Vanity system feels more complex than it needs to be...

[Mihana]

I've tried not to make many complaint threads ever but after looking at the vanity system for the first time tonight I feel the need to make a mini-rant (Warning, long rant.) on the matter.

Yoshi-P and his team took a simple idea and made it more convoluted than needed.

Let's say John wants to prism his treasured Garuda's Spine he earned with his good buddy from v1.0 onto his Artemis Bow. Well to first do this John needs to head to Mor Dhona and complete a quest. Okay, simple enough. But what's this? In order to project his Garuda's Spine onto the Artemis Bow he needs to get a Grade 4 Glamour Prism made by a Goldsmith. John has two options now:

A.) Make it himself if he has a high enough Goldsmith.
B.) Buy a premade prism.

Here's where it just gets more complicated than it should be. Why do you need five different grades just to do a "cosmetic change" to a piece of gear, what's more why does it need to be one for each different class? Go buy the correct grade and kind or you're out of luck. In order to cover every armor, weapon, or accessory in the game you need to tote around up to thirty-five different prisms. That's five grades of prisms, seven different kinds IE classes (Culinarian gets the shaft here, sorry chefs of Eorzea.) just to customize your appearance.

A simple approach would be as compared to dyes, all classes can craft a single, universal prism. No Leatherworker prism, Goldsmith prism, Carpenter prism, just a single unified prism. I'm actually a little shocked they thought it was a good idea to make individual prisms. This alone feels like a step backwards from trying to streamline the whole modern process. Remember when repairs required a specific material to repair with, before dark matter came into play? A step back in that direction.

Expanding upon the dark matter comparison there's yet another step backwards here. In regards to dark matter you can repair any kind of gear regardless of its physical level providing you have a high enough grade. Grade 5 Dark Matter can be used to repair even a Lv1 piece of gear. The same holds true for catalysts used in materia melding. Sure you waste a Grade 5 catalyst on something that requires a Grade 3, but you could still make it work. Yet for some reason they chose to go a complete opposite direction here. You need the appropriate grade for the correct item level assigned to a piece of gear. A Grade 5 Glamour Prism (Goldsmith) won't work on your Ahriman Choker, no you need a Grade 1 Glamour Prism (Goldsmith) to properly project it.

Let's not forget that certain pieces cannot be projected over other pieces. This means tank classes lugging around the bottom half of gear that takes up the foot slot with either have to project something similar over it or run around barefoot. A mage class that wants to project a robe and crown over a hooded cowl will have to forgo their crown. I can see some reasons behind this but even this feels like it could of been reworked a little. Projecting say a pair of goggles beneath a hooded cowl isn't impossible, one of the Scions wears goggles beneath his cowl after all.

Going back to the prisms now, just to make the prisms you need to buy a clear prism, buy a specific book to craft them making sure it's the correct book. You then need shards and in addition two of a certain kind of material. Two toad leather for Leatherworker, or two walnut lumber for Carpenter as an example. Prisms cannot be mass synthesized either meaning you need to slog through the process if you want to make a small batch of them. Here is another step backwards.

Regarding dyes any class can craft them so if you wanted to change the color of your gear all you needed was a minimum of one DoH class at 30 to make them. And you didn't need to buy anything special beyond the crystals and pigment to make it.

Here you need the appropriate class, additional materials, a book, and the prism. All just to again, make a cosmetic change to your equipment.

Overall all the hoops you need to jump through just to customize your gear seems more of a chore than an overall freedom they've hyped the Glamour system out to be. This holds especially true for those who like to change up their appearance on a whim. They've taken a simple idea of what should of been a "drag n' drop on a separate vanity window" method and made it into something utterly ridiculous. I know some people who have figured it isn't worth the trouble just because of how they've implemented this.

Now I could easily accept it if say the system worked in a combination of the dark matter and dyes combined. Any class could craft a prism, five grades of prisms total. The higher your item level the higher grade of a prism you needed with the highest grade being a universal prism working on anything of any level. Keep in needing to unlock it via a quest which lets you then craft it with any 30 DoH class, and you're golden.

I know you can easily have friends who can craft the correct prism for you, hell, you don't even need to touch a crafting class ever and still use the system. The entire problem is how they went through with implementing it, taking a massive step backwards from the entire thing up until now, made customizing your equipment simple. Not even materia melding is this complex and that went beyond just a simple thing like appearance so extra steps for that made sense, for this it doesn't.

My rant has gone on farther than I intended and I likely strayed off a bit but the whole vanity (Glamour) system was the one thing I was truly looking forward to in this patch. It's still usable and with some help from my FC I figured some things out (Seriously, it needs to state the specified glamour is based on the item being projected, not the item you're projecting on! You shouldn't need to enter the system and check there what prism type and grade you need.) but all-in-all, I'm disappointed in their choice of system. On the whole the patch looks promising so I won't knock the rest of it.

And for the TL;DR crowd:

Vanity system needs to be simplified a bit. Ditch the extra kinds of prisms, make it universal. Change some limitations, make it more streamlined.

[Mixxy]

It's a tad complex, but all things considered I'm grateful it wasn't worse. I'm not saying it couldn't be improved, but I want to know what games people are playing that have these flawless vanity systems because of all the games I've played with vanity systems, XIV is one of the least restricting, though probably one of the more complex ones.
At least its not like TERA (and I think Aion?) where you have to destroy gear. Expensive gear, mind you.

[myahele]

In order to save me the headache of mixing different grades of gear, I'll just buy a grade 5.

But yeah, I agree. It's needlessly complex. I thought that it'll just be 1 glamour prism. Instead it'll be I prism per slot.

[Ayamia]

I too believe they made it too complicate. Holy hell, 40 slots for prisms (including clear ones)? It would make more sense if it was only one prism for each class instead of five.

[BearGrylls]

The same reason Ventures and Atmas go into your inventory instead of into your currency tab and key items; incentive to buy retainers.

In order to save me the headache of mixing different grades of gear, I'll just buy a grade 5.

Grade 5 only allows you to glamour ilvl 81+

[Mihana]

At least its not like TERA (and I think Aion?) where you have to destroy gear. Expensive gear, mind you.

Yeah, I remember TERA. Though in comparison even for that game there were "alternate" pieces of gear in some cases that looked like the more powerful gear. Not much I think but there was. But again it's not really based on the availability of said gear but the whole process used just to project that gear. When they spoke of vanity I had envisioned a simple system where you just dropped a piece of gear into a separate window that sort of "overwrote" your current appearance. I'm not saying other systems are perfect either but it's over complicating features like this that generally turn people off from using them. And technically the armor is sort of "destroyed" anyway when you think about it. Say you craft a specific piece of gear that's incredibly hard to make. According to the patch notes using it in a projection will effectively bind it to you anyway. Stat-wise it could be totally useless but it means you cannot sell that piece off to somebody else, or in the case of a Free Company, share it for your friends to use.

Essentially it destroys it from entering the market ever again and just takes up a slot in your inventory or retainer until you decide to either throw it away or sell it to a vendor. Not as harsh I know but in a way it still exists here too.

The same reason Ventures and Atmas go into your inventory instead of into your currency tab and key items; incentive to buy retainers.

This was my thought as well, which actually, I had hoped trying to avoid saying.

[Rufalus]

It probably helps people to make money, since specific classes are needed it's more likely you'll need the help of someone else, unless you have every crafter class levelled. Opportunistic crafters are enjoying selling prisms.

[Mihana]

It probably helps people to make money, since specific classes are needed it's more likely you'll need the help of someone else, unless you have every crafter class levelled. Opportunistic crafters are enjoying selling prisms.

Yeah I've seen the inflation on them already.

[Fizzie]

I was really looking forward to vanities, but I'm not even gonna touch this incase I fuck it up. :/

[Felis]

The same reason Ventures and Atmas go into your inventory instead of into your currency tab and key items; incentive to buy retainers.

They would also do it without an option to buy a retainer.
Just look how many item slots were needed for the materia system 1.0.
Same materia, same tier but 3 different stats = 3 item slots for the same materia + tier because only those with the same stats were stackable.

Maybe they do it to bring people to buy retainers, maybe they do it to bring people to use the MB more and play the market game (people complained that there is nothing worth to buy with gil)