So, lot's of gear options, yet no gear swap in active mode..

[Molly_Millions]

There's no gear swapping because the detrimental effects of the system far outweigh the benefits. Let's take a look at some of the issues it causes...

• Inventory management problems, we're already able to swap jobs in the field, what if we have to carry 5 items per slot per job?
• Accessibility issues, it's a huge learning curve to master the art of gear swapping, and creates unneccesary rifts in the playerbase.
• Visual issues, there is no acceptable way to deal with gear swapping visually, characters blinking in and out, and canceling animations and spell effects is absolutely unacceptable.
• Macro storage issues, there have to be significantly more macro slots, and more lines per macro.
• Playability issues, the game becomes unplayable without macros. Lost your macros? Playing on a new machine? Time to spend 9 years writing macros.

The only benefit is that a wider array of gear is useful at the same time for a single player. This is nice, but it's not worth all of the downsides. Not to mention there are other ways to accomplish situational gear being useful.

In addition there are also these issues created by gear swapping:

• Gear Swapping breaks immersion (It doesn't matter how much stock you personally put into this, because immersion is broken it's bad design.)
• It removes any strategy that is required to properly gear up before battle
• Gear swapping ultimately leads to players being required to have certain items for groups, or else they are considered "gimped" by the community
• The game becomes more difficult for devs to balance because gear swaps must be considered, leading to longer dev cycles.

So after all these negatives, what are the positives?

• highly situational gear becomes more useful
• Higher DPS for players that want to take the time to set up the macros required for efficient gear swapping

Lets keep gear swapping out of this game please

[Reinheart]

There isn't enough subligars for me to swap during battles so NO THX.

(Gear swap during battles like other said... should stay in FFXI and not needed in FFXIV)

[Tacotaru]

• Gear swapping ultimately leads to players being required to have certain items for groups, or else they are considered "gimped" by the community

While I don't necessarily agree with the other thing posted, I keep seeing this said about gear swaps and it's irritating. Elitism is going to exist with or without gear swapping. I really hope you don't believe just because gear swaps are excluded that you will never be called gimp at some point if you don't have certain gear.

Your story earlier about empress hairpin being out of the realm of you to get would lead me to believe you don't have a lot of time to play on your hands. If that's the case, and empress hairpin was too much of a time investment, then I'd start thickening your skin now if you plan to stick it out for the long haul, because you will be sorely disappointed.

Of course there's nothing wrong with playing like that, so don't take this wrong and think I'm attacking you for not getting a lot of time to play, but this mentality is going to exist with or without equipment swapping mechanics and you're only going to avoid it by surrounding yourself with like minded individuals.

[Molly_Millions]

While I don't necessarily agree with the other thing posted, I keep seeing this said about gear swaps and it's irritating. Elitism is going to exist with or without gear swapping. I really hope you don't believe just because gear swaps are excluded that you will never be called gimp at some point if you don't have certain gear.

To a certain extent the bold part is true, but gear swaps embolden the folks who push this mentality to the rest of the community. Ultimately there would be less of this type of elitism without gear swaps.

Your story earlier about empress hairpin being out of the realm of you to get would lead me to believe you don't have a lot of time to play on your hands. If that's the case, and empress hairpin was too much of a time investment, then I'd start thickening your skin now if you plan to stick it out for the long haul, because you will be sorely disappointed.

Of course there's nothing wrong with playing like that, so don't take this wrong and think I'm attacking you for not getting a lot of time to play, but this mentality is going to exist with or without equipment swapping mechanics and you're only going to avoid it by surrounding yourself with like minded individuals.

This is simply untrue, but I'll forgive you because you're on Durandal and as such can't know what kind of presence me and my LS have on Balmung and Fabul before it. While that may have been true of my play time in XI, it is not true in XIV.

[ReplicaX]

So after all these negatives, what are the positives?

• Higher DPS for players that want to take the time to set up the macros required for efficient gear swapping

Come on Molly that requires time, they obviously want an illegal 3rd party tool to do this for them and switch gear based on what action that they are currently doing automatically. :P

[Huginn]

Gear swapping, while very useful, is not very realistic. I enjoy having to balance my stats with gear for general purposes. I know it is a game and not real life, but in real life, you simply can not easily fire an arrow from a bow while wearing a gauntlet... unless it is a very specifically designed articulated finger gauntlet. And even then, you would need to remove your visor to see easily, unless you had a visor that had specialty holes. In any of these cases, the gear for both applications does not work as well as the specialty gear, and you can NOT switch gauntlets and helms during battle. Those of us with Medieval reenactment experience know this well.

I could see adding an ability to change gear when not in active combat, maybe if SE gives us an ability such as if not having been hit or attacking for 10 seconds we can activate a gear change that then gives us a debuff for 10-20 seconds of heavy defense down and attack down, such that you would have effectively removed yourself from combat and changed your gear then go back into combat. The current system makes this impossible since you have to deaggro or die to be out of combat.


TL;DR
Gear swapping makes no logical sense. i can see switching weapons (maybe off-hand or a secondary, like sword to dagger) and ammunition, but not armor.

[mikefmc]

Gear swapping is one of the things that definitely needs to stay in FFXI.

according to you.

[SwordCoheir]

according to you.

According to a grand majority of us.

[Teknoman]

Also cant lie about the fact that i'm glad this prevents people from falling into the mentality of: "If you dont have these macros and items set up for certain attacks, you can't join us".

[Enfarious]

Gear swapping == unrealistic, content breaking, unintentional game mechanic in XI, they didn't mean for it to be used do you really think that they do now.
God let it go, I still hope they make it so that once you make the hate list you can't swap gear, not just when you at the top or active.

As a side note, I had macros for gear swaps for all jobs on 2 accts in XI and the gear to make it worthwile. I hated it, I hated getting geared on a job getting 50 pieces of gear swapped between safe and inventory sucked, I hated all the blinking, and I hated not seeing my numbers post in chatlog when I would 3 shot self skillchain. I hated missing animations cause my swaps mid cast/ws/abil broke them. Worst game mechanic ever, once you start fighting wether your tank DD mage Support w/e you shouldn't be able to take off your pants and jacket.