Suggestion: Improved Glamour System

[Rongway]

I realize that there are more items for which you would need to store information, but isn't there less data per item that would need to be stored? Since these are not items that could be restored, for example, you wouldn't need to keep track of quality (NQ/HQ), dyeable/undyeable (just replace the undyeable with the dyeable if you get it), maker's mark, etc. It would just be a boolean array for each character of 1 byte per item (2 bytes for items that have a dyeable/undyeable option - 1 byte for the true/false of having unlocked the item and 1 byte for the true/false of it being the dyeable version). Wouldn't need to keep track of pre-dye either, since I mentioned that a con to the original proposal would be that you couldn't pre-dye items (it would only be tracked on the glamour plates).

One bit per item, and it wouldn't matter if it's dyable or not because a catalog system would only care if you've acquired the item or not. It would be up to the client to map the bits to items and tell you which ones are dyable.

At 1 bit per item, it comes out to twice as much data as currently required.

Now if you took that and split it up per server (not all 24 million players are on one server and I mentioned in the original post that the database would be account wide so wouldn't need 1 database per character, unlike the current item dresser, just 1 per player), how much room would it take per server then? And if you limited access to it (couldn't access any of it, other than the glamour plates, if you do a cross server/datacenter visit or are outside an inn) would the server load be more feasible?

I suspect it wouldn't make a difference if the people with multiple characters were allowed to consolidate their glamour data into a single catalog. There are probably far more people with single characters than with many alts, so account-wide glamour catalogs would only save so much space.

Besides, have you ever heard the XIV devs respond to requests for account-wide things? We may some day get a glamour catalog but I don't imagine for a second that they would make it account-wide, even if that could save them enough storage to allow a more accessible catalog.