Comments from the Devs

[Takiwaki]

Was reading the Official forums today and was wondering if anyone would like the chime in/shed some light. (nothing NDA breaking)
Why is it that we as players need to be forced/punished into using skill variety? I mean there are so many complaints asking for separate and longer cool-downs on skills because they can be spammed, while we really don't have to spam if you choose not to, the way it as atm.

I just think its so strange that people want to be purposely limited in when they can use a skill in order to have "better" gameplay instead of just choosing to.

Also from the live letters / interviews it seems that Limit breaks will also aleviate the need to spam as it seems from what I read, building the meter for limit breaks will only take place by basically "non spammy" gameplay.

I am not arguing for or against anything but just find it interesting how we perceive things

[Grey Jorildyn]

I dunno. It doesn't really matter to me personally if a game:

A. gives you 30+ skills
B. gives you 10 skills
C. gives you 30+ skills but you can only select 10 to use at any given time

as long as it works within the design and balance of the game itself. The older of the "modern" MMOs do A a lot. We're seeing B and C pop up more often now with the newer titles but it is just as old a concept as A. The FF-online community isn't exactly the type to have tried a vast array of games. It's likely many tried 1-2 other titles, saw type A and realized how much better it worked than XI or another game they tried or saw a video about or read something on a forum about which lacked context.

Skills also need to be meaningful. Giving me a cc breaker on a 10m cooldown isn't meaningful to me if a mage has a cc spell on a 5s cooldown. That's right where skill meaning meets balance and that has been one of the most difficult if not the most difficult challenge of early 2000-era MMO developers. It's not surprising that the trend towards less skills (B) or less available skills equippable (C) has become more common. Players are unpredictable in their approaches to an extent, but that can be controlled largely by limiting the extraneous variables. Just like any formula really. It's a contributing factor to why instanced PvE and PvP are more easily approachable as content bases for games.

And to support the above paragraph there also needs to be a roughly equal amount of skills available to all classes to provided an additional layer of potential balance. XI had very few skills in retrospect, but never struck a balance anywhere. They probably never bothered to try either and likely have continued that trend (I dunno, I don't play anymore). Mages had ridiculous spell libraries but it didn't matter. Only Thunder mattered! So yeah, meaningful skills, controllable environments are important. The number of skills means very little out of context.

[Takiwaki]

It wasnt about how many skills being used but the frequency of usage. Although I agree with your statement lol, it wasn't really about what my initial point was

[Grey Jorildyn]

If you boil it down to its base argument it's tit for tat.

[Churchill]

So, at minimum I think we can expect one gear slot per class/job. Some of those can be used for bulk storage sure, but that basically means your number should be closer to 270+100+150+150, where I'm assuming approximately 10 slots used for 19 classes classes/8 jobs.

That puts you at 670.

But you really don't need all those slots though. As you said there's no gearswap in ARR so any gear you're going to use will be stored in your set and not in your inventory. Yeah, you'll have the occasional piece of gear that's better for certain situations over what you usually wear but I'd say the slots we have are more than enough. And some sets will likely be storeable in your Inn (like AF sets in 1.0).
At this point there's really no way to know, we'll have to see how situational certain pieces are in endgame but we need those events to be added first.

There will always be a need for different sets. Not being able to swap sets in combat doesn't really change that, it just makes you have to choose prior to the engagement.

We will also not have enough gear sets (at least from what they've said) to cover all DoW+DoM+DoL+DoH, at some level you won't be able to carry all of your gear unless we get more slots.

Just doing a quick count assuming 8 gear sets to store gear on:
Full miners gear: 14
Any additional DoH/DoL (minimum): 13/per (some shared)
ACC/Enmity/HP/Crit Power/Potency sets for DoW/DoM: ~40 (might be a low estimate)
Acc food, War acc food, attack food, bard attack food, macc food, mab food, 3 crafting foods, mining food: 10
-enmity/enmity potion, elixir, hi potion, mab/attack potion: 6
Spiritbond gear: (no room lol) but usually 30-50 pieces

Assuming paragon+miner+2DoH fully geared, you're at 96. Not a lot of room for spiritbond or shit that drops while doing stuff. I understand this can be changed, I understand we can get storage, I understand the argument that "you can just pick it up off the retainer if you need it". They have seemed fairly adamant about having 100 slots and storage doesn't let me craft/HQ in the field or play any job I want whenever I want.

[Katlan]

Aren't retainers basically banks?

[Cichy]

I'm a person that likes to carry all my shit on me and play everything. I'm hating on that 100 slot shit

[Amiricle]

I'm with Cichy & Churchhill. 100 won't be enough in the end.

We are really just going to have to wait & see since we don't have a choice, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised to see them add inventory upgrades ala gobbiebag quests.

[Cichy]

maybe they saving the option if the game comes f2p. You gonna be able to buy extra bags lol

[Vuitton]

p.sure at some point they'll introduce gobbie bag quests to increase the bag amount at some point in the future. maybe with an expansion they'd introduce it.

[Kachiko]

Question for those that are more in the know, but if each of the jobs have their own equipment set, that isn't counted against the current amount of storage, just how much extra equipment do you think you'll actually have to carry, for the jobs/circumstances you really play? Thinking back to FFXI, there were a lot of people, who took a lot of jobs to max level, but really only played a select few due to the work required to obtain gear that actually made you useful at an event. Granted, I only played BRD, and I had equipment to do anything I wanted, at any given circumstance, and that didn't leave me but about 11 inventory spaces for holding random crap, but I'll admit that's really a rarity as far as FFXI was concerned. While I understand we can switch jobs, at any time, how realistic is it that you'll be so unorganized that you won't know what job you need to be on for a given event, and plan accordingly?

[Cichy]

When we would do dungeons in 1.0 we would simply gather at the dungeon so some people had different preferences and depending on those who showed up we would make a decision. Some people only played PLD and MNK while I played WHM, BLM, MNK, DRG so I'd have 4 sets on me at all time. Especially when we did Aurum Vale > Cutters Cry and you had to change party setup between that. Besides that I'd always keep mining/botany gear on me cuz that's what I would do in down time. It's not that you can play ahead it was just way more convenient atleast for me.

[solracht]

Question for those that are more in the know, but if each of the jobs have their own equipment set, that isn't counted against the current amount of storage, just how much extra equipment do you think you'll actually have to carry, for the jobs/circumstances you really play? Thinking back to FFXI, there were a lot of people, who took a lot of jobs to max level, but really only played a select few due to the work required to obtain gear that actually made you useful at an event. Granted, I only played BRD, and I had equipment to do anything I wanted, at any given circumstance, and that didn't leave me but about 11 inventory spaces for holding random crap, but I'll admit that's really a rarity as far as FFXI was concerned. While I understand we can switch jobs, at any time, how realistic is it that you'll be so unorganized that you won't know what job you need to be on for a given event, and plan accordingly?

In FFXIV, you can switch jobs out in the field, there's no need to go to your house like in XI. Maybe it's just me, but taking that into account, if I can't carry all my gear for my jobs on me somehow, then I think the system has failed.

Either way, ultimately I think the problem is not inventory slots, it's the number of gear-sets.

[Churchill]

Between doing AV/CC/Garuda, I would carry:

Warrior Tank set (accuracy)
Warrior Tank set (enmity)
Warrior DPS set
Dragoon DPS set + accuracy
Monk DPS set
Bard Support set
Bard DPS set
Bard Accuracy set
Black Mage Fire set
Black Mage Thunder set
Black Mage Accuracy set
Thaumaturge set
---
Didn't Paladin a lot, but had my Paladin HP+Enmity sets on me as well, just in case.

If I had BRD+MNK+WAR+DRG+BLM+PLD each on their own page, I would have ~51 pieces of extra gear that wouldn't be on a different set already plus ~10 pieces of different food and then all the medications I listed earlier. That's just for those 6 classes, not counting Miner or any DoH. The only thing I carried for White Mage was like a Staff so I could change to it if necessary.

[Enygma55]

Was reading the Official forums today and was wondering if anyone would like the chime in/shed some light. (nothing NDA breaking)
Why is it that we as players need to be forced/punished into using skill variety? I mean there are so many complaints asking for separate and longer cool-downs on skills because they can be spammed, while we really don't have to spam if you choose not to, the way it as atm.

I just think its so strange that people want to be purposely limited in when they can use a skill in order to have "better" gameplay instead of just choosing to.

Also from the live letters / interviews it seems that Limit breaks will also aleviate the need to spam as it seems from what I read, building the meter for limit breaks will only take place by basically "non spammy" gameplay.

I am not arguing for or against anything but just find it interesting how we perceive things

The spamming is only noticeable because there isnt any real content to challenge the fact. TP becomes a precious resource in longer fights with bosses that actually requires management. (MP also)

This by design is a good thing. Easier fights should be faster and thus spamming is accepted. Longer fights can be spammed but it'll significantly hinder your chances to win if u dont manage the skill spamming.

Basically people can't see the bigger picture of the Battle system GCD til they release those harder encounters.

I know people complain about Flash being on GCD and not instant, but would people prefer it be on a 30 sec timer instead of a 2 sec GCD timer? I would sure hope not.

[Alkar]

It's way too early to tell because we don't know how many sets we need. Also you don't really need to bring your DoL sets with you if you're gonna raid and I'd say the same for DoH too.
You're assuming we'll be limited at 8 gear sets but that's not true if what we're seeing right now is gonna apply to everything else.

[Churchill]

They said awhile back there wouldn't be enough gear sets to match all of the classes, they threw out a number like 8 with some stipulation that quests or something would unlock a few more. From what the battle system is looking like, the secondary attribute system will be gone (thank god) which frees up...well nothing if you didn't gear like a derp in 1.0. If all you really focused on was STR, Attack, Accuracy, Enmity, HP, VIT, -Enmity, INT, +MATK, MND, CurePot, Enhancing (Gone?), CritPower, Crit, and PIE (BRD, hopefully this becomes STR because fucking lol) then I can't really see much changing.

[Spira]

I actually hope they extend the potential of Free Companies by having storage available for them as well..
like a real guild bank of sorts..

it seems as though most equipment binds for players, but for those that don't it would be nice if free companies had a system of sharing equipment within the guild - and a method of retrieval so that the leaders can prevent drama/stealing/etc.

also an NPC to provide a bailment NPC system would be good, like, for promises to pay or stuff you would like an NPC to hold on to for a while for safety.

i suppose the alternative is to play with more trustworthy people.. but less drama is always good

[Takiwaki]

Remember the entire gear set system is being redone. Not sure how many sets the new board will have though. Also the entire thing about flash being on the GCD is that people couldn't use it right after a ws or another ability, when they wanted, it does still have its own cooldown timer.

[Cichy]

He said in that last letter they been working hard to add completely new gear sets because they had way too many weapons and not enough armor. If you look at the art work they been showing there's a ton of armors they got planned. So far some I can recall of the top of my head are 3 bahamut gear sets (heavy, light, mage), 8 PVP sets (each class has a animal like armor), I've seen drawing of Titans shield and a mention they want to add primal armor, and bunch of other ones. I'm personally super excited, I love the variety, it's been something that always keeps my interest in the game.