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Thoughts on inventory management in mmorpgs
Wandering Mist
Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, as a lot of games like ESO and GW2 offer vast amounts of storage space for materials and items, as well as quick ways of accessing these items whenever you want. I personally dislike having too much storage space as I feel it detracts from the sense of adventure that is important in any RPG.
Do you think having lots of inventory space and quick ways to access it away from town enhances or detracts from the gameplay experience?
Do you think having lots of inventory space and quick ways to access it away from town enhances or detracts from the gameplay experience?
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Probably an item system that i liked the most is Lineage 2 - it was weight based i think and how much you could carry i think depended on things like race and class. It has unlimited space in terms of slots (i think), but once you exceeded the weight limit you slow down and at one point you would be unable to move. Each item or stack of materials takes 1 slot as well and i don't recall having stack limits for items. You could literally stack thousands of Bones (a material) on a single slot if you wanted. Quest items and drops were separated in different tabs and quest items didn't count towards space or weight limits. in L2 you had to go to town to do everything. There was no way to chest mails, put or buy items from the AH (I don't even remember there being an AH), you went back, stashed your gold or materials to reduce weight and went to the central square in Dion/Giran to shop around for items and consumables.
I don't like what WoW did with their inventory management - well, buy a bigger backpack and have more space. Carry a submarine in it if you want to cuz there is literally no limit to how much or what you can put in there.
I do not want to be able to access my stashes, bank or anything like that unless i am next to an NPC that provides that service. If I can do that, just give us a raid finder, a global AH and the ability to put items on the AH from anywhere and call the game 'WoW: But Better'.
Games who opened up storage by increasing stack amounts and bank space made things less of a struggle and offered more convenience. I prefer the ability to summon a banker to me, a merchant to sell crap to and a bag to stack all the resources into that are gathered. But if I have to go back to town to unload that's fine to as long as I can store and save the crap up.
Basically, if I put items in storage in one city, I shouldn't be able to use them in another.
If I am crafting in my house, I am ok with having access to materials stored in that house or on my character, but I shouldn't have access to materials in other houses, or in other forms of storage.
So, I am all for lots of storage, but not for quick and easy ways to access it.
What I would say is that if there are multiple areas that a player could store items, it would be great if there was a master inventory list somewhere.
ESO’s Buy-to-Play, Play-to-Pay system is godawful. The sub is “optional” but there’s almost more material types than there is storage space so you have to sub to have any space at all. If you’re gonna apply storage limits, they should have the same potential cap for everyone.
Some basic QoL things that make inventory management less painful are high quantity stack limits, having designated slots for gear so they don’t take parts of your inventory space when equipped, and storage logs so you know where you stored something even if you have to travel to its specific location to get it.
I'd assume that only high level gatherers will be able to expand their inventory slots for resources.
Based on the wiki, storage should mostly be like this. If I'm reading things correctly, anything deposited in a warehouse in one node will only be available in that node.
The wiki says that some mounts will be considered mules, and will have ~10x the storage space of a player's inventory.
Per the wiki, there will likely be some forms of player backpacks that will be better for carrying resources/gatherables.
If I understand correctly we are talking about backpack space which limits the carry capacity of weightless things only and is expanded by purchasing bigger backpacks from crafters.
If that’s the case I am all for having a backpack capacity to be as large as possible. I want to be able to take many different mounts, costumes, and completed items like backup gear sets with me when I go out wandering.
I think we will need separate tools to perform different things, not to mention backups for those tools if they break in the middle of the adventure, or in the middle of gathering a rare gatherable. We might even want to carry gear with different kinds of resistances or abilities for a single dungeon that has some requirements for cold resistances against one boss or fire resistances against another.
We will need to carry utility things to find where we are going, consumables for buffs like food, scrolls, potions, and many many things.
So ashes being a game with hardly any fast travel, many threats out there in the world, and ever changing situations that call for different equipment. Means when you head out. If you want to be prepared. You need to take with you loads of things to be ready for what you may encounter out there.
So in conclusion my opinion is that the “weightless things grid space” (backpack capacity) should start somewhere between 50 and 100 slots and be upgradeable to like 300 slots by purchasing more advanced backpacks from crafters with later expansions pushing that to numbers like 600 slots.
Agreed
I dont think actual space should be as much of a limiting factor as it is in most games. However weight makes a whole lot of sense, particularly if it affects your ability to move just as it would irl. I dont say that because I want a game to replicate real world conditions but in some areas it actually goes some way to enhancing immersion because it instinctively makes sense.
I started MMO's with Shadowbane almost 20 years ago. There was no simple access to banks when you were literally a 30 minute run on foot to a "safe" bank. If you looted something of genuine value or were carrying a lot of semi valuable mats you actually had to make real choices about who you needed to help you get back to bank it and how long youd risk being out in the world before doing a bank run.
L2 has the best storage system, it is not infinite, but it is enough, and it forced you to organize all your materials very well and think about your next crafting move. you also had a place in every city to access the warehouse.
You should be able to go off and adventure all day and pick up lots of cool stuff, without worrying about space or running back to town to deposit it every hour. But you shouldn't be able to carry Everything You Own with you at all times. You should be able to store all kinds of crap "just in case", but if you do that a lot, you might have to clean out your bank once a month or so.
I think those are reasonable middle-grounds that encourage players to keep their shit somewhat organized, rather than piling up stuff up forever, and forgetting that 90% of it even exists.
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In terms of convenience: We already know that in Ashes, storage will be local, and you actually have to go a node or freehold to store or retrieve stuff. So when you're in the field, all you have access to is your backpack and mount. This is just a sensible structure to keep gameplay simple and intentional. You take only what you need with you when adventuring. And inventory management/commerce happens only in towns/freeholds.
The cost of moving materials around is a core part of the economy and PvP gameplay, so obviously that can't be compromised. So materials cannot by any means "teleport". You have to move it all manually. But paying to mail finished items around is probably acceptable, since they aren't a part of the caravan system.
I would personally like some inventory management shortcuts. One of my favorite things about GW2 is that little button to "deposit all materials", without having to click each one individually. Anything to minimize the amount of clicking-and-dragging icons around, since I don't consider that to be valuable gameplay. (But again, these functions should only be available in-town.)
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Weight limits for materials are fine. They just exist so that carrying a lot of materials requires a mule/caravan. Which makes those materials more visible and vulnerable for open-world PvP. I don't have much experience with that, so I can't guess what a good tuning balance would be. But some kind of weight system makes sense.
Allowing people to buy expansions to their inventory is not that important to me. I guess it has value as a progression system for new players. As you get deeper into the MMO, and participate in more systems, you're going to need more space. Inventory space should attempt to follow that curve, so there's always a sensible limit (again, to encourage people to actually care about all the crap they're hoarding). So I think inventory expansion should be limited but free -- unlocked as you progress from newbie to veteran. Every 10 levels perhaps.
1: Weight limit
2: Inventory space limit
They both follow a similar principle, at a certain amount of items you can't carry anymore because either you'll be overweight or you don't have space anymore.
In my opinion, both should be able to be countered by the use of items/mounts. Like specific gear or mounts to increase the Weight limit or being able to store items in a mount's inventory.
One big issue i have with both of these, is that they can easily be implemented to be frustrating as hell.
You shouldn't give an mmo a small inventory, and throw 1000 items at the player. That's just annoying.
You also shouldn't give a player alot of inventory spots, but you get overweight so quickly you barely even get to use 10% of it.
Also, hard-caps on weight limit is shit. Make players progressively walk slower, don't just hit em heavy when they hit a certain point.
I like infinate space but weight restrictions, except for currency.
You shouldn't run around with 1000 healing potions.
You shouldn't run around with 500 roasted chickens.
You shouldn't run around with 5 gear sets.
Arrange your bag before heading out.
You shouldnt run around with 5k iron ore.
You shouldnt run around with 5k animal skin etc etc.
I also like when some races -> dwarves can carry more stuff. In L2 we would unload all our consumables on our Scavenger (dwarf class that gets extra materials from dead mobs) and camp a zone for days.
TL;DR I dont like limited bag space. I like weight restrictions except for currency. Increasing bag space is tedious, weight restrictions enable you to get organized before heading out.
I think ESO`s most popular addons was a good indicator of what the community would like to see for that game..
For the inventory, I would like to see a number of ways to filter and arrange the contents and perhaps even sub-folder/bag/containers.
Such filters that could be related to the nodal alliance as weight, quantity, value, grade, level.
I really like the idea that for an individual carrying goods will be somewhat reflected in what they wear.
And I really do like to see encumbrance impact speed and some variance between classes.
L2 didn't had unlimited slots(had 80 for all classes other than dwarfs that had 120 i think and there was methods to increase the slot limit through fishing) but 80 slots was enough for you to hardly care about while farming other than late game spots that had alot of material drop variance, it was mostly the weight system that would say when was the time to back, the only criticism i have for it was because the weight limited was based on the CON base stat and not equalized like the slots. And yes quest items having its own separate bag and holding no weight was excellent.
Aren't we all sinners?
I always wanted a MMO to simulate both encumbrance with the diablo/poe larger items take up more slots, and account for weight.
You would do this with a bag system like darkfall or uo.
I know people don't like having to manage their inventory, but things like being able to craft tiered bags of holding for you and your mount would make it so that a larger inventory is eventually possible, but must be worked for.
I am the type of D&D character that keeps good track of their inventory, and actually puts things in bags in a way that they would realistically fit correctly. I feel like I am cheating if I just assume I have enough arrows.
In short I think inventory management doesn't go far enough in MMOS. It is always some lame single slot system.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Any holiday or event-related drops should take no space and no weight. Fragments should be part of collectibles and not inventories. Basically, if it anything that has to be “in-season” to use, if should not count toward any carry limit.
Gear meanwhile, I’m fine with having stricter limits, via weight limits or otherwise. Two or three full sets on hand sounds like a good cap. It means you bring what you use, not every niche set you may perhaps use in a specific circumstance.
I also like it when there is an auto arrange inventory button.
U.S. East
This so much. Part of the problem I have with online games is that there is this large amount of items. I would much rather have a nice drop then 20 lousy drops that I just vendor away. The glut of game items contributes to the problem of bag storage.
I want items to be rare and everything else to be gold. If I see an item drop, I want to be excited and hope it is something I can use. If I cannot use it, then I hope other players would be able to and thus be able to sell it.
I would like these types of storage in a game like AoC:
Personal inventory should be very limited but you should be able to upgrade it by carrying a backup, different backpacks should have different pros and cons and you should be able to drop them to get rid of the penalties. When the backpack is down everyone should be able to pick it up but if he is not in your group he will be flagged as a combatant.
Mules should be a thing, animals that would help you carry much more stuff around, they should be able to be killed and looted or hijacked. Mules should have a variety of stats similar to mounts. Their inventories should be accessible as long as you are near them and to unsummon them they should have empty inventories.
City storage, if the mayor decides to build a warehouse in his node everyone can get some personal storage space in that node, it should be local and not accessible from other nodes. If you need more space you should be able to upgrade your storage space on that node for a monthly price, the more storage you get the more you pay. All the materials stored here are accessible to crafting stations inside the town.
Personal stash, similar to storage but has no upkeep it only requires you to have a house or apartment. Basically is a chest you place in your house/apartment and can get better ones with more space from the crafters. All materials stored in here should be accessible to all crafting stations inside the town.
Freehold stash same as personal stash but can't access it through crafting stations in the city only from crafting stations in your freehold.
Guild vault, same as personal stash but a lot bigger. It has a permission system and a log so the guild leader/officers can check who is greedy.
Quest inventory, work as normal inventory but only for quest items. No restrictions apply in this storage.
Market inventory, for all the skins you bought from the store. No restrictions here and it's account wide so you can access it from all your characters.
Any storage attacked and destroyed will drop a percentage of the items stored as loot.
They're against pay2win, progress or convenience. Steven himself said that he hated backpack slot extensions and ESPECIALLY with real money.
As far as storage areas think there shoulc be pretty big limit on items that you plan to keep so ounce you put those items in that storage items can only be vendored and not sold to other players or something like that. If you do not plan on selling it then really does not affect the economy. But guess has to be some limits on storage because people can horde items and disrupt the economy although people have like bank toons and bank guilds so think should still be pretty generous.