Quote Originally Posted by Payadopa View Post
That's the funniest thing to me. Defend it how much you like. But how can you say [server limitations] one moment but allow [every] player to buy up to X(not sure how many) and that somehow doesn't cause an issue?
(Leaving aside the excellent resource instanciation explanation above...)

Because in many companies, devs don't just get to unilaterally add features if they have a measurable impact on resource use and/or operational cost. And if allowing everyone to have, say, 500 more storage slots universally would add up to X amount more storage and thus require adding Y amount of cost to the server budget, that can be hard to convince the company's finance team is a good change; they just see numbers, and they'd see one number going up there where they don't want it to.

Whereas if you can sell the 500 more storage slots so that the extra Y cost is covered by those sales, the finance team doesn't flail around in a panic about increasing the costs. (At least in my own experience from having worked in the industry, and still being in touch with many former co-workers and old friends who still are suffering through crunch time.)

It's dumb, yes. But a lot of corporate politics behind-the-scenes in game development boils down to what I would define as "dumb". And based on my own experiences, I would not be shocked if that was exactly the logic there behind making additional retainers purchasable but not just giving everyone 10 retainers for free. "Not everyone needs this much storage, and the ones who do will pay for the server bills by buying it!"