Quote Originally Posted by Enkidoh View Post
One word: lore.

The aetherotransformer is what actually gives you your bullets, as well as powering many of your abilities (it's where your automata come from for one). You're not a gunslinger or musketeer, you're a gun-wielding mechanic that fires aether bullets made from your own life force via the aetherotransformer.

Likewise the katana's sheathe is part of the lore (as it was in reality - Japan is iron poor so what little iron they could find was precious and... basically scrap, mostly brought into the country from China and other places via the Silk Road). Hence why katana and other weapons were so thin, it was by sheer necessesity, so the slightest shock could litereally shatter the blade, and thus the reason for the ronin code of honour about a weapon being broken being extremly dishonourable). So it is the same here, the sheathe is used as part of the animation of using their weapon.

It just so happens that the development team take the lore very seriously and it forms the basic theme of each class and how they use their weapon or tool and the abilities they make use of. This does make it rather rigid though, but, that's the price that is paid for having a consistant story. Accordingly I do not see SE changing this.
So what's the lore reason for AST carrying that massive board on their hips rather than packing their cards into a box for Transport. Can't be ease of access as the cards float while in use anyways.