Here's an idea I just had to make Inventory Management easier.
1. Select All. The game already sorts items automatically using tabs. Provide a Select All button so players hot the button and all items of that type are selected.
2. Multi-Select. Provide a button or hotkey to enable Multi-Select. While enabled, every item I select remains selected.
3. Fast Sell Option. Once you unlock a vendor, that vendor's name pops up on your Inventory Screen in a Vendor List. When not in a dangerous area, the vendors available highlight so you know you can use Fast Sell. Select all items you want to sell, click the vendor's name, Select Sell. Done. All items you selected have been sold. No need to Fast Travel to the grove to sell. You could now do it on the road. However, you can't Fast Sell with Dammon the tiefling while in Ethel's lair, spider lair, goblin camp, etc. However, you would probably be able to Fast Sell with the goblins only while in the gobbo camp.
4. Fast Buy. Same as Fast Sell except you click vendor name and select Fast Buy. Their inventory pops up (no pictures of the vendor are necessary. Just items is fine. Actually, no item picks are necessary either. Just item names listed. If I want to look at the item listed, then a pic pops up. This would make it so my screen stops lagging when I'm at vendors). Pick items to buy using Multi-Select. Boom. Done.
5. Auto Send To Camp. Same as now except make it a button to enable on each item inventory tab. Want to send all food automatically to camp each time you exit a dungeon? Enable this feature. As soon as you leave the hag lair, Boom. All food is auto sent to camp. Want all useless silverware sent to camp? Same.
6. Retrieve From Camp. This would open a single camp inventory popup so you can Multi-Select items from camp you want to retrieve. It could be similar to backpacks, etc. When you have selected the items to retrieve, click done, and boom. Items retrieved from camp. No need to go there and open the chests manually.
7. Sell Camp Items. Same as number 6 except once you select the items you can simply sell them to one of your vendors as opposed to retrieving the items and lugging them around.
To shortcut all your writing. What is needed is the same funcitonality in itemmanagment as we manage our DATA/FILEs in WindowsExplorer or Desktop Area. Selecting, deselecting, Drag n drop options as it is done in Windows or other OS.
It is so common that its strange that we allmost never see such implementaion in RPG games. But in RTS Games you can select several units with mouse and keys etc.
I never understand why this usability is not common norm in RPG item managment. Is it patent protected?
To be honest, the inventory management is already so unrealistic that, as a player, I would not like to get these options made to allow extrem loot (except option 2 as a "nice to have" feature").
I thought to something similar to your suggestion #5 :
1. Flag Item to camp. Similar to Flag for selling with an entry in contextual menu and specific icon (firecamp ?) . Any items flagged "Camp" are automatically added to the Chest camp everytime the group is arriving at camp.
We can still discuss about the fact that putting books, food and armors in the same container is also unrealistic but this feature is feasible, quite realistic and can speed-up the process.
If I can work this up in Excel in about an hour, and that's stretching the time it took me, surely Larian could whip this up in BG3 easy enough. Right?
I wonder if BG3 will be like DOS2, full of useless items! EA seems exactly like that. Yeah many items are interactable but useless as well. Too many times being spent picking up and wondering what the bloody thousand junk items are for just like DOS2.
Some say you can sell them. Why bother? Just rob vendors or sell weapons and armor, which are abundant, for a great sword sells more than proly hundreds of stupid bones.
Some say you can throw them in combat. Why bother? There are endless amount of spell scrolls which any class can cast. I am sure there are better fighting options rather than using your main action to throw a plate.
Yeah many items are interactable and you can pick them. So what?! They mean nothing as long as they are useless. I feel like I wonder in a junkyard.
I believe i can imagine your perfect game, where every single item, spell or interaction is pure effectivity and usefulness ... And i find it litle frigid. :-/
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
I fully agree that in a video game, everything doesn't have to be pickable. If something just CAN'T be usefull, it shouldn't ever be possible to take it.
But it is in Larian games and I don't really know why, some people like being able to pick bones and such things. They don't do it because it's useless... But they like it.
That said, two little things could help us to visualy sort what is "a decoration" and what is not...
1) "decorations" are never highlighted when you click "alt" (or shift? Don't remember the shortcut to highlight pickable items).
2) when you read an item's description, "decoration", "misc" (or another word easy to understand) is written. Looting and managing our inventory would become easier
I mean, what kind of response is that? I explained it. Its something I worked up in Excel just to show an example of what they could do as a basic design for BG3 Inventory Screen. Players could Equip Items and manage then all on 1 screen and even up to 6 characters on one screen. Look at how many item slots they COULD have if they did it that way. And, the point is, like Excel, you could highlight multiple things at once and drag and drop. The row at the top is to show an example of the special buttons I described in my previous comment along with sort buttons and filters as opposed to tabs like they have now. Its just to illustrate that it could be something LIKE what I made in an hour. They COULD fit all of those things on one screen for 6 characters and it would be so much more user friendly.
... Yeah many items are interactable and you can pick them. So what?! They mean nothing as long as they are useless. I feel like I wonder in a junkyard.
Where's there's muck, there's brass, lad!
Second copy of that book. 1g That plate, another 1g Another plate, hey hey, it's silver, 50g, I'll take that. A stack of small ('useless') bottles, 67g, sure, thank you kindly.
In fairness, that image was made in Excel and it was just a quick mock-up. And everything always looks a little bit worse when you involve Excel. It's almost like a magic trick, really.
But I do agree that it comes off a bit intense. Too much data in too little space, and too much, ahem, rectangularity, if you will. But then again, Excel. It does that. It's a wonderful application that can do just about anything, up to and including regular brewing of coffee if you've got your kitchen IoT-ready, but looking at mock-ups made with it does tend to be like rubbing sore eyes with sandpaper.
However, I think that maybe GM is getting a bit ahead of themself. The current inventory interface is not, in my view, totally horrendous. It just isn't quite as easy to work with as one would expect from a UI in 2021.
Multiselect is an absolute must. Dragging things around one icon at a time is ghastly. Having to right click and find "send to -> x" in the menu for one item at a time is ghastly. Multiselect fixes both these issues.
There's also, I feel, sort of a lag in the menu. It feels clunkier than it should and it feels like clicks occasionally do not register. That has to be fixed.
And it is fairly clunky to drop things into containers. The old Infinity Engine could automatically push an item into a container more than 20 years ago.
Quicksell, that I am not a fan of. That's too easy, takes the feeling of actually going to a merchant out of the game.
Send to camp, it feels a bit odd. A bit too meta. It is needed right now, given the rather restrictive carry weight limits that prevents players from just carrying around all the interesting stuff that they don't know if they'll find a use for. But making the feature more accessible would completely undermine the entire concept of carry weight limits. Just move everything to camp while exploring, find a merchant, then remotely move everything from camp and mass sell. And it would reenable aggressive barrelmancy, which is a funny concept that really should stay in the DOS series.
It's like this. Larian is dealing with two types of people: those who want immersion and those who don't want to be bothered by such realism.
For the ones who like immersion, you can avoid using Fast Travel, Fast Sell, etc. Jog to the grove every time, talk to the merchant and sell your gear.
For those who don't like this, THAT was why I came up with the Fast Sell option and such. If you aren't in some danger zone, allow players to Multiselect items and click fast sell. Super easy and you cut out all the extra steps of doing it the immersive way.
Same with Send to Camp. Its for those who don't want to do the immersive approach.
The problem is, where does that convenience factor end? If you can just insta-store infinite stuff at camp with one click and insta-retrieve with another, then one has to wonder if it even makes sense to have limits on the inventory at all? Why not just skip that extra step of sending to camp entirely? What value does it add?
As much as I like my cheese, I really don't think we should be able to pick up absolutely everything that isn't bolted to the ground without investing a ridiculous amount of time and effort into it. That being said, I really struggle a fair bit with the current carry weight limits. With them being as strict as they are, it really isn't easy to carry a whole lot. It would be awesome if containers like sacks and backpacks could improve carry-weight limits instead of just being a way to unclutter the inventory.
The problem is, where does that convenience factor end?
In dangerous areas. If I'm in the Spider Lair or Hag's Lair or wherever, and I can't Fast Travel, Fast everything is locked.
Think about it. Why not allow Fast Buy and Fast Sell, etc.? Why make players Fast Travel, run into the grove, talk to the merchant, listen to that tiefling trio talk about how the guy cares about their lives, their futures, slowly and painstakingly drag and drop from one window to the next? If you can rest an hour at the click of a button for short rest, and if you can fast travel instead of manually jogging everywhere, why not speed up one of the most boring aspects of the game, endless item management?
I just want them to add a simple "organize inventory" button that will automatically sort my inventory so it isn't full of holes where I dropped/used/sold items and haven't bothered to painstakingly drag and drop everything to fill them back in so that whenever I pick up something new it isn't hidden randomly in the middle of all my stuff.
I just want them to add a simple "organize inventory" button that will automatically sort my inventory so it isn't full of holes where I dropped/used/sold items and haven't bothered to painstakingly drag and drop everything to fill them back in so that whenever I pick up something new it isn't hidden randomly in the middle of all my stuff.
They kinda sorta do. Go to the Sort dropdown. Select something other than what it is currently on. It auto-sorts then, filling in your holes. If you want to go from Types to Weight and then Types again, that's usually how I do it.
They kinda sorta do. Go to the Sort dropdown. Select something other than what it is currently on. It auto-sorts then, filling in your holes. If you want to go from Types to Weight and then Types again, that's usually how I do it.
Well that's good to know, at least there's some kind of workaround for it lol
If you can rest an hour at the click of a button for short rest, and if you can fast travel instead of manually jogging everywhere, why not speed up one of the most boring aspects of the game, endless item management?
Some players like to do this
I truly agree that inventory management should be improved. By implementing multi-section of items. By letting the character speaking to the merchant sell all items flaggued as "To be sold" from all inventories of characters present with him/her. But fast selling is not realistic and as a player, I prefer having a realistic experience instead of a race for the loot.
100 players could have 100 ways of playing the game. And it is very difficult to implement 100 options to satisfy everybody
OK, I'm bringing this one back up because after getting into the Underdark and nearing the end of EA, I realize that Inventory Management is becoming more and more tedious as the game progresses. I am quickly gravitating towards those who question the validity of a large portion of the functions.
Why do we have a Send to Camp feature at all? It is SO tedious and it makes carrying capacity null and void and pointless. If I become encumbered, Send to Camp... SLOWLY AND PAINSTAKINGLY. It's pointless and just slows the pace of the game down. One item at a time, Send to Camp. Makes me not want to pick anything up because NOTHING IS TYPICALLY WORTH PICKING UP. Most of the items in the game are trash. I figure they'll be more meaningful maybe when the game finally rolls out, otherwise why even have all these various items, but ultimately it just slows everything down tremendously as I'm dragging one item at a time from one person to another or selling one item at a time to the merchant or sending one item at a time to camp.
It's just dumb and pointless and a waste of time. I'd rather have it so that ONLY valuable items are able to be picked up than to have all this useless junk cluttering my inventory that I have to manage and constantly play around with and finally maybe sell but only IF the vendor has enough money. Basically, what I'm saying is, if I can put everything in camp storage anyway, EVEN DURING COMBAT, except those items I really need on my character, and I can basically pull stuff out of storage at any time without really much consequence other than having to painstakingly fast travel to camp and 1 item at a time pull it out, then WHY? Just WHY?
Let's make Item Management SO much less tedious. Even if you have plans for all those little diverse items, and you are going for immersion and so forth, we ABSOLUTELY have to have an easier system in place. Right now, I've got all the items I need and I'm not really even selling things I pick up, so just about everything is being tossed into Camp Inventory. I'm just cluttering up my Camp Inventory because I'm trying to keep my character inventories from being cluttered. I feel like it's a LOT of work for nothing. I've even just started leaving tons of stuff and ignoring it because I'm not going to get any better weapons in EA at this point anyway. But even when the full game comes out, and ESPECIALLY when the full game comes out, this is going to be an even bigger pain point.
And yes, Camp Supplies is starting to get to me BECAUSE of the sucky inventory management system. I've got SO much food, I don't even know what to do with it now. I just keep painfully sending it to camp or dropping it. It's a mess, and it's killing the ending of the EA playthrough for me. I almost can't stand picking anything up anymore because I just don't want to clutter my inventory anymore.
And seriously, most of the magic items suck anyway. By late EA, I'm finding nothing cool anymore. Everything is just, meh. There's another item to toss into the Camp Inventory because the Vendor doesn't have enough gold to buy it off of me.
Oh...and the Sussex Bark Masterwork item is no longer cool either. It's not worth the work. I already have the Sword of Justice, the Everburn Blade from Zalk, the Blooded Greataxe is pretty cool, Faithbreaker is a decent weapon, and many other magic items. By the time I get to that weapon, I'm like, "Hmmm... why did I go through all this trouble? Who should I even equip it to? Everybody's got some pretty good gear here."
but this feature is feasible, quite realistic and can speed-up the process.
