Hello! UI lead, Hiroshi Minagawa here.
I’d like to follow-up on the post made by the community team the other day about the sort feature.
This is going to be quite the long post, but I’d like to take the time to talk in detail about the sort feature.
Two item sort commands that will be implemented
There are two types of item sort features that we are working on implementing during patch 2.1.
The very simple and easy to use “Sort” feature.
A sort that can be used with a text command to organize your inventory more freely and specifically.
We are in the process of readying the above two sort features to be implemented in patch 2.1. These features can be used to the below three windows:
Inventory
Armoury Chest
Retainer Inventory
Progress status
Below is an image of the sort feature. (Apologies it is in Japanese.)
This image was taken in the dev. environment this past Tuesday, and as you can see the sort feature is working nicely for the inventory.
As I am sure you all can see, this is not only a sort by item level feature.
With this feature, it’s possible to arrange all 100 spaces of your inventory at the same time, and it will arrange your gear in the below order. The portion in brackets is what you can indicate.
Stacks numbers (Possible to select high to low, low to high)
HQ/NQ
Gear with and without materia (only equipment)
Spiritbond (equipment only, high to low in order of percentage)
Standard list order: organizes items with the same name
Item level (equipment only, possible to select high to low or low to high)
Equipment level (equipment only, possible to select high to low or low to high)
Item category (possible to select high to low or low to high)
Fill in empty spaces or divide major categories by tab
With the above processes, I think this should give a sufficient sort result for 70-80% of players. (It’s possible to change the order setting for each of the above items.)
*Please note that this is still in-development, there is a chance that parameters and ordering process change!
Also, by looking at the above image, you can see that multiple stacks of similar items will not be combined. (This can be seen with the yellow potions in tab 2.)
I apologize, but currently this will be difficult to address in patch 2.1, but this is something we plan to address. The reason why this will take longer is a somewhat complex story, so I’ve written it out at the end of this post separately. If you’re interested, by all means have a read.
Text command sort feature
*From here on out the explanation might get a bit difficult to understand if FFXIV: ARR is your first MMO, so feel free to skip over this if you like. This is mainly for people who know about the item sort add-ons for other MMOs.
The text command feature was built to fulfill the needs of high-level players that the above sort feature cannot satisfy.
The sort feature is something that is extremely easy to understand and simple, but the text command feature allows a very degree of ordering freedom with sort keys for various parameters.
*We plan on making a GUI for this in the future.
If you’re familiar with the auto-filter and sort feature of Microsoft Excel, I think this should sound familiar, but we’ve prepared text commands to order individual parameters, and by sorting multiple times for different parameters you can achieve your desired objective.
Combining this with macros, it’s possible to arrange multiple parameters at the same time, and you can build extremely specialized sort requirements.
We are planning to take the internal processes for the sort feature that will be implemented in patch 2.1 and turn them into text commands for parameter arrangement. Following this, we will be expanding this feature by increasing the amount of text commands so it can have a variety of applications.
We are also planning for these features to be used with user created add-ons and have built out the specs accordingly, and they will be implemented as a client-side process to avoid placing stress on the game servers.
Combining stack items
At the current point in time, the sort feature will not address combining stacks of similar items. As I mentioned briefly in the text command portion above, the arrangement process will be something that takes place on the client-side, which is displayed for the player.
If we were to implement a stack combining process only on the client-side, and you had the maximum amount of slots filled (server-side limitation), disparities would arise between what you see as remaining for space and what is actually there server-side. Due to this, we need to have this process take place on the server-side. As such, this cannot be accomplished with UI implementation only.
Once the servers have become stable we will be addressing this, but we appreciate your patience in the meantime.
