Tackle box off hand

[Niwashi]

I would hate this. Instead of adding in 8 or more inventory spaces that can only be used for fishing bait/tackle, I would much prefer it to just be added to the backpack. And that's the main reason I think why it will never be added. Why add more restricted inventory when if you have the resources for it, just use it to expand inventory for everything.

Because there are 52 kinds of bait/tackle (and probably more once SB raises the level cap) and a fisherman who wants the ability to aim for particular results needs to keep the vast majority of those on-hand (ideally all of them, if you want maximum flexibility, though you can certainly get away with skipping a few). I'd rather get space for those 52 specific items, than the what, maybe 5 or so (or maybe fewer) generic slots that would be equivalent in size to it.

(After all, bait has no glamour, no color, no materia, not even a NQ/HQ distinction. It's nothing but a stack size. A single number doesn't take up nearly the space of an extensive detailed record of all possible details that any item could ever have. We're currently wasting lots of enormous slots on a very tiny bit of info.)

From what I understand, as awesome as an inventory Bait tab would be, SE is reluctant because they wouldn't be able to add a bait tab JUST to fishers - EVERY player in the game would get the bait tab, and the vast majority never bother with FSH at all.

Everyone gets an extra tab in the currency window that's exclusively for crafting scrips, even though only a minority do high level crafting. And this would be a whole lot more useful. (Not that that isn't useful. It is and I'm certainly glad we have it. But comparatively, it only saves us a few items, as opposed to 52 of them.)

[Niwashi]

... also that it won't happen because it would make it unfair to other jobs who don't have somewhere special to store their consumables. Regarding that second reasoning, I can only assume they mean potions & medicines because no other job has "essential" consumables.

Yeah, this "reason" never really made any sense. The only consumables any other class might want are food and potions, which FSH is as likely to want as any others are. Bait/Tackle is in addition to that, and really doesn't have any equivalents in other classes/jobs.

[Astyrah]

Everyone gets an extra tab in the currency window that's exclusively for crafting scrips

to add to this, it only appears once you unlock and gain your initial amount of crafting scrips, otherwise iirc it's a hidden tab. they can do the same for fishing baits if they go with this route and have it as an optional/hidden until unlocked tab from the inventory

[LineageRazor]

Everyone gets an extra tab in the currency window that's exclusively for crafting scrips, even though only a minority do high level crafting. And this would be a whole lot more useful. (Not that that isn't useful. It is and I'm certainly glad we have it. But comparatively, it only saves us a few items, as opposed to 52 of them.)

While it's true that players who craft/gather are a minority, when you talk about fishing you're bringing up a niche group within a niche group. There are VERY few fishers in comparison to botanists or miners for the simple fact that very few fish are profitable. When you become a fisher, you pretty much do it for the joy of being a fisher (or possibly because you're a completionist who simply must do it all). When you become a botanist or miner, you do it because you want to make a profit. Fisher was actually DESIGNED that way.

On top of that, in comparison to scrips, there are four kinds of scrips. Bait? More than fifty different kinds. Tracking bait in the same way that scrips are tracked is literally an order of magnitude more space intensive.

I'm not saying that it's not a problem, and I'd love to see something done about it, but from a data management perspective, I can definitely understand SE's reluctance. This is not a simple problem with a simple answer.

[Dustytome]

I'm not saying that it's not a problem, and I'd love to see something done about it, but from a data management perspective, I can definitely understand SE's reluctance. This is not a simple problem with a simple answer.

They could simplify the bait to using 15 or so lures that fit into the tackle box. If they can create a window for yokai surely they'd be able to do something for fishing.

[Niwashi]

in comparison to scrips, there are four kinds of scrips. Bait? More than fifty different kinds. Tracking bait in the same way that scrips are tracked is literally an order of magnitude more space intensive.

Which means an order of magnitude more space saved by doing it. From a data management perspective, the more data you're dealing with, the more important it is to store it efficiently, and using a whole bunch of generic item slots is just about the least efficient method they could come up with.

It was probably also the easiest to initially develop, since the framework was all there anyway, but very inefficient. We're asking them to switch from the quick and dirty method they started with, and go to a more streamlined efficient method where they only need to store the necessary information (in the case of tackle, that's just stack sizes). On a going forward basis, that would make it easier for both data management at their end, and inventory management for players.

[LineageRazor]

Which means an order of magnitude more space saved by doing it. From a data management perspective, the more data you're dealing with, the more important it is to store it efficiently, and using a whole bunch of generic item slots is just about the least efficient method they could come up with.

Ah, but that's not the case. Every player, no matter what they do, expects to have an inventory. It's all part of playing an RPG. So, these generic slots are a necessary and expected component of every player character. This is non-negotiable, and even if a lot of players leave some or most of their inventory slots empty, it's an accepted cost. Empty or full, these slots take up the same amount of data in data storage - no matter what you fill them with. BY FAR the cheapest way to introduce a new currency or consumable is to allocate it to these generic slots, and simply leave it to the player to prioritize what's worth spending their inventory on (Primal tokens are another big offender in this regard, if not quite as bad as fishing tackle). It requires literally no additional data storage space to ask players to use their inventories, because all that space is already used, even if players aren't using it.

Every time you add a new type of specialty storage, that is an increase in the amount of data that needs to be managed, and like generic inventory it's data that needs to be managed on every character, whether they use it or not. SE is cautious about adding such things, and tries to keep things trim when they do add them. Tomestones have even been cycled out of the game periodically, to ensure we never have more than four kinds of Tomestones to track at one time. Scrips, we only have four kinds - and we use them to buy other currency which winds up, you guessed it, in our generic inventory!

So, no, adding specialized data storage never results in saved space. The only way it could is if you could find a way to ONLY store data for the folks actively using that data, and database systems like SQL and Oracle can turn into a frightful mess when you try to implement conditional storage of that kind.

[Niwashi]

Every player, no matter what they do, expects to have an inventory.

An inventory, yes, certainly. But how big that inventory needs to be in order for the game to be playable is a direct reflection of how many of the game's features are stored there, and how. We wouldn't need an expansion of regular inventory space if we had enough improvements like storing all the currency tokens as currency and bait in a tackle box, and so on. They can add tons of specialized storage like that for much less space than even just a few extra inventory slots.

it's data that needs to be managed on every character, whether they use it or not.

Well, it wouldn't matter how much someone uses it. But they probably wouldn't need to create a tackle box storage record unless you're a fisher. (Of course, there would be players who unlock Fisher and try it out for a while, then decide they don't care for it. They'd still have the tackle box record, since SE could never actually know whether they're ever going to go back to it.)

The only way it could is if you could find a way to ONLY store data for the folks actively using that data, and database systems like SQL and Oracle can turn into a frightful mess when you try to implement conditional storage of that kind.

Conditional storage like that is a pretty standard use of foreign keys. I'm sure an MMO of this complexity probably has plenty of conditional storage already.