So, they're finally at least considering giving us a glamour log?

[Niwashi]

If the system still uses an item-to-skin map rather than a slot-to-skin map, I can almost guarantee it will be one-to-one. It would be ludicrous to try to maintain that system and have a one-to-many relationship defined; the result would be both cumbersome and inefficient.

It would be a couple more fields in the item data. Patch 2.2 added one new field for glamour. This would treat that one as Glamour A, while adding two more fields for Glamour B and Glamour C. When they've already demonstrated that they can add one, adding two doesn't really qualify as "ludicrous". (Adding 34, on the other hand, certainly would, which is why I said that so long as it's tied to items I don't think it would be class/job based.)

Then for which is equipped, there would be a four way specification between original appearance, glamour A, glamour B, or glamour C on each of our visible equipment slots. At two bits for each of a dozen slots, that part would add only three bytes.

So gear items would grow by maybe four bytes each (assuming a likely two bytes for a glamour ID), and our character's equipment specification by three. If they wanted to streamline the server to client data transfer, they'd only need to give us that extra data for our own character and items. For other characters around us, they'd still only need to specify a single glamour (the one that's active at the time), so that part wouldn't need to grow.

There are 2 sane approaches:
1) One-to-one mapping, either of a slot or of the item. Without unlocking all gear for all classes, this cannot be done per slot, so it would currently have to be a continuance of the existing system (one item gets associated with one skin).

That's just leave it as it is and don't do anything. While it's indeed quite likely, I'd consider doing nothing to be a choice to not approach the issue at all, rather than being one of the approaches.

2) Many-to-one mapping of slots to items. Each class would get an appearance slot for each piece of gear, which is unrelated to the appearance of any other class. This is a change to the system that would not necessitate unlocking all skins for all classes, but would be more expensive than a one-to-one mapping of gear slots across classes.

I'm not quite sure what any of it has to do with unlocking skins for different classes. I'm assuming those rules would either stay as they are now, or that if it changes, that change would be unrelated to this one.

But mapping appearance slots is the other possibility I mentioned, (though I think it would make more sense to have it gear set rather than class based). But to do that, they'd have to completely throw away what exists now, which is always a big problem in ongoing games. People aren't going to want all the glamour outfits they've already set up to suddenly disappear when a new system is released. So the transition from an item based system to an appearance slot based system would be really hard to manage well. Simply expanding on the system that's in place would make for a smoother transition.

(There's also the fact that, back when 2.2 came out, SE said they couldn't get appearance slots to work with their existing code base, and it was easier to tie the glamour to regularly equipped items. Now maybe that's changed with upgraded systems since then, but I wouldn't count on it.)

[Dark-Saviour]

It would be a couple more fields in the item data. Patch 2.2 added one new field for glamour. This would treat that one as Glamour A, while adding two more fields for Glamour B and Glamour C. When they've already demonstrated that they can add one, adding two doesn't really qualify as "ludicrous". (Adding 34, on the other hand, certainly would, which is why I said that so long as it's tied to items I don't think it would be class/job based.)

The problem comes from the sheer number of items that could be affected. Every association you add is potentially for every piece of armour in everyone's inventory, armoury chest, retainer, etc.
When they only add one, it's simply switching the map from a fixed item skin to reference a variable skin instead. With each they add, that's another flag for (arguably) minimal benefit.

That's just leave it as it is and don't do anything. While it's indeed quite likely, I'd consider doing nothing to be a choice to not approach the issue at all, rather than being one of the approaches.

The changes would be around the system at that point (reading from glamour log, changing how prisms work, etc.)

I'm not quite sure what any of it has to do with unlocking skins for different classes. I'm assuming those rules would either stay as they are now, or that if it changes, that change would be unrelated to this one.

If you have a single glamour slot that sits across all classes, all gear would have to be unlocked or you'd run into issues with say, setting the coat to a Bard-only item and then switching to White Mage. The glamour would no longer be valid.

But mapping appearance slots is the other possibility I mentioned, (though I think it would make more sense to have it gear set rather than class based). But to do that, they'd have to completely throw away what exists now, which is always a big problem in ongoing games. People aren't going to want all the glamour outfits they've already set up to suddenly disappear when a new system is released. So the transition from an item based system to an appearance slot based system would be really hard to manage well. Simply expanding on the system that's in place would make for a smoother transition.

If you did go with the hypothetical 4+ potential skins tied to a piece of gear, the gear sets would still have to be modified to store that flag, so I don't know that it would be significantly easier than just pointing to the skin you want in the first place, but without access to the code or DB schema, I can't really attest to that. :-/

In the end, I will support whatever is the cleanest and most intuitive approach, and while I'm sure ease of implementation will win out in the end, I can't see keeping the current system, yet adding more complexity to the process ever being a positive.

[Niwashi]

The problem comes from the sheer number of items that could be affected. Every association you add is potentially for every piece of armour in everyone's inventory, armoury chest, retainer, etc.
When they only add one, it's simply switching the map from a fixed item skin to reference a variable skin instead. With each they add, that's another flag for (arguably) minimal benefit.

What you call "minimal benefit" is fixing something that for many players is the biggest problem the glamour system has. (Or in my own view, one of the two biggest problems.) Certainly an important enough one to be worth a couple extra flags per gear item (and yes, that's for all the gear items we're holding, the same as our current glamour).

I'm not quite sure what any of it has to do with unlocking skins for different classes. I'm assuming those rules would either stay as they are now, or that if it changes, that change would be unrelated to this one.

If you have a single glamour slot that sits across all classes, all gear would have to be unlocked or you'd run into issues with say, setting the coat to a Bard-only item and then switching to White Mage. The glamour would no longer be valid.

Which is exactly how it works now. The glamour we apply is across all classes, and if you glamour something that's only available to one of them, then whenever you switch to another class, the glamour doesn't work and the underlying gear is displayed instead. Of course, if SE is making changes in glamour, changing how that works could well be one of them. But whether it is or not would be unrelated to whether they add a couple more available glamours onto the item.

If you did go with the hypothetical 4+ potential skins tied to a piece of gear, the gear sets would still have to be modified to store that flag, so I don't know that it would be significantly easier than just pointing to the skin you want in the first place, but without access to the code or DB schema, I can't really attest to that. :-/

Our gear sets already know what glamour skin we were using when the gear set was stored (as well as what color it was and what materia it had), but the way gear sets work is essentially just saying "These are the items I would like to equip. Are they available?" Then the system checks our armory chest to try and find them. So you could modify the file to say your glamour is an item you've never actually received in the game, but when you try to equip that set, you'd just get the warning that a matching item with that glamour cannot be found. Regardless of what your gear sets say, you can only equip items and glamours that you actually have on hand. That puts the important part of the data with the item itself which SE holds in its database where it's less readily hackable than gear sets that we store.

Without knowing their code base, I don't know what other reasons there are as well, but I'm pretty sure that's one of them. (Though it's one that could be solved if they'd move the storage of gear sets to their own servers.)

[Dark-Saviour]

What you call "minimal benefit" is fixing something that for many players is the biggest problem the glamour system has. (Or in my own view, one of the two biggest problems.) Certainly an important enough one to be worth a couple extra flags per gear item (and yes, that's for all the gear items we're holding, the same as our current glamour).

If it's tied to slots, I'd say there's likely enough benefit to it to pursue. Adding extra glamour tags to individual items though, not so much in my eyes. It makes the system more convoluted and cumbersome, and will still result in you having to re-glamour every time you get new gear (4 times per item, at that), so its not especially convenient.

I'm not saying that some people wouldn't use it, as people will probably latch onto whatever they can get at this point, but I don't see that as a long-term solution that will actually make anyone happy (and I'd personally just continue to avoid glamour on intermediate gear 90% of the time and stick to one slot per item).

...
(Though it's one that could be solved if they'd move the storage of gear sets to their own servers.)

I actually hadn't realized that gear sets were saved locally, though with that being the case, then yes, that is something that absolutely needs to change.

In addition, if they're actually storing flags for item type, materia, etc. I consider that to be unnecessary bloat as well; the gear set should purely point at a unique item ID associated with each piece of gear itself, and that should be all it needs to know about.
I hadn't considered that these flags were tied to the actual gear-set association (though since it does whine about materia, glamour, etc. being different if you change them and don't reassociate, that does make sense), but I don't honestly see enough benefit to that approach to justify its continued existence.
If you've discarded or stored a piece of associated gear, but have another instance of it on you, "X was not found. Do you want to equip (other) X" is more than enough. If you change the glamour/materia, you chose to do so and the associated item itself has not changed, so it should not need acknowledgement or to provide any warning/error.