No increase to inventory space

[Vrankyl]

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"?

Criminal? As it stands, out of the big three MMOs FF14 has the largest on hand inventory system that you start out with, and even at max is one of the largest period. ESO only slightly edges it out due to their crafting mats tab. That said, max purchasable on person inventory in ESO? 210 slots. WoW? About 150 slots. FF14 you start off with over 500 inventory slots between your bag and your Armory Chest, and this isn't counting the Saddlebag.

Now, obviously there are things that are done better, such as proper glamour logs in WoW and the crafting tab in ESO. But to say that the storage space is criminally small is an over exaggeration of a pretty high order. Even as a max level Omni-Crafter and Gatherer that routinely crafts things for gil and all jobs leveled with 5 of them geared up, the only times I struggle with bag space is if I forget to consolidate my materia or hold on to one too many housing items.

[Aneshda]

Yoshi said that all HQ Materials will be removed with 6.0 from Gathering and Mining. How they handle Fishing they have yet not decided. He said we will still be able to craft HQ Gear and that the Crafting System to craft HQ Items gets an overhaul.

[Vahlnir]

Can't increase glamour dresser or inventory space, but they have shown that they can add retainers in a pinch for a profit. Hmm...

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Can't increase glamour dresser or inventory space, but they have shown that they can add retainers in a pinch for a profit. Hmm...

Because not everyone will pay the $2 for an extra retainer, is why. Thus the increase to Server I/O load stays within expected margins than ballooning out of control in an instant. It's the same logistic behind why ISPs could theoretically give unlimited plans to every customer they want while not being able to actually handle everyone's bandwidth, because the average GB/consumer isn't going to be ultra skyhigh, and why it suddenly goes above their expected bandwidth load, they start throttling people.

It's been insanely clear to me the bottleneck for extra inventory is server I/O load for a long time now, this post just all but confirms it. Their server hardware itself is reaching its maximum I/O load operating capacity if too many people queuing with full inventories is causing slowdowns on the back end. Giving everyone extra free inventory would just skyrocket the slowdowns, or even possibly cause other issues to arise.

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.

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. How do you think it knows how many items are on each of your retainers the moment you interact with the summoning bell, or what's for sale on the marketboard or has sold to display information accordingly? That data isn't stored locally. All data for all your retainers is pulled from the server the instant you interact with that summoning bell, and is constantly streamed between your client & the server for as long as you're in the retainer interface. Adding in a full extra Retainer free retainer for everyone in the game adds up to an instant 33% extra server I/O load in the pie slice of the server load that is being dedicated to handling Retainer <-> client interactions.

C) When you design systems like these, you have to account for the worst possible situations. Otherwise, you get issues like Raubahn EX. I actually wouldn't doubt they could give everyone a third free retainer if they wanted, but it would be an insanely risky play without proper testing, optimization of server <-> client interactions, etc. Because at that point, it could be very easy to crash the servers or bog them down intensely if too many people have their retainers open all at once.

Hence their last sentence - 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. They need better hardware and to better optimize their code so adding in more inventory or retainers doesn't just instantly burn down the servers, or cause situations to arise like Raubanh extreme through artificial bottlenecks by bad design. The reason it'll take time is because they have to do it for all 3 of the datacenters their hardware is hosted at, which can take tons of time in the business world.

[ForteNightshade]

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. How do you think it knows how many items are on each of your retainers the moment you interact with the summoning bell, or what's for sale on the marketboard or has sold to display information accordingly? That data isn't stored locally. All data for all your retainers is pulled from the server the instant you interact with that summoning bell, and is constantly streamed between your client & the server for as long as you're in the retainer interface. Adding in a full extra Retainer free retainer for everyone in the game adds up to an instant 33% extra server I/O load in the pie slice of the server load that is being dedicated to handling Retainer <-> client interactions.

Because they specifically said "your inventory" and made no mention of your retainer. And the stress testing they referred to which caused issues happened when they were in instanced content. They weren't interacting with a Summoning Bell. So I don't know where you're drawing this correlation from. The referenced paragraph implied queuing into instanced content with a full inventory led to bottle necks. Which implies the items on our character specifically are the issue not those stored on a retainer.

[Nyarlha]

B) Retainers -do- affect Server I/O load. How do you think it knows how many items are on each of your retainers the moment you interact with the summoning bell, or what's for sale on the marketboard or has sold to display information accordingly? That data isn't stored locally. All data for all your retainers is pulled from the server the instant you interact with that summoning bell, and is constantly streamed between your client & the server for as long as you're in the retainer interface. Adding in a full extra Retainer free retainer for everyone in the game adds up to an instant 33% extra server I/O load in the pie slice of the server load that is being dedicated to handling Retainer <-> client interactions.

It's even worse that that. Remember that isearch exists and is able to search in real time EVERYWHERE (inventory, saddlebag, armory, glamour dresser and even the armoire), meaning all of those are accessible by the client wherever you are.

[Iscah]

It's even worse that that. Remember that isearch exists and is able to search in real time EVERYWHERE (inventory, saddlebag, armory, glamour dresser and even the armoire), meaning all of those are accessible by the client wherever you are.

Only when you run a search though; not checking it at every moment like it does with your inventory.

Also, from memory, your retainer names come up as ???? when you're in a dungeon and run a search, so it's not loading all of the data properly.

[Jojoya]

It's even worse that that. Remember that isearch exists and is able to search in real time EVERYWHERE (inventory, saddlebag, armory, glamour dresser and even the armoire), meaning all of those are accessible by the client wherever you are.

That's not how it works. A "snapshot" of what is in an inventory container is saved to your local client when you use that container. When you're running a search, it looks at those snapshots. It's why some containers will have a ? instead of a check mark - it means you haven't accessed that container since you logged in so it's not certain the snapshot is still accurate.

Generally it should be accurate if you always play on the same console/FC but it will be wildly inaccurate if you switch between them (logging on from a different PC that also has the game installed, playing from a PC when last time you had logged in you were using Playstation, etc.).

[Snorky]

I actually like the idea of increasing retainers inventories. If that allievates q loading times. My take away is empty inventories are better for loading times.

[alibutterfly]

This has been several expansions now of no inventory increase with what I would guess are probably thousands of new items added per expansion (at minimum).

Now, do you need to hold onto all of those things, let alone simultaneously? No.

The longer you play this game and the more classes you level up, would you typically find the more things you "need" or at least want to hold onto? Probably so. Crafting materials, gear sets that you like, gear sets that you went to some trouble to obtain, consumables, etc. I know this has been an increasing problem for me. Even just adding a proper glamour log (one that unlocks appearances when you first pick up the item) would massively help, but that seems like something the tech will never be able to handle, either.

It typically irritates me whenever I see them doing a recolored, maybe newly-dyable, maybe cross-classed version of a previously released armor set in a new expansion as "new" gear, but maybe it's good that they're not giving me 5 dungeons full of fully new sets that I'll like and want to collect for every class for future cosmetic purposes, if this is going to continue to be the case...