Let's be even more radical on inventory design...

[Headbomb]

What if... there was only ... the party inventory, plus individual character inventories. Since we already do away with individual weight restrictions, does it really matter that it's Jane or Bob that carries the 4th leather armor you looted from bandits? OK some of you are panicking at this point, but hear me out.

 

You got Bob + his personal equipment (i.e. what he has equipped + quick items), and 8 backpack inventory slots.

You got Jane + her personal equipment (i.e. what she has equipped + quick items), and 8 backpack inventory slots.

 

You walk to Bandit Corpse #1, Bob is full, so instead you tell the game "put the loot in Jane's inventory" instead, even if Bob was the guy that walked over the Bandit Corpse.

 

So, how about you just get rid of the separate backpack inventories entirely? Have one common party inventory, which scales with party size. Got 2 party members? You have 16 slots. 4 party members? You have 32 slots. Jane dies in a party of 4? 1/4 of the party's items are on her corpse. Bob leaves the party and you don't have enough space? Extra items are dumped on the ground.

 

The best thing with this is that you could sort the party inventory, according to value, item type, order of addition in party inventory, etc... And you'd get rid of the "Bob has 3 veggies, Tim has 3 veggies, Sally has 2 veggies... I need to combine those stacks into one stack of 8 veggies to give myself 2 extra inventory slots so I can fit those other items I want to loot" annoyance.

 

Now I hear some of you. BUT HEADBOMB, WHAT ABOUT THE SCRIPTED INTERACTION WHERE YOU SAVE HEODAN IF YOU HAVE A SPEAR, BUT THE ONLY SPEAR WAS IN HEODAN'S INVENTORY? you say. That's a fair concern, but remember that each character would still have their "equipped" equipment. You can still check if CHARNAME has his spear equipped.

 

And some of you might say WHAT ABOUT THE SCRIPTED INTERACTION WITH THE GRAPPLING HOOK THING??!1!1BBQCHICKENWITHMUSHROOMS!!!. Again that's a fair concern, but remember that if CHARNAME can find time to open up his backpack, shove aside the 4 Leather Armours, 3 Beetle Shells, 3 Potions, and Camping Supplies to find a grappling hook to latch onto the ceiling and go all Luke Skywalker on us, CHARNAME also has time to ask "Yo Jane, got a grappling hook around?"

 

So let's be radical, if we're doing away with fighting the inventory, let's go the whole nine yards, and just have the party inventory to deal with. Well that plus individual equipment.

 

P.S. The like button's that way --->

Edited August 19, 2014 by Headbomb

[Koth]

Love this idea, but I don't like your chances of getting it implemented this late in the design cycle. Liked for props for a great idea however.

 

Cheers,

 

K.

[Headbomb]

Just played through the game again, and I found myself wishing this was already implemented... Oh the perils of being a lowly commoner who doesn't know if his idea will make it into the game or not... But here's wishing. Comments would be welcome on the idea, maybe there's something I overlooked.

[Headbomb]

Decided to make a mockup. Keep in mind I used PAINT to do it.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Headbomb

[Bryy]

I concur. The inventory system at this moment seems extremely tacked on.

[Zansatsu]

Harrumph harrumph harrumph 

[Ganrich]

Agreed.  Going to quote myself.  It is a post I made in one of Sensuki's threads.  http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67093-sensukis-suggestions-005-item-descriptions-and-contextual-ui-rant/page-2

 

 

Great post again, Sensuki.  You are a machine lol.  I agree with a lot of your points.

 

On the note of the inventory screen and functionality (since it seems our individual characters inventory went from 16 slots to 8 ) I would shrink the PC/NPC portraits and move all party members up toward the top to give space at the bottom for the stash.  That way you can avoid a stash button and you can gray out items in the stash to show that you cannot access them at the moment.  You can still allow right clicking and hovering on grayed out stash items to allow for figuring out what you have down there, but keep players from pulling items out of it.  You could still have a small scroll in order to see the entire stash if you have a megaton of items in it. 

 

This could also be used in the merchant window which would decrease the need to scroll to access the entire party's individual inventories, and the scroll could be added to access the stash without necessitating a button.  This IMHO would streamline things a great deal.

 

[sheriffharry]

I must admit juggling items around characters is my least favorite (and totally useless) aspect of the older games.

I am all for "Party inventory"!

[Pray]

So my question is, what if party members get somewhat separated for some game mechanic, quest line, plot device - and the game mechanic calls for characters having separate inventories?  

[sheriffharry]

So my question is, what if party members get somewhat separated for some game mechanic, quest line, plot device - and the game mechanic calls for characters having separate inventories?  

 

There should be one "Party inventory" for each party.

If the game splits the party in two for story purposes, there should now be one party inventory per party.

There will be a need for a "switch between party" button anyway, as you can't play two different party at the exact same time.

[Zansatsu]

So my question is, what if party members get somewhat separated for some game mechanic, quest line, plot device - and the game mechanic calls for characters having separate inventories?  

Good point.

 

 

So my question is, what if party members get somewhat separated for some game mechanic, quest line, plot device - and the game mechanic calls for characters having separate inventories?  

 

There should be one "Party inventory" for each party.

If the game splits the party in two for story purposes, there should now be one party inventory per party.

There will be a need for a "switch between party" button anyway, as you can't play two different party at the exact same time.

 

How will you know what items will go where when you split up your party?

[CatatonicMan]

So my question is, what if party members get somewhat separated for some game mechanic, quest line, plot device - and the game mechanic calls for characters having separate inventories?  

 

Technically you could do both if it was necessary. Have a unified inventory for handling the combined backpack where "who has what" doesn't matter, and a second....view mode, say, that keeps track of who is holding what.

Edited August 20, 2014 by CatatonicMan

[TheHumanDove]

The inventory system is definitely in need of a rework. For conveniences sake, the party pool would help a lot.

[sheriffharry]

 

So my question is, what if party members get somewhat separated for some game mechanic, quest line, plot device - and the game mechanic calls for characters having separate inventories?  

Good point.

 

 

So my question is, what if party members get somewhat separated for some game mechanic, quest line, plot device - and the game mechanic calls for characters having separate inventories?  

 

There should be one "Party inventory" for each party.

If the game splits the party in two for story purposes, there should now be one party inventory per party.

There will be a need for a "switch between party" button anyway, as you can't play two different party at the exact same time.

 

How will you know what items will go where when you split up your party?

 

 

That's the thing: you will need to "split" the party at some point in that scenario: who goes right, who goes left ?

Once the 2nd party is formed, it gets its own Party Inventory and you'll have the chance to fill it up with extra leather armors and potions. or not.

[Headbomb]

A party split might throw a wrench in the equation, but that could be handled with a "Who's in Party A? Who's in Party B?" screen, including "Inventory A, Inventory B". For kidnapping and other scenarios, it's removing the member from the party, so that can be handled in a similar way as any other "Bob's leaving the party".

 

This also saves you from transfering non-essentiial equipment if you swithch up your adventuring party at the stronghold.

[bob54386]

The 2nd party thing is purely hypothetical at this point, most likely you'd have half your party checking out one room and the other half checking out another room on the same map.  Shared inventory in this case saves you from doing something dumb like walking a character halfway across the map to get the relevant item to the relevant character.  

 

Might not work for the people people who want realism, but it gets them a minute of their life back to convince themselves the characters really did wander over.

 

Also, it would be great if the stash button / quest inventory button used that newfound freespace in headbomb's mockup to display their items.  The current inventory is fighting way too hard with layering of tooltips and extra inventory screens.  Best to get all inventory on the same layer.