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

[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.

[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...

[Vhailor]

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?

My personal reason? I like more items. They contribute to the depth of the game world for me. I mean, the most fluid system wouldn't use any items for crafting at all, beyond Crystals; or, to maintain a link to Gathering, would have at most one farmed (monster-dropped) item, one Miner item, one Botanist item, and one Fisher item. Personally, though, that would greatly diminish the richness of Gathering and Crafting for me. I like making Tama-hagane ingots with Oroshigane and Iron Ore. And, by the way, Oroshigane Steel and Tamahagane are real things - they aren't fantasy. There is an element of realism here.

In many ways, this is a similar argument to abilities. FFXIV could also be simplified from a gameplay perspective by eliminating abilities, so that each Job has, oh, maybe 10-15. Why have multiple combos, right? It's all button-mashing in the end - why make me worry about which series to push when? Well, it's because a lot of people like the depth that results from additional complexity. The simpler something is, the shallower it is.

I also think most people don't have unique inventory problems relating to FFXIV. I would wager that the vast majority of people with non-Glamour inventory issues, struggle with it in every RPG they've ever played. Those that don't struggle with it, have no cause to complain. And then there's what I'd guess is a small subset of people having similar feelings to your own - that even disregarding Glamours, FFXIV is unduly burdensome on players, and something should be done to remedy it, even if it means eliminating items from the game. Hence, relatively few people echoing your concerns.

Edit / Aside: I'd also like to point out that, while my SO struggles with her inventory, and while I sometimes sink significant effort into cleaning it up, neither of us are remotely inclined to blame SE. We know her tendency to hang on to things she doesn't need is the problem. She even commented after our last World of Darkness run on the Alliance Roulette that she should probably stop even casting a lot on useless shit like Timeworn Sand, to which I said "yeah, probably so". She knows exactly what generates her inventory woes, and she knows that 90% of it - the non-Glamour side of it - is due to her behaviour, not a systemic limitation. I'd encourage you to spend some time reflecting, too. You seem to have a lot of anger over an issue that is largely arising because you're dealing with a somewhat-disorganized SO who has a half-dozen or so Retainers. Is it really SE that's at the root of the problem, here?

One more edit:

Yes it is, they over bloat you in items to try make you pay more for your sub then you should be doing.

It is not "extra service" do you forget this game is a sub base model? If this game was f2P model, sure I would be agreeing with you.

This is patently absurd, and it's clear you haven't really played games that actually try to do this. This is a company that has (a) introduced additional Glamour storage, (b) added a Chocobo Saddlebag, and (c) increased raw inventory storage, all in the past six months or so. Yeah, you're right, they sure are trying to coerce us into buying Retainers.

I typically find it very difficult to defend SE, but you're making it hard for me not to.