The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

[Kailea]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

I think the better idea would be to just add slots or something to most/all armor/weapons, the reason why I say all, is so even people at "low level" can augment and customize their stuff.

[Armando]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

Not to toot my own horn but I think the idea I posted in the Poor Concepts thread does just about the same thing without the hassle. Have some sort of menu where you're given a certain number of slots for each action you can do, in which you can introduce Stat Boosts for that action (these could be tradeable items, or something Rare/Ex).

You get to min/max and tweak your individual actions without the conceptual stupidity and macro hell of changing entire sets of gear around on the fly.

[DakAttack]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

Not to toot my own horn but I think the idea I posted in the Poor Concepts thread does just about the same thing without the hassle. Have some sort of menu where you're given a certain number of slots for each action you can do, in which you can introduce Stat Boosts for that action (these could be tradeable items, or something Rare/Ex).

You get to min/max and tweak your individual actions without the conceptual stupidity and macro hell of changing entire sets of gear around on the fly.

I didn't quite follow in your original post. By action, you mean ability and weapon skill, right? If so, it sounds like a mighty fine idea. Even though it seems like it would offer a nice opportunity to customize your skills, I think it would be subject to min/max'ing and the path of least resistance, which is what I think you meant it for anyways.

I thought I had a neat idea for collectible marbles used for sockets, but it didn't garner any interest.

[Armando]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

By action, you mean ability and weapon skill, right? If so, it sounds like a mighty fine idea. Even though it seems like it would offer a nice opportunity to customize your skills, I think it would be subject to min/max'ing and the path of least resistance, which is what I think you meant it for anyways.

Yeah, any ability, spell or WS; which is more or less everything we make gear swap macros for right now.

I think I remember you posting about your socket-marble idea. At the time I didn't think it was too necessary but at this point I can really see FFXI's equipment system is screwed in a few ways, and the slot/marble system could help alleviate some of them. What I just suggested is really just a variation of that, except applied to JAs/WS/MA instead of equipment to simulate the results of gear swapping.

And yeah, naturally it was dominated by min/maxing, but the point was really to show Ziero (or anybody else that really likes the notion of gear swapping) how an alternative could be come up with that'll get the same thing done without the actual problems involved in the swapping of the gear. It's kinda like SpellCast in the sense that it's automatic, but even better since no swapping really takes place at any point.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

You know what would make gear-swapping less jarring?

Sailor Moon outfit transformation sequences!

I'm sure all would play if they included that.

That or we could all just go naked.

[Feba]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

I was thinking that building in a motion for equip changes would work best; it would look stupid, sure, but no less stupid than the "I was hiding a shrunken bow in my ass" look RNGs sport so well.

But yes. Mahou-Shoujo naked-flash-transformation technique. It would make an excellent alternative to gear swapping, compared to vanishing.

[Balfree]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

I has the solushon!

Bag of holding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When changing equipment instead of blinking the stuff could just fade in while whatever you currently have fades out, no other way around it that I can see, unless ofcourse you simply cant change gear during a fight.

Please?

[Raydeus]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

Henshin!

[Ziero]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

Thing is: there are ways to implement such pros without all the awful and graphically-jarring cons. As such I really dislike the system.

Who says it has to involve the graphically jarring cons at all in any way shape or form? We don't see any blinking or graphic changes in FFXI when we swap out accessories, why would we see them in FFXIV?

It may be for you, but for other players who play Rdm, Blm, Whm, and other mage type jobs, and even some melee characters, the use of gear swapping takes up so much friggen inventory space. Rdm has up to 20 Slots take up by swap gear.

I'd rather use the 20 slots used up by swap gear for other stuff like say... Food, Loot, Beastmen seals, Synthisis materials? Not sure about others though. Gear swapping should have a penalty, not just changing weapons makes you lose Tp. It should also impose a (small) penalty on your stats for like... 30 seconds.

How did gear swapping even increase potential rewards? All it does it just take up inventory space, and make your character Slightly better when casting a spell or something

I'm a Thf, I know all about filling your inventory full of gear. And when I know I'm going to be doing something serious I'll have no problem carrying just meds, gear, accessories and leaving a few slots open for loot. Plus, we don't even know if FFXIV will have the same gear issues as FFXI did. For all we know, using a system like I listed, all your equiped items could be removed from the inventory, which would create a lot of space.

And gear swapping increases potential rewards since it means you have more items to chase after. For example, in FFXI, my War has the best non-relic Gaxe in the game. I don't need another Gaxe (though I do want some for looks) so anything that drops a Gaxe is useless to me. However I do need boots for different situations from different mobs, and different rings from different missions and different head pieces from different events. It gives me a wider variety of items to work towards.

Not to toot my own horn but I think the idea I posted in the Poor Concepts thread does just about the same thing without the hassle. Have some sort of menu where you're given a certain number of slots for each action you can do, in which you can introduce Stat Boosts for that action (these could be tradeable items, or something Rare/Ex).

You get to min/max and tweak your individual actions without the conceptual stupidity and macro hell of changing entire sets of gear around on the fly.

While a good concept, there is a glaring problem. How does these specialized boosts come into play for defensive actions? Should they always be active, allowing you to have the perfect blend of offense and defense on at all times? Or would you have to actively select your defensive stat boosts, using up precious time that you're taking damage? It's this reason that I would prefer a system that actively lets you work in the gear you need for when you need it. And it does so by changing a limited amount of items, so there is no "conceptual stupidity" of changing 10-16 pieces of armor. But rather one or two preset, customed pieces. Though your idea isn't totally terrible at all, and would work great for active abilities and such. But to me, for reactive situations, it seems a bit restrictive.

To put it in a bit of perspective, the basis of my idea is inspired by the system Phantasy Star Universe used. In that game, clothing was completely and solely for looks only. It meant you could dress up however you wanted, be unique and one of a kind, without it affecting your stats in any way shape or form.

The Armor was actually a non-visible (the only thing you could see was a glow in your clothing) energy shield with the potential to have specific elemental resistance. The Armor would have it's own set of stats as well as a special set up of "accessory" slots, with a potential slot for Head, Arm, Body and Extra, which would change per piece. Now you could easily make due with one single armor, but to be the most effective you would want different elemental resistance armors for different situations. Seeing as in one battle you could have fire based monsters one moment and ice based monsters the next, you would have to switch on the fly to have the best defense against these things as you could. Or if you wanted a piece that could offer better defense and evasion, you could equip the armor that had slots for Body and Extra, which you could link more Defense and Regen boosts too. If you wanted better offense, you'd get an armor with an Arm slot, which could be used to increase Att/Acc and the like.

However, in PSU, doing this was fairly cumbersome, as you would need to open your equip menu and change things manually. So while I enjoyed the system and concept itself, having to switch between them was a massive hassle.

But in FFXIV, they could have a similar system, where (non-visible) Armor had specific stats and slots and you could could customize the slots to your liking while being able to change the (non-visible) Armor on the fly at the press of a button. A system like this wouldn't suffer from inventory issues, as stats attached to slots wouldn't take up space, nor would you have to deal with the graphical disparity as you wouldn't change your character's outward appearance. So it would still allow for a great amount of min/maxing, unique player builds and customization, while not having any of the outstanding downsides we experience in FFXI.

[Sekighara]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

So is the argument here the fact that gear swapping makes you blink, or the fact that is shouldn't be needed? Also the gear swaping not being realistic matters how specially since war with no magical abilites once so ever can make a cyclone with two swings of a greataxe?

If I remember correctly in ff3-5 you could equip gear mid battle but it was only one piece at a time and it sacs your turn accordingly so it was your action. In FFX when you did it (Of course they eliminated armor for the weapon and accompanying accessory) it would do the same but they used a different active system that put speed difference on it.

An implementation llike that though may be problematic because in that system spells had no recast you just had a delay before you could cast again. Weapon delay is one thing , but I am sure every mage class player will be furious if the delay from casting one spell, using an item, or equiping a piece of gear effects the time before they could do anything else and just like a melee sitting there waiting for you next animation. Also a WS replacing your attack instead of activating immediately would get bashed to hell and back.

But the blinking thing that is iffy. Yes they could do other things but it requires less data to completely rerender a character model then to have to keep the character there still swing, blocking, taking hits, wsing, spell casting and render just the armor on him. What you would see is just the character model flash empty and then armor rendered back on. Which will piss you off more when you lag from doing it.

[DakAttack]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

The Armor was actually a non-visible (the only thing you could see was a glow in your clothing) energy shield with the potential to have specific elemental resistance. The Armor would have it's own set of stats as well as a special set up of "accessory" slots, with a potential slot for Head, Arm, Body and Extra, which would change per piece. Now you could easily make due with one single armor, but to be the most effective you would want different elemental resistance armors for different situations. Seeing as in one battle you could have fire based monsters one moment and ice based monsters the next, you would have to switch on the fly to have the best defense against these things as you could. Or if you wanted a piece that could offer better defense and evasion, you could equip the armor that had slots for Body and Extra, which you could link more Defense and Regen boosts too. If you wanted better offense, you'd get an armor with an Arm slot, which could be used to increase Att/Acc and the like.

But in FFXIV, they could have a similar system, where (non-visible) Armor had specific stats and slots and you could could customize the slots to your liking while being able to change the (non-visible) Armor on the fly at the press of a button. A system like this wouldn't suffer from inventory issues, as stats attached to slots wouldn't take up space, nor would you have to deal with the graphical disparity as you wouldn't change your character's outward appearance. So it would still allow for a great amount of min/maxing, unique player builds and customization, while not having any of the outstanding downsides we experience in FFXI.

Relegating min/max'ing to non/barely visible pieces of gear sounds good, but I'm having trouble imagining what that would translate into. I know I'm walking the line between reality and fantasy, but, while rings seem like something you can take off and put on rather easily, earrings and necklaces are not. They're all claspy and hard to manipulate with my large piano-hands.

Again, I come back to sockets. Apart from simply having switchable socket sets, with gems or what-have-you being earned like gear, perhaps putting a limit to how many sockets you can have available, while offering a player an abundance of sockets in their gear, players could activate certian sockets at certain times on the fly to accomplish their min/max'ing. Perchance, said limitations could be increased through upgrades. Permaybe, there's a simpler way.

I didn't know permaybe was actually a real word until I just typed it and Firefox didn't red-flag it for me.

[Ziero]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

In the end it's the same concept with a slight variation in terms really. We both think switching between pre-set custom made slots would be a good way to work "gear swapping" into the game with fewer negative effects. In fact it seems that the only real complaints against gear swapping are 1) character blinking 2) inventory restrictions and 3) it's not realisticish...

Now I can see 1 and 2 as problems myself, and 3 is dubious at best, but a system can be added that works around all three of those problems with little resistance.

[Armando]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

Who says it has to involve the graphically jarring cons at all in any way shape or form? We don't see any blinking or graphic changes in FFXI when we swap out accessories, why would we see them in FFXIV

Oh, the problems are far, far more severe than graphical. I just like to point them out because it really does look stupid in FFXI. But the system also allows players to maximize the potential of EVERY action, which in turn: causes players to strive towards the same sets of gear; lowers the potential for customization since there are no trade-offs; creates a dependence on macros to perform each and every action, degrading the worth of other input methods. Macros should be a collection of handy shortcuts or a way of automating a set of tasks, not the only de facto way to input commands.

While a good concept, there is a glaring problem. How does these specialized boosts come into play for defensive actions? Should they always be active, allowing you to have the perfect blend of offense and defense on at all times? Or would you have to actively select your defensive stat boosts, using up precious time that you're taking damage? It's this reason that I would prefer a system that actively lets you work in the gear you need for when you need it. And it does so by changing a limited amount of items, so there is no "conceptual stupidity" of changing 10-16 pieces of armor. But rather one or two preset, customed pieces. Though your idea isn't totally terrible at all, and would work great for active abilities and such. But to me, for reactive situations, it seems a bit restrictive.

Define "defensive abilities."

Also, in my opinion, being able to change gears from offense to a magic resistance set IS the perfect blend of offense and defense. You can have the magic defense you need strictly when you need it and have the stats you really want the rest of the time without any sort of sacrifice or trade-off. It's the equivalent of a console RPG letting me equip an accessory that lets me Counter attacks, but lets me switch to an accessory that greatly increases Magic Defense just before a spell hits.

I would like to see Dak's socket-and-marble system implemented. Keep the handy stats on the armor, and relegate all the situational stats (ELEMENTAL RESISTANCE I'M LOOKING AT YOU) to the stat boost marbles. Change the marbles as needed for your encounter, without having to use an entirely different set of armor just to get a situational stat boost.

EDIT:

In the end it's the same concept with a slight variation in terms really. We both think switching between pre-set custom made slots would be a good way to work "gear swapping" into the game with fewer negative effects. In fact it seems that the only real complaints against gear swapping are 1) character blinking 2) inventory restrictions and 3) it's not realisticish...

You missed the biggest one. Your min/maxing should be automated. Gear switching fails at this. It forces the player to use macros for everything, like I said above, as well as give constant maintenance to those macros as gear changes or you want your "default" set to be something else in that fight.

[Ziero]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

Oh, the problems are far, far more severe than graphical. I just like to point them out because it really does look stupid in FFXI. But the system also allows players to maximize the potential of EVERY action, which in turn: causes players to strive towards the same sets of gear; lowers the potential for customization since there are no trade-offs; creates a dependence on macros to perform each and every action, degrading the worth of other input methods. Macros should be a collection of handy shortcuts or a way of automating a set of tasks, not the only de facto way to input commands.Define "defensive abilities."

People are always going to strive to create similar builds, even in games where there is no swapping and one item is always better then the next for something. But even in FFXI people debate what is best, and we end up seeing similar, yet varied builds for different players in the same situations. The whole point of Min/Maxing is to come out with the best set up for a particular situation, and allowing players some freedom with this choice while limiting it compared to what they had in FFXI would be the best way to work it into a new MMO. By giving players limited amount of swappable, customizable gear, combined with the potential of having numerous different builds and styles work equally effectively in specific situations, FFXIV can be a much better game with it's included gear swaps.

And by "defensive abilities", or rather "reactive situations", I mean situations where you're fighting a mob one moment, but are attacked by another, or pull hate youself so you're the target. Or as you suggested, throwing on magic resistant gear when being hit by a big spell. Which while in FFXI could be a split second, we don't know how it'll work in FFXIV.

And why are macros the only way to control switching gear? In SWG you could link clothes to your action bar just like weapons and abilities, press 5 and you're wearing your coat, press 3 and you pull out your Blaster Rifle. PSU had an entire combat system built around switching your weapons. One second you'd be swinging a massive fire sword at a pack of small ice mobs and the next you could whip out a thunder spear to stab at the giant rock monster. You can't judge whether or not a new idea for FFXIV can work based on FFXI's content and interface alone because we don't know how effective the new interface will be yet. For all we know, in FFXIV you'll be able to carry multiple weapons and swap them around like you were playing an FPS or something. Press up to pull out your axe, press right to swap to sword/board etc.

Also, in my opinion, being able to change gears from offense to a magic resistance set IS the perfect blend of offense and defense. You can have the magic defense you need strictly when you need it and have the stats you really want the rest of the time without any sort of sacrifice or trade-off. It's the equivalent of a console RPG letting me equip an accessory that lets me Counter attacks, but lets me switch to an accessory that greatly increases Magic Defense just before a spell hits.

Except when you have your magic defense gear equipped, you're giving up the damage capabilities you were doing by having less offensive stats on your gear. Although, for all we know, we could see similar situations to that like Piestes or the past Beastmen Kings where they have perpetual auras that damage/debilitate players as they try to attack. If that's the case, throwing on resistance gear while trying to DD would save your life but lower your damage output, hence the balance. If attacks and spells could have persistent, lasting effects, it would open up a whole new style of play and create a completely new reason to select your gear.

EDIT:You missed the biggest one. Your min/maxing should be automated. Gear switching fails at this. It forces the player to use macros for everything, like I said above, as well as give constant maintenance to those macros as gear changes or you want your "default" set to be something else in that fight.

I didn't miss anything because gear swapping should be something that players have to actively participate in. They should have to choose what they wear when they do something instead of letting the computer do all the work.

[Kailea]

Re: The *ahem* OFFICIAL "FINAL FANTASY XIV Online" Thread of Ultimate Anticipation!

my god.... if they combined FFXI and Phantasy Star Universe's battle system (one better made of course) I think I would die with excitement ;p