Glamours

[Maerwen]

I m still waiting for having a feature where I can wear glasses AND a hat/helmet/headgear at the same time (face slot or something).

Indeed, I'd love to wear my glasses with my Cait Sith ears.

[LineageRazor]

This exact thing has been suggested before - and actually got a dev response. While I have no link to the actual article, the response was along the lines of, "Since these jobs all share equipment, each piece of gear would need to store the glamour data for each job. Each piece of gear would have three glamour slots, rather than just one. Maybe more, if we want to account for new jobs in the future who might also share that gear. This would greatly increase the amount of data associated with each piece of gear, which would require more storage space, impact latency, etc, etc. So we are reluctant to do this." In short: No.

Not the response we wanted to hear, obviously. But this is just one of many problems with the current glamour system. The whole thing needs an overhaul, frankly - and one of the things that I'm hoping for for 4.0 is that it gets that much-needed overhaul.

[UnstablePersonality]

This exact thing has been suggested before - and actually got a dev response. While I have no link to the actual article, the response was along the lines of, "Since these jobs all share equipment, each piece of gear would need to store the glamour data for each job. Each piece of gear would have three glamour slots, rather than just one. Maybe more, if we want to account for new jobs in the future who might also share that gear. This would greatly increase the amount of data associated with each piece of gear, which would require more storage space, impact latency, etc, etc. So we are reluctant to do this." In short: No.

Not the response we wanted to hear, obviously. But this is just one of many problems with the current glamour system. The whole thing needs an overhaul, frankly - and one of the things that I'm hoping for for 4.0 is that it gets that much-needed overhaul.

I hope there is a lot of overhaul coming for sure ...the drop of PS3 will help a lot.

[Kosmos992k]

This exact thing has been suggested before - and actually got a dev response. While I have no link to the actual article, the response was along the lines of, "Since these jobs all share equipment, each piece of gear would need to store the glamour data for each job. Each piece of gear would have three glamour slots, rather than just one. Maybe more, if we want to account for new jobs in the future who might also share that gear. This would greatly increase the amount of data associated with each piece of gear, which would require more storage space, impact latency, etc, etc. So we are reluctant to do this." In short: No.

Not the response we wanted to hear, obviously. But this is just one of many problems with the current glamour system. The whole thing needs an overhaul, frankly - and one of the things that I'm hoping for for 4.0 is that it gets that much-needed overhaul.

Edit : I see in a later post you suggest the exact same thing I was suggesting below. I'll leave my explanation in place, but recognize your suggestion here.

A fix that does require a bit more data, but not much, would be to greate a glamour set for each Gear set. Each gear set you create would have two item slots for every position, the first is the actual piece of armor/whatever that you are wearing for Stats, the second (if filled) is the glamor piece you are using. You still need prisms to apply that glamor piece to that set, but it's tied to the gear set, not the gear piece. So for every set you have the gear set and the glamor set. When a piece of gear is changed in a set, the corresponding glamour is lost - for that set only.

So, for example, Kos could have some utterly unflattering lump of metal armor in slot one as the actual gear, and then use a prism to put the Thavnarian Bustier in that slot for glamour. If I remove the actual piece of armor from that set, the glamor slot is emptied. But if I have all 3 tanks and want to do different glamors for each despite wearing the same armor piece, I can.

P.S. I'm pretty sure that glamour data is stored server side so that the server can send appropriate information to your client for other players glamours as soon as they appear in view.

[LineageRazor]

P.S. I'm pretty sure that glamour data is stored server side so that the server can send appropriate information to your client for other players glamours as soon as they appear in view.

That's not quite what I meant. I stated that equipment sets are stored client side. This is easy to check - just log on to someone else's computer, and you'll see that all of your equipment sets are gone. That indicates that your equipment sets were stored on your original computer, and not on the server. Whenever you switch to an equipment set, your client sends your set data to the server, the server checks to see if you actually possess the equipment listed in the set, and if so dresses your character appropriately (and if not, gives you the appropriate warning triangles indicating that your inventory of equipment doesn't quite match what your equipment set is looking for). A player using third party tools can edit their equipment set to, for example, dress their mage up in Heavy Darklight Armor (the actual armor, not glamour), and the server can look at that request and say, "Nuh uh - not only isn't that gear you can wear, but you don't even have that gear in your inventory. Red Triangle for you!"

Under the current system, glamour is stored on each piece of equipment, and each piece of equipment is kept careful track of on the server. But what if we track the glamour info on the equipment set instead? Now, whenever we use an equipment set to instruct the server how to dress our character, we are also telling the server what that equipment is supposed to look like. The server will glamour the characters however the equipment set instructs, because there is nothing stored server-side to contradict that. The server HAS to trust that you did glamour your character the way that the equipment set lists. After all, you could have glamoured and then threw away the original item, or the item might be on your retainer, or in your Armoire. This means open season for those third-party tool users. They might never have set foot in Coil, and still edit their equipment set to deck themselves out in full High Allagan (not Replica - the REAL stuff).

There are ways to solve this problem, of course - and all of them require server-side investment in which the devs may well be reluctant to invest. For an obvious example, they could store the equipment sets server-side. Heck, even without glamour, this would make a lot of folks happy, since they could then access their equipment sets no matter whose computer they play the game on. The fact that they didn't build equipment sets this way from the ground up indicates to me that it's too resource-intense to consider. Another solution would be to keep track of every piece of gear that you've ever owned, and only allow equipment sets that include those pieces of glamour to be valid. This "glamour library" is something that folks have suggested many times in many "Let's improve glamour!" threads. Again, though, that sounds like a lot of data to keep track of.

You are correct that the actual imagery of glamour is stored server side. Clients aren't constantly weighed down with the visual models of every piece of equipment in the game, only the ones that are nearby. They constantly download needed visuals on a need-to-know basis. However, we need to keep track of what glamour we're wearing, so the server knows what imagery to send to the other clients - and if we store that info client-side, the server has to trust that we're being honest about how we look. Server trusting clients is the basis of every third-party hack there is. Glamour would be no exception!

[Kosmos992k]

That's not quite what I meant. I stated that equipment sets are stored client side. This is easy to check - just log on to someone else's computer, and you'll see that all of your equipment sets are gone. That indicates that your equipment sets were stored on your original computer, and not on the server. **snippage**

Indeed, you are correct.

As you say further into your post, a good solution would be to store gearsets on the server side, which would enable glamour per gearset to be handled server side without worrying about the sync between client and server, since the client would always take it's lead from the server, so to speak.

On the transmission of glamour data, I think the actual graphical assets are already client side, the server sends the data needed to reassemble any and all characters from those assets in your client. So it sends the item ID's for each gear slot for each character along with the appropriate IDs for the character's face and physique, and the client assembles it all piece by piece to render things. Transmitting graphical data from server to client would be very resource intensive and consume bandwidth like it was going out of style.

[Naunet]

Transmitting graphical data from server to client would be very resource intensive and consume bandwidth like it was going out of style.

Why is this the only MMO that ever has concerns like this in such a way that both the players and the devs twist themselves into knots trying to work out some sub-par system to get around the "problem"?

[cammi]

How would the PS3 getting drop help anything? It's not like the PS3 is holding EVERY.SINGLE.MOTHER.FING.THING back. That is not the fix to everything. Tho on topic, I wish the glamour system were more like skins instead of using those stupid crystals to put a look over gear. Why didn't they just make costumes and have those as skins you can just put on without something being over the top? Just a shame imho. But I'm used to skins as most games do that instead of what FFXIV uses.

[UnstablePersonality]

How would the PS3 getting drop help anything? It's not like the PS3 is holding EVERY.SINGLE.MOTHER.FING.THING back. That is not the fix to everything. Tho on topic, I wish the glamour system were more like skins instead of using those stupid crystals to put a look over gear. Why didn't they just make costumes and have those as skins you can just put on without something being over the top? Just a shame imho. But I'm used to skins as most games do that instead of what FFXIV uses.

In a way it actually is because of it's limited space and what not and its just overall limited everything within it's own design on this game. They can't add special things because or big things because the PS3 literally cannot handle it, they should of dropped it awhile ago. Have you even seen how long it takes people using PS3 too load as is?

[LineageRazor]

It's this level of terrible decision-making that I just don't understand. Are they entirely unaware of the multitude of examples of painless, streamlined systems in other games? I don't understand why they back themselves into coding corners and then pretend like they can't do anything to improve it because the first iteration of their failed system cannot be altered. They can ALWAYS take it out and replace it with something else.

While I agree that a lot of the initial implementation was terrible, ripping it out and replacing it isn't necessarily as easy as you make it sound. As with any piece of code, when you remove a chunk to replace it with something else, you gotta be very careful that the code you removed wasn't being referenced by or having an effect on other code. This exact kind of thing is a major source of bugs when working with computer code. The glamour system was added pretty early in FFXIV's lifespan, and a lot of the game's content has been developed with the expectation that it is there.

In a way it actually is because of it's limited space and what not and its just overall limited everything within it's own design on this game. They can't add special things because or big things because the PS3 literally cannot handle it, they should of dropped it awhile ago. Have you even seen how long it takes people using PS3 too load as is?

PS3 may or may not have an impact on the current glamour system, but it's certainly the case that dropping the console will not necessarily improve matters. SE also wants to keep the game available to as big a chunk of the PC market as they can, and that market includes PCs with even LESS power than PS3s have. I personally know people who play the game on PCs more than ten years old.

If SE drops PS3, don't expect them to suddenly shower the game with new features that PS3 was supposedly holding back. They will continue to develop conservatively. Version 1.0, they tried to tool the game to appeal to higher-end computers - and that was just one of many disastrous decisions that was reworked for ARR.

Dropping PS3 will be a decision made because not because SE's tired of holding back on features. It will be made because it's no longer profitable to spend the development time creating expansions for a console that not many people use. At the moment, though, there are a LOT of folks still on PS3 - especially in Japan, where PS4 did not catch on quite as well as it did in the west.