Really tired of the inventory excuses.

I for one (and i might be the only one) don't mind limited space. Unfortunately others can pay for more space (i think [buying more retainers]). But i like that a limited amount of space forces people to make choices. If space is unlimited, people will just keep everything, limiting the need to buy stuff and limiting the need to choose what is most important to you (i.e. specialize).
But it doesn't sound like this is what the creators will eventually offer. So for now, i dig it. I think unlimited space is kinda unrealistic as well. Any limitation is just part of the game to me, so long as its a shared circumstance.

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Originally Posted by Xerius

I'll rephrase it because the point went completely over your head and now you're trying to be philosophical in some desperate attempt to maintain credibility. You can't price compete with someone effectively when their margins are much more flexible than yours.

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It's not philosophical, it's economics. Of course, most people will never grasp the concept of Opportunity Cost because they really want to believe statements like, "Blacksmithing is so profitable for me because I have Mining and get all my mats for free!".

That or they simply place no value whatsoever on their time. Not sure which is worse.

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Originally Posted by Cyrusskorrey

it has EVERYTHING to do with it.

Go buy a retainer or learn to manage your inventory.
Im an Omni Crafter and gatherer and i still have PLENTY of room in my retainers. Don't hoard stuff its that simple.

I'm wasting my breath here, Yoshi already said were not getting more inventory space any time soon.

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How does it have "everything" to do with it?
This game is not that game, they are two separate entities.
Just ask everyone who complains about XIV being compared to XI. >w>

Plus how would you define hoarding?
I hold onto things because I don't have every class/job at baseline 50.
Taking your character for example: Wouldn't it have been nice if held on to some of your older, healer gear to level AST? To not have to waste resources like time, material, and/or gil to get more?

Not to mention, the game has glamour. If they aren't going to account for people using it and storing pieces, that is bad design on both glamour and inventory/storage.

On the issue of the Armoury Chest:

The Armoury Chest seems a redundant catalog method from when classes/jobs were supposed to be on an equal footing, and with multiple gear sets/specs for each role was in mind.

Given that, as a DRG for example, I am only going to wear DRG gear..., well whats the point of a toybox of sorts for filtering gear. In essence, I only change gear when I want to change jobs.

As more and more gear comes out I find myself just selling all the old stuff for GC seals to save space.

A dual system like this would work better:

1. When you link gear to a Gear Set then it disappears from the Armoury Chest entirely but remains in the Gear Set to allow changing of jobs.

2. At the same time each player can recall a museum of gear (unlocks upon 100% completion of each item set) so at any point in the future you may duplicate an item for glamour whether you have thrown it, used it up in a gear set or traded it away for GC seals.

Hm... as much as it can be argued about... here's the deal.

Fact: the Armoury Chest system, which allows players to be everything on one character is still among the first things (if not THE first thing) that is mentioned when talking about unique features of this game. That's not only 10(+3 now) battle jobs, each with their own weapons, and every 2-3 of them with their own armor set (minus AF which is different for all jobs), but also 8 crafter and 3 gatherer classes. That's 24 different potential occupations on every one character - 24(+1) weapons/tools; 4×6 pieces of armour (assuming shared sets) and 4×5 pieces of accessories for battle classes; 5 pieces of accessories for gatherers, and a mess of a number of outfits for crafters (impossible to assume either shared or unique). That in itself is probably close to 100 items. And that's assuming they're all at level cap, so no need for a "max" set, "high level" sets and "low level" sets.
Any one person might not potentially even thinks of aiming at maxing them all out, but when you're planning and creating such a system, you can't go the "eh most people won't want to have it all anyway" route, you have to prepare for the most extreme possible scenario.

Fact: the glamour system we were given requires people physically owning the piece of gear they want projected - on top of their actual gear. That's potentially 2×11 items, but feel free to (no pun intended) project that to the numbers discussed above, and think about how many actual pieces of gear there are that people potentially want to glamour - how many of those are actually too expensive and/or hard to obtain for whatever reason. Try to come up with a sensible number.
Heavensward only added to these.
In order to keep crafting relevant, SE created prisms. That's not only 7 different types of extra items, but each has 5 different grades too, meaning 35 potential items.
Despite all these numbers, there is no glamour log in sight on the horizon, in any way, shape, or form. Even though it is quite an obvious way to reduce inventory clutter - which is very much needed at this point. Even though it would reduce the network stress - no physical items, no need to flush their data to the servers. Even though it has been suggested numerous times already, and still being suggested every time the subject emerges.

Fact: colouring items (those that can be coloured...let's not even go there) requires dyes, of which there are...I think 96? different ones. These are all actual items too, once I suppose to keep crafting relevant, now...for whatever reason. In any one armour set, there are 6 potential pieces of items to dye, and each pot of dye is gone after one use of course. (Yes, I'm aware, it's still better than what we had in 1.x...)

Fact: crafters need an insane amount of raw materials, from simple collectibles to already crafted "middleware". The more crafter classes one wants to level up, the more things they need, obviously. It's not dozens, but hundreds of items, maybe even close to a thousand. These things share inventory space with - everything else. Just think about that a little.
Heavensward only added to these.

Fact: fishers need baits, lots of different types of baits, while leveling and at level cap as well. Though it's a rather isolated (to this one class) issue, these baits still also share inventory space - with everything else.
Heavensward, I think, also added to these.

Fact: there's a number of items, of which the existence as actual items is, at best, questionable. Gysahl Greens (cute idea on paper, by now it's just pointless not to have it a generic action to summon that bird...which let's not even talk in detail about), Ventures (even the actual in-game description says it's a currency), Alex tokens, Scrip tokens, other different tokens (mark logs, now the silver and gold feathers that come to my mind), TT cards, whatever else I can't remember right now. Items that could as well be simple data in a chart somewhere, like tomes are in the currency list, instead of being physical items that pretty much permanently occupy inventory slots. For some reason only the Twelve know (or maybe even they don't), they aren't.

Fact: rare drops, rare materials for example for housing items, that really cost an arm and a leg, and are really only obtained by sheer dumb luck besides the MB, are obviously items that people would like to hold on to, until they can use them. Let's not even talk about rare furnishing items and the clusterf××× that is housing in this game......
I think Heavensward added to this as well.

Fact: every random junk drop in dungeons, or even from open world mobs, is automatically added to the inventory. There is no inventory queue, not even a chance to immediately discard something in order not to waste a super rare drop (see this guy who lost a Terra Branford card because of this). Basically while our inventory is getting filled for us automatically (with junk for the most part), there isn't any sort of countermeasure to prevent the loss of something actually valuable. I'm not saying the game should take all the responsibility off our shoulders when it comes to managing free space, but with all this (look up), we sure as hell should have some such implemented.

Fact: with basically every event, there come items that are unique, that are untradeable, uncraftable, unobtainable in any other way than during that event. Add veteran rewards here. These items usually spend anywhere from 3 to 6 months in our (or our retainer's) inventory, before they get added to the Armoire - the safe for such special items. Because for some reason it's apparently very complicated to code that, it needs extra consideration, etc. Even though they don't come up with these items overnight, before they are actually added to the game. Even though they know these items need to end up in the armoire - they will end up in the Armoire.

Thought about all that yet? Ok, because here is the real jackpot.

Fact: all these are conscious decisions, all these are conceptual, all these are parts of the actual game design, of the system they created.

For so long (starting maybe somewhere during the second half of the first year of ARR?) people have been having inventory issues. The number of people gradually increasing, the severity of the issues gradually increasing. The concept of "hoarder" pretty much dies with the game system itself, with the design that centers on the fact that the player is flooded with items and needs to collect items - it's pointless to label people as "hoarders" and tell them to learn not to do it, so please, don't. Some argued in other relevant threads (such as this) that FFXIV has such a large inventory compared to other games/MMOs, that we really shouldn't complain about it - well, yes, but also consider all the abovementioned facts and think about whether those other games/MMOs also have all these... if not, the comparison is faulty.

They release an expansion, which increases the number of items, of crafting materials, of housing items, of pretty much everything so much that it's mind-boggling. Yet, the size of our inventory remains the same; heck, we don't even get an additional retainer. It's "explained" by such huge data sizes that increasing those is practically impossible at this point. (Really makes me curious about the actual code, how they handle all this data, etc - the technical side. Because I'm starting to think it's really far from optimal.) It's "explained" by that ridiculous full-inventory-save-every-15-seconds thing, that is so incredibly insane I can't even comprehend what actual expert honestly believes it's alright, in such a game, with such massive amounts of data. Heck, I wonder how the hard drives of the servers don't die every 3-6 months. Just because someone somewhere cried once about having lost some item. I'm not sure they even thought of other solutions to this - like, set a special flag on actual special items that trigger a flush to the disk. A simple check before the save - is there anything new in that inventory? Keep the auto-kick feature permanent, make it so that it detects fake "crafting" and "convos" - all those characters that idle away all day in the same spot also contribute to the size of those inventory flushes. Actually improve the hardware, the network infrastructure, everything - heck, drop the PS3 support already. (Sorry, but with how long we've been given these things as reasons for why everything is so difficult, I just can't believe they're doing this; same for how often things are traced back to the PS3 simply being weak - then again, they could also give up on this notion of wanting everything to be the same across all the very, very different systems.)

Fact: we can rent additional inventory space. Not buy, like practically every other F2P game does this, pay once, have it for as long as you play. Nope, here you have to pay an increased sub fee every month if you want to keep that extra space.

Fact: before, we could have 2 extra retainres, the total number to own being 4. With Heavensward, the number of additional ones we can have was tripled, now we can have a total of 8 retainers - double the amount than before. 350 extra inventory slots for "free" - a potential max of 700 before, a potential max of 1400 before. Thought about all that I've talked about so far? Consider that and tell me that's not at least borderline pay-to-win. Even with the best of intentions. A really grey area. (And let's not even talk about the ventures-side of it...)

Fact??: all the difficulties about increasing the inventory goes away if we just pay a little more. All that about data sizes, network stress, bandwidth whatnot - it's not there anymore. Apparently?? Like I pointed out, they have to prepare for the extreme scenario - planning to implement something like this, it can't just be shrugged off with "ah well probably only a few players will max this out anyway".
We're told increasing the inventory is being considered, carefully even, but until then - well, they're gonna make managing retainers much less frustrating. This is something that could have been done ages ago, because, really, managing the retainers has also been a hassle since basically day 1. For some reason though, it's being done now, after the additional content of HW, after tripling the number of additionally-available-for-extra-monthly-fee retainers. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely a better-late-than-never thing, and I'll be as appreciative of it as anyone else. But it can't be argued that the timing is a little bit ... weird.

Fact: I do think we have all the reason to be tired of the inventory-related excuses. And not only all the reason, but we also have every right to be tired of them. Crafter or not, glamour-holic or not, personal preferences and playstyles are irrelevant. Because the core of it is that that this situation did not happen overnight. It was not an accident. And I, personally, will not for a moment believe from any sane expert that it was "not expected" either. Not with all the abovementioned things considered.

Seriously, I already made a thread about why SE can't upgrade anything:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...er-clusters%21

Here's what I really don't understand. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

SE claims the reason they can't expand the player inventory is that they save it to the server every five seconds, and more space equals more network traffic equals more server load and everyone suffers. Okay, that's an explanation that I can follow, even if I find it absurd that they save all data that often even if nothing has changed. But, they've used this same explanation when explaining why they can't expand the armoire, give people free retainers, or provide other forms of off-character storage. Huh? Do they really save the contents of your armoire every five seconds with the rest of your inventory data? Even if you haven't accessed it in weeks? Why isn't this an on-access connection? Remove an item from the armoire, and your armorire data is saved to the server and so is your inventory. Store an item, same thing. Is this really being stored every five seconds?

And if retainer data is being saved that often, that's just as bad. Yes, when you access your retainer, the game appears to treat your retainer's equipment and inventory exactly like your own, even unequipping items into your armory chest. It makes total sense to do the "save every five seconds" thing to your retainers while they are summoned. Does it really save the data that often when not engaging with retainers? If it's done the sensible way, then doesn't it take the same exact network traffic for one retainer or fifty, if only the currently active one is being saved?


Either the reason they give for not expanding off-character storage is incorrect and there's really another reason behind it, or there's some serious efficiency issues with their data storage. And I mean, worse even than most people thought.


Also, in regards to on-character storage, why are we limited to 99 items and not 250 (or 255)? 255 items take up exactly as much space as 99. Is it just limited to 99 and compounding the inventory woes just so it's more "visually appealing?" Because I can't think of any other reason for it... It's just a number as far as the computers know, and that number goes from 0-255, not 0-99. Unless they're allocating space for negative items? Computers don't use the decimal system. 99 is not a multiple of 2, nor a multiple of 2^8.

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

Stuff.

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I can't remeber the name, but a while back I remember a Chinese F2P mmo that gave you exactly 254 inventory slots.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

Yeah, this is my take on it too. They can either find ways to optimize the existing system (which they've said they're working on) or they can completely recode it and god knows how much work that would be.

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But there are other solutions. Or at least, partial solutions, especially for people who glamour things. Here's four of them:

1. They can expand the armoire to include all glamour items, all dungeon sets, all token sets, and all relics (including lucis/supra).


2. They can create a new currency tab for "Tokens" and make it so you can "use" a token to have it added to your character sheet.


3. As I just said in my post above, they can expand stack size from 99 to 250.


4. They can streamline items as well. Why are there five grades of clear glamour prisms? I get why they might want five grades of the actual glamour prisms, but what purpose does having five grades of the clear ones serve? They are all bought from the same NPCs and they all cost the same. What about Gyshal Greens? What purpose do they server? They're so cheap, summoning/dismissing your chocobo is hardly a drain on anyone's coffers, even newbies. Why are Gyshal Greens an item that must be stored and not just an action? What about Dark Matter? Sure, they don't all cost the same, but seriously, who cares? Why are they not all just one item? And what about Coke/Potash/etc? These can only be used 9 at a time, so why not introduce a new item that replaces them and counts as nine of them (as in, you can trade in 9 coke for this new "pile of coke" item, all places where coke can be bought or found, it costs 9 times as much for the new item and coke is removed, or you find 1/9th as much of the new item as you found coke and coke is removed)? Suddenly, we don't need five inventory spaces per airship part just for the coke required, and we don't have to store leftover bits when we don't have an exact multiple of 9.

What I'm saying is, they can save a notable amount of space without making game-changing changes to items. There are things that can be compressed without really changing them.


None of these suggestions are asking for anything new. It's all existing functionality that is being underutilized, compounding the inventory space problem. I can't speak for other people, but for me, if I didn't have to store glamour items and tokens, I'd have no inventory space issues.

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Originally Posted by Bovinity

It's not philosophical, it's economics. Of course, most people will never grasp the concept of Opportunity Cost...

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Opportunity Cost isn't a difficult concept to comprehend. TL;DR If you can make more money doing something else, do something else. Which is what I do, I don't make money through crafting, I do it through other avenues. I simply enjoy crafting and when it's a hobby and not a primary source of income you want the lowest bottom line that you can. That being said gathering is so easy, it's almost always cheaper to gather your own mats than to buy them off of the MB.

P.S. When I said you were being philosophical, what I meant was that this was going to turn in to a debate about how economics work instead of addressing the original point of how it's harder to compete when you have a higher bottom-line than the other guy.

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

Also, in regards to on-character storage, why are we limited to 99 items and not 250 (or 255)?

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I agree with your post. To this specific point... SE has gone through a great deal of effort to make FFXIV feel like a traditional JRPG. Traditionally they were limited to 99 of one item (perhaps due to space for digits? Or someone thought 99 was reasonable and it just caught on)... I would guess that the stack of 99 thing is just one small part of that.

That said, 99 is enough for most purposes that this particular point doesn't bother me. It would be annoying if crystals/shards had this restriction but they actually covered us there.

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Originally Posted by Xerius

Opportunity Cost isn't a difficult concept to comprehend. TL;DR If you can make more money doing something else, do something else. Which is what I do, I don't make money through crafting, I do it through other avenues. I simply enjoy crafting and when it's a hobby and not a primary source of income you want the lowest bottom line that you can. That being said gathering is so easy, it's almost always cheaper to gather your own mats than to buy them off of the MB.

P.S. When I said you were being philosophical, what I meant was that this was going to turn in to a debate about how economics work instead of addressing the original point of how it's harder to compete when you have a higher bottom-line than the other guy.

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Well fine, then lets go have a drink!

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

To this specific point...

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Fair points, but while true that it wouldn't change much, there are several items I wind up with more than 99 of, especially when desynthing, binge-fishing, or participating in Company Crafting (or storing items for it). And really, this was just pointing out that there are simple ways they could alleviate the situation at least to a tiny degree without making a substantial change to the game or the code, but they have not done it and instead give reasons for why they won't do it that don't even apply to such changes.

And, on the [S]NES and [Super] Famicon, I can see screen real-estate being really important, so limiting items to a practical 99 is totally sensible. But, we're not playing games on the NES anymore (well, the PS3 users might as well be, but still <_<) and we don't have super-tight screen real-estate.

The amount of space we have is mostly fine, though I think the armoury chest might need expansion as certain slots are easily filled through normal play. Most of what needs to happen is restructuring of certain items on their end.

Glamour prisms, even if they opt to keep all the ridiculous redundant variants (instead of removing the 5 tiers and making it just 7 varieties) should be stored like crystals or currency.

There should be a glamour logbook so we don't have to hang on to tons of old armor that we like the look of and really don't want to reobtain (even with soloing low level dungeons and the like, imagine even now the time commitment to collect a full set of armor from Labyrinth of the Ancients, for example). For many people this would free up an entire retainer or more. Make it only accessible in private chambers/ inn rooms if server stress would be a problem.

Turn dye into a similar unlock system (maybe add a single dying kit item that's consumable if you're dead set on consumables) and you've freed up more space. There is the potential problem of their paid for dyes, but I don't think there's anybody who doesn't think it's ridiculous that there are certain dyes that you can purchase for real money that are consumed, especially in a game where you change your gear so often.

A tackle box absolutely should happen. Make it only accessible while you currently have a fishing pole equipped and the server stress should be negligible. There's no reason to check it, save it, etc. at any other time.

Only the suggested crafting materials tab should be a problem because of the staggering number of materials that exist and the fact that the proposed solution is really just an additional, extremely large, reserved inventory system. Still, given the inventory bloat everyone is feeling and their reluctance/ inability to make changes, you'd think they could refrain from creating hundreds of new materials that are only used in a very small number of recipes instead of being more conservative.

The item bloat is bad. Why did they not streamline all the recipes and sets pre 3.0. I am sure we could all remove 50% of the recipes and gear from pre 3.0. One dungeon set, one crafted set, one grand company set, and one glamour set. Then reduce the items needed for all recipes to the simplest method no multi craft or multi gather. Have mobs drop 1 type of crafting item per family not per mob. Certain catalysts that have multi grades just had a pre 50(low) and a post 50 (high). All the extra worthless fish pre 50.

Would not deleting all this bloat from pre 50 help everyone servers, players on ps3s, and crafters. I am no designer so I have no idea if removing and renaming data is hard or easy. But they do seem to rename stuff fast in quick fixes. This would personally not solve my current inventory issue (main weapon for pvp sets) but it would show a huge sign of progression. Most people don't expect miracles but they also don't expect to be treated like trash when voicing an issue.

Give me a key items so I can summon my retainers anywhere and I have no issues.

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Originally Posted by Dejectedbunny

FFXI inventory / storage:
Gobbiebag - 30, upgradable to 80
Mog sack - scales with gobbiebag
Mog satchel - scales with gobbiebag
Mog safe - 30, upgradable to 80
Mog house storage - upwards to 80
Mog case - 80
Mog wardrobe - 80
Mog locker - 30, upgradable to 80
_____________________________________
640 total slots

Cost of additional characters for storage (mules) - $1.00 each / month (Another 640 slots of inventory).

If you're going to compare apples to apples, make sure you are providing all the information. The larger complaint that I have with the inventory issues, is that this isn't SE's first MMO and it certainly isn't their first to feature a one character, all jobs system. The fact that they have had to continually add new storage methods throughout XI's lifespan should have made it pretty clear from the beginning that inventory would be a major issue in this game. Also, stop and consider that we've had 4 new jobs added since initial launch and with the expansion they have started moving away from shared gear, back to job-specific gear.

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You are forgetting that that is global inventory. EVERYTHING you had went into those locations--including your gear. So, you would also have to take into account all the armory slots in XIV for a proper comparison.

Also, only one of those bags was immediately accessible last time I played. All the tools you needed on demand had to be in your main backpack (80 items): foods/meds if on a macro, any situational gear you might want to flip to via a macro--all had to be in that first 80 slot bag. Otherwise you had to stop and move items in and out or otherwise call up the separate bag and use it from there manually.

If you didn't keep gears in that first gobbie bag, when you job changed you had to hunt them down across the different storage locations.A full BLM and SMN gear/item set could basically consume an entire storage location alone. Then you had issues with other jobs as well that relied on a wide variety of weapons and situational gear that could make things tricky as well. And don't EVEN get started on weapons selections for triggering staggers. Some jobs had to carry a veritable arsenal on them for swapping out different weaponskills--some even had to keep differnt damage types on hand for certain content (like mobs that would only take piercing damage). Depending on how complex you gear sets were and how much you got into crafting/gathering, organizing inventory was quite a job.

It was far and away a much more screwed up system than XIV by comparison.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I agree with your post. To this specific point... SE has gone through a great deal of effort to make FFXIV feel like a traditional JRPG. Traditionally they were limited to 99 of one item (perhaps due to space for digits? Or someone thought 99 was reasonable and it just caught on)... I would guess that the stack of 99 thing is just one small part of that.

That said, 99 is enough for most purposes that this particular point doesn't bother me. It would be annoying if crystals/shards had this restriction but they actually covered us there.

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On this topic, technically speaking 99 is actually only 7 bits...the 8th bit comes into play above 127 on the programming side, so it actually takes less space. I know.. splitting hairs, but it can be important from a programming standpoint. That 8th bit could be used as part of a mask or something if more bits are reserved.

Also, graphically representing 3 digits versus 2 digits can be problematic in small interfaces. So this could be coming into play as well. Putting a 100 in the box may not seem like much of a shift from 99, but if you move to a larger number it starts to have more of an impact:
200
100
99

Keep in mind the text here is much more uniform. In the GUI, that 100 might actually be slightly more narrow than the 200. It can pose some issues with layouts and such in an already tight interface.

Keep in mind also the consoles---they sort of stream some data on a sort of loop. Some don't quite behave like a PC, so increasing the bit count used for certain things can have a negative impact on how things flow on a console.

I think the inventory should be cut in half and a bank should be made. A bank only needs updated when players use it. This cutting the "Inventory" lag on the server by more then half.

I'm actually more peeved they didn't give us all a free retainer.
Instead of saying oh here, a free retainer because we dropped 50 million mats and new items and gear!
Nope, sorry, we extra bucks or two and shove them back in mog station.
That's really a low blow.

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Originally Posted by Bovinity

Well fine, then lets go have a drink!

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Deal, I've been making frozen spirits all day and I see we're on the same server. :P

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Originally Posted by Nektulos-Tuor

I think the inventory should be cut in half and a bank should be made. A bank only needs updated when players use it. This cutting the "Inventory" lag on the server by more then half.

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You mean like the Armoire? which should be able to hold all -full- sets of gear but for some reason doesn't?

Not exactly an inventory extension, but a 'glamour log' would free up a lot of bag space for a lot of people. Get an item, the appearance is recorded in the glamour log, don't have to worry about throwing it away afterwards.

What's that? You say you want more inventory? Like a store inventory? So you want more items, is that what you are saying? Well hold on because here are another hundred rare materials coming your way, each one useful in a single super expensive crafting recipe, but you need 3 and they drop individually, so just put them in your retainer until you have enough of them someday.

2 ball bearings, 1 bearskin, 1 atomos part, 1 dusk leather, 1 thav leather, 1 thav silk, 1 gobwalker shield, 2 frost giant core, 1 mogcrown, 2 far eastern coins, here is some MORE INVENTORY FOR YA!

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Originally Posted by Aeyis

Oh yeah? Name one MMO with as many crafting items as FFXIV. Just one. Just one! Come on, can't be that hard.


Inventory and the amounts you require is reliant on the amount of items you are liable to use or have. In FFXIV the amount of items is far larger then for most other MMOs.



Also the armoury system is a double-edged pizzacutter. Who actually has 25 bracelets to store? Yet 25 are too few spots for chest items, or main hand tools.

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I'm sure Everquest has more.

I am tired of hearing people saying that we are hoarding. Money can still be made with "all tiers" of gear and items in the game so crafters need all the items to make these items on our retainers at all times so we don't have to go on the MB every time we want to craft something. There are a ton of items to need...you are not understanding. Oh well...some will never get it.

They did cut down on the crafting bloat. In 1.0 you had to make every individual piece of a piece of gear. Chainmail required the bronze rings, made into bronze chain, made into sleeves, vest, and other bits, some cottons stuff turned into other stuff.

They cut it down a lot. :P

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Originally Posted by Fenwick

Not exactly an inventory extension, but a 'glamour log' would free up a lot of bag space for a lot of people. Get an item, the appearance is recorded in the glamour log, don't have to worry about throwing it away afterwards.

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That's a great idea! I even saw they responded to that request in one of the recent live letters. You know what they said?
They wanted to make it easier to glamour straight from your retainer!
Because that solves the problem...right?...
...

On a slightly separate note, I have been playing this game almost every day since 1.0 beta. Not a lie, I play through all of 1.xx without abandoning the game like most people. Even I don't have more then the standard 2 retainers and I refuse to buy more. Shouldn't people like me get at least 1 more retainer permanent for free?
To be fair everyone should get at least one more for free but at least the long time subscribers who have been here since the beginning

My issue has only ever been them saying they can't increase our personal storage space but are more than happy to sell us retainers.

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Originally Posted by Taei

So basically, what Yoshi wants us to do is suffer with the existing inventory space, while making it "easier" to use retainers so that we will buy more retainers. Thanks Yoshi-P.

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No, what Yoshi wants you to do is BUY more retainers. Because that's really all a good fix for the inventory problem would taker, give everyone one or two more retainers. I find it difficult to believe that it would be that much more of a strain in the servers considering you can only access one retainer at a time. But they don't want to do that. They want to have a subscription base and still make as much micro transaction as they can squeeze out of us. To be honest I'm finding it very hard to continue to justify a monthly subscriptions in MMOs when developers are doing this shit. I pay you monthly so I don't have to deal with the nickel and dime bullshit.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

My issue has only ever been them saying they can't increase our personal storage space but are more than happy to sell us retainers.

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Yeah I call bs on inventory limitations. What would happen if every player capped out on retainers? Seems strange that SE can make space for you if you have the cash

I think we all need more inventory space, but how much is enough I don't think you can put a number on it, because there will always be more requirements for space. So the only option is to be able to buy a infinite number of bag spaces.

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Originally Posted by Xerius

When you have 8 crafting jobs that require mats and each mat has 2 versions (NQ and HQ) and some jobs (I'm looking at you WVR) have a 3 stage raw material process (Thread > Cloth > Cloth + Holy/Hallowed Water) you run out of inventory room very fast.

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Exactly this. I had to leave out cooking, due to the enourmous amount of material required, that just didnt go along with the other crafters...not enough space.my Inventory is filled ONLY, except for Ether potion, with crafting material and tokens for my servants that is it and I just have 8 slots free to make sure I can craft at least one gear at a time...But is true too that inventory in FFXIV is better then most mmos, we just need to compose with it.

Mei

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Originally Posted by IveraIvalice

On a slightly separate note, I have been playing this game almost every day since 1.0 beta. Not a lie, I play through all of 1.xx without abandoning the game like most people. Even I don't have more then the standard 2 retainers and I refuse to buy more. Shouldn't people like me get at least 1 more retainer permanent for free?
To be fair everyone should get at least one more for free but at least the long time subscribers who have been here since the beginning

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Would make a nice veteran bonus...
1 year + 1 retainer
2 years + 1 retainer
3 years + 1 retainer

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Originally Posted by weighty

Yeah I call bs on inventory limitations. What would happen if every player capped out on retainers? Seems strange that SE can make space for you if you have the cash

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And people continue to not understand how inventory space works in lieu of vilifying the dev team even after it was mentioned many times within the topic itself and Yoshi-P repeated the reasons nearly every time he is asked. accessing retainer space and accessing your personal inventory are two VERY VERY different things. Your personal inventory space is backed up every 15 seconds by the server. It is always with you, always checked and always stored not matter where you are and what you are doing.

Retainers, however, are far more limited. Their inventory isn't subject to change at a moments notice at any time and any place. They can only be accessed in certain places and their inventory only needs to be backed up while it is summoned or when an item is sold. So retainer inventory is FAR less stressful on the server than player inventory is. It's not a ploy to make you buy retainers. They didn't sit down and say "Hey, let's just gouge out more money from players by not giving them space!" It's the way the system was designed WAY before space was ever a problem. And until they fix that problem, the team suggested the only current solution, more retainers.

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Originally Posted by Ayanno

When your solution to a problem is to charge people more money on top of that sub fee for a problem the devs themselves created, then you cross over into greedy money grubbing troll. Nothing is stopping SE from giving people a free retainer to bide time till a real solution is put in place, except greed.

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Like I said, people are justified about the free retainer thing. Whatever reason SE has for not at least giving one is up to anyone's guess. That could be greed or it could just be a temp holdover that they don't expect everyone to do, just the ones that need it BADLY. However, the issue is that most people aren't whining about that alone, they are whining for more personal space.

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Originally Posted by Apoptic

Guess what guy? Functionally, retainers and on character inventory are almost the same. Both store stuff. The problem is we have more stuff than we have space to put it, both on the retainers and in our own inventory. But Square is willing to "fix" the problem they created, by selling us more Retainer$. Which is why people are rightly viewing this as a cash grab. In fact, you yourself admit this when you say "And until they fix that problem, the team suggested the only current solution, more retainers."
So give us a bell to summon the retainers on the move as a workaround. Just don't charge us a monthly fee to use it.

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Guess you missed the whole explanation and why it's not basically the same. Not at all. Retainer space and personal space is very different as I explained. Making a bell to summon retainers on the move does not fix the person, it makes it worse. It removes retainers as a solution because then retainer inventory will have to be backed up more often. This will create even more stress when they are trying to cause less on the servers. And again, as someone else pointed out, they ARE working on a real solution. Buying more retainers is just a temp solution for those that absolutely MUST have more space until the problem is fixed. And as you mentioned, another free retainer would be nice. But the vocal minority of this topic isn't crying for that, they want more personal space and assume it's an easy fix.

As for why they won't give a free retainer, I don't know. You can go all "Us vs the MAN! (dev team)" on that one, but please stop acting like every single dev is a greedy money grubbing troll so it's easier for you to hate and cry.

There has to be some very tricky coding business about Inventory space. As World of Warcraft still have their 16 slot item BackPack after 10 years, and the later bags dont have much slots either. Think biggest Bag in WOW is 26 Slots, and you can equip 4 of them.

Are people just ignoring the fact that along with the retainer thing, he DID say they are working on fixing the inventory issue

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Originally Posted by BubblyBoar

And people continue to not understand how inventory space works in lieu of vilifying the dev team even after it was mentioned many times within the topic itself and Yoshi-P repeated the reasons nearly every time he is asked. accessing retainer space and accessing your personal inventory are two VERY VERY different things. Your personal inventory space is backed up every 15 seconds by the server. It is always with you, always checked and always stored not matter where you are and what you are doing.

Retainers, however, are far more limited. Their inventory isn't subject to change at a moments notice at any time and any place. They can only be accessed in certain places and their inventory only needs to be backed up while it is summoned or when an item is sold. So retainer inventory is FAR less stressful on the server than player inventory is. It's not a ploy to make you buy retainers. They didn't sit down and say "Hey, let's just gouge out more money from players by not giving them space!" It's the way the system was designed WAY before space was ever a problem. And until they fix that problem, the team suggested the only current solution, more retainers.

As for why they won't give a free retainer, I don't know. You can go all "Us vs the MAN! (dev team)" on that one, but please stop acting like every single dev is a greedy money grubbing troll so it's easier for you to hate and cry.

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When your solution to a problem is to charge people more money on top of that sub fee for a problem the devs themselves created, then you cross over into greedy money grubbing troll. Nothing is stopping SE from giving people a free retainer to bide time till a real solution is put in place, except greed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BubblyBoar

And people continue to not understand how inventory space works in lieu of vilifying the dev team even after it was mentioned many times within the topic itself and Yoshi-P repeated the reasons nearly every time he is asked. accessing retainer space and accessing your personal inventory are two VERY VERY different things. Your personal inventory space is backed up every 15 seconds by the server. It is always with you, always checked and always stored not matter where you are and what you are doing.

Retainers, however, are far more limited. Their inventory isn't subject to change at a moments notice at any time and any place. They can only be accessed in certain places and their inventory only needs to be backed up while it is summoned or when an item is sold. So retainer inventory is FAR less stressful on the server than player inventory is. It's not a ploy to make you buy retainers. They didn't sit down and say "Hey, let's just gouge out more money from players by not giving them space!" It's the way the system was designed WAY before space was ever a problem. And until they fix that problem, the team suggested the only current solution, more retainers.

As for why they won't give a free retainer, I don't know. You can go all "Us vs the MAN! (dev team)" on that one, but please stop acting like every single dev is a greedy money grubbing troll so it's easier for you to hate and cry.

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Guess what guy? Functionally, retainers and on character inventory are almost the same. Both store stuff. The problem is we have more stuff than we have space to put it, both on the retainers and in our own inventory. But Square is willing to "fix" the problem they created, by selling us more Retainer$. Which is why people are rightly viewing this as a cash grab. In fact, you yourself admit this when you say "And until they fix that problem, the team suggested the only current solution, more retainers."
So give us a bell to summon the retainers on the move as a workaround. Just don't charge us a monthly fee to use it.

This is my 'childish' assumption not knowing if they are even using an algorithm or encryption.

Why they don't just add a server wide glamour wardrobe baffles me. At worst case one inventory slot is using 5-6 int per item for storage. This is for item id, glamour id, durability, quantity and multiple materia. Which would be 80 bits per item. while a wardrobe could optimally be assigned to only need one bit per item or an entire item set since they can be assigned a fixed location of storage.

So here we got a retainer with 175 item slots, with an assumed storage of about 14000 bits which is 1.75kB compared to 175 bit which is 22Byte

175 slots of glamour trash taking 1750Byte could be reduced to just 22Byte across one entire server. need 2-4 bit per items instead? Would still just take 88Byte compared to the 1750Byte.

Could do the same with a resource and token bank but then each slot would take 8 bit at best. Either way no more need for 8 retainers since 2 would be more than suffice.