Glamours made easy - announcement

[Zojha]

You'd think right? But are you aware of how both of those systems work on the back end? I'm not.

Well, for all I know, a money hungry executive threatened to fire the dev team if they didn't make the system limited to not endanger retainer revenue.

I have no idea. A lot of things are possible in the realm of "Maybe". Can you be sure that isn't the case? No you can't, you have no idea how their workplace and contracts look like. That's the joy of the argument. You can look at a different workplace or contract and think that assumption is unrealistic, just like I do when I look at a different log, but you cannot be sure. Even if a different person tells you how it is and delivers proof, he might be lying and using forged evidence. The only way to be sure is to check in person.
You can also assume that aliens took control of the devs and make all kinds of wild conspiracy theories that you have absolutely no proof of yourself, but as long as you leave no way to deliver proof of the opposite, you cannot be sure that isn't the case either.

Religion has thrived on that principle for a while now - This is faith you are talking about.
And your entire argument boils down to:"Have faith in the dev team!". Well some people are gonna have it, some people won't.

I personally don't have faith in a dev team that tells me that having barefeet models presents some kind of technical problem while a hobby modder can do it in their free time. I don't have faith in a dev team that can make storage "limitations" go away at the price of 2$ per month. I don't have faith in a dev team that tells me auto-demolition for housing is "a thing of the past" and then implements it. I don't have faith in a dev team that tunes Savage DPS requirements with the assumptions of zero Healer DPS and only aggro combo from tanks in mind, which are extremely far detached from reality. I don't have faith in a dev team that holds off a feature like Frontline Frontlancer for fear of "Moral Degradation". I don't have faith in a dev team that concludes that the increased PvP participation after 3.5 is due to the chat restriction in Feast and not because of the newly introduced Garo items and mounts. But that's just me. Not an exhaustive list either, but I think it gets the point across.

[Vstarstruck]

Well, for all I know, a money hungry executive threatened to fire the dev team if they didn't make the system limited to not endanger retainer revenue.

that is how i feel, I really like to see more money put in the game

[Krotoan]

Religion has thrived on that principle for a while now - This is faith you are talking about.
And your entire argument boils down to:"Have faith in the dev team!". Well some people are gonna have it, some people won't.

The argument goes: Either the team is able, or it isn't able to do all the things you request. If they are , it will happen, if they arent (for any reason, aliens or otherwise) it will not. If they listen as little as you think, perhaps you should abandon this game. Because for hecks sake, nothing will ever get better and they will continue to destroy the game with poor decisions. Perhaps though.. if you HOPE that they'll change. You HOPE they'll start listening. HOPING that this iteration of solution is better isn't quite as foolish as you'd imply.

People are indeed free to present their own ideas on why or why not this is a good idea.But I don't see a reason to complain about a system we haven't touched yet. Feedback before actual experience is very likely to be even more ignored than usual.

I personally don't have faith in a dev team that tells me that having barefeet models presents some kind of technical problem while a hobby modder can do it in their free time. I don't have faith in a dev team that can make storage "limitations" go away at the price of 2$ per month. I don't have faith in a dev team that tells me auto-demolition for housing is "a thing of the past" and then implements it. I don't have faith in a dev team that tunes Savage DPS requirements with the assumptions of zero Healer DPS and only aggro combo from tanks in mind, which are extremely far detached from reality. I don't have faith in a dev team that holds off a feature like Frontline Frontlancer for fear of "Moral Degradation". I don't have faith in a dev team that concludes that the increased PvP participation after 3.5 is due to the chat restriction in Feast and not because of the newly introduced Garo items and mounts. But that's just me. Not an exhaustive list either, but I think it gets the point across.

All of these are from the point of view of a single person armed with personal experiences. I will not argue they aren't VALID.. but they're missing a lot of context. In my own head , and knowing what I've learned of the way the game world has played out, these all make sense. Not always in the players interest, but they make sense.

In the end we both have very different views on the people behind the game and the decisions being made.
You will never convince me that having optimism is a bad idea, and I cannot seem to convince you (and many others) that hostility towards something you want changed is a poor approach.

You are welcome to continue to try though.

Someday this game will cease to be worth the money and time I spend every month. This hasn't happened yet, but when it does I will leave with no venom, and no words on the forum. Until then I will post tolerance, even discussion and positivity.

[Ametrine]

Alright, I'm theory crafting here, but in regards to customization and inventory, I think SE has a strict data cap for each player character.

Dropping the PS3 increased the cap, and SE opted to use this to increase our on hand inventory.

My guess is the reason the vanity system works as it does is it doesn't add any extra data so much as changes a small bit of it.

So, you've equipped the Ala Mhigan Muffed Cap of Casting, no materia, appearance is the Muffed Cap of Casting, no dye.
You glamour it and it becomes an Ala Mhigan Muffed Cap of Casting, no materia, appearance is Rimless Glasses, silver dye.

The game isn't loading more data with that, so the client and server are happy. If so, it's possible SE built everything else with this character data cap in mind, thus making any increases to it about a thousand times more difficult to implement than just patching in a glamour log.

[Roegadoom]

In fairness: It is somewhat hard to imagine how you can have a log of items from which you can craft, which can casually track whether you have crafted that item yet or not to give you a first time XP bonus at the end of the craft and check whether you have the materials for each item in your inventory before it allows you to craft and check whether the items in your inventory are HQ or not to give you a quality bonus for the craft and check whether you have access to the recipes (Quests, Master Books, etc) AND check whether you have the right class and correct items equipped (Like Ixal gloves) to craft all at the same time, but not a similar log of items which only tracks which items you can glamour or not based on X criterion (Like a logical OR condition between having it in your inventory and having it glam'd once via the system) and then allows you to glam them.

The prior log somehow holds 6255 items as of now and regularly gets added to.

I dunno. If engine and server constraints are an issue, you'd think the prior log would be considerably more problematic than the latter in just about every possible way.

There's an important difference between what would be possible to design and build, starting from scratch, and what is reasonable to transition to given what's already in place. The crafting log was designed with that kind of capability, but has its own limitations they have to work around. Note the distinction between "Level-based" and "Special" recipes. Any recipe that you unlock or learn by any mechanism other than class level is filed under special recipes. Most of what you've listed as capabilities of the crafting log aren't relevant to the underlying issue of synchronizing data between the client and server.

At a fundamental level, they've chosen to synchronize tons of data between the client and server on a frequent basis, and while this makes it easier to avoid causing invalid states or duping glitches, it scales poorly. The usual approach would be to avoid synchronizing anything that both client and server can determine separately, and only synch what turns out to be necessary. This is more challenging to get right, but way more efficient. So SE took an approach that initially made their jobs easier, but causes its own set of problems that are difficult to work around. There are all sorts of cases where they limit the possible state transformations so that they can save on bandwidth, but make for a clunky user experience. Things like being unable to move items around in your inventory while crafting, or not being able to craft in inn rooms. They don't have to synch data that they know cannot change, because they've prevented you from changing it. The rest of the time, they assume they cannot know what has and has not changed, so they play it safe and synch it all.

They're constantly shipping your entire inventory back and forth between the server and client, whether you have your inventory open or not. That's why they're hesitant to increase readily available inventory space. Things like Retainers and the chocobo bags that they're adding, however, only have to be synched when they're being interacted with. The crafting log completion only has to be synched while you've got the crafting interface open.

What they're trying to avoid for glamours is constantly synching a list of every piece of equipment in the game and whether or not you've unlocked it. That's why they are putting in a system with restrictions on when and where it can be accessed, to limit how often they need to synch that data. Had they designed the system in a sensible fashion from the ground up, it would only need to synch information about a few items at a given time. To do that now would require ripping out and replacing code that is spread throughout the game, client and server both. It would be a tremendous undertaking, similar to the transition from 1.0 to 2.0. Which leads to this:

Only time will tell, but SE's obsession with creating entirely new systems for every small change - as opposed to augmenting existing, established systems with new functionality - is a tremendous liability. It might make for flashier headlines when previewing version updates, but it also contributes to a game world that feels cobbled together from dozens of independently-designed pieces, rather than crafted and built up with some sort of consistent vision.

They create new systems, because the old ones are badly designed and difficult to augment. They work around limitations by making new systems that aren't subject to those limitations in the first place. The game feels cobbled together because that's exactly how it's been built. They have an enormous amount of technical debt to overcome, and very little experience dealing with the concept to know how to address it. Consider that the entire Japanese software development methodology has long consisted of starting practically from scratch for every project, with relatively little code or tool reuse. They lose a lot of efficiency as a result, but haven't had to deal with the long-term consequences of poor design decisions. Admittedly, it's difficult to predict what sort of functionality you'll need in an MMO 10 years down the road, so there will always be obstacles to overcome, but good programming practices make it easier to isolate and replace pieces to add new functionality.

To do glamours right would basically require a separate team of programmers rewriting the entire game from scratch, while the current team continues to work with what they've got. Regardless of how much money SE as a whole has or makes, the FFXIV team isn't given that kind of budget. They're a small group of people struggling to make headway, shackled by either their own poor past decisions, or the decisions of those who came before them. They're probably going to have to deal with these fundamental problems at some point in the future, but it's a matter of resource allocation and keeping the game running in the meantime.

[Darker_Midnight]

Snip.

*Slow clap*

This person knows their stuff. But I pity you because you're going to get ignored by the angry, ignorant masses regardless.

Still, you have my Like for explaining it carefully and in great detail in a manner laymen would understand. Thank you.

[Alleo]

so.. if you had a system with 700 slots for gear and 2 plates for EVERY SINGLE JOB possible (32 plates) .. still no go? Unlimited or nothing?
Concern over the future of a game built on cobbled together technology and poorly designed netcode is valid, but unless you know more of the programming than I do (are you a former dev?) , how are you so sure that it's just a "yes/no" list using the current underlying systems?

Yes because I want this game to exist for a long time (I do rant about it a lot but that is only because I like it and want it to succeed) and seeing how many glamours we get for a single patch between the expansions and on top of that all the glamour from an expansion release unlimited would be the only true long term solution.

Seeing how we already do have other logs (fishing, crafting, gathering) and things like the orchestrion scroll lists I do kinda believe that a list should be possible and others that have more knowledge about this stuff have posted over the time that this is not something that impossible to do. (And no I am no dev but I also dont need to be a cook to tell that a dish is not that great and need improvement..and as a customer I honestly dont care about the details. I pay them money and expect them as experts to give us a long time system and not a bandaid.)

Zojha wrote it down perfectly. SE is a company that did a lot of bad things over the last few months..they already went against their own words (housing and timer), they more than once said that something was not possible only to later say it is. They truly like to switch between their opinions and honestly it smells like greed when we get no free retainer for an expansion but its fine to buy them. (We are not even asking for 8 free ones x)) I pay money and they are not my friends. I do know that this is probably not the problem of the workers but more of the higher ups.

I also find it bad to kinda imply that we should be a former dev or something like that to give feedback. For me its a fact that other games manage quite some part of their game better than SE and even if they do not have the same system and code behind it that is not my problem. Its the job of SE to find out how such a system will work with this game. And if their code cant give us a true glamour log like other companies do than they truly have a bad system.

This person knows their stuff. But I pity you because you're going to get ignored by the angry, ignorant masses regardless.

Nice way to insult those that find fault in this system. x) It might be not that easy for SE to do (and other people that also have experiences with servers and codes do point out that its not impossible to do) and I am fine if they said that we would get an overhaul later because it needs time but in the end this solution feels like a bandaid that will hinder us from getting a true log down the line. The problem is that they like to ignore the problem (see housing) until its no longer doable to ignore it. But when that point is reached it might just be too late.

Also lets not forget that SE is a huge company and that some reports show that FF14 is their cash cow right now. Subs, cash shop, merchandize..this should be more than enough to finance more people and features. If we just take these bandaids and not complain and want better systems than we might never get them because they would think that we are fine with the way things are. I mean you can be fine with it but that does not mean that everyone has to see it that way. Maybe I will be positively surprised and they will continue to increase the limit in big amounts and over a reasonable time span but right now I just cant see this.

[Tridus]

Alright, I'm theory crafting here, but in regards to customization and inventory, I think SE has a strict data cap for each player character.

Dropping the PS3 increased the cap, and SE opted to use this to increase our on hand inventory.

Depends on where the cap is. Dropping the PS3 helps client side, because the new weakest supported client is Win32 PCs. It doesn't do much of anything for server side data at all.

My guess is the reason the vanity system works as it does is it doesn't add any extra data so much as changes a small bit of it.

So, you've equipped the Ala Mhigan Muffed Cap of Casting, no materia, appearance is the Muffed Cap of Casting, no dye.
You glamour it and it becomes an Ala Mhigan Muffed Cap of Casting, no materia, appearance is Rimless Glasses, silver dye.

How glamours are actually applied to equipped items appears to be identical to how it's working now, so they probably didn't have to change that code much, if at all. So yes, the same basic data is being retained while you're off doing stuff. The extra data is only needed when you have the glamour closet itself open, and you can only do that in certain places so they don't need to keep that data loaded all the time while you're logged in.

The game isn't loading more data with that, so the client and server are happy. If so, it's possible SE built everything else with this character data cap in mind, thus making any increases to it about a thousand times more difficult to implement than just patching in a glamour log.

It certainly seems that way given what we know. They've said that character data transfer between servers while you're logged in is an issue for them if it gets to big, and this system does avoid adding anything else to that. Roegadoom's post also suggests that it's due to synching everything with the client too frequently, and it also avoids that because the client only needs the glamour closet inventory (and the chocobo saddlebags) if you specifically interact with it, both of which are restricted to certain areas (the server a dungeon is running on doesn't need to know either of them exist at all). The sever also only needs it in those cases, and perhaps if they're covered by the search command (which isn't something we know at this point AFAIK).

If you want to build glamour storage without having to keep any extra data loaded most of the time and without changing the basis of how the game stores which glamour is attached to which item, this system makes a lot of sense. That's the context people need to understand the decisions in.

[Tridus]

At a fundamental level, they've chosen to synchronize tons of data between the client and server on a frequent basis, and while this makes it easier to avoid causing invalid states or duping glitches, it scales poorly. The usual approach would be to avoid synchronizing anything that both client and server can determine separately, and only synch what turns out to be necessary. This is more challenging to get right, but way more efficient. So SE took an approach that initially made their jobs easier, but causes its own set of problems that are difficult to work around. There are all sorts of cases where they limit the possible state transformations so that they can save on bandwidth, but make for a clunky user experience. Things like being unable to move items around in your inventory while crafting, or not being able to craft in inn rooms. They don't have to synch data that they know cannot change, because they've prevented you from changing it. The rest of the time, they assume they cannot know what has and has not changed, so they play it safe and synch it all.

Wow... that explains so very, very much. I never even considered that they'd do something that crazy in something meant to scale.

Great post. Fills in a lot of blanks I had as to exactly why this stuff is so problematic.

[Krotoan]

Yes because I want this game to exist for a long time (I do rant about it a lot but that is only because I like it and want it to succeed) and seeing how many glamours we get for a single patch between the expansions and on top of that all the glamour from an expansion release unlimited would be the only true long term solution.
Seeing how we already do have other logs (fishing, crafting, gathering) and things like the orchestrion scroll lists I do kinda believe that a list should be possible and others that have more knowledge about this stuff have posted over the time that this is not something that impossible to do. (And no I am no dev but I also dont need to be a cook to tell that a dish is not that great and need improvement..and as a customer I honestly dont care about the details. I pay them money and expect them as experts to give us a long time system and not a bandaid.)

Comparing a fishing log.. and a log of items that need to be applied to your appearance is stretching it quite a bit. No you don't have to be a cook to say whether or not you LIKE a dish, but telling a cook you don't like something as opposed to scolding them for not doing something better without any knowledge about difficulty of technique or scarcity of ingredients is quite another animal altogether. Yes you pay money. Very little money really. You'd pay more for 2 cocktails in a bar with a tip. I'm getting a little tired of people acting like they are entitled to a flawless experience and whatever features they demand simply because they pay a (minor) fee. "I don't care just make it happen" is a very poor way to go about requesting things. People say things like "I PAY MONEY" and then everyone acts like the cash shop is the devil when SE tries to make a little more without raising actual base pricing.

Zojha wrote it down perfectly. SE is a company that did a lot of bad things over the last few months..they already went against their own words (housing and timer), they more than once said that something was not possible only to later say it is. They truly like to switch between their opinions and honestly it smells like greed when we get no free retainer for an expansion but its fine to buy them. (We are not even asking for 8 free ones x)) I pay money and they are not my friends. I do know that this is probably not the problem of the workers but more of the higher ups.

I also find it bad to kinda imply that we should be a former dev or something like that to give feedback. For me its a fact that other games manage quite some part of their game better than SE and even if they do not have the same system and code behind it that is not my problem. Its the job of SE to find out how such a system will work with this game. And if their code cant give us a true glamour log like other companies do than they truly have a bad system.

Bad things? Like dealing with changing situations and trends? Implementing things you didn't like? I'll agree another retainer would have been nice, but we did get SOME inventory, and now we're getting the chocobo bags. They're always going to try and make the decision that keeps people playing and maintains their subscription base, but sometimes they're going to be wrong. Nobody knows the future and pulling "Gotcha" moments on them with quotes is probably another reason they don't like to reply on these forums.


You don't need to be a Dev to offer opinions, but saying things like "This system from this game is better, I don't see why they can't do that, it's so simple" is very telling that you don't have any idea what goes into it and it reeks of entitlement and ignorance. What if they can't do it? Would you be OK if they just out and out said: "That's never going to happen, but this is what we can do with what we have." is this what you are expecting? I'm pretty sure if they announced that people would call them liars no matter how true it was.

"I really like how this game does this, it would be great if this could happen in our game"
"This system seems kind of limited, are we going to see any sort of expansion in the future?"
"This doesn't seem scale-able with growing inventory concerns, what is being done to make this a feature we can continue to use conveniently for future expansions?"

All of these are requests without unwarranted judgement or assumptions. These are things that The devs could probably answer, even if a little vaguely.