bring everything you need. Before the fighting starts you pick out a set of armor, a weapon, and use those in battle. You dont get to switch in the middle. You brought a bullet proof vest to a sword fight? Tough. Wore football pads to a gun match? Oh well. Part of your job is bringing the right gear to battle, and balancing that gear around every possibility within a certain fight. If I'm going up against a boss who likes to spam high dmg aoes, I will bring hp gear. If I know a boss is weak to a certain element, i will bring gear that boosts elemental attack.

If a certain fight is mp heavy, I bring mp gear/ethers. You should have this prepared beforehand, and should put it on before combat. Thats your responsibility as a good player.

[Xoo]

Stopping mid-battle to add new materia to your gear makes less sense.

Materia is centered around crafters in this game, as SE designed it to be in order to keep crafting relevant after the market has been flooded with the items they can create. (Both as a way of removing items from circulation by converting them into materia as well as needing a crafter to meld the materia itself.)

Instead of gear-swapping which causes your character to blink (the prime culprit of complaint), why not just allow each slot a capped number of materia slots which can be virtually swapped out? Instead of melding materia to the item, just allow the materia itself to hold the value.

Nobody said anything about 'stopping' to do anything. He said, and I implied that the swaps could be done in macros and on-the-fly. Sounds like a great idea to me.

Hell, to even sort out the problem of swapping anything - just bind those particular materia to auto-equip when you press a WS ability.

[illriginalized]

1) It looks ugly. Charactesr disappear every time they swap gear, I dont not want to blink in and out of reality the entire time I'm fighting. Not visually attractive.

2) Its overburdensome on inventory. We are getting a reduced amount of inventory spaces too, I can't have most of it taken up with gear. Sounds like a nightmare.

3) Its a balancing nightmare. As a dev, if you have gear swapping, how are you going to balance the content? Around a set of gear? Around Gear Swapping? Deciding a difficulty curve is pretty much a dice roll.

4) It alienates casual players, which eats away at a lot of profits. Once you have gear swapping, gear swapping becomes law. No gear swap no group. Oh you dont have 3 different sets as a tank? Too bad gtfo. Does the casual person have time to amass 3 sets of gear, all melded and ready to go? No. Do casuals mean more money? Yes. Therefore it is a bad idea to alienate casuals.

5) A game that is gear dependent is a bad game imo. If everything is dependent on gear (as in all problems are fixed with a gear swap), then it removes whatever challenge the game might have had if you could only use one set of gear. Unless they, of course, raise the difficulty curve...but in that case gear swapping woudl become a necessity, and casuals would be alienated. That is bad.


There are plenty of reasons for not employing gear swapping. It is a potential party nightmare..where everyone is required to have 6 sets of gear and multiple class/jobs maxed before they are even allowed to participate in group content. That kinda atmosphere is destructive to a game's health and longevity, turning away everyone but the hardcore few. The hardcore few cannot keep a game afloat, nor can they keep SE's investors happy.

1. It looks ugly? What is this.. a beauty pageant? Ya blinking is annoying... when you're trying to target them to cure them but they keep blinking (lol SE why you do diz blinking crap??!?! it's 2012, get the with program!!!)

2. you have 200 slots of inventory.. I'm gonna assume you just do a lot of crafting specially culinary? Or a mixture of different crafts? This is a lot more than what FFXI had.

3. You're a dev? So I guess... FFXI is a lot more advanced than you can fathom, eh? Problem is... SE is mixing up a lot of numbers to keep us confused and making it difficult for people to fully master a job and the stats.. this is not beneficial, imo. Instead they want us to all be unique, not just the jobs themselves, but the uniqueness in guessing games as to what stats are best for their character and their job.

4. Casual players have linkshells, linkshells tend to do everything together.. if not find another linkshell that is productive. I find casual players to be those people who just use the game for socializing more so than game play, the game play is just an added bonus. Thus they don't have crap leveled and they sit around in Ul'dah all day just because they're a so-called casual player. That's what a casual player is, imo.

5. The game isn't gear dependent... it is stat dependent just like every other RPG.. that is part of the RPG DNA... without it.. the game is just another fighting action game like Ninja Gaiden and Street Fighter and and Mortal Kombat. THAT is for people who just don't have the processing capability to think and observe and apply mathematics and theories to their game.

I dunno what game you played (if FFXI, your server sucked... I'm from Titan and there was no party nightmare, nor did I face elitism when I refused to buy expensive haste gear) where you had such a horrible time with parties because you were either too casual or too poor (possibly?) to join them... gear swapping is purely for enhancing game play, specifically your char... especially vs high level mobs / NMs.

Thank you for bolding them, as that is the important part of my post. Choosing the appropriate gear for a long fight/long dungeon/whatever and being unable to swap adds dynamics. That is why even on mage it is rare that I change gear. (usually only before a boss) It never even crosses my mind on DPS as I haven't taken the time to make gear sets based on Dlvl of what I'm fighting yet.

Gear you put on at the start should be an important decision. Could you picture your character stopping mid-fight like "Hold on a sec, I gotta change my shirt, pants, shoes, staff before I'm ready to take my next action!" Yes, I was a gear-whore in XI, i swapped for every single macro I had. This game does fine without it.

There's two different stats alone between fire and thunder. Then there's a whole other stat just for mobs that are higher level.. ugh.. the variables are just... crazy when you're stuck with one set of gear.

[Kiroh]

Nobody said anything about 'stopping' to do anything. He said, and I implied that the swaps could be done in macros and on-the-fly. Sounds like a great idea to me.

But as I said in the rest of my post, the entire materia system was created for and intended as a crafting system. Adding materia slots you can swap whatever you want into whenever you feel like defeats the entire purpose of the materia system, and considering the risk of multi-slotting regular materia would mean that if they DID add it, the effect of the instant swap materia would have to be minimal at best to preserve the balance between crafter added materia (which carries a very high risk for the reward) and player switched materia (which at best would be +2 stat or -1 enmity).

It's a ridiculous and self-defeating proposition to add materia you can switch on the fly.

[Tibian]

1) It looks ugly. Charactesr disappear every time they swap gear, I dont not want to blink in and out of reality the entire time I'm fighting. Not visually attractive.

2) Its overburdensome on inventory. We are getting a reduced amount of inventory spaces too, I can't have most of it taken up with gear. Sounds like a nightmare.

3) Its a balancing nightmare. As a dev, if you have gear swapping, how are you going to balance the content? Around a set of gear? Around Gear Swapping? Deciding a difficulty curve is pretty much a dice roll.

4) It alienates casual players, which eats away at a lot of profits. Once you have gear swapping, gear swapping becomes law. No gear swap no group. Oh you dont have 3 different sets as a tank? Too bad gtfo. Does the casual person have time to amass 3 sets of gear, all melded and ready to go? No. Do casuals mean more money? Yes. Therefore it is a bad idea to alienate casuals.

5) A game that is gear dependent is a bad game imo. If everything is dependent on gear (as in all problems are fixed with a gear swap), then it removes whatever challenge the game might have had if you could only use one set of gear. Unless they, of course, raise the difficulty curve...but in that case gear swapping woudl become a necessity, and casuals would be alienated. That is bad.


There are plenty of reasons for not employing gear swapping. It is a potential party nightmare..where everyone is required to have 6 sets of gear and multiple class/jobs maxed before they are even allowed to participate in group content. That kinda atmosphere is destructive to a game's health and longevity, turning away everyone but the hardcore few. The hardcore few cannot keep a game afloat, nor can they keep SE's investors happy.

Truth. Do not want gear swapping ever again. Talent specializations that you can swap between fights is a much better mechanic than requiring hundreds of pieces of gear just for 10 more dps.