On inventory and storage management. [DEVS please take notice.]
Dear SE.
I realise you're primarily a business and aim to make as much profit as you can. However, I feel there is a limit to how far you should be going with it, and practically cornering us, your already paying customers, to rent those extra retainers, is just taking it too far. When at the same time we see those news about boasting such high numbers and we see those reports about profits; but keep getting the same "hardware this" and "network that" excuses again and again. Here's the deal.
All the utter junk during every dungeon run and every open-world encounter is automatically placed in our inventory, regardless of want or need for them. Bone chips, yarzon legs, etc, things that fill up the inventory we have faster than our gear breaks. This in itself would not be so bad, but at the same time there is absolutely no countermeasure to prevent missing out on actual useful items - rare weapons or armour, rare cards, and the like, things that take "forever" to get. If the inventory is full when they drop (and a roll is won), they're simply lost. They don't go in a temporary storage for any limited amount of time; there's no option to discard something else from the inventory to place the new shiny thing in its place; there's absolutely nothing to prevent the loss. With so many items and such (relatively) small inventory, this is a major design flaw.
Going further, I have to mention tomestone gear. Currently, there are three more tiers of gear beyond what can be bought for Tomestones of Law: we have the Prototype Gordian from Alexander, we have Esoterics, and we have Gordian from Alexander Savage. Add to that the fact that there is quite literally nothing to do for, what is it now, five months? at endgame except to get better gear - personally, I have 15 (yes, fifteen) Asuran/Yasha pieces cluttering up my inventory because they've been replaced by better gear and because they can't be turned in for GC seals. I understand not wanting to make top-tier gear exchangeable immediately, but in such long time, with so many more options above a certain level, there really is no reason for us to have to carry them around or dump them on a retainer to just collect dust. This is also a major design flaw.
(On a sidenote, more than two years after launch, I do believe the max amount of GC seals should also be doubled, or even tripled - increased in any way, when we've had so many items worth near, or even more than, 1000 seals.)
Then let's talk about the Armoire and the special items we get from various sources, that also have to be hoarded. You know how many items there are that really should be placeable in the Armoire? Here's a list that's probably not even all-inclusive.
Behemoth Earring, Behemoth items (7 pieces), Best Man's set (three pieces), Dawn Wristguards, Dream set (three pieces), Dress Shoes, dyes (at least venture-obtainable ones, 8 pieces I think), Ehcatl Wristgloves, Eternal Devotion set (4 pieces), Eternal Passion set (4 pieces), Extreme Primal drops (too many pieces), Friendship Circlet, Goobbue Earring, Gridanian Ring, Gysahl Ring, i90 AFs (9×5 pieces), Lominsan Ring, Mended Imperial Pot Helm, Mended Imperial Short Robe, Meteor Survivor Ring, Monoa Mask, Moogle outfit (five pieces), Odin items (3 pieces), Postmoogle Cap, Qiqirn Earring, Ring of Fidelity, Ring of Fortitude, Ring of Fortune, Ring of Freedom, Sable Death Mask, Ul'dahn Ring, Usagi Kabuto (three different colours), Voice of the Just, Weathered Shepherd's Slops, Weathered Shepherd's Tunic, Witch's outfit
I know some of you might say "but that was/is craftable" or "you can get that from duties any time" or "it's sellable/buyable" - but the fact remains that these are all special items, either because of seasonal availability (meaning not actually obtainable anymore), or because they're received during the MSQ or by achievements. Even those that we can still get "any time" can potentially end up requiring too much time, especially now that most of the content connected to these is no longer relevant. And let's face it, "glamour is the true endgame" does have some truth to it - without having a proper glamour log or catalog or any such, we are forced to keep holding on to these if we want them to be available for use. I also don't believe that there should be any reason for the rewards of a seasonal event not to be immediately placeable in the Armoire, only months later.
Another questionable category is tokens. Nobody argues their functionality, nobody says they shouldn't exist - I do think we can all agree on these. However, the sheer amount of different tokens we have by now is mind-numbing. Again, just a few I can list off the top of my head.
Aetheryte Ticket, Alexandrite, Behemoth Horn, Blood-spattered Mark Log, Extreme Primal tokens (9 different ones?), Gordian Manifesto (4 pieces), Ixali Oaknots, Moonstone, Odin's Mantle, Rowena's Token (6 different ones I think), Tarnished Gordian pieces (7 different ones), Unstained Mark Log, Ventures
Why can't these simply be currencies in the now-so-awesome Currency window, without actual physical items to occupy inventory slots? Or just have their own separate tab where they don't end up occupying actual inventory slots? Heck, they could as well be key items, for which we have a whole separate tab already with 25 slots, of which I doubt more than 6 or 7 is ever in use at once. Again, I understand tokens. But, again, the sheer number of these is just too high considering the overall size of the inventory itself.
I'm not even going to go into details about fishing tackles/baits as they have been discussed numerous times - a box, or putting them into the off-hand section of the Armoury Chest (which doesn't really get close to full as things are now, anyway) are just two of the possible solutions to deal with these. For one reason or another, nothing is being done about them.
There is also the issue of furniture. Not everyone has a house (...sorry but LOL), and not everyone has a room either, again, for whatever reason. Yet time and time again we have seasonal events with furniture rewards (either actually given or purchasable). Heck, even Veteran Rewards include housing items. This basically forces players to either get them when they are relevant and have them permanently occupy inventory slots, not get them when they are relevant and lose out on them if they can't be sold/traded, or get them at severely inflated prices later on when they can actually use them. If nothing else, these seasonal/veteran housing items should have their own storage somewhere, at least for those who don't own a house or a FC room, because as things are now, these people are only getting punished - when the housing system in itself is a joke and the personal rooms have too many restrictions to be viable for quite a lot of us.
Last, but not least, let me mention TT cards. I really can't even wrap my head around why these are actual items in the inventory to begin with. Yes, they can be sold for MGP - for pitiful amounts of it, which really doesn't make a difference compared to the prize prices, unless someone could dump many dozens of rare ones (of which the drop rate is also pitiful) on that NPC every week. Either the amount of MGP we get for them should be raised, or they shouldn't be physical items at all: let the RNG of whether we get them or not work as it does now, but if we get lucky, simply unlock the card directly in our deck. So much simpler, so much less of an annoyance - in terms of inventory clutter as well as having to remember whether we already have it or try in vain to use them.
Also in regards to the whole inventory debacle, this issue might be a little bit on the side but I have to mention it: reinstate the AFK auto-kick feature and make it permanent. Reinstate it, make it permanent, and tweak it so that it can "see through" fake crafting and conversations/cutscenes. Seriously, we keep hearing about the stress of network traffic, we keep hearing about this backup system that saves entire inventories of all the characters online roughly every 15 seconds.
Mind you, this 15 seconds is absolutely insane as well, it shouldn't be lower than one minute in any case; it would be even better if those rare-special-whatever items would have little flags that do trigger saves themselves, then it could be even higher like 5 minutes. The amount of stress this would alleviate would be staggering, imo.
Yet, at the same time, there is absolutely nothing preventing players to idle away, rooted to the same spot, from dusk til the evening hours - I see dozens of them every day, in every city/camp. It's quite baffling that such extra, and truly unnecessary source of network traffic and amount of data is left alone like it's not an issue. I can't believe that nobody ever does any calculation, that nobody is at all aware of the stress these ignorant AFKers cause. And still they get away with it. Please, for the love of the Twelve, change this, as it's bloody infuriating.
All in all... Alright, there are factors that don't allow increasing our inventory, even though the item pool has gotten many times as big as it was at launch. Alright, you want to extra money with additional retainers (though the fact that we didn't even get one more with the release of the expansion has really been pushing it) - let those who want them get them, instead of cornering pretty much everyone into a situation where we need them. But regardless of these, there are ways to "increase" our inventory. There are ways to ease up on all that server/hardware stress and resource requirement. I do believe the ones listed above are quite rational, and honestly, at least some of them are actually needed at this point.
And while I guess some will argue that some of the things seem "optional", considering all the facts, systems, and content that we have in the game right now... They are quite a significant chunk of what we can occupy ourselves with, while the storage options are just as significantly limiting - especially in a game that prides itself on "everything on one character".
I know changes can't happen overnight, I know the team is small, I know there always are other, "more pressing" things on those priority lists. However, I also believe that, again, at this point, the question of the inventory should be pretty high on those same lists. I hope these things at least have been "in consideration" at the very least, and the changes will come with the upcoming patches. I would like to look forward to it.
Edit: dark matter, carbonized matter, glamour prisms - as pointed out here and in other threads, also come up to a pretty great pile of pointless inventory waste. Grades could be done away with, at the very least, or simply not have them as physical items either would be even better.
