Inventory and Treasure distribution issues

Losing lot choices through full inventory

As has been addressed in a previous thread to make a lot/pass all feature and similar things, there's currently some problems with the inventory and treasure pool. Right now, you can lot items, then your inv gets filled up, the item drops and you lose it.

And contrary to popular belief, this can also happen if you pass all items in the pool, because new items drop. And the way the game works, it lets untagged items drop first when the treasure pool is full (items without a rare or exclusive tag). That way, tagged items can stay the entire duration of 5min to decide drops. Which, on the one hand, is a good idea. On the other hand, it leads to the aforementioned issue, which can be extremely annoying on certain items. Now some people will, no doubt, argue that those people suck and it's their responsibility to keep checking their treasure pool to pass stuff constantly, but I don't think it has to be like this.

Right now, the FFXI client will only let you lot if you have at least one free inventory space. However, it lets you lot an unlimited number of items, even with only one inventory space. To ease the frustration on players, I think it would be nice if you could only lot as many items as you can hold.

A possible way to do this, that would, coincidentally, also fix the other issue of having items drop to you that will crowd your inventory over the desired limit, would be this:
Make items you lot temporary drop into your inventory.

They don't actually have to be in the inventory, this can be done entirely artificially, just by checking available spaces vs. lot choices. So for example, if someone was sitting at 78/80 inventory, he could only lot two items. These two items would would bring their inventory to 78+2/80 = 80/80. That means he couldn't lot more items or trade with other people or obtain quest rewards, etc. until the drops are sorted out.

There's more ways to fix this issue, this suggestion just came to mind.

Inventory sorting and trading

First of all, please allow satchel and sack to also auto-sort (optional). I know some people use it to store gear and don't want it sorted, so they can grab job-specific gear faster, others however use those for consumables or convenience/quest items, and having it aut-sorted would allow quicker access to those.

Trading items is a major issue at near full inventory. If two people are sitting at 80/80 there's no way for them to trade items, which seems rather pointless. Several ways to address this, one would be the same as with the treasure pool, set the artificial state of the inventory to max(I-X+Y, I)/C, where I is the amount of items currently in the inventory, C the inventory size, X the amount of items traded by party A, Y the amount of items traded by party B. That way, if someone is sitting at 76/80 inventory and has 3 items to receive in the trade pool, their inventory would count as 79/80, and only 1 item from the treasure pool would be allowed to drop. And while at it, a nice and very quick fix would be to not allow someone to put more trade items in the trade box than the other person can receive. Having the trade cancelled and having to redo everything is very tedious.

Also, gil should never count as an item to be traded. Not being able to receive money because your inventory is full is pretty annoying.

Another thing, although that's probably a bit too much to ask for, would be pre-stacking. If you're at 80/80 inventory with 3/12 Gold Beastcoins in one slot, then you should be allowed to lot, trade and steal 9 Gold Beastcoins, until it can't be stacked anymore. This however is not as realistic as the other fixes, so I won't get my hopes up.

Treasure pool conveniences

It was mentioned before in another thread, but since it fits the topic, I'll post it again here.

A feature to lot/pass all items and/or always lot/pass one item. These would have to be set in advance, and could never affect the current treasure pool. This would prevent any kind of ninja-looting completely, so that argument is out of the way.

Select an item in the pool, click it, select "Always pass" or "Always lot" will always pass or lot all future drops of this item, however it will not affect the ones currently in the pool. This would be very useful for large scale runs where you farm triggers, but don't wanna deal with the other useless items the entire time. And the always lot feature would be nice for events like Limbus/Dynamis, or for Empyrean weapons farms, which can take several hours.

I could see something like a tentative pass function to be rather useful. A (seperately marked) pass, that means you won't obtain the item, unless you lot on it. This could be done globally (i.e. automatically apply to all items), or for one item in particular. Alternatively, you could just block your inventory, so you only obtain items you lot on.

Edit: Another thing that I just read here, which I'll mention as well since it fits the topic nicely. Mistakenly lotting/passing happened to everyone because items in the treasure pool shift. My personal suggestion would be to move the cursor along whenever an item is shifted, because the pool is being cleared. If an item moves up, just move the cursor with it, just let it stay on that item. Especially if the lot/pass menu for that item has already been opened.

These features (especially combined with the previous suggestion of temporary inventory filling) would help improve the game's treasure/inventory/trading system immensely and I really hope SE considers something like that.

1) untagged items do not get auto'd before tagged items in general. That is only in select few instances such as dynamis where currancy is auto'd before Relic armor. In most other cases it's sorted as normal.

2) If you're both 80/80 for a trade then put some things into mog sack/satchel temporarilly. If you are 80/80 in all three of gobbie bag, satchel and sack then you're carrying around too much unnesseccary gear in the field.

3) temporarilly changing your inventory value when you've cast a lot on something would probably take a decent amount of man power to change for the tiny minority that would care about it.

I do agree however that a method to auto-pass items in the treasure pool would be a nice addition, however it would be far too complex to input a system where you can choose what items you lot or pass, so it would only be an either-or setting. There's close to no instance where you'd want to lot or pass everything in the pool. Even in some generic exp party where you will want to pass all random crap like flintstones, you'll still not want to pass seals and crests etc (and any worthwhile item from a random gold box).

If you don't suck at inventory management and realise you don't need to carry around all your rediculously situational gear all the time, and if you are smart enough to transfer a few items to sack/satchel just incase when an important item in the treasure pool drops (or multiple, like af3 mats), then these inventory "issues" aren't really a problem at all.

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Originally Posted by noodles355

1) untagged items do not get auto'd before tagged items in general. That is only in select few instances such as dynamis where currancy is auto'd before Relic armor. In most other cases it's sorted as normal.

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Definitely happens in Abyssea too. A friend of mine lost some drops because they dropped a few seconds after the items that came after it, which she couldn't pass because she was afk. I don't know about outside of that, but doesn't invalidate the point in either case.

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Originally Posted by noodles355

2) If you're both 80/80 for a trade then put some things into mog sack/satchel temporarilly. If you are 80/80 in all three of gobbie bag, satchel and sack then you're carrying around too much unnesseccary gear in the field.

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I just have way too much stuff in general. I'm 80/80 on pretty much everything these days, so it doesn't matter what I carry in the field. While that may be mismanagement on my part, again it doesn't change the point. Sometimes it's not even 80/80 but 75/80. But then you wanna receive 6 items, and the trade is canceled because it doesn't work. Sure, you can /sack something, then hope to retrieve it again efficiently after, but that's just something that doesn't have to be imo.

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Originally Posted by noodles355

3) temporarilly changing your inventory value when you've cast a lot on something would probably take a decent amount of man power to change for the tiny minority that would care about it.

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It was just a possible suggestion to fix this, there's other things they could do as well, that would require little to no effort, like simply checking inventory status and allow only F=C-(I+L) items of the current pool to drop your inventory, where C is the inventory size, I the current amount of items you carry and L the amount of items you have a lot on. F, the result, would be the amount of free slots you have. These variables are already available and it would take barely any effort to import this setting.

Honestly, I don't even really expect that to happen, but I still felt like suggesting it. Maybe some day in the future, someone at SE will be bored enough to try it. Seriously, as a programmer myself I don't think it would be that hard to implement. There's a all these variables I mentioned should already be in the code, or could be easily calculated. There has to be a function that determines free inventory space already (currently being used for trading, lotting and obtaining quest rewards).

The entire change to the inventory I suggested could be summed up by using this formula, which calculates F, the amount of free inventory slots:

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F(I, C, L, X, Y) = C-(I+L+Y)-X

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instead of the currently used

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F(I, C) = C-I

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Legend:

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C = inventory capacity/size
I = current amount of items/slots in inventory
L = current amount of lotted items in treasure pool
X = items currently being traded to party B
Y = items currently being traded by party B

F = amount of free items, result

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Looks a lot more complicated, but it's just some more additions (in a mathematical sense), it can be calculated in virtually zero time.

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Originally Posted by Arcon

Definitely happens in Abyssea too. A friend of mine lost some drops because they dropped a few seconds after the items that came after it, which she couldn't pass because she was afk. I don't know about outside of that, but doesn't invalidate the point in either case.

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I say this was a memory error. Things do not auto like that in Abyssea. My linkshell always farms t least 2 high level +2 item/empy item NMs at once, and occasionally we kill them at the same time, the 2nd dying before the council has time to decide drop priority on the first NM. On these occasions, all drops, whether Ra, Ex or Ra/Ex all have dropped based soley on their position in the treasure pool.
If one thing is an exception to that rule then you must appreciate that said item will auto after 5 minutes. If this is the case then it if is a drop you really care about then you should take special effort to make sure you will be able to recieve it (like giving yourself 3-4 empty inv slots and actively passing everything in the next 5 minutes). If you can't do this then it's your own lookout when you lose X precious item.

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I just have way too much stuff in general. I'm 80/80 on pretty much everything these days, so it doesn't matter what I carry in the field. While that may be mismanagement on my part, again it doesn't change the point. Sometimes it's not even 80/80 but 75/80. But then you wanna receive 6 items, and the trade is canceled because it doesn't work. Sure, you can /sack something, then hope to retrieve it again efficiently after, but that's just something that doesn't have to be imo.

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I'm sorry but I do not believe this argument to hold any real validation. "Sometimes I might be 75/80 and need to trade 6 items". Please provide one example of some remotely relevent situation where you need to trade 6 items at once. Yes, the argument is valid theoretically, however there is no actual situation where it is valid and so the point is void =/

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It was just a possible suggestion to fix this, there's other things they could do as well, that would require little to no effort, like simply checking inventory status and allow only F=C-(I+L) items of the current pool to drop your inventory, where C is the inventory size, I the current amount of items you carry and L the amount of items you have a lot on. F, the result, would be the amount of free slots you have. These variables are already available and it would take barely any effort to import this setting.

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Now, your point in your gobbiebag having a certain status, either take all, take only Rare, exclusive or ra/ex is a valid point and I do think a good idea. I put my support behind this idea. I do not think it would tae an unreasonable amount of programming to tag your inventory as so, and have the treasure pool drop items dependant on this variable.
However, as I stated before, I believe that full inventory leading to treasure pool drops being lost is a very small problem. It happens to a minority. Furthermore, there is also the argument against this in that "Everyone should passimportant drops immidiately". My old endgame shell on Shiva used to actively make everyone pass. If you didn't pass within 2-3 minutes then you were kicked from the alliance. This is a simple fix to the problem. Dynamis is the only time where this doesn't work, as kicking someone does not remove them from the treasure pool, however in dynamis you will 99% of the time have someone else lotting all currancy, and so the point is basicallt void. Sometimes the monster will drop a synth matierial as well as AF, but as I stated earlier if you can't manage your inventory well enough to leave yourself 2-3 extra slots in teh situation of an important item dropping, then you probably don't deserve it.

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Honestly, I don't even really expect that to happen, but I still felt like suggesting it. Maybe some day in the future, someone at SE will be bored enough to try it. Seriously, as a programmer myself I don't think it would be that hard to implement. There's a all these variables I mentioned should already be in the code, or could be easily calculated. There has to be a function that determines free inventory space already (currently being used for trading, lotting and obtaining quest rewards).

The entire change to the inventory I suggested could be summed up by using this formula, which calculates F, the amount of free inventory slots:
instead of the currently used
Legend:
Looks a lot more complicated, but it's just some more additions (in a mathematical sense), it can be calculated in virtually zero time.

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To be honest you raise a good argument relating to the ease of implementation. It could quite possibly be simplistic enough to implament. However this issue, (I believe), is such a small issue affecting such a minority that it is not worth the time of the Dev Team.