Inventory Expansion

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Were you looking for Inventory 101 or Gobbiebag Quests?

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The topic of inventory expansion has been a popular question for the development team and SE staff over the years. This article will likely need a lot of additions as people run across them in interviews and posts.

2016

The 2016 Reddit AMA saw a couple of related questions asked of Akihiko Matsui and Yujo Fujito.

Q: Was the introduction of the additional paid services (expanded equipment inventory) successful to the FFXI team? Do you plan on introducing other additional paid services?

A: It had an overall positive effect. If there are services that we feel players would understand the introduction of, then we would like to consider them as well.

Q: Would you consider one more Wardrobe-style box? This box would only hold consumables (medicines, food, ninja tools, etc) and making at least echos, remedies, and holy waters stack to 99?

A: This is not possible as we cannot add any new storage. As for changing the amount of the stack, this is possible; however, it will increase the amount available on the market to 99, and also would make it not possible to be placed on the auction house for a couple weeks due to the system. This will cause a situation where players won’t be able to purchase when they would like to. For this reason, we would like to try and avoid making changes.

2020

During Freshly Picked #51 (video here) broadcast on July 7th, 2020, the devs discuss new storage methods they're working on. Funkworkz provided a summary below in his post on FFXIAH.

New storage methods are being thought of for the future. Specifically, a type of storage that you can throw items into it, and do not need to access it, like how Porter moogles work where the data is always there and the armor is always accessible. The screenshot shows two sets of AF armor. It would be a paid option. They are working on the technical details.

During the July 2020 Digest video, the team addressed the expansion of storage.

Fujito: First is the expansion of storage. Currently, we're going through trial and error looking for various methods to secure additional storage space. We're currently moving forward with hopes to implement it sometime next year or later.

Matsui: The number of items keeps on increasing, and we'd like to allow you to have some breathing room in terms of inventory space. It's most likely end up [sic] as a paid feature, but we're doing our best to make it happen.

Fujito: Right now, we're organizing the details surrounding payment. Once we've cleared that, we can move forward with investigating the in-game specifications.

2021

In Matsui's 2021 Happy New Year post, he very briefly mentioned expanding storage options.

Additionally, we're looking to expand storage options and implement new character growth options for all jobs.

During Freshly Picked #54 (video here) streamed on March 17th, 2021, the dev team commented on the storage expansion progress. Funkworkz summarizes it below from a post on FFXIAH.

The ending part they go on about working from home/remotely and the challenges involved. They reply to live comments from viewers, nothing really noteworthy. They talked a fair amount about expanding the inventory with the new storage system and how they needed to bring in a senior engineer to help make it work. The delay is due to different departments working together (billing, web development, game development, etc).

In the 19th Vana'versary address posted on May 16th, 2021, Matsui commented on inventory system changes.

We are also working to expand item storage options, as many of you have requested extra support in this area. However, there are trade-offs to be made, as any increase to storage system capacity comes with an ever-increasing amount of data that needs to be sent. We are currently discussing what is and isn't feasible with our engineers and will provide you with an update as soon as we have more to share.

In a May interview with Famitsu, the subject was brought up. FFXIAH poster Manque provided a translation below in their post here.

Q: How is storage adjustments/expansion progressing?

Matsui: We are making progress, of course! Currently it takes a long time for inventory and items to appear so we can't simply add more bags/storage. We are working with our engineers to address this.

Fujito: when we consider expanding storage, we also have to think about other factors like, expanding usable macros/equip sets, transmission times, or transferring items to and from diff. areas without having to go through your main inventory first, item recovery rule policies if you mistakenly toss something. Lots to think about.

Fujito: We're discussing with the engineers but we have to first decide how far we'll adjust things. Once we do, there' a danger things cost more ongoing maintenance. Also, as we stated again, we have already stated publically that we CANNOT expand storage further. However, people still insist on requesting and spreading the request further and further. We ask for your understanding on this point.

In an interview with Gamer Escape in the same month, Fujito fielded the topic.

Gamer Escape: Are there any plans to implement additional inventory expansions or mog wardrobes in the future?

Additionally, are there any plans to adjust the maximum stack from 12 to 99 for a wider breadth of items such as basic crafting materials and crystals?

Yoji Fujito: We’re continuing to explore options for increasing storage space, but we’ve got nothing to share regarding what form it might take. In terms of adjusting the maximum stack, some items are balanced around current stack numbers, whereas others would become harder to distribute full stacks of if we increased the number, so we’re not planning to do something like setting the limit for everything at 99.

However, we are continuing to monitor this issue, so if there are any particular items you’d like to see changed, be sure to mention it on the forums.

In June of 2021, Fujito made a post to the Japanese forum that included a snippet about the adjustments. Community rep Voltenyne posted an official translation here.

Storage System Revamp

This has been in the works for a very long time, but we are looking into increasing inventory space.

Ever since Mog Wardrobes 3 and 4 were added, we’ve repeatedly replied that adding more inventory space wasn’t possible, so this goal may seem like a contradiction, and you might be frustrated with us and wondering why we haven’t implemented it already.

However, this method comes with a risk to gameplay and I would like to warn you that it most likely won’t be a catch-all solution.

Loading times, the aspect with the largest effects on gameplay, cannot be improved beyond their current speeds, so we'll try and tackle it from a different angle.

2022

In his 2022 New Year's address, Matsui briefly mentioned inventory system changes.

We're also laying the groundwork for new storage systems debuting this fiscal year. Hopefully this will help solve your inventory woes.