Suggestion: Improved and Centralized Inventory Management

[NitrogenFixation]

The dev team has done a fantastic job streamlining the game to make it more accessible to new players, but one major hurdle remains untouched: the inventory system. Better lighting is great, but one of the most basic ways of interfacing with the game is through your inventory. If it's clunky, difficult to sort through, and daunting to manage (esp. for anyone interested in Disciple of the Hand/Land content), it leaves a bad impression.

Inventories should be:

1. Sortable: Allow players to sort by different criteria, e.g. sort armor by class/role
2. Searchable: /isearch and "Search for Item" are rather...clunky and limited.
3. Filterable: Should be able to narrow down results based on various criteria.
4. Display a list view (or at least offer that option)
5. Access multiple inventories: Switching around between Personal Inventory, Armory Chest, Chocobo Saddlebag, Glamour Dresser, Housing Storage, Retainers (2+), and Armoire to sort my inventories is exhausting. It does not spark joy.

There is already an interface in the game that satisfies 4/5 of these requirements: the marketboard. It is far more navigable than my cluttered inventories, and I would love to be able to use a similar interface with all the same filtering and sorting options -- and have access to all of my inventory spaces (or at least, most of them).

I would love for this to be a menu that is accessible everywhere except instanced duties, and to enable crafting easily with access to all retainers' inventories as well as your own. But even if it's added in the form of an item in the overworld like the Summoning Bell or NPCs like the House of Splendours vendors, it would still be a VAST improvement from the current state of affairs.

Additionally, attaching excessive inventory clutter to side content like DoH/DoL and even high end content grinds is an accessibility barrier that exists for no reason. Here are some suggestions to reduce inventory clutter:

• Dedicated inventories for Dye/Prisms, Materia, Fishing Bait, and Raw Crafting Materials: Rather than being stored as stacks of items in normal inventory spaces, each of these could be stored in their own inventories, similar to crafting crystals. This alone would massively reduce inventory clutter.
• Trophies: Tokens dropped from Alliance Raids, Extreme Trials, and Normal/Savage Raids (coins, totems, books, etc), used only as currency to trade for weapons/upgrades, should either be classified as currency or stored in their own separate space.
• "Mark as Junk"/"Protect Item" + "Sell/Destroy All Junk": Helpful to prevent accidentally losing items that are wanted, makes it easy to purge. This can apply persistently, i.e. if I mark Bat Wings as junk, they will always be marked as junk whenever I get one in my inventory. I can just press "Sell All Junk" at my retainer to get rid of them regularly.

[Catwho]

Well thought out constructive criticism with genuine suggestions for improvement? In these official forums?

Take your upvote. And also consider making this post over in the UI suggestions forum, where it's more likely to get some attention.

[NitrogenFixation]

Oh, is that the preferred place to post suggestions? The in-game stuff just says to post suggestions for improving the game in gen discussion, so this is where I put it, but I'll definitely post it there! Thank you!

[Kranel_San]

I expected yet another nonsense, but you gained my support!

[dspguy]

The fact that we are 9 years into this game and "sort" still doesn't actually stack identical items. It moves it next to each other. That's something I guess.

[ZeraSkiratea]

The fact that we are 9 years into this game and "sort" still doesn't actually stack identical items. It moves it next to each other. That's something I guess.

TBF i am fairly certain that not stacking identical items is intentional, afterall you have to go out of your way to split a stack.... i imagine more people would be mad at the game just stacking them together via sort then not.


HECK i dont get why people would assume sort would stack identical items.. its a sort, not a stack option.

[Avidria]

TBF i am fairly certain that not stacking identical items is intentional, afterall you have to go out of your way to split a stack.... i imagine more people would be mad at the game just stacking them together via sort then not.


HECK i dont get why people would assume sort would stack identical items.. its a sort, not a stack option.

Other games I've played with a sort function do also stack the items. It may well be intentional but I honestly didn't even notice this was a thing until now, I thought it DID stack identical items when you sorted. But I also never really checked, so.

Anyway yeah +1 support for improvements to inventory management in this game.