Comments from the Devs

[Dooom]

Swapping people around in parties is silly; it really hurts some jobs ("get the thf in at the end!", or for other fights and more recently, "get the smn in for Perfect Defence then kick them for another job"). Encouraging it as a strategy isn't fun; people basically get to take part by not taking part for most of the fight until they're needed. If you can't see why that's bad, then oh well.

Gear swapping mid-fight is also a silly concept, it makes no sense at all. It's also a huge inventory hog; look at modern XI, where people are often carrying around 70+ pieces of gear for some jobs without even having anything too fancy or specialized (unless you consider PDT and MDT sets specialized, which will get you laughed out of any serious endgame group).

[Takiwaki]

I agree gear swapping is stupid, but its not the game's fault we players just took it to the extreme trying to max out every possible stat for every possible ability. the game unfortunately catered to it early on. unfortunately this creates a game with no individuality, I would love to play a game where I can gear myself how I want to look and not because of what is best (yes guildwars 2 cant come fast enough). Have you tried playing blu? I cant even fit every peice of gear in my inventory. Swapping for every single spell, maxing out dmg, casting time, recast time back into melee gear. I did enjoy it to some extent I admit, at the time the game came out this was revolutionary, now its just stupid. It made the game about collecting gear, which is what drives the game at the moment. 10 sets of gear 4 sets of weapons for one job. Spellcast, an awesome plugin by all means, i guess some good did come from the gear swap system. Its sad when a sexy peice of armor means how big the numbers are on it lol

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Multiple sets of gear is what kept the game going as long as it did. Instead of one piece of gear for the end all in one slot, you had 5+ for different situations. The difference between XI and XIV, as far as I can tell, is the lack of 'skill points' for XIV(and obvious no gear swappin). Instead, we have just stats and the basic attack/acc/defense/evasion. This'll make the 'best gear' set ups a lot easier as you only need to factor stats in to diminishing returns then pump up attack or whatever. What I don't want to happen is the 'WoW' system where you have an expansion released and the rush for getting all the best gear. Then next expansion all the gear you previously got was basically gimp compared to the new stuff available. That's what I liked about XI. You spend a long time getting a piece of gear and it could last you years. Having multiple pieces of gear for different situations gave you more chances to 'feel good' about finally getting that gear.

It might be an old/bad system but it was fun to me. Always gave you something to aim for. And personally I like the number crunching for different situations. I realize I'm probably in the minority with that thought process, but I don't see myself holding much interest in XIV if you can '8 man' everything with basically any setup so long as you have a tank/dd/healer. It all comes back with what happens with these battle patches.

[Takiwaki]

I duno I spent a long ass time getting my salvage gear. not very useful now. . .so yea that ideal has changed

Also I do not see an issue with holding interest in something if you can 8 man everything with any set up as long as its fun right? I mean thats the entire point, for it to be fun. I mean if you can basically do anything in the game with anyone it would make it even better, then I can play with who I want to play with and when. The issue is nothing in the game relies on skill anymore, its should not be about the jobs but the people.

[Lokus]

It might be an old/bad system but it was fun to me. Always gave you something to aim for. And personally I like the number crunching for different situations. I realize I'm probably in the minority with that thought process, but I don't see myself holding much interest in XIV if you can '8 man' everything with basically any setup so long as you have a tank/dd/healer. It all comes back with what happens with these battle patches.

It seems like this was their intent as well. XI was riddled with encounters where alot of jobs were not wanted or were less effective leaving players to just stick their fingers in their ass. Granted, over time, players finally found out how to properly utilize the jobs but it seems like SE wanted all classes to have a part in a group off the bat. Course now we have the homogenization problem with the classes. At the same time, being able to cross-class WS and skills, just means people use ARC for everything with THMs and CONs doting shit to death.

[Alderaan]

The entire multiple gear concept was mostly due to poor itemization though. Sure it created an interesting concept that people took to extremes, but in the long run it was horrible. When you spend more time writing spellcast macros than you do playing the game, then there's a problem. I will give you that it did keep the game going but i'm sure proper itemization would have taken it further.

[Takiwaki]

Yep that type of thinking I believe is very archaic, and what is causing the downfall of ffxi and ffxiv, where every job/class basically plays the same but does something different, rather than every job can do the same thing but in different ways, if you guys get what im saying. If every job could dot dmg heal, then the fun was in how it was done, people would play jobs cus it was fun, not because it was a need to an end. i guess this is reason blu became my main.

Right now every Job/class uses the adrenaline type tp gain unleash big ws type gameplay. even mages. which is dumb at this day and age. Imagine if the tp gain system was only for one job and there was a completely different system for mages or range players. think about it.

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Yea they kinda went from one extreme to the other. They need to find a balance between the two. As for the 8-man thing, I'd just like to be able to play with bigger groups sometimes. I could see it working out if you had to 8-man stuff like sky, where there's multiple pieces of gear and different things to do so people will want to do it all the time/have multiple items to get. But it sucked for stuff like assault where people only wanted to do one area to earn points to get one piece of gear. If you weren't doing that area it was a total waste for them and they didn't want to go. I liked Einherjar where you had 3 parties fighting multiple mobs and then a big boss at the end. That was fun. It required some skill and coordination to pull off.

[Nevex]

The real question is: do you really need all that gearswapping to play the game?

How many players bothered with ridiculously large sets of gear because of the other players' psychological pressure rather than because they wanted to improve their own performance by an insignificantly small margin?

[Takiwaki]

Yea they kinda went from one extreme to the other. They need to find a balance between the two. As for the 8-man thing, I'd just like to be able to play with bigger groups sometimes. I could see it working out if you had to 8-man stuff like sky, where there's multiple pieces of gear and different things to do so people will want to do it all the time/have multiple items to get. But it sucked for stuff like assault where people only wanted to do one area to earn points to get one piece of gear. If you weren't doing that area it was a total waste for them and they didn't want to go. I liked Einherjar where you had 3 parties fighting multiple mobs and then a big boss at the end. That was fun. It required some skill and coordination to pull off.

I agree but the issue with einherjar is that it really did not reward equally across all jobs.

[Kensaki]

I don't think they care much about rewarding equally across all classes. Theres little to nothing mage gear at 50 and no r50 mage weapons.

[Cichy]

You can say w/e you want and how stupid it was but multiple gear sets and having all jobs on one character is what kept the game going all this years and still does.

[Takiwaki]

You can say w/e you want and how stupid it was but multiple gear sets and having all jobs on one character is what kept the game going all this years and still does.

I dont think the issue was multiple gear sets or having all jobs on one character at all. I think the discussion was about how stupid gear swapping was mid battle.

[Grey Jorildyn]

No one could argue against that truly Cichy, but that doesn't make it a good idea. It worked then, and works now for a single game. In general though the concept is not sound. There are better ways to extend the shelf life of a game than make you gear-hunt. It's to the point that the fights themselves are unimportant, and always were. It was always about claiming in the end game for the longest time. It wasn't until Salvage/Einherjar that skill started playing any kind of factor in XI. Challenging encounters, environment traps, things that make a person think are what is important. The rewards are earned then, rather than expected (and they become as such when you need 30 adaman hauberks for your entire roster rather than just 10 for your main dps).

But in any case, these aren't dev comments. And on a related note, I hope they never consider open gear swapping in XIV.

[Cichy]

I agree I dint like gear swapping at all, I still dont understand how people played without the windower macros. Although, I did enjoy having multiple sets of gear purely because of the aesthetic appeal. Personally for me one of the biggest things I am looking for in an MMO is that my character must fit my definition of "cool looking" and I guess XI struck a note with me because of that.

[Lucavi]

Would have been nice to be able to wear the gear you wanted while having your favorite visual gear on top. I'd have never gotten out of Wyrm if that was the case. Glad its become a standard thing for MMOs today and I hope XIV eventually does it.

[Corrderio]

I agree I dint like gear swapping at all, I still dont understand how people played without the windower macros. Although, I did enjoy having multiple sets of gear purely because of the aesthetic appeal. Personally for me one of the biggest things I am looking for in an MMO is that my character must fit my definition of "cool looking" and I guess XI struck a note with me because of that.

I don't think anyone is arguing over multiple sets (I have about 2 for my CRP and could see a GLA having 3 or more if they're hardcore) it was just switching for certain situations or a single ability that made it annoying.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Yeah I have 2 gear sets for Gladiator. What this game brings to the table instead is how to utilize the action bar and traits. This brings a positive dynamic the game needs but it needs to be fleshed out a lot more. But we're supposed to get that right?

What concerns me is what they alluded to when they said something like they want all abilities of a class to be available. On phone atm so can't grab a source. If they do that how will the armory system find its uniqueness in a game where picking jobs apart is a tough job already when you can't see what weapon is equipped?

[CrstyCptSteveWitherspoon]

Personally I wish they would allow us to use all of our main classes abilities and then have points to use for cross class abilities. I just find it stupid that as conj I can't have access to all of my spells at one time. With a little more restriction cross class I think classes would be a bit more unique instead of everyone using the same abilities if their tanking/dd/healing.

Edit:
Also I think they should focus a bit more on affinity to add diversity, making you have enough required affinity towards a class to equip their abilities(or even have a certain affinity requirement for each ability). For now, I could see equipping the +10 affinity trait as a way to boost your affinity, and I could also see having jobs affect affinity towards all classes in both a good and bad way. Example, being a 'paladin' would boost your conj affinity but decrease your thm affinity, etc. They could build on this too by also allowing you to boost affinity by the materia system. This could create different 'builds' for classes to make them specialize in one area or go kinda well rounded. Duno, just a thought.

[Cichy]

Personally I wish they would allow us to use all of our main classes abilities and then have points to use for cross class abilities.

This is what I wanted since the beginning