Sensuki's Suggestions #014: Non-Terrible Inventory [Mockup]

[Mayama]

Agree, mostly because there's a lot of overlap with http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67298-lets-be-even-more-radical-on-inventory-design/ and my own Mockup.jpg

Thats awesome and it would fit nicely with having the character icons in the middle which opens up space for the combat log on the left side.

[Sensuki]

Yeah if character portraits were in the middle, you could select them that way - that's how you did it in the IE games too

 

Now all they need to do is make the inventory take up most of the screen and bobs your uncle.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Sensuki

[Zitchiock]

I am not a fan of the current state of the inventory screen. After a single encounter, such as taking care of Medreth and the band waiting by the bridge, picking up their loot requires utilizing a whole host of party members. It seems that the size of the inventory per party member is very small. If all of the character’s inventories are housed on one screen, with very little distinction between who is holding what, why even have separate inventories? It would seem to me that having one large pool for items would solve this annoyance.

 

That said, I would still prefer the IE style of inventory where each party member has their own inventory screen. The key here is that each party member has the ability to carry more items. I liked the inventory micro-management where I had to give my heavier items like swords and full-plate armor to my stronger characters and gave my scrolls and light-weight items to my weaker characters. 

[Aramintai]

I didn't like inventory separation to different characters and stash at all in beta. Why do we need basicaly two types of inventories - stash and per character?

Are these characters gonna steal from one another or smth like in Divinity: Original Sin? Because otherwise I don't see any point in making it separate for characters. The stash is just a plain waste of space in the UI. Quest items could just be another tab next to armor, weapon etc. tabs.

So I propose one common grid inventory for all characters with sorting tabs by types of items. Look in the aforementioned Divinity: Original Sin for reference.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Aramintai

[Prometheus]

Imo At the moment, you have too many item slots in the packs. The advantage of a stash system is that you can limit the inventory without overloading the inventory after one encounter.  So you need to make a tactical decison, e.g. do I want to have access to an extra sword or do I want to have access to some consumables. But you don't need to do this decision at the moment because you have enough item slots

Edited August 28, 2014 by Prometheus

[Silent Winter]

I agree it could be improved and I like the mockup - would prefer the BG style myself too but can live with it if its improved a bit.

• The inventory and ALL of the UIs should scale to higher resolutions. The lucky bastards using a laptop with a 13" screen get a full screen inventory at 720p, why can't we have the same? (I'm going to cry when I buy the 27" 1440p screen I plan to get in a few months).
• The UI screens should have a uniform look and uniform navigation set, preferably in the style of Windows - OK, Apply, Close for options menus and a big DONE button at the bottom for everything else in the style of the IE (can leave the cross at the top though I guess).

^^These are important to me - scale the inventory to full-screen please, and have some consistency (not necessarily 'Windows stlye' but certainly more uniform navigation)

 

 

 Also from what I've seen, you cannot run away to end combat. If you engage or get engaged, you'll stay locked in combat mode (again, stupid concept) forever unless you kill the mobs involved (who most likely will either chase you anyway, or get stuck via pathfinding somewhere). Heck, I think you cannot even "zone out" from what I've seen in a stream, not sure.

Srsly?  Ok, that's dumb.  I should be able to run from a fight or end 'combat mode' without killing everything.

TOEE had that - there was an enemy activated on the other side of the map and I couldn't even move at normal speed (turn-based there so had to take turns to track down the enemy - but it'd still be annoying and pointless here).

Edited August 28, 2014 by Silent Winter

[Sensuki]

Imo At the moment, you have too many item slots in the packs. The advantage of a stash system is that you can limit the inventory without overloading the inventory after one encounter.  So you need to make a tactical decison, e.g. do I want to have access to an extra sword or do I want to have access to some consumables. But you don't need to do this decision at the moment because you have enough item slots

But that's dumb if you can't get a sword out of the stash, but you can craft an item on the spot. Terrible inconsistency IMO.

 

FTR Everyone my overall preference is just for an IE style inventory, I made this one because I do not believe Obsidian is willing to do that. They have their own ideas (manifested here).

Edited August 28, 2014 by Sensuki

[Prometheus]

 

Imo At the moment, you have too many item slots in the packs. The advantage of a stash system is that you can limit the inventory without overloading the inventory after one encounter.  So you need to make a tactical decison, e.g. do I want to have access to an extra sword or do I want to have access to some consumables. But you don't need to do this decision at the moment because you have enough item slots

But that's dumb if you can't get a sword out of the stash, but you can craft an item on the spot. Terrible inconsistency IMO.

You are right, I didn't think about crafting. I think they should make crafting only possible on specific locations, if they still want to use the stash system.

FTR Everyone my overall preference is just for an IE style inventory, I made this one because I do not believe Obsidian is willing to do that. They have their own ideas (manifested here).

Imo ie games had a bad inventory, making extra inventory screens for every character isn't a good idea.

[Sensuki]

You are right, I didn't think about crafting. I think they should make crafting only possible on specific locations, if they still want to use the stash system.

That's how it used to be. But they changed it. Odd decision too.

 

Imo ie games had a bad inventory, making extra inventory screens for every character isn't a good idea.

A lot of people think that, I didn't find it very difficult to manage at all, just needed an auto sort button or something.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Sensuki

[Tartantyco]

 

You are right, I didn't think about crafting. I think they should make crafting only possible on specific locations, if they still want to use the stash system.

That's how it used to be. But they changed it. Odd decision too.

 

I assume they found that people won't waste their tactical inventory slots on crafting ingredients, so they'll have to craft only when they can access their stash.

[Sensuki]

That's a problem with inventory design though, not location based Crafting and Enchanting

[Prometheus]

....

I assume they found that people won't waste their tactical inventory slots on crafting ingredients, so they'll have to craft only when they can access their stash.

I think the plan was always to divide normal items from ingredients(They talked about this really early).

 

I think they changed it because the resting system was changed:

 

Because of the changes to resting, the crafting UI is launched from the inventory panel.  You can't craft during combat, but otherwise there are no restrictions on when you can do it.

[Shadenuat]

No idea what they thought they'd accomplish with Stash. Just give characters very limited amount of quick slots (6 is probably too much, make it 2-3) and huge inventory or big inventories for everyone + stash. Make inventory locked during combat. That's it.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Shadenuat

[TheisEjsing]

Once all the bugs are worked out, I fail to see the problem. I liked the IE inventory design alot, but it's just inventory design. If Obsidian wants to try something new, it isn't really an issue to me. When I think of the IE games, inventory is kinda low on the list. That said, it's awesome that you take the time Sensuki, to deliver so much constructive criticism. Big thumbs up.

[Tartantyco]

That's a problem with inventory design though, not location based Crafting and Enchanting

 

You misunderstand. They found that adding a restriction wasn't necessary, because players would restrict themselves.

[Ineth]

I have ridden the inventory of the horrible buttons below the weapon sets and included the absolutely fantastic Witcher 1 Quest Item system, a set of never ending scrollable horizontal slots that stores all of your quest items for you, visible in the inventory screen - another great step in inventory design.

 

I love the look of this. Much better use of that space than the current UI.

[Sensuki]

You misunderstand. They found that adding a restriction wasn't necessary, because players would restrict themselves.

If they were going to have Crafting items in the normal inventory - yes, but they talked about having them separated previously.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Sensuki

[Grotesque]

[...] but also including the auto-sort button from Titan Quest  Arcanum (a great step in inventory design) .

 

How dare you??

Fixed that for you.

 

 

It will always amaze me how the majority was butthurt about  weapon durabylity but its utterly lax to the 8 slots/character inventory.

[Bulkbu]

 

 

 

I find the D:OS inventory a great solution, it only misses a search bar and an auto-sort button.

Its close to Sensuki's great suggestion, but I find a "per character" inventory with an encumbrance system more appealing. Having your mages carry all the books, scrolls, and magical crafting mats, and your warrior ores and all the heavy stuff you found adds greatly to the atmosphere I find.

 

Edit: I just noticed that Sensukis stash could just as well work for each character individually and the character portraits next to the grid even enhance ease of use.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Bulkbu

[GreyFox]

Eight slots is too small I think a lot of us agree there....at minimum I'd be fine with big increase in slots per character but with no encumbrance why is it per character?

 

The way they are doing it now it should be a shared inventory with tons of free space.

[aeonsim]

I like the look of the current inventory but simply think it needs more slots (2x) per character like in the pcgamer video where JS showed the first 30min of play and possibly the ability to access during combat.

 

I think the idea of the combined view of all the individual inventories and a stash (kind of like a bag of holding) is great, the ability to see what is in multiple peoples inventories and quickly transfer or arrange them is excellent, and the existence of the stash for throwing gear your not interested in and just want to sell seems ideal.

In the IE games not being able to easily see what multiple people were carrying made it rather painful to juggle every thing around, especially seeing I'd have one person doing all the identifying then have different strength chars holding different types of gear to maximise stacking and give the heavy gear to the strong companions. The problem with this in the IE inventory is, as I'm a bit of a packrat chars would often be near there slot limit and I'd pick stuff up with a char who couldn't identify stuff. Then trying to transfer the items to the char with Lore I'd find they had a full inventory and have to spend the next 5mins playing an annoying version of the towers of hanoi to rearrange everything amongst the chars. Having the shared view of all the individual inventories solves this nicely.

 

As for full merged group inventories the ones in NWN, KOTOR, KOTOR2 etc drove me crazy I could never find the items I was looking for even with the sort function. There was simply to much stuff in one place and I couldn't neatly parcel it out to the Mage had the scrolls, the fighter the armour & weapons, potions went to the healer and so forth. Now search can help with this but that assumes I remember what the item was called which is unlikely I tend to remember things like weapon that does lightning damage or strength item not the "Super Magic Sword of Elemental Air" thus having a char who carries all my magic weapons and another who carries all the armour and another who carries consumables makes it easy for me to find things.

 

In short like the overall flow of the inventories just think it needs some improvements with the amount allocated to the different areas and how easy it is to drag and drop items between them.

 

 

Note for those who liked D:OS inventory I loath it for numerous reasons including, the disconnect between selected char and inventory screen (clicking on the head doesn't jump to that inventory), the stupid buttons to switch from one party member to another while your actions remain those of the currently selected party member, the way certain items end up in different sub categories (is it magic, a weapon, or craft item?) than what your'd expect, the amount of material you end up carrying, that the stash/homestead inventory is split between the two chests depending on char and companion, that the homestead stash isn't available when with merchants, the floating windows and I could go on and on...

Edited September 8, 2014 by aeonsim

[Grotesque]

 

 

I find the D:OS inventory a great solution, it only misses a search bar and an auto-sort button.

 

 

That inventory design was a total clusterfrack and in a good part because of the crafting ingredients and lack of in depth filters and the possibility to craft anywhere.

I literally spent nearly 20% of total game time sorting and searching sh!ts.

If PoE will have the same moronic UI and handle crafting the same way, I will not touch this game not even with a 10 yard pole because I am too old for this frivolous design nonsense. 

This game needs designated crafting UI/inventory

[Falendor]

Im glad someone else remembers going back to town and looking/selling all your loot fondly. I used to call it "taking a logistics action."

[Shevek]

The inventory is ok as is. It isnt great but many games have been worse - like the IE games who had a system so crappy that they added in bags to totally subvert its limited inventory and encumbrance mechanics. Anywho, I would rather dev time be spent on combat feedback and AI. Those are real problems.

[Kjaamor]

As an absolutely dyed-in-the-wool grognard, can I say that I really like the inventory system of PoE, and that I actually prefer it to the system of BG?

 

I like the limited options (although to be fair, for all people are citing those eight bars to the right, there are also the quickslot bars to the left) because I feel it offers genuine decision-making impact on which items to keep, and I like the stash because it provides a convenient dump for all things I don't need but might like to sell.

 

I am also profoundly impressed by the way any character can reach an item (or chest, say), and from that menu directly send things to another party member, or to the stash.

 

So not every one of the Grognards dislikes it.

 

.

 

EDIT: (and the D:OS inventory system was horrendous)

Edited September 9, 2014 by Kjaamor