An alternative to gear swaping

[Enfarious]

It is a very valid point that as the game progresses, the macro scripts become increasingly more complex (although these macros were very easy to write).

So lets tweak the system a little, it could be eased in with what SE has planned for the mannequin system, a set of souls that you call into your macro. If i remember correctly, we are going to be having a limited number of mannequins, so lets make the number of soulsets limited as well (per job) a random number not greater than 10 perhaps it increases through quests or levels?

This new limit to the system will make it so you have to make your choice of which soulsets you want to take to the raid/primal/NM/whatever content, and ensure that your macros don't get out of hand. While still allowing you to fulfill many roles in the fight (again looking at the mages).

Perhaps the system would involve a very high amount of sets you can save, but you can only choose a small amount of these sets to actually "carry".

I want also to mention that the purpose of the thread is to establish a middle ground, for those who want gear swap and those who do not. Clearly there is a difference of opinion.

Everyone thanks for your replies. Please keep them coming =)

I'm all for finding that middle ground, that's why I like the idea of "souls" and I like the idea of only being able to have so many "carried" perhaps a section of our "moghouse" just for storing the ones we aren't using atm, and only being able to carry say 10 on our person at any given time. It's enough that mages could carry 1 for each element and 1 for enfeebles/enhancing/curing.

I can't see whipping a mannequin out in the middle of a fight while I have my spear up trying to ready a WS then trying to pull of my hat to switch it with the mannequin, then my shirt, and so on. It'd be f'in hilarious though if SE said, "You know what we're sick of this gear swap argument, you can swap anytime you want, BUT we've added animations to every gear change. Say 15 seconds to change your shirt, 30 to change your pants. There's your immersion, now you have to watch yourself change and while doing it get wailed on while you've no defense at all."

Souls I can see as just having to "activate" one that's already slotted in your gear, or the few seconds to pull one out to put in another, digging through a puch of 10 different colored glowing golfballs would not take too long to find the yellow. But back to that "activate" if we could have say a varrying amount of souls "slotted" in our gear.
AF Head/Hand/Feet 1 slot > AF Head/Hands/Feet +1 2slots
AF Body/Legs 2 slots > AF Body/Legs +1 3 slots
But you can only have 1+(1 per piece of AF+2) Active.
Now we just need to be able to upgrade AF > AF +1 > AF +2...