Inventory & Interface

[Vox Nihili]

It seems to me that, at this point in game design, inventory tetris is something of an anachronism. ARPG designers have been so enthusiastically trying to reproduce the Diablo formula that a lot of them haven't stopped to consider whether or not reproducing some aspect of Diablo is a good idea; did Diablo actually do that well?

(N.B.: I'm not accusing IronLore of this. Titan Quest got rid of more of Diablo's bad loot system ideas than any other game in the genre. I'm just looking for another step forward.)

That limited, grid-based sort of inventory system was fine, maybe even expected 10 years ago. But these days, it's just an impediment that leads to some truly obnoxious work-arounds. I think it would be an excellent idea to mix things up a bit; to give us a new system: searchable lists. Treat the inventory like a database.

This suggestion is based on a couple assumptions:

1) We ought to have infinite (or at least extremely large) inventory space. Players will find a way to horde everything they want, anyway, whether it's via mules or some program like TQvault. It's also rather antithetical to typical ARPG loot systems to limit the number of things a player can horde.

2) Given #1, the major limitation is usability. Headache-inducing inventory management isn't a desirable aspect of playing the game. I may know I have the Sword of Angst in my inventory, somewhere. But having to cycle through mules, or twenty-some sub-vaults with a dozen tabs each to find it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, fun.

3) Likewise, we're going to transfer items from character to character. The very nature of the drop systems in, basically, every ARPG ever made, ensures that this is necessary. If I have a one-in-a-million chance to get the Sword of Butt-kicking, and it drops for my robe-wearing wizard who can't use it, I'm not going to say "oh well" and destroy it. As with #1 and #2 above, I'm going to find some way to transfer it, because I'm probably not going to find it again on my own, much less while I'm playing a character who can use it.

TQvault, legions of mules, having to log in a dozen different characters to find what I want, and limited inventory space in a genre that feeds the pack rat instinct like no other are old ideas. They're bad ideas. They don't make the game more enjoyable; they make the game more tedious.

So how am I proposing that an inventory system should work? Well...

1) Infinite (or at least extremely large) inventory space.
2) List mode (for a very basic example of this, see WAR)
3) A text search box
4) A fly-out with options for searching for specific attributes (e.g. two-handed sword, chest armor, +skills, etc.)

So now, I want to find that Sword of Angst: I just type "angst" into the search field, and every item without that word in it is filtered out. I need a hammer with a strength bonus on it? Well, I know I found one last week! Now, I just open up the flyout, check the "strength" box, and only items that have +strength show up. But there's still too many, so I select "hammer" from the weapon type drop-down, and there it is: the item I was looking for, in just a couple seconds.

Why should it work this way? Simplicity, efficiency, and ease of use. The inventory systems of games like Diablo 2, just like potions and identifying items, are ideas that are long past the time they should have been buried. Grid-based UIs are, too.

I realize that this isn't exactly a novel idea; any e-commerce site uses a system exactly like this. But for some reason, it hasn't made it into games, yet, even though the items, upon generation, already have the very tags we'd need to search.

(Also, while I'm not going to get up on my programmer's high-horse and say it'd be easy to implement, I would encourage Crate to think about the potential development time of this system against the time and cost of creating art assets for inventory tetris.)

[Kluga]

Your raise a lot of good points, especially when you mention the fact that if something like this wasn't implemented then most people would use a work-around such as multiple mules or a TQVault type system.

Alot of players (myself included) love to horde or the awesome weapons they find, even if they don't want to twink and simply create a weapon and armour collection. An implementation similar to this would be easiest in terms of gameplay and item storage, as using mules or a program external to the game simply interrupts gameplay

[TECHNOmancer]

Wow, I couldn't agree more, especially with the idea of setting up the inventory as a searchable database. There are loads of loot hoarders out there, myself included, who spend a lot of time comparing and transfering items between dozens of characters and mules.

Similar to the caravan that was implemented in TQ, what if there were banks or storehouses in major towns? I would be willing to live with a limited personal inventory if the shared/common inventory were much greater in size. It'd also be of fantastic help if two (or more) of the same item could be compared side by side so that their individual attributes could be scrutinized.

TECHNOmancer

[Phuncz]

Indeed, limit the personal inventory (on the character), but have a huge shared bank/storage for your account. If the game is item-happy, it's only normal that everything is geared towards that.

Good points are made here but in my opinion, your character's own inventory should always be limited in capacity. I do recommend an option to view your bank/storage as a list with correct use of colors and icons for rarity, item type and some short info with vital variable stats.

[Mochnant]

I'm also a fan of large inventories, especially with the idea of crafting materials dropping from monsters.

I'd hope that a shared item vault is a given with the developers. Torchlight is one that has a personal vault and a shared vault, plus that friendly item selling pet.

It might be a decent compromise to allow all items to be sold to a vendor straight from inventory, thereby removing the need for a lot of personal carrying room. You could still have very large vaults that would not be accessable when away from town.

[Llama8]

I'm also a fan of large inventories, especially with the idea of crafting materials dropping from monsters.


Another possibility is to have a specific page in the inventory for materials, possibly "just" a list of what material it is & how much you have of it (like the way Guild Wars did it), that way it wouldn't take up other more valuable inventory space.

[The Old Farmer]

I have to agree the idea of huge vault storage is a great idea, in a kill n loot based game. I can't remember the huge number of mule chars I had in TQ to store all the goodies. Hoarders will hoard and find some way to do it with the game anyway so why not make it a feature. Definitely have a share feature between all your characters as well as possibly a MP share chest to swap loot with friends.
A major part of the fun of TQ was swapping and showing off of loot with friends.

[Iceciro]

I too can see the need for limited PERSONAL space, because you don't want players to cart around the right weapon for every encounter in their infinite personal space.

But as far as a caravan type storage accessable in major towns? Infinite storage for that, please. It's especially bad when you're trying to store loot for your character, loot for every other character you have, and stuff that might not be useful for you but you have a friend who can use it...

[Vox Nihili]

I don't really see the distinction between an infinite shared stash and a limited personal inventory as a useful one to make. What purpose does it really serve?

If someone's willing to fight an encounter, stop, dig through an inventory, equip a different weapon, fight through an encounter, stop, dig through an inventory, equip a different weapon, and perpetually repeat this, it'd take a really severe restriction on inventory space to prevent it. And even if that were the case, it's not like it would be a big deal to just portal back to town and grab what you need. All the personal limitation does is add another layer of nuisance.

I think the keys to good inventory management are:

1) Enormous space with everything in one location
2) No more inventory tetris
3) Ease of finding what you want

In my not-so-humble opinion, if you want a model of exactly what not to do with inventory and loot (excepting the pet), Torchlight is a perfect example. Small inventory, lots of wasted space in the layout, tiny, uninformative icons, an alt button function that can't cope with the game's mountain after mountain of trash drops, identification, and constantly having to stop to play inventory tetris.

Loot in Torchlight is slow, tedious, monotonous, largely unexciting, and a constant burden to the player (unless you just ignore it all). That's exactly what I hope Crate avoids with Grim Dawn.

[ExNomenDei]

I fully agree on this: Players want to keep stuff they might need and they might want to use on other, lower-leveled characters. Keeping a lot of stuff isn't going to upset the balance of the game anyway since items get old and therefore 'useless' to your main character quickly, and you generally only give a few items to a new character at a time, which means that a tiny shared inventory space such as in Immortal Throne isn't going to limit people from making their 'young' characters too powerful either.

One shared space that can be accessed from a variety of locations in the world, one with a huge amount of space, is definitely the way to go here. And as stressed, automatic filtering and keeping tabs on different types of weapons and armor and other items could make the game much more fun as well. I like the idea of having customizable filters with 'Only +strength' and then another filter 'Only amulets' a lot, it makes it easier to find that one ring you're looking for.

On a related note, perhaps personal space should be bigger but the chance to visit your shared space smaller. Not giving people as easy access to shared space (not by making it tedious to get back to it, but to make it impossible for certain lengths of time by some gameplay mechanic like a cool-down on a town portal) is then very important. Otherwise, the shared space will get clogged up with several dozen renditions of "Sword of slight whoop-ass that wasn't worth enough $ to sell" in its variety of forms.

Perhaps there should be a limit to what you can store on the shared stash at one time as well as a limit to what you can withdraw. This way, you still have to make decisions with a new character: I can take five items from the shared stash at this time because that's the limit of what the merchant can carry to me. I won't see the shared stash for a while, so I should choose carefully."

At the same time, the personal stash wouldn't be necessary anymore. There'd only be one shared stash, you could carry quite a bit with you to it but only dump a little bit on it at one time. This way, you get to keep some balance in the game.

[Phuncz]

I think the pro-"infinite personal storage" people are forgetting one thing: overview.
YOU might think endless lists of items is cool.
YOU might need every single item in the game in your personal inventory at every given moment.
MOST PEOPLE who play it, however, don't want that. It's intimidating, for most people, to see hundreds of different items like a fancy Excel sheet just so a few of you get beyond the limit of what is a reasonable solution. If "infinite storage" was the ideal solution to inventories in games, most games would have it.

The "small inventory, large shared stash" is being adopted by many games because it is good for horders and easy for casual players. "Infinite inventory" is just good for extreme horders and totally useless for casual players. Middle ground, people. Middle ground.

[Vox Nihili]

I think the pro-"infinite personal storage" people are forgetting one thing: overview.
YOU might think endless lists of items is cool.
YOU might need every single item in the game in your personal inventory at every given moment.
MOST PEOPLE who play it, however, don't want that. It's intimidating, for most people, to see hundreds of different items like a fancy Excel sheet just so a few of you get beyond the limit of what is a reasonable solution. If "infinite storage" was the ideal solution to inventories in games, most games would have it.

The "small inventory, large shared stash" is being adopted by many games because it is good for horders and easy for casual players. "Infinite inventory" is just good for extreme horders and totally useless for casual players. Middle ground, people. Middle ground.

Are you serious?

If you don't want a huge list of things, then don't pick them up, don't save them or sell them. This isn't a terribly difficult concept.

The whole idea behind the infinite space is well-covered in the first post. The small inventory, large shared stash model is just about the worst possible design for anyone who hordes. Hell, it's an awful design just for people who like to hang onto uniques and high-end rares to pass to alts. I don't even hoard and I run out of space all the time. Mules and TQvault aren't an adequate solution because a handful of people might take a few minutes to grow accustomed to the exact same text that's always there, but now isn't attached to a 3x2 block with a picture on it.

[Vox Nihili]

<stuff about limits>
Everything you're putting there is balance-via-nuisance. So, I have to relog a few times to transfer everything I want? That's not going to stop me from doing it. That's throwing up another silly roadblock like mules.

The idea is, if a player needs to be prevented from doing X, either do it meaningfully or don't at all.

[Malpheas]

But these days, it's just an impediment that leads to some truly obnoxious work-arounds.

EDIT: Oh right, I was going to start with a mockery of this line based on exaggeration. Quite the profound statement.

1) We ought to have infinite (or at least extremely large) inventory space. Players will find a way to horde everything they want, anyway, whether it's via mules or some program like TQvault. It's also rather antithetical to typical ARPG loot systems to limit the number of things a player can horde.

Eh, shared stash.

1) Infinite (or at least extremely large) inventory space.
2) List mode (for a very basic example of this, see WAR)
3) A text search box
4) A fly-out with options for searching for specific attributes (e.g. two-handed sword, chest armor, +skills, etc.)

What, are we accountants? Or players. (Not you LLama, you're an exception that I know of) I say: Dragon age had a good system, by weight and by type. Although, I know I like seeing an item then seeing what type of attributes it has; that tool-tip screen is like a mnemonic to me. I figure, GD is still going to go with Tetris and I would be disappointed if they went with single cell sizes.

I would encourage Crate to think about the potential development time of this system against the time and cost of creating art assets for inventory tetris.)

Damnit, I like seeing art. I like playing picture games and I would feel cheated if they did not decide to have item pictures. Just me.

I like what you've said, but I don't think it's necessary beyond the Dragon Age suggestion (most contemporary example I can think of).

Cheers,

Malph

[Vox Nihili]

What, are we accountants? Or players. (Not you LLama, you're an exception that I know of) I say: Dragon age had a good system, by weight and by type. Although, I know I like seeing an item then seeing what type of attributes it has; that tool-tip screen is like a mnemonic to me. I figure, GD is still going to go with Tetris and I would be disappointed if they went with single cell sizes.

Damnit, I like seeing art. I like playing picture games and I would feel cheated if they did not decide to have item pictures. Just me.

I like what you've said, but I don't think it's necessary beyond the Dragon Age suggestion (most contemporary example I can think of).

So, Dragon Age is fine? Dragon Age had enough inventory space that you could have hoarded damned near every item in the game. They had tiny icons on a list-based layout (e.g. no tetris), with the ability to sort by item type. And that's just fine, right?

...but adding a text search box to that turns us all into accountants, right?

I'm fairly certain that someone could manage to operate something like GameBanshee's Titan Quest items database (http://www.gamebanshee.com/titanquest/equipment.php) without a CPA or any sort of undue burden, and that's quite a bit more complex than what I'm suggesting.

[Phuncz]

Are you serious?

If you don't want a huge list of things, then don't pick them up, don't save them or sell them. This isn't a terribly difficult concept.

The whole idea behind the infinite space is well-covered in the first post. The small inventory, large shared stash model is just about the worst possible design for anyone who hordes. Hell, it's an awful design just for people who like to hang onto uniques and high-end rares to pass to alts. I don't even hoard and I run out of space all the time. Mules and TQvault aren't an adequate solution because a handful of people might take a few minutes to grow accustomed to the exact same text that's always there, but now isn't attached to a 3x2 block with a picture on it.
Yes I'm serious. Now we take a different approach.

Not really adding anything but if you doubt I'm serious, please don't contradict yourself while trying to justify "the only good solution". You want lists and infinite space because you seem to need that. But you say you don't hoard. But you "run out of space all the time". You're just an item magnet.

You think graphic art representation is useless, maybe they should just give items a number and just stats. If it doesn't matter how it looks, why do they even have to make graphics for it on the character. Why does he even need to move when he walks, it just ruins the item hoarding and that time could have been spent perfecting the list of items.

Your kind of game isn't this game, as apparently you didn't read the "About" box in the top of every page of this website. I'll quote the most important part for you:
As a spiritual successor, Grim Dawn will attempt to better perfect the magical formula of exploration, character advancement, and loot collection pioneered by Diablo.

I think this is what you want it to be:
Grim Dawn will succeed in revolutionising the way you gather items, by introducing an infinite inventory with the only viable solution to browse: the list. Now gasp at your seemingly endless list of items all rendered in beautiful white text, which Diablo didn't use and failed miserably for.

Now the question I ask you: are you serious ? Because advocating list view as being more important then "time consuming art" is like saying a museum doesn't need paintings, just a list of the ones they have in the back room.

[Vox Nihili]

Yes I'm serious. Now we take a different approach.

Not really adding anything but if you doubt I'm serious, please don't contradict yourself while trying to justify "the only good solution". You want lists and infinite space because you seem to need that. But you say you don't hoard. But you "run out of space all the time". You're just an item magnet.
I run out of space "all the time." Yes. After running 2-3 characters through Immortal Throne, saving nothing but charms, scrolls, and uniques, my stash was full. I don't even bother to pick up yellow items past the first few levels, and I rarely bothered with greens (and usually sold them). But assembled charms? Scroll recipes (although only one of each)? Uniques? Yeah, I held on to those. And if you totaled all the space available to a TQ character - 3 bags, the stash, and the shared stash - you could probably hold, what, maybe 5% of the total number of uniques in the game?

You think graphic art representation is useless...
The rest of this is just way off-base and out of line.

A list view of inventory items is a more efficienct way to display inventory than the traditional grid. I never said art isn't important. I never said it was useless. I didn't advocate anything like what you're saying.

However, if you have 1,000 unique items, it takes more man hours to create the higher-resolution art needed for grid-based inventory than it does 1,000 simple icons (where they could get away with, say, just scaling down the actual in-game model of the weapon).

Art in a game is is important. I'd like to see interesting models and environments and animations and a cohesive art style. But in terms of bang for the buck, creating a whole set of comparatively high-resolution art that's only useful for the sole purpose of playing inventory tetris sounds like a tremendous waste of resources, and leads to a cludgy inventory system.

[alexei]

still no word from dev about the inventory type?

I prefer to have brick inventory rather than tetris type or other type like loki. What i mean by brick is like item in Warcraft 3 or dota and most mmoprg. Although it limit the view to those who like to see the actual weapon.

It is easier for dev to develop art for brick item rather than actual item view. But i only support this IF we can zoom closely our char. If it is just like TQ, i think it is not a problem.

But I'm not really sure about this before having to try it. Remain the same might be better.

[Malpheas]

...but adding a text search box to that turns us all into accountants, right?

Hey I think that sometimes tetris intentory does not work, but it isn't as unmanageable as you think it is. I just don't care to have something like that changed.

As far as search... we're not playing a warehouse for a character. We all have finite storage space. I think it's unnecessary.

I'm fairly certain that someone could manage to operate something like GameBanshee's Titan Quest items database (http://www.gamebanshee.com/titanquest/equipment.php) without a CPA or any sort of undue burden, and that's quite a bit more complex than what I'm suggesting.

Of course you wouldn't, you took my jibe about accounting vs. fun to an exaggerated extreme.

[Panthro]

I quite like the item-tetris and especially the artwork. Seeing a big two handed sword next to a dagger gives a sense of scale and the 2D artworks in things like TQ/Diablo look much better than the 3D counterparts that you actually see on the character.

I've been pretty happy with personal space in both TQ and Diablo, it's the storage chest or whatever back at the towns that requires more of a fix. For that, I'd happily have more space, although I can't see myself ever having more than a couple of characters on the go at one time nor can I see myself stockpiling thousands of items.

[Skorpion_King]

Damnit, I like seeing art. I like playing picture games and I would feel cheated if they did not decide to have item pictures. Just me. I agree with that. It's funny to see the item´s picture.

But in Diablo (1) when a merchant was showing you an item, before buying it, only propierties were displayed, no image was showed. And really it was not a problem at all.

I think this is not the most important point (but the inventory must work as well as in TQ, never worse like it does in Diablo2..), the most important point about inventory for me is:
Is confirmed if there will be a shared stash to exchange items between my characters like in TQ?? (please yessss please please please..) :confused:

[MadWasp]

BIG tetris with BiG 2D equipment gfx. The Best choice in my point of view.
Different item size. (sword>ring etc)

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I run out of space "all the time." Yes. After running 2-3 characters through Immortal Throne, saving nothing but charms, scrolls, and uniques, my stash was full. I don't even bother to pick up yellow items past the first few levels, and I rarely bothered with greens (and usually sold them). But assembled charms? Scroll recipes (although only one of each)? Uniques? Yeah, I held on to those.

2-3 characters? I start running out of space just with a single character before I hit the end of Normal. Without TQVault, I think I'd cry. Even with it I still do anyway, because it's such an awkward solution to a problem that would be better handled in-game.

I of course very cleverly posted something about this on the titanquest.net forum (http://www.titanquest.net/tq-forum/threads/32278-Sacks-and-Caravans?p=386958&viewfull=1#post386958) before finding this thread here, but the "bottomless pit"-style storage with some way to sort/organize stuff (even if it's just a filter for "swords" and "hats" and "rings" etc. and "all", and then a way to sort by rarity/value/level or something) is my number one feature request for GD, since most other stuff seems like it's already being dealt with well by the devs (and maybe this is, too, but I haven't found anything from them about it yet).

I don't know if there's a less ancient thread about this somewhere, either on here or the GD forums, but this is the only one I've found so far (and if there is another somewhere, please point me at it). Probably the number one issue I have with TQ is massive amounts of crap piling up in my inventory and nowhere to put it all, even with the caravan available. I always end up with an enormous heap of relics and charms and recipes and pieces of set eq that keep accumulating but that I can't really justify getting rid of, because I know I'm going to need them at some point and don't want to have to farm for them later.

With an expanded crafting system in GD, I have a feeling that it'd be even worse, unless there's separate storage for crafting materials/recipes that amounts to basically a bottomless pit. I'm all for limiting the amount of stuff you can carry with you at any given time in your character's inventory, but I'd also really like somewhere I can store my hoard of crap that's also its own bottomless pit. It's a pain in the ass to have to fire up TQVault on a regular basis, and having something in-game to handle that (which could hopefully also handle better sorting and organization and whatnot, since the game has direct access to and is integrated with itself, while a third-party program doesn't/isn't).

That is by far my number one feature request, by a large margin, since most other stuff already seems to have been addressed or is being worked on. I mean, it is a loot-whoring game after all. Let me be a loot whore without jumping through hoops.

Edit: Of course, right after I post this, I finally dig up a thread about exactly this on the GD forums that I didn't see during the previous hour of reading stuff. Go me. Heh.

[Drogirant]

I like the idea of having an infinite shared storage.I don't really care how it would look like.Be it tetris-like grid inventory, or small icons to represent the items.Infinite storage just makes the game so much easier.Add search engine to that, and you have the most sought-after feature by the users of almost any ARPG.

Better yet, adding special containers for swords, axes, chest pieces, helmets,....... would make it even simpler, making the player focus on the actual game and slaying tons of monsters instead of searching for one item he knew he had stored somewhere or on someone.

Auto-sell function like in Torchlight would be good too, but I'm not sure how would it be managed in GD if it was implemented.