Just copy the Transmog collector system from WoW. Glamour needs a serious update!!!

[Avatre]

Maybe SE doesn't want us to collect and hoard glamour.

What else are retainers for?

[Iscah]

A really hacky way to implement blizzard-like transmog system: keep the glamour dresser, but remove the ability to put in or remove items, and make its capacity "infinite". Whenever the player acquires an item, place a copy of it in the glamour dresser if it doesn't exist there already. It's really crude and not efficient at all, but should require minimal changes to code.

I think the problem is that it still needs to handle the things in the dresser as "physical items" and so needs to allocate a certain amount of spaces for them. Making it "infinite" would require them to potentially store every single item in the game and allocate space for that, which apparently they can't do - which comes back to exactly why dresser space is limited in the first place.

[Canadane]

What else are retainers for?

Holding all these fish until SE makes aquarium models for them! @_@

[tdb]

I think the problem is that it still needs to handle the things in the dresser as "physical items" and so needs to allocate a certain amount of spaces for them. Making it "infinite" would require them to potentially store every single item in the game and allocate space for that, which apparently they can't do - which comes back to exactly why dresser space is limited in the first place.

Yeah. A more efficient approach would be to use a bitmask, reducing storage requirements significantly. SE seems to be using 40-bit item IDs, so a bitmask would only require 2.5% of a fully-populated list of IDs. Of course the IDs are not contiguous so there would need to be a mapping from item ID to bitmask index, but that's constant data. Potentially the savings could be even more depending on how the player/item associations would otherwise be stored. A database row with character ID, item ID and internal bookkeeping data could take 136 bits or more. But all that requires the data to be structured differently, so it would take more effort to implement.

Edit: I did some quick calculations. With 100 million characters each having 10000 unlocked glamour items and each item taking 20 bytes of storage, the grand total comes out to 20 terabytes. Sure, it's a good chunk of data, but not that much in the grand scheme of things. It's about the size of the largest hard drives currently available.

[Avatre]

Holding all these fish until SE makes aquarium models for them! @_@

Nah, they just need to make a bigger aquarium...my spectral megalodon is lonely in there, and looks cramped.

[Granyala]

REMAKE the whole game then!.

This 10 years old game could well use a remake and update/upgrade not only the code but the graphics as well.

Sure, if you are ready to go 4-5 years w/o any new patches or content, they can do that.

[Macleod]

How closely do you want it to mirror the transmog system? With transmog, it's just the appearance that is stored and not an actual item. That works fine for WoW because there's few items worth keeping once you get an upgrade for your class.

Would you be okay if the glamour dresser worked the same way? That would mean losing it as storage for items you might want to equip later, perhaps because you're leveling a new job in the same role.

Personally, I'd be fine with just the appearance getting stored (most items are easy enough to obtain again if needed) but I'm not certain the general player base would agree.

If you want the item, keep the item in the storage space you already have...same thing you would do in any of the other games with better glamour systems.

I for one agree, we need a glamour log. I've been at 400/400 forever, AND have two retainers full of items because I ran out of room everywhere else I can store them.

[Genz]

As usual, a compilation of fiction around the game coding and invention of answers from interviews that don't exist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's just that the current system is good enough for most players.

FFXIV doesn't aim for excellence, it only focuses on quantity, so new things or updates are only done if they impact a lot of players or have a small cost.

[Granyala]

As usual, a compilation of fiction around the game coding and invention of answers from interviews that don't exist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Only a person that is either extremely naive or simply has no clue about programming would think that the late addition of a feature which requires a rewrite of core components that are a decade old would be an easy undertaking.

If SE is anything like Blizzard, the code of eld won't be documented very well, they won't have ancient versions of the game in a running state and most programmers from the beginning will either not remember how they did it or are no longer around.

Fact is: they most likely do not want to touch a decade old code unless absolutely necessary.
Especially not in a situation where they have to divert significant resources for a non critical problem while already being behind on content delivery.

[Garnix]

Fact is: they most likely do not want to touch a decade old code unless absolutely necessary.
Especially not in a situation where they have to divert significant resources for a non critical problem while already being behind on content delivery.

They are not really behind on content delivery...I mean, sure Covid impacted things and delayed the whole patch cycle by 2+ months, but since 5.3 they said that they are pretty much back to their standard development capacities.

And regarding diverting resources for a non critical problem : isn't it part of each expansion/patch to take some of the resources to build new features?
Trust, NG+, or even the world visiting system were not critical features to have either, yet they invested time and resources in them.
They also used resources for other things that they previously said was too much for them to handle (flying in ARR zones).

A revamp of the glam system is probably one of the most requested feature, they can push it to the side as much as they want because of the complexity of the task, but the truth is : it will always be brought back to their attention until they do something about it.