Legitimate reasons why many of you do NOT like Gear Swapping

[illriginalized]

That is an issue with how the damage calculations work in regard to defense actually. Strategy =/= gear. Strategy can be implemented even in the complete absence of gear. Combos, positioning, timing skills to avoid attacks or reduce damage, stunning/interrupting, knowing when to fight and when to back off, healing, enmity management, incapacitation, etc... are all things that require skill and are not directly related to having the proper gear. They are more effective with proper gear but proper gear does not make you a good player.

Live with the gear choice you make before a fight, make an informed decision about what gear that is, play well regardless of the gear.

At this point it's better to just use potions for stat decrease/increase and even then... right now stats are still shady in this game.

[Leoheart]

And gear swapping itself is not an issue to me, it's the fact that it is almost always done to hide a lack of skill.

This was never the reason- not in ffxi; gear swapping was used to increase output for the job you were playing, not because there was a lack of skill.
Skill doesn't measure how much damage you'll do a monster.
If anything, gear swapping when used correctly showed that you did not lack skill.

FFXI is a gear swap heavy game, when you were fighting most high end monsters, you were unable to do damage unless each of your sets were Optimal for each individual situation.
And most optimum gear sets couldn't even be produced without first quantifying what you were fighting; its level, its job, its stats, and what abilities / traits / spells it had.

If anything though, keep ffxi out of ffxiv, the game is fine as it is; we have a materia system in place so gear swapping isn't required.

[Exni]

To me, blinking characters is a minor, meaningless issue. What is important is an endgame that offers a variety of choices and provides incentives (i.e., useful gear) for engaging in those choices. The current environment, like many other MMOs (e.g., WoW, SWTOR, FFXIV) provides one piece of god gear that everyone wants and no one else wants the other pieces (in that slot). So all that other content that was created over the past few years is useless. You are stuck doing the same primal battle (or whatever) a million times. How fun. I rather do 50 million of the same content so my character doesn't blink all the time.

I know you all love the FFXI comparisons, but people are still doing dynamis after yearrrrrrs (replace dynamis with many other events). Very few MMOs have people still engaged (happily) in years old content.

That is what this is about.

Good post. Yeah that's one of my major concerns. Without swaps most gear BY FAR is pretty much useless, and this game needs to make sure it doesn't invalidate most of its content, especially so early on. If they had done the materia system better/differently then we prolly wouldn't really need swaps, but.. well yeah..

[Exni]

This was never the reason- not in ffxi; gear swapping was used to increase output for the job you were playing, not because there was a lack of skill.
Skill doesn't measure how much damage you'll do a monster.
If anything, gear swapping when used correctly showed that you did not lack skill.

FFXI is a gear swap heavy game, when you were fighting most high end monsters, you were unable to do damage unless each of your sets were Optimal for each individual situation.
And most optimum gear sets couldn't even be produced without first quantifying what you were fighting; its level, its job, its stats, and what abilities / traits / spells it had.

If anything though, keep ffxi out of ffxiv, the game is fine as it is; we have a materia system in place so gear swapping isn't required.

I agree with most of your post except for that last sentence. Our current materia system definetly does not fill the role that swaps played in XI. Actually, the current materia system doesn't do a whole lot in general.. seeing as how only a few of the stats actually "work" as expected. The fact that they have a materia system in place though gives me hope for the future of XIV though, it can always be fixed.

[Leoheart]

I agree with most of your post except for that last sentence. Our current materia system definetly does not fill the role that swaps played in XI. Actually, the current materia system doesn't do a whole lot in general.. seeing as how only a few of the stats actually "work" as expected. The fact that they have a materia system in place though gives me hope for the future of XIV though, it can always be fixed.

Of course, that last sentence wasn't very constructive.
But it's a start, and I do hope to see the system flourish in the near and/or distant future of FFXIV.
My only quarrel is the limitations of what materia can be attached to as well as what you have stated.

I.E. Why use the AF gear for a minimal increase in stats- and an even worse increase to some of your job specific abilities when you could've stuck with your single/double/triple melded gear before 1.21.

My only hope is that these addresses are issued immediately so we don't have to put up with a near flawed system for a long time.

[Resheph]

I think that the difference in a gear swap system like xi's and other mmo's vs the system we have currently is that the current gear system is gear that is more powerful and therefore worth wearing all the time, wheras in a gear swap system the gear is less powerful but each piece has a different specific purpose. With matera, you can futher boost gear so that there is no reason to take it off at all.

Gear swapping is just a dumb concept. I don't think I have seen a movie or comic book chracter, about to deliver a devastating punch to the bad guy, stop, change his gloves to ones with spiked knuckles, deliver said punch, then put back on his original gloves.

Not to mention the current speed at which gear can be changed would not be practical in combat anyway. Most of the time my gear macros for changing classes have to be hit two or three times to get all of the gear on, due to lag.

edit: I also can't understand why people would think of gear swapping as a selleable game mechanic. It has always seemed like something players want to do as a result of bad gear design by developers, bug exploit, or other unintended use of a system. I have never thoiught "oh man, that game has gear swapping, gottabuyit!!!"

As long as the gear id designed well, and as long as the combat system is interesting enough on its own (and the game doesn't have an exploitable equipment system that allows players to change equipment in battle) then no one will need or want to swap gear.

[Arcell]

Of course, that last sentence wasn't very constructive.
But it's a start, and I do hope to see the system flourish in the near and/or distant future of FFXIV.
My only quarrel is the limitations of what materia can be attached to as well as what you have stated.

I.E. Why use the AF gear for a minimal increase in stats- and an even worse increase to some of your job specific abilities when you could've stuck with your single/double/triple melded gear before 1.21.

My only hope is that these addresses are issued immediately so we don't have to put up with a near flawed system for a long time.

However, double/triple melded gear will always be better than most anything else in the game. It has been stated that the game is balanced around putting a single materia into gear, nothing more. Anything else puts you outside of the balance of the game. The trade-off is the low rates on melding more than one materia.

[Molly_Millions]

Violation of forum rules. See your way out, don't come back.. or possibly face the consequences due to your level of maturity.

kthnxbye!

What, you don't like pie? After all, pie is a vastly superior desert to cake!

...also, don't give me that "cheesecake is better than pie" line. Cheesecake is nothing more than pie masquerading as cake.

[Wincy]

Gear swapping is just a dumb concept. I don't think I have seen a movie or comic book chracter, about to deliver a devastating punch to the bad guy, stop, change his gloves to ones with spiked knuckles, deliver said punch, then put back on his original gloves.

I don't have a desire to read through almost 40 pages of this, but a quick skim through recent posts and I found this quote.

This is definitely the thing that gets me about gear swapping. It doesn't make any sense for your character to swap gear in the middle of a fight.

I also saw some discussion about the way materia works. I do agree that it might be cool for materia to be slotted and unslotted at will, more like the way it works in its namesake FFVII. So if you know you are headed to Ifrit, you can stack your gear with Fire Resistance. Stuff like that.

So now you don't need to store lots of random gear pieces, but rather lots of random situational materia. Now add materia to its own inventory tab (like crystals), and you're starting to speak my language...

[Klive]

I don't have a desire to read through almost 40 pages of this, but a quick skim through recent posts and I found this quote.

This is definitely the thing that gets me about gear swapping. It doesn't make any sense for your character to swap gear in the middle of a fight.

I also saw some discussion about the way materia works. I do agree that it might be cool for materia to be slotted and unslotted at will, more like the way it works in its namesake FFVII. So if you know you are headed to Ifrit, you can stack your gear with Fire Resistance. Stuff like that.

So now you don't need to store lots of random gear pieces, but rather lots of random situational materia. Now add materia to its own inventory tab (like crystals), and you're starting to speak my language...

Only problem of that is all materia is not considered equal. Your chance of exploding your item with more than one bind is based on type of materia, level of materia, quality of materia; of each materia used. You would have to 'gut' the materia system and place in a new one. Too many variables as it is now. Being that they are updating the materia system with new materia, I doubt they would be 'gutting' the system anytime soon.