Glamours made easy - announcement

One thing to realize with FFXIV is that the JP player base will have their feedback heard loud and clear, while those of us in other regions need to go through a few translators to get passed on to the correct people. It's often misunderstood as a result. While JP players do have similar thoughts to us, they often have different ideas take off among that community. (IE, vet awards changed mostly from JP players hating the old system.)

Lords or Verminion was a result of a most of us English speaking players not getting the reference to the Lords of Vermilion game, which is closer to the actual minigame we got. We got hung up on the idea of it being a Pokémon-like, and no one from SE realized how widespread the misinformation was and corrected the fanbase.

But, glamour plates are likely a happy medium.I understand that this will make it so you can both keep job glamours seperate, and that covers the largest, most specific complaint our current system has.

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Originally Posted by Balipu

Well as far as I know everything can be glamoured. Aren't they?

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As far as I know, things that can be stored in the armoire, can't be put in the glamour dresser. However, making a glamour plate allows players to use gear stored in the glamour dresser, as well as the armoire.

Or in Bongaboi's case, they could add the Cleric's set to the glamour dresser, but not the Healer's set.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I did not say that I wanted Pokemon..I said that people wanted to have a similiar system where they could fight against other people or NPCs using their minions. Yes there is a difference between the opinions of the players but I dont remember seeing anyone even requesting something complicated like LoV and seeing how it was nearly death on arrival this was not something that the majority of the playerbase wanted..

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Hindsight is 20/20. Under your refined definition they STILL technically fulfilled what was asked for. Bummer most people didn't like it. Apparently the FFXIV crowd is NOT also mostly into RTS. Finding out people don't like stuff shapes future updates, it cannot retroactively correct old ones.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

People also write for years that they dont really like doing Fates and yet instead of giving us something new they gave us Fates on a new place (Diadem) and used all the feedback to give us Diadem 2.0 which was even death faster..nobody asked for RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG so yes it seems that they did not listen there too.

I am not saying that they are doing this to anger us..I am just saying that they seemingly either get the wrong feedback back or read the data in a wrong way. For example people are doing fates because its one of the few ways to level up yet a lot of people complain about it because its not fun. Yet they only take the numbers of people doing fates and somehow read it as people like doing them.

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"a lot of people". On the forums. Usually with poorly thought out arguments like "I don't like it so it shouldn't be in the game". We here in the forums are a very vocal minority. Hard numbers like how many people do fates, how many get done a day and which types of fates get done make a convincing argument to put those in new content, I'm glad you understand what their logic train might have been. People have also asked for MORE fates, or to "fix" fates to make them solo-able more often. "They didn't listen to us is very subjective to your perspective. If you were arguing for these things, you'd feel different. I , personally , haven't seen a post that says "I know a lot of fates get done, but that's because it's the only leveling option that's feasible.". What I did see was "GIVE ME MORE STUFF TO DO , WE'RE IN A DROUGHT, IF IT'S GOING TO BE SO SLOW I WANT MY MONEY BACK OR IT SHOULD GO FTP. " This is all very much NOT common consensus but they are loud voices on the forums.

.. all in all you have a reasonable perspective on HOW things get implemented, agreed, but blaming them for following metrics and implementing based on those metrics is going to make you unhappy very often. What else do companies present to their investors and business advisors when making a case to allocate resources for projects?

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Also the problem I (and probably others) see with this dresser is that they dont have a good track record of these things in the past. We cant say for sure that they will increase the limit because they promised an increase with apartments and never did it..we also know how long it took them to change anything with housing (if they even change that) so who can say if they will ever introduce a better system than that? In the end this is just another retainer with an limit. A bandaid on the real situation..and over the years I lost my trust in them so I dont remain optimistic that we will get something great and long lasting in the future..maybe they will surprise me but I remain skeptic..

And we already do know how much of it function so we already can give our feedback to it and should be allowed to post about this in the forum. And if a lot of people say that they dont like it then maybe its not that great. And maybe we are just getting tired of bandaids that dont solve the problem on the long run.

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They've added more wards (with more apartments!) , and a new area which had apartments. If you're referring to needing more apartments PER ward, we may see that once they feel they cannot add any more wards comfortably, though I have hopes for more housing reform first since they seem to be realizing how important it is to us and how restricted the system is (adding more wards and changing the way that housing is sold is coming and I'm betting WASN'T on the agenda until the mess that was kugane release caused).
The fact you're saying "this is just another retainer" gives the impression you see a new systems similarities to an old system and immediately lump it together. This is more like a bit of the Armoire, with a dash of the glamour system from Squadrons and a new system for smushing several gear set models into ONE that doesn't take up player inventory.

The reason I even respond to this kind of complaint post is I see the attempt being made to give us something that could be great, COULD solve a lot of peoples issues and the forums respond: THAT'S NOT ENOUGH, IT'S STUPID. DO SOMETHING ELSE. before even touching it.

Sure we could use more plates, not even gonna argue that. Sure I could use more inventory alleviation , I already pay for extra retainers and free inventory expansion will ALWAYS be welcome because people are packrats. But expecting every new implementation to solve ALL THE PROBLEMS AT ONCE is a pretty small mark to hit and I've never seen a company do it on the first try.

things we do know:
200 pieces of gear can be converted.
10 Ensembles can be made,
you HAVE to go to an inn for now to make these sets but they can be applied in any non-combat area.
Converting items to the dressers inventory requires a prism per item , but types of prism have been removed. All are just Prisms now.
Applying a Ensemble costs nothing and can be done infinite times.
dye is saved PER ensemble (I did a little research and yes. .per ensemble. Dye it once, apply it forever)


problems I see so far:
200 pieces is low for some people, the same with 10 Ensembles..

that's it.

These are changeable things, this is a workable system that can be built upon.

I'm not saying you CAN'T post on the forum, I hope you don't think I'm trying to limit you, cause really, I'm just another player with an opinion that's likely to be as wrong as anyone else. I would like rational discussion of known issues though. Rejecting something we only have a smattering of knowledge on without trying it is pretty aggravating to me. Just because it doesn't solve all your criteria at once, doesn't mean it can't eventually and should be outright rejected before it's seen and experienced.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Plates are independent from stats, though. If someone wants their RDM and SMN to look different, who are you to say they don't need that?

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Why are people not understanding this?
BLM gear it up with gear that has spell speed on it
SMN/RDM gear this that has DET/CRIT/DH on it
It is 2 different gear sets, has nothing to do with the plates, so when you do this you only NEED ONE PLATE, not TWO, since RDM and SMN has the same gear.

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Originally Posted by Vstarstruck

Why are people not understanding this?
BLM gear it up with gear that has spell speed on it
SMN/RDM gear this that has DET/CRIT/DH o n it
It is 2 different ear sets, has nothing to do with the plates, so when you do this you only NEED ONE PLATE, not TWO, since RDM and SMN has the same gear.

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So you are telling me that blm share no gear at all with rdm/smn?

You could have worded it better too, because the way you presented it, the system relies on the stats on the gear for number of plates, rather than saying, "Since BLM uses different gear than SMN/RDM, you only need 1 plate to have different glamours for the 3 jobs, to have a different appearance for SMN/RDM. No Plate is needed for BLM".

Makes a lot more sense than what you said.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

So you are telling me that blm share no gear at all with rdm/smn?

You could have worded it better too, because the way you presented it, the system relies on the stats on the gear for number of plates, rather than saying, "Since BLM uses different gear than SMN/RDM, you only need 1 plate to have different glamours for the 3 jobs, to have a different appearance for SMN/RDM. No Plate is needed for BLM".

Makes a lot more sense than what you said.

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Explain how I need to word it better, because to me it is the fault of the reader from reading too fast and assuming. If you tried to explain it here, it is not enough detail for me to understand. Honestly what you said is more confusing to me because I explained why you would have different sets as a BLM then SMN/RDM.

Yeah uhhh, I am definitely not sold on equipment used as glamours being taken out of your usable inventory. I *use* a lot of the stuff that I currently glamour.

They're definitely going to need to rethink that part, assuming that is how it seems to be described.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Yeah uhhh, I am definitely not sold on equipment used as glamours being taken out of your usable inventory. I *use* a lot of the stuff that I currently glamour.

They're definitely going to need to rethink that part, assuming that is how it seems to be described.

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You can still glamour the old way, so keep those pieces out of the dresser

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Originally Posted by Balipu

Well thanks for the info. So you DO need more. Well that sucks. All I can say is that most of the systems start small before blooming into more interesting things. Like the Gold Saucer the company workshops, the squadrons and Palace of the Dead. Hell even treasure hunts.

Listen. I also have things I want from the game. Like races that look less human than the ones we have. Or a far east inspired healer class. Or a fourth mundra. Or intances where we actually see a character bound and gagged and it's not just the tooltip telling us that there are unrendered things on the character models. But I know they will not happen because 1) It can't happen because of budget or the engine. 2) The majority of the community probably does not share my views.

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Gold saucer mostly just get new additions while the old ones are barely touched anymore. No new places to race your chocobo for example. Palace of the death still does not have an increase and company workshop will just get the submarine that is Airship 2.0. Housing is a problem for a long time and yet they only react right now (and we dont even know if this will be a good reaction) after the forum exploded in rage. Apartments were meant to be at least some solution to the housing problem and they promised to increase it if they are full and we still did not get that. So no I dont really have much faith left in them. (Its not just the glamour that is creating my negative mood towards them..all the greedy descisions lately are not sitting well with me..like making something single character only..)

Also Glamour is not the only change that I want in this game but imo a glamour log would have given the game more live. People could run old content for glamour and this would have increased the play time. Now for quite some people we just get 200 more slots to place our glamour in. In a game with such a huge amount of glamour options. Its better than nothing but I honestly grow tired of having to be fine with a bandaid. I just dont trust them to create a better system after they put their work in this. And even if they increase the limit in 5.0 to 400 it would still not be enough because then we would have another huge amount of glamour with the expansion.

I would be fine if they said that they need the time till 5.0 to create a true and unlimited glamour log..I am not fine with this system. I mean they gave us just the half of the inventory increase at the start of SB because they feared what it would do to the system if we got the whole increase..yet till now we did not get the other half so for me the chocobo saddles are nice but in the end are just the rest of the promised inventory space.

Honestly if not much changes in 5.0 I will probably stop playing this game (which would be sad because I do like it) because for me glamour is one of the biggest reason to even run battle content..without a true glamour log I either have to buy even more retainers or throw old stuff away (or not gain new things). So a big part of the game would be unplayable for me so why still pay for it? (And glamour is not the only part that annoys me but the biggest one...that they could change for the better with a true log)

I am not alone with this. I have a friend that loves FF. They buy a lot of the FF merchandise and they own all possible retainers in this game...he is getting more and more frustated with it because he loves collection glamour and he simply does not have the space to store them. A few more negative things and I am not sure if he just will stop playing it.

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@Krotoan: They had much more aparments planned when they talked about it but only released like half of the amount..yet promised that they would increase the numbers if they are full. Quite some bigger servers were sold out quite fast..yet we never saw an increase in the old apartments.

The forum might be the minority but seemingly the housing release of Shirogane was such a huge rage that they finally choose to do something about it. (And said that they were surprised that this happened...like seriously? How can you be surprised?)

Not all people are just posting: GIMME MORE without any reasons. I have posted more than once about the housing problem with solutions and we have posted more than once that we want features in a certain way. Comparing features to other games is quite a big hint how the writer wants it.

I compare it with a retainer because next to the ensembles it just simply that. You get 200 more slots to put an glamour item into this. Just like an retainer you need to go there to get the stuff. The only change is that you can now create ensembles for different jobs which might be a nice change but also nothing more than that. Lets look at Rifts glamour system: When I get loot I can already see if I owned it once or not and if I dont need it as gear I can throw it away because it will be registered in their glamour log without the need to put the item somewhere. Now they have ensembles too which you can change everywhere. Also if you get a new piece of gear your glamour will not change because glamour and gear are different slots. If you want to change your glamour you just click on the ensemble you want or you just click on the glamour slot and then you can click on any item you ever got. No matter which job it was. With one click you have the new glamour on. You get achievements for owning whole sets, you can change with a click and everywhere you want, you will not lose the gear if you put it in there but you also dont need to keep it because its automatically there and you can see what is still missing. Yes the glamour items are way less in Rift than in FF14 but its also a F2P game.

Its just a shame (imo) that a game that uses so much glamour still is way inferior to a game that does not even focus on glamour..and instead of just doing it right and create a system that is unlimited they go the complicated route with a system that they need to constantly touch if they change it...and that limits the user in such a way. I am fine if we can only access the glamour log in certain places if its at least a true glamour log..If they do decide to create a true log then that just means that they threw away all the time and budget on that dresser system because with a good log we would not need that anymore..so sadly the only thing that I can see with that is an increase of ensembles and the limit..and who knows how often they will increase that..

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

You can still glamour the old way, so keep those pieces out of the dresser

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THIS.

The whole point of the glamour dresser is to not force you to drag along items that you only need for their looks. It is not a replacement of the old system. It is there to complement it.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Not all people are just posting: GIMME MORE without any reasons. I have posted more than once about the housing problem with solutions and we have posted more than once that we want features in a certain way. Comparing features to other games is quite a big hint how the writer wants it.

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Do you understand that your exact particular method of "glamor log" may not be possible using this engine and server system?

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Do you understand that your exact particular method of "glamor log" may not be possible using this engine and server system?

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Yes might be, does not mean that I am going to be happy with a simple bandaid to this problem. I mean I just cant see them raising this limit all the time so this dresser will not change the glamour situation much. And honestly if their system cant handle a list with Yes/No questions than I do wonder how this game will do in the future.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Yes might be, does not mean that I am going to be happy with a simple bandaid to this problem. I mean I just cant see them raising this limit all the time so this dresser will not change the glamour situation much. And honestly if their system cant handle a list with Yes/No questions than I do wonder how this game will do in the future.

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so.. if you had a system with 700 slots for gear and 2 plates for EVERY SINGLE JOB possible (32 plates) .. still no go? Unlimited or nothing?
Concern over the future of a game built on cobbled together technology and poorly designed netcode is valid, but unless you know more of the programming than I do (are you a former dev?) , how are you so sure that it's just a "yes/no" list using the current underlying systems?

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Do you understand that your exact particular method of "glamor log" may not be possible using this engine and server system?

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In fairness: It is somewhat hard to imagine how you can have a log of items from which you can craft, which can casually track whether you have crafted that item yet or not to give you a first time XP bonus at the end of the craft and check whether you have the materials for each item in your inventory before it allows you to craft and check whether the items in your inventory are HQ or not to give you a quality bonus for the craft and check whether you have access to the recipes (Quests, Master Books, etc) AND check whether you have the right class and correct items equipped (Like Ixal gloves) to craft all at the same time, but not a similar log of items which only tracks which items you can glamour or not based on X criterion (Like a logical OR condition between having it in your inventory and having it glam'd once via the system) and then allows you to glam them.

The prior log somehow holds 6255 items as of now and regularly gets added to.

I dunno. If engine and server constraints are an issue, you'd think the prior log would be considerably more problematic than the latter in just about every possible way.

I only play samurai and monk so this limited revision of the glamour system works pretty well for me as I only stick to 4-5 favorite outfits per class in other MMOs.

Of course it could always be better (GW2 and WoW's systems) and eventually improved....

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Originally Posted by Zojha

In fairness: It is somewhat hard to imagine how you can have a log of items from which you can craft,which can casually track whether you have crafted that item yet or not to give you a first time XP bonus at the end of the craft and check whether you have the materials for each item in your inventory before it allows you to craft and check whether the items in your inventory are HQ or not to give you a quality bonus for the craft and check whether you have access to the recipes (Quests, Master Books, etc) AND check whether you have the right class and correct items equipped (Like Ixal gloves) to craft all at the same time, but not a similar log of items which only tracks which items you can glamour or not based on X criterion (Like a logical OR condition between having it in your inventory and having it glam'd once via the system) and then allows you to glam them.

The prior log somehow holds 6255 items as of now and regularly gets added to.

I dunno. If engine and server constraints are an issue, you'd think the prior log would be considerably more problematic than the latter in just about every possible way.

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You'd think right? But are you aware of how both of those systems work on the back end? I'm not. sounds like you could be comparing apples to oranges and never know.

It's always interesting how many people think they know more than the people that are doing the job.

If we are able to "store" glamours as already dyed, I'm curious if we will be able to store multiples instances of the same gear with different colors. Would be nice option for the more expensive colors.

Oh, and I do hope that the "search for item" and /isearch functionality also checks the glamour collection, similar to how it searches through retainers.

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Originally Posted by DarkDedede

If we are able to "store" glamours as already dyed, I'm curious if we will be able to store multiples instances of the same gear with different colors. Would be nice option for the more expensive colors.

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/355921

Post in live letter thread says yes.

Wish they fixed these roadblocks for devs back when they were making 2.0. Something tells me we'll be dealing with these limitations for the rest of the game.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

You'd think right? But are you aware of how both of those systems work on the back end? I'm not. sounds like you could be comparing apples to oranges and never know.

It's always interesting how many people think they know more than the people that are doing the job.

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But it's a valid question at the same time. Exactly why is a glamour log not doable when the crafting log has over 6000 items in it and still going? Are we going to reach a point where the crafting log breaks because it's too large? People are naturally going to speculate.

Looking at it a bit on XIVDB, there are 1,289 body slot items, 1306 hats, 1076 hands, 1143 legs, 1110 shoes, 560 earrings, 603 rings, 540 necklaces. I don't think bracers or belts show up in glamour so I'm ignoring those. Then there's 206 Paladin weapons, plus all the other jobs, plus the crafters & gatherers. Add it all up and we're probably past 10,000 potentially glamourable items (I don't want to count them all out right now). Garland Tools tells me that around 200 new ones were added in 4.1. That gives us a rough idea of how fast a glamour log would have to grow.

Ballpark, it's twice the size of the crafting log, and growing faster. At an absolute minimum, storing only if you have the item unlocked or not would wind up taking up a bit under 2KB of memory, for every single person. That doesn't include dyes, and the current glamour system gets it's dye from the item you're projecting from. That's potentially where the problem is, since they'd have to rebuild how dye works with a glamour log (because the basic data structure doesn't have a place to store the dye information anymore). Since they also want to keep the old system in place, I imagine that's a fairly big deal to do, code wise.

By giving you a 200 item inventory that's only available in certain zones, they don't have to do anything with the dye system at all.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

You'd think right? But are you aware of how both of those systems work on the back end? I'm not.

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Well, for all I know, a money hungry executive threatened to fire the dev team if they didn't make the system limited to not endanger retainer revenue.

I have no idea. A lot of things are possible in the realm of "Maybe". Can you be sure that isn't the case? No you can't, you have no idea how their workplace and contracts look like. That's the joy of the argument. You can look at a different workplace or contract and think that assumption is unrealistic, just like I do when I look at a different log, but you cannot be sure. Even if a different person tells you how it is and delivers proof, he might be lying and using forged evidence. The only way to be sure is to check in person.
You can also assume that aliens took control of the devs and make all kinds of wild conspiracy theories that you have absolutely no proof of yourself, but as long as you leave no way to deliver proof of the opposite, you cannot be sure that isn't the case either.

Religion has thrived on that principle for a while now - This is faith you are talking about.
And your entire argument boils down to:"Have faith in the dev team!". Well some people are gonna have it, some people won't.

I personally don't have faith in a dev team that tells me that having barefeet models presents some kind of technical problem while a hobby modder can do it in their free time. I don't have faith in a dev team that can make storage "limitations" go away at the price of 2$ per month. I don't have faith in a dev team that tells me auto-demolition for housing is "a thing of the past" and then implements it. I don't have faith in a dev team that tunes Savage DPS requirements with the assumptions of zero Healer DPS and only aggro combo from tanks in mind, which are extremely far detached from reality. I don't have faith in a dev team that holds off a feature like Frontline Frontlancer for fear of "Moral Degradation". I don't have faith in a dev team that concludes that the increased PvP participation after 3.5 is due to the chat restriction in Feast and not because of the newly introduced Garo items and mounts. But that's just me. Not an exhaustive list either, but I think it gets the point across.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Well, for all I know, a money hungry executive threatened to fire the dev team if they didn't make the system limited to not endanger retainer revenue.

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that is how i feel, I really like to see more money put in the game

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Religion has thrived on that principle for a while now - This is faith you are talking about.
And your entire argument boils down to:"Have faith in the dev team!". Well some people are gonna have it, some people won't.

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The argument goes: Either the team is able, or it isn't able to do all the things you request. If they are , it will happen, if they arent (for any reason, aliens or otherwise) it will not. If they listen as little as you think, perhaps you should abandon this game. Because for hecks sake, nothing will ever get better and they will continue to destroy the game with poor decisions. Perhaps though.. if you HOPE that they'll change. You HOPE they'll start listening. HOPING that this iteration of solution is better isn't quite as foolish as you'd imply.

People are indeed free to present their own ideas on why or why not this is a good idea.But I don't see a reason to complain about a system we haven't touched yet. Feedback before actual experience is very likely to be even more ignored than usual.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

I personally don't have faith in a dev team that tells me that having barefeet models presents some kind of technical problem while a hobby modder can do it in their free time. I don't have faith in a dev team that can make storage "limitations" go away at the price of 2$ per month. I don't have faith in a dev team that tells me auto-demolition for housing is "a thing of the past" and then implements it. I don't have faith in a dev team that tunes Savage DPS requirements with the assumptions of zero Healer DPS and only aggro combo from tanks in mind, which are extremely far detached from reality. I don't have faith in a dev team that holds off a feature like Frontline Frontlancer for fear of "Moral Degradation". I don't have faith in a dev team that concludes that the increased PvP participation after 3.5 is due to the chat restriction in Feast and not because of the newly introduced Garo items and mounts. But that's just me. Not an exhaustive list either, but I think it gets the point across.

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All of these are from the point of view of a single person armed with personal experiences. I will not argue they aren't VALID.. but they're missing a lot of context. In my own head , and knowing what I've learned of the way the game world has played out, these all make sense. Not always in the players interest, but they make sense.

In the end we both have very different views on the people behind the game and the decisions being made.
You will never convince me that having optimism is a bad idea, and I cannot seem to convince you (and many others) that hostility towards something you want changed is a poor approach.

You are welcome to continue to try though.

Someday this game will cease to be worth the money and time I spend every month. This hasn't happened yet, but when it does I will leave with no venom, and no words on the forum. Until then I will post tolerance, even discussion and positivity.

Alright, I'm theory crafting here, but in regards to customization and inventory, I think SE has a strict data cap for each player character.

Dropping the PS3 increased the cap, and SE opted to use this to increase our on hand inventory.

My guess is the reason the vanity system works as it does is it doesn't add any extra data so much as changes a small bit of it.

So, you've equipped the Ala Mhigan Muffed Cap of Casting, no materia, appearance is the Muffed Cap of Casting, no dye.
You glamour it and it becomes an Ala Mhigan Muffed Cap of Casting, no materia, appearance is Rimless Glasses, silver dye.

The game isn't loading more data with that, so the client and server are happy. If so, it's possible SE built everything else with this character data cap in mind, thus making any increases to it about a thousand times more difficult to implement than just patching in a glamour log.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

In fairness: It is somewhat hard to imagine how you can have a log of items from which you can craft, which can casually track whether you have crafted that item yet or not to give you a first time XP bonus at the end of the craft and check whether you have the materials for each item in your inventory before it allows you to craft and check whether the items in your inventory are HQ or not to give you a quality bonus for the craft and check whether you have access to the recipes (Quests, Master Books, etc) AND check whether you have the right class and correct items equipped (Like Ixal gloves) to craft all at the same time, but not a similar log of items which only tracks which items you can glamour or not based on X criterion (Like a logical OR condition between having it in your inventory and having it glam'd once via the system) and then allows you to glam them.

The prior log somehow holds 6255 items as of now and regularly gets added to.

I dunno. If engine and server constraints are an issue, you'd think the prior log would be considerably more problematic than the latter in just about every possible way.

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There's an important difference between what would be possible to design and build, starting from scratch, and what is reasonable to transition to given what's already in place. The crafting log was designed with that kind of capability, but has its own limitations they have to work around. Note the distinction between "Level-based" and "Special" recipes. Any recipe that you unlock or learn by any mechanism other than class level is filed under special recipes. Most of what you've listed as capabilities of the crafting log aren't relevant to the underlying issue of synchronizing data between the client and server.

At a fundamental level, they've chosen to synchronize tons of data between the client and server on a frequent basis, and while this makes it easier to avoid causing invalid states or duping glitches, it scales poorly. The usual approach would be to avoid synchronizing anything that both client and server can determine separately, and only synch what turns out to be necessary. This is more challenging to get right, but way more efficient. So SE took an approach that initially made their jobs easier, but causes its own set of problems that are difficult to work around. There are all sorts of cases where they limit the possible state transformations so that they can save on bandwidth, but make for a clunky user experience. Things like being unable to move items around in your inventory while crafting, or not being able to craft in inn rooms. They don't have to synch data that they know cannot change, because they've prevented you from changing it. The rest of the time, they assume they cannot know what has and has not changed, so they play it safe and synch it all.

They're constantly shipping your entire inventory back and forth between the server and client, whether you have your inventory open or not. That's why they're hesitant to increase readily available inventory space. Things like Retainers and the chocobo bags that they're adding, however, only have to be synched when they're being interacted with. The crafting log completion only has to be synched while you've got the crafting interface open.

What they're trying to avoid for glamours is constantly synching a list of every piece of equipment in the game and whether or not you've unlocked it. That's why they are putting in a system with restrictions on when and where it can be accessed, to limit how often they need to synch that data. Had they designed the system in a sensible fashion from the ground up, it would only need to synch information about a few items at a given time. To do that now would require ripping out and replacing code that is spread throughout the game, client and server both. It would be a tremendous undertaking, similar to the transition from 1.0 to 2.0. Which leads to this:

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Only time will tell, but SE's obsession with creating entirely new systems for every small change - as opposed to augmenting existing, established systems with new functionality - is a tremendous liability. It might make for flashier headlines when previewing version updates, but it also contributes to a game world that feels cobbled together from dozens of independently-designed pieces, rather than crafted and built up with some sort of consistent vision.

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They create new systems, because the old ones are badly designed and difficult to augment. They work around limitations by making new systems that aren't subject to those limitations in the first place. The game feels cobbled together because that's exactly how it's been built. They have an enormous amount of technical debt to overcome, and very little experience dealing with the concept to know how to address it. Consider that the entire Japanese software development methodology has long consisted of starting practically from scratch for every project, with relatively little code or tool reuse. They lose a lot of efficiency as a result, but haven't had to deal with the long-term consequences of poor design decisions. Admittedly, it's difficult to predict what sort of functionality you'll need in an MMO 10 years down the road, so there will always be obstacles to overcome, but good programming practices make it easier to isolate and replace pieces to add new functionality.

To do glamours right would basically require a separate team of programmers rewriting the entire game from scratch, while the current team continues to work with what they've got. Regardless of how much money SE as a whole has or makes, the FFXIV team isn't given that kind of budget. They're a small group of people struggling to make headway, shackled by either their own poor past decisions, or the decisions of those who came before them. They're probably going to have to deal with these fundamental problems at some point in the future, but it's a matter of resource allocation and keeping the game running in the meantime.

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Originally Posted by Roegadoom

Snip.

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*Slow clap*

This person knows their stuff. But I pity you because you're going to get ignored by the angry, ignorant masses regardless.

Still, you have my Like for explaining it carefully and in great detail in a manner laymen would understand. Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

so.. if you had a system with 700 slots for gear and 2 plates for EVERY SINGLE JOB possible (32 plates) .. still no go? Unlimited or nothing?
Concern over the future of a game built on cobbled together technology and poorly designed netcode is valid, but unless you know more of the programming than I do (are you a former dev?) , how are you so sure that it's just a "yes/no" list using the current underlying systems?

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Yes because I want this game to exist for a long time (I do rant about it a lot but that is only because I like it and want it to succeed) and seeing how many glamours we get for a single patch between the expansions and on top of that all the glamour from an expansion release unlimited would be the only true long term solution.

Seeing how we already do have other logs (fishing, crafting, gathering) and things like the orchestrion scroll lists I do kinda believe that a list should be possible and others that have more knowledge about this stuff have posted over the time that this is not something that impossible to do. (And no I am no dev but I also dont need to be a cook to tell that a dish is not that great and need improvement..and as a customer I honestly dont care about the details. ;) I pay them money and expect them as experts to give us a long time system and not a bandaid.)

Zojha wrote it down perfectly. SE is a company that did a lot of bad things over the last few months..they already went against their own words (housing and timer), they more than once said that something was not possible only to later say it is. They truly like to switch between their opinions and honestly it smells like greed when we get no free retainer for an expansion but its fine to buy them. (We are not even asking for 8 free ones x)) I pay money and they are not my friends. I do know that this is probably not the problem of the workers but more of the higher ups.

I also find it bad to kinda imply that we should be a former dev or something like that to give feedback. For me its a fact that other games manage quite some part of their game better than SE and even if they do not have the same system and code behind it that is not my problem. Its the job of SE to find out how such a system will work with this game. And if their code cant give us a true glamour log like other companies do than they truly have a bad system.

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Originally Posted by Darker_Midnight

This person knows their stuff. But I pity you because you're going to get ignored by the angry, ignorant masses regardless.

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Nice way to insult those that find fault in this system. x) It might be not that easy for SE to do (and other people that also have experiences with servers and codes do point out that its not impossible to do) and I am fine if they said that we would get an overhaul later because it needs time but in the end this solution feels like a bandaid that will hinder us from getting a true log down the line. The problem is that they like to ignore the problem (see housing) until its no longer doable to ignore it. But when that point is reached it might just be too late.

Also lets not forget that SE is a huge company and that some reports show that FF14 is their cash cow right now. Subs, cash shop, merchandize..this should be more than enough to finance more people and features. If we just take these bandaids and not complain and want better systems than we might never get them because they would think that we are fine with the way things are. I mean you can be fine with it but that does not mean that everyone has to see it that way. Maybe I will be positively surprised and they will continue to increase the limit in big amounts and over a reasonable time span but right now I just cant see this.

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Originally Posted by Ametrine

Alright, I'm theory crafting here, but in regards to customization and inventory, I think SE has a strict data cap for each player character.

Dropping the PS3 increased the cap, and SE opted to use this to increase our on hand inventory.

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Depends on where the cap is. Dropping the PS3 helps client side, because the new weakest supported client is Win32 PCs. It doesn't do much of anything for server side data at all.

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My guess is the reason the vanity system works as it does is it doesn't add any extra data so much as changes a small bit of it.

So, you've equipped the Ala Mhigan Muffed Cap of Casting, no materia, appearance is the Muffed Cap of Casting, no dye.
You glamour it and it becomes an Ala Mhigan Muffed Cap of Casting, no materia, appearance is Rimless Glasses, silver dye.

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How glamours are actually applied to equipped items appears to be identical to how it's working now, so they probably didn't have to change that code much, if at all. So yes, the same basic data is being retained while you're off doing stuff. The extra data is only needed when you have the glamour closet itself open, and you can only do that in certain places so they don't need to keep that data loaded all the time while you're logged in.

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The game isn't loading more data with that, so the client and server are happy. If so, it's possible SE built everything else with this character data cap in mind, thus making any increases to it about a thousand times more difficult to implement than just patching in a glamour log.

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It certainly seems that way given what we know. They've said that character data transfer between servers while you're logged in is an issue for them if it gets to big, and this system does avoid adding anything else to that. Roegadoom's post also suggests that it's due to synching everything with the client too frequently, and it also avoids that because the client only needs the glamour closet inventory (and the chocobo saddlebags) if you specifically interact with it, both of which are restricted to certain areas (the server a dungeon is running on doesn't need to know either of them exist at all). The sever also only needs it in those cases, and perhaps if they're covered by the search command (which isn't something we know at this point AFAIK).

If you want to build glamour storage without having to keep any extra data loaded most of the time and without changing the basis of how the game stores which glamour is attached to which item, this system makes a lot of sense. That's the context people need to understand the decisions in.

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Originally Posted by Roegadoom

At a fundamental level, they've chosen to synchronize tons of data between the client and server on a frequent basis, and while this makes it easier to avoid causing invalid states or duping glitches, it scales poorly. The usual approach would be to avoid synchronizing anything that both client and server can determine separately, and only synch what turns out to be necessary. This is more challenging to get right, but way more efficient. So SE took an approach that initially made their jobs easier, but causes its own set of problems that are difficult to work around. There are all sorts of cases where they limit the possible state transformations so that they can save on bandwidth, but make for a clunky user experience. Things like being unable to move items around in your inventory while crafting, or not being able to craft in inn rooms. They don't have to synch data that they know cannot change, because they've prevented you from changing it. The rest of the time, they assume they cannot know what has and has not changed, so they play it safe and synch it all.

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Wow... that explains so very, very much. I never even considered that they'd do something that crazy in something meant to scale.

Great post. Fills in a lot of blanks I had as to exactly why this stuff is so problematic.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Yes because I want this game to exist for a long time (I do rant about it a lot but that is only because I like it and want it to succeed) and seeing how many glamours we get for a single patch between the expansions and on top of that all the glamour from an expansion release unlimited would be the only true long term solution.
Seeing how we already do have other logs (fishing, crafting, gathering) and things like the orchestrion scroll lists I do kinda believe that a list should be possible and others that have more knowledge about this stuff have posted over the time that this is not something that impossible to do. (And no I am no dev but I also dont need to be a cook to tell that a dish is not that great and need improvement..and as a customer I honestly dont care about the details. ;) I pay them money and expect them as experts to give us a long time system and not a bandaid.)

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Comparing a fishing log.. and a log of items that need to be applied to your appearance is stretching it quite a bit. No you don't have to be a cook to say whether or not you LIKE a dish, but telling a cook you don't like something as opposed to scolding them for not doing something better without any knowledge about difficulty of technique or scarcity of ingredients is quite another animal altogether. Yes you pay money. Very little money really. You'd pay more for 2 cocktails in a bar with a tip. I'm getting a little tired of people acting like they are entitled to a flawless experience and whatever features they demand simply because they pay a (minor) fee. "I don't care just make it happen" is a very poor way to go about requesting things. People say things like "I PAY MONEY" and then everyone acts like the cash shop is the devil when SE tries to make a little more without raising actual base pricing.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Zojha wrote it down perfectly. SE is a company that did a lot of bad things over the last few months..they already went against their own words (housing and timer), they more than once said that something was not possible only to later say it is. They truly like to switch between their opinions and honestly it smells like greed when we get no free retainer for an expansion but its fine to buy them. (We are not even asking for 8 free ones x)) I pay money and they are not my friends. I do know that this is probably not the problem of the workers but more of the higher ups.

I also find it bad to kinda imply that we should be a former dev or something like that to give feedback. For me its a fact that other games manage quite some part of their game better than SE and even if they do not have the same system and code behind it that is not my problem. Its the job of SE to find out how such a system will work with this game. And if their code cant give us a true glamour log like other companies do than they truly have a bad system.

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Bad things? Like dealing with changing situations and trends? Implementing things you didn't like? I'll agree another retainer would have been nice, but we did get SOME inventory, and now we're getting the chocobo bags. They're always going to try and make the decision that keeps people playing and maintains their subscription base, but sometimes they're going to be wrong. Nobody knows the future and pulling "Gotcha" moments on them with quotes is probably another reason they don't like to reply on these forums.


You don't need to be a Dev to offer opinions, but saying things like "This system from this game is better, I don't see why they can't do that, it's so simple" is very telling that you don't have any idea what goes into it and it reeks of entitlement and ignorance. What if they can't do it? Would you be OK if they just out and out said: "That's never going to happen, but this is what we can do with what we have." is this what you are expecting? I'm pretty sure if they announced that people would call them liars no matter how true it was.

"I really like how this game does this, it would be great if this could happen in our game"
"This system seems kind of limited, are we going to see any sort of expansion in the future?"
"This doesn't seem scale-able with growing inventory concerns, what is being done to make this a feature we can continue to use conveniently for future expansions?"

All of these are requests without unwarranted judgement or assumptions. These are things that The devs could probably answer, even if a little vaguely.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

...
I don't think bracers or belts show up in glamour so I'm ignoring those.
...

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Wrist items are visible on characters.
It's just that most of the time the hand items disable them because they cover them up.

Belts no longer have visible effects since they redid the game for 2.0.

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Originally Posted by Roegadoom

Snip

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Thank you for this information; it makes a lot of sense.

I had a thought while reading. If this is the issue, could they not keep the glamour dresser in the inn but have it function as the glamour log that people are asking for? Ie, you go into the inn and interact with the dresser, and then you can right-click on pieces of gear in your inventory and armoury to add them to the dresser? They stay as gear but are permanently part of the dresser (like the glamour log, the models would light up as 'unlocked' in the dresser menu). Then you could do with the original gear piece as you wish. It'd be a bit clunky (as you mentioned) to have to go to the inn and do this every time, but I think it would satisfy many concerns.

Side note: I'm excited to use the new glamour dresser and I'm glad we're getting it, but I understand why so many people would really prefer a proper log, too.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

Thank you for this information; it makes a lot of sense.

I had a thought while reading. If this is the issue, could they not keep the glamour dresser in the inn but have it function as the glamour log that people are asking for? Ie, you go into the inn and interact with the dresser, and then you can right-click on pieces of gear in your inventory and armoury to add them to the dresser? They stay as gear but are permanently part of the dresser (like the glamour log, the models would light up as 'unlocked' in the dresser menu). Then you could do with the original gear piece as you wish. It'd be a bit clunky (as you mentioned) to have to go to the inn and do this every time, but I think it would satisfy many concerns.

Side note: I'm excited to use the new glamour dresser and I'm glad we're getting it, but I understand why so many people would really prefer a proper log, too.

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Theoretically, this type of system would bypass the need for moving more data when the character transfers across servers.
But it does come with the downside of only being able to glamor in an inn room.

I know I really only end up doing my glamoring at my apartment anyway, since I can't carry the stuff around due to inventory issues, so that's not much of a change.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

.

I had a thought while reading. If this is the issue, could they not keep the glamour dresser in the inn but have it function as the glamour log that people are asking for? Ie, you go into the inn and interact with the dresser, and then you can right-click on pieces of gear in your inventory and armoury to add them to the dresser? They stay as gear but are permanently part of the dresser (like the glamour log, the models would light up as 'unlocked' in the dresser menu).

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I understood it as working exactly like this from what little we know. The caveat is that the dresser only hold 200 items.

Roegadoom's explanation also explains why there is difficulty in having us return to the inside of housing when we zone back in from a dungeon.

That said, putting it in the inns also resolve access issues since all player can easily get to an inn, but not all can have the crafted, housing equivalents. (Orchestrion, Armoire, Toy Box, etc.)

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Originally Posted by Roegadoom

They're probably going to have to deal with these fundamental problems at some point in the future, but it's a matter of resource allocation and keeping the game running in the meantime.

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Ultimately, this is my issue with the new system: Its a bandaid fix thats going to need to be re-bandaided continuously down the line until they pump money into fixing the original problems or announce their next MMO.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

Thank you for this information; it makes a lot of sense.

I had a thought while reading. If this is the issue, could they not keep the glamour dresser in the inn but have it function as the glamour log that people are asking for? Ie, you go into the inn and interact with the dresser, and then you can right-click on pieces of gear in your inventory and armoury to add them to the dresser? They stay as gear but are permanently part of the dresser (like the glamour log, the models would light up as 'unlocked' in the dresser menu). Then you could do with the original gear piece as you wish. It'd be a bit clunky (as you mentioned) to have to go to the inn and do this every time, but I think it would satisfy many concerns.

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My suspicion on that is dye related. Right now, you can dye a source item, then use it on a target item, and the target item gains the dye as part of the glamour. That dye data is actually stored on the source item (the target item isn't truly dyed, if you remove the glamour the dye goes with it). In order for that system to work, you have to effecively treat the source item as an inventory item rather than a simple locked/unlocked flag. So if they destroyed the item and just stored a flag, that wouldn't work anymore without also reworking the dye system to cope with it, or saying simply "now you can only dye after you glamour on the target item".

By treating it as an inventory instead, all the existing dye systems (and dyes already on items) work with what shouldn't be large scale modification. Keeping this in place with a glamour log that could handle every item would require an inventory for around 12,000 items, which is obviously pretty huge.

When you're dealing with existing systems and a budget, sometimes you just have to work within the confines of what's already there. This strikes me as one of those situations. I don't know that, of course. :)

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Originally Posted by Tridus

My suspicion on that is dye related.

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Could we not apply dye on the plate itself and simply have base models stored in the log/dresser? Just a thought. Your reasoning makes a lot of sense, though.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

Could we not apply dye on the plate itself and simply have base models stored in the log/dresser? Just a thought. Your reasoning makes a lot of sense, though.

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You could, if they made the UI and code to let you do that. With the dye staying on the gear, the plate is just a collection of data: Player, Plate Number (my #4 should always be 4), and a link to which item in the glamour closet belongs in each slot. Then a bit of code to edit the plate and apply the plate to gear, which does so by simply running the "cast glamour" process that exists now on all of it at once. Done. No changes to how a glamour is actually applied are required because it's coming from a source item, same as now. The game already knows how to do it.

To make the plate able to have dye as well, each slot in the plate has to also store dye information. The UI code has to change to allow it to be edited in the plate (since it applies to a specific item right now), and the code to apply/display the glamour has to now know to get its dye information from the plate instead of from the source item. If the target item doesn't store which plate was used and instead just stores the source item, it now has to store the plate or dye as well, because the dye on the plate and the dye on the source item could be different.

Those things are all doable, but it involves adding and changing more code than keeping it on the source item (since the game already knows how to do that). That comes down to how much time and resources do you have to add the feature?

Hopefully I'm explaining this clearly. :)

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Originally Posted by TaranTatsuuchi

Wrist items are visible on characters.
It's just that most of the time the hand items disable them because they cover them up.

Belts no longer have visible effects since they redid the game for 2.0.

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Good to know, thanks!

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Originally Posted by Tridus

Hopefully I'm explaining this clearly. :)

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Yeah, that makes complete sense - thank you! Hopefully one day they'll have some ideas on how to build this out into something like a proper glamour log, but I can see why it'd be a hassle right now. I'm glad we're at least getting this much!

I cannot state enough how happy it makes me to see possible solutions and well thought out criticism posted on this forum. Thank you Roegadoom for expressing what I failed to and directing attention to productive channels.