Legitimate reasons why many of you do NOT like Gear Swapping

[Sav]

RPGs ALL have gear swapping.

Actually, come to think of it, WoW doesn't have mid-battle gear swapping, last I played. Not that WoW is the be-all-end-all MMO, but it's typically the one people reference first (or second, on these fora).

[KyrsIsley]

sorry it was a long post so ill focus on the bold part to make my over arching point.

by equiping fire damage gear you will allmost certainly be giving up some other attribute, so heres where my point kicks in, there wasnt any real benefit to changing gear in the first place.

and there is a scenario where -fire damage gear might be viable.. its called ifrit and in fact i used said gear the first couple of times and guess what... i found out that over all it made close to no difference to if i had used my "normal" gear setup. it may have even hindered me.

with gear swapping the effect of different gear is compounded by the fact you dont have to give up a stat you would normally use.

I use fire damage as an hypothetical situation, so I don't mean Ifrit encounter or how the fire resist works in this game, you can simply replace the scenario with Miser's Mistress and initially stacking HP gear or something, the idea is to make sure you survive longer so you have more time to learn it first hand.

If you've lead a raid, the #1 most efficient way to learn an encounter in the very beginning is to increase the survivability of the raid group (assuming no prior knowledge to the encounter). If the group can survive longer, they can familiarize themselves with the encounter. I've been in many groups that try their best to down the boss on first try, but without prior knowledge, downing the boss on first try is pretty much impossible, unless the encounter is trivial. Most established competitive guild/linkshells I've seen or played with will do whatever it takes to learn the fight in and out first before thinking about min/maxing (whether it be gear or class/job stacking) to cater towards the fight, this also falls in line with why I prefer "choosing the gear before I engage". This is why I say, stack fire resist first (increase survivability = increased exposure to the fight = more learning time/experience), then I swap to dps focused gear (min/maxing) to reduce the encounter time (less encounter time = less chance of mistake).

Also, I never disagreed that "with gear swapping the effect of different gear is compounded by the fact you dont have to give up a stat you would normally use." In fact, I completely agree, but I also pointed out that "Choosing your gear prior to the battle isn't a cop-out to not wanting to carry more gear. It takes real understanding of your own playstyle and how it fits into the group's playstyle and of course how the encounter works. In this case, bringing every set of gears available to encounter every variables in the battle is the easy way out. Sure it takes a lot of effort to gather all that and write up the macros. However, you are just playing reactively, what's the fun in that?"

If you look back to my post, I clearly stated "This of course is how I play and you may feel different and that's fine. Ultimately, whether gear swapping will be implemented or not is up to the devs."

While I enjoy having fast reflex and being able to react to skills that the boss throws at me, I also enjoy theorycrafting, to me gear swapping takes away a bit of the enjoyment from the latter. So, I agree to disagree.

[Vanguard319]

I'm not in favor of gear swapping, it does turn the game into a contest over who has the best gear, rather than skill.

[Rogue]

I'm not in favor of gear swapping, it does turn the game into a contest over who has the best gear, rather than skill.

but its still a contest over who has the best gear...

[Antanias]

I'm not in favor of gear swapping, it does turn the game into a contest over who has the best gear, rather than skill.

<--hands the kitty a ball of yarn

100% agree with this

[Viritess]

I usually don't reply to negative postings by quoting or names because i like my posts to stand on their own merits.... However, Illriginalized

Your reply to Kiroh is insulting and does a dis-service to your point. To your question:

You CC the adds and burn the lvl 60 Or you have a secondary tank tank the adds while the group burns the Lv 60. Or you come as a THM and your buddy comes as a BLM. the THM brings secondary healing that can switch between. Using his strength on one part and the versatility on the other.

If you have gears swaping mid fight you: Burn the boss, swap armor burn the adds, swap armor burn the boss again.

Of the above possabilities. I prefer the non gear swap. You should have a weakness. There should be something your missing you would like to have but do not. You team mades are there to fill the voids in your skills, in your protections. To say that you can only have bland fights without gear swapping in my opinion is dishonest to the discussion.

Now before any reply comes forth with "but the adds are too strong" lets not digress into arguments over theoretical instances that would likely not happen. If the "adds are too strong" then the instance is not correctly balanced for the current system. That does not mean the armor system itself is faulty.

The value i see and enjoy in Choosing an armor set and not being able to change it mid fight is, commitment.

I have done my best, i have researched, perhaps attempted and for the entirety of the upcomming fight. i belive ARMOR X, gives me the best chance and advantage for the longest amount of time during the fight. For the other times, when it is les of an advantage i will rely on my skill and team mates to contribute to the win.

Much of that can be lost if i only need to swap 5 items a few times. Now i am optimal for the entire duration for the fight.

In my opinion a battle should be filled with peaks and valleys. For a time your Lord of the battle, and at other times your trying to survive. Locking in an armor choice i belive helps.

I would also worry that if swapping armor was the standard. you would see a very fine line as far as tuning fights. It would be assumed that you will be wearing the best at all times. Which generally means enemies will have to be tuned for overall HP and not have specific weaknesses (perhaps in certain phases) that could be exploited. because they will ALWAYS be exploited.

Then people will complain for more armors with more HP bonuses so they can make that thinly tuned line mean nothing.
and in my opinion, suck the amount of possibilities, peaks of greatness, valleys of survival and joy doing well even if your not optimal 100% of the time for every phase, every moment every add and boss. What happened to being victorious despite the weaknesses? I find fun in that too.

My opinion: Commit to your choice. do your best and win despite the weakness inherent in your armor. And then do it better then anyone else.

TL;dr There isn't one. i would hope if this discussion means much to you, you would be willing to read everything even if it is an apposing opinion.

Edit: I'll catch up on the posts. when i started writing this it was earlier in the day at work, and i got busy. and replied at Page 2. Seems alot of action has happened here snice then.

[illriginalized]

This thread has been a gigantic troll, it was all a giant social experiment and you all failed it. I planned this all along, ho ho ho.

(The crafting troll has already come out, just waiting on the op now.)

Actually if anyone wants to know, I wasn't attempting to troll. A lot of points were made and I took them down. That way I can come up with a theory on how to work around them.

I like gear swapping and hopefully there will be a way to bring it to FFXIV.

[Darkvalkyr]

Some people's concerns FOR gear swapping are easily answered by: "Change Gears Between Battles". Going to fight magic heavy mobs? Swap to magic defense gear, eat food. Next wave is a huge mob of mobs. Expecting to get hit? Swap to defense gear. Next mob is very evasive? Swap to accuracy gear and food.

Others really do want serious, midbattle gearswapping. While casting, put on maximum elemental damage gear + fast cast. While having enmity, swap to damage reduction gear. While curing, maximise cure potency. While idling around between spells, swap to maximum regen/refresh gear.

That's the situation right now for the guys who do want gearswapping.

[Alerith]

common essential of majority RPGs

You've said this a couple times since I started reading in the thread, and I have to ask...which MMO's have gear swapping and are there enough of them to claim the practice is a "common, essential majortiy"?

(I ask this on the assumption "Gear Swapping" means changing gear mid-battle to boost the output of certain spells and abilities. Not simply changing gear between battles.)

As for the rest of the pages and pages of the topic:

Elitism is just an attitude. It's a potentially good player with a bad attitude.

It's kinda like "Newb" and a "Noob". One is a legitimate beginner whom is learning the basics or advanced mechanics of the game while a 'Noob' is someone who simply doesn't grasp those same concepts.

Here, we have "Elite" players which are good players who appreciate efficiency, but ultimately use their skill without flaunting it and can work in just about any given situation. "Elitists" are players who may or may not be good players who demand efficiency and ultimately only care about the highest numbers and fastest runs.

[Feynman]

FFXI (I know, a swear word around here) had gear swapping, and while I did it, I didn't enjoy the mechanic. That's my simple argument. I don't play games to beat other people (or these type of cooperative games at least) or things like that. I play the game to enjoy myself. With gear swapping the dynamic felt more like a judgement contest where people will boot players from a party for not having a certain piece (I've seen it more than just a few times), or just rag on them until they get fed up a leave. Instead we should be figuring out how to work together and defeat the enemy in our path.

Another part of games to me is immersion. The more I can let myself fall into the game and be swept up by its story, aesthetics, world, and system the better of a game it is. Gear swapping doesn't affect the story or world at all, but the aesthetics and the system are destroyed by it to me. The blinking is an obvious aesthetic fail, but I think any other ways of doing it would be too. A flash and new armor? A fade effect? No, this pulls me out of the world, pulls me out of the battle, and once gear swapping is allowed it will occur for nearly every action (more on that in a second). The system is hurt by a lot of the little visual cues we get. In a battle a lot of things can be going on and it was not a rare occurrence for (example) the visual effect of my weapon skill not to show because it was busy blinking and changing gear. Now I'm the type of person that I want to make sure, so now I'm looking through the log to make sure my skill went off and I didn't get a "Target out of range" message and all my TP was spent (again FFXI rules) or something.

And to get back to my point about gear swapping for every action. This battles in FFXIV are much faster paced compared to FFXI. Someone on the forums even has the "If you're playing PLD right it should feel like this" with an animation of psychotically fast button pushing sig. Could you imagine gear swapping for each of those actions? Now imagine the whole party doing it. With the faster paced battles of FFXIV (a good thing in my opinion) it would look like the monster so seizing and dying instead being attacked because the characters would never be visible!