Alternative solution to glamour log

[Berethos]

Ignoring that is a disservice to the players.

Unless you count not implementing it as the sole criteria for not ignoring it, they haven't.

They just haven't given the answer certain individuals have been fishing for. Unless you buy into a conspiracy theory that they are doing this just to make people spend extra money on retainers, then we ultimately have to accept that they will work toward the solutions that they can feasibly implement and continue to provide constructive feedback on the kinds of systems/features we want to see added...

Instead of immediately accusing them of excuses and lying and shady tactics designed solely to make a buck at our expense, as some posters here are wont to do.

[Valinis]

WoW did it, time to catch up SE.

[SokiYagami]

Wow... if there wasn't anything lost in the translation, then this is a really bad reply from Yoshi-P... Among all the things he could had use as references from WoW, he didn't pick the glamour log due to the respond he given... I hate to say this, but Yoshi-P really drop the ball on this one harder than my Dragoon can tank the floor.

[SokiYagami]

While I can't be 100% sure because I have no insight on how the inventory is coded, that is probably incorrect (almost surely, considering Yoshida's answer). An inventory item is normally stored as a numerical ID in a table that calls on a database with all the item's data. For each character only the ID is stored, not the whole item data, which is already present in the database, and is common for all characters. To store the fact that the item is available for glamoring, you'd have to store the same numerical ID in a dedicated table. This means that the memory footprint of the data would most probably be the same.

It's not that I wouldn't love a glamor log, but accusing Yoshida of lying without the slightest evidence, technical expertise, or insight on how the game is coded sounds very, very dumb, and not at all constructive.

Firstly, I didn't accuse Yoshi-P for lying, do not put words in my mouth. My own words was:

Wow... if there wasn't anything lost in the translation, then this is a really bad reply from Yoshi-P...

I also went further to mentioned that even if his explanation was valid, it (glamour log) can still be done somehow as proven by other games and it's in high demand from the players.

Now, with that out of the way, let's get back to the data type. Note, as I do not code the system myself, this is all purely speculations on my side based on the BRIEF knowledge I have on coding and observations from playing the game as well as some logical prediction. In no way am I claiming this is exactly how the system works, just a disclaimer before someone put words into my mouth again.

I definitely disagree that an entity in the inventory will carry the same amount of data than an entity found in the proposed glamour log. Two reasons; size of data and read/write frequency.

An entity in the glamour log should rightfully hold similar amount of data as one found in the armoire, striped down of any excess information such as color state, spiritbond amount, item condition, etc. It's basically strip the item down to the bare minimum amount of data. Meanwhile, an entity in the inventory has to cover everything that can be found in there. Be it consumable item, gear, tokens, collectible, etc. Logically deducing, (Is this a grammar mistake? Meh) a data entity found in inventory should be proportionally larger than one found in armoire, and by extension an entity in the proposed glamour log. That's one.

Next up, read/write access. We all know that FFXIV has a backup ongoing in the background every couple seconds (I forgot the exact number, someone please enlighten me), in case of data corruption and a rollback is required. I believe this is the exact reason Yoshi-P once cited to be one of the obstacle in simply increasing inventory space. Once again, I believe everything carried on the player aka anything inside inventory and armory chest, is subjected to the X seconds refresh mentioned earlier. On the other hand, an entity found in the glamour log should rightfully behave like a data entity found in the armoire and retainer's bank, they will be access only at specific locations and time, without the on-demand capability unlike inventory/armory chest.

So if logically speaking, a glamour log required lesser data and are access less frequently, I believe I'm not entirely wrong to say that Yoshi-P made a bad reply (put in bold so you can stop accusing me) if there's nothing lost in the translation to and from him in that interview.

As Captain Jack Sparrow would had say (I'm been watching Pirates):

Savvy mate?

[Abriael]

Firstly, I didn't accuse Yoshi-P for lying, do not put words in my mouth.

You didn't. The OP did, and I was commenting about that.

Read and write frequency is not an entirely predictable quality. You can probably say that it'll be used less than items in inventory, but how much less? Even if you strip the item down to the minimum amount of data, you're probably just saving a small string that potentially isn't that much smaller than the ID itself, assuming that the database isn't coded badly.

Yoshida's response was obviously simplified because he was talking in an interview on a generalist site. Context matters. You don't go much in depth in this kind of technical issues when you talk to that kind of crowd, unless the interviewer prompts you to. As a simplification, his answer is entirely valid, as it captures the essence of the problem. While it probably wouldn't use the same amount of data per item as the inventory, it still works essentially in the same way, with each piece taking up server storage and data bandwidth when accessed.

Knowing first hand the quality of the interpreters that went on the European media tour (since I was there myself, I have worked with them plenty in the past, and I understand Japanese well enough to catch mistakes), I can tell that I doubt something was lost in translation unless the site misquoted/mistranslated on its own. Since translating from English to French is extremely easy, the possibility of big omissions and mistakes in that part is very low. There were two interpreters working in tandem supporting each other so that any mistake made by the interpreter on shift for each interview would be corrected on the fly by the other.

Try telling me you can store thousands of gear within 215 slots.

No. I'm telling you that calling the Director of this game a liar without a shred of evidence is extremely rude, not at all constructive, and not too smart either, considering that you know nothing of how the game is coded.

There are some issues preventing this game to expand further.
I think their dev team is not big enough for such changes and they have to come out with excuses to hide their corporate weaknesses.
It boggles my mind we can't have things other MMORPGs with way smaller budgets and teams already have and enjoying.
Their budget/team must be really limited and you can see it as they reduce the number of dungeons in 4.XX once again.
We will get 1 new dungeon every odd numbered patch now because the team wants to focus on other type of content.
This tell me that there are some issues inside the team which prevents them from implementing things like the glamour log
and other things Yoshida said coming but never made it.
Same for the character creation options. They refused more options because of "memory limitations".

Sorry, but this kind of completely baseless allegation is laughable. Final Fantasy XIV has notoriously a rather big team compared to most MMORPGs, and Square Enix has been consistently hiring for it through 2.0 to now. Which is unsurprising, since the game is one of SE's biggest recurring revenue drivers.

That's also why it gets three fanfests a year in different areas of the world, plenty of events, concerts, and big media tours in luxury venues like the one that just happened. That kind of thing doesn't happen for games with small development teams, budgets or "corporate weakness."

The only "issue" I see is people talking like they know what's going on, when they really don't.

[Abriael]

Yoshida saying "doing a glamour log is like increasing inventory slot", we all know it's false as hell.

Exactly what evidence you have to accuse a prominent developer of lying? Just so you know "We all know" is not evidence.

From a technical standpoint, the explanation Yoshida gave appears to be perfectly sound. An item being logged as available for glamor needs to be stored into memory, and it's stored into server memory in exactly the same way an item in your inventory is. From the point of view of server memory footprint, it's precisely like creating another inventory slot.

[SokiYagami]

Exactly what evidence you have to accuse a prominent developer of lying? Just so you know "We all know" is not evidence.

From a technical standpoint, the explanation Yoshida gave appears to be perfectly sound. An item being logged as available for glamor needs to be stored into memory, and it's stored into memory in exactly the same way an item in your inventory is. From the point of view of server memory footprint, it's precisely like creating another inventory slot.

To be fair though, a glamour entity will cost far lesser data than an actual item if coded correctly. And even if we assume Yoshi-P's explanation to be true, it's still a major QoL update that players have been requesting and other games have successfully pulled off, regardless of the method they opted for.

[Abriael]

To be fair though, a glamour entity will cost far lesser data than an actual item if coded correctly.

While I can't be 100% sure because I have no insight on how the inventory is coded, that is probably incorrect (almost surely, considering Yoshida's answer). An inventory item is normally stored as a numerical ID in a table that calls on a database with all the item's data. For each character only the ID is stored, not the whole item data, which is already present in the database, and is common for all characters. To store the fact that the item is available for glamoring, you'd have to store the same numerical ID in a dedicated table. This means that the memory footprint of the data would most probably be the same.

It's not that I wouldn't love a glamor log, but accusing Yoshida of lying without the slightest evidence, technical expertise, or insight on how the game is coded sounds very, very dumb, and not at all constructive.

well, that's true in the sense that it's going to take up space in whatever location they choose to store it, but if it's separate from on-hand inventory then it doesn't need to be accessed unless called for. So, it wouldn't need to update in the same fashion as your general inventory which they have used as an excuse not to add inventory slots before. It's more like the chest in your hotel room that you only dig in once in awhile. So, by their own examples that they have given it's about half false.

Server memory footprint should be the same regardless of how many times it's accessed. Lower frequency of access probably means lower server CPU load, but that normally isn't the problem.

[savageink]

Server memory footprint should be the same regardless of how many times it's accessed. Lower frequency of access probably means lower server CPU load, but that normally isn't the problem.

Server memory footprint wasn't the specific issue they previously used, it was network data usage, the character itself is written to the server frequently during play and it doesn't really pick and choose what it's sending. It sends the whole package. Things like your chest in your Inn room do not write to the server every few seconds.

[Niwashi]

While I can't be 100% sure because I have no insight on how the inventory is coded, that is probably incorrect (almost surely, considering Yoshida's answer). An inventory item is normally stored as a numerical ID in a table that calls on a database with all the item's data. For each character only the ID is stored, not the whole item data, which is already present in the database, and is common for all characters. To store the fact that the item is available for glamoring, you'd have to store the same numerical ID in a dedicated table. This means that the memory footprint of the data would most probably be the same.

A gear item in inventory has not just its own item ID, but the item ID of it's glamour, another for its dye, 5 item IDs for what materia is on it, a character ID for who crafted it, a counter for tracking spiritbond, and another for tracking its condition. And while we don't know details like how many bytes each of those identifiers is, we do know that they all have to be multi-byte fields, since there are a lot more than 256 items in the game, characters on a server, and actions towards spiritbonding or dropping condition to 0.

A tick in a log, on the other hand, takes one bit. That's nowhere near the same size as an item.

A glamour log of the 9099 visible gear items currently in the game would take up 1138 bytes of storage, though of course they'd need room for new items being added, so it would probably be more like 2kb or so (which would be enough to hold 16,384 items). At a reasonable guess at the size of gear in inventory as 44 bytes each, that would be enough space to hold 46 of them.

Out of all of that, the only parts I was estimating without knowledge of their specific coding practices are:
1) I guessed 4 bytes per item ID, character ID, or counter.
2) That an an 80% increase from the amount of current gear allows them enough room for adding new items through the next couple expansions or so.

While either of those guesses could be a little off, it's unlikely that either would be off by more than a factor of two, so that 16384 to 46 ratio is reasonably close, no matter how their system is set up.


Besides which, there was the other interview, where Yoshi pointed out that it was possible, but that it was their UI team that was too busy for it at the time. That's an explanation from him that actually makes sense. I'm perfectly willing to accept what he says when he makes sense, but not when he doesn't.

Server memory footprint should be the same regardless of how many times it's accessed. Lower frequency of access probably means lower server CPU load, but that normally isn't the problem.

The issue on this is the transfer between the game servers and backup servers. *Active* data, the kind that can change while playing, is backed up every few seconds that you're logged in. Our characters also have other data, though, (like armoire storage or retainer inventory) that can only change while interacting with that feature and isn't accessible while out adventuring. That data is only backed up when we interact with it, and not all the rest of the time.

There have been multiple suggestions regarding a glamour log, and while some (like automatic inclusion of items whenever we get them) would require it to be classified as active data, others (where we manually place items there, like the armoire) would allow it to be backed up only on access and not the rest of the time. (Note: the limited access would only need to be on adding new items to the log. Using them for glamour could still be available from anywhere, since that doesn't change the contents of the log so doesn't require additional backups.)