Gearswapping Gearswapping in " Final Fantasy XI " is a player term that specifically refers to changing one ' s Equipment for the current situation , even while in battle . " Final Fantasy XI " is unusual in that outside of PvP , the game does not deliberately penalize changing armor while in combat ( although changing weapon does incur the loss of all TP ) . As a result , competent players will build up numerous sets of equipment and develop macros to change between them in a second . Annoyingly , whenever a player changes visible equipment , they become invisible for a brief moment , and other players lose target on them . ( This also interrupts movement . ) This unwanted " blinking " effect is the reason that there is a penalty in PvP for changing equipment . The development team has repeatedly asserted that fixing this is impossible , although there is a third party tool to do it . Common equipment sets . For mage jobs . A good mage will have more sets than this - - one for every important spell that they cast , in fact . A competent mage will specifically swap their Staff , usually to an appropriate elemental stave that matches the spell . Impact on the game . It is a safe bet that without rampant gearswapping , " Final Fantasy XI " would have sunk into decay a very long time ago . The fact that to play at peak ability , a player needs to have dozens and dozens of pieces of equipment keeps players busy long after other MMORPG s would have run out of things for them to do . This also helped keep old content still relevant , and thus meant that groups could still do it for years after its release . Even players who obtained everything they want for one job could just Job Change and start building their equipment and abilities all over again on a new job . The fact that it was possible to find groups to do older content helped casual players stay in the game instead of quitting because they couldn ' t find a group ( or quit because the goal they were working towards had been made obsolete ) . This was a unique source of strength for " Final Fantasy XI " that kept it relevant even a decade after its original release . ( However , Akihiko Matsui has expressed a desire to move to a more conventional World of Warcraft - like model . ) The need to hoard dozens of pieces of gear per job , combined with the need to maintain backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 2 client , also means that players ' inventories are constantly bursting at the seams , and there is never enough room for everything that a player might want to bring with them or pick up along the way . This impacts the in - game economy as players are more likely to throw away Synthesis materials and other item drops they don ' t really care about . However , some players are bored with the endless ' sidegrades ' and want new equipment that will completely obsolete ( and thus let them throw away ) old gear . They don ' t want content they ' ve already done enough to get sick of to stay viable , and wish it would go away so other people wouldn ' t do it . There is also a small but vocal faction that insists that gearswapping is somehow " cheating " , and while it is true that to gearswap to peak impact requires third party tools , a great many players are content to rely upon the game ' s built - in macro system .