Instant Portraits - Annoying??

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Originally Posted by Astrus

The one thing that really irks me though is that I can't just have the "wrong" weapon on a shared plate any more.
For example sharing a tank glamour plate when one of the tank Jobs is still leveling.
In the past I could just glamour the other tanks' weapons once, then leave the leveling tank's weapon on the plate.
Now, every time I then switch to one of the other tanks the glamour is going to be fine because it just ignores the wrong weapon on the plate but the portrait will throw a fit about the gear not matching. Or at least it did when I was testing things out after the Beta of the system.
Having to go and add a weapon, save the plate, apply the plate, remove the weapon and finally save the plate again every time the only tank I'm still leveling at the time upgrades their weapon is annoying.

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Have you tried just directly glamouring the new weapon with the one saved to the portrait? Either carry it with you or do it directly from the dresser when required.

Sharing the plate shouldn't affect anything, because each gearset saves the portrait separately. And applying the "wrong tank's" glamour plate shouldn't break other ones, because a sword glamour isn't going to be applicable to an axe.

Do you have something in every slot of the glamour plate, including jewellery and hat?

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Originally Posted by Kemiko

I'd also like to add that a particular nuance the system has is its inability to handle multi-sectional glamour. That causes it to break instantly and the only fix is beyond silly.

For example: If I glamour a piece of gear over, say, BRD that covers the body, hands, legs and feet but I don't have a glamour piece consuming all those slots on, say, MCH, if I ever switch to MCH my BRD glamour will never work again until I remove the glamours physically from the hands, legs and feet. Period. It just will always and forever break the portrait.

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If I am understanding this correctly, you need to to utilize those slots with the glamour plates whether or not you want it to take on the same appearance or different if more than one job is using the same piece of gear and save it to a gear set. What you're doing now will work as far as changing jobs, but the portrait will break anytime you change jobs because the system cannot recognize your intended shortcut with the glamour system. It is technically changing the appearance because you have not specified anything for the slots in question with your glamour plate(s).

My healers are the biggest example of how I handle this because I play all four of them, and each of them use the same gear with the exception of their weapons, and all four of them have completely different glamours set to most of the slots. I think maybe ear and neck might be the exception to this, which brings me to my next point. In order for portraits to not break if you do not specify a piece of gear for a particular slot, none of the jobs using that same piece of gear can have it specified. It must be blank for all of them, or the portrait will break.

I've stopped using it. Its not really a portrait if it has to be updated all the time. Imagine if our drivers license photo had to be updated every time we changed our clothes, or got a hair cut? How annoying would that be?

I mostly keep Glamour Plates with all slots filled (those slots that do not need any glamour would be filled with Emperor's New Gear) and I link them to the gear set I have for each class. Every time I get an upgrade in gear, I only have to equip the new piece, update the set and, by "equipping" the set again, the glamour would reapply on all slots, keeping the portrait up without needing to update it manually.

Only thing where it doesn't fully work is for pieces that occupy several slot (like the Toad suit) but I found a way around which is having the hidden pieces to be glammed with a different compatible glamour set (for example, I use the Toad Suit for my Warrior glam but the gloves, pants and boots, which are hidden are saved with my PLD glamour appearance. That way, to avoid getting the reset, I just swap to PLD, applying the glamour on those pieces, then to WAR, which gets the end result the portrait wants.

Since I keep 2 hotbars visible to use for jobs swaps and the glamour plate menu button, it got less bothersome for me.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Have you tried just directly glamouring the new weapon with the one saved to the portrait? Either carry it with you or do it directly from the dresser when required.

Sharing the plate shouldn't affect anything, because each gearset saves the portrait separately. And applying the "wrong tank's" glamour plate shouldn't break other ones, because a sword glamour isn't going to be applicable to an axe.

Do you have something in every slot of the glamour plate, including jewellery and hat?

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I'm not able to log into the game to test this right now but back when I tried after the system left its Beta the issue seemed to be that the portraits thought an invalid piece on the plate meant that that slot was using the unglamoured default appearance of the item. So it would work if I was using an actually unglamoured weapon but would break the moment I tried to use a weapon with an applied glamour if the weapon on the glamour plate was incompatible with the Job.

They might have changed this since, I'll try again when I get a chance to log in in a couple of days.
Also, yes all the main slots on the plate are filled to avoid "invisible" pieces like armbands breaking things, except the offhand slot since only PLD uses that.

Applying the glamour directly from the dresser without using a plate is a feature I was not aware of, that's going to save me time in either case.

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Originally Posted by Astrus

I'm not able to log into the game to test this right now but back when I tried after the system left its Beta the issue seemed to be that the portraits thought an invalid piece on the plate meant that that slot was using the unglamoured default appearance of the item. So it would work if I was using an actually unglamoured weapon but would break the moment I tried to use a weapon with an applied glamour if the weapon on the glamour plate was incompatible with the Job.

They might have changed this since, I'll try again when I get a chance to log in in a couple of days.
Also, yes all the main slots on the plate are filled to avoid "invisible" pieces like armbands breaking things, except the offhand slot since only PLD uses that.

Applying the glamour directly from the dresser without using a plate is a feature I was not aware of, that's going to save me time in either case.

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There is no reason I can think of to use glamour plates to glamour weapons. The glamour plate system is essentially used to glamour multiple appearances on the same piece of gear. This was basically the response to being unable to choose multiple glamours if multiple jobs were using the same piece of gear with the previous glamour system. Because weapons are unique to each job and cannot be used by any other class/job, there is no reason to use glamour plates to glamour a weapon. Just use the old system and save the gear set. It should work fine after that.

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Originally Posted by WindyGamer

Anybody else annoyed by the Instant Portrait function? It requires an edit every time you change your gear in any way? For each Job? How about it just auto-clicks edit and Save, so you get face camera / sparkles and the correct border without doing that each time you change a ring or something? How about that?

With 15 jobs, isn't it a bit much to have this thing needing edits all the time?

Whatever

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I haven't a clue as to what the "Instant Portrait function" even is or does.
So no, it doesn't annoy me because I never noticed it in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Merryl

Imagine if our drivers license photo had to be updated every time we changed our clothes, or got a hair cut? How annoying would that be?

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The irony being that if you are using your driver's license photo as your portrait in game (i.e., you never bothered to set a portrait, ever), then it updates automatically! No pain. No annoyance. :p

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Originally Posted by Doozer

I've never understood why other people seem to struggle with such a basic system. The only way I end up with a broken portrait is if I, for example, get new gear for BRD and then later on quickly update my gear for DNC and then queue for something without checking it. The system isn't broken, you're just lazy with no problem solving skills.

Here's a tip, though: If your portrait says it's fine but you know it isn't (i.e. you just changed something) or want to be certain, use visor or show/hide hat, update it, then revert the change if you wanted it a specific way. Then you're fine. It's not that hard. If doing that is Too Annoying then I truly don't know how you ever survive doing anything that has more than one step. If that's too hard, just don't bother with it then. Leave it default. No one else cares.

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More than 1 step ? I have to argue XD.
The system isn't broken, but it isn't efficient and nor is it informative.
1. Replace gear (meld as well, because I feel like it does -_-)
2. Save gear
3. Update portrait

Now, you can forget to do step 2 and still do step 3.

If this happens, it'll revert the portrait to default and you won't notice until you enter an instance. Then you must wait until you're out of the instance to go back and do step 2 and then step 3 again. IF you remember after a 20-30m instance. Which I often don't until half a day to sometime much later.

So now, that's 5 steps because we messed up.

I've even made sure everything is done in the correct order, save it, and somehow it still doesn't save. This has happened to me several times but in more recent updates of the system, it's become a rarer occurrence thankfully.

The system shouldn't rely on the player knowing when their gear has changed IMO. Automation is lazy, but often simpler and more efficient. Relying on the player ? Nah xD.
It's one thing to be fiddling with the instant portrait itself, it's another to just be on the go and equipping an earring or pressing the 'equip best items' and it just so happens the best items have changed unbeknownst to the player. Another scenario I've come upon is that if I glamor for a multiple use item like aiming gear, then I have to go through each job and do the above steps for each. In addition, considering just how messy the entire inventory/gearsets/how many jobs there are in the first place, the system shouldn't rely on the player knowing when it's the system itself that knows that gear has changed.

If the system knows gear has changed (we know it knows because it defaults upon instance), then why can it not update itself automatically upon a player's change of equip ?
There is no reason for it not to as the instant portrait will always default when there is a change in gear and it cannot be otherwise (correct me if I'm wrong).
My theory is that the instant portrait system only checks and notifies the portraits outwards display when it is being displayed in an instance rather than at the time of the player equipping a new gear/saving a new gear.

It's not too hard, it's just a system that is not user friendly nor automated when it should be.

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Originally Posted by VirusOnline

Snip.

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Melding doesn't cause reset nor changing equipment, so long the appearance is exactly the same you had when the portrait was saved. And when I say exactly, I mean the portraits takes every slot into account, even if it can't be seen or you haven't cast glamour on it. So, if you didn't bother with rings (because, most of the time, they aren't seen anways, to be honest), when you save portrait, the portrait will assume whatever ring appearance you have is part of the glamour and, if you change the rings in any way, even if it's exchanging the slots of the ones you have on, the portrait will take that into consideration and reset. The quickest fix to a lot of breaking portraits is pretty much to fill in every slot of the glamour plate and save that. Plus, the portraits also signal when the set they're linked to is, in turn, linked to a glamour plate and which glamour plate they're linked too.