Dear Square Enix: Please Remove the Glamour Dresser Cap

[Hasrat]

You're right, but other games have had this issue solved for a decade now. There's no excuse for ffxiv to not keep up at this point.

Except there is excuses. I mean. As pointed out, it's not being withheld just for shits.

The item system in this game is a complete mess, and that system is so deeply rooted into the core of the game that fixing that mess would essentially require another shutdown to overhaul.

Pointing to other games/systems isn't helping. Those are presumably examples that were better equipped and built to handle those systems by design.

The design of the item system in this game is a cobbled together disaster with no foresight or future proofing. And with the glamour system tied to the item system, the only result you're ever going to get from it is a disaster.

[Absurdity]

Pretty much. My assumption is that when they were working on the engine for ARR they had to cut corners, otherwise they would've never finished in time, and the item system is probably one of those.

I like to compare it with WoW's standard inventory bag that was limited to 16 slots. No idea if they managed to fix it now but I remember them trying to expand the bag and it flat out broke the game.


In the end nobody actually knows if this is the truth or if it's all just an elaborate scheme to sell retainers, but considering the amount of complaints they have to deal with due to the inventory system I highly doubt they wouldn't just fix it if they could.

[GrizzlyTank]

Glamour dresser isn't for storage. Stop hording items you'll never glamour and the cap is no longer a problem.

The glamour dresser is literally a glorified bank.

[Larirawiel]

No code was saved from 1.0, only assets. They literally threw the source code for 1.0 away, iirc from one interview a while back.

2.0 onwards uses a completely different game engine, old code would be useless.

Then they lied. Because they admitted, that the 2002 error issue during the EW launch was caused by some old 1.x code in the client.


Cheers

[Larirawiel]

Pointing to other games/systems isn't helping. Those are presumably examples that were better equipped and built to handle those systems by design.

Mhhh, i do not think, that when Blizzard made the Warcraft 3 engine, that they had a glamour/transmog system in mind. And yes, World of Warcraft still runs on a heavily modified WC3 engine. But they have made some huge refactorings in it. They normalized the data in the database etc.


So i can understand, that the players are upset about it, that other companies can implement better features in older engines and SQEX cannot.

Cheers

[DragonFlyy]

Devs: "Oh, our poor databases have TOO MANY values to deal with! It's dying every time you look in your inventory! Please understand! ;A;"
Also Devs: "Hey, you can buy up to 8 retainers for a monthly fee and each come with a ton of storage! :^)"

It's too tiring to be angry about it anymore, though I do enjoy laughing at situations like this. lol

The problem is, the data in a retainer isn't refreshed every time you zone. Your character Inventory is and with the poor implementation on how server data is made, that causes problems.

However a properly made glamour dresser would take significantly less space than what the current dresser does.

But the system is poorly made due to the underlying engine. To redo that would take a lot of time, possibly stopping content for all that time. Would you want to wait 1-2 years with 0 content so they can rewrite the engine?

[Reinha]

Searching the Eorzea Database crafting log section with the filter for item level 1-610 gives 5546 results for gear that is marked in a log with either "have crafted" or "have not crafted". This log is accessible in duties.

Saying that a glamour log is not possible is a lie. There is no reason we could not have a log of several thousand item skins that could be used as an addition to the glamour dresser similar to the Armoire, where you pull the appearance of an undyed item directly onto a plate.

[Silverbane]

There is no reason we could not have a log of several thousand item skins that could be used as an addition to the glamour dresser similar to the Armoire, where you pull the appearance of an undyed item directly onto a plate. (Emphasis added)

Wow, greedy much? You want them to implement and maintain TWO glamour systems, and make them work together?

And no reason not too? What, you think they can just implement it in an afternoon with two interns, and then it will maintain itself?

Everything takes resources to implement, and what gets resources, from among the undoubtedly long list of bug fixes and new features that need to be implemented, is almost always a matter of prioritization.

Compared to the other things they can and might be doing -- like the graphics upgrade, new content, and so on -- I think the revising the glamour system, which I and everyone I play with consider "good enough," falls very low on the priority list for resources. And that's all the reason necessary for it to not be done.

And don't give me that billion-dollar-company-so-no-resource-limits nonsense. Have you ever worked in a billion dollar company? Managed projects in one? The internal competition between business units and within business units for resources can be brutal, and if you can't show how your team's product or feature will meet or exceed the expected profit margin of someone else's product or feature, then that someone else gets the resources and you don't. And why is it that way? Partly because execs have a duty to the stockholder to maximize the value of the company. And partly because, in the big US corps I worked in, middle management is full of ladder-climbing sociopaths eager to stick knives in the backs of any competitors for the next open C-suite position.

Reinha, the world isn't the simple place you seem to think it is.
There's never "no reason" not to do something, because there is always some way someone can gain an advantage or make a profit from something not being done.

[ElysiumDragon]

Small idea of sorts.

Given that the glamour dresser likely isn't going away, what about an in-game 'catalogue'? One where you could maybe 'sacrifice' items to an NPC, and get a 'mark' in exchange that lets you rebuy that gear (or a replica of it) for say, 1000 gil?

That way, people aren't clinging onto old gear for the sake of glamour, it frees up inventory/retainer space, and also lets them replace items at will if they need them for a specific glamour?

Bear in mind that most people who own additional retainers are likely not doing it for the sake of holding a few extra glams, but because they're omnicrafters who want 10 retainers gathering materials for their Day 1 Savage precrafts, whilst they're petting animals in Island Sanctuary, so I don't think SE would lose money from it ^^

[Iyrnthota]

Would you want to wait 1-2 years with 0 content so they can rewrite the engine?

Honestly, yes. There are so many issues that could be solved with a codebase overhaul.

The dev team have been very open both in word and design that they don't expect us to be playing this game all the time, so an extended break to fix all this stuff probably wouldn't be too bad, for both us and them. I'm sure they get just as frustrated as we do sometimes with the code limitations.

Likely the Squenix execs/shareholders wouldn't allow it though. No way they'd let their cash cow go for that long.
Suffering from success once more I suppose.