Pay for your inventory.

How is owning more than 2 retainers, by paying for it, not pay to win? In my opinion, it is certainly pay to win--a tragic flaw of this otherwise great game.

Anyways, how about that HEAVENSWARD!

I'll just throw in my 2 cents; I thought they might add the amount of free retainers equivalent to the amount of paid retainers? Or add 1 more free retainer and the rest are paid? I was surprised though when I read "8 retainers in total" I assumed only 1 or 2 more retainers.
(Note: I do pay for 2 extra retainers atm).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by polyphonica

The main issues are more the fact you can send them out on ventures, and the fact they can each sell things.

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But you still have to earn the ventures to send them out, which means lots and lots of grinding leves, FATEs or dungeons. The more retainers you have, the more ventures you need in order to dispatch them all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LunaHoshino

But you still have to earn the ventures to send them out, which means lots and lots of grinding leves, FATEs or dungeons. The more retainers you have, the more ventures you need in order to dispatch them all.

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Yes, I agree. If you were a master crafter/gatherer, using Delivery quests and trading Grand Company Seals for Ventures may be another way, but this also would not scale by adding more retainers. In this sense, using alts would actually probably be more efficient (since they each have their own daily delivery quests, and also have their own allotment of leves, etc.). Plus, as was mentioned, you'd also have to gear up all the retainers with gear, and at the higher levels this isn't inexpensive. It's possible, but not easy to do. And really, the main point I was making was that it's already possible now via an existing method anyway (using alts and an FC, or a second service account).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LunaHoshino

But you still have to earn the ventures to send them out, which means lots and lots of grinding leves, FATEs or dungeons. The more retainers you have, the more ventures you need in order to dispatch them all.

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Ventures are cheaper than dirt. Literally.

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Originally Posted by Gextiv

Anyways, how about that HEAVENSWARD!

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http://i.imgur.com/gAQdeKX.gif

It means they've seen a reasonable demand for extra inventory, and instead of fixing the inherent problem, they add an additional set of slots for more profit.

I am by NO means against SE's desire for more profit. What I am against, is the desire of profit through selling power to players.

I do not give a crap about paid vanity items. The dyes, the mounts, and minions.
Inventory space, market board presence, and having more active ventures is where it crosses the line.

So, the day they add a paid shortcut to relic weapons, don't complain about that either.

With how games are now days, I wasn't at all surprised by this. And honestly, I didn't even know they had already been offering additional retainers for money since march.
But by increasing the limit to 8, really angers me.

I love this game. Don't get me wrong. But, this double-dipping into the F2P market and the subscription market already angers me.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for them to decrease Key Items inventory and add it to normal inventory. Like seriously, I haven't even got 5 key items at once, yet we have... 75 of them.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen..._retainers_in/

Seems japanese notes say more than 3 you need to pay...

only solution I can thing of is: don't start crafting
yeah... we need more free space

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ashgarth

So, after talking dozens of times in interviews and Q&A about inventory problems with all the new recipe materials, gear and jobs in 3.0 the solutions is...

You can pay more retainers.

So it's impossible to adds a few more spaces to the armoury chest or increase the retainer capacity but it seems that allowing us to basically pay twice as much per month is completely doable.

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Just posted a similar topic on reddit and was greeted with "its your fault you have no space"...so +1 signed :D.

Also why the %#$^ should we have to pay for extra storage when we're already buying the game, expansion AND sub. Sorry SE but that is just not cool..i've been playing a PAY TO WIN MMO lately with the main emphasis on vanity, this MMO GIVES YOU THE PLAYER the option to do special quests in order to unlock more inventory space. No need to buy extra...for PAY TO WIN.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raffounz

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen..._retainers_in/

Seems japanese notes say more than 3 you need to pay...

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You should read the top comment.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The_Last_Dragoon

In no way, shape, or form does any sane person need 1400 inventory slots of bank space. Having one extra glamour set for EVERY class (Weapon, Head, Chest, Legs, Feet, and Off-hand) results in the use of 147 inventory slots. Unless you enjoy keeping multiple dye versions of the exact same piece of gear, there is absolutely no way that you would ever need that much space, and neither does it give you any advantage over another player just because you happen to have every boot model in the game for your White Mage on hand at any time.

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...right. So you farm a given dungeon for a given set (while leveling up), and you finally have the set after so many runs (well beyond the dungeon level). You're gonna throw it away because it's no longer relevant? You're gonna throw it away, because if you decide to want to glamour it again, you just farm the place again (when you'll have more important things to do)? Yeah, good luck with that. Having one extra glamour for each job is not the point in itself (you conviently forgot to count the accessories there, btw, but let's overlook that for now) - the point is having the stuff you may want to glamour. Because with the current system, that's the only way to do it. Sure, if you don't care about glamour, it's not an issue for you. That doesn't mean it's not an issue in general. And even though it might not be all that important, green (and blue) items provide quite a bit of advantage over even HQ crafted gear while leveling up. Again, some might not care, but others sure do.

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Originally Posted by The_Last_Dragoon

The problem with this logic is that anyone can make 9 character alts in their own little free company and get 18 more retainers, totaling up to 360 more items for sale at once without paying a single dime. If it hasn't already broken the market board then it won't when people can do it on a single character. If anything, you're paying for the "convenience" of not having to log in & out to check your stalls.

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And that's already a problem in itself, yes. I certainly didn't argue that, nor do I think anyone else did. The increase of the retainer numbers only adds to it - if anything, I'd say this is even more infuriating with that in mind. And let's not forget you can't really conveniently exchange things between alts even if they're on the same server, this just takes care of that as well, since you won't have to.

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Originally Posted by The_Last_Dragoon

You do realize you have to gear, level, and manage all of those retainers, right? Not only is this a massive undertaking in it's own right, but retainers NEVER return with relevant gear or items, and once again only benefits players who are trying desperately to get rare glamour gear like the unobtainables you mentioned. Considering that you're still severely limited by your Venture income, this doesn't make it pay to win in the slightest. Just because you "play different" doesn't mean you can go crying out on the forums and accuse a perfectly fine cash shop model of being pay to win. If you want a good example of "pay to win" look at Air Mech Arena on the PS4 where it's a competitive game that has it's best items behind a pay wall.

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Yeah, and you do realise that those who'll be taking advantage of this are the ones that can gear, level, and manage all of those retainers without a problem, right? Venture is dirt cheap, as someone already pointed out. Also, if your retainers have never brought back one relevant gear or item for you... you're doing something wrong. And excuse you, but I pay the same amount of money for my game as anyone else, I have as much right to "go crying out" here when I don't like something as anyone else has to whiteknight everything SE does - complacency never changed anything, and if we just cheer at everything, they'll never stop "testing the waters" of how far they can go with the extra charges. Air Mech Arena is an actual F2P game, unlike FFXIV - which is why SE doesn't dare putting the game's best equipment behind a pay wall. Or at least it hasn't yet; I'm not sure we're not on the road to that destination anymore.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The_Last_Dragoon

You do realize that in order to implement such a system that they'd have to completely reprogram the way that the game works, right? Not to mention the dire effects it could have on the economy since they haven't been keeping track of the gear you're putting on up until now, so you'd see a spike in old content items that have no business being so pricey.

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You do realise (man, I'm getting tired of these) that it would do more good than harm on the long run, right? You do realise that it is their job to reprogram and tweak the game, whether that's daily maintenance or something completely new, for it to work properly, right? Most gear pieces that most people would want to use are already way too pricey on the market. Which is also why most people hold on to them once they acquire them. And holding on to them is only creating this admitted stress on the servers, storing so much character data - with the slew of new clothes and armours, that won't decrease. And with each new expansion, or even content patch, we're only getting more and more items. Not to even mention furnitures, especially timed (seasonal) ones, that most players can't even use, because well hey guess what, housing supply is nowhere near adequate either.


All in all, it's the very principle itself that is offending - and if someone can't see that, regardless of how it might or might not affect them, they need to open their eyes (or if they don't want to, then they're just ignorant). At the core of it, it's paying extra for significantly more inventory space (as basic a f2p element as it can get) - in a game that's already subscription based to begin with. In a game that thrives on its "everything on one character" system, at that. Like it was also pointed out, many of us are here in a sub-based game to avoid such schemes.
After being told countless times how difficult it would be to increase our inventories. Because of all the item data being so big. Because of that putting so much stress on the servers/network (in itself at least questionable in 2015, when pretty much nobody else seems to have issues with this). They pull a stunt like this, effectively revealing that it isn't a problem at all, they can very much do it. Just, y'know, pay more money on top of your subscription fee. Because all the sites don't report, time after time, how successful and profitable the game has been otherwise, anyway.
But whatever, keep on saying how irrelevant, or even awesome, this is; enjoy the comfort of your ignorance.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

Snip

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So to sum it all up you literally want everything in the game because you never know when you may need it (and yeah, I left out the accessories because any class can wear any ring, so most normal people who have extremely disposable income maybe have 5 or so accessories that aren't able to go into the Armoire that they use to glamour), you have a distinct paranoia and distrust for any authority that hinders you in your goal to get everything, and the fact that you think everything can and should happen at the drop of a hat to appeal to your view of the world. I can just see you on your Culinarian now:

http://media.giphy.com/media/ERpswSAwiFNe0/giphy.gif

Jokes aside, most MMOs that allow you to buy inventory space severely restrict said inventory space to the point where even an economically sound player would need more space. In FFXIV's case it is indeed a significant amount of space, but it's also an extremely excessive amount. It's perfectly fair that if you want to have that excessive space that you pay for it, and since it's only $2 a month per retainer I can scarcely believe you're this up in arms at it since it's obviously not something that the average player would ever even consider paying for. If SE actually takes your complaints to heart you must realize their solution won't be to give you 8 free retainers, it will be to once again limit it to 2 without even the option of additional retainers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

All in all, it's the very principle itself that is offending - and if someone can't see that, regardless of how it might or might not affect them, they need to open their eyes (or if they don't want to, then they're just ignorant)

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http://stream1.gifsoup.com/webroot/a.../1379890_o.gif

Hmm pay or trash stuff i may want later on? https://youtu.be/fD76_5ZIol0 plz don't make me beg

This is the problem when game developers think they are the marketing department, they stop trying to make a good game and start trying to make the most efficient money vaccuum.

To add 3 new jobs to an already suffering inventory space and not give us any more free storage is just pathetic.

While for most players, the original 2 retainers is enough to hold everything they need, some people (such as myself) have trouble just sticking to 4 retainers. I have 2 retainers holding my glamours (with dyes and prisms), 1 retainer holding HQ mats only, and the other retainer holding all other mats - and all of them are 170~/175 items. The extra 3 or 4 on the mog station would be perfect for me, and I find them quite cheap for what they are. But I can also understand players not wanting to have to pay irl money to have more space, incoming 'P2W'.

I don't buy the excuse that increasing server-side data like this should mean having to pay this much more... and I'll explain why:

Right now there are two subscription options: Basic and Full.
- Basic gets you 1 character per server with a max of 8 characters across all servers
- Full gets you 8 characters per server with a max of 40(?) characters across all servers

Full costs $3 more per month than Basic.

So eight characters with two retainers each would be 16 retainers (no additional ones purchased) for $3/month over the Basic price. That's an absolute TON of extra data compared to just a bunch of retainers on a single character. Besides all the retainer data, it's also full character data for seven additional characters. But adding 6 retainers to a Basic account doubles the subscription fee? Nope. I don't buy it.

Furthermore because we can't share inventories or mail between alts outside of some personal FC shenanigans (which precludes you from joining an FC to pull off), we don't even have the choice to pay for the more efficient option to expand inventory space. All this ostensibly to curb rmt activities.... yeah that's going really well.

So no. If these end up doubling the sub fee for Basic-level players, it's just greed. There's no technical reason for this that makes any sense at all. SE just wants more money from you and they've figured out how to get it.

Not even free-to-play games charge you MONTHLY for your expanded inventory space.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

Then they should've designed a system that is more manageable on the data side... A retainer alone equals a close to full character data thanks to appeareance and ventures.

There are various ways that are less storage intensive then retainers:
- Allow more (or better all) gear in Armoire.
- Craft Mat Tab - Save ItemID and Amount. (Look GW2)
- Higher Stack Size for Crafting Mats (WoW increased most crafting items from 99 to 250)

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This guy gets it. As we stand right now if we do not want to pay for more space to be a crafter you almost have to farm every time you need to make something. Sounds silly but to have mats on hand speeds up that process considerably. Now having to gather each time for stuff is gonna be a even bigger time sink. At least allow higher stack numbers geez.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Callinon

There's no technical reason for this that makes any sense at all. SE just wants more money from you and they've figured out how to get it.

Not even free-to-play games charge you MONTHLY for your expanded inventory space.

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I don't want to pay either but there is a technical reason. Server side refresh / save ratios. What I mean is how often the serves save data. i don't think it's really a space issue on the servers as it is how many times per minute a save is made on the complete characters set of data. Just having more than one character which you can only log onto one a time btw, does not change this formula much. Having a character with large amount of storage to refresh does.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by WHS

I don't want to pay either but there is a technical reason. Server side refresh / save ratios. What I mean is how often the serves save data. i don't think it's really a space issue on the servers as it is how many times per minute a save is made on the complete characters set of data. Just having more than one character which you can only log onto one a time btw, does not change this formula much. Having a character with large amount of storage to refresh does.

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Is there some reason I'm not thinking of that would cause retainer inventories to be saved outside of when they're being edited?

Poor design isn't the players' fault and players should not be penalized for it so harshly.

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Originally Posted by The_Last_Dragoon

This game gives you 100 inventory spaces, 350 retainer spaces, 25 armory chest spaces per equipment slot, an armoire which can hold certain unique items, and if you really need it there are 40 market board slots. Not to mention that there's also a total 150 slots in the Free Company Chests which will probably be expanded as new FC ranks come out. That's a total of 450 free slots and 300 specific gear slots per character. Not only is this more than most MMORPGs, but most stackable items stack all the way up to 99. There is a CRAZY amount of free storage in this game, and if you don't seem to have enough space then it's either time to clear out all of those useless monster drops or suck it up and pay SE so you can continue with your hoarding problem.

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And there are some 300 000 items (doesn't matter the exact amount) in this game. The crazy thing here is people saying there is a crazy amount of free space.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

-snip-

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Exactly, this has been a scam from day one. Couldnt have said it better. Specially the RMT excuse, because not being able to transfer items on an account RMT already have control over will really hunder their ability to... lol, jk, theyre not hindered at all. They dont want us transfering items between characters because they know we'd make pack mules and tell them to shove their payshop retainers, plain and simple. Is it any wonder why ventures came out around the time they let us buy more of them? Why more and more collectables come out yet no answer what so ever for inventory problems?

I saw this coming when we were talking about the storage issues...

And, of course, the armoire won't be properly fixed and we'll still have to keep future events' items on our retainers. Oh, and more non-stackable quest items going to our normal inventory, of course.

And ventures? Alright, more retainers equal more chances to get those rare and expensive items. But no, this is not P2W. At all. The very least they could do would be DISABLE ventures on paid retainers.

Way to go.

I'm usually on SE's side about the cash shop and additional services.

However this is leaning heavily towards what F2P games do. No i take it back this is worst than what typical F2P games do.

In almost every F2P game i have an account with, the most popular cash shop items are related to inventory and storage expansion i have purchased these features in several games and every time its a one time fee. Though usually in the $5-$10 USD price range.

simplest solution fo inventory management: make it possible to send items between characters on the same account of the same server.

What annoys me the most is the Armoire not being fixed. Come on. I have event items that still can't go in there even with this next patch. Further more I had thought about the ventures thing with more retainers, but after a while that would actually get to be very tough for someone to pull off because with more retainers out on ventures you go through venture coins that much quicker. The issue I have is that for this expansion I had to empty out my retainers as much as I can. Lucky for me I don't craft, but I've thought about doing so. In order to do that I have to be able to store mats. It makes crafting easier instead of going out gathering. Because of that too I have to carry more items in my Amory Chest to switch to classes and jobs. That isn't increasing either. Then there is glamour items. By the Twelve Square fix you inventory issues please!

There isn't enough space for everything all crafting mats, fish bait, lures, collected armor sets, weapons and Atam 12 slots there wasted there just isn't even space! and for those collected armor sets that i can't even collect.

Need to be able to store all Unique items in this Armoire! I really hated having to had spend tomes on armor and stuff only to have to trade them for grand company seals!s. And the same with dungeons drops I've never been able to get 1 full set of these cause you store them in the armoire and CT/ST/WOD really suck can't really get anything anymore when i'm not on the right jobs and most of the time they don't even really need them... they just need to desynthesis stuff over and over so anyone on the wrong job will never be able to get the stuff they need.

CT/ST/WOD should be greed only for those that don't really need anything.

Sometimes you'd think this is a f2p

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

Then they should've designed a system that is more manageable on the data side... A retainer alone equals a close to full character data thanks to appeareance and ventures.

There are various ways that are less storage intensive then retainers:
- Allow more (or better all) gear in Armoire.
- Craft Mat Tab - Save ItemID and Amount. (Look GW2)
- Higher Stack Size for Crafting Mats (WoW increased most crafting items from 99 to 250)

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This. Even giving us crafting mat bags would be good.

Someone please explain to me what exactly you are 'winning' at when people scream "P2W!!!!"

Is there some kind of secret buff for having a shit load of items? Do you do more damage? Are you tankier? Is there a special move that lets you throw junk at enemies and nerf them?

So if I buy another retainer, I just apparently 'win' the game.... damnit SE, this is the worst secret ending yet!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaelah

This. Even giving us crafting mat bags would be good.

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You know what I would like to see is actually the way WOW handled it. Increase the stack of the crafting mats. Instead of 99 make it 999 as an example. Then add as you said a special storage just for mats.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Intaki

"Master crafters" produce small amounts of high end items.

People who actually know how to get the real money out of the MB produce lots of lower-to-middle end, high demand items.

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What makes you think I don't do that? But I also have a 0 competition policy and only produce a limited number of HQ goods for sale. I don't like to flood my own markets. Keeping my 80 slots stocked on a daily basis is enough of a challenge, trust me.

A few things I would like to point out -

• As a programmer, I'm going to say right now that increasing stack size from 99 to 125 does not cost additional server space (unless they are doing something extremely weird). "99" is not a multiple of 2. They are storing a number from 1 to 99 in a slot that can hold a number that is at least from 1 to 128. The space is already allocated. They just want to use the "round" number 99 instead of the more generous number 125. Also, chances are very high that increasing stack size to 250 would not cost additional server space. It's very rare for a programming language to use 7-bit data structures. There's no such thing as negative numbers of items, so there's no reason for item quantities to be "signed" numbers (numbers with one bit allocated to +/-). This means that they are almost definitely storing a number from 1-99 in a slot that can hold a number from 1 to 256 (8 bits, aka 1 byte). Increasing stack size is one of those simple things they can do to alleviate the inventory space issues if they wanted to, but they have not done. This seems, to me, to imply that they don't want to.
• Not to defend SE's decision, but transferring items between characters would cause a greater strain on their servers. I highly doubt that SE has the server capacity to support every player on a server suddenly having 8 characters, each with 2 retainers. I'd bet they're banking on people buying the additional character slots and not using them, or not leveling their alts past 15. That said, $2 extra a month gets you either 208 extra inventory spaces (175 retainer inventory, 12 retainer equipment, 20 retainer for sale), or 926 items (416 retainer, 100 inventory, 13 equipment, 275 armory, 27 soulgem, 75 key item, and 20 received but unopened mail attached items) plus a couple hundred armoire spots, an equally large number of Calamity Salvager unlock spots (those take space), Mount/Minion guide spots, crafting/gathering/fishing/siteseeing log spots, aetheryte/aethernet unlocks, aetheryte favorites, hunting logs, currency, experience and levels for 24 classes, desynth skill levels, Triple Triad cards, chocobo data, chocobo racing data, and so on and so on per character for up to 7 additional characters. All of the data for a character consumes a ton of space. But, they price one single retainer with its 208 extra item spots (plus character customization and experience/level info for one class) at the same price as all of those extras. If someone who has access to 8 characters per server were to make a single alt and never use it, it would eat up more space than an additional retainer. If they were to use it, it would eat up at least five times as much server space as a retainer (more like ~10 times). Their pricing scheme does not match their stated reasons for their decisions. If we're actually paying to support additional server space, why doesn't an additional retainer slot cost the same as a new 1-character subscription?
• To add on to the previous point, I'm paying $13 a month for ~1,300 items worth of server space (at least). New retainers cost $2 a month and grant ~200 items of server space. We are literally paying the same $/data rate for the new retainers as our initial subscription. Before someone points out that not all item data is created equal and some items take up less data than others (inventory space being the most expensive, armoire/calamity items being the least), that point doesn't actually matter. I care about how many items I can store, how many mounts I can collect, how much stuff I can have. They've said they can't increase armoire sizes for space reasons, even though that should compress a large portion of our data significantly and reduce the amount of data stored... until we get more items increasing it. But they could alleviate space issues by giving us a means to trade our inventory spaces for significantly more armoire-like spaces. They are not doing that. Therefore, the point is still valid.

To break out of the list format for a second, I just realized something. Consider what they could do to provide us more efficient inventory space, but have us pay for it with a higher sub fee (since that's what the pay per retainer service is all about, this makes total sense). They could add the option of us spending $2 a month for the same amount of server space a single retainer takes up, but instead used of being in the rather inefficient (for glamour purposes) retainer inventory format, we get an armoire-like space that could store any piece of equipment. Since the space is highly compressed compared to retainer inventory (the only detail the database would have to store is an item number, no stacksize/dye/glamour/condition/materia1-5/makersmark/spiritbond/inventoryposition, so it would take ~1/5th to 1/10th the space), that new space could have a maximum capacity of ~1,000-2,000 gear items for the same price. One retainer costs the same, server-space-wise, as an entire, workable glamour storage system.

I can't even imagine this taking much coding time on their end. They already have the Armoire. This would just be an extension of an existing system. If expanding server space to handle the data for an extra retainer only costs $2/mo, then server space isn't an issue with implementing this system. If they don't want to charge money for a unique system that is not available in the main game (which is a reasonable and good position to have), they aren't - this is just an expansion of the Armoire, like additional retainers are an expansion of the Retainer system. Heck, an extra retainer gives it to all your characters if you have multiple. Tie this new system to a single character if you have to - it would then take LESS server space than an extra retainer. I'll make a new thread asking about this. Brb. (EDIT: Done)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lewtskie

Someone please explain to me what exactly you are 'winning' at when people scream "P2W!!!!"

Is there some kind of secret buff for having a shit load of items? Do you do more damage? Are you tankier? Is there a special move that lets you throw junk at enemies and nerf them?

So if I buy another retainer, I just apparently 'win' the game.... damnit SE, this is the worst secret ending yet!

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You can sell more stuff at a time and so dominate the market and get a lot of money with which you can buy well...errr, well you can't buy all the stuff you buy with pvp commendations, grand company seals, allagant tomestones, gold saucer points and hunting seals, but you can use it to repair gear and teleport so it's very usefull.

And besides you can't keep five glamours for every class in your current inventory.


EDIT: I don't know who will notice this as I can't make new posts but I logged in the mog station to check this retainer stuff and it said no additional fee for 1 and 2 additional retainers. The way I understand it: we can have up to 8 additional retianers now, with the first two being free.

I'm in complete disgust about the fact that you have to buy the new retainers.

Quote:

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[2.0] Players can now hire up to eight retainers.
* Players are normally limited to two retainers per character. To hire additional retainers, please use the optional retainer service

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At first I was like we're getting 8 retainers!?! Awesome!

Then I read the second line.

Thats a complete asspull in my honest opinion.
Between glamors, craft mats, housing items, fishing lures, food and pots the inventory at this point is already pushed to breaking point.

They should of given 2 new retainers FOR FREE PRIOR for everyone! And they jump on this like a vulture ready to feed off everyones money.
YOUR MEANT TO FIX PROBLEMS NOT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEM SQAURE!!!

Honestly this is something an F2P game would do!

I also wanted to mention, for those who didn't play FFXI, that your storage and extra AH slots were additional characters in that game (known as mules) and each one cost $1 extra on top of your sub fee. Retainers became a thing because SE realized that's what we were doing, so even in 1.0 they just went ahead and gave you one to start. (And you had to physically place them in the game so people could examine them, until they fixed that with the market ward search engine. 1.0 was broken as heck...)

Thus, SE charging for additional storage space and additional slots on the AH is nothing new to the XI veterans.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

A few things I would like to point out -

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Great post. All this talk about "space" being a problem... what? Depending on their naming convention, items can only possibly be a few bytes of space per stack. Item number, stack size, and inventory location. You might think that can add up with all players but give me a break... at a time when there is a seemingly limitless space for videos, pics, and documents, for free... you expect anyone to believe there is really a space problem? Are they saving our characters in floppy disks? I doubt our entire current inventory takes up even a single MB of space.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Thus, SE charging for additional storage space and additional slots on the AH is nothing new to the XI veterans.

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True but it was bs 13 years ago too. We just didn't know any better because there wasn't a baseline to compare it to. We just rolled with it because it sounded reasonable. Hard drive space at the time was also a legitimate concern, so it wasn't totally unreasonable.

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Originally Posted by KayoZ

Great post. All this talk about "space" being a problem... what? Depending on their naming convention, items can only possibly be a few bytes of space per stack. Item number, stack size, and inventory location. You might think that can add up with all players but give me a break... at a time when there is a seemingly limitless space for videos, pics, and documents, for free... you expect anyone to believe there is really a space problem? Are they saving our characters in floppy disks? I doubt our entire current inventory takes up even a single MB of space.

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Sounds right. There's a little more to an item in your inventory than that, but you've got the basics.

At most you're looking at an object that contains:
itemId, quantity, dye, aetherialStats[5], aetherialValues[5], materiaId[5], signature, spiritbond, condition

So that's an: unsigned int, unsigned short, unsigned int, 5 unsigned ints, 5 unsigned ints, 5 unsigned ints, string, unsigned short, unsigned short. About 106 bytes per item. Be generous and round us up to 128 bytes per item to give us room to expand later.

That not huge. Each character can have a few hundred of those in regular inventory (including retainers). And then of course the armoire and calamity salvager have a much simpler structure consisting entirely of: itemId.

Yeah the disk space claim doesn't pass the smell test. Previously they've complained about the number of read/writes they're having to do (apparently the game writes your entire character every 15 seconds, which is frankly a ridiculous thing to do), but then that's what you attack. There's no reason we need to be writing character data that often. We could double that interval, toss in zone changes as forced writes, and still cut the CPU time used for this and the bandwidth required roughly in half.

Or we could double people's sub fees so they can have enough inventory space. Yeah let's do that one!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Callinon

At most you're looking at an object that contains:
itemId, quantity, dye, aetherialStats[5], aetherialValues[5], materiaId[5], signature, spiritbond, condition

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That's where SE is really making a mistake, if they add a skin book or something like that you would be able to store much more items since you would only retain the ItemID number and remove all the other datas, creating much much more space for vanity.