While the Glamour Revision is welcomed - I feel like its missing the mark

[Jijifli]

You don't understand the limitation of resources then.

Why does Square have to limit it to 200 while Blizzard with WoW can legit let you save EVERY piece of gear in the game that's green or higher? When they teased it for the pre-patch, it was 338 plate helms alone, not counting any other slots or armor types. And that was before an entire expansion of new appearance items.

When one game lets me save more hats than another lets me save pieces in general, it's starting to get silly.

Also...

And honestly, 200 slots is more than enough to glamour with, you just have to be smart with what you choose.

Why do I have to be picky with glamour? Specially if I put something in, it's both gone in my bags and can be removed from existence entirely? 200 slots over the course of 12-13 slots a job means I'm allowed no variation. Sure, if I only wanna stick to one set per battle class, that's only 181 slots, but then I get only 19 for either any variations to that, or for any crafters and gatherer sets I wanna use. That's very limiting to customization, something Blizzard already corrected on their own game because people asked for the exact same thing we are, a catalog to save inventory space.

[Tridus]

From what I can see all SE has done is create another CF like housing. This is another case of SE being good at developing stories but not knowing the first thing about software development (i.e. server limitations excuse for everything). SE needs to hire someone that has good knowledge of database design and implementation. While they're at it adding a few folks who know how to and aren't afraid of writing code would be good as well. If nothing else they could have taken the armoire and rewritten the way it works to support glamour and outfits. A bit restricting since the locations to use it are limited but not really any different than what they have proposed for 4.2.

I get the distinct impression there are old limits floating around due to bad decisions made in the 1.0 era that would be very expensive to fix today, and we're suffering through the consequences. Because "transfering data around" doesn't apply to this. There's no reason any glamour data except what you're currently wearing has to be available all the time. The server only needs it when you're actively trying to use the glamour log , and to tell you if you've already got a specific item's glamour or not. I don't need to be able to browse through all my hats halfway through Rabanastre.

We're not privy to how the backend is designed and how data is accessed. If we were, I suspect we'd cringe.

[Singularity]

A lot of software development is "we can make this work now provided it's limited in these specific ways."

Yes they could have released it with a thousand slots, or a hundred ensembles, but then it would take even longer. Better to have some of it now and the rest later than nothing at all now and the same thing later that we would have had anyway no? There'll be more coming.

And a glamour log of the type most of us are probably imagining is not simpler. Not underneath.

[Vhailor]

You don't understand the limitation of resources then. The same reason why the new 70 inventory choco bag can't do the things you can do with a regular inventory. Resource management. They were able to add 70 slots by disabling access to it in instances, being unable to craft, deliver, sell, etc with said items. That means instead of potentially adding 25 slots that may not of have restrictions they were able to add more with restrictions.

Or SE could store the information locally, and verify on the server end that the character can actually use the Glamour piece they're trying to equip. Ping an update to the server and the local information upon adding an item to the Glamour, and sync them every time someone logs in. Given the narrow range of functionality for items in the Glamour Log (project / not project), there is absolutely no reason why a Glamour Log should ping the server simply to display the gear that you've stored in it; it should only ping the server when you've requested a new outfit be displayed.

SE's obsession with server-side confirmation and requests isn't a good excuse for shitty implementation of key game features.

A lot of software development is "we can make this work now provided it's limited in these specific ways."

Yes they could have released it with a thousand slots, or a hundred ensembles, but then it would take even longer. Better to have some of it now and the rest later than nothing at all now and the same thing later that we would have had anyway no? There'll be more coming.

I'd agree, if this were a rushed system that SE was implementing 3-6 months after Glamours originally launched. This wasn't. Glamours have been around since Version 2.2, over three years ago. Two expansions have launched, entirely new battle systems like PvP have been implemented, flight and swimming has been introduced. They've had plenty of time to design a seamless, high-quality Glamour Log system, if they wanted to. What they appear to have done is tried to ignore us for roughly three years, and then finally gotten tired of the complaints and cobbled something together in the cheapest way possible. I don't see how that's a defensible decision.

I get the distinct impression there are old limits floating around due to bad decisions made in the 1.0 era that would be very expensive to fix today, and we're suffering through the consequences. Because "transfering data around" doesn't apply to this. There's no reason any glamour data except what you're currently wearing has to be available all the time. The server only needs it when you're actively trying to use the glamour log , and to tell you if you've already got a specific item's glamour or not. I don't need to be able to browse through all my hats halfway through Rabanastre.

We're not privy to how the backend is designed and how data is accessed. If we were, I suspect we'd cringe.

I'm sure we would too, but I don't see how this applies.

Consider the Crafter and Gatherer logs, for instance. Every piece of craftable gear is displayed, immediately upon request, by these logs, anywhere in the game - along with check-marks indicating which items you have crafted and gathered before. That is, in essence, the same functionality required for the Glamour log.

Are we supposed to believe that the implementation of, essentially, a third Crafting log, would break the game's architecture? I find this incredibly difficult to believe, even with the mess left over from version 1.0. And if that is the case, SE still needs to fix it, because at some point with level cap increases, the amount of items in the Crafting / Gathering logs would exceed the current total number of Glamour items today (if it hasn't already). I'd completely agree with your point if other Logs of this nature didn't already exist, but given they've been seamlessly implemented since ARR launched, I'm scratching my head as to how an identical system for Glamours would somehow be hampered by these inherited architectural limits.

[Claviusnex]

I get the distinct impression there are old limits floating around due to bad decisions made in the 1.0 era that would be very expensive to fix today, and we're suffering through the consequences. Because "transfering data around" doesn't apply to this. There's no reason any glamour data except what you're currently wearing has to be available all the time. The server only needs it when you're actively trying to use the glamour log , and to tell you if you've already got a specific item's glamour or not. I don't need to be able to browse through all my hats halfway through Rabanastre.

We're not privy to how the backend is designed and how data is accessed. If we were, I suspect we'd cringe.

I worked with code that was hours old to stuff that was written in the 1960's and still in use. Even if the code is poorly written for something like this you write all new code for the extension then return the data to the old code in the format it is expecting. In this case it would only need to be the one item you are using for your glamour which would fit in any existing list used by the armory based glamour. The new code would handle all database access, validity checking and UI for the new system.

I agree we haven't seen the code nor design but SE impresses me as a content company not a software company. The result is they don't really know how to develop the platform their content sits on. I base this on the way they fight to not have to make changes and the excuses they make when they do finally change something part of way. As I've said in another thread part of software development is taking the really bad pieces of code and rewriting them as part of a new release. The business case to justify this is usually straight forward to create and puts the argument into the dollars and cents (or Yen in this case) management understands. The glamour improvements and housing problem are two areas where I think it would be to SE's advantage to do this.

[Vhailor]

I agree we haven't seen the code nor design but SE impresses me as a content company not a software company. The result is they don't really know how to develop the platform their content sits on. I base this on the way they fight to not have to make changes and the excuses they make when they do finally change something part of way. As I've said in another thread part of software development is taking the really bad pieces of code and rewriting them as part of a new release. The business case to justify this is usually straight forward to create and puts the argument into the dollars and cents (or Yen in this case) management understands. The glamour improvements and housing problem are two areas where I think it would be to SE's advantage to do this.

And also account management in general, rather than character management. I got hints of this back as far as the ARR launch, when they were locking character creation on servers even to accounts that already had an existing character on said server. This restriction was patently absurd, given that two characters from the same account couldn't be logged in at the same time. A few other issues (character-specific black lists rather than account-specific) lead me to believe SE simply doesn't have the account-wide management architecture built up very well, which they should work to develop.

[Tridus]

I'm sure we would too, but I don't see how this applies.

Consider the Crafter and Gatherer logs, for instance. Every piece of craftable gear is displayed, immediately upon request, by these logs, anywhere in the game - along with check-marks indicating which items you have crafted and gathered before. That is, in essence, the same functionality required for the Glamour log.

I'd expect the crafting log could be loaded on demand because most of the time the data isn't needed. Like, in an instance, most of the time you won't look at the crafting log at all. If someone does, it could be loaded then.

For the purpose of doing glamour, the glamour log could work the same way, and it'd be fine. For the purpose of showing on the tooltip of a drop if you already have that glamour registered, you'd need it always available.

I mean, I'm not disagreeing with anyone here. It's a very weak excuse at this point. But it comes across to me as a "there's fundamental problems in how stuff works that we aren't being given the budget to fix, and so we're trying to tack stuff on top of it instead" situation. Honestly, the dev team has come across as understaffed for pretty much all of Stormblood.

[Tridus]

I worked with code that was hours old to stuff that was written in the 1960's and still in use. Even if the code is poorly written for something like this you write all new code for the extension then return the data to the old code in the format it is expecting. In this case it would only need to be the one item you are using for your glamour which would fit in any existing list used by the armory based glamour. The new code would handle all database access, validity checking and UI for the new system.

That's true, unless the problem is in something like the handoff code between servers. If it's only got X bytes of data to work with, you can't just stick more in without changing X. Changing X will impact a bunch of other things and requires a significant test cycle to not have another "new NA data center is constantly booting people off" situation. If management won't give you the budget to do that, then it doesn't get done.

I agree we haven't seen the code nor design but SE impresses me as a content company not a software company. The result is they don't really know how to develop the platform their content sits on.

Definitely agree with that. Stuff like account management is incredibly clunky compared to other games, and there's lots of stuff in the game itself where it looks like they simply don't know what they're doing, server wise.

[Draxxion]

The issue I have is two fold. One is Square really needs to invest more in this game so they can get the servers they need and so Yoshi can expand his team. At this point there is no reason to not have a robust programming team working on many aspects of the game and improving the background structure of the engine. The other is for a modern game it is odd that such a feature was not implemented sooner and be more able to handle more items. You can argue that it took many expansions for Blizzard to implement it in WoW, but Guild Wars 2 had it at the get go and it can handle every piece of gear in game. WoW can as well. Here we are with a system that is limited and lacking by comparison as well doesn't live up to the hype placed on it. I can understand that when Yoshi P said it would take hours to explain it might have been a more complex system. They could have simplified it greatly for all we know. Concept is great and yes it can be expanded, but having it limited is disappointing.

[ElazulHP]

Why are they calling them commodes? I seriously can't be the only one where that means toilet in my region can I?