Legitimate reasons why many of you do NOT like Gear Swapping

[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.