Quote Originally Posted by Dubont View Post
Saying that gear drops causes players to not be social is incredibly incorrect. FFXI was all about gear drops and people were more social in that game than 14 has ever been. Also, gear has always played a big role in almost every RPG. Demon's Souls? If you don't have the right gear, you'll die (faster). FF games? If you don't have the right elemental resistances, you'll get 1 shotted. Man even in FPS, if you don't have the right grenade at the right time or the right gun at the right time, you'll get owned hardcore. For gear to be essentially useless is more unrealistic than having a knight in full plate able to jump 10ft in the air.
The causation of XIV's lack of interaction has nothing to do with it's production based play. Having gear play a major role has become a design crutch and flaw of most modern RPGs. Take Ragnarok especially, with gear importance very similar to XI. In RO, only the largest guilds with the most resources are able to farm out the higher level dungeons, and only the highest level gear sells for high prices, perpetuating the concept that large guilds have to rule the game without exception because raid gear is what is important. This is also true of WoW, and consequently most other MMORPGs, and it doesn't permit real interactivity with smaller groups and the player market.

Ontop of that, let's be honest, we want to distinguish our characters, so why should most be gear be much more than aesthetics anyways? I'm not saying all gear shouldn't produce bonuses, but the simplest way to balance gear is to give different weight classes different absorption rates, trading element absorption for defense (or vise versa).