We're suffocating on inventory space - how much of a priority is it to fix it?

I know this has been mentioned many times, but seriously we are suffocating on inventory space and as patch and patch come by it'll only get worse.

I know there are answers to this already that it's something they are working on but server space is a limiting factor.

All I want to ask is this: exactly how much is SE prioritising a fix to this problem?

Are we only going to see an answer 3 patches away? Or is something going to be done really soon?

They have alternatives if you do want extra inventory space, you could accommodate what they have to offer with their current inventory space options if you're not hoarding.

Though free inventory space is something wanted/ I'd always take, suffocating from lack of space is over dramatic I think.

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Please buy more retainers to alleviate the inventory problem - Yoshida

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Not his actual words as that would be a PR disaster but that's literally the best we've got, it's always PS3/server limitations, the servers will explode if we give everyone free retainers, etc. I remember reading pre-Heavensward (or maybe it was a recent interview, I honestly can't recall) that the majority of players haven't even filled their first retainer's inventory, so it's likely not a high priority either.

It's not being considered at any level, and once they decide to develop something it still takes like 3-4 patches at least to get it to the implementation stage.

So with a little luck, maybe as early as 4.1

Without luck, never

I think it's a high priority since every single PLL there is some question about inventory space. Yoshida knows there is demand for more space but the problem is no matter how much players want it, I believe that it's basically impossible to get it right now for players. I think they are trying to work out solutions, but everything they come up with doesn't work/puts too much strain so they have to think up and try something new.

Just like many issues this game has if it is going to actually cost the dev team time and resources to fix, just think of it on the back burner until the community tolerance for it reaches a boiling point.

Just look at housing they continue to bandaid the system they shoved out the door broken and have yet to even do anything significant about it.

1. Instead of releasing it as a seperate content as planned they just flipped the switch to let solo players buy the FC plots.
2. Instead of doing anything they have just added a decay timer to the current housing system.

Until they do something significant about the housing problem I doubt we will see anything else get fixed unless it requires no real effort on their side.

look. they're going to bleed us dry before they give us retainers for free. they dont care. they know that we're not gonna stop playing if this doesn't get fixed.
It's even more obvious that this is the case seeing as there is an actual solution give to us by them, "buy retainers", but its hidden behind having to pay extra. It's not a matter of "it can't be done" but "we don't want to do it for free"

Rather than just more space, I'd rather see some of the systems that have popped up in other games added to FF14 to actually solve the inventory issue instead of just delaying it by adding more slots.

Guild Wars 2's crafting component inventory should be a genre standard, and a proper cosmetic appearance/armour system instead of just glamouring should be a priority (and could still be cash shop compatible if SE wants it that way).

There are ways to ease up on the stranglehold on the inventory. One that doesn't even require actually adding more slots to everyone. Too bad that instead of focusing on these "passive" solutions, they seem to be much busier flooding us with even more items (and I don't even mean the actual gear sets here).

The funny thing about inventory space is that no matter how much of it you have, people will always want more. FFXIV is incredibly generous with inventory space compared to many games that I've played. In FFXI, you didn't have an armory chest. All of your gear, for all of your jobs, was in your gobbie bag or not at all. That bag could be upgraded to a maximum of 80 spaces! Now we not only have a 100 space inventory, but an armory chest with 25 slots per item! The amount of inventory space we have is insanely generous already.

That's not to say I don't have inventory troubles. I'm a crafter. My inventory is almost always packed full of materials, finished works or catalysts for repairs and melds. I'm constantly battling against the struggle. But I realise that it's not the fault of the system, it's a fault of how I play the game. And I know better than anyone that if I had a bigger inventory, I'd just find new ways to fill it back up.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

The funny thing about inventory space is that no matter how much of it you have, people will always want more. FFXIV is incredibly generous with inventory space compared to many games that I've played. In FFXI, you didn't have an armory chest. All of your gear, for all of your jobs, was in your gobbie bag or not at all. That bag could be upgraded to a maximum of 80 spaces! Now we not only have a 100 space inventory, but an armory chest with 25 slots per item! The amount of inventory space we have is insanely generous already.

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Don't just compare inventory size to another inventory size. Take a look at the number of storable items vs the number of inventory slots - and compare that ratio. Gives a much more accurate picture. In FFXIV, last I heard we have about 7000 items that can potentially go in the inventory - right now, or with 3.1, I'm not sure; the .1 content patches add about 500-700 items, the guy said in the live letter, I think? (And don't forget that the "every job on one character" thing is not really common either, as far as I know.)

They have repeatedly brought up that they're working on optimizing things on the back-end so that they can add more space...

They mentioned for example that they could backup stuff less often, but that would mean higher risk of losing items in case of a server crash.

Any change being done also needs to be really carefully done in order to not break our existing inventories.

There are plenty of things I'd like to see... A component inventory... A tackle box... A fish box... Things that don't need to be immediately available when opening the inventory. Things that is enough if it's synched with the server when you're trying to see what's there (like retainer inventory).

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

They mentioned for example that they could backup stuff less often, but that would mean higher risk of losing items in case of a server crash.

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They need to back up stuff less often. That ~15s is totally insane: on one hand it's flooding the network with traffic (at least, I'd guess, half of which is completely unnecessary) continuously; on the other, it's a strain on the servers themselves - no idea what they're using, but if it's SSDs it's certainly a quick death for them, if it's HDDs I wonder if they can even finish one save before starting the next. There are simply too many characters online at any given time, even if only half of their inventories is full, it's way too much data. They even let AFKers just idle away and do nothing for 6-8-10-12 hours, dozens of them at any given time in any city, and their inventories are being backed up too.

And for what? That 90k disconnect error is as frequent as ever. Network strain and data sizes and server limitations are mentioned in pretty much every live letter, in pretty much every issue we get a negative reply to (which is quite a lot). While at the same in the 2+ years since ARR launched - how many servers crashes did we have? How many times did we need a rollback? As far as I remember: zero. That backup timer need to be increased, at least to 1 minute - that would be much more rational on both sides of the argument. (Personally, I'd say once every 5 minutes, with logout and retainer exchanges actively triggering a backup.) Heck, have the acquisition of blue/purple items (even scrip-exchanged items, for all I care) actively trigger a backup. And for sanity's sake, put the AFK-kick feature back in and don't ever remove it - if you're away for more than an hour, if you're "stuck" in "crafting" or in a "conversation/cutscene" for more than an hour without doing anything, you've no place to be online in this game, not with the systems (backup and hardware) that it currently has. It's a very remarkable system, in a way (not in a good way), that's so damn spartan and strict on one side of an issue, and so utterly lax and free on the other side of that same issue...

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

They need to back up stuff less often.

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The backup mentioned is done server side. There is no synchronisation done between client and server that often afaik, so the backup doesn't mean network flooding.
Inventory related network traffic is generated when you change anything in your inventory, and when you go into instances.

The 90K disconnect errors are generally not on SE's side of the equation. ISP's and backbone providers are the main cause of those.

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

Don't just compare inventory size to another inventory size. Take a look at the number of storable items vs the number of inventory slots - and compare that ratio. Gives a much more accurate picture. In FFXIV, last I heard we have about 7000 items that can potentially go in the inventory - right now, or with 3.1, I'm not sure; the .1 content patches add about 500-700 items, the guy said in the live letter, I think? (And don't forget that the "every job on one character" thing is not really common either, as far as I know.)

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But how many of those items that we would actually need in our inventory?

'The servers will explode' is literally a bad excuse they want you to believe. They're adding duplicates IDs (dyes that were previously untradable) and even more physical tokens in 3.1, I don't think that's a priority as long as we keep renting retainers for an extra fee.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

The amount of inventory space we have is insanely generous already.

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It really isn't, considering that alts aren't supposed to be necessary. That means you should be able to store all your crafting items and all your gear one character. To access this many classes and crafts in WoW for example, I'd probably be using most of my 11 alts.
The storage at the inn is just bizarre, hardly anything seems to go in it and retainer storage is limited unless you buy more. I'm forever trying to make space in my bags and even now at level 51, I'm having issues with the armoury.

Perhaps FFXI was less generous, but that doesn't make the provision we have here ideal.

Why can't SE just do glamour/transmog like any other MMO and just have a record of all styles of obtained visual items :| I think that's like the largest reason people hoard.

I mean I know they'd rather us just pay for 8 retainers but...

First of all, FFXI is in computer terms from the stone age network-wise. Since that game was first designed data storage and transmission has progressed tremendously. It would be like comparing the speed and cargo capability of a donkey cart to a modern oil tanker.

Secondly, FF14 is NOT generous with the armory space. Seriously, use the weapon section as the best example. It fits 25 weapons, and we have 23 classes at current. Compared to the 40-something equipment sets we can actually save, what are you going to do if you have a couple of party outfits? I mean, I have my one for lounging in a hot tub that will get changed to monk with invisible fist weapon in 3.1, I have the one I made for Halloween, and I ... oh wait. I'm full on weapons now. Oops. I hope I don't actually, you know, get a new weapon for one of my classes because changing it will now involve having to take something out of the armory chest, equipping my new weapon, taking the old weapon out of the armory chest, and putting that first weapon back in.

That is not generous. That is stupid tedium in 2015.

They're not gonna fix it because then they can take less of your money for extra retainers.

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Originally Posted by Moonleg

Secondly, FF14 is NOT generous with the armory space. Seriously, use the weapon section as the best example. It fits 25 weapons, and we have 23 classes at current.

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They already said that increasing the armory chest is the first thing they will do about increasing the characters storage.

Even tho I totally dislike this system I had to hire third retainer - for few weeks it was great, but now I am back to "if I level all the tanks to level x, I will able to free up x slots of inventory." I have a dream that once all my jobs are lvl 60 the inventory issues will be gone forever... yet with every single picture of new gear it is getting less and less probable.

Biggest issue inventory wise I'm having is with the 25 armory slots and weapons/rings thanks to having every job leveled. If gear sets could pull gear from the inventory that'd be nice. Also I saw an 11 comparison eaflier. Towards the end of redo not only did you have a gobbie bag, but there well multiple other things such as the log satchel and storage that could hold gear and players could access anytime. So really 100 + armory isn't always enough.

Reading these topics always baffle me, but I would really like to know what everyone is keeping so they have no room at all. I have all my classes to 50+, but dark and mch, and every one of them have a full set of gear allocated to them. I have 4 retainers (one for each gathering, and one combat), 2 have nothing but mats on it the other two have gear that I may use once my classes reach whatever level/glamour, but the biggest bulk of it is food and holiday crap that I'll never need. The only stuff I carry on me is stuff I actually use, resting anywhere from 80-90 out of 100 slots free.

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Originally Posted by Dukeun

Reading these topics always baffle me, but I would really like to know what everyone is keeping so they have no room at all. I have all my classes to 50+, but dark and mch, and every one of them have a full set of gear allocated to them. I have 4 retainers (one for each gathering, and one combat), 2 have nothing but mats on it the other two have gear that I may use once my classes reach whatever level/glamour, but the biggest bulk of it is food and holiday crap that I'll never need. The only stuff I carry on me is stuff I actually use, resting anywhere from 80-90 out of 100 slots free.

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This. I think that 4 retainers are the right amount at the moment to store everything one needs. Still trying to resist the urge to hire the fourth one OTL

We are gonna run out of space eventually....my retainers are filled with gear from events/crafting materials/things for other classes (thank god for 60 gear blue hand ins soon) but still there will be a lot of space taken up..and don't even get me started on my inventory.

The thing I find funny is they say that more inventory space can't be added (I mean, not even a little) yet what would happen if everyone suddenly bought an extra retainer? Obviously it's unrealistic, but it just proves that it's possible. I have one extra retainer and I'm still struggling with space. We really, really will need more soon.

It doesn't help they keep throwing glamours at us either with almost every event and we got more coming in a few days with the FFXI event.

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Originally Posted by WinterLuna

The thing I find funny is they say that more inventory space can't be added (I mean, not even a little) yet what would happen if everyone suddenly bought an extra retainer? Obviously it's unrealistic, but it just proves that it's possible. I have one extra retainer and I'm still struggling with space. We really, really will need more soon.

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Character inventory and retainer inventory is not handled the same way server side.
Retainer inventory is downloaded and synched from the server when you have the retainer up, but not otherwise.
Character inventory needs to be kept track of at all times.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

Character inventory and retainer inventory is not handled the same way server side.
Retainer inventory is downloaded and synched from the server when you have the retainer up, but not otherwise.
Character inventory needs to be kept track of at all times.

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I think Luna means that reason has also been given towards giving us a free retainer or two with the release of Heavensward. I'm sure everyone would be fine with more retainer space and not more inventory space to be honest, but that's not going to happen either.

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Originally Posted by Colorful

I think Luna means that reason has also been given towards giving us a free retainer or two with the release of Heavensward. I'm sure everyone would be fine with more retainer space and not more inventory space to be honest, but that's not going to happen either.

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Yeah, I mean they use the same excuse for both things. We can't have an extra retainer due to limitations, yet we can buy one.

I don't particularly care about inventory space... A free extra Retainer would be nice, but my physical inventory manages to be pretty tidy, only changes I'd like to see beyond that is being able to access Retainer inventories for things like crafting and casting glamours.

What I really want is a second Armoury Chest... That's where my Gear Sets are kept, that's where I have 25 spaces for main hand weapons/tools when I have 24 of them... Going to need an expansion of that before new Jobs come out, heck I'd say we need an expansion of it before Wolves Den is fixed, because it's going to be fairly annoying to fit a real PvP set in with the current space... As someone who PvPs, the Armoury Chest is getting fairly limited now... Guess they could always just drop the concept of gearing in PvP to give everyone an absolutely level playing field, and just have the rewards be glamour, but the Armoury Chest would still sucks during leveling, and it will still need an expansion come new Jobs...

I made the mistake of trying to level all crafts as I level my battle classes. I spend too much time struggling with space issues and find I just have to stop leveling any class for a time until I can empty out a bit more space. It really puts a damper on my game. I already subscribe to the game and find the thought of also having to subscribe to storage disturbing. I'm considering just starting a new character and forgetting about crafting. I have had space issues in other games, but not to this extent- I guess at least in part because no shared storage or mail between alts, which I have always had before. I find this lack of access disturbing as well. I like having different characters, but in this game, they are so isolated from one another, there's almost no point to having alts. I hope there is some remedy incoming as all this added up (along with no real wardrobe system) is a real discouragement to me playing this game.

SE could improve the inventory situation with a very simple change. Just increase stack limits from 99. This could be increased up to the maximum allowed with the existing choice of data type with zero impact on storage or data transmission. The work would be in adjusting the associated UI's to accommodate more digits.

While this wouldn't address armoury chest issues, it would dramatically help crafters.

Some QoL changes to inventory management would also be nice. Like...not stopping my craft by saying I don't have inventory space when I'm crafting a stackackable item that can be stacked onto an existing stack in my inventory. Stack.

And especially the armory space if they're planning to add more jobs in the future or even make job exclusive accessories.

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Originally Posted by Dukeun

Reading these topics always baffle me, but I would really like to know what everyone is keeping so they have no room at all. I have all my classes to 50+, but dark and mch, and every one of them have a full set of gear allocated to them. I have 4 retainers (one for each gathering, and one combat), 2 have nothing but mats on it the other two have gear that I may use once my classes reach whatever level/glamour, but the biggest bulk of it is food and holiday crap that I'll never need. The only stuff I carry on me is stuff I actually use, resting anywhere from 80-90 out of 100 slots free.

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TL;DR: I don't think there's a storage space problem because I pay more money every month to double my storage space in a pay-to-play game.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

The funny thing about inventory space is that no matter how much of it you have, people will always want more. FFXIV is incredibly generous with inventory space compared to many games that I've played. In FFXI, you didn't have an armory chest. All of your gear, for all of your jobs, was in your gobbie bag or not at all. That bag could be upgraded to a maximum of 80 spaces! Now we not only have a 100 space inventory, but an armory chest with 25 slots per item! The amount of inventory space we have is insanely generous already..

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Just no....


Inventary is ridiculously small taking in to account that we can have all those diferent classes.

Taking in to account the ridiculous amount of tokens that this game have. Taking in to account the ridiculous amount of diferent things that you need to glamour diferent things.


It's really really small.


And the retainers system is probably the less confortable system for storage management that has ever being invented.

For god's sake, I've being playing in user made Neverwinter Nights ( (This one, not the useless new one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights ) persistent worlds, and they had a far more confortable system to store items outside of a character.

Retainers are unconfortable and slow.

I don't really want more retainers. I want just a new inventory system.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

The funny thing about inventory space is that no matter how much of it you have, people will always want more. FFXIV is incredibly generous with inventory space compared to many games that I've played. In FFXI, you didn't have an armory chest. All of your gear, for all of your jobs, was in your gobbie bag or not at all. That bag could be upgraded to a maximum of 80 spaces! Now we not only have a 100 space inventory, but an armory chest with 25 slots per item! The amount of inventory space we have is insanely generous already.

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Other games also offer ways to get more inventory space that don't require paying a monthly cash micro-sub for them. In WoW it's bigger bags in your inventory and bank + void storage, In Aion, it's an expanded cube (and crafters get an even bigger inventory than everyone else on top of that). To my knowledge, most other mmo's also only have you playing one class, which would probably have 3-4 actual gear sets max anyway (depending on spec system, if there is one) so there's less need for space for that particular set of items that the armory chest (mostly) handles here.

Here, the inventory is bigger because it almost has to be. There are 23 classes in this game, and the more you play, the more slots get taken up by alt class gear - not to mention crafting mats and consumables and whatever else people like to keep.

This game has a limited-size inventory that stays static while the amount of items in the game does not...unless you're willing to pay even more cash. That's something I'm frankly not a fan of at all.

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Originally Posted by Dukeun

Reading these topics always baffle me, but I would really like to know what everyone is keeping so they have no room at all. I have all my classes to 50+, but dark and mch, and every one of them have a full set of gear allocated to them. I have 4 retainers (one for each gathering, and one combat), 2 have nothing but mats on it the other two have gear that I may use once my classes reach whatever level/glamour, but the biggest bulk of it is food and holiday crap that I'll never need. The only stuff I carry on me is stuff I actually use, resting anywhere from 80-90 out of 100 slots free.

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I only have 2 retainers, for one. One is full of crafting mats, the other is full of alt class gear and glamour. Honestly most of it is glamour. I also have food, potions, tokens that for some reason take up inventory space, holiday furniture, and old law gear that I can't do anything with yet. I have some gear on me because it won't fit on the retainers anymore. :/

Everyone who thinks we're lacking for space in this game has so obviously never played almost any other sort of online RPGish game (FFXI is merely one of MANY examples).

It's so funny, I can practically point each and every one of you out.

I have a question:
Why can't they just take some of the space for key items and make it for regular items?
I mean, do we really need 75 slots for key items?
Theoretically, I guess someone could fill up those spaces by starting quests and hunts and never finishing them but should that kind of thing be encouraged?

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

Everyone who thinks we're lacking for space in this game has so obviously never played almost any other sort of online RPGish game (FFXI is merely one of MANY examples).
It's so funny, I can practically point each and every one of you out.

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And what's wrong with that?
This is a game that caters more to casuals and first-time MMORPGers.
And second, just because you aren't having an issue with inventory does mean no one else isn't, you being level 60 in every craft and gatherers and not needing the extra material to craft items to level and all...