Moghouse Beautification: The storage space trade off

[Hashmalum]

a place to put decorative items that doesn't feel like it's eating up space that could be used for useful items.

This. So very, very much. Giving people more general purpose space will just result in more packrat junk hoarding and will barely result in any more interior decorating at all.

[Calamity]

I think you're missing the point. Nobody wants furniture specific storage to be mutually exclusive from an upgrade / expansion to normal storage inventory. People want both.

I want is a place to put decorative items that doesn't feel like it's eating up space that could be used for useful items. While it might be eating up the same resources from your perspective, it doesn't necessarily do so from ours. If inventory expansion was being held back for some kind of balance reasons and not technical reasons, I see no reason why a separate furniture storage could not be added in addition to another palette of normal storage.

Um... I think you're the one missing the point. From him, I'm getting that, if they're going to add storage space, it's better that it be free to be used for anything, as the player sees fit. From you I'm getting that you'd rather they add storage that is locked specifically to furniture so that it "doesn't feel like it's eating up space that could be used for useful items." Your way, it's still eating up space that could be used for more useful items, the only difference is, we won't have a choice in the matter. And why not add more regular storage AND furniture only storage? Well why not add more regular storage and, yet more regular storage instead? I don't know. Maybe something was just lost on me. Is there something I'm missing?

[Mayoyama]

Um... I think you're the one missing the point. From him, I'm getting that, if they're going to add storage space, it's better that it be free to be used for anything, as the player sees fit. From you I'm getting that you'd rather they add storage that is locked specifically to furniture so that it "doesn't feel like it's eating up space that could be used for useful items." Your way, it's still eating up space that could be used for more useful items, the only difference is, we won't have a choice in the matter. And why not add more regular storage AND furniture only storage? Well why not add more regular storage and, yet more regular storage instead? I don't know. Maybe something was just lost on me. Is there something I'm missing?

The initial idea was to have furnishings storage which would then free up all the storage slots being taken up in mog safe (thus in effect also giving you more storage).

However I would agree that THIS + OTHER storage would be great!

I know other MMOs have a furniture-specific storage allocation, plus "warehouse" space (ie our safe/locker/satchel/sack) and it works quite well.

[kingfury]

Hey Mayoyama,

This is a great idea and we can certainly understand your request for more room to decorate your Mog House. As mentioned in the Storage Woes: Fat Chocobo thread the development team is looking into ways to add more inventory space that would allow users more decorative freedom. However, since furniture, equipment, or consumable items take up the same amount of space/memory, we don't want to restrict the use of this valued storage upgrade to just furniture items. Therefore, if we are going to increase the total amount of inventory or storage slots, we would like to provide players with the freedom to use this new space as they please.

There have also been some calls for separating gardening from furnishing. Unfortunately, the pots and other things involved with gardening are managed by the furnishing system, so we are not able to separate these two elements at this time.

Finally, we saw an idea about turning furnishings into moogle slips or key items. These systems were set up based on the idea that several types of items or combinations of specific items would be remembered, so it's not possible to apply it towards physical items.

Currently storage has deep roots weaved into the item management system, so steering away from this setup too much would make item management increasingly difficult and time consuming.

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1st off, hats off to the Devs for their continuing efforts to create new inventory space from thin air! /cheers for this. Can't wait for more of this stuff.

2ndly In response to the above response about the system constraints for providing furnish-specific/gardening-specific extra space based on how things are coded currently, I wanted to suggest a theory.

• Increasing Inventory Space:
  
• What Works:
  Currently, we players have the option to purchase another game character (a "mule" character) for an extra $1 per month if we want to increase our overall game storage/inventory space within the game. Though we can't access these items in real time within the game while playing, we can send items to these extra characters to store our extra items. We can also increase these mule's individual inventory space by clearing Mog House, and Gobbie Bag quests. For all intensive purposes, this is a very effective method that most players employ should they want extra inventory + storage space instantly.
  
• Rewiring What Works:
  I for one would not mind paying an extra dollar per month if the above "mule" functionality could manifest itself as the original post suggested, a "Mog Warehouse" or even a extra in-game inventory specific system/item (aka Mog Satchel, Mog Sack, etc.) like a Mog Bag. The difference programming side would simply not be a physical game character that we players would have to log onto in order to access our newly added inventory and storage space, but rather just the storage system mechanics itself. How this would physically look can range from something very simple such as another inventory menu to an entire new zone that we physically run into(example: chocobo stables).
  
  Whereas I would personally prefer to be able to access "paid inventory" everywhere in the game, should there be system constraints to such a possibility, so long as we could access the inventory from any Mog House(possibly even Nomad Moogles), I'm sure most would be content. Furthermore, similar to the mule scenario, we could still have the ability to expand the maximum inventory slots through quests and so forth. This would be a simplified alternative to possibly solving the issue versus going back to the Development drawing board.
  
• Multiple Warehouses:
  The programming result of someone wanting to spend an extra $5-20 a month for multiple "warehouses/in-game storage" (since players can do this currently with mule characters) could simply be an in-game naming system that differentiates the multiple storage systems from one another(example: "Character name" Warehouse-A).

[Mayoyama]

I for one would not mind paying an extra dollar per month if the above "mule" functionality could manifest itself as the original post suggested, a "Mog Warehouse" or even a extra in-game inventory specific system/item (aka Mog Satchel, Mog Sack, etc.) like a Mog Bag. The difference programming side would simply not be a physical game character that we players would have to log onto in order to access our newly added inventory and storage space, but rather just the storage system mechanics itself. How this would physically look can range from something very simple such as another inventory menu to an entire new zone that we physically run into(example: chocobo stables).Whereas I would personally prefer to be able to access "paid inventory" everywhere in the game, should there be system constraints to such a possibility, so long as we could access the inventory from any Mog House(possibly even Nomad Moogles), I'm sure most would be content. Furthermore, similar to the mule scenario, we could still have the ability to expand the maximum inventory slots through quests and so forth. This would be a simplified alternative to possibly solving the issue versus going back to the Development drawing board.

Sorry Kingfury, but I have to completely disagree with this idea (and you have some awesome ideas). I dont want to have to pay more money than I already do simply for storage (having to buy security tokens just for satchel was bad enough). I live in Australia but am forced to pay euros (SE doesnt like aussies I guess lol) so I already pay nearly double what everyone else has to pay after currency conversion and intl transaction fees ; ; (I do realise number of aussies playing is a minority but still.. storage costing more money {no thanks})

What Okipuit was saying is that they would rather give players another slot of 80 spaces that could hold anything rather than simply furnishings. I would personally rather just have direct access to storage of other characters on same account but given how those things are programmed its not likely to ever happen

BTW: I use my mules for fishing/crafting as well as storage so its multi-functional :P (curse the damn rmts forcing us to have 200 fish a day caps)

[Kari]

What Okipuit was saying is that they would rather give players another slot of 80 spaces that could hold anything rather than simply furnishings.

Still don't see how turning Furnishings/etc into an Automaton Attachment-like system would be hurting anything.
Trade furnishings to your moogle, and it's added to your character data for furnishings.

[Mirage]

Hey Mayoyama,

This is a great idea and we can certainly understand your request for more room to decorate your Mog House. As mentioned in the Storage Woes: Fat Chocobo thread the development team is looking into ways to add more inventory space that would allow users more decorative freedom. However, since furniture, equipment, or consumable items take up the same amount of space/memory, we don't want to restrict the use of this valued storage upgrade to just furniture items. Therefore, if we are going to increase the total amount of inventory or storage slots, we would like to provide players with the freedom to use this new space as they please.

There have also been some calls for separating gardening from furnishing. Unfortunately, the pots and other things involved with gardening are managed by the furnishing system, so we are not able to separate these two elements at this time.

Thank you for the reply. If it takes just as much resources to give us 80 more slots for any sort of items, instead of a separate inventory just for furniture, I think this would be just fine to just do that instead.

After all, I doubt a lot of people have more than 80 furniture items, so most people would get what this thread asks for, and extra spare inventory in addition to that.

[hiko]

Still don't see how turning Furnishings/etc into an Automaton Attachment-like system would be hurting anything.
Trade furnishings to your moogle, and it's added to your character data for furnishings.

it wont hurt anything but it'd take same memory space than adding a new storage where you can put anything

[Mostfowl]

Totally agree with this thread. As someone who has about 25+ ifurnishing taking up space. I would love extra storage to hold it, even if its furniture exclusive storage. Even if they had a system of mules you can access without logging out (ie the retainer system in xiv) that would be fantastic.

[kingfury]

Sorry Kingfury, but I have to completely disagree with this idea (and you have some awesome ideas). I dont want to have to pay more money than I already do simply for storage (having to buy security tokens just for satchel was bad enough). I live in Australia but am forced to pay euros (SE doesnt like aussies I guess lol) so I already pay nearly double what everyone else has to pay after currency conversion and intl transaction fees ; ; (I do realise number of aussies playing is a minority but still.. storage costing more money {no thanks})

What Okipuit was saying is that they would rather give players another slot of 80 spaces that could hold anything rather than simply furnishings. I would personally rather just have direct access to storage of other characters on same account but given how those things are programmed its not likely to ever happen

BTW: I use my mules for fishing/crafting as well as storage so its multi-functional :P (curse the damn rmts forcing us to have 200 fish a day caps)

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Understandable, and by all means, no extra money for such extra inventory would be the desirable choice of course. I offered the suggestion more as a possible approach system wise for the Devs to consider in terms of functionality more than anything else. If the Devs responded and said, "Yeah, we can actually re-code the additional character mechanics to suite this Mog warehouse with little effort and can introduce it in the next version update", versus, "Due to memory constraints/system constraints we wont be able to offer extra inventory for some time to come", I would choose the additional $1 in a heartbeat.
Granted, yeah it's extra money, but not much, and it would be better than having to log off and change characters to access your stuff. But needless to say, the free inventory option would be best, so I agree with you there. If it's even possible to rework the mule creation system to function like an extra warehouse-like area, they could come back and say it could be free to us should they introduce it this way.

However, if I've learned anything about how these boards work, it's best to offer the most plausible and easy to implement options when suggesting solutions to an overloaded Dev team. It also doesn't hurt if you can give a suggestion that gives more incentive for the Devs than just "Hey, we really want this in the game!" such as they could make some extra cash for implementing said suggestion. Which could always mean more content for FFXI in the future. That way, the business heads at SquareEnix could possibly push for the suggestion too. It's all about the Benjamins y'know... or Yen...