RMT retainers and how they deliberately hold back progress

[YovelaLindswood]

Its no small secret that inventory in xiv is especially cooked compared to most other games. In fact if you compare it to its direct competitor WoW it has less inventory space. The only difference is armory but thats only because XIV allows multiclassing. As the game has grown only minor inventory changes have been made and only to the armory to allow you to hold the required items to gear all classes. Their "great improvement" of chocobo saddlebags was in fact just jingley keys to sell their app on a $5 a month subscription since they gave you half of it and made viewing what you could have had integral to inventory storage. While i'm not a fan of that its not necessarially a problem. The problem is the systems that have been deliberately harmed in an effort to retain retainer sales.

The glamour system - The glamour dresser is an improvement. This much is true but the problem is its implementation. Rather than a wardrobe like gw2 or wow for skins they elected to keep it as an inventory system. With every update they continually keep treating symptoms without fixing the problem. All because they need dresser scarcity so dedicated players who continue to pay monthly wouldn't be opposed to paying "Just $2 more for another bank tab." They know the ones who will pay for retainers are the long term players and collectors. So they design a system that dedicated players almost need to pay into. Considering the data storage requirements of each item are less if its just a skin code rather than an actual item you cant even argue it saves data space. Its literally just an additional section to the excel spreadsheet that is your character data. There is no reason why we have this awkward system other than milking the dedicated playerbase, crafters, and collectors.

Material storage - Crafting/gathering takes up a lot of inventory in any game but most games have an alternative bank as material storage. In GW2 you can even auto deposit crafting reagents to your material storage from anywhere with a button press in your inventory. WoW has an account wide reagent bank. Rather than using additional retainers as a gil sink to reduce the already hyper inflated gil you pay real money on a MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION to access additional storage. Deliberately inconveniencing crafters to make money.

Continued on next reply

[YovelaLindswood]

The marketboard - Limiting the number of trades you can make to the number of retainers you bought is crazy. It may sound like a good counter to rmt buts but in fact it doesn't help anyone more than rmt bots. Dedicated crafters may hit 60-80 trades by flipping items and having long term trades up but only the bots can reach 200 trades being fed mb data. I get the rp of having your retainers sell things but its just an archaic system in its implementation. Theres no reason we're limited to 20 trades or why accessing my bank removes my trades from the market. The way its implemented just adds up micro inconveniences over time designed to make people eventually cave to buy that extra retainer.

Tackle boxes - The tackle box lets you conveniently swap baits without going into your inventory but why isn't it just a separate inventory for baits? While it doesn't affect every player there are a lot of people that like the fishing collection who are overflowing with baits. Its another thing designed to clutter your inventory and make you buy more bank space.

I could go on and on about the various inventory items that could fill the currency tab like ex totems or araid coins or the pay to win advantages of ventures but I feel like i've gotten my point across. While I don't necessarily think all of these in a vacuum are bad but combined it paints a picture of deliberate design to squeeze a couple extra bucks out of its playerbase and deliberately hindering actual player convenience.

[Raraka]

They need funding for foamstars 2

[Saraide]

They need funding for symbiogenesis.

[YovelaLindswood]

We all know its actually the golden goose Belan Wonderland 2 electric boogaloo.

[AmiableApkallu]

The tackle box lets you conveniently swap baits without going into your inventory but why isn't it just a separate inventory for baits?

The reasons to have separate kinds of inventory — armoury vs. chocobo saddlebag vs. tackle box vs. … — are (1) for immersion/role play and (2) to artificially restrict the player in some way.

The resources it would take SE to provide 100 general-purpose inventory slots that you can use any way you please ought to be roughly the same as the resources it would take to provide 10 tackle box slots, 20 chocobo saddlebag slots, 30 armory slots, and 40 general-purpose slots.

The former is far more flexible and what players should be asking for.

[YovelaLindswood]

The reasons to have separate kinds of inventory — armoury vs. chocobo saddlebag vs. tackle box vs. … — are (1) for immersion/role play and (2) to artificially restrict the player in some way.

The resources it would take SE to provide 100 general-purpose inventory slots that you can use any way you please ought to be roughly the same as the resources it would take to provide 10 tackle box slots, 20 chocobo saddlebag slots, 30 armory slots, and 40 general-purpose slots.

The former is far more flexible and what players should be asking for.

Either is still maybe 1mB at most per character of data storage depending on the size (which i'd argue doesn't need to be above 10 since that covers common baits and current big fish bait). Which is being very generous given the file size of any character in an mmo should maybe be 400ish mB (wow private servers as reference. IDK how awful SE's data storage method is). All that really changes is where that data is entered on your character spreadsheet. Given the only players who have extra data entered are the ones whose inventory currently has fewer slots available than the tacklebox i'd argue its an entirely negligible ammount of resources.

[Raraka]

The former is far more flexible and what players should be asking for.

If we ask for general slots we get turned down because Retainers generate revenue

If we ask for saddle slots we get turned down because companion app revenue

If we ask for glamour space, or a tacklebox, we are asking for a more niche/separated method of storage, that more importantly, doesnt directly affect their revenue (as they dont sell more glamour spaces), hence why we tend to ask for specific types of storage, its more likely that they will take in suggestions that dont affect their revenue directly

[CaptainLagbeard]

Square-Enix is just a tiny indie company. Please understand, they need that cash.