Inventory/request

[Eorzean_username]

Gonna let you in on a secret: It would still be an issue. Because of players just like you that can't just clear out space. There is no amount of inventory space short of unlimited that wouldn't eventually have someone coming back here saying "I'm running out of inventory space."

Which is directly-symptomatic of a game with an excessively-bloated number of items filling up people's inventories, while offering no, or poor, indication of whether any of it is useful.

Constantly consulting external database sites, manually-checking every item against the Marketboard, or just throwing everything away in a fit of exasperation, is all — to put it mildly — not a clean UX.

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Additionally, while "but X does Y" is not exactly an inherently-persuasive argument, that most other games have implemented Material Storage systems still speaks to the fact that this is considered a valuable and logical feature by many designers, and well-received by many players.

Even within XIV, your arguments could also be applied to, for example, Glamour items, Seasonal items, various Currencies, such as Seals, MGP, Tribe tokens, Scrips, Tomes, etc — yet these have ended up being given their own specialised and separate storage systems, indicating that there is both an appetite for, and support of, these sorts of concerns.

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The issue isn't inventory space. The issue is players that don't understand when to let things go.

It's obviously both, making this needlessly-reductive.

The game very poorly provides pathways to retain items that may not be immediately-useful, but also may not be convenient — or even feasible — to quickly re-obtain if they are needed at some point, such as Glamours that drop from tedious and prolonged grinds such as Dungeons and Alliance Raids, or become entirely-unavailable after limited windows (hence contributing to why the Glamour Dresser appeared in the first place).

So while yes, there certainly is an element of "inventory management" designed into most RPGs, and it is possible for players to "packrat" excessively and handle it poorly, it is absolutely not inherently the players's fault if a game floods them with more inventory than they feel like they have space to handle, or time to analyse and sort-through.

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Here's another secret: You already have a convenient consolidated inventory currency: Gil. You can convert so much of your inventory into gil, one way or another, and then spend that gil on the items you need when you need them.

Besides being needlessly-condescending, this isn't even accurate.

Your example only works in a world where the following are true:

• The Gil value of an item remains perfectly static over time

• Retainer slots to sell items are unlimited

• Market demand for a given item is infinite, meaning it will always sell, rather than require prolonged undercutting and micromanagement (because the alternative, the vendor Gil value of any given item, is essentially equivalent to simply Destroying it, barring the few items specifically-intended to be sold that way)

• The quantities of items available on the Market Board remain static over time, and will never enter shortages, nor price-spikes, nor be listed in quantities severely-disproportionate to the amount you actually need

Were money actually perfectly-equivalent to goods storage, there would be no reason for any individual, or even nation, to retain stockpiles of anything — "You can always go buy what you need".

[Jojoya]

Your example only works in a world where the following are true:

• The Gil value of an item remains perfectly static over time

• Retainer slots to sell items are unlimited

• Market demand for a given item is infinite, meaning it will always sell, rather than require prolonged undercutting and micromanagement (because the alternative, the vendor Gil value of any given item, is essentially equivalent to simply Destroying it, barring the few items specifically-intended to be sold that way)

• The quantities of items available on the Market Board remain static over time, and will never enter shortages, nor price-spikes, nor be listed in quantities severely-disproportionate to the amount you actually need

Were money actually perfectly-equivalent to goods storage, there would be no reason for any individual, or even nation, to retain stockpiles of anything — "You can always go buy what you need".

It's not perfectly equivalent but it works well enough in game terms for the types of items that tend to create the demand for more inventory space.

Where the price of one crafting material might increase, others will decrease. Unless you're dealing in the rare crafting materials from older treasure maps that players ignore, this will tend to balance out over time. On the off chance a material has a temporary increase in price over what you find reasonable, you've now got something to actively farm short term for profit.

It makes no sense to hang onto crafting materials when you don't know if you will need them again, when that would happen, and what quantity you will need while in the meantime you're struggling to manage inventory due to limited space. Keep inventory churning - get rid of what you aren't using so you have room for what you are using.

Every player gets 560 general use slots for inventory. 560 It really is players not learning how to let things go. Yes, there are some things worth keeping because they're difficult to obtain. But those items are few. Everything should go if you do not have specific plans to use the item in the next week.

Sometimes I think we should start a "Help Me Manage My Inventory" thread where players can post screenshots of all the stuff they have stored in in their inventory and on their retainers so others can advise them on what's worth keeping and what they should sell/discard because they can easily get it again later if it's ever needed.