What ever happened to the increase in inventory slots

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Originally Posted by kidalutz

Ask yourself this.. do you want to sit around doing nothing for the six month death march that it would take the developers to do to rewrite everything from the ground up just because YOU want some more inventory space?

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First...we're talking about a large company with multiple development studios. They have enough manpower to "spit out" an entire game every six months...Finding a few people to work at a fix is not a problem. They're there already. Not everyone is necessary during every step of a games development, so I'm sure there are a few doing literally nothing, just lying around somewhere waiting till they'll be needed again.

Second, even if they wouldn't get any extra people, "nothing for six months" is a massive exaggeration. The fix maybe would come in six months, yes. But the only things you would "lose" is some of the real-money stuff they spit out so frequently (and considering the app, I very much would want them to be too busy to lay a single finger on it from now on, yes) and maybe one dungeon at most. There are multiple teams that take care of different parts of the updates.


Seriously. The transition from Final Fantasy XIV to Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn took...nine months. Original was closed on 11 November 2012, while ARR was released on August 27. You really think that fixing one part of the code will take 2/3 as much time as completely reworking the entire game?! And that it will take as much manpower as well?! I don't know whether you are naive, ignorant or are just making excuses for Square Enix blindly, but I am afraid I'm not "buying it".

(Yes, ARR was developed already while original was still operative, but Naoki Yoshida did make some updates to the original while ARR was in development anyway. And the scale is just that much larger with an entire game in comparison to a part of the code responsible for ONE feature.)

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Originally Posted by kikix12

First...we're talking about a large company with multiple development studios. They have enough manpower to "spit out" an entire game every six months...Finding a few people to work at a fix is not a problem. They're there already. Not everyone is necessary during every step of a games development, so I'm sure there are a few doing literally nothing, just lying around somewhere waiting till they'll be needed again.
Second, even if they wouldn't get any extra people, "nothing for six months" is a massive exaggeration. The fix maybe would come in six months, yes. But the only things you would "lose" is some of the real-money stuff they spit out so frequently (and considering the app, I very much would want them to be too busy to lay a single finger on it from now on, yes) and maybe one dungeon at most. There are multiple teams that take care of different parts of the updates.


Seriously. The transition from Final Fantasy XIV to Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn took...nine months. Original was closed on 11 November 2012, while ARR was released on August 27. You really think that fixing one part of the code will take 2/3 as much time as completely reworking the entire game?! And that it will take as much manpower as well?! I don't know whether you are naive, ignorant or are just making excuses for Square Enix blindly, but I am afraid I'm not "buying it".

(Yes, ARR was developed already while original was still operative, but Naoki Yoshida did make some updates to the original while ARR was in development anyway. And the scale is just that much larger with an entire game in comparison to a part of the code responsible for ONE feature.)

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This is correct, they only have the problems now is from taking shortcuts and rushing then, and now they want people to pay more for the game because of it. If inventory was such a big issue and they shown full understanding of that, things wouldn't be taking as many items as they do now.

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Originally Posted by Rokke

It was 4.1’s housing rush that broke the (housing) camels back:
When the servers crashed from everyone flooding in and trying to grab a shiro plot all languages of the OF collectively vomited lava, several gaming news had articles on the housing crisis, popular xiv youtubers ranted, reddit & twitter exploded, etc.

Prior to this point, we were repeatedly told servers couldn’t handle a huge housing increase…but after the community's viral meltdown, servers could suddenly handle a 50% increase of housing plots/wards.

The exact same situation happened when they upped the price for BR/RU players- radio silence until players caused a big enough scene. Only then an apology and payment extension was made. SE is surprisingly quick to snap into action when their bottom line is jeopardized by bad press.

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But as you said it was that straw and some have pointed out they advertised shirogane as an expansion asset and everything that was said before + the existing, I think that saying that only that drama had something to do with 4.2 housing increase is not correct, probably they could already work had extra housing.
As for the radio silence, apparently I was told that community manager have to be 100% sure of what they are told before beign authorized to say any word and since japanese apparently can have varied degrees of meaning I frankly am not going to really shit on them since, one misplaced word will lead to a disaster

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Originally Posted by kikix12

First...we're talking about a large company with multiple development studios. They have enough manpower to "spit out" an entire game every six months...Finding a few people to work at a fix is not a problem. They're there already. Not everyone is necessary during every step of a games development, so I'm sure there are a few doing literally nothing, just lying around somewhere waiting till they'll be needed again.
Second, even if they wouldn't get any extra people, "nothing for six months" is a massive exaggeration. The fix maybe would come in six months, yes. But the only things you would "lose" is some of the real-money stuff they spit out so frequently (and considering the app, I very much would want them to be too busy to lay a single finger on it from now on, yes) and maybe one dungeon at most. There are multiple teams that take care of different parts of the updates.


Seriously. The transition from Final Fantasy XIV to Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn took...nine months. Original was closed on 11 November 2012, while ARR was released on August 27. You really think that fixing one part of the code will take 2/3 as much time as completely reworking the entire game?! And that it will take as much manpower as well?! I don't know whether you are naive, ignorant or are just making excuses for Square Enix blindly, but I am afraid I'm not "buying it".

(Yes, ARR was developed already while original was still operative, but Naoki Yoshida did make some updates to the original while ARR was in development anyway. And the scale is just that much larger with an entire game in comparison to a part of the code responsible for ONE feature.)

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I'm curious what you base all of this estimation of development, implementation and testing on? Six months is a pretty ridiculous timeframe for any kind of foundational rework.
I'm all for game reworking but the expectation should not be "oh you guys can do this in the background.". It's gonna be either a halt in updates entirely for a long time , or a HUGE expenditure of cash and time on the companies side. It's not a light venture and thinking it would be so is setting yourself up for disappointment even if it does happen.

Do you really think that fixing the underlying inventory system is ONLY fixing that system? The amount of things the inventory system interacts with is immense. It would be like replacing the electrical system in an office building, there are going to be unforeseen effects to so many aspects of the game.

Companies don't pay people to exist, it would be a very poor policy to just let them sit idle till the next project comes around. As someone who's got friends in the industry you either have a project or you're looking for work. Billable hours are a thing, and I know very few salaried game devs.

Demand change, by all means but temper those demands with reason or it just sounds like noise.

It's a big mystery!

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

I'm curious what you base all of this estimation of development, implementation and testing on? Six months is a pretty ridiculous timeframe for any kind of foundational rework.

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Again, I am talking about a workaround at least (aka. what they did through saddlebags and retainers for example) which would leave the faulty code there, but unused. This would be both faster and cheaper. And we're talking about a game that got a complete rework of itself, sans the engine apparently. While the developer STILL supported somewhat the old game before it was closed.

I really do fail to understand how people keep on thinking that making a new game from scratch (I'm not talking bout ARR right now) is easier than changing just one aspect of an existing game (I'll bring the "one aspect" up later in the post).

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

I'm all for game reworking but the expectation should not be "oh you guys can do this in the background.". It's gonna be either a halt in updates entirely for a long time , or a HUGE expenditure of cash and time on the companies side.

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Eh...no. It wouldn't be a halt. Why would it? The team responsible for one type of updates would be responsible for it while the other teams would continue their work. Again, this is not a company where six or seven people in total work at the project. It's a company where there are probably dozens of them divided into several teams, each with their own purpose. And that it would cost company?! And why should I care about that?! Players pay them every single month. Some pay on top of that. They get money technically "for free", just having to move part of it to cover costs of operating servers. If we're expected to pay a LARGE amount of money every single month, and then pay on top of that for something worth no more than a couple dozen cents when you consider it being digital and miniscule to the scope of the game...why shouldn't we expect them to funnel part of that money to fixing the worthless code this game is built up on? Subscribers give them more money every month that most games earn at their peak. Yet those "most games" still provide their developers with money for future projects. Entire games. On top of paying their bills, vacations and so on. And those games take ~two years to develop, while we pay that EVERY MONTH. Yes, an MMO (and Final Fantasy XIV is no exception) is a bigger project than most single player games (note the "most"). However, its updates are not. This game was made and we are only getting updates on it. The updates over the course of a single expansion, along with the expansion that comes after it, can very well be compared to the amount of content a single new game covers (if not less against certain games).

So yes, I base my "estimations" on players money spent to content amount to new games development basis.

It's also not completely without merit financially. Players are more likely to stick (and continue paying) if the game is well-made. The future development costs go down the more the "cleaner" the code is and the easier it is to build upon it. The risk of bugs goes does and that lessens the amount of money spent on emergency fixes too. The development time also is shorter (part of why its costs go down), meaning that they will have easier time managing it. And...last but not least, not only is it going to score them some "points" with the community to actually fulfill their promises eventually instead of repeatedly breaking them, but it will also look a lot better if they will stop giving a "the servers can't handle it/the games system can't handle it" response to even the smallest requests of the players.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Do you really think that fixing the underlying inventory system is ONLY fixing that system? The amount of things the inventory system interacts with is immense. It would be like replacing the electrical system in an office building, there are going to be unforeseen effects to so many aspects of the game.

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Except most likely not. "Most likely" because there is a way it could have been done that would require that...but if it would be like that, I'm pretty sure that fixing it as soon as possible would save Square Enix TONS of money in the long run. From server costs, to development costs. Massive decrease in required debugging and so on. I assume the code is at least "reasonable", as in that it is SOME sort of a database that is merely referenced as appropriate.

And what does that mean? Consider this. If you ever used Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc or any other such program you surely know how it works. The cells can reference each other, over multiple separate tabs even. Inventory would be one tab. The storage of data, the functions of items, the possible interactions, all of that would be in that one tab. This is actually a bit wasteful way of doing it, since some of those things should be in a separate tab (like interactions and actual item data, in fact) but Square complains about their jumbled system so let's assume it like this. Character data, and that includes the equipped items, would be another tab and it's involved with the inventory. Then there are retainers, chocobo saddlebags, shops.

Now, how does that work. If you want to do something related to the inventory, for example buy or sell a new item, the shop references your inventory. That means that it "targets" a cell within the Inventory tab related to what you click on. If that cell is empty or have incomplete/corrupted data, the game crashes (or at least the function doesn't work), so that's a bug. Making a new inventory system would need to provide a way for it to work. Now, what you suggest is changing all those tabs (retainers, chocobo saddlebags, shops and more) so that they reference the respective cell in new Inventory tab. What I say they should do is change the old Inventory tab to just reference the relevant cell in the new one. In other words, the old inventory tab would be reduced to a redirection table towards the new inventory tab. Every inventory tab needs the same cells respective for the inventory slots and needs to have access to the same data directly (in additional slots) or indirectly (redirected to a database). That means that even if they made a completely new inventory tab, based on databases and cross-reference instead of endlessly copying everything unnecessarily (which is how I assume it works and why there are such issues in the first place), nothing other than the old inventory tab would need to be touched and the problem would be solved.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Companies don't pay people to exist, it would be a very poor policy to just let them sit idle till the next project comes around. As someone who's got friends in the industry you either have a project or you're looking for work. Billable hours are a thing, and I know very few salaried game devs.

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I know. That's why large companies work on multiple games at the same time, relocating workers between teams that are at various parts of the development. But that still means that there are "slow days" for some workers. Not because it's impossible to avoid, but because I know full well "humans". I have not seen a single company without management flaws and I've seen multiple large companies that work nation or world-wide from inside. Not development ones, but production, transport and service related...so yeah. I've got some experience there.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Except most likely not. "Most likely" because there is a way it could have been done that would require that...but if it would be like that, I'm pretty sure that fixing it as soon as possible would save Square Enix TONS of money in the long run. From server costs, to development costs. Massive decrease in required debugging and so on. I assume the code is at least "reasonable", as in that it is SOME sort of a database that is merely referenced as appropriate.

And what does that mean? Consider this. If you ever used Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc or any other such program you surely know how it works. The cells can reference each other, over multiple separate tabs even. Inventory would be one tab. The storage of data, the functions of items, the possible interactions, all of that would be in that one tab. This is actually a bit wasteful way of doing it, since some of those things should be in a separate tab (like interactions and actual item data, in fact) but Square complains about their jumbled system so let's assume it like this. Character data, and that includes the equipped items, would be another tab and it's involved with the inventory. Then there are retainers, chocobo saddlebags, shops.

Now, how does that work. If you want to do something related to the inventory, for example buy or sell a new item, the shop references your inventory. That means that it "targets" a cell within the Inventory tab related to what you click on. If that cell is empty or have incomplete/corrupted data, the game crashes (or at least the function doesn't work), so that's a bug. Making a new inventory system would need to provide a way for it to work. Now, what you suggest is changing all those tabs (retainers, chocobo saddlebags, shops and more) so that they reference the respective cell in new Inventory tab. What I say they should do is change the old Inventory tab to just reference the relevant cell in the new one. In other words, the old inventory tab would be reduced to a redirection table towards the new inventory tab. Every inventory tab needs the same cells respective for the inventory slots and needs to have access to the same data directly (in additional slots) or indirectly (redirected to a database). That means that even if they made a completely new inventory tab, based on databases and cross-reference instead of endlessly copying everything unnecessarily (which is how I assume it works and why there are such issues in the first place), nothing other than the old inventory tab would need to be touched and the problem would be solved.

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If I understand you correctly the solution you propose is the one that they looked at first here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...95#post4565795

And they themselves said that doing it that way takes too much work.

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Originally Posted by Hiroshi_Minagawa

This ended up affecting us later (now). At a cost of development speed and space efficiency, it became difficult to add inventory slots in groups.

It became difficult because we need to fix (more like rebuild) features such as the Moogle letters and trading, which doesn't seem like it would be related to the addition of inventory slots.

For the first method, the parts that are affected are numerous, and the engineers involved are different, and there are many features which carry over from the original program. For this reason, we needed to actually try it out to estimate how much development time would be required for this. (There were strong concerns of this not being able to make it by the expansion's release.)

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Originally Posted by qwerty23131

If I understand you correctly the solution you propose is the one that they looked at first here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...95#post4565795

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It's not. What he said was expanding inventory using the current system.

If I would go back to my example, it would be like allocating more cells to store inventory data, while their second solution (the one they chose, moving from 25 to 35) would be like adding more items into a single cell of data.
However, what I am talking about, is making a separate system whose lone purpose is to be the new inventory. You see, they have an issue because they tied the inventory to non-inventory spaces that work similarly (store data), but also have a different function. This is the basic idea, which they chose at some cost for efficiency and cost...but they failed thinking of the long term. If you tie two existing system, with separate functions, together, you end up being bound to work with both whenever you want to change one. The difference between what I suggested and that tying to the letters and what not is that the old inventory would become just a linking table, while the new inventory would be a stand-alone database. There would be no issue with changing the inventory since all it would require in other parts of the program, at most, is add extra links.

Again, I say this is "the least" they can do. It is not the best option, but the one that could bring fastest and cheapest results. I honestly believe that if the game does well (and it does according to all the available information) then they really should consider an engine upgrade. Yes, basically form a new team that would make the game systems from scratch and then migrate the assets and databases to it. It's not impossible and it's not a prohibitive cost (it was done in the past for multiple games, it's also technically done for every single game that is released on multiple platforms technically I believe, but to a lesser degree as the framework is there in that case). It would be a major undertaking, and I understand that, and that's why I suggest doing it in smaller bits by reworking how systems work individually, adding them as modules, using cross-references to push out the older functionality. With that done they would no longer start from scratch if they ever decided to make a proper fix.

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Originally Posted by MiraKershaw

Clearly that's not what they had in mind because when they showed it off they said those extra slots that are blocked off will be part of the second inventory expansion when we find out the servers are stable I doubt the chocobo bag was even a consideration till they focused more on the app

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They posted a long technical explanation of exactly what happened a while back, in reference to why we now only see two pages of inventory at a time rather than four. Basically, they did plan to expand the core inventory again, but realized after the first expansion that the servers couldn't handle that. (You may recall that they said they'd be playing it by ear when the inventory expansion was first announced.) So they came up with the chocobo saddlebags solution instead.

From a technical perspective, it makes perfect sense why they did this. Chocobo saddlebags are a separate inventory, similar to retainers, that are only loaded when you open them. Your basic inventory is loaded much more frequently, which is why expanding it causes server problems.

So no, the chocobo saddlebags pretty clearly weren't inspired by the app. They're a fairly obvious solution to a problem they warned might happen in the first place. If they could technically support larger inventory, they would just expand that with the app.

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Originally Posted by Luin

And yet you still don't have enough inventory for Puk Wings and Hi Ethers that you will never use.

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Yeah but where will I put all my sparklers and dated currencies they still haven't put in currency tab? D:

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Again, I am talking about a workaround at least (aka. what they did through saddlebags and retainers for example) which would leave the faulty code there, but unused. This would be both faster and cheaper. And we're talking about a game that got a complete rework of itself, sans the engine apparently. While the developer STILL supported somewhat the old game before it was closed.
I really do fail to understand how people keep on thinking that making a new game from scratch (I'm not talking bout ARR right now) is easier than changing just one aspect of an existing game (I'll bring the "one aspect" up later in the post).

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Because it's easier to make a cake from scratch than it is to yank ingredients out or compensate for disproportional ingredients. It may not be faster but it requires a hell of a lot less troubleshooting things that may or may not get fixed.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

Eh...no. It wouldn't be a halt. Why would it? The team responsible for one type of updates would be responsible for it while the other teams would continue their work. Again, this is not a company where six or seven people in total work at the project. It's a company where there are probably dozens of them divided into several teams, each with their own purpose. And that it would cost company?! And why should I care about that?! Players pay them every single month. Some pay on top of that. They get money technically "for free", just having to move part of it to cover costs of operating servers. If we're expected to pay a LARGE amount of money every single month, and then pay on top of that for something worth no more than a couple dozen cents when you consider it being digital and miniscule to the scope of the game...why shouldn't we expect them to funnel part of that money to fixing the worthless code this game is built up on? Subscribers give them more money every month that most games earn at their peak. Yet those "most games" still provide their developers with money for future projects. Entire games. On top of paying their bills, vacations and so on. And those games take ~two years to develop, while we pay that EVERY MONTH. Yes, an MMO (and Final Fantasy XIV is no exception) is a bigger project than most single player games (note the "most"). However, its updates are not. This game was made and we are only getting updates on it. The updates over the course of a single expansion, along with the expansion that comes after it, can very well be compared to the amount of content a single new game covers (if not less against certain games).

So yes, I base my "estimations" on players money spent to content amount to new games development basis.

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Because if they're going to rework the inventory it'd be silly not to rework the things related to it. The only people who wouldn't be involved would be the design crew, but none of it would be testable, or implementable without the code crew. You can make all the content in the world but it's not gonna get coded and tested unless that crew can get to it. You need the whole crew going to keep the updates coming. We pay a fee that's relatively small compared to other "service for a fee" options. Netflix is slightly less but they are primarily a content aggregator, not a producer. While their name IS on several exclusives it's easy enough for them to throw money at a crew and ask to slap their name on it, SE tried that and we got 1.0. 12 dollars is not a large amount, AND optional content IS completely optional, nobody is forcing your hand there, you get to say whether that's worth it or not to you. Likely our sub money goes to the costs to keep the game and the updates coming , not improvements. SE decides how much money they want to put back into the game and while we should expect them to put SOME back into it, refunding a ground up rework AGAIN is highly unlikely. I say unlikely because at the point they'd decide to do such, AGAIN it's far more likely they'd just make FFXIV .. 2. Solving a whole host of problems at the same time: Inventory, MSQ lockdowns, update restrictions, data center upgrades yadda yadda. I can see the decision for that going through far easier than "hey.. we need to rework the game.. again". From their point of view they'll keep this going as long as people will pay for it and when it becomes more trouble than it's worth it'll shut down and the successor will be announced. You see far more profit in reworking now and reaping longer subscriptions later which is a fair assessment but investors see consistent money coming in and no reason to stem that flow until it starts to be constricted. Neither of those paths are right or wrong in my opinion, I'm trying here to provide perspective and I lean towards a non rework because I believe it's unlikely knowing what I know about business decisions and development investment.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

And what does that mean? Consider this. If you ever used Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc or any other such program you surely know how it works. The cells can reference each other, over multiple separate tabs even. Inventory would be one tab. The storage of data, the functions of items, the possible interactions, all of that would be in that one tab. This is actually a bit wasteful way of doing it, since some of those things should be in a separate tab (like interactions and actual item data, in fact) but Square complains about their jumbled system so let's assume it like this. Character data, and that includes the equipped items, would be another tab and it's involved with the inventory. Then there are retainers, chocobo saddlebags, shops.

Now, how does that work. If you want to do something related to the inventory, for example buy or sell a new item, the shop references your inventory. That means that it "targets" a cell within the Inventory tab related to what you click on. If that cell is empty or have incomplete/corrupted data, the game crashes (or at least the function doesn't work), so that's a bug. Making a new inventory system would need to provide a way for it to work. Now, what you suggest is changing all those tabs (retainers, chocobo saddlebags, shops and more) so that they reference the respective cell in new Inventory tab. What I say they should do is change the old Inventory tab to just reference the relevant cell in the new one. In other words, the old inventory tab would be reduced to a redirection table towards the new inventory tab. Every inventory tab needs the same cells respective for the inventory slots and needs to have access to the same data directly (in additional slots) or indirectly (redirected to a database). That means that even if they made a completely new inventory tab, based on databases and cross-reference instead of endlessly copying everything unnecessarily (which is how I assume it works and why there are such issues in the first place), nothing other than the old inventory tab would need to be touched and the problem would be solved.

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An MMORPG is not a spreadsheet unless we're looking for an analogy. There are levels of interaction a spreadsheet just cannot reproduce and interactions in the codes of the items themselves that make swapping out just one page or cell a nightmare of new bugs and now flapping references. I understand your comparison but it doesn't hold up in the context of a game.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

I know. That's why large companies work on multiple games at the same time, relocating workers between teams that are at various parts of the development. But that still means that there are "slow days" for some workers. Not because it's impossible to avoid, but because I know full well "humans". I have not seen a single company without management flaws and I've seen multiple large companies that work nation or world-wide from inside. Not development ones, but production, transport and service related...so yeah. I've got some experience there.

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Idle time does not equal available development time. Fred the item database coder farting around on facebook for 3 hours a day isn't going to translate into 3 hours of productive rework time if someone is standing over his shoulder holding the (figurative) whip. People do goof off but not in scheduled chunks or organizable timeframes. Yes they COULD make everyone work on the rework on their "spare" time but that's more of a timeline for YEARS instead of months and even IF they do that, the amount of changes to the game while they do so might make their work never ending or in the end moot. Once again here we hit "no updates till it's done" territory. Getting it done before changing any other parts of the game would be paramount.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

We pay a fee that's relatively small

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I disagree to this,because of dollar conversion, not to mention that physical copies of the game are rarer than they used to be as you actually get to download nowaday.Just my opinion, I dont think we pay a relatively small fee

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Originally Posted by Ruf

I disagree to this,because of dollar conversion, not to mention that physical copies of the game are rarer than they used to be as you actually get to download nowaday.Just my opinion, I dont think we pay a relatively small fee

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what does having a physical copy of the game matter? It's one less thing to lose and contributed literal cents to the cost of the game in the past. It's relatively small as in relative to OTHER services you pay monthly fees for. Netflix, amazon music or video, twitch prime or subs, Crunchyroll.. the list grows. If we're talking about how much 12 dollars is to you or me, that's incredibly subjective. 12 dollars is less than lunch to me, for some people it's a months allowance and I understand if that seems like a lot. I'm not going to argue your personal finances, but in the scheme of the average gamer aged north americans (23-35) income it's not a whole lot either.