Glamour restrictions: a hinderance to creativity

[Tigerlilley]

I will always agree with these threads. Free the glam!

[Skivvy]

I will always agree with these threads. Free the glam!

YUS! FREE THE GLAM! FREE THE GLAM!


Ironically enough, XIV's predecessor XI has free glam and it is SO nice. The only caveat is that in order to use a piece of gear as a glam item, you have to also be able to equip it normally on the job it's actually intended for (e.g. if I want to use a level 68 healer piece on my dragoon, my healer would need to be at least level 68). You also get 100 outfit slots, can create a glam anywhere (even using items that are stored elsewhere and not in inventory), apply a glam anywhere, and it doesn't take any crystals. It's such an easy system compared to what we have in XIV.

If that came to XIV, I know I personally would be spending SO much more time running all those random dungeons and raids in order to build up my options. I imagine a lot of others would be doing the same.

[Canadane]

Restrictions breed creativity.
Allowing everything ends up with people just slapping together whatever that works on everything.

[Jagick]

YoshiP will be along any minute to present his usual strawman argument that has nothing to do with the request:

"W-we can't have jobs sharing weapons."

[BaconBits]

I don't really agree that any restriction hinders creativity nor do I think that 'creativity' is the only measure of the glam system.

For instance, I think it valuable for different classes and different armor weights to generally look different - it keeps things interesting. In fact, a complete lack of restriction can ultimately lead to lots of sameness - you see this with certain unrestricted glams that then become ubiquitous.

So no, I don't think that the restrictions that exist are a hinderance, and I think that, in fact, some increase creativity by keeping everyone from making the same choices.

Let me borrow a quote from Prof. Mordin Solus:

Shaddup and gimme my aiming pimp hat for red mage.

[SturmChurro]

Not necessarily true. I do like some select items to remain class locked, but they should make more general items available over time, sure.

[Skivvy]

Restrictions breed creativity.
Allowing everything ends up with people just slapping together whatever that works on everything.

I feel like the only thing that restrictions help to do is keep the dev's original vision for tanks/healers/dps roles more intact*. You will always have people who go for basics, and that's fine, but there is no way that having hundreds (and hundreds) more items to choose from would stifle creativity.

*This ship sailed ages ago with how much regular fashion (events/mogstation/crafted glams, etc) is now in game. And then we also have SE reusing outfits and simply recoloring them in order to give them to an entirely different job type.

ETA: Also, I'm having a hard time with this part of your comment specifically

Allowing everything ends up with people just slapping together whatever that works on everything.

Unless your character linked here is just a maxed out mule and you've fooled us all, you've used the same glamour basically since the beginning of time. However, that outfit is made up of non-class specific items, and there would be no way to tell what job or style you were actually going for. So it's a little hypocritical that you don't want others to have more options for "slapping together whatever works on everything" and using it all the time when that's exactly what you've done for years.

[Juyira]

I always wanted viable armors for an armored mage look of sorts, and options were extremely limited always until the Archfiend armor from pvp, which you can wear on literally any class DoM/W/L/H from level 1 which was great. But I want more things like that. I'd love for the GSM 80 glam to be able to be worn on a MCH, for example.

I really like the FFXI-style suggestion mentioned above, where you can wear it on any class so long as you can equip it normally. It still encourages putting in the work to level up a class to the level needed even if you wanna wear it on an entirely different class in general.

[Enkidoh]

YUS! FREE THE GLAM! FREE THE GLAM!


Ironically enough, XIV's predecessor XI has free glam and it is SO nice. The only caveat is that in order to use a piece of gear as a glam item, you have to also be able to equip it normally on the job it's actually intended for (e.g. if I want to use a level 68 healer piece on my dragoon, my healer would need to be at least level 68). You also get 100 outfit slots, can create a glam anywhere (even using items that are stored elsewhere and not in inventory), apply a glam anywhere, and it doesn't take any crystals. It's such an easy system compared to what we have in XIV.

If that came to XIV, I know I personally would be spending SO much more time running all those random dungeons and raids in order to build up my options. I imagine a lot of others would be doing the same.

Except in practice FFXI's glamour system (style lock) has a lot of it's own deficincies and issues:

For most of FFXI's run the game never had any glamour at all, and gear restrictions were tighter than here in FFXIV.
There still isn't and has never been any kind of gear dyeing system in FFXI like we have here in FFXIV.
Glamour in FFXI was only introduced a fair bit of time after it was introduced in FFXIV (and that was after the original FFXI development team left)
When style lock was first introduced in FFXI it was restricted to your Job (and as Job switching in FFXI is restricted to inside your Moghouse or using a Nomad Moogle in certain towns it's not something you could easily swap around).
Glamour restrictions were only lessened after a certain amount of time in a patch, because FFXI is in it's Indian Summer and has a skeleton staff development team running things, and really no longer take things like keeping the game balanced seriously anymore.
A fair number of enemies (particularly high level ones) will deactivate style lock completely (as in, completely delete your current glamour) with certain attacks that strip your gear (namely yagudo enemies in Campaign battles, and those giant red slugs found out in Pashow Marshlands in the past), which is extremely frustrating. Using the traditional gear swap trick with your weapon also deactivates glamour, not to mention changing Jobs, forcing you to reset your glamour manually again.

I mean, I'm all for improving the glamour system here in FFXIV, but it gets tiresome when I see players trying to make it out FFXI has the better system when it's not necessarily better at all and has it's own fair share of problems. The other grass is greener though I guess.

[Skivvy]

Except in practice FFXI's system has a lot of things to remember:

For most of FFXI's run it never had glamour at all, and gear restrictions were tighter than here in FFXIV.
There isn't and has never been any kind of gear dyeing system in FFXI.
Glamour in FFXI was only introduced a fair bit of time after it was introduced in FFXIV.
When it was introduced it was restricted to your Job.
Restrictions were only lessened after a number of years in a patch, because FFXI is in it's Indian Summer and has a skeleton staff development team only really keeping the lights on and not much else.
A fair number of enemies (particularly high level ones) will deactivate style lock completely (as in, completely delete your current glamour) with certain attacks that strip your gear (namely yagudo enemies in Campaign battles, and those giant red slugs found out in Pashow Marshlands in the past), which is extremely frustrating. Using the traditional gear swap trick with your weapon also deactivates glamour, not to mention changing Jobs, forcing you to reset your glamour manually again.

I mean, I'm all for improving the glamour system here in FFXIV, but it gets tiresome when I see players trying to make it out FFXI has the better system when it's not necessarily better at all and has it's own fair share of problems. The other grass is greener though I guess.

Correct, it wasn't around forever, and it was a new functionality that was added into the game. And as you've pointed out, they've improved upon it over time and opened it up to be unrestricted. The only thing that XIV has over it, IMO, is that you can dye your clothes. So really, it doesn't matter that XI didn't always have it, or that it was more restrictive, point is that the 20 year old games has better options than their new shiny MMO.

I still play both games. I don't need the whole "grass is greener" dismissal.