Proposal: Glamour, but for upgradeable skills

Sometimes you level up, and one of your skills changes into something new. And sometimes that's great! When Hotshot becomes Air Anchor, I found the aesthetic of the chains to be really col!

But sometimes a skill changes into a new skill and you lose something you liked more. And that's a bummer. I miss the sound of Chaos Thrust. I miss the delightful pew-pew-pew of Spread Shot. I miss the solid aesthetic of Stone IV.

Because of this, I would love it if there was some way to select which aesthetic your own upgraded skills use. That way those who prefer the new animations can use those, but those of us who prefer the old aesthetic don't have to lose it in up-to-date content.

Nice idea! And yea, I also prefer the spread shot over shotgun animation.

One of my most desired features. I'd love to revert Royal Authority animation back to Rage of Halone, and MCH's shots back to their un-heated versions.

I probably wouldn't use it but it's still a solid idea.
One thing that would be funny would be if you could glamour different spells all together. Imagine a mchn with all his ogcds set up as drill. Or a war spamming fel cleave even more than usual :P

I've talked about this before and called it "action glamour" There's also the potential to add new animations to replace existing actions without changing them. For example, in Bozja, Atori's dragoon animations are different, and all cherry blossom themed. Or you could make bard actions that replace the archery with music attacks, and so on.

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Originally Posted by LilimoLimomo

Sometimes you level up, and one of your skills changes into something new. And sometimes that's great! When Hotshot becomes Air Anchor, I found the aesthetic of the chains to be really col!

But sometimes a skill changes into a new skill and you lose something you liked more. And that's a bummer. I miss the sound of Chaos Thrust. I miss the delightful pew-pew-pew of Spread Shot. I miss the solid aesthetic of Stone IV.

Because of this, I would love it if there was some way to select which aesthetic your own upgraded skills use. That way those who prefer the new animations can use those, but those of us who prefer the old aesthetic don't have to lose it in up-to-date content.

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Oh, I love that. I think I prefer Malefic 2 the best. I find the latest one way too busy for a spammable action. I also think that SGE's Physis with the 'searchlight' effect is much better than Physis II when the Sage takes off lol.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I've talked about this before and called it "action glamour" There's also the potential to add new animations to replace existing actions without changing them. For example, in Bozja, Atori's dragoon animations are different, and all cherry blossom themed. Or you could make bard actions that replace the archery with music attacks, and so on.

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The Ninja boss from Mt. Rokkon also has unique mudra casting effects themed around cherry blossoms that would be so nice to have.

While we're at it... How about the ability to change the elements of BLM's spells? Replace Fire spells with Lightning or Air, or Ice spells with either Earth or Water... Mostly to just keep the Astral and Umbral theming of the spells rather than just going with any combination...

Newer skills are far too effect-heavy for my liking and there is no middle ground between "full light show" and "turn all effects off".

Wholeheartedly agree, action glamour could be an entire new class of reward for content, something alongside normal clothing glam.

Changing new skills to older skills or current skills to removed skills. Being able to use Butcher's Block over Storm's Eye would already be an improvement.

Giving White Mage access to elemental versions of their spells again, maybe powered up.

Giving Black Mage more options than just Fire, Ice and Lightning.

Allowing existing classes like Paladin to have multiple class fantasies, such as a Paladin that is more about summoning holy stuff and one that is just a run-of-the-mill "I like steel and I swing" knight.

Replacing Summoner summons and egis to visually different options while keeping the functions intact.


There's a reason mods that edit these kind of things are exceptionally premium and coveted. You need to see some new stuff after hundreds of hours of playing a class.


Of course, this would have to be an optional toggle to enable on yourself or other players, so inexperienced players wouldn't be confused by two summoners having different summons.

Imagine if they made V&C and Deep dungeons drop the glamours as well? We might finally have a reason to do them. The cherry clossom Ninja from Mount Rokkon comes to mind. I wish my Ninja could do what she did.

I never thought about this but totally yeah. Personally I prefer the more simple animations of the lower level Machinist skills because they feel more impactful to me than the exaggeratted swift actions of the higher level skills.

So I secretly always get excited when I get queued into a lower level content as a machinist in roulettes for it

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Originally Posted by Iselion

Wholeheartedly agree, action glamour could be an entire new class of reward for content, something alongside normal clothing glam.

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If we ever did get the option to change skill appearances, I think it would be more likely to be a client-side thing, simply because of how much data would be involved in tracking applied glamours for potentially hundreds of skills.

If they add more choices that get transmitted to other players, I would rather more actual character customisation than skill glamours.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

If we ever did get the option to change skill appearances, I think it would be more likely to be a client-side thing, simply because of how much data would be involved in tracking applied glamours for potentially hundreds of skills.

If they add more choices that get transmitted to other players, I would rather more actual character customisation than skill glamours.

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I'm not sure I follow? If you're doing it in an efficient way you'd just have a value assigned with each skill, such as Glare 2: Version 1 or Glare 2: Version 2. It would use existing effects or effects made with the system in mind, nothing custom that would need to store data on other clients. Alternatively, they could use their existing system of action replacement like Aero 1 -> Aero 2 -> Dia and just have spells that have stats identical to the current strongest iteration of the skill, and you could have a seperate loadout of skills to use for that. Blue Mage proves that skills can be equipped and unequipped at will if necessary.

To that extent you could even make the option to track others' skill glamours opt-in to keep things sane for newer players or players that aren't interested in that sort of thing.

We're already tracking hundreds of different glamours in the form of clothing items. I don't see why it couldn't be done, especially seeing as they're grasping to come up with rewards that people want that aren't titles or equipment glamour. It's a win-win.

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Originally Posted by Iselion

I'm not sure I follow? If you're doing it in an efficient way you'd just have a value assigned with each skill, such as Glare 2: Version 1 or Glare 2: Version 2.

We're already tracking hundreds of different glamours in the form of clothing items.

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The issue is how many different skills would need to be tracked. Which version of Glare are you using? Which version of Dia, Holy, all the other skills you have access to? The issue is not that there are lots of possibilities for each skill, but lots of skills with two or three options each, and every person who sees you cast a spell needs to be informed of what your spell looks like. Instead of being told "X cast Glare" and the recipient's computer displays the effect for Glare, it would either need a list of your preferences in advance or every command is now "X cast Glare with the appearance of Stone", increasing the amount of data that needs to be sent.

Equipment glamour is the opposite. The hundreds of options are irrelevant because people only need the short list of what you're wearing right now, and presumably don't need a new version relayed to them every 2.5 seconds.

Also, just because they can do equipment glamours now isn't proof that they can do skill glamours on top of it. The existing character data may be the limit of what they can transmit through their network.

Do removed skill animations count? Because Quick Nock < Wide Volley

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Originally Posted by Raikai

The Ninja boss from Mt. Rokkon also has unique mudra casting effects themed around cherry blossoms that would be so nice to have.

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That seems more like an entirely new action rather than a reskin of an existing one. A few people referenced that too in the media your wishlist survey. But if it’s not a new action then you could do something like that possibly.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The issue is how many different skills would need to be tracked. Which version of Glare are you using? Which version of Dia, Holy, all the other skills you have access to? The issue is not that there are lots of possibilities for each skill, but lots of skills with two or three options each, and every person who sees you cast a spell needs to be informed of what your spell looks like. Instead of being told "X cast Glare" and the recipient's computer displays the effect for Glare, it would either need a list of your preferences in advance or every command is now "X cast Glare with the appearance of Stone", increasing the amount of data that needs to be sent.

Equipment glamour is the opposite. The hundreds of options are irrelevant because people only need the short list of what you're wearing right now, and presumably don't need a new version relayed to them every 2.5 seconds.

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I think you are vastly overestimating the amount of data that would actually take. You could very easily get all of this information in a byte per skill if you were using proper values, probably less than that if you're really efficient at coding. So, if we assume 23 other players with a very generous 100 possible skills each, that is still only 2.3 kilobytes, or 0.0023 megabytes in skill data received at the start of a 24 man. And yes, you would pull that data at the start of an instance, not on the fly.

Again, Blue Mage does this no problem. This could use that exact same framework.

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Also, just because they can do equipment glamours now isn't proof that they can do skill glamours on top of it. The existing character data may be the limit of what they can transmit through their network.

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Sorry but I'm really not a fan of the "Well it's hard" excuse. This is a top MMO with hundreds of thousands of active players. If they're straining to transmit less than 1/100 of a megabyte, they ought to address that immediately. Even if they keep saying network strain is an issue, there's no reason as to why they couldn't improve upon it if they wanted. The real reason they don't is because it's probably a pain in the neck to revise their networking environment and they really want to keep kicking that can down the road.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

That seems more like an entirely new action rather than a reskin of an existing one. A few people referenced that too in the media your wishlist survey. But if it’s not a new action then you could do something like that possibly.

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No, I don't mean the actual resulting action, but the mudra itself (hand gesture) and the ninjutsu 'press'. They all have unique petal anmations added on top of the usual Mudras.

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Originally Posted by Iselion

Again, Blue Mage does this no problem. This could use that exact same framework.

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The only computer which needs to know your custom list of BLU spells is your own. When you use one of your chosen spells, other players just need to know "X cast Flying Sardine", no different than any other job. They don't need to know what else you can or can't cast.

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Originally Posted by Iselion

Sorry but I'm really not a fan of the "Well it's hard" excuse. This is a top MMO with hundreds of thousands of active players. If they're straining to transmit less than 1/100 of a megabyte, they ought to address that immediately.

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It's not about the size of one piece of information, it's about the size on top of all the other pieces being sent, multiplied by the amount of players on the network, and what else they could be doing with the same information.

I'm not saying I don't want skill glamours, but I just think it's more likely to be something only you can see, as is currently the case when you set the size of summoner pets.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The only computer which needs to know your custom list of BLU spells is your own. When you use one of your chosen spells, other players just need to know "X cast Flying Sardine", no different than any other job. They don't need to know what else you can or can't cast.

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Exactly. One of the two possible solutions I've suggested was to have visually unique skills that apply the same potency, share the same cooldown and apply the same debuff/dot. In this case, it would be "White Mage 1 is casting Dia Version 2".

Granted, I don't know the architecture for the skill library works so I cannot say whether this is a better or worse way of doing it.