Would it help inventory space at all if it was text based like GC Quartermaster?

[zeth07]

In regards to this post:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post4565795


He mentions a few technical things like:

- Keep the previous database which treats 25 items as one group
- If there's no stress on the load, assume we can increase the number of items available in one group.
- while also increasing the efficiency of the save data storage
- Once 4.0 went live, we calculated that the server couldn't handle the amount of communication stress that the additional increased inventory slots and character item data brought with it.
- We cannot do this for the Windows 32-bit version or the Mac version, as there isn't enough UI memory required for displaying the icons.

Does it help or hurt the game system to have the inventory display everything as "icons" instead of strictly by name like an old school RPG, or in what I really want to reference is the Grand Company Quartermaster menu.


As it is now when we select an item we see the icon and it says the item name above the item, then we have the entire item help window to give the stats and ALSO show the icon for what it is.


For the GC Quartermaster menu it is first separated in categories, Weapons / Armor / Materiel / Materials (lol) which seems nice and fitting. It then lists the item by name and shows a general item type icon that's much smaller. And again when selected it shows the actual item icon and stats in the item help box, this is obviously the same.


A particular thing of interest is that in the First Flame Lieutenant "Materials" category it is able to list 40 different items in that section alone. Then there's 35 items in the "Material" section. So the numbers are relatively similar.


Now I don't know about everyone else but I would find it much easier to find stuff if it was listed out by name easily to see in a list instead of just eyeballing it based on the icons until I select them.


But my question is more in a technical sense, do the icons help save data space / memory or would using a more text based listing actually help the inventory management in some way?


Just as a hypothetical, what if the inventory functioned exactly the same as the GC Quartermaster but instead of the ranks those were just Page 1, Page 2, etc. up to whatever the limit would be. Then page 1 could have categories for Weapons, Armor, Accessories. Page 2 could have specific material categories, and on and on and on.

And within each of those category tabs it could easily list 40 items given the above or more and you could just scroll through them down the list to find what you want and still tab over into other categories or switch "pages" by clicking where the ranks would be.


I feel like there were more in-depth developer posts about the inventory system but I could not find them. So I wanted to know how the situation would work or if it is better as is on purpose.



EDIT: Or better yet, could it function like the Market Board? Not only is it already organized neatly, if I click on DRG weapons it is able to list out 51 different spears which is more than the 35 per page of the current inventory system. And not only does it say the item name it also shows the icon. I can easily see 17 different items listed before I have to scroll down. Meanwhile in the inventory I "see" 35 items but I don't know what they are until I select each one individually. If I click on armor it is able to list 100 items before I need to go to the next page. That's way more than 35 per group.

[Faeon]

No, I don't think so hoarders are hoarders. The main problems with inventory are the number of items you need to craft with, look at a leather worker and culinarian the ingredients are many and then there is the HQ and NQ items and then there is glamour.

The list goes on and on, but it mostly got to do with the infrastructure, the housing also has the same issue infrastructure. the player base actually wants an infinite auto-expanding system, this spans across all aspects of the game from housing to inventory space. But this is not going to happen.

We will probably get an inventory bump in next expansion, but then the gather and crafter materials will also increase and then there is glamour etc. It is always going to be a problem always

[Callinon]

Some good questions in here and I want to offer a programmer's perspective.

Does it help or hurt the game system to have the inventory display everything as "icons" instead of strictly by name like an old school RPG, or in what I really want to reference is the Grand Company Quartermaster menu.
Doesn't matter. From a purely technical standpoint the type of display is only relevant when you're looking at available screen real estate. Icons tend to be easier for players to parse visually rather than long lists, but they're bulky.. so if you're dealing with a lack of screen space, a list might be a better choice (FFXI uses lists for its inventory for instance... PS2 screen resolutions ahoy).

As it is now when we select an item we see the icon and it says the item name above the item, then we have the entire item help window to give the stats and ALSO show the icon for what it is.
Sure but bear in mind that the item tooltip (the big window that shows you the item's stats) is a UI element that can just be disabled. So printing the name of the item above it helps the user tell the item apart from something with the same icon when they're not displaying tooltips for whatever reason.

For the GC Quartermaster menu it is first separated in categories, Weapons / Armor / Materiel / Materials (lol) which seems nice and fitting. It then lists the item by name and shows a general item type icon that's much smaller. And again when selected it shows the actual item icon and stats in the item help box, this is obviously the same.
I suspect SE is separating long lists for things like vendors (GC vendor, tomestone vendor, whatever) into tabs like that because of the display requirements for all that information. So a vendor might be displaying not only icon and name, but also price with an interface to purchase multiples. The memory requirements for displaying all of that garbage at the same time get tricky especially when you're talking about the PS3 or a minimum-spec PC. I know SE dropped PS3 support, but I very seriously doubt they went back and redesigned every element that was sensitive to the PS3's base specs. And then for continuity, they've kept that same design moving forward because people are used to it.

Now I don't know about everyone else but I would find it much easier to find stuff if it was listed out by name easily to see in a list instead of just eyeballing it based on the icons until I select them.
Having two distinct display types like you're describing is a non-trivial amount of development and design time. Considering most people do better with icons than they do with lists (especially the enormous screen-devouring lists that our vendor system uses), icons are generally going to be a better choice for complex inventory systems.

But my question is more in a technical sense, do the icons help save data space / memory or would using a more text based listing actually help the inventory management in some way?
No difference, just visual.

And within each of those category tabs it could easily list 40 items given the above or more and you could just scroll through them down the list to find what you want and still tab over into other categories or switch "pages" by clicking where the ranks would be.
Just my opinion here but that sounds unbelievably cumbersome. I played FFXI for several years and dealt with their "lists of lists" inventory management. And it sucked. Finding things was a huge pain especially as they started adding more and more different types of inventory as the game got older.

[Dzian]

Often wish you could have text based inventory as an option.. be so much easier to find things. especially when you're trying to flick through 15 or 20 bodies to find the one you want to glamour

or just crafting materials when you have a dozen different types of logs or threads that nearly all have the same icon just a slightly different color...

material again is that crit material or direct hit or determination yada yada

a text based inventory would be so much easier

[Sylvain]

If I remember right, the reason inventory space is an issue in FF14 is because every time you move an item or do something, you send data of your whole inventory and not simply what has changed.
Expanding the inventory size means that every data packet is bigger because there are more items. When you expand that to every single player, that's a lot of useless data being processed for no real reason. (this is why for instance the chocobo saddle bag is like a mini retainer, so that when you want to craft it doesn't add up 70 slots of item to read when it looks if you have the mats)

Considering the new glamour system is also capped at 200 items, I believe it must have been coded in such a way that making it less data-vore would be a very hard task.

I also believe that the whole retainer thing doesn't help to have items on different list all around.

Regarding cooking and other job having too many mats.
This is actually a huge problem. We carry too many crap around because there are so many mats. Unfortunately that's a lot of different item id.
Perhaps one day, one thing they could do would be to simplify crafting / gathering from 1 to 60 to reduce the amount of different materials.

Another thing that could be done would be to allow HQ and NQ to stack together. The fact that every item often take two slots is significant.

There are plenty of things they could do, I wonder if they've actually looked at how other mmo do.
I'm sure they did, Y.P tends to be very aware of what is done in other games. I personally really loved the mats system from GW2.

[Elamys]

Another thing that could be done would be to allow HQ and NQ to stack together. The fact that every item often take two slots is significant.

I don't know that allowing HQ and NQ to stack together would be possible but they do need to look into the function and purpose of HQ items, particularly materials. Right now HQ materials become massively devalued for crafting once you reach a certain number of stats. There are maybe only 10 materials in the game that I feel I NEED HQ versions of to craft with. HQs of anything else are useless, so much so that they become a hindrance when I'm mass gathering and keep getting HQs - I have to stop and lower quality, because it's just wasted bag space otherwise.

[Callinon]

The game needs to do a much MUCH better job at managing crafting mats. Honestly GW2's system is the best I've ever seen in this regard.