Something needs to be done about inventory space

[Moonlite]

Just a heads up to people about retainers. They are a weird left over from 1.0 and we would all be better off if they were removed. In 1.0 retainers sold items like a random placed NPC in a zone. Except you had to check every retainer. If I remember correctly before ARR. The MB is just a search and the retainers still exist in this zone. But instead of clicking on every retainer looking for one piece of cloth, you use the MB interface that searches for you.



They have improved inventory since ARR but we also have multiple expansions of bloat. If the game handled seasonal and cash shop items better that would help some. The materia system will hopefully get a squish with the rest of the game. Creating aethryte gear sets would also smooth out the levelling process. It would help people not save dungeon drops for levelling other jobs. No this would not kill the MB. You know what kills the MB me having retainers with unlimited quick ventures. Also you don't need MB to level like old days they added Ishgard restoration for that.



Also to the person who says it is easy to just go get more. This game isn't really easy to go just get more. Not all dungeons are just like a lvl 80 farming Satasha. You couldn't even do the 24 man even if it was soloable. They could go the replica way they did for sky pirate and make all dungeon set replicas craftable or gil syncs.




Not my idea someone asked about this in a thread. Change all fireworks and such to emotes. Or create a tab like the umbrella tab. The animation is all already done and stuff that give fireworks just make it some other throw away item. This is just one of those things that shows they don't think about space in a concerned way, because they have a dedicated base that defends them. If we admit the game has limitations and we are already working to the max for item storage. Would you not implement thoughtful solutions that are not game breaking. Making all materia lvl one that can fit in i999 gear with +100 is game breaking. Having an event fireworks as an emote instead of a consumable is not.

[MiaShino]

Thank you everyone for humoring me! English is not the main language so if I come across as rude I am not always attempting to be. I do not know how to be umm, not blunt? in English every time.

"Am I going to use this? Am I keeping it for good reasons, or am I just... well. hoarding?" And I decluttered about 90% of my inventory. So I'm speaking from the experience of both a newbie who went through it and a newbie who, well... literally went through it.

Mmhmm! I did this not long ago, so did two friends (the ones recently having the most trouble).
The conclusion they reached? Yes. Yes I am going to be using that because I am leveling everything and do not have a means to undersize dungeons yet and re-obtain the gear I might need. Even when I do this will cost time so instead I "horde" it.

There is a gap between Lvl 30-Lvl 50 in which gearing becomes suboptimal - this is something in which Squeenix can improve upon. Typically it's dungeon loot and crafted gear that is class locked... sometimes? It's not uncommon to see sprouts tanking in "All Classes" healer gear.

Adding more inventory would fix this. Of course so would better story loot or other things buut one issue at time.

At the WORST possible outcome, tossing out gear as you level and leveling each class separate from each other, each section should have 27 pieces of armor each. If there is more, you have something extra that you don't need - toss it out.

This leaves you with six weapon slots available in best case scenario. We know you know I know best case is not how this works. Most are not playing by leveling every job simultaneously because that is.. silly. The game even warns you not to do this because of armory exp bonus.

I did! ^-^ They're only used for marketboard and ventures, since I've begun to make a pretty penny off of casually selling off gear I don't need/use, and crafting.

Do you perhaps feel that having additional retainers makes the procurement of resources easier? According to this I would say yes, yes you do. Because it is easier to obtain things you feel less need to store them. Because it is easier for you to obtain things and sell them you have more purchasing power to use the market board with. This purchasing power allows you to obtain "stuff I threw away or sold" when needed more easily.

However, defending square's decisions I am not. You have a total of 1310 slots, with half of those being for gear and the other half being for whatever you want. The armoire needs upgrading, we need more glamour slots for those who have been around since forever and have filled their glamour chests to the brim, and we need more glamour plates. Preferrably 31+ (One for each class (including the two coming out in Nov) + maybe 3 extra for whatever)

This sounds like issue that could be fixed by increasing inventory capacity or relegating more inventory to "general inventory". The glamour system needs Jesus and I am not touching that with a ten foot anything. The desire to store glamour creates half of the inventory issues in first place!

If you're filling your inventory with stuff you "might need... maybe, for this class you're going to eventually level... possibly" then you've got poor inventory management.

Are you sure about that? What if they fully intend on leveling those jobs. How does a freshly leveled sprout without a single 80 unsync dungeons to re-acquire loot they gave away?

I'd like to end this by saying that poor inventory management isn't a bad thing - it's a thing that eventually everyone will have to face. I did so several months back - I had one job at level 80, One at level 70, and the rest were scattered in between 30-40-50. I kept gear that was worthless or easily farmed, because I was worried that, despite my careful planning, I'd lose out. I didn't by the way.

Ohhhhh wait so you did exactly that! Mismatched leveling as any sane individual would approaching a game as massive as FF14.. and it caused inventory issues. You reached a higher level so lower level gear became more easily obtainable. What about before you reached a higher level? Before you had tomestone gear? You resolved this problem because by the time you had leveled each thing it was no longer a problem. I would say the problem actually resolved its self.

Mention absolutely NOTHING about my spelling of disciple, by the way. I'm dumb and too lazy to go back and fix it all.

Pffff, I do not speak English as the first language You could misspell all the things and I probably would not notice..

Something additional worth mentioning I forgot to remember. Tomestone gear.. by the twelve tomestone gear. It is so so easy to over cap on tomestones by only using roulettes to level alt jobs. Your choice is then to stay over capped or spend them on tomestone gear which, you guessed it! Takes up inventory..

Many thanks for engaging me in actual discussion though! It is breath of fresh air as they say somewhere. Tis what I always thought forums were for, long form discussion and debate. Everything else goes to twitter and other places.

Because they can't actually increase subscription prices without causing backlash. A sub to an MMO in 2003 was $12.95 per month. Inflation would put an equivalent cost today at $19.21 per month, but a monthly sub to FFXIV is $12.99~$14.99. They need a way to make up that $4.22 to $6.22.

This is not exactly how inflation works but I am nooooo market guru! Yes, the value of a single dollar has diminished but so has the cost of development and the power of server hardware.

Let us compare server cpus from 2003 to now shall we?

The first amd server Opteron cpu was code named SledgeHammer and had a total of one single core. This was a 130 nanometer cpu (quite large!) that output much heat. Common arrangements for servers included multiple cpus on a single board. This was quite common practice as far back as the Pentium MMX.

Server storage space was also far far more limited. This is pre solid state, pre sata. I will not even get into memory capacity that is a dooooozy.

Now a current server cpu would be from the AMD Eypc line. The EPYC 7763 has a whopping 64 cores each multithreaded for a total of 128 threads. Each one of these cores is substantially more powerful then a single 2003 Opteron core. Power consumption is roughly the same though!

So yes inflation has done its stuffs but Square has access to far far more powerful hardware then Blizzard of 2003 would have ever dreamed of. Looking at these numbers you should actually be surprised Blizzard managed to keep the cost where they did.

I did and still do program speaking of this. When I was but young Mia I worked on mmo emulators. It would surprise you just how much power we were able to squeeze out of a single core AMD Athlon 64.. buuuut we would never dream of merging character inventory into same database as character data. Inventory was contained in separate tables and could be executed from dedicated SQL servers (yes we used sql, mysql was most common then).

Sorry for wall of words and letters! I also enjoyed writing..

[MilkieTea]

I'd like to point out that the only thing leveling a class to 80 assisted me with is the armory bonus. And I've mentioned before that I'm still in the process of leveling all my classes to cap, but using the methods I've learned over the course of these few months. I don't really have the energy to do what I did last post (point by point), so I'll just respond to a few things.

Are you sure about that? What if they fully intend on leveling those jobs. How does a freshly leveled sprout without a single 80 unsync dungeons to re-acquire loot they gave away?

Yes, I am! Poor inventory management doesn't mean you're at fault 100% - there is much that SE could do to assist with inventory management. Adding more slots isn't the solution though, because those who are keeping everything just in case will still, eventually, run into the same exact issues. There could be an ingame tutorial - optional, of course, but perhaps located in the adventurers guild. Someone who will teach sprouts that they don't have to hold onto levelling items and every crafter/gatherer item because they will be easily reacquired or out leveled within 30 minutes.

Streamlining the early gearing would do wonders, as would explaining how gear sets work and that there will ultimately be 7 sets of gear with the only difference being weapons.

Expanding inventory won't teach proper inventory management - playing the game will. Learning what you can and can't toss will.

Do you perhaps feel that having additional retainers makes the procurement of resources easier? According to this I would say yes, yes you do. Because it is easier to obtain things you feel less need to store them. Because it is easier for you to obtain things and sell them you have more purchasing power to use the market board with. This purchasing power allows you to obtain "stuff I threw away or sold" when needed more easily.

I've never received something from a retainer that I've previously tossed out, I can say that much. And the purchasing power I have is something that can easily be obtainable by free players - the amount I have is simply spread further apart by extra retainers. Instead of 1mil in 1 retainer, there is 100k in one, 30k in the other, etc etc.

Edit: not free. Players who don't pay for extra retainers. Happy?

[Faafetai]

Response to my post. Thank you for being awesome and discussing!

I was not using his video as 'gospel' I am only stating it was a decent video on the subject without having to go into a million different mmos and how their inventories or systems work. Even how bad they could be. Usually the ones I have played will start with just selling cosmetics like Aion than 'accidentally' start adding small amounts of pay to win aspects to their stores. They will also remove the stuff like the retainers or chocobo saddle bag and instead put the whole thing on their store not even giving you that.

Of course ffxiv is not as horrible as it can physically be. It could definitely be worse. Similar to numerous terrible Korean mmos that rely heavily on pay to win. I do not even wish to imagine how things could have been with ffxiv if they used a time gated system to just walk for a faster speed, at the very least I can ignore the ffxiv phone applications currency. It truly does feel like a free to play mmo sometimes with the millions of different currencies and millions of tabs similarly designed in other games to confuse the user in order for them to make a payment without even knowing it. Thankfully it is all used to get items within the game and not to trade in for a second currency than a third currency, to then trade in for special currency that could be converted to another currency to purchase items on mogstation. At least I don't think there is such a system in ffxiv. I hope there is not, but I am still learning what exists and such because there is indeed a ton of things to do and interact with. Do not be suprised though when you could only purchase things on mogstation only using 'Crysta' and you are always just slightly short to purchase a mount making you pay for the better higher amount to get it leaving you always with extra crysta in the future. It is just an observation.

The system is already there to give us more inventory, but they would not just give people one extra retainer to solve the issue. It is perfectly fine that is what an alt only dedicated to keeping that small bit of extra stuff is for, but the nature of the pay for extra space just doesn't sit right with me.

I would like to keep some of the resources I am using while leveling especially crafting. I know at least that is included in the subscription and game itself. Maybe they should reduce the amount of regents it takes or just add a separate tab for those like they have in other games. They did add one for crystals I am unsure if they use to flood the inventory. If they had why did they fix it? Why not take that and throw the crystals back into our inventories. We have tons of space already!

I shall not get into inflation because that is a huge can of worms. Depending on where you live you do not get paid more so things going up just means more people wont be able to play the game in the first place. Of course people would be upset. This is also not accounting for conversion rate or where you live in the world if your dollar is worth more or less on another dollar. My friend pays the equivalent of I think 34 dollars a month due to conversion but I am unsure how much that amount means to her exactly just that it is quite expensive to her and her family.

If I compare to other games that have a one time payment for content or even a free to play game as well it also get strange. It is similar to how much you should charge for artwork or a crafted item. Where you factor in content and how much time it took for you to make it, but coming up with a price is always weird. Especially with just items in ffxiv you can buy some items from beast tribes or other random vendors some may not know about and wish to sell that item for how much time you put in to making it. All I can really go on is how much a regular game is and usually ranging from 15-60 dollars but really some games that are 60 dollars are a fraction of the quality of games that I have played that are 15 dollars.

I think if they increased the sub there may be backlash but mostly because people have been paying the set amount for a set time, and they are getting the same amount of content. I am also unsure how the inflation is within the place they operate would actually be. Japans wages are way different than just 7.25 in some places in the US I think it is about 8.50 in Japan. Also the cost of living not accounting for food. I know you at least get transportation accounted for in some incomes within japan that may not cover all of the commute but most of it. This is just going on the bare minimum someone could have access to financial.

[Faafetai]

As others have said, stop hoarding. We've got 560 slots of generic inventory space without purchasing additional retainers along with 820 slots reserved for gear in the Armory chest and Glamour Dresser plus the Armoire for the seasonal event/achievement/ARR ilvl50 artifact gear.

My math may be super off, so bear with me. Regular inventory is 140 each retainer is 175 each chocobo saddlebag is 70. 35 for each individual set of armor only able to store specific gear so 35 for weapons chest plates so on and so on. If you are cheeky you can use the glamour dresser early game to store 400 sets of armor you can take back out. So about 560 slots for anything at all the other stuff is restricted to types of armor. If you are not being cheeky and storing your gear in your glamour dresser or actually use that for glamour it may fill up by just having one outfit for each class. I know people can manage their inventories better, yes, but other mmos allow you to purchase space with in game currency and have crafting regents in a separate inventory all together. There is not even the option to grind currency for an extra chocobo bag just pay up to papa square. I do not even know if the developers are even getting the money from any of this or from mogstation. I think you are correct but not accounting for some extra space that are reserved for only certain items

Also do not forget that some items can not be stored in the Armoire for no reason like the level 50 sets of armor, but the level 45 sets can be stored for some reason buuuuuuut everything stored within the armoire can only be dyed within a glamour plate which we have not many

I've never received something from a retainer that I've previously tossed out, I can say that much. And the purchasing power I have is something that can easily be obtainable by free players - the amount I have is simply spread further apart by extra retainers. Instead of 1mil in 1 retainer, there is 100k in one, 30k in the other, etc etc.

Free players do not get retainer access, and can not even use the market board

[MiaShino]

There could be an ingame tutorial - optional, of course, but perhaps located in the adventurers guild. Someone who will teach sprouts that they don't have to hold onto levelling items and every crafter/gatherer item because they will be easily reacquired or out leveled within 30 minutes.

Tis a bit of the good idea bad idea. Define easily re-acquired? If a level 30 sprout wishes to obtain gear from Haukke Manor they must queue for Haukke Manor. This means potentially waiting fifteen or more minutes in queue, then dealing with party members rushing through not opening chests so they obtain even less loot. Gray vendor items are inferior to significantly inferior to dungeon loots. The good idea part comes from making this not issue, perhaps better vendor or msq loots with tutorial? I think just giving easier access to on par with dungeon drop leveling gear would do much to assist.

I've never received something from a retainer that I've previously tossed out, I can say that much. And the purchasing power I have is something that can easily be obtainable by free players - the amount I have is simply spread further apart by extra retainers. Instead of 1mil in 1 retainer, there is 100k in one, 30k in the other, etc etc.

That is.. kinda difficult to believe if we are being honest. You have never once discarded a crafting resource then later realized you needed more of it and dispatched retainers to procure? Everything else you said had some semblance of believability to it but this last bit, this last bit I question heavily.

Free trial players do not get access to retainers at all so I will assume you mean subscription only players.

We get two retainers. Each retainer can go on a maximum of one venture and can sell a maximum of twenty items. That is forty items and two ventures per hour maximum.

If you purchased ten retainers you can dispatch them upon ten ventures per hour (eight more per hour then I can) and sell 160 more items at a time then I can. That is umm, that is not insubstantial. Now.. if you make alts.. Welp! Things become far more interesting then. A player with ten retainers (I assume you do not pay per character, if you do that is just wow Square) has an exponentially increasing advantage over one with only two.

Inventory is just the tip of that there iceburg but this is other discussion now. I will not even get into retainers being able to access timed node drops whenever or their ability to bring back dungeon loot. Of course someone with more then two retainers is having easier time procuring things then someone with two, saying otherwise is facetious at best.

[MilkieTea]

Tis a bit of the good idea bad idea. Define easily re-acquired? If a level 30 sprout wishes to obtain gear from Haukke Manor they must queue for Haukke Manor. This means potentially waiting fifteen or more minutes in queue, then dealing with party members rushing through not opening chests so they obtain even less loot. Gray vendor items are inferior to significantly inferior to dungeon loots. The good idea part comes from making this not issue, perhaps better vendor or msq loots with tutorial? I think just giving easier access to on par with dungeon drop leveling gear would do much to assist.



That is.. kinda difficult to believe if we are being honest. You have never once discarded a crafting resource then later realized you needed more of it and dispatched retainers to procure? Everything else you said had some semblance of believability to it but this last bit, this last bit I question heavily.

Free trial players do not get access to retainers at all so I will assume you mean subscription only players.

We get two retainers. Each retainer can go on a maximum of one venture and can sell a maximum of twenty items. That is forty items and two ventures per hour maximum.

If you purchased ten retainers you can dispatch them upon ten ventures per hour (eight more per hour then I can) and sell 160 more items at a time then I can. That is umm, that is not insubstantial. Now.. if you make alts.. Welp! Things become far more interesting then. A player with ten retainers (I assume you do not pay per character, if you do that is just wow Square) has an exponentially increasing advantage over one with only two.Inventory is just the tip of that there iceburg but this is other discussion now. I will not even get into retainers being able to access timed node drops whenever or their ability to bring back dungeon loot. Of course someone with more then two retainers is having easier time procuring things then someone with two, saying otherwise is facetious at best.

Notice how I specified that I've never "received something from a retainer that I've previously tossed out." Crafting resources are things that I either gather or purchase *as needed* and as such I do not toss them out and ask for retainers to retrieve more of it. Do I *run out*? Yeah. Everyone does. But I'm very particular with crafting resources specifically, and that was actually what I did the most research in before I even downloaded the game. I also didn't get into crafting until I knew I had the time, gil, and energy to powerlevel as crafters specifically I did not want to have a level disparity between. This is where I fall differently from other players in that my generalized anxieties actually helped me out for once!

I've also stated that my purchasing power is easily obtainable by free players and, yes, I meant players who do not have more than 2 retainers. Purchasing power =/= ability to acquire money. For example: a millionaire has significantly more purchasing power than someone with $100k, yet that person with $100k might make more in ten years than the millionaire in a lifetime. The millionaire has more *purchasing power* (The ability to purchase and acquire goods and services), yet the person with 100k makes more over time. Purchasing power is simply the value of a sum of money - not the potential value of multiple sums of money.

[MilkieTea]

Free players do not get retainer access, and can not even use the market board

Yeh. Read above.

[Ultimatecalibur]

The system is already there to give us more inventory, but they would not just give people one extra retainer to solve the issue. It is perfectly fine that is what an alt only dedicated to keeping that small bit of extra stuff is for, but the nature of the pay for extra space just doesn't sit right with me.

They do give you 2 for free from the start and even if all available retainers were given out for free people would still be complaining about not having enough inventory.

Retainers are also intended more for longer term storage than short term storage than as short term storage that people sometimes treat them as.

I would like to keep some of the resources I am using while leveling especially crafting. I know at least that is included in the subscription and game itself. Maybe they should reduce the amount of regents it takes or just add a separate tab for those like they have in other games. They did add one for crystals I am unsure if they use to flood the inventory. If they had why did they fix it? Why not take that and throw the crystals back into our inventories. We have tons of space already!

They did reduce the number of materials need when leveling crafting, even if not decreasing the total number of crafting materials, and in multiple ways: Crafting beast tribe dailies supply the material needed for their crafts, custom deliveries are crafted from a limited number of items purchased from nearby merchants and the Firmament crafts only have 1 craft per 10 level period and most of the materials needed are sourced from an attached zone while the single remaining material is easily crafted from easily gathered materials.

Crystals have pretty much always been a crafting currency and the crystals tab was a way to actually let players carry large amounts of them when the stack cap was 99.

[Shougun]

Generic inventory space is far superior than specialized inventory.

They're not 1:1 comparisons though. A system that has a very specific order of a very specific set of items can be stored differently than free form slots that can potentially include the entire list of all things. While it's not apples to oranges you're not speaking the same breed of apple at least. Given that you know what slot two is you don't need to store that anymore, just the quantity, as well the access time can be different. There are opportunities of optimization and just general different storage solutions if you were 'going big'.

If you speak of 30 bag slots dedicated to just crafting items that works exactly like a regular inventory then sure yeah.. then I'd rather have normal space too, but I wasn't speaking of that. We're discussing different things, this is also why I said I think they're talking about WoW stuffs, and it appears of your focus as well, but I am not thinking that specifically.

Glamour logs can potentially be stored in similar better ways than standard items too. The less requirements you have the more weird things you could do to store them differently (funnily you might read that as 'the more restrictions of what is within' so.. more less.. depends on what you're talking about but for example having who knows what in slot who knows where causes a different approach than I have exact limited list and know exactly where it is I just need to know how much of it). While a reagent storage solution could just be another banking system, it also doesn't need to be that way. You have to plan that stuff out from the beginning, in general, though (likely # of unique items would suddenly become more important).

I think both are huge challenges (for different reasons), though I imagine glamour log being far more likely (given for example we have a crazy amount of # unique regents and glamour log would benefit more people), yet.. if I had both.. wewh that'd be sweat easy management on my inventory.

Edit: Want to add I appreciate the further details to WoW and generally agree with many sentiments, I did however want to note that I was specifically thinking of an end result system that would functionally not be something that is akin to a usual inventory system (given that it couldn't handle normal inventory, not an inventory system but a rigid formed list or whatever other clever shortcut programmers may take given they have a series of fixed situations). In such a situation 20 slots of normal inventory with all it's free form ability might be akin to 150 slots of crafting space (which is to say they're not 1:1, slots made for anything vs not slots made for a specific list of items).