Final Fantasy: Full Weapons and Armor set or Weapon/Accessory combination?

[Lamia]

Which system do you prefer? One where you get to outfit your characters in a full set of armor (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, IX, XII) or where it is limited to weapons and accessories but comes with an upgrade/customization system (VII, VIII, X, and XIII)?

Personally I prefer the old school system that made a return in IX and XII. You could mix and match armor set pieces to customize the stat bonuses on your characters. I thought it was especially well done in XII--where you have a choice of a wide array of weapons, armor, and accessories that all have their own properties, disadvantages/advantages. For instance, katanas were good for characters with a high magic stat because their attack power is based off magic instead of strength.

The other system has seen a variety of customization systems with X probably being the most notable. So, I can see why people would like to just have the selection of weapons and armor to be narrower yet provide a customization system instead of variety.

[Necronopticous]

Full set, no contest. One of my biggest gripes with some of the later games of the series.

[ShinGundam]

Of course, accessory + customization.I will take passive abilities(AUTO-HASTE<3) over Bonus stat, any day.

[VeloZer0]

I don't really mind as long as there is a lot of depth in character set up. So if you give me three pieces of equipment and a whole boat load of materia it is better than four pieces of equipment and two relics. Sometimes itemization is done well where you actually have to pick and chose gear for the builds you want, but often times it is just every piece is better than every other piece that came before it.

The only downside is that it kind of eliminates the amount of loot that they can doll out through chests and the like. Finding stuff I can really use is one of the hallmarks of an RPG Square-Enix, remember this!

[Mirage]

It doesn't have to be specifically Main hand Off hand Head Hands Body Feet Accessory slots, but I definitely prefer more than just weapon + one or two more slots. For all I care though, it could be main hand, sub hand, armor, ring, earring, belt, necklace. Of course, I'm also used to having 16 equipment slots, due to being a FF11 player.

There we have the following:

Main hand, Off hand, Ranged weapon, Ammo
Head, Neck, Earring 1, Earring 2
Body, Hands, Ring 1, Ring 2
Back, Waist, Legs, Feet

[chionos]

I would be perfectly happy if every FF used the same system as FFXI. It reminds me of D&D. I also like to see the equipment that I put on have a visual affect on my character. It's really annoying to run around as Vaan half naked when he's supposed to be wearing Plate armor (or w/e).

[Mirage]

The problem with that is then it transitions to prerendered video. It looks odd if you enter a town in full hardcore giant armor and pauldrons with 2 feet long spikes, and then get a CS with like a leather vest. and shorts and that's it.

[Lamia]

The problem with that is then it transitions to prerendered video. It looks odd if you enter a town in full hardcore giant armor and pauldrons with 2 feet long spikes, and then get a CS with like a leather vest. and shorts and that's it.

That's true but graphics are getting good enough that prerendered video can be replaced by respectable in game cutscenes. In fact, they decided to do all or mostly in game cutscenes in XIII-2 and it saved a lot of disk space. I suppose this same decision could be made for a Final Fantasy that shows armor, weapons, and accessories on a character.

Although the armor would have to be pretty dang awesome looking...

[VeloZer0]

What I don't really like about showing the armor is that it quickly becomes miss-matched and/or doesn't co-exist well with the characters art style. I don't want all my characters equipped with the same stuff to look the same, I want them to be all distinct. Ideally this would mean the same armor has a different (but similarly styled) model for each character, but I am somewhat realistic about the amount of work that would take.

[Mirage]

The problem with that is then it transitions to prerendered video. It looks odd if you enter a town in full hardcore giant armor and pauldrons with 2 feet long spikes, and then get a CS with like a leather vest. and shorts and that's it.

That's true but graphics are getting good enough that prerendered video can be replaced by respectable in game cutscenes. In fact, they decided to do all or mostly in game cutscenes in XIII-2 and it saved a lot of disk space. I suppose this same decision could be made for a Final Fantasy that shows armor, weapons, and accessories on a character.

Although the armor would have to be pretty dang awesome looking...

Sometimes, prerendered videos are used not just because the developers want to make prettier visuals, but to hide loading times. For example in FF13, there are many instances of prerendered videos that looked *exactly* like the ingame realtime rendering, but while this video was playing, the game was secretly loading the graphics for the next part of the game. If anything, i would think they'd need to do it the FF7/8 way, where there was a prerendered background movie, with the actual 3D character models put on top of that. I'm not sure how accurate they could make that look. I know FF7 and FF8 had a few instances where the characters were moving slightly out of sync with the moving background, but the tech might be good enough to make that a non-issue now.

[VeloZer0]

I always thought the FMVs that you could move around in were cool.

[Mirage]

They were, but are ultimately not as special anymore when the consoles can render moving scenes in real time instead.

[Bolivar]

^ But that makes them special to me, in that Square was doing in the late 90's what every AAA developer wishes they could do now.

I don't have a problem with some of the later FFs nixing the full armor sets, but I definitely prefer it. I love how IX and XII have them, in addition to a customization system, and I might put gameplay of those titles over the later of the FFs that don't have it. Love customization in those two.

As far as cutscenes, I definitely understand the difficulty and that's probably why most games with full armor sets don't change character appearance. But I think we're at an age where developer's can make it happen. White Knight Chronicles did, but that still had the problem of the armor sets looking the same. Again, I think they can put in the little extra effort and have one character's scale mail look different and individually personalized than another character wearing the same set.

[Del Murder]

Full set, no contest. One of my biggest gripes with some of the later games of the series.

Yep! It's just lazy!

[Bolivar]

Full set, no contest. One of my biggest gripes with some of the later games of the series.

Yep! It's just lazy!

Or better for balancing!