Glamour Plate Mechanics

I've been playing Final Fantasy MMOs for a long time, so I expect every new system to be hopelessly convoluted, but I admit the Glamour Plate system is even more convoluted than I expected. I know a lot of people are upset that it doesn't work the way we all assumed it would (i.e., being a temporary glamour overlay on all your gear), but I think it's worth digging into how it actually does work, because there are a number of advantages to the system as it was actually implemented.

A quick disclaimer: I didn't actually investigate any of this before the emergency maintenance, it's based on my observations while playing and some of the threads on the forums. So if my basic assumption on how the Glamour Plates work is incorrect, please point and laugh and ignore this thread. :)

So in a nutshell, all the Glamour Plate system does is let you glamour items exactly the same way you used to, except without using more glamour prisms, and with the ability to do multiple pieces at once. Which means any changes are just as permanent as other glamours. As I mentioned, this has a lot of upsides and downsides, and I'll list the ones that come to mind.... here:

1. Pro: You don't actually need to keep Glamour Plates around after you use them, so the limit of 10 is a bit misleading. You an glamour a gearset you don't expect to change any time soon, then replace that Glamour Plate with something else and the original glamours will not be lost. It would probably be wise to leave one Glamour Plate mostly blank to be used for one-shot glamours in this way.
2. Con: By the same token, if you want to use Glamour Plates on shared gear, you must have a Plate that covers each piece of gear used. If you have all three tank jobs at 70, share all gear except weapons, and glamour your Paladin set, that glamour will apply to your other tank jobs whether you want it to or not. You have to make separate Dark Knight and Warrior plates to make this work. And if you want to use the actual, current gear in a glamour for any of these, you can't do so (unless you manually use a glamour dispeller each time you switch) because that's not how the system works. Similarly, if you want to use multiple glamours on the same job for whatever reason, you run into the same issues.
3. Pro: This system actually already lets you glamour retainers. Just take their gear, equip it on yourself, and apply a Glamour Plate, then give it back to them. Voila! Retainer glamour. This is probably a good use case for non-permanent Glamour Plates, too. (Also this may work for squadrons as well, depending on what happens if you use a glamoured item as a glamour. Do you get the base item appearance, or the glamoured appearance? If the latter, then this would work there too. And even if it doesn't, they did mention that they'd be prioritizing squadrons.)
4. Pro: Because the glamours applied are permanent, the restriction of being able to apply Glamour Plates only in towns and such is often a non-issue. If you're glamouring your main job, this means that dungeon drops won't be re-glamoured until you get back to town, but otherwise you can do so as soon as you purchase anything, for instance.
5. Con: ...but on the other hand, if you do share gear (again, let's say between tanks) then you need to be in town to switch back and forth. I'm not sure how much of an issue this is in practice, but it's annoying. (And for what it's worth, they've mentioned they will be expanding where Glamour Plates can be used. Though I suspect instances aren't high on the list, and that's probably the most relevant place for them to be used.)
6. Con: With only 10 Glamour Plates, if you're really into making glamour sets you're going to be shuffling them a lot. If you separately glamour your tanks, healers, casters, and ranged physical DPS, for instance, that's already 11 plates. If you want to separately glamour different crafting or gathering classes, you're going to go through them quickly as well. (On the upside, if you only have one Dragoon glamour without accessories, that won't conflict with anything, so... yay?)

Overall, I'm actually pretty happy with the system, because I don't use a ton of glamour. I see it as a way to keep my current job looking the same as I level and get new gear. I imagine the system will be very frustrating for some of the more fashion-conscious among us, though. Please let me know if you can think of any other high or low points of the system.

+1 This post

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Originally Posted by Talraen

I've been playing Final Fantasy MMOs for a long time, so I expect every new system to be hopelessly convoluted, but I admit the Glamour Plate system is even more convoluted than I expected. I know a lot of people are upset that it doesn't work the way we all assumed it would (i.e., being a temporary glamour overlay on all y....

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Thank you for a well thought out examination. I think almost all peoples reservations can be overcome with more space and utility (npcs). Both of which they've said they're looking at. Lets hope that goes through.
The "shuffle" method is good too, Personally I have about 5-6 classes I'm working on at any given time so 10 plates should be enough, but it'd be nice not to have to do that glamour shuffle every time I change it up. Nice but not essential.

this system sucks. just glamour the class NOT the gear or anything else... and the dresser is trash as well. complete fail of a system....

going to a city, having to dump gear permanently lost to a chest, not enough plates for each class (15 + 8 + 3) , etc etc....

i guess 75% of my retainers are still dedicated to holding glam items...

it's definitely still a work in progress but i found you can temporarily stick base pieces into the dresser and make a plate out of them if your using multi-class gear and want it to look base on one of them.

Literally all it does is apply glamours to each piece of gear without the need for prisms and can be linked to gear sets so it's even automated. And a bunch of free extra storage
It is a giant leap forward compared to what we had to work with before

The only technical problem i have with it at all currently would be fixed with something like a dummy item you could assign to glamour plates to function as a dispeller

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Originally Posted by Thaeros

this system sucks. just glamour the class NOT the gear or anything else... and the dresser is trash as well. complete fail of a system....

going to a city, having to dump gear permanently lost to a chest, not enough plates for each class (15 + 8 + 3) , etc etc....

i guess 75% of my retainers are still dedicated to holding glam items...

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You've pulled up this discussion from a year ago. The system has long since been altered to allow you to remove gear from the dresser.

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Originally Posted by Nihility

The only technical problem i have with it at all currently would be fixed with something like a dummy item you could assign to glamour plates to function as a dispeller

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You can kind of do that - if you deliberately put an incompatible item on the plate (eg. tank armour on your healer plate) then the glamour gets applied, but because you can't equip that item you see the original gear.

Alternately (the better option, unless you have materia attached to it) you can put the gear into the dresser, add it to the plate, and then remove the gear again. The image stays on the plate, and you have the actual gear back.

Since I came back back to the game (around the end of November), I can tell you right now I hate it. I would have rather had a costume system than this. Also, having to put away a lot of gear in the dresser is really annoying. It can work for storage though. :p

I don't think it's bad, I don't even really mind the plate application restrictions, at the end of the day I'm not outside a town all that often anyway.

What it desperately needs is more space, and then very closely after that, more plates.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

I would have rather had a costume system than this.

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Something else could have been better, certainly, but I think it's not bad once you're used to how it works.

I think it all comes back to the game's unwieldy code and the difficulty in actually reworking parts of it.

Whether by necessity or choice, the dresser system hasn't altered how the game handles glamour instructions - as before, each gear piece carries its own glamour information at "location X", and then when loading your character's appearance it reads from location X.

The difference is that instead of only being able to change X by applying a glamour prism, they've constructed this system that streamlines the process and lets you instantly set new information X for an entire gearset at once.


What's actually annoying about storing things in the dresser though? Just having to do it at the inn? Otherwise it's not much different to storing things anywhere else.


Have you actually played around with building and applying plates though? That's the entire point of it, and it had me sold as soon as I realised I can set up my fixed glamours for different jobs (favourites + currently leveling) and reapply them instantly every time I level up and equip new gear. Plus I don't have to carry the base items with me.)

It also means it's worthwhile to glamour little things like jewellery. I wouldn't have bothered spending prisms and time on individually glamouring them, but now when it's a one-time setup it's much nicer to be able to choose specific things or hide them.


Worst case scenario, the old prism system still works, so you can keep using them if you've tried it out and you really want to keep using manual prisms instead.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

What it desperately needs is more space, and then very closely after that, more plates.

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I agree, although I'd choose to prioritise more plates (and ideally the ability to re-order them and view them in a list like gearsets).

The storage limit can be worked around, and I'd rather have more plates so I can leave them set up long-term instead of having to prioritise which ones to leave assembled.

(That, and have them remove that awful "apply glamour dispellers" tab that automatically displays you in your de-glamoured actual gear. Being on PS4, I have to go past it any time I tab left to reach the higher-numbered plates.)

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Something else could have been better, certainly, but I think it's not bad once you're used to how it works.

I think it all comes back to the game's unwieldy code and the difficulty in actually reworking parts of it.

Whether by necessity or choice, the dresser system hasn't altered how the game handles glamour instructions - as before, each gear piece carries its own glamour information at "location X", and then when loading your character's appearance it reads from location X.

The difference is that instead of only being able to change X by applying a glamour prism, they've constructed this system that streamlines the process and lets you instantly set new information X for an entire gearset at once.


What's actually annoying about storing things in the dresser though? Just having to do it at the inn? Otherwise it's not much different to storing things anywhere else.


Have you actually played around with building and applying plates though? That's the entire point of it, and it had me sold as soon as I realised I can set up my fixed glamours for different jobs (favourites + currently leveling) and reapply them instantly every time I level up and equip new gear. Plus I don't have to carry the base items with me.)

It also means it's worthwhile to glamour little things like jewellery. I wouldn't have bothered spending prisms and time on individually glamouring them, but now when it's a one-time setup it's much nicer to be able to choose specific things or hide them.


Worst case scenario, the old prism system still works, so you can keep using them if you've tried it out and you really want to keep using manual prisms instead.

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I think it's better than it was don't get me wrong. As for storage, I like to use a lot of leveling gear as glamour. :p I mostly want a costume system, so I don't have to remove a lot of the glamour from pieces I am using, but also like, (since I go back and forth so often) etc.

just needs more plates. Fed up with my tanks all looking the same but there isn't really enough to do a glam a piece with all jobs

My wishlist for the glamour dresser, in order of how much I want them:

1. More plates. MANY MORE PLATES.
2. More places plates can be applied (eventually everywhere, please, just like manual glams)
3. More space in the glamour dresser

^ Spot on!...


I would suggest at least one plate per slot in the Armory Chest so 35 in total as of 4.X, even more in the upcoming expansion...


It would be nice if they allowed us to apply plates inside dungeons as there many occasions where one needs a different look but is unable to use it...


Ideally I would have 1,000 slots in the Glamour Dresser but the dev team could start with 500 I suppose, since it takes them so long to do the smallest changes to the game, for some reason!...

Hopefully they double if not triple the amount of plates we can have. Especially since we are getting 3 new jobs.

The glamour system is one of my biggest pet peeves in this game. It's far too restrictive in terms of where you can apply them, and which pieces of gear you want to place in the glamour dresser. It has to be 100% durability, you have to have the required prisms, you have to be in an inn room, and you have to be in a major city to apply any plates. It's like, good lord! Why?! In SWTOR, it's just create a tab on your profile, drop a piece of gear in whichever slot you want to change, and off you go.

FFXIV is actually my first FF game so I'm not used to convoluted systems that require multiple steps just to do something simple. So, this is all extremely annoying to me.

My biggest con right now is not being able to apply plates in the open world.

My biggest pro is being able to apply glamours directly from the dresser without using a prism.

The number of plates seems to have a greater drawback the more classes you have that share gear with other classes, with omni-crafters being the worst off because there are eight of them. It's another big con because the job specific crafting and gathering sets are gorgeous and go mostly unused other than bridging an ilv gap while gearing up. All that time that went into their design too. It's just sad.

That said, I find myself overwriting existing plates more than I am creating new ones. Because it is so easy to re-create a previous look so long as those items are in the dresser, I find little reason to retain any plates other than the ones I am currently using, and I am never using all 10. I would actually get more use out of the dresser by them increasing the amount of items that can be stored; not necessarily the plates. However, I am also not max level anything. Those with my mindset who have 10 or more jobs at max are in a bad position with the dresser.

All in all, I think the next big step(s) are to doubling the amount of plates and storage. That would go a really long way. Being able to apply the plates in more places, and increasing the access to the dresser can come later imo.

I hadn't really cared about the glamour dresser before they added in the feature to take gear out of it.


But since then, I've found it to be a good place to store certain items I glamour into often, having to go into an inn room or the GC Barracks to use it is somewhat of a downside.

The plates, I find it better to ignore the weapon slot on them, and only making rather generalized sets.

In my prefered system, everything would be "in" it by default, and becomes accessible to use on a plate when you place the physical item in the dresser.

Several filter options added to make it more functional too. Filter by: whether you actually have it or not, what job you're on, level required, etc.

Ideally tool tip over items would tell you where to get the items you don't have too.

Of course, none of that is going to happen. So double plates and double space would do for now ;)

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Originally Posted by Gemina

The number of plates seems to have a greater drawback the more classes you have that share gear with other classes, with omni-crafters being the worst off because there are eight of them. It's another big con because the job specific crafting and gathering sets are gorgeous and go mostly unused other than bridging an ilv gap while gearing up. All that time that went into their design too. It's just sad.

That said, I find myself overwriting existing plates more than I am creating new ones. Because it is so easy to re-create a previous look so long as those items are in the dresser, I find little reason to retain any plates other than the ones I am currently using, and I am never using all 10. I would actually get more use out of the dresser by them increasing the amount of items that can be stored; not necessarily the plates. However, I am also not max level anything. Those with my mindset who have 10 or more jobs at max are in a bad position with the dresser.

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The two issues of "individual crafter glamours" and "not enough plates" go hand in hand. If there were more plates, it would be viable to set up unique crafter glamours and set up the (already existing) link to gearsets so it would re-glamour your sets as you changed class.

Technically you can do this already, but it is going to take up the majority of your plates. Just doubling it to 20 plates would free up that option - still not enough to have every class covered, but certainly enough to devote that many to permanent crafting sets if you wanted to, and not be left with only two plates for battle classes.)

I prefer to be able to leave all my plates intact. I know I *can* disassemble them and put them together again later, but I'd rather not have to. Especially if I've dyed something on the plate and I'll lose that if I have to overwrite it with something else. (Already I have a few plates taken up with things I won't be needing again for a while, but I don't want to break it up or I won't have the dyed version instantly available later!)

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

The plates, I find it better to ignore the weapon slot on them, and only making rather generalized sets.

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The plate can still be applied to other classes even if you've put a specific weapon on it. It will just ignore the weapon glamour and not apply it (and anything else incompatible like the glamour piece being higher level than the gear you're trying to apply it to).

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

The plates, I find it better to ignore the weapon slot on them, and only making rather generalized sets.

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I only use the weapon slot if my plate includes job-specific gear, in which case it's already specific to that job. Otherwise I don't bother; I don't change my weapon often enough and I don't have enough plates for multiple glamours with different weapons for each job (OMG PLEASE MORE PLATES FOR THE LOVE OF - ).

The job-specific stuff is what makes the plates a pain to use in the field if you want to switch from (for example) smn to rdm (using the same base gear). My smn plate has the job-specific body piece, so if I switch to rdm in the field I get the base gear instead since it won't reapply my rdm plate. Very annoying. The only reason that a fix for this is below 'more plates' on my wishlist is because it's not something that comes up TOO frequently (mostly just on my fc's map night and in eureka).

I put 'more space in the glamour dresser' below both of them mainly because you can swap gear in and out, so despite being annoying it's not as big of an issue.

And I forgot to mention that I really want a glamour dresser for my house. But that'd be number four on my list.

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Originally Posted by Rhus

just needs more plates. Fed up with my tanks all looking the same but there isn't really enough to do a glam a piece with all jobs

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This and this alone would fully solve any issues I have with the glamour dresser. Sometimes I get tired of my tanks all looking the same, my healers all looking the same, my casters all looking the same, and the only physical DPS that are unique by default being my DRG and NIN. (I don't mind my crafters looking the same, but that's a personal preference thing.)