[ Dev's ] Gear Swaps Can I have It?

[weeble]

say what you want about gear swaps, but there were a couple of really good things it did for FFXI.

Firstly, being able to swap gear in and out at a moments notice allowed for a lot of min/maxing. This allows you to use your abilities to their maximum effect. At first players complained about not having enough solo content, but as players matured and came across various trinkets, many solo options and challenges began to open up. And certain spells that were almost unusable, due to limitations placed on the main job, began to have an impact. Sure, a Paladin wont be able to Silence an IT, but a Paladin would be able to Silence a T-VT (Like an Imp) with good macro swaps. This one example allowed me to solo 5k/hr on PLD, and duo 8k at rank 75. That's more exp/hr than whole parties would make with a NIN main tank during the height of the PLD vs NIN debate. It is also up there with the arrow burns pre RNG nerf. And it was due to macro swaps, along with the skill to know how and when to use them.

Secondly, it allowed for more interesting battles. This is true for big scale and small scale. Tiamat becomes an entirely different fight once your tank was able to swap between haste/def/eva gear and fire resist gear. And on small scale, being able to swap elemental staves allowed for fights where your mages needed to actually pay attention to the enemies behavior. Because casting the wrong element spell would actually heal a certain enemy for much more than any nuke would deal in damage (for example: the ZNM gears). Currently, FFXIV suffers from very one dimensional battles. I really believe that gear swaps prevented FFXI from suffering the same issue.

I am a firm believer that gear selection for a fight is a fundamental part of player skill. The question is not gear vs skill. Its how a skilled person recognizes which gear to use, and when. After playing both games, i can tell you that i feel like my hands are a bit tied without gear swaps. For example, solo Gladiator/Maurader would be a much better experience if it was able to swap in resist gear when needed.

I also don't think FFXI would have lasted as long as it did before raising the level cap without gear swaps. The longevity of events like sky was a great thing. It kept older content relevant. And, made for many sources of endgame activities to partake in. This amount of longevity for endgame events is almost unheard of in other games. Shoot, when i stopped playing LL and VE was still relevant for certain jobs until endgame.

Without gear swaps, you are forced into a WOWesk endgame. You no longer search for macro swap gear, instead SE must release more powerful gear. You are also forced to raise the level cap more often, for the more powerful gear. Doing so relegates older content to obscurity, and it also makes for an endgame that will ALWAYS only consist of 1-2 events which offer the latest and greatest gear. For example, as soon as the level cap increases your Crab Bow+3, Silver Tricornes, and Iron Plate +3 sets will be pretty much useless for any new endgame. If you were fortunate enough to play other MMO's, ones without gear swaps, you'll know what I am writing about. Macro swaps kept many pieces of gear relevant for years.

Because gear swaps made allowed for many events to be made, without raising the maximum level, you also found that players were able to have some sort of diversity in viable equipment. This diversity of viable equipment was directly correlated to the number of endgame events. And the number of endgame events was due to the existence of macro swaps eliminating the need to raise the maximum rank. Look around FFXIV. Hehe, you don't even need to look further than the rank 50 Gladiators. Its all Iron Plate set, with the illusion of individuality provided by changing a color. Now look at FFXI. Hagun was a superb Great Katana, but there were others that were also very viable. The skilled player would know exactly why Hagun was such a good Great Katana, and gear appropriately. The same player would also know why another Great Katana could put up respectable numbers as well. And he would play/equip gear appropriately for that one. At first it doesn't seem like this is because macro swaps existed. But, without macro swaps making it possible to keep the maximum rank static for so long, it would not have been possible.

I do agree that changing your pants every spell was silly, in terms of breaking the few portions of realism left within an MMO. But, I don't see how completely eliminating gear swaps is a good thing. If anything, I would say that the complete elimination of them has been detrimental.

/clap /clap/clap

very well said. i'm mostly worried about the content being pointless as new comes out, the dungeons we doing now will become pointless i bet, some max caps will run them to get maybe a gear for there lowbie classes if they finally fix the game and having decent gear matters by then.

without gear swaps this game will become like warhammer or wow clones, where u'r always replacing your set of gear instead of keeping most of it. and i don't think materia will fix this but we'll see how it is implemented. but still really wish devs would consider adding gear swaps again.

[Cairdeas]

/clap /clap/clap

very well said. i'm mostly worried about the content being pointless as new comes out, the dungeons we doing now will become pointless i bet, some max caps will run them to get maybe a gear for there lowbie classes if they finally fix the game and having decent gear matters by then.

without gear swaps this game will become like warhammer or wow clones, where u'r always replacing your set of gear instead of keeping most of it. and i don't think materia will fix this but we'll see how it is implemented. but still really wish devs would consider adding gear swaps again.

The whole point of materia is to remove stock equipment from the world inventory.

[Physic]

/clap /clap/clap

very well said. i'm mostly worried about the content being pointless as new comes out, the dungeons we doing now will become pointless i bet, some max caps will run them to get maybe a gear for there lowbie classes if they finally fix the game and having decent gear matters by then.

without gear swaps this game will become like warhammer or wow clones, where u'r always replacing your set of gear instead of keeping most of it. and i don't think materia will fix this but we'll see how it is implemented. but still really wish devs would consider adding gear swaps again.

gear swaps is not what made gear not get outdated, it was the fact that cap didnt increase for years. While in a few select pieces gear swap kept old gear alive, just as often it was replaced by something better once cap raised. for example dune boots.

It was a bad system. being able to change your gear on the fly, interesting, but foolish. gear basically became an extended skill list.
swap in haste+30 and cast = skill that decreses recast time
swap in 100+ strength = skill that increases your strength for the next WS
Swap in mp regen gear = skill that increases your mp regen for a time

while adding skills that people obtain through gear, was entertaining, the execution of that mechanic was horrible. what i get from you is you like getting more gear to add skills to your class, thats good but gear swap was not the best execution of that by far.

it was also imbalanced, with gear swaps, you take gear and systems that were supposed to give you a different focus, and playstyle with advantages and disadvantages, and make it into by an large only advantages, while it is cool to have gear that gives you lower recast, it was balanced by the fact that you might be giving up weapon skill damage. It was in fact broken at a basic level, people basically figured out how to cheat the system for great results. Add to that, in order to fully utilize this power, you were required to use a 3rd party app that broke the rules, and could create long macros, and thus had very little limit to the possibilities of gear swapping. (at least without windower, you were somewhat limited by needing to dedicate 2-3 macro slots, and 2-3 presses before you did a WS)

If they wanted to create a mechanic that gave some of the advantages of gear swap, without the foolishness, it would probably have to be a system that allowed you to combine the effects of gear, then turn it into a skill that alters your traits for a short time, IE you take the soul of the armor set, turn it into a short term buff. and then give people like 3 or so of these skills.
but i doubt that would ever happen, its execution would bear to close a similarity to materia, and would be fairly complex to implement.
gear swapping itself would be unbalanced, and instead of tailoring content to people who have one specialization or the other, would require the content be scaled to someone who has use of all the maximum specifications, and if you do that, the normal player would basically be unable to complete most battles.

its broken on a lot of level, say goodbye to your old broken ness.

basically it was an exploit that they didnt fix because it became such a big part of the game.