We really need a Sticker Book collection system for Cosmetics

[AdamChattaway]

I myself have no space left in my glamour and I'm not a big collector as it is, inv space is a mess, back space is full. I've just watched the livestream of them talking about how they will try to address it a bit and give more space in 6.1 or near it and their aging backend can't handle all the items etc.

So why do they not do what almost every other mmo has done naming WoW as an example but a good example of how they implemented a collections windows which was also retroactive and any item you ever pick up has its cosmetic unlocked, similar to diablo 3 and so on. Surely this would be the biggest way to fix this and move forward?

[Packetdancer]

So why do they not do what almost every other mmo has done naming WoW as an example but a good example of how they implemented a collections windows which was also retroactive and any item you ever pick up has its cosmetic unlocked, similar to diablo 3 and so on. Surely this would be the biggest way to fix this and move forward?

Without poking deeply into the code... we do already know that there's a major issue with loading glamour lists in non-private instances. Moreover, it seems like the game's backend doesn't support sparse bitfields, which are practically a necessity to support a glamour catalog covering all gear in the game.

(The armoire appears to be implemented as a non-sparse bitfield, for reference.)

To explain slightly, bitfields are like a giant checklist, where for every possible option on the list you have a "yes/no" checkbox. A non-sparse bitfield, for instance, could store 8 items in a given byte; a byte is 8 bits (1/0s), thus you can have 8 'yes/no' settings. However, if you have, say, several million items in the database, that list becomes very, very long -- and most database systems do not allow you to store an arbitrary 4-million-bit number. (As opposed to, say, a 64-bit number.) So you end up storing it as a giant binary blob you must load fully into memory. If you had, say, 200 people in a zone, you'd be using hundreds of megabytes of memory just to store the glamour records for each.

Worse still, if you make it be just wearable gear (to lessen the size of that checklist), you now need a lookup table as well ("Item ID 3,456,723 = Gear appearance ID 23,305" or whatever), which now also requires more storage (albeit it's one lookup table globally).

The armoire appears to use this method, which is why it's so limited; every time they add new stuff to the armoire, they need to extend that list (and increase the size of the 'blob' of binary data the armoire is represented as).

One solution to this is something called Sparse Bitfields, where the number is functionally compressed; instead of saying "here are 4 million 1s and 0s", it's more like "Here are the 700 positions in that 4 million bit long bitfield that are set to 1". This involves math (YAY MATH) but is able to store the data in MUCH less space (provided that you don't have everything set in the giant long bitfield set to '1', anyway). However, it does not appear that Square-Enix's system is set up to use sparse bitfields anywhere.

This isn't to say they couldn't add it, and then try to go back and add anything that's tied to an achievement ("Got Bard to level 70" or "Won X number of PVP matches" or whatever). But it wouldn't be a quick change, nor would it be a small one, so they probably haven't found the tradeoff worth doing it instead of whatever other feature they have the necessary staff working on.

THAT SAID, I seriously wish they expanded the armoire to support more Mog Station cosmetics, just so you don't have to chew up your glamour dresser for any of those which you happen to like.

[Nafreyu]

I love this idea, and I think with the volume increase in subscriptions, that projects to expand on their previous limitations should be expected.