Glamour system feedback

[Yu37]

I am not a regular user of these forums, as I try to spend my free time actually playing the game, so I apologize if this is not the best place to post that topic in hopes that it reaches whom it concerns as feedback, but it does look like the most fitting section.
I am also sure this subject has been brought up a lot, but I believe the matter may not have been expressed in the way that hit me recently.

The glamour system is a very important part of the game for many players. It can provide lots of enjoyment on principle and have a lot of depth with the tremendous amount of combinations it opens up. But it needs to be well implemented, of course, lest any enjoyment be ruined by U.I. considerations.

And no matter the different ways to approach it, it all boils down to one thing:



When I get a beautiful piece of gear, it is supposed to be a moment of celebration, to bring me joy as a player.
This is not the case.
Any positive feeling is almost immediately replaced by frustration, anger, and sadness, as obtaining nice loots means having to choose what other nice cosmetic option I will have to throw away.
And such feelings from players are an important indicator of the state of a game feature.



If you can understand this and how it is important, I should not need to explain any further. As long as this focal point drives the future of the system, logic will provide you with the correct course for any decision.

But if you are inclined to read some more, I'll detail a few points about it below (because of the character limit I apparently reached...).

[Yu37]

I know the situation has improved over time, with a dresser capacity now at 400 items.
However, you must know that no matter the figure you set up here, it cannot be the right one.
You will keep expanding the game, you will keep releasing new content. Each new expansion will keep bringing thousands of beautiful new art to wear, which should be eagerly anticipated, and not feared by players who have already filled their precious collection.

There are a number of things that should be managed in a more sensible way that would alleviate this, both immediately and in the future.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: mog station items.
When I spend that much real money on cosmetic gear (and forgive me for saying, but your shop is not among the cheap ones as far as cosmetics items in games currently go!), the first thing I expect is not to have less space for in-game acquired items than other people.
These things ALL belong in the armoire. Nowhere else. Their sole purpose is to be glamour.
Otherwise, anyone who is a regular buyer from your cash shop only ever gets less and less space for actual loot, which is an incentive to play your game less. As such a player is obviously driven by their interest in glamour, or they would not buy these, having way less space for looted items than someone who doesn’t care is highly ironic, and unpleasant.

[Yu37]

Job armor sets also belong in the armoire. This goes back to the focal point: when I get a stunning set for a job, this is supposed to be a moment of satisfaction, not a moment that I genuinely dread, because I will eventually have to find FIVE slots (and that’s for a single job!), or choose to throw an other full set away.

Actually, everything that can be bought back at an NPC once unlocked belongs in the armoire, not in the dresser.
When I try to put an outfit together, it is an exercise of mix and match, it involves experimentation and lucky finds. This happens on a glamour board, which is fed the items available for it.
Do you think it reasonable to expect from us to remember every single appearance of hundreds of items in detail, how they dye, how they react together, and to be living visual databases staring at a half-finished board, having to take into account items that do exist somewhere, in some remote NPC, in some sub-sub-sub-menu, potentially in exchange for the twelve know what specific item, that may be a random loot in some old dungeon? (Yes, I am looking at you, ARR job sets, with your soft palette in the armoire, but not the finished version, and most certainly not the dyeable version, the only one that matters in the end!)

Any item you implement to be forever unlocked on the calamity scavenger for a couple gils is meant to only exist as glamour on the long run. You know and understand that, or you wouldn’t have such a system in place. So why are they not treated accordingly? Why not use the data that keeps track of what a player has unlocked to make the appearance available in a way that is actually user-friendly?

There are games nowadays that deal with this aspect by making appearances you secured for your character once available forever, period. Without even going to such an extreme, the stunning art that goes into your gear and the level of customization offered by your glamour system in the end both highlight how important this aspect is to this game, and keeping it so backwards and frustrating at the same time is really akin to shooting yourself in the foot.

[Yu37]

And, I should probably not go that far in the same post, but on a directly related sidenote…
When can we expect to have a number of glamour boards that make sense with the number of jobs on an actual character?

The only, very core, totally logical reason for these boards to exist is that several jobs share the same worn items. They enable a player to look like the actual job while using the same gear for the stats over every job calling for it.
So why, why in the name of logic do I have 15 boards, for a grand total of 18 fighting jobs, plus 8 crafting jobs and 3 harvesting jobs?

Disciples of the Hand especially have such finely detailed, impressively designed, job-specific gear for each and every one of them… While they obviously share one and only one set of actually worn items, by nature!
They could be on their own the sole reason for boards to exist. But once we’re done dressing up our fighting jobs, do you sincerely believe there is any space left to differentiate our jeweler from our cook chief? Our miner from our fisherman? (And I’m bringing up culinarian on purpose, because even with a “generic crafting outfit”, it really feels weird to have the cook be dressed like the artisans…)
And that is without taking into account the need for any kind of outfit we may want to keep handy, from the occasional swimsuit to basic comfy day-to-day clothing, or anything actually fun we might want to come up with besides the jobs as we play them.

But my power as a player ends here, in telling you. The future is up to the developers. I can only hope that something will be done before I have to deal with a new expansion and its several hundred of new items, dozens upon dozens of reasons to play and to get angry and sad at the same time…

[Callinon]

This is good stuff and I have things to add to it, but let me start by saying that you can edit a long post to bypass the character limit. Just cut everything but the first sentence, post, then immediately edit and paste the rest of it back in.. voila, one super long post instead of 4 short ones.

Moving right along...

- This game has needed a glamour log for 3 expansions now. When I collect a piece of gear that either can't be traded or has at least 1 point of spiritbond, it should be checked off a big list o' glamours that I just have access to for creating glamour sets. There should be no question of inventory space or dresser space or armoires for glamour-only items. It should be one unified log that I can pull from to create glamour sets.
- I should have as many glamour plates available as I have gear sets. Every time a new gear set is made available to me, it should come with a glamour plate. It should just be part of the process of getting a new class unlocked. Maybe chuck I don't know... 10... let's go with 10... chuck an extra 10 onto that as "base" glamour plates just so we can also account for things like the fashion report and random occasional wear. But at a baseline, every gear set should include a glamour plate.
- I should be able to apply a glamour plate anywhere. Why can I only do it in towns? And not even EVERY town.. only certain towns. This makes no sense, and never has. I could apply the glamours myself with prisms out in the middle of Lakeland if I wanted to, but I can't just apply all of them with a plate? No. Fix it.
- Dyes should be stored in the dresser. Let us deposit and withdraw them normally, but they should be primarily stored in the dresser as a pseudo-currency. It is VERY frustrating putting together a set, getting it all the right color.... and then abandoning it and going to the bell to get the dyes out and then going back and having to do the whole process over again. That's annoying. Just store the dyes in the dresser. Solved.
- Glamour sets should include hairstyles and colors at a minimum. Maybe everything the aesthetician can modify could be included, but I'd settle for hairstyles and colors.

Honestly, SE... embrace glamour as the "true endgame" people think it is. It's a BIG deal in this game... that should be apparent since you make money selling the nicest stuff on the mog station. Evolve it from the intern side project it is right now and make it a fully-fledged system with it's own keys and everything.

[EaMett]

Love the suggestions. As a more short term fix I would settle with increasing the glam dresser again. Honestly the dresser was already 200 slots behind the day it came out. We should get at least 200 slots per expansion. That should be at least 600. It was extremely frustrating when SE increased the dresser by 200 slots for ShB, allowing us to place our retainer items in there.. Only for us to be faced with another full expansion worth of glamour and no remaining dresser slots.

The fact the dresser does not play well with items outside of the dresser just makes it worse. It was meant to be a QoL change but it really only moved the goal posts a bit.

[Iscah]

The fact the dresser does not play well with items outside of the dresser just makes it worse. It was meant to be a QoL change but it really only moved the goal posts a bit.

What exactly do you mean by "not playing well with items outside the dresser"

Also it was absolutely a QOL improvement from the previous prism system. It might not do everything that people want out of it, but it's a great deal better than what we had before. Prisms were awful; the dresser is clunky but useful.

The prospect of building a plate and applying it as many times as I liked was game-changing from a glamour perspective. Restoring new levelling gear to my preferred glamour in seconds! Having multiple glamours for a class and switching on a whim! It has been great.

[Gokki]

This game needs a Glamour Log or Glamour Collection like in World of Warcraft - any Bound item gets added to it where i can use it for glamour forever, and throw away the item itself.