Inventory List Mode (improvements)

Berek commented in a discussion around the end of bag mode that now resources that were spent to develop and improve bag mode would be moved to improving the list mode inventory system. So what are those potential improvements?

Here are a couple of my thoughts with the news of removing the immersive bag mode:
-Sorting by name currently is kinda useless since names are all over the place without a standard. Everything needs a standardizing naming pass to rename and get a standard throughout. I would suggest a major->minor->property schema.
Such as:
Leather, hardened
Leather scrap
Leather strap
Mace
Mace rusty
Mace of Necromancy +4
Food, apple, red

This was implemented with both Repair Kits and Potions when implemented and I am hoping this is on the radar to fix the rest of the names of items within the game. Current system is complete chaos and although Starr may prefer it that way list mode is way to disorganized even with some sorting filters. Current key example demonstrates this perfectly:
the follow are key names and the order they show in inventory spread out among-st tons of other items.
Etceter Crag Mines to Quel Passage Key
Outskirts Fence Key
Verdantis Cage Key

Increase the size of the icons - things are too small as people have resolutions far beyond 1024x768. Suggestions for this could be:
- Maybe a dialog zoom feature adding a 2x zoom to all UI windows.
- Increase the size of the icons so I can more easily see the items I am looking for since bag mode is on the chopping block for next release. Honestly with the end of bag mode in sight some major things have to be done to list mode to make it engaging. (I play on a res of 3000x1900 and like the environment and the UI items are very hard to use at this resolution but things are not getting lower res in the future...

 

Fully agreed on the naming thingie.
Been a pet peeve of mine since 2014. Have tried to bring it up regularly to limited effect.

One of the worst offenders are gems. If I filter on "fragment" then I get all of all types. But for the "uncut" gems there is nothing. Instead you have to filter on them individually. Diamond, garnet, ruby etc. sooooo frustrating.

Same thing with reagents. If they were listed as
Reagent, Garlic
Reagent, nightshade
Etc
Then one could filter on "reagent" and get them all listed.

Another offender are some of the rare ore. Where they are Tin instead of Tin ore. Which kinda makes meta sense but from a gaming POV is super frustrating.

Then don't get me started on deco like furniture.

 

Would be cool if you could drag and drop stuff you want in a list and have it as custom. So you can decide all your lists yourself and as many as you would like. Bit like deck building where you make your own stuff.

 

I know its a lot of work to rename a lot of assets public name but it has to be done now that there is soooooooo many variations of assets in game, and the problem will only continue to grow with every release.

 

Sorting out the loot when you've been running around for a couple of hours is quite the chore due to the filter limitations.
Part of this I think can be reconciled by simply applying the correct filters to items ..

Currently we have:
Equipment Tab
Equipment Tab is reasonably good at its job of filtering things that are equipment. Yay Equipment tab, you're doin' a great job.

Crafting Tab
This captures 'most' crafting/raw materials - a few outliers I can think of are cinnamon bark, brown cap mushrooms, pecan nuts @Berek these need to filter correctly. I'm sure there are others.

And this is where it gets messy.

The housing tab does capture decorations, but it also captures equipment that can be placed as decorations, so we've got a bit of filter overlap here. The consumable tab captures consumables but its also capturing things like reagents which you can -technically- eat one at a time, though I don't know why you'd want to.

Typically when I go to 'put loot away' I have a massive box that I sell junk loot and then dump everything else into the massive box to 'deal with later' rather than every single time I come back to town because sorting it is quite the chore . As mentioned, you can filter fragments but not gems. A naming convention would fix this entirely - though I wouldn't necessarily call them 'gem' since that is what the crafted versions are called. What about sapphire crystal, ruby crystal, etc? Then at least I could filter them and deposit in the appropriate container. Several items have uses in more than one craft so categories wont really work well here, so typically to sort inventory I have to do the following filters:

-wood
-bark
(or -pine, -maple, depending on my mood, but then I still have to go deal with sooty bark or pine resin, depending on which one I chose)
-borer
-cutworm
-fragment
-ore
-tin
-tungsten
-nickel (as they aren't "ores")
-cotton
-beetle
-suet?
-thrombus???

at a certain point, it actually just becomes easier to open all my containers and go through it all item by item, rather than trying to use the text filter.

While renaming a bunch of things may facilitate using the text filter, I'd really like to see something more modular. Like allowing players to add filters to item types and organize their crap. Either that, or let us do it with bags but designate which item goes into which bag. That's a completely workable for me, just need to figure out how to make loot go into the appropriately labelled container instead of making a mess in main window.

Trying to repair a tool when you need to drag a repair kit (begins with R) onto say, a harvesting axe which begins with (H) when you're carrying a bunch of stuff in between and no contortion of the list window will show these two things together, means you have to use bags for repair kits anyway or try to scroll the inventory window while simultaneously holding on to the repair kit and well...it just gets clunky.

I think custom filters or bag sorting would solve this problem quite eloquently.

 

With moving items into another container, would be nice when you have a long list in your inventory to be able to select the ones you want then with right click of mouse be able to cut and paste the items. Sometimes the list is just to long to move them all at once how it is currently

 

Well I have to say that not having bag mode option is just what it is but now on to improving as you say the list mode to be much more user friendly. Right now we have teeny tiny close together lists of words ummm items. I am continuously dragging the wrong thing and sometimes not even knowing it until I find it missing. So if list mode is here to stay and be our system then let's fix it to be more user friendly and maybe even more visually pleasing.

I agree changes and improvements need to be made. I like the grid ideas mentioned. I checked on some examples of other game's inventory systems and here are a few image and ideas to steal ideas from

Edited for clarity.





Here is our Inventory. I think if we could have the items on the list not so close together and so you cannot drag the wrong thing that would be wonderful and ease frustration. @ devs

 

Very good ideas. The names definitely need to be grouped like that! I'd love that.

 

Rather than renaming things non-intuitively, perhaps we can find ways to rename things to work with the filter, yet keep their naming intact.

"Diamond" may be "Diamond Gemstone", etc, so filtering by "gemstone" finds them all.

Note there are already category filters, so reagents, consumables, goods, equipment, etc can be found quickly.

 

that exactly what @Chaox said he was gonna push for, above. maybe we need to make him a list of groups of things that don't filter well?

 

Agreed. The issue is that consumables is too generic and the category overlaps exist. If they move to rename things as it seems the later items have been nicely named such as potions it would be much easier to sort items. This doesnt mean in addition there could not be some better filter tabs as well but I think managing filter tabs for me begins to remove the immersion of the game. I would much rather see larger inventory display in a better organized list of items by item type then detail first.

 

Two things:
1) Ideally I would not want to see it is a requirement for players (especially me) to spend a lot of time managing filters and customizing just to be able to sort my inventory. I would rather have it be straightforward and organized by name to begin with.
2) The category filters dont work well in current implementation as someone else mentioned the consumables tab lists all reagents and anything edible and can really be a mess, and same is there for crafting since things have more than once use.

 

I guess this just is the difference between knowing what you are looking for and looking through your inventory to sort things. Which the games current direction makes sorting inventory items a major component and I think we need to really refocus on making this a less mundane and complicated task if we want people to enjoy the over-all experience.