A consern about space efficieny since stormblood is not getting enough space increase

[Shougun]

In WoW you can have 11 characters on one realm and each of your 10 alts can have their own bags, bank and guild bank (which is huge). You can mail extra stuff to those alts and on top of this the game also has a glamour log and an armoire. Inventory space is far more limited in FFXIV than in WoW.

Addons make it really easy too, one to track what your alts have (so you dont have to log in and out/if you forgot), another to mass mail and mass open. It's relatively easy and straight forward, and it all comes under one sub purchase :3.

(Ofc we can add the glamour log, and other space savers it has to add to that inventory difference, wardrobe alone can easily count for 200+ slots)

Edit: just for fun checked the wiki on wardrobe system, this is an old screenshot so its probably not accurate anymore (slightly larger than before I imagine):



714 items saved, 714 "slots" possibly saved. LOL, /cry. Of course that won't effectively feel like 714 for everyone since not everyone cares about X, Y, Z item, but still - it is very easily +200.

It's also account wide with the convenient wardrobe character drop down previewer, so alt-alcoholics can enjoy looks far easier (there are transmog restrictions of course though, but the log is account wide).

[Ama_Hamada]

Rents space AFTER providing you with one of the higher by slot amounts at one of the lowest in-game costs.

If you made every slot a free form inventory slot now, you'd have almost 800 at a costthat a newbie can accrue in about 20 minutes or less. With the upcoming inventory expansion, that number jumps to nearly 1k inventory slots, for a pittance in-game.

You want the roughly 670 slots you can have total on a character in WoW? Be prepared to shell out the equivalent of several million gil.

Compared to the games that give me 30 slots then ask me to shell out $1 a pop for the next 10 slots while also filling said bags with loot chests that need keys bought from a store to open? You'll excuse me if I still find those practices to be sleazier than offering space above and beyond what we already get, which is in and of itself more than a number of other games offer at their max inventory available on a per character basis.

The only reason it feels more limited is because of restrictions on what can go where and sending stuff to alt characters on the same account is not a quick/easy option.

wow does not have 24 + gear sets to shift though, it is 1 set per character.. no crafting gear and maybe fishing pole and miner tool? WoW has much more free space then here and lol@ thinking 2 million 1 time fee is a big deal, I take that over paying double my sub.

WoW has more then enough space, this game doesn't with how they are played

[Berethos]

In WoW you can have 11 characters on one realm and each of your 10 alts can have their own bags, bank and guild bank (which is huge).

I've mentioned this several times as one of the reasons their system overall is better, despite the lower overall per character space.

My original points, however, had to do with how much space we get on a per character basis and that, contrary to popular opinion, it's actually a fairly sizable inventory when counted on a per slot basis (and per character is easier to obtain), and that treating it like we have a tiny inventory is disingenuous at best.

Also that increasing inventory even by 100 total slots, otherwise several older MMOs would have increased theirs by significant amounts long ago.

[Berethos]

wow does not have 24 + gear sets to shift though, it is 1 set per character.

And despite that, when I played my inventory was routinely nearly full until they managed to get the transmog catalog implemented...as they don't have a way of recovering old gear the way we do in FFXIV (which can easily account for freeing up a couple hundred item slots across various quest reward gear, event items, and holiday stuff that you'd have to hold on to in WoW or lose it forever).

Grass ain't always greener on the other side.

Also, since it bears repeating, inventory increases aren't trivial tasks - the 40 or so increase each time they did it in WoW is indicative of that, and I guarantee that the transmog catalog tool a helluva lot of development time over several years to get implemented.

[Naunet]

Be prepared to shell out the equivalent of several million gil.

Or craft them yourself. In a game that doesn't have nearly the level of space issues as FFXIV. Or you can stop trying to compare being asked to spend real life money to rent virtual inventory space with spending in-game money earned through playing the game.

and I guarantee that the transmog catalog tool a helluva lot of development time over several years to get implemented.

Good thing FFXIV has already had several years to work on this, because we've literally been asking for a log to store armor appearances since day one.

[Ama_Hamada]

And despite that, when I played my inventory was routinely nearly full until they managed to get the transmog catalog implemented...as they don't have a way of recovering old gear the way we do in FFXIV (which can easily account for freeing up a couple hundred item slots across various quest reward gear, event items, and holiday stuff that you'd have to hold on to in WoW or lose it forever).

Grass ain't always greener on the other side.

Also, since it bears repeating, inventory increases aren't trivial tasks - the 40 or so increase each time they did it in WoW is indicative of that, and I guarantee that the transmog catalog tool a helluva lot of development time over several years to get implemented.

Does not matter, how long did it take them to change it? We are going on 2 expansions, one clearly ignored, where inventory was not addressed at all, and no making people pay double their sub is not a fix to it.

[SokiYagami]

Rents space AFTER providing you with one of the higher by slot amounts at one of the lowest in-game costs.

If you made every slot a free form inventory slot now, you'd have almost 800 at a cost that a newbie can accrue in about 20 minutes or less. With the upcoming inventory expansion, that number jumps to nearly 1k inventory slots, for a pittance in-game.

You want the roughly 670 slots you can have total on a character in WoW? Be prepared to shell out the equivalent of several million gil.

Compared to the games that give me 30 slots then ask me to shell out $1 a pop for the next 10 slots while also filling said bags with loot chests that need keys bought from a store to open? You'll excuse me if I still find those practices to be sleazier than offering space above and beyond what we already get, which is in and of itself more than a number of other games offer at their max inventory available on a per character basis.

The only reason it feels more limited is because of restrictions on what can go where and sending stuff to alt characters on the same account is not a quick/easy option.

I'm not going to argue if the grass is greener on the other side, as I do not have enough experience with the other MMOs. Some of the other users seems to be implying that the other MMOs are indeed having it better though. But either way,

And even if there's one, two wrongs don't make a right.

Right, now that we put that aside, let's talk about FFXIV. You keep mentioning that FFXIV have higher raw inventory count, which is right. But in our case it's like a country with high income and high tax. We have more inventory space, that is true, but we also have more items to take up that space. Let's think back a little, regarding seasonal gear. They have no other purpose besides glamour function, that much I assume we can all agree with? The previous stance was, seasonal gear can only be place into the armorie some patch after release because Yoshi-P wanted the players to wear it for a bit before they toss it aside and forget about it. Was a pretty fair and logical reasoning, and I personally think that train of thought comes in line with respecting the developer/artist who work on the gear. However, many players complaint about said seasonal gear taking up precious inventory space (as there's no optional way to re-obtain the gear after tossing it back then, neither NPC in-game nor kupo store), and there are times where it take way more time than desire before we can put them into the armorie. So they change it to what we have now, being able to store into armorie the moment we receive it and/or the ability to re-purchase said gear from NPC in-game.

So you might be wondering what I'm getting at pulling this subject out of the blue, what I'm trying to say is that the armorie might have limitations on how much items that can be code in it, but it is able to be expanded when required. So assuming this is true, I have but one question;

"If the armorie can be expanded when required, why can't we store kupo store/promotion gear that are actually purchase/obtain by spending cash?"

We can debate that even though a glamour log/bait box/others useful QoL request can help tremendously with the inventory space, but they haven't implement it yet because it's technically challenging or simply because they don't have the time for it. However I can't help but feel that some existing factors to inventory bloat are intended. I think it's logical to say that among all the factors that are contributing to inventory bloat, it's not unfair to expect that those that involved cash spent should be dealt with in a better manner, no? Like how server space is an issue which can be solved by renting retainer, sounds familiar? Objectively speaking, but if I'm working in the SE business team, I might be thinking along the line of, "If these players are willing to spent cash getting the items, there's a good chance that they are willing to spent more cash renting the retainers as well?"

All course, all of this are my personal opinion, so take it what you will. But I can say that I am not blindly white knighting SE nor am I criticizing them without reason as if I've a pair of Nidhogg eyeballs on my shoulder with "Highway to Hell" playing at full blast in the background. With that said, I'm off to work. Hope everyone have a nice day.

[Maero]

40 slots may/will get filled up fast but it is a start.
What would really help is allowing things stackable that should have been by now like maps for example

[KisaiTenshi]

I would not want retainers to function as my wardrobe/glamour/item log. Unless you meant some other sort of system. Transmog Wardorbe/etc similar systems would be more preferable, better organized, easier to use than a retainer, I do not want to see the armoire become the glamour log either as the interface would be really ugly and clunky (similar reason why opposed to retainers, it would be a worse system).

Decor/crafting bags or w.e in the retainer wouldn't mind as much, although I would like to be able to more quickly access both retainers. Perhaps one pane with a tab at the top for the retainers, and they can have a loading circle like they do for the FC banks on pages - having to do four menus to check a different retainer isn't that great lol (although I understand if I had to wait a sec for loading between tabs).

I didn't want to write a longer post (I initially did but, then lost half of it due to text limits)

Basically how I would address the problems is to learn from the mistakes of other games

1) Keep player inventory at 25 items per page, only allow one page to be manipulated at a time, this keeps sync data down

2) Allow adding more "pages" by having a "item bag" or a specific container item that is permanently part of the inventory. Do not allow more than one page to be open at a time, if you want to dump stuff, "label" a bag (eg "allow only (consumables||potions|food|ingredients) in this bag") and you'll get a drop prompt, or if you're talking to a merchant, a sell prompt, or talking to your retainer a "deposit on retainer" prompt. You can always drop things into your main 100 unit inventory.

3) Allow the Retainer to have these same "item bag" inventory expansions subject to the same rules. The "store inventory" keeping a list of 20 items that can be sold, or refilled from retainer inventory until depleted.

4) Configure the Armoire to have "Special", "Seasonal", "Gear sets" and "Glamour sets" pages. If you want to store a gear set and still be able to use the gear at a later date, you store it in the gear set, and this can be theoretically unlimited, but you -MUST- store it in the armoire, and you must come back to the inn to switch it in and out. A "Glamour set" instead makes a fixed costume set that can never be removed (only deleted) from the armoire, but can be "attached" to any gear set that you are currently carrying. Since the gear can't be retrieved again, you can only delete it, or dye it. If you get a new hat that you like better than the one in the glamour set, you can copy the glamour set and then replace the hat. You don't get to withdraw anything once glamoured.


Experience from other games suggests that you want to keep the player inventory as small as possible, but you can work-around the limits by imposing limitations on being able to open or close those bags. Like for example, if you had a bag that added 800 spaces, it takes 2 seconds to open/close/move stuff, which would be infuriating to use, especially during combat.

In another game, the "pet/mount" was the expanded inventory mechanic. This works great until you have to cycle through 90 pets to find that thing you're looking for. While I think this works for field crafting/gathering this works out terribly for dungeons since you can't summon pets/minions/mounts in dungeons. More to the point, this other game put time limits on the summons, so you were SOL if you didn't plan.

So the best solution that doesn't break the game as it is now is by creating expanded inventory pages, either by having items that act as containers for a specific items like consumables, or by breaking the inventory system in half so that your dungeon inventory is limited only to the consumables bag and the original 4 inventory pages. You don't get to bring crafting materials into the dungeon. You don't get to bring gear into the dungeon that doesn't belong to the class you queued as. That keeps the latency from item/gear use down.

The technical inventory is unlimited, but the amount you can synchronize has to stay low otherwise dungeon play, or field play (eg FATE's) becomes too laggy, for everyone. It's not a question of transferring 100 items once, and then the game client just knows you have it, those items are syncronized every time you use an item or get an item, or open a window, and so forth. So I don't see SE changing how much you can store on the character, only how much you can store in other inventory type of items or fixed locations.

I mean seriously, the quickest way to add more inventory space to the game is to have a "bank" NPC with global inventory scope (eg all your other characters on the same server can share it) and thus allowing the player to have one page per level 50 character job reached. But only allow materials/items that are specific to that class to go into those pages (Eg DoL could only store gathered materials, DoH could only store finished gear) to avoid disorganization.

[silverhope]

Let me Craft out of my retainers inventory.. this will save alot of reg inventory space