Inventory Wars! (Lists vs. Freeform)

I'm sure there will be a poll posted at the end of release about this,

but I spent all of yesterday using lists, crafting etc..

and today I went back to free form bags.

I'm so much happier crafting and using free form! I can organize things how I want them, I can separate things into multiple stacks and group crafting elements into different bags like my tools in one bag, products in another, and a bag for each type of crafting materials.. it's so much easier to drag and drop from free form bags than from the list too.

Overall I'm glad I tried lists, because going back to free form has made me realize how much I really do prefer it!

 

I like them both, each has their advantage. I like the list for knowing what each object is at a glance, but I like organizing the free form, so I figure once I am more used to what each item looks like I'll switch to free form 100% of the time.

 

I <3 the list view. I am going to crack the whip on SOE until they put it in EQ2. I am perfectly willing to bug them about it until the game closes. The way that it has those tabs that you can sort... If I could use that to see what I've got in my house, the bank and the guild bank... This digital pack rat would be very happy. If I could search it like I can my inventory and bank in EQ2, even better.
You could suggest that I stop accumulating so much junk but that is just crazy talk.
Edit: Being able to shift select in list view is awesome. Give me a fiery flying mount like I've got in EQ2 and I'll never go back!

 

I'm with MD. I thought I would love the lists, but find the free form seems to be the way to go. I like to organize things in my bag and different containers as I like. Still, nice to have the option.

 

I like both too. I want an easier way to switch between them. A hotkey would be good. I think labels showing up as soon as your mouse hovers over an item would make free form a little more friendly.

 

I like both, but I find myself using free form more often for inventory management. It could still use some work to make it more usable but so far I'm preferring that as the default mode and only switching to lists for the stats. And yes, a toggle or hotkey to show quantity and other attributes while in free form would be great to have.

 

I like free form all the way. List gives good details at a glance, but completely ruins immersion for me. Makes it feel like the icon for inventory should change from a bag to a scroll...

My main concern with list is that it would ruin the development of a thief build. Free form bags make it harder for thieves to steal certain items based on how you have your bags laid out. If a thief has the option to look at a list format, there would be no form of risk for the thief to have to spend more time looking through your bag and moving objects, that will potentially give them away, before finding something valuable to take. If given the option between list and free form, someone who plays with list might not ever arrange their bag in free form mode, so valuables might get pushed on top of your bag, and make it easier for a thief to grab the mother load, if playing a thief means you can only look through a bag in free form mode and not list mode.

A good compromise, that I would be happy with, would be to have both formats in the game, but make list format only viewable to your characters inventory and houses that you own or are allowed joint ownership too, and have it so that you can't move or take things out of it in list view. This way the list is only a quick reference to what you have/own, and doesn't break immersion, or limit the developers from creating other game elements that would have an unfair advantage from gaining access to a list view of what a player has.

You could also add to the list format an option that list what items are in what sub bags/inventories, for players that might loose track of where a certain item is if they have 50+ bags, pouches, chest on them.

I'm hoping in the future they limit what items can go in certain containers based on size, even though we all know you shouldn't be able to carry a whole crafting station or 10+ chest in a single backpack. That's what they had deeds for back in UO, and hopefully that will be tweaked to be more realistic as the game comes closer to public release. Obviously adding those levels of details and restrictions at this point in pre alpha would gimp the whole testing process.

 

A thief build? Other players (or NPCs) grabbing stuff out of my bags? If this would even be implemented, this should be opt-in only. Otherwise Portalarium will be overwhelmed with bug reports ("my stuff disappeared") and bad-mouthing players will leave en masse.

 

UO survived perfectly fine with this before EA gimped the whole sandbox risk/reward system years after the initial launch of the game. SotA doesn't need to have an opt in option for core game play elements. It's a simple understanding that this is a spiritual successor to a game that had the core elements of sandbox game play with risk/reward systems. Items were not what they are in modern day MMOs, they were a dime a dozen with specific functionality, not this level epic crap that you have to spend 3 months real world time farming out blah blah blah to obtain so and sos uber awesome god slayer fill in the blank crap. It's quite simple, the more risk you are willing to take, just like in the real world, the higher level of reward you obtain, and the greater pain for failure. If you want to play something more "hand holdish" then this might not be the game for you. That's why their are no quest logs and map markers, let alone maps, just given to you. SotA is about using your brain, not just being brain candy.

This is not me being mean to you, just trying to explain the direction of the game.

 

I also think both have their advantages and disadvantages.... I had my inventory full of (mixed) stuff and list view came in handy at that point, but often it's handy to arrange things just the way I like.

 

I'm a spreadsheet guy and prefer lists, but I'd really like to use arrow keys to scroll down through items. I'm finding selecting items when crafting to be a major pain. We currently have to use the keyboard (Shift + Click) to select and type a number of items to move to the crafting station. My hands are already on the keyboard to type a number, I'd rather not have to move my hands back to the mouse to scroll to another item.

If there's a more efficient method, please let me know.

 

I think they're gonna collect a lot of data saying people "prefer free form" just because lists are not the answer! I myself am one of the naysayers to the free-form "spend 5 hours trying to find your tailoring scissors" inventory, and yet I find myself not using the lists. GIVE US A GRID, what is so hard about that?

If they wanna make the free form thing usable, having items highlight with a white/light yellow outline when you mouse over and show the item name on top of it without having to wait would help a TON as well. You know what would be killer? Being able to click something to "Auto-organize container" that aligns things to... wait for it... A GRID!

Crafting is totally unusable as is with either lists or bag graphics, and you could totally learn a thing or 2 from Minecraft, since that's what you're trying to emulate anyway. If you could at least click to hold, click to release rather than having to drag it would be much less of a chore.

Also honestly I couldn't give a damn about weight or sell price of items, STOP trying to make the list view look like a bloody spreadsheet. Item names, item graphic, item stats when you mouse over, make them EASY to pick up by using the boundary rectangle... you know like a DECENT MODERN GAME!

Sorry if I offended anyone but it feels retarded to be having this conversation in 2014. UX patterns evolve and it's the survival of the fittest. There is a reason why most, if not every game having an inventory, use a grid, and that is USABILITY. Nothing to do with immersion.

Want to have your old school UI? Fine, but please don't screw up the other option for the rest of us who DO mind spending half of our playtime organising things in bags inside bags inside chests inside crates inside boxes inside backpacks and losing rings and other small items left and right. And if you like the old UI that much, please add the ability to colour and name my containers like most private shards did in UO.

 

The devs have mentioned a "diablo" style grid inventory several times in their chats.

In order to mesh with the existing free-form inventory, one would need to provide sufficient grid slots to accommodate all the items one would be able to add to the bag in the free-form system.

And if you ask : Why not simply do away with the free-form system? Well, you will run into complaints from the old-school users (such as myself) which prefer the free-form method.​

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As well, in a grid-system, the "dimensions" of each object (the number of grid slots it takes in inventory) would most likely need to be assigned, and the icons drawn to fit properly, otherwise users would complain about a table taking the same space as a chisel.

This adds additional workload when creating new objects, which the dev team may not be in a position to provide.​

 

Guess I missed that one. Mind offering a link? Couldn't seem to find anything with the search

You're implying every old school user prefers them. I play Ultimas since Ultima IV was released, and yet I prefer a grid-based system. BTW I never said we should do away with the free form, just that list isn't the answer for the rest of us.

I think they could do it easily based on the pixel size of those things in the free form inventory. Math.ceil(spriteWidth / gridSlotWidth) then center the icon on the grid slots; can be done in 2-3 lines of code. If icon sizes are off people would complain as well in the free form system. Your argument is pretty much invalid in this case.

 

I'm not a fan of being locked into using a grid, but an option to turn on a grid for ones self only couldn't hurt. I do agree with what you have to say here though.

I stand on the side of anything you interact with, that you don't personally own, should open up in a free form inventory/paperdoll. Anything you personally own should give you the option of free form or grid to interact with in the world, or a list to reference what you have and exactly where it's located if you can't remember where a certain item is, or how much of a certain item you have spread out amongst all inventory you own.

A tab in the list for self, house/s, bank/storage, pack animals, boats, ect. should allow you to determine what, where, and how much of an item/resource you personally own, if you can't recall it yourself.

Skills should be used to determine details of an object beyond the generic name and weight of an item. Quality, condition, value, and special properties should require skilled identification to know.

 

I want an easier toggle, but bag view will be my default. I like the easy access to stats and sorting in list view, but I see this as being something I do less frequently for specific purposes.

 

I prefer the WoW & Swtor way of bag handling over both list and free form.
Please oh please let us give the grid way a testrun

 

It was noted in one of the "Hangout of the Avatar" dev chats. Sorry, I do not remember which one.

 

UO Last time I played it in 2009, had a grid form pack, I didn't like it. (You could switch between free form and grid).

 

As long as we can chose between styles in game, then I am happy. List for my Vendors and Free for my crafting. i like them both and find them both Very useful.