Instant Portraits - Annoying??

[Asako]

Many people have just got fed up with the system and have simply agreed that we should be able to simply set 1 that we can use regardless of what gear or job we are currently rocking. If we want to change it, we can do it manually, the game trying to be smart and trying to auto update it is what breaks it. No call for that.

[Destati]

I've gotten into the habit of checking and updating my portraits whenever I make changes but having said that I hate that it's a necessary habit. Maybe I'm wrong but I could have sworn the issue wasn't there (or at least not nearly as prevalent or obnoxious) back when the feature was in "beta". Kinda wish we could go back to that.

[Kemiko]

Have you tried re-saving first the BRD gearset and then the portrait after applying the MCH gearset to the other pieces?

Though, throw a dancer set into the mix, and you'd have to switch to MCH before BRD every time to realign it.

To answer this, updating the gearset won't let you resolve issues involving the portrait due to pieces that cover multiple slots. For the glamour plate, it won't allow you to save the plate with anything in the slots that something else is using (such as Omega-F's body that also uses the hands, legs and feet - the glamour plate will force those slots to be empty or it will not save). Meaning, the plate will want those slots empty when used for the portrait even though you can freely swap between other gearsets and the plates will still apply its glamour appropriately. It's only the portrait that see's it as an issue because something is glamoured to the slots when it wants nothing to be there, as is stated by the glamour plate.

[Iscah]

Meaning, the plate will want those slots empty when used for the portrait

I think this is where the confusion is happening. The plate has nothing directly to do with your portrait, and your portrait does not want the slots to be empty – it wants all the gear pieces to have the same appearance that they had according to the gearset the last time you updated the portrait, whether that's a glamour or the actual appearance of the unglamoured item.

So, assuming both gearsets contain the same gear and both these sets have linked glamour plates:

1. Equip your MCH gearset. All pieces get glamoured. For example's sake let's say the full list of pieces is "Machinist's top and Machinist's pants".

2. Equip your BRD gearset. The glamour plate gets applied but "empty" slots retain their MCH appearance.

3. Save your BRD gearset. (This step is important, as the portrait references the gearset rather than your current gear.)

4. Update your BRD portrait. The portrait registers you wearing "Omega-F top and Machinist's pants" even though you can't see the pants.

From here on if BRD and MCH are the only two classes using that gear, every time you switch from MCH to BRD the pants are going to have that same MCH glamour on them, and the portrait is happy.

On the other hand, your assumption that you have to strip the glamours off your underlying gear will break the portrait either immediately or the next time you upgrade your real gear, causing the appearance of the individual pieces to not match what was registered to the portrait.

And as I was saying earlier, even if you understand how it all links up and you've got BRD-vs-MCH straightened out, throw DNC into the mix and switching from DNC to BRD would mean you're now wearing Dancer's pants under your Omega top and the portrait breaks because you're not wearing Machinist's pants. So you'd need to always switch to BRD via MCH first to keep the portrait working.


Note: If your BRD and MCH gearsets don't fully have the same gear then you might need to replace steps 1 & 2 with "equip BRD gear, manually apply the MCH glamour plate then manually apply the BRD plate.)

[Kemiko]

SNIP

My experience here was very different. It's been months since I've used multi-piece glamours because of how readily they screw up portraits due to how flawed the system is (there shouldn't even be "fixes" for this in the first place. There shouldn't be any issue and that's sort of the whole point of the topic). My experience was that swapping between gearsets didn't prompt any updates because as far as the gearsets were concerned, there wasn't any discrepancy to begin with. I swapped, glamour plate was applied, nuff said. That being said, I'll be sure to test the method you lined out when I get home to see if that actually works rather than relying on my memory of a frustrating and incredibly nonsense experience.

[Fhaerron]

I don't use it so I don't get annoyed by it.

That's the only option really, that or maybe wait several years and hope they fix it? (but you should still ignore and not use it during that time so you won't get annoyed).

[Kemiko]

Just wanted to update my experience here with trying the methodology posted here to get around the portrait system not being able to properly handle mutli-peice glamours. My memory here was actually correct in that swapping gearsets within the same role (I used DNC and MCH here with DNC using the mutli-piece glamour and MCH being glamoured with every individual piece). The DNC gearset was never giving the option to update it and swapping between the two (DNC and MCH and nothing else) would never prompt it to do so and always caused the portrait system to break for DNC, who had the mutli-piece glamour. So, there was never a situation that I could update the portrait, or update the gearset, to recognize the glamour pieces of MCH who has individual pieces so that swapping from MCH to DNC would make the DNC portrait work properly.

[Iscah]

So, there was never a situation that I could update the portrait, or update the gearset

What do you mean, there was never a chance to update the gearset? You just press the update button in the corner of the character menu (or Triangle on controller) and it saves the current state of your equipment and glamours to the gearset. What "situation" are you expecting?

Updating the portrait isn't any good until the gearset is glamoured correctly.

I haven't set up the automatic linking of plates to gearsets, but I tested it out with manually applying all-in-one and multi-piece glamour plates as I switched between gearsets. I don't think it should behave any differently when the linking just makes it apply automatically, but I'll test it with linked plates next time I'm in the game.

[Allegor]

Many people have just got fed up with the system and have simply agreed that we should be able to simply set 1 that we can use regardless of what gear or job we are currently rocking. If we want to change it, we can do it manually, the game trying to be smart and trying to auto update it is what breaks it. No call for that.

And it wouldn't even be hard since the adventurer plate is right there, just use that one.