No increase to inventory space

[ForteNightshade]

Apparently, this came from a follow up to the Live Letter and were posted to the reddit translation channel.

Hey everyone. Hope you all are hyped for 6.0 after that job action trailer!
Today we bring you a short summary of what YoshiP said about inventory space (and why they are not expanding it) during the server stress test held on the japanese DC Mana on the 27th of August.

The stress test asked all available players to queue for the same content at the same time. This lead to long queue times if someone from Pandaemonium (a server on Mana) was queued up with you.

The reason given was that zoning into instances (and/or hopping between servers) requires the server to handle all the char data for each request. The more items you have in your inventory, the larger the data to handle.

Since the players on Pandaemonium apparently all had fully packed inventories, this data handling led to a bottle neck. Anyone who got matched with someone from Pandaemonium was slowed down in their queue by this process. Players from Pandaemonium couldn't get into the instance, but they also couldn't leave it without longer waiting times.

If they increased the inventory space this data would be even larger. YoshiP emphasizes that it is very important for them to handle the char/inventory data with extra care so nothing gets lost/bugs during the transfer between zones.
They want to increase the inventory space at some point, but in order to do so they would have to optimise servers which will take time.

To comment myself, I'm not overly bothered by our personal inventory bag not increasing. However, they absolutely should offer a third free retainer, especially as this wouldn't impact the servers as they mention above. Likewise, the Glamour Dresser should increase for the same reason.

[Seraphor]

They'll never offer an additional free retainer, because everyone who is currently paying for retainers will suddenly see their bill slashed by $2, which means SE will instantly lose something like $400,000~$800,000 per month. They're backed into a corner on retainers, shareholders would never allow it.

I could however see them increasing the capacity of retainers inventories. Each one currently has 175 item slots (7 pages of 25), an increase to 200 or even 225 would be feasible, without invalidating paid retainers, and would even increase the "value for money" of getting additional retainers.

Glamour Dresser? Absolutely.
More items viable for the Armoire? Definitely.

They are however reducing clutter by removing HQ versions of dropped/gathered/crafting mats. So if you're a crafter that should help quite a bit already.
And removal of Belts will give us a few extra Weapon/Ring slots.

[ItMe]

That is interesting info and thanks for sharing it

I agree with you, if the issue is players are carrying too many items on them and it makes handling character data difficult... give us more places to put our things that aren't our own pockets.
A 3rd free retainer would fill that need beautifully.

[Larirawiel]

That is interesting info and thanks for sharing it

I agree with you, if the issue is players are carrying too many items on them and it makes handling character data difficult... give us more places to put our things that aren't our own pockets.
A 3rd free retainer would fill that need beautifully.

If you do it right then it should not be a problem that the players have too many items. Relational databases can handle that without any problems if the database model is normalized properly.

Cheers

[Imora]

They've already said they can't make the glam dresser any bigger.

I'd get on board with a third retainer though. I'm about to hire one myself because i can't handle all my stored crap for jobs i haven't leveled yet. Seriously about to destroy it.

I need to pull my female only stuff out of the dresser, too and stick it on a retainer. Ugh. Space issues.

[Nightingaile]

They've already said they can't make the glam dresser any bigger.

Oh well shoot. *They already said it*. Guess it can't happen eh?

Wonder if they've ever said other things werent possible and then made them happen anyway?

[kiagenwa]

I'm about to hire one myself because i can't handle all my stored crap for jobs i haven't leveled yet. Seriously about to destroy it.

Gears are easy to get. If you're not leveling that job, I suggest you just get rid of them.
In my experience, when you do leveling roulettes, people care little if your gear is level-matched unless you're the tank and you can't take any mob.
Still, you can just buy stuff off MB to get a starting gear, with the gil you earned leveling previous job.

[Iscah]

They've already said they can't make the glam dresser any bigger.

I'd get on board with a third retainer though. I'm about to hire one myself because i can't handle all my stored crap for jobs i haven't leveled yet. Seriously about to destroy it.

I'm not sure they've said that there is no possible increase to the dresser. Still, it's clearly not an easy thing.

As for hiring extra retainers, if you're just using it as long-term storage then you don't need to maintain the subscription full time. They will keep your items until the next time you re-hire them for access.

A) I'm not sure where you're seeing 'retainers dont affect the servers' from that snippet, as they only talk about your main inventory.

B) Retainers -do- affect Server I/O load.

Retainers do affect server load, but not in the same time or place as transferring a player (and their primary inventory) into an instance.

Additionally, the reason a player's inventory is crammed is probably because they've run out of storage space on their retainers and glamour dresser.

(Personally it's a mix of that and the "free gear at the end of the dungeon" thing making me hang on to an assortment of stuff for jobs I'm currently levelling.)

[Imora]

That noted, i keep my inventory clean. Three rows on a bad day are used

[Rhyagelle]

They need to increase the inventory or move monster drops/etc into a separate inventory of its own. It's actually very criminal how small the inventory is with no means of upgrade. If they cannot do this, they need to increase retainer space or offer another option to buy them in game. If even that's too much, they need to introduce a storage chest in the inn.

As for them saying they "can't" do this and that, why? Have they actually said why it's not possible, or is it more along the lines of "Shareholders said no, so we can't"?