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

[Avidria]

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.

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.

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.

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. :/

[Lemuria]

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

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

Oh really? Well, how about we talk about just that.

In WoW, you can get a nice tidy 110 inventory spaces if you go crazy with the bags and have gold coming out of your ears. This game offers you 750 inventory slots without paying a single dime! Skeptical? Let's look at the facts, shall we?

You start with 100 standard inventory slots by default. You have, by extension, 300 inventory slots for your armory. That's 400 slots already. Now, retainers offer a tidy sum of 175 slots each. You can have two retainers without paying extra. That's 350 inventory slots. Now, who here can do elementary math? Three hundred and fifty plus four hundred. You at the front, yes you. That's right. 750 inventory slots! Have a piece of candy.

That's before I even mention buying even a single extra retainer. Oh, and for obvious reasons I'm not counting the soul crystals or key items either. Do you see why I said that they're extremely generous already? I challenge you to name even one game which comes close to that. It doesn't exist anywhere.

Now, as I mentioned in the post that both of you quoted, that doesn't mean I don't have inventory troubles. I'm a crafter, so I'm always going to have inventory troubles. However, the REASON we have trouble is because we're hoarders by nature. Go on, you're free to admit it, we're all big girls and boys here. No one is judging you, least of all me. Heck, I'll freely admit I'm one of the worst hoarders of them all, because I just never know when I'll need that red landtrap leaf, or that rock salt for a quick synthesis.

Would more inventory be nice? Hell yes. Am I going to say we're, quote, "suffocating on inventory space"? Hell no. It helps to at least have some sense of perspective here. We have these troubles because we hoard, and we hoard because we can. More inventory space wouldn't solve that issue, it would just give us more chances to hoard. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's food for thought at least.

All I'm asking is for people to think before they post, instead of playing the victim. If this was a blame game, I'd be the first on the rack.

[Gyson]

That's before I even mention buying even a single extra retainer. Oh, and for obvious reasons I'm not counting the soul crystals or key items either. Do you see why I said that they're extremely generous already? I challenge you to name even one game which comes close to that. It doesn't exist anywhere.

All I'm asking is for people to think before they post, instead of playing the victim. If this was a blame game, I'd be the first on the rack.

Well, I'm not going to patch up, log in and count it, but between the dedicated slots available for crafting items, the ability to stack items up to 250 (unless they've increased it again - wait, I checked, you can boost it to stack to 1500 per stack), the ability to belong to multiple guilds and thus have your own guild bank, bag space, etc, I'm going to guess Guild Wars 2 allows you to have more storage space than FFXIV. Even more storage can be gained by spending gems, which can be purchased using in-game gold, and it's a one-time fee rather than the additional rental charge every month that FFXIV uses.

Having said that, I'm willing to bet most MMOs provide more storage space, for the simple fact that most games allow you to mail items between alternate characters. And once you start factoring in easy mule transfers in other MMOs, FFXIV's free storage options start to look pretty pathetic. And we're not even touching on MMOs that have superior solutions to vanity item storage.

Hey, all I ask is for people to think before they post.

[CyrilLucifer]

When FFXI, a game held back by PS2 limitations and one that keeps character server data that has existed since 2002, which means you can't use the "XIV has more players" excuse, can have more than 700 inventory slots per character, I find it extremely hard to believe that XIV is limited by their "servers."

Now, admittedly, the last 200 added inventory did finally start adding to load times, but unlike XIV, you can view all of your inventory data at any given time. XIV doesn't suffer from that problem.

[Avidria]

Oh really? Well, how about we talk about just that.

In WoW, you can get a nice tidy 110 inventory spaces if you go crazy with the bags and have gold coming out of your ears. This game offers you 750 inventory slots without paying a single dime! Skeptical? Let's look at the facts, shall we?

You start with 100 standard inventory slots by default. You have, by extension, 300 inventory slots for your armory. That's 400 slots already. Now, retainers offer a tidy sum of 175 slots each. You can have two retainers without paying extra. That's 350 inventory slots. Now, who here can do elementary math? Three hundred and fifty plus four hundred. You at the front, yes you. That's right. 750 inventory slots! Have a piece of candy.

That's before I even mention buying even a single extra retainer. Oh, and for obvious reasons I'm not counting the soul crystals or key items either. Do you see why I said that they're extremely generous already? I challenge you to name even one game which comes close to that. It doesn't exist anywhere.

Now, as I mentioned in the post that both of you quoted, that doesn't mean I don't have inventory troubles. I'm a crafter, so I'm always going to have inventory troubles. However, the REASON we have trouble is because we're hoarders by nature. Go on, you're free to admit it, we're all big girls and boys here. No one is judging you, least of all me. Heck, I'll freely admit I'm one of the worst hoarders of them all, because I just never know when I'll need that red landtrap leaf, or that rock salt for a quick synthesis.

Would more inventory be nice? Hell yes. Am I going to say we're, quote, "suffocating on inventory space"? Hell no. It helps to at least have some sense of perspective here. We have these troubles because we hoard, and we hoard because we can. More inventory space wouldn't solve that issue, it would just give us more chances to hoard. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's food for thought at least.

All I'm asking is for people to think before they post, instead of playing the victim. If this was a blame game, I'd be the first on the rack.

The current max bag size in WoW is 30 slots. You can have 4 on your person and 7 in your bank, which adds up to 330 slots, plus the 44 from the default bank and inventory slots that can't be changed - so 374 on one character.

But you can have 11 characters per server, so if you really go nuts and primarily play one character that's a max of 4114 slots total at no additional cash cost. Yes, those bags are absurdly expensive in gold and materials, but that's not my point - my point is that they are available in game, not in the cash shop. You can also freely mail gold and items between alts. I had 5-6 characters that I played actively and 5 or so more that I played on and off, plus 3 or so that were almost exclusively used for storage. I had their inventories, banks, guild banks (I had 2 of my own guilds), and mailboxes at my disposal. Each character also has access to 80 more slots through void storage.

Granted the original, base inventory space for WoW is kind of terrible - 16 slots of inventory space is next to useless if you play for any length of time. But they gave a way to get more, and they kept adding more as the game aged.

And I have no qualms with admitting that I am a hoarder in games. I collect things. My druid in WoW, who I played for ~10 years, has a completely full bank, full void storage, and a mostly full inventory...full of items and gear sets and random stuff, a fair amount of which doesn't exist or isn't available anymore. But that's beside the point, too.

My issue is primarily with the fact that you need to spend cash to get more space in this game. There are dozens of solutions available, but that's all we have right now.

[RiceisNice]

...

It's all relative. WoW starts you with 16 slots, and easily 108 slots without having to splurge gold. You're also comparing those 750 slots (which includes retainers. IE, banks) but do not include WoW's banking? That's extremely bias toward comparing inventory slots.

WoW also does not have two versions of nearly every item (NQ/HQ), tackle baits for fishing, and token currencies that take up a bag slot. Their inventory is also a bit optimized that it's certianly not a hell hole for having a cluttered inventory, specifically that you can't craft anything period if you have no slot, even if you're crafting an item that can be stacked onto an existing slot, and items that can't be picked up disappear into FFXIV's equivalent of The Twisting Nether. with no Postmaster to assist you.

I mean ealistically speaking, the inventory issue at point blank isn't that bad, but there's so many other nonsensical things that surround the function of an inventory drives me nuts. But by no means is our inventory circumstances any better than what's currently existing, numerically (because again, it's sort of a relative thing with the game it's in) or functionally.

[Eye_Gore]

This game offers you 750 inventory slots without paying a single dime![/B] Skeptical? Let's look at the facts, shall we?

The fact is they keep adding items with nowhere for us to put them unless we pay more money, and thats the truth.

[Lemuria]

It's all relative. WoW starts you with 16 slots, and easily 108 slots without having to splurge gold. You're also comparing those 750 slots (which includes retainers. IE, banks) but do not include WoW's banking? That's extremely bias toward comparing inventory slots.

Errm... 750 slots on one character still beats WoW even with the banks. My point was how you'd have to go absolutely crazy with bag slots on WoW just to match the default storage on FFXIV.

The fact is they keep adding items with nowhere for us to put them unless we pay more money, and thats the truth.

Except... it's not. The retainers are not default storage. They're something you unlock IN GAME. Thats a whopping +350 storage slots from in-game play and no extra purchases.

Just because you don't count it, doesn't mean it doesn't count. Again, no one is disputing that there's a lot of things for us to hoard, but the fact is we're having these problems BECAUSE we hoard. It's not an issue with the actual game, nor is SE being even remotely stingy with the inventory space. If you're even halfway honest, most of the stuff we get we could easily discard or sell off, but we don't. We keep it 'just because'.

One of my retainers is stocked on old equipment alone, and most of it I just use for glamors. Do I need any of that stuff? Not really. Do I want it? Of course! I really don't understand how people can say we don't get much inventory space, when the reality is we just find new ways to stock up on junk!

[Eye_Gore]

Except... it's not.

So its not true that they keep adding items with no extra storage for us unless we pay for it? Well slap me silly and call me Bobo.

[RiceisNice]

Errm... 750 slots on one character still beats WoW even with the banks. My point was how you'd have to go absolutely crazy with bag slots on WoW just to match the default storage on FFXIV.Except... it's not. The retainers are not default storage. They're something you unlock IN GAME. Thats a whopping +350 storage slots from in-game play and no extra purchases.

Like I said, everything is relative, and you don't even have to go "absolutely crazy" as you say with bag slots. 750 slots (and they're not necessarily all effective slots since you're including armory) is a lot in WoW, but nessescarly so in FFXIV with how they handle their items and drops