Final Fantasy 14 has become just as much of a social chatroom as it has an MMO. You’d be hard-pressed to find a veteran Warrior of Light who hasn’t spent copious amounts of time rummaging through their glamour dresser or paying regular visits to the aesthetician for a new hairstyle in order to perfectly present their ideal image as they idle in Limsa Lominsa or run around the expansion’s latest player hub.
That playstyle has led to an increasing demand for more flexibility and freedom in the way players can present their characters over the years which, for a long time, was met with a fair bit of resistance from director and producer Naoki Yoshida. Requests to unshackle gear from job or role-based restrictions were long declined, with Yoshida once saying that “it would feel awkward if a Black Mage jumped into an instanced dungeon with full plate armour.”
That argument very much lost its juice as Final Fantasy 14 started adding in more gear that wasn’t particularly befitting of any job or role—hell, the game literally added a full plate armour set for all classes before Yoshida ever made the above comment.
At the end of last year, however, Yoshida relented. Patch 7.4 finally let us mix-and-match gear from all jobs, which made me inconsolably happy, as someone who’s always felt as though Dancer’s aesthetic was far more suited to Scouting gear than the Aiming gear it’s assigned to.