Dear Devs; please move the "Off-hand" and "Soul Crystal" slots to the top of UI

[Terin]

Right now, the standard character-sheet is lop-sided. It displays 5 pieces of gear on the left, and 7 pieces on the right. TWO of those pieces on the right, however, shouldn't even be there; those are the "Off-hand" slot, and the "Soul Crystal" slot.

Just like your Weapon is literally a job-defining piece of gear, so too are the Soul Crystal and Off-hand slots. In fact, I would display them as such:

FIRST in line (left to right) should be the Soul Crystal, since thematically, it is the most important piece of gear on your person. Next would obviously be your Weapon. The third "Off-hand" slot, however, I would actually HIDE ENTIRELY, unless on a job that specifically uses it. Which, to my knowledge, are literally just low-level BLM's and WHM's, meaning it's effectively a PLD-exclusive equipment slot. Which, whatever, that's fine; only display it for those characters, then.

In terms of the Armoury Chest, I would display them in largely the same order, but move ALL of the icons to the left side of the window, and move Soul Crystals ABOVE the Weapon slot, and Off-hands BELOW the Weapon slot. That would actually perfectly align them, using the exact same amount of space.

I know these probably sound like trivial changes -- and make no mistake, for most players, they are -- but as someone who REALLY values a clean-looking UI, and likes for things to be displayed in a way that makes sense, these changes would really clean things up a lot.

That's all I've got! I hope you guys get a chance to forward this to the Devs. I know it sounds a bit complicated, but if you look at my post while you're actually in-game, looking at your character-sheet (or Armoury Chest, where referenced), I think you'll agree these suggestions would really look a lot cleaner.

[Iscah]

A simpler approach that I've seen a fan-made mock-up of is to leave the offhand slot where it is, move the main hand slot down to where the headgear slot is (and pushing all the left-side gear down a notch) and moving the soulstone to where the main hand weapon currently is.

Alternately the soulstone slot could stay where it is and the current weapon slot location could become a decorative icon like the ones that are used if you set a gearset to a hotbar.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Personally I think both slots should be removed. Soul crystals are almost totally irrelevant when jobs are tied to weapons instead and the class system should be abandoned. And does anyone actually like the fact that every DoH needs *two* weapons, the offhanded one almost always being bulky and ugly? Does PLD really need two slots when every sword/shield combo is priced the same as a single weapon or drops simultaneously in loot? If jobs like NIN, MNK, RDM had actually utilized the two-hand system I could see a stronger case for keeping it, but as it stands the off-hand system only exists for the sake of PLD which imo is just clutter and waste.

[HyoMinPark]

Personally I think both slots should be removed. Soul crystals are almost totally irrelevant when jobs are tied to weapons instead and the class system should be abandoned. And does anyone actually like the fact that every DoH needs *two* weapons, the offhanded one almost always being bulky and ugly? Does PLD really need two slots when every sword/shield combo is priced the same as a single weapon or drops simultaneously in loot? If jobs like NIN, MNK, RDM had actually utilized the two-hand system I could see a stronger case for keeping it, but as it stands the off-hand system only exists for the sake of PLD which imo is just clutter and waste.

Outside of relic weapons, most weapons for jobs that evolved from classes still have the classes listed on them—so if you were to equip just the weapon, it won’t actually equip your soul stone since, technically, a GLA can use that level 87 weapon you just got from the dungeon. They’d have to go back and reprogram all of that (even though I wonder why they kept it as such to this day, but I’m not a dev so idk what’s going through their head). That said, classes are obsolete but I doubt they’ll remove them outright at this point. Would involve too much retconning of the class lore, and they’d have to go back and redesign the first 30 levels of play for all classes so that they now function as their respective jobs. Too much work for a part of the game that passes so quickly these days is probably how they feel about it.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Outside of relic weapons, most weapons for jobs that evolved from classes still have the classes listed on them—so if you were to equip just the weapon, it won’t actually equip your soul stone since, technically, a GLA can use that level 87 weapon you just got from the dungeon. They’d have to go back and reprogram all of that (even though I wonder why they kept it as such to this day, but I’m not a dev so idk what’s going through their head). That said, classes are obsolete but I doubt they’ll remove them outright at this point. Would involve too much retconning of the class lore, and they’d have to go back and redesign the first 30 levels of play for all classes so that they now function as their respective jobs. Too much work for a part of the game that passes so quickly these days is probably how they feel about it.

That's what I mean though. The soul stones are an additional, needless, clunky step to swap jobs that are effectively tied to weapons. And yes, they should go back and reprogram it because it is janky and redundant af.

I don't think it would be difficult to just rename a few fields/tags so that levels 1-30 and experience points are now just "jobs." And I've seen it suggested elsewhere that we don't really need to retcon class lore...just make the quests optional content. They would still give "lore" backstory for the process of becoming the jobs, they just wouldn't need to be nominally represented as distinct from them in mechanics anymore. For example, you could still experience "marauder" lore with the implicit understanding that marauders are identical to or just less-developed warriors. Players pretty much treat them as one and the same anyway so there's really nothing wrong with the game equating the two.

The only jobs that would potentially need some tweaking are the arcanist jobs, and:

1) I think even independent of this issue SCH and SMN deserve some retconning to be completely independent of each other and would be worth the effort alone in a vacuum;
2) I don't think it would take too many changes to accomplish; and
3) I think the cost-benefit would be more than fair as far as tweaking two jobs in order to eliminate systems so clunky and obsolete as classes and job stones.

[Darthgummibear]

I'm in the camp of nuking one or both slots for two reasons: 1) The presence of soulstones as a physical item in our inventory serves no practical purpose and 2) getting rid of belts allowed expansion of two pages of inventory...getting rid of one or both of these as separate items might allow for more expansion of the inventories that matter, or maybe even more glam plates.

I'm aware of the effort involved, I also think the potentially huge QOL upgrade would be worth it.

[Avidria]

Delete the soul crystal items entirely, make them an icon in the center or something, and spread those inventory slots out over everything else tbh

[Kacho_Nacho]

Delete the soul crystal items entirely, make them an icon in the center or something, and spread those inventory slots out over everything else tbh

I love this idea. It makes little sense to have soul crystals take up space in the inventory.

lol, looks like the person above me thinks the same way. I had this tab opened for a while and forgot to submit. xD

Happens to all of us, Eriane.

[Eriane_Elis]

Or get rid of soul crystals altogether. You equip your weapon and that acts as the soul crystal. If you unlocked your upgraded class then it automatically uses that class. The soul crystal is still with you lore-wise but it's not visible in the menu. It would also clear up room so they could use it for something else like more armory storage or something.

Edit: lol, looks like the person above me thinks the same way. I had this tab opened for a while and forgot to submit. xD

[TheMightyMollusk]

Even Yoshi-P has said he's not fond of the job/soul crystal system. It's a weird relic of 1.0. Unfortunately, getting rid of it would require rewriting a lot of job quests (several of them, including black mage and dark knight, explicitly use the soul crystals as a plot device), and redoing how summoner and scholar split off the same class. It's just one of those things they want to work on but can't prioritize over new content.