Gear swapping 2.0? Speculation beyond class change gear swap?

[coldviper18]

Fail @ Gearswapping. Unless they can come up with a way where your character isn't constantly blinking out so you don't even see yourself doing anything you just disappear. Otherwise it's just retarded. You may as well not have a character figure at all in that case. Why even have gear either if you're only doing it for statistical purposes. May as just make the game "Number Fantasy XIV". Since all you care about is what numbers you're hitting for.

I'm against it completely unless as I mentioned there is a way to change how it effects you visually. Looks are important. Thats why so many people care about graphics. That's why everyone is trying to make them better and better. Even you elitists care, otherwise you'd be playing a different game like Maple Story.

[Kaluuki]

It'd be neat if they did that shiz from Aion where you could swap stats on gear pieces for aesthetic purposes. butchuknow.

I have a feeling gear swapping will be less prominent.

[Rokku]

Part of me just wants to say the hardcores can fuck themselves, as they wanna be as snowflake as the casuals they love to rag on, but understand that my little fantasy land isn't beyond the realm of imagination.

Let's take a page from WoW's book for a moment, and point out they have instances of varying difficulty levels. If all you do is the easy version, then expect NQ loot. Do that hard? Incoming HQ, or maybe even another tier altogether. Easy mode could have hints for puzzles. Hard could be the fly blind mode.

Hard modes aren't quite as simple as your analogy. What you're getting at makes sense, but suggesting it in the form of puzzles is asinine. Even if they're completely different puzzles, the hints from the "easy mode" puzzles would undoubtedly give a great deal of insight into the "hard mode" puzzles.

If you want to talk about hard-easy difficulties in the scope of the relative strength of a given encounter, that's all well and fine, but trying to apply that same sort of system to a puzzle is just stupid.

[Vacht]

Blinkmenot I think was the name of the program that fixed the targeting issue for ffxi when someone was changing gear, these programs which outside programmers made should have been implemented by SE themselves as a means to negate the use of other third party tools from the game(not likely that will ever happen but dream with me here!!). I like the thought that you can still have gears swaps for all aspects of the game as it gives us a reason to go out and do as many quests as possible to attain these items (i guess some of us enjoy the grind a bit ,lulz) but that being said.... to use these items being a determent in fight situation to those around you is not something i looked forward to. SE should in a sence make their own version where the players around you would see your character stay in one set but items would still be changed by the use of macros, maybe work it so your gears changes don't take affect on screen in certain areas or instances but then in city or non-instanced based areas the change of gear can be seen by anyone around you.

YARRRR!

Part of me just wants to say the hardcores can fuck themselves, as they wanna be as snowflake as the casuals they love to rag on, but understand that my little fantasy land isn't beyond the realm of imagination.

Let's take a page from WoW's book for a moment, and point out they have instances of varying difficulty levels. If all you do is the easy version, then expect NQ loot. Do that hard? Incoming HQ, or maybe even another tier altogether. Easy mode could have hints for puzzles. Hard could be the fly blind mode.

Let's also look back to something like CoP. A lot of people like to say XI's strength is the story. I don't think it's the best set of stories in the world, but whatever, it's there and some people use it as their carrot to slog through content. Now, the Easy/Hard dynamic could be played here, with those more interested in simply experiencing the story could go through the easier versions and maybe get their choice of 1 of 3 rings at the end. People who partake of the hard would not only get the 3 rings at the end, but the individual fights could have extra rewards like the U/O fight dropping a lv60 variant of Homam/Nashira. Pepper these decently enough throughout the game, and people who might be around to tackle content upon its release might have a better chance of getting it done later since there's a chance helpers would get something for their time that couldn't just be outdone by 5 minutes of hitting colibri.

Interesting idea, but your comment on the storyline really draws attention, because they really do have the most interactive storylines ive encountered in an MMO. Ifs depth and complexity is awesome compared to all MMOs ive played. I think the only other game id prefer storyline wise would be asheron's call, the first one. Fully traversable, updates to the game every month, and weird shit would happen every update that coincides with the storyline. It was cheesy, but a truly interactive storyline is awesome. they would have the bad guy raid towns by one of the developers occasionally. People banded together and killed him eventually, and stopped him from destroying towns. There was one town that was destroyed and the developers never brought it back.

But to get back on track, that idea is interesting for sure.. i just dont know how well that would work. But i agree, we need more sets of armor. If anything they need to get rid of the consistent same sets of armor. Id like to see randomized sets of armor that drop from mobs with different colors. Although im not sure if the PS3 could handle something so random and vast as randomized armor colors and stats. Itd just be nice to look different. Then again I remember how fun it was when i finished my homam and people were like omgwtf. Granted that was years ago, still fun.

[arus2001]

Rewards for Hard Mode story battles can be really freakin' easy to come up with. Obvious gear rewards aside, SE could also do things like permanent stat boosts (Think like a level in merits) or even let them unlock new classes or abilities. Of course, upping difficulty should be more than just adding HP or making them do more damage. Mobs could get added TP moves, perhaps react more quickly to combat situations, or you get a different set of critters to take out entirely.

[Kawfee]

Hard modes aren't quite as simple as your analogy. What you're getting at makes sense, but suggesting it in the form of puzzles is asinine. Even if they're completely different puzzles, the hints from the "easy mode" puzzles would undoubtedly give a great deal of insight into the "hard mode" puzzles.

If you want to talk about hard-easy difficulties in the scope of the relative strength of a given encounter, that's all well and fine, but trying to apply that same sort of system to a puzzle is just stupid.

Applying it to a puzzle still works. Perhaps you have the same mobs/bosses/whatever, but in hard mode they have totally different mechanics, maybe easy mode only has 1 out of their 5 mechanics, etc. Maybe in easy mode you just walk in and fight them, in hard mode, you have to solve an additional puzzle first.

[Rokku]

Applying it to a puzzle still works. Perhaps you have the same mobs/bosses/whatever, but in hard mode they have totally different mechanics, maybe easy mode only has 1 out of their 5 mechanics, etc. Maybe in easy mode you just walk in and fight them, in hard mode, you have to solve an additional puzzle first.

What you're saying still falls under "fight mechanics" and not "puzzles". Solving an additional puzzle to take on the same fight isn't a hard mode, it's artificial bloating of content and just fucking stupid.

[Kawfee]

What you're saying still falls under "fight mechanics" and not "puzzles". Solving an additional puzzle to take on the same fight isn't a hard mode, it's artificial bloating of content and just fucking stupid.

Having to solve a different/more challenging puzzle and adding in more difficult fight mechanics in a hard mode to get better drops, giving the option for casuals to experience the storyline, and hardcore players to experience storyline+challenge, doesn't seem fucking stupid to me.

If you're arguing that you can't take an existing puzzle and "make it harder", yes, obviously, then it would be a new puzzle or additional puzzle altogether. If you really feel the need to argue semantics to that level of detail you should probably go outside for a while.

[ringthree]

Having to solve a different/more challenging puzzle in a hard mode to get better drops doesn't seem fucking stupid to me.

Having different sets of content for different kinds of players isn't much of a solution unless you have millions of players to cater to different subsets of players.

I don't think SE is playing to create disposable content like WoW. I would think you would have individual events you can pick and choose from like in FFXI.

If Salvage had a harder version, once people had found out that version no one would do the easier version. There are too many ways to get around the need to do the easier version because of the non-disposable nature of FFXI characters.

Trying to apply one mechanic to another MMO is questionable at best. This discussion about Salvage is just reflective of one persons bad experience. It is not reflective of the true value of the content for the general FFXI public.

[Vacht]

Having different sets of content for different kinds of players isn't much of a solution unless you have millions of players to cater to different subsets of players.

I don't think SE is playing to create disposable content like WoW. I would think you would have individual events you can pick and choose from like in FFXI.

If Salvage had a harder version, once people had found out that version no one would do the easier version. There are too many ways to get around the need to do the easier version because of the non-disposable nature of FFXI characters.

Trying to apply one mechanic to another MMO is questionable at best. This discussion about Salvage is just reflective of one persons bad experience. It is not reflective of the true value of the content for the general FFXI public.

I agree, people would go for the harder zones, then they would just have empty unused areas that no one would go for, then we would experience the same problem with the harder zones that we experienced with that one event with the discs and floors in FFXI(i totally forgot the name of that event). At 2-4am its was totally super packedddddd because of JP primetime. Although that was only during JP primetime.

Any speculation is good speculation though.



Im wondering if gear swaps will not even be possible because of the right hand and left hand guages. Since we do not have auto attack in XIV then we will be manually entering commands. Each command requires stamina or endurance to use, or something to a similar effect. So we wouldnt have much room to swapping in gear, because i assume we are going to be constantly choosing abilities to use for either hand depending on which job we are, right?

Our hands would be way too busy to play efficiently, or atleast it would be significantly harder to be "good" at the game not having an auto attack mode and 2 guages to operate during battle.

Im hoping its something like, holding down the left or right weapon keys, or L2 or R2 for PS3 it brings up a drop down menu, then allows you to select what ability to use on your next round.

Also they could possibly make your armor increase in effect with the success of your attacks. Like lets say distance considered with your weapon type and how far you are can be relative to the stats on your armor.

So stats would increase the more you satisfy the accuracy pertaining to your weapon. So to maintain a constant up-close stance when using daggers would increase your stats with each action. Not enough to over power, but enough to reward you for success in satisfying a requirement of your weapon?

Sometimes i fear it wont be as complex as we assume it will be.. like the whole crafting direction and day theory that really didnt exist in FFXI.

[Rokku]

Having to solve a different/more challenging puzzle and adding in more difficult fight mechanics in a hard mode to get better drops, giving the option for casuals to experience the storyline, and hardcore players to experience storyline+challenge, doesn't seem fucking stupid to me.

If you're arguing that you can't take an existing puzzle and "make it harder", yes, obviously, then it would be a new puzzle or additional puzzle altogether. If you really feel the need to argue semantics to that level of detail you should probably go outside for a while.

Wow, really, the RL card? That's the best you can pull in response to that? lol good sir, lol.

Also, if you had actually bothered to read before you clicked reply, you might have noticed that the discussion that you jumped into was in regards to hard mode puzzles, and how that would fit into an MMO. So yeah, I guess if commenting on the actual topic at hand is "semantics to that level" then guilty as charged I suppose.

[McGoonagle]

Having to solve a different/more challenging puzzle and adding in more difficult fight mechanics in a hard mode to get better drops, giving the option for casuals to experience the storyline, and hardcore players to experience storyline+challenge, doesn't seem fucking stupid to me.

If you equate easy to running 1k and difficult to running 5k, then you're not really adding anything, although runners will tell you otherwise. The difference between easy and hard would be more like the difference between low- and high-level orienteering, You have an endpoint, and checkpoints on the way. How you get from beginning to end and what order you hit the checkpoints in is up to you.

[Kawfee]

I don't think SE is playing to create disposable content like WoW. I would think you would have individual events you can pick and choose from like in FFXI.

That's a good point in regards to things like Salvage, which admittedly is the example being used in topic. In my head I was thinking it would be more for a one-time completion thing, like some of the mission fights. If you try over and over again on hard mode and fail, you can do the easy mode, get a lesser reward, but still progress through the story.

If you equate easy to running 1k and difficult to running 5k, then you're not really adding anything, although runners will tell you otherwise. The difference between easy and hard would be more like the difference between low- and high-level orienteering, You have an endpoint, and checkpoints on the way. How you get from beginning to end and what order you hit the checkpoints in is up to you.

Agreed, that's a good way to say it. I still think that is a design philosophy that can be implemented without adding disposable content.

[Rokku]

It's a design philosophy that can be easily added to combat mechanics without creating disposable content. Not so much so with a puzzle, because once the solution to a puzzle is found that's all there is to it. There's no degree of skill required in solving a puzzle that you already know the solution to and the steps to reach it. There wouldn't be any use in having the easy mode of said puzzle once the hard mode was figured out.

That being said, I wholly support the usage of things like hard modes and content of different difficulty levels, instead of creating a blockade that only hardcore and upper echelon players will ever reach. It was a design system that created a great deal of animosity between the different groupings of players in XI, and a system they'd do well to do away with.

[Eyedea-Seraph]

It's a design philosophy that can be easily added to combat mechanics without creating disposable content. Not so much so with a puzzle, because once the solution to a puzzle is found that's all there is to it. There's no degree of skill required in solving a puzzle that you already know the solution to and the steps to reach it. There wouldn't be any use in having the easy mode of said puzzle once the hard mode was figured out.

i think the point Rokku is trying to get across (i believe this also) is that once the "hardcore" figure it out it will be posted on wiki and then there is no solving the puzzle. - they way i can see that they can combat this is what i think Rokku is saying by combat mechanics. If you build better AI's for boss fights then each fight is different for each group doing the fight and the mob will do moves pending on the person/group doing the battle in real time, this in turn would have generally the same path to the end boss but everyone would have a different method in which to win the fight/scenario. Then going to wiki for answers or guides that will obviously still exists can still give you help w/o wining the battle for you.

A lot of people would only use the cookie cutter formulas for certain battles/missions we saw this a lot in FFXI's CoP expansion. After the guides came out people would only use certain jobs for certain fights ...even come to the point where they might level a job up to the needed cap just to be able to complete the mission. When i went through this expan w/ my buddies there was no real guide for the battles/mission so when we went in, we all went in w/o the specifically "needed" jobs and still won each fight/mission.

If you looked at situations based on each fight/mission catering towards the the party doing it, this could be a means in which to have each person have a different experience during the hardest parts. Then implementing a tiered skill level for each of the aspects to the game might work out for casual to hardcore players with the drops/rewards reflecting the skill needed to win each tier.

[Lock]

FFXI already has easier and harder versions of missions. Compare Nyzul Isle assaults and Salvage to the easy and hard modes that we've been talking about.

Both Nyzul and Salvage take away from your limited assault permits so there's your choice of one or the other. Nyzul assault puzzles are simpler than Salvage puzzles. The NMs are almost always easier; every once in a while you could get hung up on Capricious Cassie or something on your way up, I guess. In Nyzul you can use a wider variety of jobs and still complete the mission in time. And while the Nyzul gear isn't bad, I think we can all agree that compared to Salvage, it can be seen as the NQ version of gear.

So you have an easier mission with simpler puzzles and NQ gear or a more difficult mission with more complex puzzles and better rewards as a result. I guess it isn't as obvious as setting your mode to 'Heroic difficulty' in WoW, but SE's already done this so I wouldn't put it past them not to implement something similar in 14 as well.

[Rokku]

I think you're missing the point, no one is talking about different events with different levels of difficulty, it's about offering the player base the ability to all participate in the same content while still rewarding more skilled players with a greater challenge and rewards.

Trying to take two separate events and compare them to each other as a hard mode versus an easy mode is like trying to take Einherjar and call it hard mode Dynamis.

[tsaroth816]

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet. But to those of you that want gear swapping: Fuck off. Let me explain so you don't flame.

So we will be carrying around 5 weapons or so for different classes (or sub classes) or just to level up different skills. Each class can't use the same armor sets (mage can't use that heavy plate), so now you need 5 sets of full armor. Now you want to add on situational gear swaps for every single action on top of that? Fuck that.

Give us 500 inventory or bust. I'm sick of situational shit.

[McGoonagle]

I think you're missing the point, no one is talking about different events with different levels of difficulty, it's about offering the player base the ability to all participate in the same content while still rewarding more skilled players with a greater challenge and rewards.

Here's the way I was thinking about it. You have an event with several layers. (Think of it as a grid.) As you go through each layer, you collect event-specific items that will help with the final challenge and a permanent reward (e.g. gil, XP).

Every layer has challenges of different difficulties, with the event and permanent rewards depending upon how the target checks out to you. When you get to the final challenge, the event items you have collected determine the difficulty of the final challenge and the reward.

A high level pt taking the easy path and fighting the EP will not get much of a reward. A weaker pt taking a more challenging route and tackling a tougher finale get a better reward than the first pt.

[Lock]

How can you see an event with different challenges, stronger monsters, and different rewards as the same content? Is it that both paths get to experience the same storyline? I'm just not seeing it.