Potential Inventory Solution

[Selindrile]

We all love the wardrobe, we really do, and we do understand your worries about server load and zoning-time etc etc, I have a suggestion that may have been suggested before, but, I strongly believe in it, if we have the capability to do such.

Make the wardrobe job-specific, (Or preferably create a second, job-specific wardrobe), this new wardrobe doesn't even need to load if you're not on a particular job, and it shouldn't accept gear that's not job specific, for example:

I'm on Blue Mage, I have a wardrobe that I can only add items to that are equippable by Blue Mage, and Blue Mage only, I can equip directly from it, like our current wardrobe.

When I change jobs to Warrior, my "Blue Mage wardrobe" completely dissapears and doesn't load, isn't visible anywhere on my character (thus, not creating 22 more inventories worth of server load every zone, only one specific to my job, exactly like wardrobe is now.) There would only be one wardrobe-per-job-per-player.

To prevent items getting "lost", these wardrobes should only accept job-specific-equipment, so that you can't go, "Oh where did I put my Thaumas body?" But, you don't care about your Blue Mage AF's location when you're on Warrior, so it's fine to be completely unfindable, for example.

[bungiefanNA]

That would add 22 inventory spaces, and it already takes a long time to load the ones we have. You're asking for a large increase of loading times.

[Kensagaku]

...For the "job-specific equipment" (i.e. you're being particular to AF/Relic/Empyrean mostly, with only a few other unique pieces to jobs) there's a thing called a Porter Moogle that only takes a few minutes to put gear into and pull it out of. =x

That being said, having 22 inventories of wardrobe will STILL create 22 inventories of server lag regardless of having them "disappear" or "nonexistent" when you switch jobs. The reason is that the data doesn't disappear; it's associated with your character, because otherwise how would they pull the knowledge of what you have in your "vanished" inventory when you switch back? There has to be flags in place that says "they have X gear," and then there has to be information on what those flags mean, which means more processes for each piece of gear they're calling back. I.e. it's really nothing different from the porter moogle; though items don't exist in your inventory, their data flags exist on the item you have in your inventory. Doing so by linking "wardrobes" to yourself will just increase server load times exponentially.

[Selindrile]

Please read the post before commenting.

When I change jobs to Warrior, my "Blue Mage wardrobe" completely dissapears and doesn't load, isn't visible anywhere on my character (thus, not creating 22 more inventories worth of server load every zone, only one specific to my job, exactly like wardrobe is now.) There would only be one wardrobe-per-job-per-player.

This would not create 22 more spaces if implemented properly, much the same way you have all the things stored on your porter moogle currently, if they are simply linked to flag in some way, and only loaded when your job changes (think key item equipment slips).

From a datastructure perspective, think of each "wardrobe" as a single table, with a list of all the job-specific gear, and a check, or an X beside it, likely you'd only be able to put gear that is able to be stored on the porter moogle into it, for similar reasons (augments/trials would be cleared, or else they would each require their own data, instead of being a check or an X)

It would not need to send you this data each time you changed zones, it may increase the time it takes to change jobs, but, small price to pay, as someone who has spent far too large a portion of his FFXI staring at his porter moogle, I'm well aware of it's existance, I see this as an improvement on that system, and combining it with the wardrobe system, to minimize their downsides.

[Byrth]

OP's idea is interesting, 'specially given the amount of JSE we currently use. However, they could also just stop resetting the entire inventory structure on zone.

Ask yourself why inventory has to load every time you zone. Temporary items sometimes change on zone, but nothing else is altered in any way. We should only really have to load the other bags once when logging in.



There, load-time excuse defeated. Now that it's fixed in a pretty trivial way, lets look at the problem of PS2 RAM. If they're having trouble adding more autotranslate phrases (something like 16 bytes per phrase in memory) then I'm kind of amazed that they scraped together enough free RAM to add Wardrobe to that old toaster.

[Selindrile]

I would be fine with this solution as well, lol, but I somehow felt mine was more realistic? I'm not really sure though, mind you.

[Vold]

OP's idea is interesting, 'specially given the amount of JSE we currently use. However, they could also just stop resetting the entire inventory structure on zone.

Ask yourself why inventory has to load every time you zone. Temporary items sometimes change on zone, but nothing else is altered in any way. We should only really have to load the other bags once when logging in.



There, load-time excuse defeated. Now that it's fixed in a pretty trivial way, lets look at the problem of PS2 RAM. If they're having trouble adding more autotranslate phrases (something like 16 bytes per phrase in memory) then I'm kind of amazed that they scraped together enough free RAM to add Wardrobe to that old toaster.

[Selindrile]

To clarify, imagine it like the following: You have another "Wardrobe", another inventory you can equip directly from, that holds only JSE (And doesn't even have to hold all of it (AF/+1/Reforged/+1, Relic/+1/+2/Reforged/+1, Empy/+1/+2/Reforged(soon)/+1), which as Byrth said, are and will be used very frequently these days.

I am on "Blue Mage", I change job to "Warrior", that wardrobe then effectively automatically stores everything in it, in an "invisible slip" (or, if absolutely necessary, up to 22 of these wardrobe slots could actually be taken up by slips linking to each of the jobs, leaving us 58 JSE spots left for each job, which would still be acceptable) and then removes everything from the job-appropriate storage and places it in this inventory.

It's as someone else said, effectively another porter moogle, but one about 1000000 times more convenient.

[Krashport]

We are all paying Customers that being said; Why not invest some of that money we paid a month to upgrading the Server(s) and RAM.

[Selindrile]

While I wouldn't mind them dumping some more money back into FFXI production value and equipment, I don't think adding server RAM fixes the main problem here. The main problem is that chained to the PS2, there's not enough RAM on the clients to do what they want to do.

But didn't they claim that some sort of inventory revision was in the works to solve our inventory problems permanently? If Case and Wardrobe were their only answer... they clearly do not know how much gear they've added over the past year and continue to add.

Also I have to wonder, if Gallagher, Garridan, Jarafah, Olaky-Yayulaky, and Poudoruchant (the event storage NPCs) can manage to store so much gear without anything AND Caruvinda, Tesch Garanjy, Taulenne, Sinon, Ratonne, Hajawaa, Perevie, Meh Nbolo, Muzeze, Pihra Rhebenslo, Jagaris, Renadile, and Macera (the Armor set storage NPCs) can store tons of gear with only KIs linking to them instead of physical items. Why can't the porter moogle or this system manage something similar?