Final Fantasy 14: Heavensward players can have eight retainers but they still cost real money
Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn provided players with two free retainers which would hold items for them should they exceed the 175 item limit. Players could buy up to four to hold more items, and with the Heavensward expansion, player can now have eight retainers total.
Additional retainers cost players real money, but if two free ones weren't enough for MMO hoarders (like myself) dropping extra cash was always a option.
With Heavensward introducing even more new items and crafting resources, Square Enix knew there would be more need for space, but at present, retainers will still cost real-world money as there isn't enough server space to offer more free storage options.
"The reason why we can’t increase item space is saving to the servers and getting that data transferred is one of the main reasons we haven’t been able to increase space," the games producer and director Naoki Yoshida told Siliconera. "Currently, the save data size amount per character is probably the biggest in all of MMOs in the world.
"We have the most data per character. Every 15 seconds we take a backup of every player’s data. This is good for players because if the servers crash there is no rollback. Every 15 seconds we are updating that data. Increasing the inventory also increases the amount of data we send back to the servers to save every 15 seconds. What we could do is extend that time from every 15 seconds to five minutes we can add more data, but what happens then is if the servers crash there is the threat of rolling back player data and players losing some data."
Yoshida said the team is always working on optimization in order to transfer more data, but with Heavensward on the way, there will "be a lot of stress on the servers."
Adding more space at launch would create an unstable environment he added, but the team is looking into adding more free space in the future.