I never have anymore space

[SaitoHajime]

That may be xi, but every mmo I played for the past 6 years have offered ways to increase your inventory through in-game means.
This is the ONLY game where you can only pay real money to do so

And it's a shame. Because now XIV ARR will set the precedent that subscribers are willing to pay even more monthly (and not just a one time fee) for QoL conveniences for other future MMO's to follow
/slow clap

meh. I'm using only one retainer and I'm having no problem with space. And noones forcing you to pay either. If you're having problem with space with TWO free retainers then idk what to tell you. Manage better or stop complaining.

[Nicobo]

give us a way to check what's in our retainers bags without having to dig through each and every one of them.

This feature has been added for finding missing gear of a gear set, I hope it would be extended to finding item as well.

[Durthane]

Ye gods, I haven't seen white knights like this since Oldton movopolis when the Parade Gorget became available.

Ok, I'll say this slow so y'all might get it. There is never a good reason to put any aspect of a P2P MMO behind a damn paywall! Every person in this game pays SE to have free and unfettered access to it, if we wanted to be nickle and dimed we'd play a F2P game.

I can't say what kind of stress it would place on the servers to give everyone another storage option, I do know that anyone that levels crafting jobs, collects vanity items, or collects event/rare gear are going to NEED more space. SE designed it that way intentional or not. And please don't feed me a line about this being the best way to handle it, it may be the best way according to SE's accountants but from a customers perspective it's just another company trying to bait me into a cash shop to be fleeced.

And while I'm on the subject, please don't allow SE to get the ball rolling on their little cash grab. Nothing should ever be put into a P2P MMO that is not accessible through play. Every item shoved behind a pay wall is content denied the paying customers, it is developed for the game and held back to draw a little more money out of the payer base. Look at WoW, it started with a couple charity pets, all procedes go to whatever disaster happened recently which was pretty cool I thought. (I did end up buying the flaming kitty, charity + kitty = free access to my wallet XD) Next thing you know every raid tier or certainly every expansion there are a couple mounts and pets that obviously either have more work put into them or at least are flashier than 90% of what is available in game tosses into the cash shop. Now to most of the player base this is a non issue, only collectors will cry foul and then the ones most into it will shell out the money anyway.

My real problem with this is it leads to the same type of dishonest business practice companies like EA and Capcom enjoy putting into their games. And SE has gone ahead and skipped a step, strait over vanity and into P2W territory. Inventory space has a direct effect upon how flexible you are in this game. Granted it's not a huge one, the armory chest offers enough slots to have a full set for all jobs. And considering SE has shown the willingness to screw the customer for a buck before I'm damn sure going to let em know it isn't right by me, with my wallet if I have to though I do love this game. ^^;

Thanks for your time, and sorry for the rambling wall of text lol

[Pandastirfry]

The cash shop in WoW didn't start with the Cinder Kitten, it started with the Astral Steed, an epic flying mount for $25.( and to give you an idea of how long ago that was, it was the go to example of money grubbing developers, and then the ES:Oblivion horse armor pack happened) Then three vanity pets for $15. The Cinder kitten was way down the line and one could argue that it technically started with the TCG exclusive items that such as the Spectral Tiger, none of those were charity tie ins. They were simple "nice to haves" much like extra retainers. You DON'T need to keep every crafting mat, you can store event items/AF/primal weapons/special edition items in your armoire , and as for glamour gear how much you feel you "need" is a personal choice.

And even back in XI mules were a freakin necessity even with expandable inventory. And how did you get them. Oh that's right each character past your first one was an extra $2 a month on top of the base fee+first character. So I see this as no different. I also hoard event items and rare items that I like since 1.0 but I haven 't felt the need to buy another retainer.

[tresfin]

SE should just add more inventory space or just add inventory expansion you could buy with gil

[LunarEmerald]

I used to have 1 retainer be for enemy mats but since retainers have made gathering them a non issue and supply is abundant on the market, I tossed them to make more room for my excess equipment.

[Lucke]

I'm not an IT person or anything, but really, what kind of POS servers does SE use that have problems with item data? Seriously...look waaaaay back at EQ. Server tech from 15 something years ago could support 500+ storage slots, and SoE never charged you for more inventory. Crafters made boxes and bags you put into your inventory you can open for more slots. Does a digital sword programmed in 2013 take up more imaginary space than a sword programed in 1999?

Really makes SE look bad when they invest in *expletive* servers.

[Seif]

I'm not an IT person or anything, but really, what kind of POS servers does SE use that have problems with item data? Seriously...look waaaaay back at EQ. Server tech from 15 something years ago could support 500+ storage slots, and SoE never charged you for more inventory. Crafters made boxes and bags you put into your inventory you can open for more slots. Does a digital sword programmed in 2013 take up more imaginary space than a sword programed in 1999?

Really makes SE look bad when they invest in *expletive* servers.

^
There are also SO many items they could just delete completely.

[ruskie]

It's the storage requirements and coming from IT I can understand them. But I don't agree with them.


An item stored on your retainer will require something like Item <-> Retainer relation if they have the Retainer <-> Character relation done already - but this is simplistic and probably not very efficient(slow). But this needs:

a) storage - for when not in use and in use
b) memory - for when in use
c) cpu time - for when in use

Now for a single item+retainer+character this isn't much. Let's say the retainer id is a long and the item id is a long and the character id is a long... A long is 4 bytes... So that's already 12 bytes used up for just for basic id's.
Then you have the relation that also uses atleast 4 bytes on each side. So 8 bytes as well. 20 bytes so far. And that's for a single item on a single character or a single retainer.

You already have 175 inventory slots - so 20 bytes * 175 = 3500 bytes for your inventory alone. Add to that the armoury chest - what is it 25 slots per page... so 6500 bytes. So a retanire needs 3500 bytes of raw storage. There is always overhead that you don't see and that needs to be taken into account for such things. It might not be much but it's still there. And with scale it has a negative effect on the performance and the storage.

So for a single character with 2 retainers for ONLY inventory and armory chest storage you need...
17000 bytes or 17 kB. Now multiply that with number of players... let's say 2 milion... that's 32GB(and I would guestimate that the actual number with all the overhead and stuff is probably atleast 5 times larger) just needed in storage. JUST for inventory and armoury for each character with 2 retainers.

Now you add the overhead of all the transactions that need to be logged, backed up, add stack data in there as well and so on and the overhead just goes up higher and higher.

Also cpu, storage and memory needed for good performance is not cheap for this kinds of environments.

So as said I can understand them but as this is a pay to play game I disagree with them charging more for this and they will not see any extra money from me for this even though it would help me immensly(so no not white knighting).

Storing items in armorie though is a bit cheaper since only items in there actually require storage space. There is also no item metadata to store for that - despirit bonds, 100% repaired so as someone said you are in essence junking that item. But can get it back for free.

The above is a very simplistic calculation and omits a lot of things - stacks, metadata(durability, spiritbond, items on sale and for how much, retainer gear).

[PArcher]

My main character is lv50 in everything but BOT, FSH and MNK...and will soon be lv50 in everything but FSH (don't feel like leveling it)

I have 2 retainers. That's it. 2.

And I have free space in my inventory and on both retainers. Not much, but some.

My one retainer has gear and housing items; most gear I can honestly get rid of, and did get rid of a bunch of things yesterday. Some things I'm saving for my MNK, and will be turned-in after I actually go back and farm Coil again for what I'm missing.
My other retainer is full of crafting mats and materia; again, tons of stuff I will never use or need to convert (hides, logs, stone, etc), I've got a bunch of stuff vendors sell (no idea why), and can go transmute a bunch of my crap materia.

Its all inventory management. I don't (well, try not to) keep mats that just aren't used, and keep supplies of the "common" mats (Iron Ore, Mythril Ingots, Dew Thread, etc) around.