We're suffocating on inventory space - how much of a priority is it to fix it?

[BreathlessTao]

The funny thing about inventory space is that no matter how much of it you have, people will always want more. FFXIV is incredibly generous with inventory space compared to many games that I've played. In FFXI, you didn't have an armory chest. All of your gear, for all of your jobs, was in your gobbie bag or not at all. That bag could be upgraded to a maximum of 80 spaces! Now we not only have a 100 space inventory, but an armory chest with 25 slots per item! The amount of inventory space we have is insanely generous already.

Don't just compare inventory size to another inventory size. Take a look at the number of storable items vs the number of inventory slots - and compare that ratio. Gives a much more accurate picture. In FFXIV, last I heard we have about 7000 items that can potentially go in the inventory - right now, or with 3.1, I'm not sure; the .1 content patches add about 500-700 items, the guy said in the live letter, I think? (And don't forget that the "every job on one character" thing is not really common either, as far as I know.)

[Nekodar]

They have repeatedly brought up that they're working on optimizing things on the back-end so that they can add more space...

They mentioned for example that they could backup stuff less often, but that would mean higher risk of losing items in case of a server crash.

Any change being done also needs to be really carefully done in order to not break our existing inventories.

There are plenty of things I'd like to see... A component inventory... A tackle box... A fish box... Things that don't need to be immediately available when opening the inventory. Things that is enough if it's synched with the server when you're trying to see what's there (like retainer inventory).

[BreathlessTao]

They mentioned for example that they could backup stuff less often, but that would mean higher risk of losing items in case of a server crash.

They need to back up stuff less often. That ~15s is totally insane: on one hand it's flooding the network with traffic (at least, I'd guess, half of which is completely unnecessary) continuously; on the other, it's a strain on the servers themselves - no idea what they're using, but if it's SSDs it's certainly a quick death for them, if it's HDDs I wonder if they can even finish one save before starting the next. There are simply too many characters online at any given time, even if only half of their inventories is full, it's way too much data. They even let AFKers just idle away and do nothing for 6-8-10-12 hours, dozens of them at any given time in any city, and their inventories are being backed up too.

And for what? That 90k disconnect error is as frequent as ever. Network strain and data sizes and server limitations are mentioned in pretty much every live letter, in pretty much every issue we get a negative reply to (which is quite a lot). While at the same in the 2+ years since ARR launched - how many servers crashes did we have? How many times did we need a rollback? As far as I remember: zero. That backup timer need to be increased, at least to 1 minute - that would be much more rational on both sides of the argument. (Personally, I'd say once every 5 minutes, with logout and retainer exchanges actively triggering a backup.) Heck, have the acquisition of blue/purple items (even scrip-exchanged items, for all I care) actively trigger a backup. And for sanity's sake, put the AFK-kick feature back in and don't ever remove it - if you're away for more than an hour, if you're "stuck" in "crafting" or in a "conversation/cutscene" for more than an hour without doing anything, you've no place to be online in this game, not with the systems (backup and hardware) that it currently has. It's a very remarkable system, in a way (not in a good way), that's so damn spartan and strict on one side of an issue, and so utterly lax and free on the other side of that same issue...

[Nekodar]

They need to back up stuff less often.

The backup mentioned is done server side. There is no synchronisation done between client and server that often afaik, so the backup doesn't mean network flooding.
Inventory related network traffic is generated when you change anything in your inventory, and when you go into instances.

The 90K disconnect errors are generally not on SE's side of the equation. ISP's and backbone providers are the main cause of those.

[Seoulstar]

Don't just compare inventory size to another inventory size. Take a look at the number of storable items vs the number of inventory slots - and compare that ratio. Gives a much more accurate picture. In FFXIV, last I heard we have about 7000 items that can potentially go in the inventory - right now, or with 3.1, I'm not sure; the .1 content patches add about 500-700 items, the guy said in the live letter, I think? (And don't forget that the "every job on one character" thing is not really common either, as far as I know.)

But how many of those items that we would actually need in our inventory?

[Kerrigen]

'The servers will explode' is literally a bad excuse they want you to believe. They're adding duplicates IDs (dyes that were previously untradable) and even more physical tokens in 3.1, I don't think that's a priority as long as we keep renting retainers for an extra fee.

[Solarra]

The amount of inventory space we have is insanely generous already.

It really isn't, considering that alts aren't supposed to be necessary. That means you should be able to store all your crafting items and all your gear one character. To access this many classes and crafts in WoW for example, I'd probably be using most of my 11 alts.
The storage at the inn is just bizarre, hardly anything seems to go in it and retainer storage is limited unless you buy more. I'm forever trying to make space in my bags and even now at level 51, I'm having issues with the armoury.

Perhaps FFXI was less generous, but that doesn't make the provision we have here ideal.

[Darkshade]

Why can't SE just do glamour/transmog like any other MMO and just have a record of all styles of obtained visual items :| I think that's like the largest reason people hoard.

I mean I know they'd rather us just pay for 8 retainers but...

[Moonleg]

First of all, FFXI is in computer terms from the stone age network-wise. Since that game was first designed data storage and transmission has progressed tremendously. It would be like comparing the speed and cargo capability of a donkey cart to a modern oil tanker.

Secondly, FF14 is NOT generous with the armory space. Seriously, use the weapon section as the best example. It fits 25 weapons, and we have 23 classes at current. Compared to the 40-something equipment sets we can actually save, what are you going to do if you have a couple of party outfits? I mean, I have my one for lounging in a hot tub that will get changed to monk with invisible fist weapon in 3.1, I have the one I made for Halloween, and I ... oh wait. I'm full on weapons now. Oops. I hope I don't actually, you know, get a new weapon for one of my classes because changing it will now involve having to take something out of the armory chest, equipping my new weapon, taking the old weapon out of the armory chest, and putting that first weapon back in.

That is not generous. That is stupid tedium in 2015.

[LaurelinKementari]

They're not gonna fix it because then they can take less of your money for extra retainers.