Proposed Inventory and Glamour Changes for FFXIV

(The following are my thoughts on possible inventory management solutions and changes to glamour after my first 10 months playing. I'd intended to submit them directly, but the suggestion box in game requested I put them here. :o Soooo I guess I'm posting them publicly, though that's certainly not what I was thinking when I wrote them out. XD Well, here goes. I'm sure all this has been suggested, but I wanted to add my voice.)


Option 1: Crafting, selecting fishing tackle and using the recommended gear feature are all able to pull from your retainers’ and chocobo’s inventories in addition to the player’s.
Reasoning: For crafting, picking up materials from retainers before beginning a craft is a long and frustrating process that simply feels unnecessary. If materials are pulled from all inventories automatically, this frustration can be eliminated.

For fishing, it is easy to forget to pick up the correct tackle before heading out to the desired fishing location. Perhaps more importantly, have to fit gear into the (usually rather full) player inventory makes it difficult for a player to simply walk up to a newfound body of water and try casting with various bait and tackle to see what’s there. Needing to transfer bait and tackle to the player inventory in advance makes spontaneous fishing while exploring all but impossible and greatly detriments the fun of fishing in a newfound location.

For recommended gear, searching and pulling from retainer inventories will prevent the classic regret: “I saved all this gear for when I got around to levelling X class but then forgot to use any of it.”

Option 2: Complete inventory revamp.

This starts with the introduction of a new means of storing glamours which, for simplicity, I will refer to as the “Look Book.” This is akin to the BLU spellbook/sightseeing log, with an entry for every piece of gear with a unique combination of model and default colouring. The Look Book is a replacement for the current Glamour Chest and Armoury Dresser.

How is gear added to the Look Book? We have several options:

1) Gear images are unlocked automatically in the Look Book upon obtaining a piece of gear with that unique model+default colouring combo for the first time. The original piece of gear remains with the player to do with as they please. (In this case, Glamour Prisms become obsolete.)

2) Gear images are unlocked should the player choose to destroy the piece to add it to their Look Book. (In this case, the inventory icon for the gear should bear a flag if the image has not yet been unlocked. Additionally, Glamour Prisms become obsolete.)

3) Gear images are unlocked upon spending a glamour prism. The original piece of gear remains with the player to do with as they please. (In this case, the inventory icon for the gear should bear a flag if the image has not yet been unlocked.)

(continued)

Ideally, the Look Book entries before image unlock note the dungeon etc. in which the gear may be found, similar to the BLU spellbook which notes the area in which a spell can be learned. This makes for a grand hunt to try to unlock each image.

All of this means that players are able to unlock and keep every possible glamour image, albeit only with default colouring, in their Look Book. Players are further able to open the Look Book and create glamour plates.

As the Look Book only holds images with their default colouring, dye will be consumed every time the player wishes to create a glamour plate that utilizes dyed gear. However, I feel this additional cost is entirely worth the convenience and the reduced burden on inventory that this new glamour system represents.

While the above provides a solid description of how the Look Book works, I do have suggestions to further improve its capability for creating glamours.

Primarily, I recommend that, upon unlocking the aesthetician, the player also unlocks the ability to apply hairstyles to glamour plates. My reasoning for this is that some gear clips very badly with certain hairstyles. As a result, hair that looks great with one glam may look awful with another. Running to the aesthetician every time the player switches jobs is not remotely practical. Neither is simply avoiding the hairstyle because it doesn’t work well with one of your 15 glamour plates ideal, though.

Jandelaine retains his place. The aesthetician is still required to change the player character’s base hairstyle and colouring. But including hairstyles in the Look Book, as well as ideally the option to colour them when adding them to a glam plate if this is feasible, will drastically improve the experience of creating a glamour plate by ensuring the player can choose any gear without concern for whether it clips with their preferred default hairstyle.

If including the option to colour the hair glamour from the Look Book is not feasible, it will still be tremendously useful to have the hairstyles available for glamour to prevent the aforementioned clipping issues with certain gear. In this case, when the glamour plate is applied, the hairstyle on the plate is applied using the player character’s current hair colour.

An alternate option to handle hair style and colouring in glamours would be to allow the creation of wigs via the aesthetician. Their images can then be added to the glamour plates. There are two ways this can be implemented: Either they are added to the plates straight from the player’s inventory, or the Look Book can be set up to hold a few wigs (three is likely sufficient). Alternatively, a new gear slot with no stats can be created specially for wigs, eliminating the need to include them as glamour options. Giving them a gear slot simplifies the Look Book and Glamour Plates while still giving the player the option to have different hairstyles saved to each gearset.

(continued)

Reasoning: I include the Look Book as my first suggestion for easing inventory management for players because glamour gear takes up a lot of inventory space for many players. Currently, once the Glamour Chest is full, more glamour gear is heaped onto retainers and fills up the Armoury Chest and Inventory.

Increasing the number of slots in the Glamour Chest and Inventory, etc., is only a temporary solution, and not a sustainable one. With each patch, the number of unique gear pieces increases, as does the pressure for the player to find space to store yet more favourites. Final Fantasy XIV includes some beautiful gear, and forcing players to choose any given number of them is a shame.

Creating the “Look Book” allows the Glamour Chest and Armoury Dressers to be removed from the game completely. I have heard the reason our inventories must be limited is to limit the amount of data each player character requires. I feel then that in addition to solving the most common glamour woes amongst players, the Look Book will aid in reducing the amount of data held hostage by each player character through the elimination of the 400 Glamour Chest slots.

Switching from the Glamour Chest and Armoury Dresser to the Look Book is a solid win for everyone and a strategy I, as a player, strongly recommend.

From here, we can further ease inventory management for the player by additionally incorporating Option 1 and/or by creating a separate crafting material inventory with space for a stack of every material available (crafting would automatically draw from this inventory). Following the switch to the Look Book, however, a separate crafting inventory would be more a “nice to have” than a requirement for improving inventory management, provided we are able to draw our crafting materials from our retainers automatically during crafting.

That said, it would, indeed, be *very* nice to have, and including a separate crafting inventory would allow cutting down the size of the main player inventory if necessary.

(continued)

My final, perhaps obvious suggestion regards fishing bait and tackle. My chocobo smells like fish and this is unacceptable lol. Every player who has unlocked FSH should have newly obtained bait and tackle automatically stored in a tackle box that is accessible using the tackle box action as a fisher.

Oh, there are other suggestions. More options for sorting our inventories, etc. But the overhauls detailed above will go furthest towards reducing the chore of inventory management in FFXIV and freeing players to do more of what we want to do in game: play.

I hope with all my heart that you will give these and other player suggestions due consideration. I believe these quality of life improvements for inventory will have great impact in making the game all the more enjoyable.

Thank you for a (mostly) wonderful experience in Eorzea these first 10 months. I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Sincerely,
Neve

P.S. Speaking of glamour… I have a request.

Please remove the class/job locks on all glamours except weapons. Once the requisite class/job to equip the gear has been sufficiently levelled, the glamour image should be applicable to any class/job. Some of the crafter gear is really quite lovely, for example, and it’s a shame combat jobs can’t use it for glamour.

Since dresses and swimsuits can be used for any job, there is no logical reason any gear should be barred from being used by all jobs once the player has met the requirements to equip the gear on the intended classes/jobs.

FIN

This allows more glamour freedom while retaining the exclusivity of only being able to use the glamour if you’ve levelled a given job. If checking that the player has levelled the “correct” job to use is problematic, perhaps the Look Book could simply be restricted in that you can only add gear that you are able to equip in the first place.

Whoops actual FIN

In the future you can use the edit to get past the character limit, post a bit then edit and paste the rest of it (make sure to save your stuff somewhere so you don't accidentally come out with something incomplete xD).

I think the Look Book would be a really nice addition to the game and a lot beyond just inventory management, like players going back to old content just to complete looks or wearing more diverse glamour options because now they could fairly easily see what's missing and what it looks like vs just forgetting awesome armor because it's been too long. I think I'd fill out a lot of it just because it'd be fun to fill out.

Being able to save hair styles would be a huge feature for some people I think, but I wonder if it would add a huge challenge to the system or not. Also Hrothgar and Viera? :3. You'd get loads of love if they could change hair easily lol (our hair and face are currently bound together, meaning you need fantasia to change your hair xD).

Having the book act per item I think would be most friendly but if SE has a problem with that I did suggest a system that went per dugneon / content instead via the Aether Library / Forge. Behaves a bit more macro scale than their storage system from FFXI, but with a bit of ease of management via stackable items and the forge which comes out making it a bit of a feature.

On the crafting retainer part it would be really convinent if you could just toss crafting into a crafting pit / retainer and have it come out as needed, I think it was GW2 that had all crafting materials go there which was neat. I don't craft so much so the idea isn't as high a priority and even when I have it didn't bother me too much but I wouldn't cry if I got that feature lol (it would be really cool), just I think if it was "choose one" look book or crafting book/siphon that I'd pick the look book. If I can have both I'd do both ;).

Also welcome to the forums, first few posts in style :D I like lol.

Thank you for both the warm welcome and the editing trick! :)

I absolutely agree that the Look Book would also be great for adding extra value to older content. I enjoy trying to complete that sort of thing and would also go on the hunt to get every entry. More sentimentally, I also think it's a shame that many players won't see every glamour item, let alone be able to hold on to them all for future use. Someone worked hard on every one of those pieces, and they deserve to be dusted off and admired rather than forgotten.

Also, of my suggestions, I admit the Look Book is my favourite for the reasons you mentioned. I love that adding something like that to the game would not only ease inventory management, but also add to the experience of glamour and exploring dungeons for unique gear. It's my hope that SE will consider implementing it as one of the ways they aim to keep end game players going back to early content.

No.. breaking them up into that many posts was smart. Not sure people would be cool with reading a 5 post long post. You are full of depth and long winded, and many people aren't all that crazy about long winded people anymore on the net. :/

While all your ideas sound wonderful and well thought out, it's all things people have proposed before. The problem , as SE explains it, is that the systems that track our inventory do not allow for such an implementation. So while people can continue to propose grand solutions such as this.. we are limited to what the current underlying inventory infrastructure can support.


You have my support in that I would love this sort of GW2-esque cosmetic log, but I have little faith the necessary changes and resources will be utilized.

I've wondered how players even FIND gear to build glamours from in this game. The few I have are just from quests I've done. I have no idea how to see the items before getting them, other than checking out what other players are wearing. (If that's possible.)

In WoW, I had an addon that could display ALL the gear appearances in the client, and let you dress your character with them in a window, then save it to use as a shopping list. This way, you could build the perfect "glamour" in advance, then go out and get the items. It even told you where you could find many of the items. I wish FFXIV had something like this built-in.
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/mogit/screenshots