Inventory Management Issues

[Vision.2780]

This topic has been bothering me for a long time. So I want to express here the problems I have with my inventory and suggest a few solutions and wonder how others think about that.

 

The amount of different items that fill the inventory on a daily basis is insane. Like just unnecessarily insane. I get the idea, make players inventories full so they buy more bag slots. Thats not necessarily a bad thing (yet I hate the amount of different items). So that's what I did. I bought the maximum amount of bag slots, and I crafted a full set of 32 slot bags. Did that solve my inventory problems? Well it is better but by far not where I want it to be. Inventory management in this game takes huge amounts of time. After a couple of hours playing the game, I need 1-2 more hours just to clean my inventory.

It is not my playstyle.

I wanna play content.

I don't wanna play Inventory Wars 2.

 

The idea I came up with in order to not having to deal sooo much time with the inventory was to just take the lower bags in my inventory and fill them with stuff that frequently drops, like boxes/lootbags/karma/... and then simply hide these bags and never deal with them again. And that approach worked really well actually and still does. Yet it causes another problem. It is impossible to make room for this amount of items. I already reached the point where I have 50 inventory slots left to work with. These get filled quite slowly but they cause an issue when I want to open bags or identify unidentified gears. Despite the amount of total inventory slots, I just dont have enough space to work with.

 

 

So here are my whishes/suggestions:

 

1. Simply make 10 more bag slots available to have a total possible inventory size of 640. Arenanet, you can earn money with that.

 

2. Introduce a blocklist feature for items. I don't want a Clump of Swamp Moss or a Female Norn Holo Dancer after every single Fractal run. Nor do I want it in my inventory tomorrow, nor next year. I just want to prevent it from getting into my inventory without having to disable autoloot. I assume I would have around 100 items on my item block list in that cause, so they never cause me a headache again.

 

3. Offer a broader variety of 32-slot bags. For example there exist 20-slot Fractal bags that store exotic or rare items first. I used those before, especially the exotic ones, because it makes the inventory management alot easier. It would be great to have a 32-slot version of these. Also new bags could be introduced. For example those that store ascended gear first or prevent junk and materials from getting inside. I am sure people could come up with different other bags, that could make life a little better aswell.

 

4. Simply delete items from the game. A looooot of items. How many different lootboxes and bags are there? And to me it feels like they all give me the same items. One could simply reduce the amount to maybe 3 different boxes instead of... 300? Delete trash items from the game, or give them at least a little bit of value when being sold at the merchant. Like 3 silver each, not 16 copper.

No one cares about 16 copper. Not even new players with a dire need for gold.

 

5. Similar to point 2: Introduce a self-adjustable list of items, that get sold together with trash items when hitting the instant-sell button at a merchant. When having a large inventory it can be unpleasent to have to scroll through all of it and manually sell stuff and then a minute later realize that you have forgot to sell 3 or 4 items from one bag.  

 

I know that many players dont have the issues with the inventory that I do. But maybe you can still find some of my ideas helpful, and maybe we will find some of them at some point in the game.

What do you think of them and do you guys have other ideas to make the current inventory system more convenient for players who just wanna play the game without having to take lots of time for inventory management?

[Lyssia.4637]

I'm not quite sure what items, specifically, you are having problems.  Trash items?  White/Greens/Blues?

 

I tend to get a full inventory on my main during very long WvW sessions, but rarely outside of that.  I know both my daughters do the same as you seem to be describing - just play and not bother with what they get - and for them, it was the gift of a copper salvage-o-matic that really helped; now, they just salvage everything but the unsalvageable trash, which they sell the next time they hit town, and toss any account bound unsalvageable items they aren't going to use.  If you have the money (in game or gems), also having portable merchant, permanent or otherwise, might help for dumping trash if you never end up back in town.

[Handsel.2891]

You assert that inventory bloating is to motivate players to buy more bag slots.

Then your first suggestion to solve your issues is to have yet more bag slots.

I mean, what?

[Veprovina.4876]

You have maximum inventory slots filled with 32 slot bags and you're STILL having issues? 😲

I hate to break it to you but, at that point, it's not the game, it's you... 

[Tytos.3076]

kitten, you have size 32 bags in every slot? I'm still using the Halloween pail I got back in 2015. Anyway, yes the inv management thing is part of the game's monetization. But honestly? There are way worse ways to monetize the game. If it means no sub fee and no 'pay for advantages' a la World of Tanks, I'm ok with a little Inventory Wars 2.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

The full-inventory-system

Only use quite a limited amount of inventory-slots. Just enough to fulfill your needs. Let's say you are one of those veterans who farm like crazy, T4+CM, Strikes, Raids ... you name it! There is special 'worthy' loot from all of these game-modes.

At first you slot in 1 item of every stack-able 'useful' item into one inventory slot. Then you take a look at your daily/weekly routine and find the items, one 250-stack will not be enough. So you slot in another 1 item of those as well.

Example:
1. Slot = Unidentified blue gear, 1 item
2. Slot = Unidentified blue gear, 1 item
3. Slot = Unidentified blue gear, 1 item
4. Slot = Unidentified green gear, 1 item
5. Slot = Unidentified green gear, 1 item
6. Slot = Unidentified green gear, 1 item
7. Slot = Unidentified yellow gear, 1 item
8. Slot = Unidentified yellow gear, 1 item
9. Slot = Unidentified yellow gear, 1 item
10. Slot = Fractal Keys, 1 item
11. Slot = Fractal Keys, 1 item
12. Slot = Fractal Boxes, 1 item
13. Slot = Fractal Boxes, 1 item
14. Slot = Fractal Boxes, 1 item
15. Slot = Fractal Boxes, 1 item

Then you take a look at the loot-bags you get most of and do the same. Filling the next 10-15 slots with one of each.

After that, you want to make one slot for BL keys, and the most expensive materials that can drop. Stuff like T6 Blood and the fractal-materials for example.

Then you occupy 5-10 slots with Essences of Luck. (getting back to those slots later)

At last you slot in your food and the other items you want/need to carry around with. 

Rest of the inventory-bags get removed. Any slots left? Add more Essences of Luck.

-

With this setup, your inventory is constantly full. You will only get the items you have slotted and nothing else. You will get the drop-windows, but you can ignore them straight. If you happen to run past an ascended full-drop or a precursor, you can see them easily.

How you make sure you grab only THAT item?

You interact with the loot, so the loot-table shows up. Open up your inventory and consume that one Essence of Luck. The slot becomes empty. Left-Click on the item from the loot-table. Move on.

-

After farming, you can either decide to open your loot on that char, in that case you can re-equip your other inventory bags. Or you put the stacks into the bank and open/salvage/refine/sell the stuff with a dedicated character. 

If you want to save time by using only one character, slot in your inventory-bags into empty bag-slots. So you can easily switch from farm-mode to salvage-mode. 

Want to go double-safe? Use invisible bags for the farm-slots. In that case you will never accidentally delete/sell/salvage the items slotted in.

-

The system is not perfect, but a lot less stressful. You never get any trash-items anymore or have to deal with stuff like Bloodstone Dust. If a loot-table contains items you want and items you do not want, the system will only give you the ones with inventory-slots and leave the rest outside. 

[Nate.8146]

I've seen some streamers talk about their inventory management and honestly, when I saw that mess, I knew right away these  people don't maintain their house, don't make their beds, they leave dishes in the sink, haha.. Like my house, I always keep things organized and clean. It takes less than a minute to maintain and clean up my inventory after a good run rather than wait for things to pile up into a dumpster fire and then spend half an hour cleaning that mess up.

 

Now I understand not everyone is Mr. Clean, so I'm not against the devs offering tools to help clean up after people. Adjusting the auto-loot functionality to discarding items up to a certain rarity level for example is how almost every ARPG works, and I can see a similar system work here. Beyond that however, I wouldn't want any changes to streamline loot. The variety of loot in this game helps to bolster its reward system, which would otherwise be monotonous without. The game would diminish to Labyrinth Wars 2. A slot machine on auto-play and spin skip so so you can quickly find out if you go home rich or poor. I'd rather just play and enjoy the game rather then get the quick payout fix.

[Xenesis.6389]

And here I am making use of like 100 slots for wvw....

[Larkmoor.9620]

I have always wanted the inventory to work like material storage.  Every item in the game shows up there and it is stackable and searchable and grouped by type.  The material storage interface is how it should all work, bank and inventory. Keep the store revenue up by keeping the stack sizes lowish and sell the stack size increases.

[Obtena.7952]

I can't relate to this problem at all. Sounds like someone who just doesn't care about inventory. Nothing Anet can do will fix that. 

[Tyncale.1629]

 I do not think  many players will have your specific need for so many Inventory slots, but I do agree with you that Block lists and such could be very handy. And I think we will see your suggestion of specialty 32-slots bag in the future, seems simple enough and there is *some* need for them. I most certainly want one that hides Items, that will probably the first we will get. 

 

Everquest introduced a very extensive Lootsystem in one of their 23! expansions and you can put all sorts of flags on loot. Everquest must have the most extensive UI of all MMO's by now, they add more Utility every expansion it seems.  Audio triggers, macro's, Key chains, resize and move anything, anywhere, differently colored text for like 50 types of chat text, it's crazy. 

Edited November 12, 2021 by Tyncale.1629

[Khisanth.2948]

3 hours ago, Veprovina.4876 said:

You have maximum inventory slots filled with 32 slot bags and you're STILL having issues? 😲

I hate to break it to you but, at that point, it's not the game, it's you... 

Yeah ... I don't have maxed slots nor am I using 32 slot bags AND I carry a lot of unnecessary items with me and even that is not enough to cause the problem OP is claiming to exist.

Doesn't help that one of the items OP uses as an example only drops after unlocking a collection and stops dropping if you either finish the collection or that part of the collection yet OP isn't bothering to do so. They have the ability to stop it from dropping yet they choose to complain about it instead of making it stop. Then the other example is a hyperbole since it only has a chance of dropping in CM versions of 3 fractals.

[JTGuevara.9018]

OP, I share your pain. Managing inventory is frustrating, especially as a multi-year player where you just instantly chuck items because you can't DO anything else with them. If not that, then using them to craft something worthy to sell on the in-game market. All this on top of the other loot you receive. However OP, the bag slot suggestions make the problem worse. The problem is there are too many items that the game forces you to keep. There is but a simpler way to go about this:

STOP WITH THE ACCOUNT BOUND ITEMS

Seriously, this is a problem. Account-bound items mean that they cannot be salvaged and/or be sold to a merchant. They can also be acquired as part of a collection. If none are the case, then there is one thing left to do. Chuck them. They're there to take up space. The character level process is NOTORIOUS for this. No, I don't need account-bound "lv 15 Fine Duty-bound Coffers", thanks. (And I doubt new players do either...) Chuck.

[Veprovina.4876]

5 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Yeah ... I don't have maxed slots nor am I using 32 slot bags AND I carry a lot of unnecessary items with me and even that is not enough to cause the problem OP is claiming to exist.

Doesn't help that one of the items OP uses as an example only drops after unlocking a collection and stops dropping if you either finish the collection or that part of the collection yet OP isn't bothering to do so. They have the ability to stop it from dropping yet they choose to complain about it instead of making it stop. Then the other example is a hyperbole since it only has a chance of dropping in CM versions of 3 fractals.

I know right?

 

Until recently, i carried 20 books with me (for some reason), and i still didn't have that problem. 

I have one invisible bag filled with unindentified, food, boosters, etc., one 32 slot bag filled with crap that "i'll get to later", starter bag filled with stuff like gobblers and stuff, and a lot of crap that i also don't use daily in the second one. So i have like 2-3 20 slot bags free and i never fill up my inventory that much that can't be dealt with in a minute or two.

 

But i guess if you have a short attention span, a minute of sorting stuff feels like an eternety. 🤷‍♂️

 

People forget how much worse the system used to be before they streamlined it with the wallet and unindentified stuff.

 

They just need to add a "library stash" to store our books and maybe achievement items - that everyone can look into but can't take out (like guild bank), and i'll be happy. Sort of like a vanity display or something in our home instance.

Though, i deleted almost all of that so idk what i'd store there lol. 

 

Anyway... If someone can't sort their inventory and finds it annoying with every unlocked slot filled with 32 slot bags well... Nothing Anet can do will solve that.

[Cynder.2509]

Be happy Anet doesn't force crafting material storage through a monthly subscription upon us. But still the amount of kitten you get even with max bag slots and max inventory space is insane. There's still a lot of stuff you can't store like teleport to friend (everything is bloating with these for me because I don't have friends, don't want to pay lfg port squads (or don't use lfg in general due to social anxiety) with 50 to 100g as they require usually as a fee, have 35+ characters that are all several years old and get them constantly as birthday gift, have 300 from black lion chests back when you could get these from them and occasional free giveaways. Main thing however that is taking up so much space on one of my mained characters are the books (because it fits to his backstory) and a few collection items (like for the legendary armor collection for example) as deleting them even when unlocked could cause issues like I had with past collections so I keep them until I complete everything from now on. For the books something as a library system like in ESO could work very well. Once a text/book/piece of lore is unlocked you can view it in some type of codex again. 

[Veprovina.4876]

4 minutes ago, Cynder.2509 said:

don't want to pay lfg port squads (or don't use lfg in general due to social anxiety) with 50 to 100g as they require usually as a fee

Excuse me, what? 😲

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

When I use Teleport to a Friend, I don't feel any need to talk to the person.  One just teleports to their location/map and that's it.  I may, or may not, send them a bit of Gold if it is something especially difficult to complete, but otherwise....

I don't think I've ever seen anyone demand Gold for a Teleport.  Some may state 'Donations Welcome', but there's no requirement. 

[Linken.6345]

 

Here you go OP was only made 10 days ago so its up to date.

[LSD.4673]

God the inventory system. Convoluted By Design™. Like 5 different forms of luck essences -- which all have to be clicked away -- as well as having such a ridiculous number of crafting mats. And then as if that wasn't enough, they added even more with each release, only these ones don't go into anything of any real value, and drop so often on those maps, so they just clutter inventory (e.g., Kormir's Eyes). Then you've got countless bags with almost -- if not totally -- identical drop tables, which often don't even stack with one another. And then the joyous clicking to identify loot.

 

The inventory is a chore. Please do something about it. The amount of times i've given up for the night because i can't be bothered to deal with the loot is the antithesis of an MMO.

[Linken.6345]

3 hours ago, LSD.4673 said:

God the inventory system. Convoluted By Design™. Like 5 different forms of luck essences -- which all have to be clicked away -- as well as having such a ridiculous number of crafting mats. And then as if that wasn't enough, they added even more with each release, only these ones don't go into anything of any real value, and drop so often on those maps, so they just clutter inventory (e.g., Kormir's Eyes). Then you've got countless bags with almost -- if not totally -- identical drop tables, which often don't even stack with one another. And then the joyous clicking to identify loot.

 

The inventory is a chore. Please do something about it. The amount of times i've given up for the night because i can't be bothered to deal with the loot is the antithesis of an MMO.

You do know you can right click and identify all right?

[Rogue.8235]

I really don't understand how inventory is seen as problematic in this game.

Salvage all blues.  Salvage all greens with runecrafter (if not salvage as you would blues).

Salvage all yellows 68 and up with master/mystic (or silver-fed).

Yellows under 68 get sold on TP.

Deposit all materials, sell on TP all that don't get deposited.

Sell junk to merchant.

Done.  Oh, and when salvaging, right click salvage kit and select salvage all (color).  No need to click more than twice when salvaging stuff.

 

Anything else is part of a collection, story, or can be sold to a merchant.  Those don't really drop much.

 

It's hard to struggle with inventory unless I want to keep everything for no reason other than to just keep everything.

 

Honestly, inventory was much more difficult in Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

 

[IndigoSundown.5419]

After an hour or two of playing, it takes me less than 5 minutes to clear my inventory.  I'm not sure what you're doing that I'm not, but where does the extra 55 minutes plus come from.

 

That said, I'm not fond of bags within bags within bags.  Also, I wonder whether ANet makes enough from selling clickable merchants (to sell unwanted items to) to make a sell option to go along with the store materials one.  I know that the game craps tons of the merchant items, but I guess if I was using one for every hour I played I'd eventually run out.  Still, I'd never actually spend gems on them.

[LSD.4673]

4 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

You do know you can right click and identify all right?

Which is two clicks. Followed by two more to salvage.

But each salvaged blue/green will typically turn into 3 items: a mote, a mat, and a luck. So another click to deposit all, and another double click/salvage all to rid yourself of the luck. 

And you'd better do it often, because they build up fast, like trash; and once they've built up, trying to salvage them becomes an even bigger burden: "identify all" will take your inventory into the locked overflow, and "salvage all" will do the same, so more clicking to get rid of the mats and make more space for salvaging; each arbitrary flavour of luck will take up a slot and need clicking away before you can carry on playing.

It's a chore that many players obviously forego judging by the listings on the TP (which wasn't even on the table before PoF released and unIDs became a thing...). But then your loot -- y'know, the staple of any RPG game -- becomes a dull transaction rather than a means of acquiring materials to craft with (which was obviously the idea they were going with, considering the way 99% of loot is generic), as well as losing the means of getting a rare drop (the other staple of RPGs).

 

It's an awful system. At the very least make Luck auto-consume. Why would i want to manually consume the 5 different types of luck that potentially drop? To trade it to a seasonal vendor? Or to craft the tiny selection of recipes that call for the top-tier variety?

[Xanadrine.4352]

Man if they would sell 100 slot bags they could make bank.

[Khisanth.2948]

15 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

 

Here you go OP was only made 10 days ago so its up to date.

Judging from that thumbnail the short answer is "don't be a slop to begin with"