helped my SO with sorting inventory today. FFIV needs better inventory management

[Rufalus]

"But Deceptus, just thrown them in the Glamour Plate" Until one of those items is needed for Fashion Files and Glamour doesn't count for it

Fashion Report checks the appearance only. It is ok to use stuff from your dresser.

[Vhailor]

I realize this, again my point is level 70 gear, heck, 51 +? HW+ crafts, should not be using anything that streams down to a 5 gil NPC material. This is the reason people have these problems, because of the over unnecessary items crafts do take.

The second big issue that I was trying to point out is item management of the retainers. It is super slow going from retainer to retainer, taking such a long time just to pull all the currency type items and put them in one spot, so my SO stops putting the same thing in 3-5 different places.

Why is moving items from retainer to retainer so hard?

In response to the 5-gil NPC materials, it's done for realism. Generally you don't see it outside of Culinarian and, occasionally, Alchemist. To the extent it's present in both of these, it's a trade-off between using a 5-gil item like Table Salt, or duplicating said item a few times so that you have higher tiers of 'salt' for recipes that would absolutely call for salt.

In regards to retainer management, I suspect the lack of a better system is precisely because there isn't a fixed number of Retainers. Any system SE implemented for multi-Retainer management would need to (a) be able to scale from one Retainer up to eight, and (b) be able to function on all systems, including the relatively low-resolution interfaces on consoles. That's a tough pair of constraints. It also presents difficulties for implementing Retainer information on a tooltip display; items can be in at least ten places at once, if you've got eight Retainers (inventory, Chocobo Saddle, and each Retainer). That's a lot of space on a tooltip.

At the end of the day though, I feel Retainer inventory management is very doable if you've got the stock number of two. If you've gone and purchased more, well... at a certain point, I have a hard time not advising a look in the mirror when assigning blame for organizational difficulties. I mean, where do things stop? Some players have multiple characters with several Retainers each; I see them complaining about organizing certain items across characters, too. Should SE build an all-inclusive system that can also handle multiple characters within a single server? Within a single Data Center? I feel like their design objectives, for this reason, should be based on a "stock" subscription: one character, two Retainers. In this scenario, I think what we've got is perfectly fine.

[Avenger]

I think my inventory issues could be greatly improved if they expanded the glamour dresser - I have tons of blue gear that is only useful for glamours but is hard to replace.

Stacking furniture would also greatly help, even though that isn’t realistic.

[Tridus]

There are a couple of ways to look at this. If you're just a combat player and you don't need a lot of the stuff that you get, then yeah, it's fine. Sell the stuff you don't care about, like crafting mats. If you do need something, you can always farm it or buy it back. You need space for glamour and currencies, but it's not so bad.

Crafters? Yeah, no. There's a bazillion things you use to craft things to craft other things. Many of them are time consuming to gather or can only be done at certain times/come from bosses/currencies/etc. If you can plan ahead, you can have your retainers do a lot of that, but anything on demand quickly becomes a huge mess. If you then also have glamours and currencies on top of that? The struggle is real. These two use cases are very different.

As a software developer, I see lots of room for improvement. Currencies are an easy start. Ran a few things last week and now I have Sigmascape bolts/cranks/crystalloids/springs, along with Deltascape equivalents after helping a friend get their clears. Then Alliance Roulette gave me a pair of different Mhachi coins to go with the Rabanastre ones I already have. Is all of this really necessary? Why not have the currency items in the currency tab instead of wasting inventory space and forcing me to lug it around or remember where I put it the next time I get more and want to buy something?

Lets not even talk about the absurdly overcomplicated process that is buying and augmenting a creation weapon at this point. That takes three currencies (one of which is treated as a currency) plus a couple of intermediary items, and FIVE steps of talking and trading in.

When it comes to storing crafting stuff, a big improvement would be a unified inventory. Stuff right now is broken up all over the place. I know, I know, server limitations. But I have my inventory, three retainer inventories, and now Chocobo inventory. I can search for a specific item, which is helpful, but that's a whole lot of distinct things. Lets say I take some of the advice here and want to better organize my retainer inventories. If stuff is on one retainer and I need to move it to another to do so? Open up one retainer, grab stuff, open up other retainer, move it. Probably have to do that more than once because I won't be able to hold it all in a single trip. Now do that dance for several retainers and this is quite the exercise.

The thing is that to the end user, the distinction of where something is adds no value. That's a server implementation thing that a user doesn't care about. What do I want in an ideal implementation? If I own the item, I should be able to use it. I don't care where it's stored. And that is where the current system fails. It makes me care about the location of my stuff far too often, so have to juggle things around to craft, or dye, or whatever else I want to do.

That people manage to make the current system work for them is a testament to people's adaptability, not a testament to a well designed inventory system. There's lots of room for improvement on the UI end.

[Granyala]

Stacking furniture would also greatly help, even though that isn’t realistic.

Last time I checked, we could stack deconstructed furniture IRL w/o any problems at all.

Don't ever argue with "realism" when it comes to an MMOs inventory. After all I am carrying half a wardrobe, a ton of ore and multiple furniture items into battle.

Lets not even talk about the absurdly overcomplicated process that is buying and augmenting a creation weapon at this point. That takes three currencies (one of which is treated as a currency) plus a couple of intermediary items, and FIVE steps of talking and trading in.

I know right? I think one of the DEVs has a serious fetish for currency exchanges and the associated window. :<

[Vstarstruck]

In response to the 5-gil NPC materials, it's done for realism. Generally you don't see it outside of Culinarian and, occasionally, Alchemist. To the extent it's present in both of these, it's a trade-off between using a 5-gil item like Table Salt, or duplicating said item a few times so that you have higher tiers of 'salt' for recipes that would absolutely call for salt.

In regards to retainer management, I suspect the lack of a better system is precisely because there isn't a fixed number of Retainers. Any system SE implemented for multi-Retainer management would need to (a) be able to scale from one Retainer up to eight, and (b) be able to function on all systems, including the relatively low-resolution interfaces on consoles. That's a tough pair of constraints. It also presents difficulties for implementing Retainer information on a tooltip display; items can be in at least ten places at once, if you've got eight Retainers (inventory, Chocobo Saddle, and each Retainer). That's a lot of space on a tooltip.

At the end of the day though, I feel Retainer inventory management is very doable if you've got the stock number of two. If you've gone and purchased more, well... at a certain point, I have a hard time not advising a look in the mirror when assigning blame for organizational difficulties. I mean, where do things stop? Some players have multiple characters with several Retainers each; I see them complaining about organizing certain items across characters, too. Should SE build an all-inclusive system that can also handle multiple characters within a single server? Within a single Data Center? I feel like their design objectives, for this reason, should be based on a "stock" subscription: one character, two Retainers. In this scenario, I think what we've got is perfectly fine.

There has to be give and take, if your servers can't handle the "realism" or when people ask for more retainer space, it is frustrating to see "server limitations". If you have that meany problems, I'm sorry but realism needs to be gutted then. You also forget the heavy reliance BSM and ARM has on iron ores, and GSM on copper ores. All the crafts have long chains, and BSM is getting pretty bad now when it comes to that, just gets overshadowed by cul who has a lot of muti step + having 6- 8 items at times (or whatever) I really hate Tama-hagane Ingots, they take its own ore (or was it sand? whatever) 4 of those, and an Oroshigane Ingot. Oroshigane Ingot takes a different 4 ores and NPC ore, why.. just why? how can you argue realism that point when " Oroshigane Ingot" is not even real? At some point you have to admit, SE is not being realistic with their boundaries. WVR can get bad on how meany items it takes, like for example, if you need blood cloth, 9 of those, means you need 108 leaves things.. why? just why? Also, there is a new GSM synth, i think it is only 1 or 2 patches old, that stems down to rock salt too, so to think only cul does it is a bit off..

For having this system of having an unknown amount of max retainers so they can't redo the system, don't you think that is a problem on is own? 15 retainers? 20? that is going to be exponentially difficult to manage, only because that is their only bandaid fox for this problem...

Why not start cutting out items? I really need to ask that I am shocked no one has answered yet, no one has complained about this? really? I am really confused, are people just that scared of player base blacklash like I got hit with?

There are a couple of ways to look at this. If you're just a combat player and you don't need a lot of the stuff that you get, then yeah, it's fine. Sell the stuff you don't care about, like crafting mats. If you do need something, you can always farm it or buy it back. You need space for glamour and currencies, but it's not so bad.

Crafters? Yeah, no. There's a bazillion things you use to craft things to craft other things. Many of them are time consuming to gather or can only be done at certain times/come from bosses/currencies/etc. If you can plan ahead, you can have your retainers do a lot of that, but anything on demand quickly becomes a huge mess. If you then also have glamours and currencies on top of that? The struggle is real. These two use cases are very different.

As a software developer, I see lots of room for improvement. Currencies are an easy start. Ran a few things last week and now I have Sigmascape bolts/cranks/crystalloids/springs, along with Deltascape equivalents after helping a friend get their clears. Then Alliance Roulette gave me a pair of different Mhachi coins to go with the Rabanastre ones I already have. Is all of this really necessary? Why not have the currency items in the currency tab instead of wasting inventory space and forcing me to lug it around or remember where I put it the next time I get more and want to buy something?

Lets not even talk about the absurdly overcomplicated process that is buying and augmenting a creation weapon at this point. That takes three currencies (one of which is treated as a currency) plus a couple of intermediary items, and FIVE steps of talking and trading in.

When it comes to storing crafting stuff, a big improvement would be a unified inventory. Stuff right now is broken up all over the place. I know, I know, server limitations. But I have my inventory, three retainer inventories, and now Chocobo inventory. I can search for a specific item, which is helpful, but that's a whole lot of distinct things. Lets say I take some of the advice here and want to better organize my retainer inventories. If stuff is on one retainer and I need to move it to another to do so? Open up one retainer, grab stuff, open up other retainer, move it. Probably have to do that more than once because I won't be able to hold it all in a single trip. Now do that dance for several retainers and this is quite the exercise.

The thing is that to the end user, the distinction of where something is adds no value. That's a server implementation thing that a user doesn't care about. What do I want in an ideal implementation? If I own the item, I should be able to use it. I don't care where it's stored. And that is where the current system fails. It makes me care about the location of my stuff far too often, so have to juggle things around to craft, or dye, or whatever else I want to do.

That people manage to make the current system work for them is a testament to people's adaptability, not a testament to a well designed inventory system. There's lots of room for improvement on the UI end.

All this, yes +1

I mean that is the point of this thread when I was trying to help my SO, it was so hard just to round up the currencies and put them in one spot because of the bad UI going to one retainer to the next and back again. In the end of the day there is too many items that is not really needed to be taking up inventory space, like how I do not even want to deal with the lockbox currency from diadem 3.0 because of it. Just takes too much time.

[Sapphire_Dianta]

Saved for editing...

[ErryK]

I craft, I only use one retainer for the materials, I have six for glamour, and one for housing and materia.

My inventory is fine, I have 40-something slots used from my own personal inventory, and I carry a lot of miscellaneous stuff like fireworks, Sigmascape pages, buff food, potions, etc.

The only points that were valid from OP were:
1) Certain items not in the currency menu (eg. Anemos Crystals, Protean Crystals, etc.)
2) Retainer UI being clunky.

Inventory on its own is fine.

[Vstarstruck]

I craft, I only use one retainer for the materials, I have six for glamour, and one for housing and materia.

My inventory is fine, I have 40-something slots used from my own personal inventory, and I carry a lot of miscellaneous stuff like fireworks, Sigmascape pages, buff food, potions, etc.

The only points that were valid from OP were:
1) Certain items not in the currency menu (eg. Anemos Crystals, Protean Crystals, etc.)
2) Retainer UI being clunky.

Inventory on its own is fine.

I see conflicting statements here. Paying close to your sub cost just on inventory space and it is fine? okay....

[Lilseph]

I just want a faster way to navigate through all my retainers. At the moment, I have 5 retainers mostly for glamour (having all jobs to 70 and being a glamour enthusiast myself, you can see how much space I use for this) and one for currencies/materia/tokens/dyes/misc in general. Sometimes is a pain in the butt to go through all of them individually to check them out.