New glamour system please!

[Felis]

The reason limitations is always the response, is because it really is server limitations. Unlike other MMOs, FFXIV does not store player data clientside, it is stored on the servers. They did this because SE believed players would edit the files like what happened back in FFXI with .dat file swapping. If player data was clientside, inventories would be bigger and glamours could be saved, similar to what WoW is doing with the transmog wardrobe.

graphic aside, which is clientside, the inventory content should be never clientside in any MMO.
It is not about swapping the graphic model of a gear, but about putting something into the inventory whatever you want (like 12 atmas without doing a FATE)

[Evangela]

I'm not sure about FFXI but any MMO that storing player data and inventory on client side is stupid. I don't believe that they do it like that in FFXI. Even that old MMO RagnarokOnline didn't do it. Only UI and other user preferences should be stored client side.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

My interface for a Glamour Log.

Glamour Log.

--> Duty Collection: Dungeons, Trials, Raids, PvP, Artifacts (AF), Tomestone gear, Commons (this last one includes basically all the gear any class can use, DoH/DoL).
-----> Raid Collections: T1~T13, A1~A8, AS1~AS8, Laberyth~Void Ark.
---------> T13 Collections: Log divides the tabs per role. With small icons inside each tab showing all the pieces of the gear, greyed out pieces for pieces yet to be obtained.

So for example, i want to find my Allagan Spear. I would have to:

Open Glamour Log, Select "Raid Collections", Select "Binding Coil of Bahamut: Turn 5 Collections", Select "Maiming Collections", Pick my Allagan Spear skin from the collection, select glamour over current gear, hit yes, consume the proper Prism and done.

In some cases players would have to go through 4 tabs instead of 3 depending on if the gear is role gear or class/job gear, probably will be the case for most of the artifact gear, this way you generate a list not longer than the duty finder, each subdivided in increasingly smaller logs till you reach a window that will just have the info on whatever you have 10 to 12 pieces of gear or not, weapons of each duty will be listed on their corresponding role/class/job tab for their corresponding window.

Of course this sounds way too simplistic, but i think is doable, and it would actually turn the horrificly clumsy and bothersome glamour system we currently have into a more accessible and easy to use system, without touching the need of prisms.

Damn, the very window could have a counter showing the kind of prism we need for each piece gear, and a search feature, and it would be pretty much done. FFXIV would go from having one of the worse vanity systems in the market to have one of the best.

[papichulo123]

ok so the question i ask now how can they increase the server limitation?

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

ok so the question i ask now how can they increase the server limitation?

Upgrade either their codding (incredibly cluttered with way too much info) or upgrade their hardware. Both of them perfectly viable. Thing is, SE knows we pay a lot for extra retainers, so doing this goes directly against their pocket, i would personally stop paying for 3 retainers right away with a proper glamour book, and so would many players, basically, from their PoV it would be investing to lose money.

[Terrini]

I'm not sure about FFXI but any MMO that storing player data and inventory on client side is stupid. I don't believe that they do it like that in FFXI. Even that old MMO RagnarokOnline didn't do it. Only UI and other user preferences should be stored client side.

FFXI stored graphic data client side and people would swap dat graphic information to other gear graphic information and that's what people were probably referring to.

[Lethallin]

Server limitations. Please understand. Please look forward to it.

[Alberel]

The reason limitations is always the response, is because it really is server limitations. Unlike other MMOs, FFXIV does not store player data clientside, it is stored on the servers. They did this because SE believed players would edit the files like what happened back in FFXI with .dat file swapping. If player data was clientside, inventories would be bigger and glamours could be saved, similar to what WoW is doing with the transmog wardrobe.

Please find me an MMO that stores player data clientside. Seriously. Find me ANY MMO that does this. The .dat file swapping in FFXI was nothing to do with where the player data was stored, it just replaced the mesh and texture data for the equipment in the client so when the server said a player was wearing X item that player's client was redirected to load a different item. It was a purely cosmetic change and it only affected the player with the modified client. No MMO out there will ever store player inventory client side as to do so would kill the game before it launched due to the inevitable cheats and hacks that would result from it.

That is incredibly naive understanding of how databases work.

First off, an empty variable contains as much data as a full variable. This means that a brand new empty character contains as much data as a maxed out character with a full inventory. An empty inventory is just full of blank/neutral data. The same is true for retainer inventories.

The creation of a "Glamour Log" would add a massive amount of new data to every character. Every character's data would need to include a yes/no variable for every single piece of gear included in the Glamour Log, even if the character never even uses it. That is somewhere around 6500 new variables and their database addresses for each character currently as of 3.1 and that number will only grow as more and more patches come out. That is increasing each character's data by a massive amount.

This post is incredibly misleading and irrelevant to the discussion. The amount of data actually required to store items in a player's inventory might vary but the server has to have enough space allocated for every inventory to be at full capacity if needed so it makes no difference whether an inventory is full or not. The ACTUAL data usage is irrelevant; it's the potential maximum amount of data that may need to be stored that the devs have to account for.

The most expensive items to store are likely equipment with materia slots as these need to store data for the item ID, durability, spiritbond, materia and a glamour ID. We can assume that the item ID, glamour ID and materia references are the most expensive of those attributes as they likely are several bytes each in size to account for all the possible IDs that exist (or will exist in the future). Durability and spiritbond are likely a byte each to cover the 1-100 value.

The devs will have allocated server space to each player inventory and retainer on the assumption that they could potentially hold a full inventory of melded equipment as above. That's a very large amount of data.

Conversely a glamour log would merely hold a single bit boolean value for every different item skin in the game. That sounds like a lot but it's actually very small compared to the size of actual item data. In fact it's well over 100x smaller based on a conservative estimate for how much space a melded piece of equipment would take up. For every melded item in the game SE could store well over 100 entries in a glamour log.

There's also another thing to point out here and that's how SE stores player inventory versus retainers. Player inventory is stored on the character server as part of your character data as this data is loaded and updated as part of the regular server sync that runs every 15s. They have to do this as the player inventory can be opened anywhere. That is very intensive on the servers. Retainers, however, can only be accessed from fixed locations so their inventories are stored on a separate server. This is why retainers take a few seconds to load sometimes. This is much less intensive on the server and the memory used to store retainers is much less of an issue as the server isn't syncing the data every 15s.

A glamour log would not need to be accessible from everywhere. They could very easily make it a feature accessed from inn rooms or housing furniture like the unending journey or armoire (which coincidentally also use the exact same boolean flag system that I described above). Given that a glamour log could likely store every cosmetic item in the game using less memory than a player's inventory is allocated AND it could be stored on a separate server, meaning no real impact on the primary server or character server, I see no realistic reason why we cannot have a glamour log.

Do I even need to also point out the sheer number of games that already have this feature now? SE is making excuses for something that is quickly becoming a standard of the genre. They can do it, they just won't. Given the money they're making from selling extra retainers I have to agree that it is in their interest to pretend it's not possible.

[Warlyx]

i think wow does , i remember an addon that let u change race , animations , and the gear u are wearing (cosmetic only) , only u can see it (clientside) it was of course banned but think still around as i have seen like 1 year ago a famous streamer using it to race change ...

Anyway they better work on a solution , since every patch brings new sets and more...and im full now lol my retainers are about to explode ...i dont want to sacrifice any item because I shouldnt be forced to do so.....and i shouldnt be coerced to buy more retainers with RL $$$, but oh well...we only can keep fighting!!!

edit: i like the idea of wardrobe in our rooms or any INN , since is a personal zone , and it would make sense lorewise and for RP players. Every1 happy that way.

[Qiarel]

The reason they always give about limitations for a glamour log goes back to the same as expanding our inventory. That there is so much info being saved to the server every 15 seconds, that is why their inventory "solution" is more retainers. Because that data is only accessed when you use them.

That being the case, what about moving Glamour to an Inn/Home furnishing? Give us a Wardrobe or something that takes our gear and adds it to our Glamour list permanently. Even with the inconvenience of having to return to the Wardrobe every time you wanted to Glamour, it's still a good deal better than clogging up several retainers worth of inventory, while not needing to be part of the constantly being saved player data.