ungh..

No gear swapping please.

That was one of the things I ended up hating about FFXI. We all have limits to immersion breaking elements in a game. For me, it was seeing your party blink in and out of existence with different gear every time they used a particular skill/WS/Spell. It was rather obnoxious.

I think the materia system allows players to better round out their gear for this game so they aren't stuck with single-purpose items like FFXI had.