Why does the new inventory UI show less items on Expanded than before?

First thing everyone saw, and first thing that I am sure that annoyed people ... even me.

Keep the stacks, make inventory pane actually expanded.

Yes, just make it show four sections again. With each 35 now, we get a net gain of visibility on 40. And with our current inventory size, we would actually be able to see all of our inventory at once for the first time. That's a huge plus in my book, and offsets the fact the window would be slightly larger overall.

Retainers would work, too, since by showing four sections, we would still have just one click to access the fifth. And those who were bothered by the empty space in old view would be satisfied, since there would still be no empty space.

Why showing only two sections and making us lose visibility on 30 entire slots was the answer I will never understand.

Glad I'm not the only one annoyed by the new "expanded inventory".
Give us the option to go back to 5x5 if you're not going to show at least 4 panes on screen. This is a major step back.
Hopefully they actually listen to people and give us an option to change it. Thought only blizzard made stupid changes like this that actually make things worse.

I hate... absolutely HATE with a burning passion, the new "expanded" inventory. Whoever thought this, along with the glamour toilet, was smart needs to get das boot. Dumpster fires left and right with this patch.

Adding my vote to bring back the old expanded view.

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Originally Posted by Squintina

This is why they need PTR.

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No kidding!

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Originally Posted by Squintina

This is why they need PTR.

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Or an addon API. Like the one they promised before the game was released. Still waiting.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

Or an addon API. Like the one they promised before the game was released. Still waiting.

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Which we're never going to get, because of PS4 players; that they keep saying "we'll think about it" is misleading.

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Originally Posted by Elamys

Which we're never going to get, because of PS4 players; that they keep saying "we'll think about it" is misleading.

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Didn't the PS4 versions of Skyrim and Fallout allow mods? Just need to build an interface for the console players to obtain them.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

Didn't the PS4 versions of Skyrim and Fallout allow mods? Just need to build an interface for the console players to obtain them.

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I think their concern is mods that might allow players an advantage that won't work on PS4, though I'm unsure as of the limitations of such. I think the best solution would be to have an SE-curated place for mods where they only approve and post ones that that don't provide such advantages.

This smaller storage size on the UI is highly annoying. Everything clutters up quickly, and its harder to organize. This is irritating. I don't play irritating games.

I don't see how the old expanded inventory is superior to the new one.

Old Vs. New
https://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/t/29...a95055_143.png
https://i.imgur.com/YA9RMmh.png

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Originally Posted by Laraul

I don't see how the old expanded inventory is superior to the new one.

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With the old expanded inventory you could see more items on the screen at once. (100 items at once vs the 70 items with the new one)
This also led to us having fewer tabs to go through - everything fit into three tabs, unlike now where there are four tabs to go through.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

I don't see how the old expanded inventory is superior to the new one.

Old Vs. New
https://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/t/29...a95055_143.png
https://i.imgur.com/YA9RMmh.png

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You don't see how it's better to show 100 items in "expanded" view rather than 70 items?

All that screenshot did was make me sad. :( More viewable slots! Dividers! Less tabs!

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

With the old expanded inventory you could see more items on the screen at once. (100 items at once vs the 70 items with the new one)
This also led to us having fewer tabs to go through - everything fit into three tabs, unlike now where there are four tabs to go through.

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I almost never had to click onto that 2nd tab too. They could surely get the expanded inventory down to 2 tabs.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

I don't see how the old expanded inventory is superior to the new one.

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It was better because we could see ALL the bags at once, and didn't have to dick around with tab clicking. There's enough excessive clicking in the game already, we don't need more.

What we want is the same 5x7 layout we just got but with the view of all 4 bags at once when using the "expanded" option. No. Tabbing.

2 more votes for the old view. My wife and I really dislike the new look. If my wife asks me one more time why they changed it and tells me how it doesn’t make any sense and asks me why is the last page is useless, I’m going to lose my mind. I don’t see how this is considered an improvement whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Syrehn

It was better because we could see ALL the bags at once, and didn't have to dick around with tab clicking. There's enough excessive clicking in the game already, we don't need more.

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The old inventory split it into 100 items on the first tab, 40 on items on the second, then key items and crystals on the third. It did not show all bags at once, at least not after 4.0.

With the new 5x7 layout, the inventory, armoury chest, and saddlebag all share a unified interface. And with four bags instead of five and a half, sorting by tab works a lot better. Also the item search feature now specifies the correct tab while using the expanded layout.

Some people win with the new system, and some people lose. That's always going to be the case. I for one personally prefer the new layout. I'm sorry you don't.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

The old inventory split it into 100 items on the first tab, 40 on items on the second, then key items and crystals on the third. It did not show all bags at once, at least not after 4.0.

With the new 5x7 layout, the inventory, armoury chest, and saddlebag all share a unified interface. And with four bags instead of five and a half, sorting by tab works a lot better. Also the item search feature now specifies the correct tab while using the expanded layout.

Some people win with the new system, and some people lose. That's always going to be the case. I for one personally prefer the new layout. I'm sorry you don't.

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I don't see the reason to argue that both sides shouldn't have the option to choose what they want vs just 1 side winning though? It was easier to view in the old vs the new, since its to compact and less space to view making it extremely annoying to click back and forth, and not having the option for either is annoying as well.

Not to mention they already stated the 5x7 layout for x 4 panel vs 2 which was the argument to begin with (which multiple people pointed out to you as well), not sure why you left it out in your comment. It's not about winning, its about appeasing both sides, its not hard to think of everyone.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

Some people win with the new system, and some people lose. That's always going to be the case. I for one personally prefer the new layout. I'm sorry you don't.

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So how about an option? I mean they simply could have introduced the new layout as a third option and voila we only have winners...

The new inventory sucks very hard I don’t even want to open my inventory window. Please revert the change or make a toggle with the option for the old version.

Piling on here. The new inventory display is a significant step backward from the old display (100 items visible vs. 70), and the Key Item tabs feel pointless. Give me an "Expanded" view that shows all four panes, preferably with Crystals attached as well.

As an aside, is it really so much of a strain to add ten more spaces so we're at an even 150? 140 is an exceedingly strange number, and 150 would have allowed a very nice "Expanded" view showing six 5x5 inventory panes, a single pane of Key Items, and a pane for the crystals. It would have been glorious.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

With the new 5x7 layout, the inventory, armoury chest, and saddlebag all share a unified interface. And with four bags instead of five and a half, sorting by tab works a lot better. Also the item search feature now specifies the correct tab while using the expanded layout.

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Except for my 8 retainers, who now all have an interface that went up by a page in total - an awkward half-page at that. Very unified.

Also, /isearch specification was actually *more* accurate before once you got over the initial hump of figuring out how it was numbered. All it tells me now is that it is somewhere in a vague mass of 70 items, marking yet another loss of granularity.

So, for those who haven't seen it, the FFXIV reddit has a translated post from the Lead UI Designer Hiroshi Minagawa on the new layout. (I'm not going to reiterate it here, go read it if you're curious.)

While I understand and accept the technical limitations, I still have to confess that I'm in the camp of those who can't accept it as it is. It's certainly the right technical decision to make, but the burden the current (and still-incomplete) solution imposes upon what is essentially the most vital component of the MMO user experience during the time it will take to implement a superior display solution is a bitter pill to be told to swallow, and I'm not convinced that we couldn't have continued on with a long-term insufficient but short-term superior setup until the new one was more robustly featured.

According to the UI designer:
They couldn't expand it anymore without doing this 100->70 grid change. But in return it will be easier in the future to add more functions.
Basically it was needed to add saddlebags and the glamour dresser, in this timewindow to 4.2(they wanted to do it fast because the amount of work was predictable in current system compared to the 25er grid option which was unpredictable because of several reason).
They try to work on 10x14 now, but that would be only for PS4 and Windows64bit PC user, because of memory issues.

The question is for me how long they can add stuff while not revamping the old code anyway at some point. Glamour dresser is not really in the best shape, it would have been wasted devtime too if they replace it at some point later with a total different feature...
I feel like the whole retainer/market-board/inventory/armory/glamourlog needs an update into this decade. I don't want to know how much time I spent at retainer just clicking.
They would run way better if it would be possible to copy those things from other mmo like gw2 or wow. Don't need to reinvent the apple.
In PC mmorpg you have your community building addons for you, less work for your company. But with Ps4 idk if we ever get addon support.

So playing WoW, I've had a display showing my 136-slot inventory and my 210-slot bank open at the same time displaying all their slots at once and my computer's memory has not burst into flames. "Memory issues" with displaying an entire inventory at once doesn't pass the smell test.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

So playing WoW, I've had a display showing my 136-slot inventory and my 210-slot bank open at the same time displaying all their slots at once and my computer's memory has not burst into flames. "Memory issues" with displaying an entire inventory at once doesn't pass the smell test.

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Sure if you do it right at the start, you wont have so big problems later but it probably takes way longer. I don't think they had that time for 2.0.
It's not the first time they do something weird because of engine/code limitations. You want them to put the money/time in new content or new engine/fixes you will most likely never see or notice much, but could make things way easier in the distant future?
I wonder what would be all possible if they release a new mmorpg with all the experience they gathered now, but mmorpg were not exactly topseller in the last years, mobile games were much more profitable. I still doubt it will happen, but I see a gap for a big one in a few years, current top mmorpg getting really old

Technical limitations aside, when you intend to make UI changes like this, you don't just spring it on the community, especially not with a "Sorry, we can't go back" type of excuse. I'm a software engineer and with any UI changes, we have to consider the effect on our users and WARN THEM that changes are coming. We have small numbers of users who test the change so we can get feedback on it, before we implement into the full production system. My company unfortunately did have to learn the hard way in the past, as they used to do exactly what SE did, and it lost them customers because they were so furious about the unasked for and unannounced UI changes as they had incorporated the previous versions into the way their business worked.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Sure if you do it right at the start, you wont have so big problems later but it probably takes way longer. I don't think they had that time for 2.0.
It's not the first time they do something weird because of engine/code limitations. You want them to put the money/time in new content or new engine/fixes you will most likely never see or notice much, but could make things way easier in the distant future?
I wonder what would be all possible if they release a new mmorpg with all the experience they gathered now, but mmorpg were not exactly topseller in the last years, mobile games were much more profitable. I still doubt it will happen, but I see a gap for a big one in a few years, current top mmorpg getting really old

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I'm not seeing this as a problem that'll improve if they just ignore it. Systemic design problems are only going to magnify over time if they aren't fixed.

Honestly, I should be able to specify how I want my inventory displayed. Maybe I desperately want 10 tabs of 14 slots each. Maybe I want 1 tab of 140 slots (I do), or 2 of 70 or 1 with 100 and 1 with 40. There's no good reason to deny me that level of customization. Telling me "yeah we know you had this and were fine with it, but now it's this, it's worse, and you can suck me" is not a great user experience.

Didn't Yoshi mention around 4.0 going forward they they were looking at dropping DX9 and the 32bit client for 64bit only ? So that they could move forward w/ improving the game immensely to be more responsive and make use of resources better?

Don't worry we just have to wait until patch 2.2 when we get add-on support.... oh wait....

+1 on reverting back expanded view to one page. Tabs are considered bad UI design unless you are separating different categories. Fail on SE's part here.

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Originally Posted by LunaP

Didn't Yoshi mention around 4.0 going forward they they were looking at dropping DX9 and the 32bit client for 64bit only ? So that they could move forward w/ improving the game immensely to be more responsive and make use of resources better?

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How many people are actually using a 32 bit version of Windows to play this game anymore? I guess there's a bit of concern for Mac users but even Apple finally caved and released a 64 bit version this fall. And PS3 support is dead. This seems silly.

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Originally Posted by Darrgo

they could have made a tacklebox that we asked for years but instead they gave us more quest-item slots that no one needs

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I'm just disappointed they made it so the "chocobo tacklebox" wasn't even a thing.... since we can't use bait from it directly.