As the slot based, unsearchable and unsortable, inventory system appears to be an EQ sacred cow that is destined to be protected from the encroachment of the volume-list system, which is searchable and sortable, I would like to request that quest items once looted become perception flags and not inventory clutter.
As slot based inventory systems are very limiting on the number of unique tiled objects a player can hold and store It would be appreciated for all quest items to be non-inventory objects. Rather than needing to keep track of which bank I put which random quest item in, I gain credit for finding the item or experience that I am seeking. This way the inventory is reserved only for items with intrinsic value to the player economy.
Another way of looking at it is don’t have any “quest items” by design. Write the quests in such a way that studying/perceiving a freshly looted object or studying a temporary world object is all that the quest requires. After being examined the item could be discarded or kept for financial gain reasons if the item had crafting/equiping/vendor value. There could still be quests that requires a player to turn in real items but they would be items that already have value and uses other than as a quest item.
This would allow for quests to have many more parts and a more coherent story line rather than be limited by the number of unique inventory objects a player can reasonably dedicate to an individual quest while they are still working on the quest. The crafting system would also benefit from quest items leaving player inventories as it would open the number of inventory slots that could be dedicated to complex crafting recipes. Finally this would kill off the concept of multi-questing and hording of quest NPCs as only someone on the quest would benefit from killing the mob and looting/consuming the quest item.
Trasak
You're presuming the VR devs don't -want- multi-questing. That's a big presumption, and one they have not confirmed, yet.
If they design it with real inventory items, as EQ1, it will mean they want multi-questing. If they don't, it means they don't. Personally, I hope they do what you've outlined, but... I hope they'll fix FD, too, and that hasn't work out too well so far. :)
For one thing, you can have quests with real inventory items and no multiquesting. Plenty of games do this. It's the desicion to fulfill a quest by actually trading items via the trade window to an NPC that allows multiquesting, along with the internal queue for quest completion. If you use a different mechanic such as quest windows that deduct the items, or do not allow partial completion via the queue, MQ would not be possible.
The other thing that real inventory vs flag checkoff allows is getting the items in advance, before you have the quest. How frustrating is it to spend all day killing bears, then go to sell in town and pick up a 10 bear skull quest. It might be possible to have these check off without having the quest, and still not use inventory space for them, but we haven't seen much of the quest system to know all the implementation details yet.
I liek the idea, makes alot of sense. I always thought the idea of multi-questing was an exploit. It was counter-intuitive. it took the adventuring out.
But I also like the vicseral experience of turning in something or carefully protecting and guarding something (making corpse runs even more precious). its kind of like shopping in a store.
If I had to choose I would prefer the "flag" aspect as proof you were there or got the thing.
I liked MQing, because it left you with choices to get help from greater guilds for something you can't achieve yourself, sometimes. I got help for the Robe of the Kedge and 15 years after that, I still remember that as a shortcut for a very painfull camp that was, when I did my epic, often soloted or duoted by a few classes, and thus permacamped.
However, MQing nowadays has the downside of favoring permacamps for selling purposes. While it was uncommon back then, because unthought by most, that type of behavior will probably more common now.
In the end : I think items are important to track your progression and give you a feeling of steps accomplished, but they don't need to be the SOLE quest tracker you have. It was, I think, a technical solution back in EQ to avoid endless new data lines (I'm not even sure SQL was out back then), which is probably why quests were either item based or faction based, and sometimes you had to do entire questline backs to spawns a single NPC .
Nope.
I want *items* even if trivial, because I hate the concept of imaginary flags as an imnmerive quest.
I want some object that I obtain and I want my inventory cluttered. I don't want a comupterized database keeping track of my character's life. My character needs to store things, get bags, boxes, organize them, keep track of them etc.
My medieval fantasy character does not have an SQL database of informaiton, nor a smartphone, nor does he store things in the Cloud.
fazool said:Nope.
I want *items* even if trivial, because I hate the concept of imaginary flags as an imnmerive quest.
I want some object that I obtain and I want my inventory cluttered. I don't want a comupterized database keeping track of my character's life. My character needs to store things, get bags, boxes, organize them, keep track of them etc.
My medieval fantasy character does not have an SQL database of informaiton, nor a smartphone, nor does he store things in the Cloud.
I hate to break it to you but your character is NOT a flesh and blood, living entity. There really will be a "computerized database" keeping track of your character's life.
I support the OP's suggestion. I also don't want to have to keep keys to various dungeons in my inventory either. Flag me for the zone and represent it with a virtual keychain UI window/tab.
fazool said:
Nope.
I want *items* even if trivial, because I hate the concept of imaginary flags as an imnmerive quest.
I want some object that I obtain and I want my inventory cluttered. I don't want a comupterized database keeping track of my character's life. My character needs to store things, get bags, boxes, organize them, keep track of them etc.
My medieval fantasy character does not have an SQL database of informaiton, nor a smartphone, nor does he store things in the Cloud.
I would be more on board with the all items existing if we had volume based inventories and not slot based. In a slot based inventor with 8 bag slots each having a total of 8 possible slots you are limited to just 64 total items with your bank having maybe that many again. If you are on 10 different quests, each with a total of 4 items to be turned in, have 5 pieces of situation gear, 4 stacks of food/drink, and 4 stacks of bandages at the half way point of the quests you are going to have 33 of your 64 (51% of total inventory) slots already spoken for raising to 53 out of 64 (82% of total inventory) when you have everything and want to return to town.
If on the other hand all those quest items were golf ball sized and your magical backpack could hold 1000 golf balls (400mm x 400mm x400mm roughly) you have barely touched your total inventory space maybe 10% of maximum if your food and drink are big. This leaves a lot more for loot and crafting items.
I'm 50/50 on this subject. Since most items in this game will be sell/tradeable, I feel like most quest related items would have to take up a slot in your inventory. It's an item just as your meds/armor/weapons...
On the other hand, some quest related items I can see as being flag only, but it depends on how they are presented. I could see your character keeping items such as Gate/territory passes, keys, maps and things of that nature in a flag only set up.
My thoughts:
I am really not a fan of MQing, for the reason MauvaisOeil mentioned. There are too many players who will abuse it to perma-farm quest items, effectively forcing other people to buy from them.
However, I'm ambivalent on the issue of quest items in inventory, with the caveat that I don't think we should be carrying around a dozen different quest items at a time either.
I think what I'd like to see is this:
Quest items (that you carry around in your inventory) are:
- Things that have other uses (such as in crafting), so you'd be likely to collect and carry them around anyway
- Special things that are given to you by the quest giver or an NPC along the way, and not world drops. These should be very rare and only used in certain quests where they really make sense, like if you need to use that item somewhere in the world.
- World drops that are tradable on purpose, but not for MQ purposes. Example: "Hey, does anyone happen to have an extra drake scale? I've been farming drakes all day for the firedrake shield quest but haven't been lucky enough to get one to drop."
- If something drops from a boss/named mob that is a quest turn-in, it should either be a flag or non-tradable/non-MQable. Either way, it should be exclusive to the character that has the quest.
I would be more on board with the all items existing if we had volume based inventories and not slot based. In a slot based inventor with 8 bag slots each having a total of 8 possible slots you are limited to just 64 total items with your bank having maybe that many again. If you are on 10 different quests, each with a total of 4 items to be turned in, have 5 pieces of situation gear, 4 stacks of food/drink, and 4 stacks of bandages at the half way point of the quests you are going to have 33 of your 64 (51% of total inventory) slots already spoken for raising to 53 out of 64 (82% of total inventory) when you have everything and want to return to town.
If on the other hand all those quest items were golf ball sized and your magical backpack could hold 1000 golf balls (400mm x 400mm x400mm roughly) you have barely touched your total inventory space maybe 10% of maximum if your food and drink are big. This leaves a lot more for loot and crafting items.
I don't think it will be an issue, for a couple of reasons. I don't see this being the type of game that will have you working on 10 quests at the same time, so you probably won't need space for so many quest items. And also, depending on the weight of these items, you would probably become encumbered before your bags even fill up, forcing you to return to town to sell/bank accordingly. So carry weight could be stopping you, instead of inventory space.
urgatorbait said:...
I hate to break it to you but your character is NOT a flesh and blood, living entity. There really will be a "computerized database" keeping track of your character's life.
Thank you for your sarcasm but I have a master's degree in computational engineering so I kinda understand how this stuff works.
That aside....
Your position statement illustrates "the big divide" amongst the MMORPG community and, unwittingly, supported exactly what I am trying to highlight:
When you play a game there is a continuous spectrum of immersion and involvement. Whatever you *do* in the game is not this topic, but rather how you feel while doing it. At one end of the spectrum is the traditional console style game where you are simply playing a game. At the other end is the virtual reality world to live in.
In the first type, you sit in your chair being your human self pushing the controller buttons but you are not your character. It's like playing foosball. No one plays foosball and feels like they really feel like a soccer player. They are just a human having fun operating a game.
In the second type, all distractions of the real world are removed and you live vicariously through your character. You are immersed and you don't feel like you are playing a game, but you feel like you realy ARE your character.
The issue at the heart of all of this is that over time, game companies wanted more and more money. That required more and more customers, so they had to attract more and more people. There were more people who didn't want that virtual life experience, they wanted the simple fun of playing a game with the tradeoff of it being less immersive. When WoW hit staggering subscriber numbers from this larger pool, *all* the game companies lost their minds and they all changed the focus of their games to try and attract that larger customer base. So *all* the games stopped being an immersive world to live in and eroded into just a game to sit on your couch and play.
This whole PRF thing is here because Brad, Chris and team recognized that there is this smaller subset of that population who never wanted that first type of game. They want the deep immersive feel and to live through their character. Brad named them "orphaned players" because there was no more world for them to "live" in.
There've been countless discussions about this. This is deliberately aiming at that orphaned sub-population which means it's more toward the difficult, long term, deeply immersive style of play.
Now, there are whole fields of cognitive psychology revolving around these topics, but the difference between the first and second type of game play (playing a game or living in a game world) are not which mobs you fight, or what the raiding is like, it's a consistent, unwavering set of world rules and the elimination of things that you do in the real world to affect your in game world.
In other words: if you can do something outside the game world and it affects your experience within the gameworld, it breaks the "fourth wall" (not really the fourth wall but that's the closest thing for this explanation). Every time you have to do something, even something very mundane, as your character that builds immersion.
Quest flags and virtual keychains are not that much different from quotation marks over NPC's to simplify your game play. There's a tons of those "little things" like looting corpses, and traveling, and languages, and factioning, etc. All these things are the things that made that aspect of the genre what is was - THAT was the "secret sauce" that made it work.
Yes, everyone may be here thinking they all want the same thing but I don't care if someone pledges a million dollars, hosts a radio show, makes a Youtube channel and starts a fan magazine for it. If they want PRF to be like WoW or LoL, then they are barking up the wrong tree and actually doing more harm than good.
I like to see questitems in my bag. However, not every quest should require an item placed in my inventory. Your questjournal can still keep track of how many you've killed of X. Certain longer quests or buildup quests could require you to transport item A from here to there. Or it could be a quest requirement in order to craft something or melt something together when all items are in your bags.
For me, inventory management is indeed part of the game and part of the fun. At first you might struggle, but you'll quickly find ways and a routine to keep your bags from becoming cluttered. My guess is that, most veteran players will quickly have 1-2 bags full with temporary boosts, regen boosts and exchangable gear. But those players will easely look for methods to keep those other bags clean or switch them out with the bank from time to time.
If you travel and play a lot your bags will be full a lot, but that's not a bad thing per se. It should surely be a balance between having some questitems and some just update your questjournal and dissappear ones received. Assuming the dev's have played their bit of mmo's, I'm sure they are aware of not overdoing it. I do see potential of items in your inventory in combination of the perception system they want to implement.
I'm not clear on the difference between slot based and volume based inventory. Could you explain?
I personally prefer the "tangible" object over a non-inventory object. And I prefer mobs drop the quest items even if you havent discovered the quest. I really like the process of finding a thing, and then wondering what the thing is for.
That being said, there are some things I would rather be streamlined. Key rings for example. I never liked having a backpack full of keys. Still like the idea of being able to loot the "intricate but rusty key" and wondering what it unlocks.
Feyshtey said:I'm not clear on the difference between slot based and volume based inventory. Could you explain?
I personally prefer the "tangible" object over a non-inventory object. And I prefer mobs drop the quest items even if you havent discovered the quest. I really like the process of finding a thing, and then wondering what the thing is for.
That being said, there are some things I would rather be streamlined. Key rings for example. I never liked having a backpack full of keys. Still like the idea of being able to loot the "intricate but rusty key" and wondering what it unlocks.
Slot based is your standard EQ/Wow/Diablo where your inventory is based on a total number of squares. Some games will make "bigger" items take up more squares, EQ only ever had items take up one square. Your total inventory was a based on the total number of squares combined and is very UI space intensive.
List based inventories are more like Skyrim. Skyrim only tracked mass though and not volume. I know I have played a game where both were tracked but at the moment I cannot remember which one it was, it may have been a single player RPG. List based inventories UI usually is just a title bar and a scroll-able item name list which can be fairly compact while still being able to sort through everything.
I personally do not like hunting through one bag after another for were I put the bear claw (pastry or the alchemical component) I would rather have a list that can be sorted by name, weight, volume, type, or user input string. I am not a very organized person and I would rather walk slowly across an open zone then spend the same amount of time manually organizing my inventory as I can't be bothered to organize my own RL workshop.
List based inventories are harder to sub divide as individual incremental item improvements and graphical representations of looted items have been a hallmark of games since we transitioned from text based MUDs to full 3d worlds (LegendMUD was my home for a few years). As such letting go of both the possible horizontal advancement of inventory through piles of bags and the tactile enjoyment of seeing items rather than words is the major reason we have slot based inventories and not text based. There is also some UI challenge of equipping items from a list onto a paper doll but usually that can easily be handled through a right click menu that can give many more options than just moving an object from one point on the screen to another.
I do have one idea to merge the slot based and volume list based inventory system. With any innovation it is going to be different from what people are used to.
Everquest did have a sudo volume component of Giant, Large, Medium, Small and Tiny items though it only ever effected which items could be placed in which bags. Most bags went straight to Giant and effectively never changed from that, the few exceptions like the Large Soiled Bag which could only fit small items but was a life saver for monks on a weight diet.
The compromise I could see working is three fold.
1st: Your main inventory slot (the eight standard bag slots) are the only slots that can contain giant items. No bags will ever be made to hold giant items and the need to move a giant item becomes an in-game challenge choice. A bag that can contain large items takes up one of the inventory slots and can only hold 2 large items. A bag that can hold medium items can be 4 slots, small 8 and tiny 16. This would be the base tailor made items with no special materials, special materials could increase the volume and weight reduction or partial weight negation (magical buoyancy).
2nd: Bags within bags. Simply the bags themselves have a size and can fit into an appropriate slot within another bag. A giant sized bag made to hold tiny items would have 16 slots but a medium sized bag to hold tiny objects would have 4 slots and could take up a slot in a bag that can hold medium sized items.
3rd: A find/search button that will locate an object you search for in your inventory by opening the bag and highlighting the object. This will take some tinkering to make non clunky and will still require a list search function that ties into the list inventory back end.
I have no problem with slot based inventories.
I agree that "flags" are totally unrealistic. Who wants realism in a fantasy game? You might be surprised. Quite a few people want everything to make good logical sense once the basic fantasy elements are established.
What is wrong with a wallet type system? Have normal inventory for normal items and special quest items go in the wallet.
Trasak said:As the slot based, unsearchable and unsortable, inventory system appears to be an EQ sacred cow that is destined to be protected from the encroachment of the volume-list system, which is searchable and sortable, I would like to request that quest items once looted become perception flags and not inventory clutter.As slot based inventory systems are very limiting on the number of unique tiled objects a player can hold and store It would be appreciated for all quest items to be non-inventory objects. Rather than needing to keep track of which bank I put which random quest item in, I gain credit for finding the item or experience that I am seeking. This way the inventory is reserved only for items with intrinsic value to the player economy.
Agreed. Good suggestion. At the very least dedicate a separate inventory to quest items (a la Rift, FFXIV, whatever else).
dorotea said:I have no problem with slot based inventories.
I agree that "flags" are totally unrealistic. Who wants realism in a fantasy game? You might be surprised. Quite a few people want everything to make good logical sense once the basic fantasy elements are established.
What is wrong with a wallet type system? Have normal inventory for normal items and special quest items go in the wallet.
I wouldn't be so categoric in certain flag, as they seem logical. Having to gather items to spawn a quest NPC, as in the rogue epic quest, seem logical. But why should you get them a second time when you need to see him again ? You made your proofs and such, the NPC should remember you and flag your character with "confidence". Of course it can be made into a "Marked coin token" to gimmick the flag, but that wouldn't be more logical, even withouth a token, the character should remember you.
Trasak said:As the slot based, unsearchable and unsortable, inventory system appears to be an EQ sacred cow that is destined to be protected from the encroachment of the volume-list system, which is searchable and sortable, I would like to request that quest items once looted become perception flags and not inventory clutter.
As slot based inventory systems are very limiting on the number of unique tiled objects a player can hold and store It would be appreciated for all quest items to be non-inventory objects. Rather than needing to keep track of which bank I put which random quest item in, I gain credit for finding the item or experience that I am seeking. This way the inventory is reserved only for items with intrinsic value to the player economy.
Another way of looking at it is don’t have any “quest items” by design. Write the quests in such a way that studying/perceiving a freshly looted object or studying a temporary world object is all that the quest requires. After being examined the item could be discarded or kept for financial gain reasons if the item had crafting/equiping/vendor value. There could still be quests that requires a player to turn in real items but they would be items that already have value and uses other than as a quest item.
This would allow for quests to have many more parts and a more coherent story line rather than be limited by the number of unique inventory objects a player can reasonably dedicate to an individual quest while they are still working on the quest. The crafting system would also benefit from quest items leaving player inventories as it would open the number of inventory slots that could be dedicated to complex crafting recipes. Finally this would kill off the concept of multi-questing and hording of quest NPCs as only someone on the quest would benefit from killing the mob and looting/consuming the quest item.
Trasak
Although I understand your rationale. Creating carebear inventory systems better spent on RNG P2W Grind games is not what Pantheon seems to be about.
Anything, any oject, quest, loot, armor, weapon or otherwise is subject to handling. It's up to the player to manage this. it's part of the immersive game. Which is based on D&D.
Yeah it was a pain, but it did drive home the value and importance of some items over other items.
You had to have space for it. You needed to be careful where you put it.
Creating bottomless storage is not really in line with this games philosophy, just like instancing is not a thing in this game.
So no, they do not want people being able to endlessly collect items for all manner of quests without concern of their storage space and management of said storage space.
Immersion to some, annoyance to millennials I suspect.
urgatorbait said:fazool said:Nope.
I want *items* even if trivial, because I hate the concept of imaginary flags as an imnmerive quest.
I want some object that I obtain and I want my inventory cluttered. I don't want a comupterized database keeping track of my character's life. My character needs to store things, get bags, boxes, organize them, keep track of them etc.
My medieval fantasy character does not have an SQL database of informaiton, nor a smartphone, nor does he store things in the Cloud.
I hate to break it to you but your character is NOT a flesh and blood, living entity. There really will be a "computerized database" keeping track of your character's life.
I support the OP's suggestion. I also don't want to have to keep keys to various dungeons in my inventory either. Flag me for the zone and represent it with a virtual keychain UI window/tab.
Really urgatorbait? You're the guy screaming fake news? Maybe you're not really ready for this game?
yes, we all know stories in books are really just ink and paper. but once you apply your imagination you can be rewarded with some manner of immersion where you might forget the physical aspects.
Or, are you just trolling?
zewtastic said:
Although I understand your rationale. Creating carebear inventory systems better spent on RNG P2W Grind games is not what Pantheon seems to be about.
Anything, any oject, quest, loot, armor, weapon or otherwise is subject to handling. It's up to the player to manage this. it's part of the immersive game. Which is based on D&D.
Yeah it was a pain, but it did drive home the value and importance of some items over other items.
You had to have space for it. You needed to be careful where you put it.
Creating bottomless storage is not really in line with this games philosophy, just like instancing is not a thing in this game.
Volume based Inventory is not and never has been Carebear and as for referencing D&D all bags of holding and haversacks all had volume limits as well as maximum weights. So no, not carebear, it's more true the source material and not limited by a UI with a maximum pixel size and the database limitations of a 20 year old data storage system.
Asking for quests to be based on actions and the perception system more than taking token A, B, C and D to NPC 2 in the quest line is not asking to do away with inventory management all together. Its just shifting the design focus away from being a hoarder of random monster body parts and useless trinkets to one of action and consequence.
At no point have I asked for or suggested bottomless storage. I am simply requesting intelligent item storage where a single gold ring does not take up the same amount of inventory space as an entire ring mail shirt. In fact the volume suggestion is actually going to be much more limiting on the total volume of items a character can carry around. It will force players to focus on collecting small high value items rather than full suites of armor, i.e. gems given as rewards in D&D always being looted but sometimes you need to leave behind the large marble statue art object despite being worth 2000gp. I could even see emergent game play of specific players offering to buy the bulky items in the zone at cut rate and earning money by carting them back to civilization.
As far as the search function goes there is also the Handy Haversack as a precedence. All you needed to do was think of the object you want and immediately pull it out without searching for it.
So for one liners:
Volume inventory is more hardcore than slot based inventory and should be heralded by the “deep immersion” crowd and the “non-carebear” crowd.
Inventory should mater and there for picking which backpack to use based on the amount of volume and weight reduction you expect to need should be a plus not a minus.
There is no reason the list could not be a scroll-able list of images that are sortable, see the inventory of Divinity Original Sin.
I prefer to keep the slot based system. Inventory management is one more feature that adds to the game. Can it be a nuisance? Sure, especially if you're an evil faction playing in a "good" zone and it is difficult to sell, but it also forces you to either interact with others to help you sell/bank, or it forces you to travel back to an area once you are encumbered/full, or just not loot at all. Give me a game with choices and consequences versus convenience, even if I understand why you'd want it OP.
@Trasak -- Honestly the one thing I dislike the most about Skyrim is the inventory system. If you're not 100% sure what the exact name of an item is, it can be a royal PITA finding it. It's alphabetical but rigid. Take for instance "Ingredients". That's a preconfigured subset of your inventory. You have to scan thru about 50+ alchemy ingrediants to find other kinds of ingrediants. Sucks, IMO. Conversely, if you always put things into your slot-based inventory in a consistent way (strategy, forethought) you greatly limit the searching required to find it.
For me backpack8 was always the one with my clicky items, situational gear, spare ammo, etc. Things I always carry but not always use. Backpacks 5-7 were the crafting items I'd been collecting since the last foray into the world broken down by tradeskill, or items I wanted to sell/trade to players. 3-4 were the quest items I'd gathered and had not yet turned in. 1-2 were all the vendor crap. This was not a hard and fast rule, but it was an easy starting point. Crafting items might bleed over into the tradeables area at times depending on what I'd been collecting, but it was easy enough to scan over contents till I saw the end of hides and the started seeing armor or weapons for trade, and those items were logically seperated from armor or weapons I wanted to keep.
I always knew were things were because I established and stuck to a pattern that made sense to me. The sense of it to anyone else is irrelevent. Hopefully they created their own system.
I did the same with containers in my bank.