It's time (Option to Hide other players Glamour)

[Awha]

Snip. . .

Sorry moblie. Will not speak for everyone, just myself. I do think the idea of saying that some that are for the idea do not see the difference between to one being UI and one being environmental is slightly disingenuous. They are different, but for me peronally is it is the core the features share, and maybe it was the primary intent or not behind adding such features, but the reality is at the core they are in place to allow players modify and enhance their own personal experience, to potentially improve it in some way. Even if SE did not have that view when they added the features, in practice that is what they are.

As for your reasons why you do not agree with glam removal.

1) I do understand that is a fear, and I have ran into people that got upset over something I have said about their character, but boils for me why should only one side have the power to control over things that they feel are part of their extensive--it terms of personal beliefs or what have you.

2) I understand this fear also, but I do not think it is fair to label the idea as such since we would not know the reason behind one using the feature and thus any claims of whitewashing or intolerance would purely ausmption based. Even if someone made it know that was the reason, fault should lay with the person and not the feature. I also just not a fan of slippery slopes, but on a personal level if someone wanted to remove lala I would be all for it, if it was only on their side of the screen. In my view my character would still be the same, sure at times I would scratch my head for a moment if someone refered to me as a roe when I am a lala, but I probably would laugh and move on.

As for the the negative twist media and the player base would put on the idea, that is possible but extremely unfair and I do not agree with how people like to project an overarching fear over a tool or feature because people are jerks.

3) I agree, personally I would not use the feature because it does limit diversity that I would see. Not everyone shares the same sense of what it means to be an MMO, so why would one version get priory over the other

One again I do get where you are coming from, and I respect your reasons for not wanting the feature, but in the end those are your faeelings just as my reasons are my own feelings. That is why I think for the most part the people that are for the idea, I know for myself personally have tried to come at this from as objective as a position possible trying to remove as much bias as possible, and if you do break down what every option that allows for the alteration of some element of the game no matter what the mindset was for adding the feature, in pratice they do allow players to have direct control over what they choose to see and not see, At the core that is all the glam removal feature is, sure the other ones have other benfits, but for every person that benfit or reason behin why they use the feature could be different. That is why I like to look at the idea from what would it do at the core, and that is why I see no difference between them.

[Ivellior]

Wall of text.

I can see your arguments, but they really feel far streched, and some to the point of being borderline illogical.

Let's talk about the artistic vision first. I will place items in 2 broad categories. Level 1 items (gear that were literally designed to be glamoured) and Level appropriate gear (ie the gear that drop in a dungeon/raids or crafted high lvl gear).

When I am in town player can pretty much wear whatever they want (either be it lvl 1 items or lvl appropriate items). That is fine and I don't mind obnoxious glamours. Since I'm not forced to look or interact with the "prick running around in neon glowing toad suit". I walk around them, do my business and forget about them. If one of my friends wears that I can always ask him to change his glamour.

When I am doing a dungeon/raid/trial whatever I am forced to play and interact with the aformentioned "prick running around in neon glowing toad suit". I have no option to avoid that unless I drop off the duty.

Now let's the explain artistic vision angle. When you are enter an instanced, you need to wear level appropriate items in order to enter. There will never be a "prick running around in neon glowing toad suit" because that is a level 1 item.

Let's say for example I am finishing the Shadowbringers main story and I'm ready to face Hades. With the glamours turned off option people will be wearing level appropriate gear. That means lvl79 dungeon gear or lvl80 class gear (or newer sets since it has been some time now). Now let's compare that with the glamoured version. I get a tank in bikini, a BLM with a glowing chobobo suit and Roe in a wedding dress.
I find it really hard to believe that the devs vision for this trial includes the colorful trio mentioned above. Not only is immersion breaking, it also greatly cheapens the experience if it is your first time. So no, I do not find it logical that this was part of the devs vision. If anything it is a huge detriment to it.

It impacts my gameplay and experience, hurts my eyes with all the nice neon colors, and I can't do anything about it besides quiting the instance, taking a 30min penalty and hoping the next group isn't as bad. If I have the option to turn off glamours I get nothing of the above and I also don't impact other players in any way. This is the crux of the argument that players make that glamours are not part of vision.

Now for your 3 main reasons.

First of all, let's talk about the possible harrasement part. In order to actually came to pass, as you describe it, the following things need to happen:
1. The player must have the option to turn off glamours.
2. The player must take a screenshot and than screenshot must contain your character.
3. You character must be wearing mismatched gear and that gear combination should appear to be lewd to a potential harasser.
4. The player mentioned above must be upload that image to a public forum and in that image your character name appears clearly.
5. The potential harasser must come across the image and find it lewd enough to harass you.
6. The potential harasser must have a character on your server or create a new character in your server.
7. The potential harasser must find your character in game and then proceed to harass you.

I'm sorry, but unless you have a person that is specifically targeting you for harassement (in which case having the glamour toggle option is irrellevant), the chances of harassment being caused this way is miniscule. Truthfully, I have more chances of winning the lottery, or getting hit by a bus while walking home than getting harassed this way.

I can understand the reason, but it still feels far stretched.

The second point.
What does "whitewashing" even mean in this context? (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...h/whitewashing) How is a toggle that does not affect other people or the game in the enviroment can even be consider whitewashing. Is using the black list whitewashing? Was the game "whitewashed" back in 2.0 when glamour wasn't implemented yet? Are players who are not using glamours "whitewashing"? This makes zero logical sense.

As for the "give them an inch and they will ask for a mile" it also absolutely makes no sense. People will always ask for changes. SE changed the gender locking on some gear and now people are asking all gear to be removed from the gender locking restriction. That is allowed in the gender locking thread but not here because reasons? Since players always ask for more we might as well set a moratorium on player asking for changes.

The only thing that makes sense in this argument is that this option will somehow remove "people's diversity" or "restrict their creative freedom" or whatever. What does "diversity"/"creative freedom" offer to the game? Nothing. It's just a way that allows some players to increase their enjoyment of the game by changing how some pixels look on their screen. What I am asking for the option to increase my enjoyment of the game by changing how some pixels look on my screen and it's not even affecting other people. In short it's a value added feature that makes the game more appealing for some people. And I want to an option to disable that value added feature in order to the game more appealing for me.

Finally the third point (the mmorpg).
I really fail to see how am I dehumanizing other players (ie making them look more like npcs) by toggling a cosmetic option. I do not in any way inhibit them from what they normally do. They can play their game normally, I can play my game normally. I can interact the say way I do with them all the time. I can still form parties, do a dungeon, talk or do whatever. The only thing that changes is that when I will be doing the hades instance I wont have the "glowing neon prick" to ruin my experience.

And finally the game is structured to allow you to customize your interactions with other players. I have guilds, linkshells, black list, and a million other ways of customizing the interaction I have with other people. If removing glamours can even be considered an interaction with other people as you claim (imo it isn't), it's still an option to customize your way of interacting with them. Another tool in the myriads of tools the game provides you to interact with people. Cloathes don't make the people, their interactions do. Removing glamour does not inhibit interaction with other people in any way. I could even claim it helps you spot the real people from the npcs as they wearing mismatched outfits.

Finally I'd like to assume that with your thrid point you're not subtly trying to tell me: "if you don't accept others players glamours/diversity/type of people you are unwelcoming and a bigot" like other people said in the thread.

If you do, and for all the people that think so, I have the following for you:
I don't care about you touting your diversity/gayness/whatever political belief you have.
I don't care about your carefully crafted glamour that took you 5 hours and 24 different dungeons/crafted mats to make.
I don't care if you dress obnoxiously to piss off other people or make them notice you.
You do these to make you game experience better. I want to shut them off to make my game experience better and it doesn't affect you in any way.

[Brynne]

I can see your arguments, but they really feel far streched, and some to the point of being borderline illogical.

You are both right and wrong, and the reasons why have already been explained in this thread (go read the whole post, it's really good):

The folks who are speaking most vehemently for the conflicting positions here are literally seeing the issue as two entirely different things.

The two of you will never agree on this issue, but neither of you is 'right'.

[Packetdancer]

Twelve help me, I said I was bowing out on this thread, but I accidentally clicked on it when I meant to click the thread one above it—thanks, mobile browser—and ended up reading this. So I'll weigh in with one thing, albeit probably at my typical Packetdancerish length and verbosity (for which I apologize).

What does "whitewashing" even mean in this context? (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...h/whitewashing) How is a toggle that does not affect other people or the game in the enviroment can even be consider whitewashing. Is using the black list whitewashing? Was the game "whitewashed" back in 2.0 when glamour wasn't implemented yet? Are players who are not using glamours "whitewashing"? This makes zero logical sense.

Several of the (many) suggested implementations of glamour removal have involved replacing the character with the default character for their race/background/gender combination. I.e., instead of seeing my character in-game, you would see the default female Highlander character. In several cases—again, see my character—this would be literal whitewashing, and that may be where the objection is being pulled from.

That's also where a lot of my own concern came from, in all honesty; I would find the removal of glamour annoying, inasmuch as (being a woman) I have enough people judging/dictating what I wear in the real world, so to hear that people want the ability to do so in a virtual world just feels a bit exhausting in that sort of "really? We're doing this here, too?" way. But I would find SquareEnix giving people the ability to (effectively) remove all dark-skinned characters from the game by replacing them with the (fair-skinned) racial defaults to be downright chilling, and the fact that it came up as a component of this suggestion several times was honestly what flipped me personally from mild exasperation—I am a healer main, please let me keep my pants, I like pants—to "oh HELLS no" with regards to the entire business.

I recognize that replace-the-characters suggestion was meant at heart to make folks more comfortable inasmuch as the character who could get screenshotted in the unglamoured 'clown pimp' type mismatched gear—which, again, for female healers quite possibly does not include pants—would not be their character but just the default. So yes, it almost certainly came from a well-meaning place, and folks just didn't think about the unintentional side-effect of erasing dark-skinned PCs from the world.

But unintended effects are a thing that happens, and the way those unintended effects are perceived is something to consider. As a relevant example, look at Google's machine learning fiasco from several years back.

Google wanted to work on a model for generalized image classification; you drop an image in, and it can say "awesome, that's probably a bird" or "I think that's a dog" or "that's a banana" or whatever else. The (vastly oversimplified) way in which machine learning works is that you have a giant pile of labeled data (i.e., you know that it's a picture of a bird/dog/banana) and divide it in half. The first half is used to 'train' a model; you throw all the data at it and go "this image is a bird" and "this image is a dog" and so on. When the model is done training, you take the second half and throw it at the model, asking, "What is this?" and then compare what it said ("Dog.") to what the label on the data says ("Bird."). Repeat until the model can tell you what the second half is with a high degree of accuracy.

So, well enough so far. For purposes of training facial recognition, my understanding is that Google decided to use their employee database; it was very large, and each employee record had a face (associated with their badge/ID), and it was data they had free and clear rights to.

So they do all their research and they train their model and release it so that now you can drop an image in and it can figure out what the image might be of... and immediately take a lashing in the press, because it turns out if you drop an image of a darker-skinned person's face into the model, it classifies the image as 'gorilla'. Which comes across... well, let's just go with "not great."

What had happened was that the facial database they used was predominantly white dudes. There was an bias in the dataset which they didn't even notice or think about, and as a result the model had been trained insufficiently; rather than features, it was using skin tone as a classifier between 'human face' and 'gorilla face'.

It was absolutely not their intention to suggest that darker-skinned folks were sub-human, but MAN it was not a good look—and lots of the less savory sorts on the internet also crowed that oh, this was just Google showing them that they were right in their white supremacist ideals... they had such a warm, happy glow to 'know' that Google was on their side at heart.

In the end, Google improved the dataset and re-trained things, but I have no doubt that their PR division felt a little like they'd been punched in the face for a while there.

So when I was speaking earlier in the thread about a feature that strips away identity in the game not coming across well in the press, that's what I meant. SquareEnix could have the best intentions in the world by creating the feature, but if the perception isn't good, it's still negative PR. And I do not personally see a way in which any implementation of a 'remove glamour' feature effectively giving you a button to push to remove all dark-skinned characters from the world—even if that was not the intention—could turn out well in public perception.

[Penthea]

'm sorry, but unless you have a person that is specifically targeting you for harassement (in which case having the glamour toggle option is irrellevant), the chances of harassment being caused this way is miniscule. Truthfully, I have more chances of winning the lottery, or getting hit by a bus while walking home than getting harassed this way.

I can understand the reason, but it still feels far stretched.

I can't help but notice you make no comment about how unglammed players should look, and do not say whether you agree or disagree that it should be introduced in a way that minimises potential abuse.

The entire point of me explaining about harassment is to show that undressing other players without their knowledge or control can lead to some really shady and hurtful stuff. Not to say "I don't want glam removal under any circumstances". I even said I would tolerate it if it put players into modest outfits.

This section alone is making lose any hope that you have any shred of empathy for someone who may feel uncomfortable by having their character potentially get undressed without their knowledge, and no shred of consideration for the negative effects such a tool could have if introduced in a certain way.

For example if unglamming puts players into racial gear, do you think every viera player is okay with the idea of the unglamming tool turning them into a Victoria's Secret model without their control? And that there would be nothing they could do to prevent a person taking pictures of their chest or rear end? And powerless to have any say as to what is done with these images?

Or how about someone who happens to use the Shisui gear for stats? I have witnessed many times players glamming over that gear because they don't like how it is so revealing. They do not feel comfortable having their character be on display in such a sexually pleasing manner.

And before you accuse me of lack of empathy for someone like you, I remind you of this post I recently made.

Bullying does happen. And some people use whatever tools they can to do it.

Just because it is unlikely to get to an extreme does not mean measures should not be taken to prevent it. Especially when it wouldn't even be difficult to do so if SE are hypothetically able create an unglam option.

I say hypothetically because in truth we have no idea if they can even do this. They regularly cite game code to be unable to do a lot of things they want to do. At best we can only guess if the game's structure could allow for creating something that unglams up to potentially hundreds of players in the same zone.

What does "whitewashing" even mean in this context? (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...h/whitewashing) How is a toggle that does not affect other people or the game in the enviroment can even be consider whitewashing. Is using the black list whitewashing? Was the game "whitewashed" back in 2.0 when glamour wasn't implemented yet? Are players who are not using glamours "whitewashing"? This makes zero logical sense.

I am surprised that you cannot understand that erasing all the personal options of clothing from your view means you are hiding the truth of their personal preferences.

Nah I'm sure you do...because why else would you be in this thread supporting it?

As for the "give them an inch and they will ask for a mile" it also absolutely makes no sense. People will always ask for changes. SE changed the gender locking on some gear and now people are asking all gear to be removed from the gender locking restriction. That is allowed in the gender locking thread but not here because reasons? Since players always ask for more we might as well set a moratorium on player asking for changes.

I did not say asking for more wasn't allowed. I merely pointed out that it would happen. Please stop putting words into my mouth.

Finally the third point (the mmorpg).
I really fail to see how am I dehumanizing other players (ie making them look more like npcs) by toggling a cosmetic option.

...because you would be literally removing very large traces of their personal preferences and to have it replaced by something they did not choose...

Finally I'd like to assume that with your thrid point you're not subtly trying to tell me: "if you don't accept others players glamours/diversity/type of people you are unwelcoming and a bigot" like other people said in the thread.

In case you're unaware, the words "diverse" and "diversity" can be used in a non political and non social context. They simply refer to having a variety of types of something. For example a person could own a diverse selection of jewelry. In the context of my post I mean that diversity refers to a diverse selection of outfits players have chosen for themselves.

Seeing as you were smart enough to look up the definition of "whitewashing" but somehow not with the word "diversity" I can only assume that your intent was to cause distraction from my point. Thanks : /

I don't care about your carefully crafted glamour that took you 5 hours and 24 different dungeons/crafted mats to make.
I don't care if you dress obnoxiously to piss off other people or make them notice you.
You do these to make you game experience better. I want to shut them off to make my game experience better and it doesn't affect you in any way.

Clearly you do care about these things if you want to shut them off. If you didn't care about others doing these things you wouldn't say you need to remove them to improve your experience.

-----------------

I feel like giving up debating with you. You won't budge, not even a tiny bit to say that glam removal should not permit players to see skin they otherwise could not. You want glam removal so much you don't even want to think of a way to introduce it that minimises the abuse that can come from displaying characters in skimpy gear they chose to cover, because that would mean admitting it's not the wholly innocent option it may seem to be.

I have thought up of a compromise; that I would be able to tolerate glam removal if it put players into modest outfits. And your reaction to this is to basically say getting harassed over gear is some form of lottery. You obviously just don't give a toss.

The forums are depressing sometimes.

[Packetdancer]

You are both right and wrong, and the reasons why have already been explained in this thread (go read the whole post, it's really good):

Somehow appropriate that my old post gets quoted right as I accidentally re-read the thread and then fail my willpower check not to chime in again.

But yes, I still feel like the key problem is not that either side is wrong per se, but that the sides are just using entirely different criteria and definitions.

First, both sides are approaching the problem with wildly different views. And, as the old post notes, taken on their own, each viewpoint is wholly understandable and reasonable; no one would argue that it's a bit jarring to see a metallic gold snowman on the battlefield when you go to do the Dying Gasp in Shadowbringers for the first time and are at the emotional height of the narrative. But similarly, I don't think anyone would argue that a literal 'turn the game into gender-conformant white people' button is something that's a great look for SquareEnix.

To put it another way, if you're looking at the Grand Canyon, the view is going to be very different if you're standing up top looking down at the river winding through the canyon below versus if you're standing down in the canyon and looking up at the cliffsides towering overhead. This doesn't make one view 'right' or 'wrong'; both viewpoints exist, even if the people standing at them perceive the landscape entirely differently. But it does mean if you ask the two people to describe the Grand Canyon just based on what they saw at those two different viewing spots, you're going to get wildly different descriptions of the same thing.

Then you have the fact that there's at least eight different ideas of what this feature would be. Some folks talk about blacklisting individual folks' glamours so they can just get rid of distracting gear. Others talk about stripping all glamour away globally (for everyone but the player). Some folks want a list of 'objectionable gear' to be added to the game so you can push a button and just that gear gets stripped away when glamoured; others want a custom blacklist where you can define for yourself what the objectionable gear is. People don't even agree on what 'stripping glamour away' actually means; does it show just the real gear (i.e. the tank currently leveling through Stormblood who was glamoured into plate is now wearing the Shisui fending set?), or does it replace it with job-specific artifact gear?

So you have this giant complicated matrix of possible implementations, where 'remove glamour' could mean "put all remote players in job-appropriate artifact gear, but let me still use glamour for my character" to one person's mind, could mean "I get to put together a list of glamours I never want to see, like the frog suit or the wedding dress, and if those pieces show up on someone they'll just be deglamoured to the actual gear" to a second, and could mean "I get to pick and choose individual people and they'll have glamour prisms disabled on my client-side and appear as the racial default" to a third.

And so people are not only arguing from different viewpoints, but entirely different maps. So some people are standing there and looking at the Grand Canyon from two different viewpoints, another person's over on Mt. Everest, two are down in the Mariana Trench while another is on a boat up on the surface, and a fourth's... I don't know, randomly off on the moon. (Cue Destiny-style "That argument came from the MOON.")

Which means there is basically zero chance of this thread ever achieving anything remotely akin to agreement; the best we can hope for is a sort of equilibrium of misery where everyone is equally unhappy, and then—Twelve willing—its eventual surrender to natural forum entropy and disappearance into page 20+ of the General Discussion post history, hopefully to be forgotten forever.

Or until someone like our resident forum troll comes along and necros the thread in 2023.

[Krotoan]

the best we can hope for is a sort of equilibrium of misery where everyone is equally unhappy,

I mean... I'm gonna keep playing and enjoying the game even if this never gets implemented as are I believe 999 out of 1000 of the rest of the supporters. So really ANY implementation of this would be fine AND not implementing it is fine. I'm relatively resigned to the fact that there are always going to be people in the world, no matter how perfect the solution is (and I'm not saying this is perfect) who will have a problem you cannot solve and who's viewpoint is entirely alien to your own.

At this point it's really up to the devs as to whether this is worth their time or the amount of player disappoint this will create (based on the research and questioning I've done outside this forum it's not huge, but that's a biased sample likely) and whether they'd even want to bother. Likely with all they've got on their plate right now the answer is no... but hey.. they decided umbrellas were important.

[Awha]

I feel like giving up debating with you. You won't budge, not even a tiny bit to say that glam removal should not permit players to see skin they otherwise could not. You want glam removal so much you don't even want to think of a way to introduce it that minimises the abuse that can come from displaying characters in skimpy gear they chose to cover, because that would mean admitting it's not the wholly innocent option it may seem to be.

I have thought up of a compromise; that I would be able to tolerate glam removal if it put players into modest outfits. And your reaction to this is to basically say getting harassed over gear is some form of lottery. You obviously just don't give a toss.

The forums are depressing sometimes.

Many of the posts have blurred together have have anyone for the idea said that they strictly want to able to put people in "reveling" clothing? Ideas have been thrown around, but if it is working towards a tolerable idea as I said I would just want to put people in some standard gear set, be it a black robe, AF gear idk. Personally I like the black robe idea, but I think of most people as NPC's when I see them in cutscenes crazy glam or not.

So when I was speaking earlier in the thread about a feature that strips away identity in the game not coming across well in the press, that's what I meant. SquareEnix could have the best intentions in the world by creating the feature, but if the perception isn't good, it's still negative PR. And I do not personally see a way in which any implementation of a 'remove glamour' feature effectively giving you a button to push to remove all dark-skinned characters from the world—even if that was not the intention—could turn out well in public perception.

This cocern is 100% valid, but maybe I am just naive I do not see why that should be an SE issues, that seems like a personal perception issue peoplw have and an issue with how news is delivered to begin with. The media likes to fearmonger I get it, but I do not think it is right to turn down an idea that could benefit the community by giving more control over their experience because people suck so to speak.

I have thought about the PR issues, even going back to the press SE has gotten because of player ran brothels, and honestly that is one the reasons why I came into with the view this would never happen, but the conversation is meaningful because the interesting aspect that I see a lot of the blacklash for the idea has less to do with the feature, and more so with how people would use said feature. Seems like a akin to blaming the tool over the person.

[SieyaM]

I think it's strange that this thread was started by someone playing a blue haired lalafell. Lalafells look ridiculous in any cutscene, especially when that have to wobble around on those stubby legs to get anywhere.

[Fland]

Then you have the fact that there's at least eight different ideas of what this feature would be.

Because we don't really know the detail of SE code and process regarding glamour in FFXIV and the effect of adding this feature to the game performance to see what the best solution would be.
I'm talking more on the technical side, but on the visual/aesthetic side of this feature I agree that it's entirely subjective. It'd be a hard to reach a consensus on what would be the best visually for people who want to have this feature.