What ever happened to the increase in inventory slots

[Berethos]

We're still stuck on the same cankerous pile of chocobo dung that at one point rendered flowerpots with as much memory as a playercharacter

While parts of 1.0's code may remain, this part does not. They dropped Crystal Tools in development and use a proprietary engine instead (some think it's a version of Luminous, but that confusion comes from an interview where Yoshida said that some who were working on Luminous also worked on their engine).

[polyphonica]

It's related because the reason why we can get inventory increase is because "server stability" how does paying 5 dollars for an app magically buff servers to surpass or overcome this stability issue

The UI Designer actually made a post that explained all this, although in the context of another question here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...95#post4565795

Once 4.0 went live, we calculated that the server couldn't handle the amount of communication stress that the additional increased inventory slots and character item data brought with it.

Therefore, we switched our direction to adding other methods to increase the inventory, or by converting items to a different format to store them, and stopped adding spaces to inventory and the Armoury Chest with the 4.0 expansion.
* Methods such as the chocobo saddlebag and glamour dressers.

Basically, the saddlebag works around the limitation they have with regular inventory.

Of course, whether it relates to server limiations or not, the fact that people are clamoring for inventory and they are selling part of the solution for that has a bad look. No argument about that.

[Iscah]

The UI Designer actually made a post that explained all this, although in the context of another question here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...95#post4565795

Thanks for that link, I was just thinking "I remember seeing an official explanation a while ago but don't know where to find it..."

Also I asked in another topic but didn't get a reply there - is it possible that in giving more inventory space via the app, they are using that interface to store that data somewhere other than on their servers? (Whether it's going onto your phone or into iCloud or something. I don't know how app data works exactly.)

If they were doing something like this, is it possible the extra saddlebag slots can only be managed through the app and are not even visible in-game?

[Kewitt]

3rd is behind a pay wall in app

[polyphonica]

Also I asked in another topic but didn't get a reply there - is it possible that in giving more inventory space via the app, they are using that interface to store that data somewhere other than on their servers? (Whether it's going onto your phone or into iCloud or something. I don't know how app data works exactly.)

If they were doing something like this, is it possible the extra saddlebag slots can only be managed through the app and are not even visible in-game?

I don't think that's the case for the saddlebag. I suspect that the saddlebag is a sort of retainer that just doesn't need to be summoned with a bell, and has 140 slots of inventory (like every retainer, and the player inventory itself). I honestly wonder if at some point they might have planned it as a feature entirely exclusive to the app, but then realized that people were still complaining a lot about inventory, so decided to go 50/50.

(Yoshi-P commented in the past that, despite the server issues with active inventory, it'd be possible to expand the number of retainers people could have, and I suspect that (and the fact that they were already using retainers as a premium tier) is basically what led them down this path. Incidentally, it's worth noting that the amount of glamour plates you can have also works out to... 140 inventory slots. Even though it's special purpose inventory, I suspect it's still basically like another retainer-equivalent too, from a technical point of view.)

Edit: Forgot that the retainer has 175, as corrected below. Also, I was assuming they left slots in the DB for the belt + soulstone for the plates, but I suppose there's not necessarily any reason to do that since they're not shown at the moment.)

[Iscah]

Retainers get 175 inventory slots actually (five groups of 35 slots instead of four groups for players), so whatever’s going on, it’s not as simple as “140 slots in each inventory”.

The thing about glamour plates is interesting but could be coincidence, and anyway that count sounds off to me? Logging into the game to check...

EDIT: There are twelve items per glamour plate, not fourteen like your actual gear (as the invisible belt and soulstone don't need glamour slots). So, 120 plate slots, 200 dresser slots and 320 total slots are the numbers they're working with for the glamour plate system, and none of those are divisible by 35, so they seem to have broken that away from the normal inventory system entirely.

Even if it was 14 slots per glamour plate, I'd still say it could easily be a coincidence since it would be based on the pre-existing number of real gear slots, which was in place before the "items per inventory group" was raised from 25 to 35.

(Also, I assume the armoury chest was an earlier method of working around their awkward-coding inventory restrictions? It's a bit better integrated, since the game can identify that you own two copies of a thing when one is in the chest and one in inventory, though you still get segmentation issues like the recommended gear search not looking in your inventory. Each category uses one group of 35 slots.)

[Hasrat]

Retainers get 175 inventory slots actually (five groups of 35 slots instead of four groups for players), so whatever’s going on, it’s not as simple as “140 slots in each inventory”.

All your arguments are on completely separate inventory systems. Not all inventory is created equal. They're different sets of code. The restriction/limitation is only with regard to the player's active inventory.

[Iscah]

All your arguments are on completely separate inventory systems. Not all inventory is created equal. They're different sets of code. The restriction/limitation is only with regard to the player's active inventory.

I know they're separate, but - on the one hand, polyphonica was thinking that all inventories, including glamour plate storage, have 140 slots (which they actually don't), and on the other, there's the official explanation they linked to that specifically talks about the inventories being coded in blocks of 35 items.

Inventory = 140 = 35 x 4
Retainers = 175 = 35 x 5
Saddlebag = 70 = 35 x 2
Armoury chest = 35 per category

The glamour dresser (and perhaps the armoire) seems to be the only item storage system they have brought in that doesn't follow this pattern of item blocks.

[Sakuraluna]

TBF didn't happen with FFXI inventory space apparently and neither with monthly retainers, pretty sure nobody had anything to get from those so it wasn't worth arguing, but we'll see.
Sadly nobody does things for free not even pro consumers advocates

I’m not necessarily talking about that though. Just bad publicity in general. People complained on these forums for years about flippers and the housing situation, but it wasn’t until that drama on Mateus went viral that SE did something about it. It’s something that might happen eventually, or it might not ever happen, but if something SE does starts getting enough negative publicity throughout the community, that can possibly effect their bottom line and they will change directions on the issue if they have to. I’m just saying that if players were to kick up enough fuss that the whole “subscriptions in my subscriptions” thing takes off as a meme and starts getting enough mentions in general gaming sites and enough negative feedback from potential customers, then I won’t mind people complaining in droves here.

[kidalutz]

I can expect low standards from a small company making cheap games, trying to get their name out there while getting some funds for a bigger project. I have no reason not to have high expectations towards one of the larger companies in the particular market. Especially when history shows that their "insurmountable issues" are very much fixable, and similar ones (or even worse) are fixed reasonably quickly and properly by smaller, even independent developers. It would be better for everyone if they actually fixed the issue by completely rewriting the code...but just avoiding that mess like they do for other kinds of inventories would already be something.

Ask yourself this.. do you want to sit around doing nothing for the six month death march that it would take the developers to do to rewrite everything from the ground up just because YOU want some more inventory space?