FFXIV: Inventory Management Simulator

[Iscah]

So my suggestion is that, for the character and retainer inventories, that the number of rows be incremented when an expansion introduces a new tier of crafting items.

Not everyone would organize things like I do, but the principle is to increase available inventory when the game has technically opened the possibility for needing more storage.

They actually made a technical post explaining this issue in detail a while ago - the short version is that they can't just incrementally add more storage, due to poor decisions with the original programming.

The game doesn't just display items in pages of 35 items, it actually handles them in groups of 35 items. Increasing the inventory space means increasing that group size, and apparently 35 is the limit of what the game can handle well.

(The "changes in 4.2" that the post is primarily addressing is that while the group size had been increased from 25 to 35, the inventory menu hadn't been adjusted, so you had a weird cluster of non-slots at the end of the last page. They fixed that issue, but it had the side-effect of reducing our 'expanded view' inventory from a 10x10 grid to 10x7.)

I'm not necessarily arguing against an expansion to the armory chest, since it's not like it's a bad thing, but I have never understood this complaint. There are 29 classes in the game, and 35 slots in the armory chest. Even if you had every class at such varying levels that you needed a separate piece of gear for every job, you have enough slots, with a couple extra for you when you get replacements. (The only exception to this is rings, which I agree was a silly oversight.)

Make sure all of your classes have a gearset assigned and managing your armory chest is not nearly as hard as it seems. All you have to do is stop once in a while and clean out everything that doesn't have a page icon on it. Maybe keep a piece or two in advance for leveling up, but ultimately you can also store that on a retainer as well until you're at the right level.

Keeping pieces for leveling up is what causes issues, and moving items away into other storage (inventory, retainers) makes it likely to get overlooked and forgotten, unless you remember to review and check if there are any stored pieces you need - and of course that adds another layer of annoying inventory management.

The issue with rings comes back to the inventory explanation above - they can't just double the size of the ring storage because it's not how the data works.

I assume that to have double the storage for rings, there would have to be separate "left ring" and "right ring" boxes and you'd either have to move them around manually to get the two best rings equipped, or potentially the rings themselves would need to be duplicated and only equippable on a designated hand. That would probably cause as many issues as it solved.

Also, this might be more of a personal problem, but I do tend to be carrying a few "just for glamour" gearsets that I don't want (or rather don't have room for) as glamour plates, or want to equip outside of towns. From memory I have a winter outfit, beach gear, general casual clothes and a formal dress from attending a wedding. Plus some gear I need to equip to my retainers, but first I need to glamour it, and that means remembering about it when I'm able to visit an inn room to sort that out.