[Feedback] More Glamour Plates or More Areas to Apply Glamour Plates?

[kikix12]

Reading such posts I sometimes wonder if maybe SE doesnt have that great of IT experts working with them. Maybe they need more employees from around the world with different experiences and views of these things because sometimes I get the feeling that they simply dont know how to do it better. Because if they really use a system that will always send all the information then its no wonder that they have to check if its possible to increase it..but that does mean that we will hit the limit sometime in the future...

To be frank, personally I doubt that there are technical issues at all to begin with. I cannot imagine people capable of programing such a game to not know about the very basics of databases and their management, which is one of the most important parts of doing any program (game or otherwise). The excuse "technical limitations" is just that. Since no one can (legally) check the actual programing, no one can legally expose that they're just blatantly lying to avoid doing stuff that they don't feel like doing.

From a business perspective, businesses frequently do things that their clients don't want, in order to get more money. But "I want more money, so you have to pay for it too." sounds a lot worse than "I don't want to make you pay extra, but something outside of my control doesn't let me not take your money." does. Basically, Square Enix wants the game to have flawed systems in order to make paying extra to circumvent them more attractive. In this case, retainers are an example.

And the extra free slots?! Of course there's a point where players will just say "stop", especially in a subscription-based game. So they need to throw a bone here or there. Don't worry. They will just add a ton of new items to clog up your new inventory so you'll still want more.

This is a sad state, but honestly, I can understand it. There are few people like me that understand that businesses want to earn as much money and at as low a cost as possible. If they were honest, they would lose a lot of players feeling "hurt" in some way by that honesty. So they are just maiming those. In the end, the players still pay and play cause they enjoy the game overall.

[Krotoan]

Reading such posts I sometimes wonder if maybe SE doesnt have that great of IT experts working with them. Maybe they need more employees from around the world with different experiences and views of these things because sometimes I get the feeling that they simply dont know how to do it better. Because if they really use a system that will always send all the information then its no wonder that they have to check if its possible to increase it..but that does mean that we will hit the limit sometime in the future...

or they're building on a base written by many outsourced companies and hastily written over to save the game.

[Alleo]

or they're building on a base written by many outsourced companies and hastily written over to save the game.

Which also means that they will hit their limit somewhere in the future. Both cases are not exactly reassuring as a paying player.

[Krotoan]

Which also means that they will hit their limit somewhere in the future. Both cases are not exactly reassuring as a paying player.

This is true. As will every other game you will ever play. Admittedly this ones breaking point is within view, but no game lasts forever.
I would LOVE to see this game have the longevity that WoW has had, but I'm realistic about what it's built on. When it comes down to it, this game will likely endure many more jury-riggs before they finally decide it's more trouble than it's worth to maintain and move to the next project. In the mean time however, WHEEE!

[Vstarstruck]

This is true. As will every other game you will ever play. Admittedly this ones breaking point is within view, but no game lasts forever.
I would LOVE to see this game have the longevity that WoW has had, but I'm realistic about what it's built on. When it comes down to it, this game will likely endure many more jury-riggs before they finally decide it's more trouble than it's worth to maintain and move to the next project. In the mean time however, WHEEE!

hmmm, how long has ffxi/wow been going on now that is not suffering like this game is?

[kikix12]

This is true. As will every other game you will ever play. Admittedly this ones breaking point is within view, but no game lasts forever.
I would LOVE to see this game have the longevity that WoW has had, but I'm realistic about what it's built on. When it comes down to it, this game will likely endure many more jury-riggs before they finally decide it's more trouble than it's worth to maintain and move to the next project. In the mean time however, WHEEE!

There were games where the entire game was converted to a new engine that removed limitations of the previous one. I never did play or care about World of Warcraft, but that game itself I believe is an example of that, more or less.

Ultimately, a "game engine" is just an automatic translator. It's not like writing the game from scratch again, though yes, the amount of time and effort required IS large, hence why it is done rarely. Financially, for most games, it is more efficient to "milk" the old game from last drop of money it can get while adding extra budget for a completely new game, I reckon. At least, that's what most businesses would believe.

Smaller changes however, I do not think would require all that much in comparison. If there is a system or two that are just completely out of date, they should be possible to remake without changing the parts that manage as they are. After all, all of this is just software limitation and the only limits to what can be done in that department are time, skills and hardware.

[Krotoan]

There were games where the entire game was converted to a new engine that removed limitations of the previous one. I never did play or care about World of Warcraft, but that game itself I believe is an example of that, more or less.

Ultimately, a "game engine" is just an automatic translator. It's not like writing the game from scratch again, though yes, the amount of time and effort required IS large, hence why it is done rarely. Financially, for most games, it is more efficient to "milk" the old game from last drop of money it can get while adding extra budget for a completely new game, I reckon. At least, that's what most businesses would believe.
Smaller changes however, I do not think would require all that much in comparison. If there is a system or two that are just completely out of date, they should be possible to remake without changing the parts that manage as they are. After all, all of this is just software limitation and the only limits to what can be done in that department are time, skills and hardware.

You've misunderstood me if you think I believe they drop everything, kill the servers and then go "whelp, that's that. Time to START work on the next one." I know my development cycles well enough to imagine that IF they're planning to wind down FFXIV they know about it NOW and are in some stage of building the next one.

Smaller changes obviously don't suffer the same restriction but will affect ANY other systems that interact with them in any way, BUT we're talking currently about why a small change was made. A reason was given, citing a technical limitation which likely (don't know explicitly) stems from the gobbledygook left over from the LAST time an engine change was made and now people are saying another one should be done instead of this small tweak. Thus I reworded the reason, and I'm probably going to get responses like "well they should have just changed everything from the ground up".

Round in circles we go.

People have been answering an A or B question in this thread with demands for a C. It's pretty silly.

Would you like water or juice? WHY CAN'T I HAVE SODA IN EVERY FLAVOR?

[Vaer]

hmmm, how long has ffxi/wow been going on now that is not suffering like this game is?

WoW kept adding bigger bags (they stopped recently), void storage/transmog came out 7 years later and crafting mat bank 10 years later. It also took until recently to increase the default backpack size by a whopping 4 slots. Their excuse was the same as SE's (code is old, game would break if we went near it). We aren't doing that bad all things considered.

XI didn't get rid of it's space issues until recently, base game you started with 50 carried only and 50 in your inn room. They sell wardrobe space now actually, before that it would be an event to get more space and usually only 5 spaces at a time while being a pain (gobbiebag quests), usually the items required for the quest were expensive. Both the carried and safe only went up to 80. Locker was one of the first inventory expansions and you had to keep it going by using a currency but could only be used in inn rooms. Satchel came out after that but needed a physical token attached (no software token back then) to the account, could be used anywhere. They then added the Sack which was actually a second inventory you could use anywhere. They added the wardrobe recently which is basically the armoury chest from XIV but now it loads super slow when you change areas. You have to wait like 10-20 seconds for everything to load on area change.

Literally people did not have enough space during 2004-2010. I even knew someone who was abusing the delivery box to get more space by sending items to themselves and not taking them out/using return to cycle it to the back (lol) so it got backed up so bad it took a while for it to cycle to the item they wanted. Or people with tons of alts (mules) just holding their stuff. The no bs saddlebag is already way better than anything XI added before the sack.

On topic, I'd rather have more plates if given a choice or a way to copy and paste them or something easily if they decide to go with the more areas.

[Ferth]

I feel like the problem with glamour plates is that they don't fulfill their intended purpose well. This is the absolute worst possible solution they could have come up with for the problem of wanting to be able to have separate glamours for the same gear for different jobs. Hands down, the worst. Not doing anything would have been better than this. That being said, it's a decent step for making glamours themselves slightly less obnoxious. THAT being said I think it's a step in the completely wrong direction.

There's a meme that has been floating around for awhile about not being afraid to correct a mistake just because you spent a long time making it, and I think it's something this dev team really needs to take to heart. They seem so unwilling to look back at absolutely terrible ideas they've implemented in the past and remove them. Either letting them rot or somehow trying to ducttape them into not being so bad.

So in the remote chance that the Dev team would actually ever see this; Glamour Plates are NOT an adequate answer to the playerbase's desire to have different glamour sets based on which job they are playing. Nothing you do to the current glamour system will allow for an adequate solution to that problem. Glamour needs a fundamental change to the way it works before you will find an adequate solution to this problem.

[polyphonica]

There's a meme that has been floating around for awhile about not being afraid to correct a mistake just because you spent a long time making it, and I think it's something this dev team really needs to take to heart. They seem so unwilling to look back at absolutely terrible ideas they've implemented in the past and remove them. Either letting them rot or somehow trying to ducttape them into not being so bad.

It's not really "being afraid," exactly, it's that the complexity of reworking a core system is enormous and the complications far-reaching. Changing the way glamour works at a fundamental level would at least impact the netcode, cross-server handoffs, the server data storage configuration, and have a direct impact on all equipment items in inventories (including in retainers, etc.) and related UIs and client-side cache -- and you'd have to do it in such a way that is backwards compatible or allows people to transition. This is the most major and riskiest kind of change possible in an evolving software project. So before you tackle such a large, complex, risky project you'd want to try to exhaust every other option, even if they're not perfect, since the amount of time/cost/risk is much smaller. With something like the Glamour Dresser, they can assign a small side-team to it, since it builds on the existing core. A fundamental rework of a major system means you need to coordinate all your top talent across the whole dev team, and take them off other high-priority work.

Basically, everything is about managing trade-offs. To keep the dev team releasing updates on a regular schedule, you can clearly observe (throughout all aspects of the dev roadmap) that the FFXIV team prioritizes stability over reinvention. That approach has its benefits and drawbacks, like everything, but one of the drawbacks is certainly things like this.