Hi all,
Just a small "plea" to the developers ... don't forget about the Inventory/Bag space in your rush to get this game out.
It is seriously important. I will give you an example:
While I've been hanging around waiting Pantheon, I have started to play Project Gorgon - a cheap little steam MMO, which concentrates on Exploring etc. Gotta tell you it is a "fun" game until you run out of bag space! Which happens ... so ... FREQUENTLY! It happens about 1/2 an hour into your session, then you have to stop what you're doing and head back to town. Then you get rid of your stuff - except that you can't get rid of it all. You need to keep your weapons, armour, knife (skinning), spade (gardening), axe (harvesting), pick (mining), flasks (alchemy), food ingredients (cooking) - you get the idea. Yes every craft has one or more tools that you must keep in your bags - did I say bags? well I meant BAG - yes ONE. Then there's the quest items which must also be kept in your bag. You get a lot of slots in your bag, but 2/3's is dedicated to the above. Basically, I've stopped playing it because it is so frustrating. Yes a good game all crueled because of the lack of bag space.
Please Pantheon developers, give some thought to this - the latest MMO's have finally fixed these issues (Armor & weapons do not count in bag space - even for the hybrid classes now), then there's the quest items - no bag space taken up there, then there's the tools for crafting - most have one tool fits all. And finally, when you go to craft something, wherever you are - they can access your bank so that you don't have to lug all around with you. Remember how frustrating it was when you wanted to craft something, you had to make SURE that you had all the stuff with you. Then you'd go to the workbench/whatever, and find that you'd left one item behind. So then you'd have to go back and get it, then head back to the workbench, bah forgot another thing!
As I understand the game Pantheon (have not played in pre-alpha ... yet [grins]) exploring will be a major part of the game. I tell you this, if you force me to come back to town etc, every 15 mins or so, I won't be playing much of the game at all.
Quality of life enhancements in MMO's are much to be desired!
thanks for listening to me rant ... I'm an inveterate pack rat/bower bird, and I will stop to pick up anything and keep it [just in case]
There are many ways to reduce inventory bloat and I agree that it is necessary.
Selling bags with a decent amount of space, allowing crafters to make them, having many quest type items go in a separate "wallet" not the main bag, having hyenas, wolves and lions all drop "furs" as their trash low value item not lion fur, hyena fur and wolf fur, having items stack to a fairly large amount (500 furs in one slot for example), convenient mail to allow you to mail inventory to mules, etc etc.
Rather than just having lots of bag space because its more convenient it would be great to loot, craft or buy bags that give us more room. And then it is up to each individual to prioritise investing in bag space vs investing in spells or whatever the early expenses are in game and that in itself is just another decision this world gives us to make. The privileged, the lucky, the hard working, the horders, the lazy will all get these things at different stages and in different ways and its a good part of the game to make it somthing to work towards. :)
I would hope that becoming encumbered becomes a problem way before running out of bag space, assuming you're well equiped enough to have high-end bag space. I would then hope that there are weight-reducing bags as well, so people can try to hoard when they go out adventuring. But with the player being able to dismantle their trash, this should never really be a problem.
yes i understand you and i kinda want a different take on it, like say att the start you have 8/10 bag space and i find a rat tail,teath.orc ear bat eye and lizard scale etc i find my inventory slots more or less full,every item weights individually 0.1 ibs so the weight is not a problem and you could in theory have 99 of every item before the slot is full but when the item slots are filled by 1 of every odd item. you cant pick upp one more different item because there isent a spot for it even if your bag is carrying 1 ibs in total so perhaps a little flexibility in how the bag is used could be nice =)
I’m still hoping that they consider switching to a mass/volume system rather than a unit volume Slot based inventory system. I started the following thread:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/8098/what-if-inventory-in-protf-was-based-on-mass-volume
The bags would basically have a set number of slots to either Negate mass(buoyancy) or magically increase the internal volume of your backpack. Rather than having %wr bags you have a specific amount of “free” in backpack weight before it starts taking up your strength. This will also allow you to pick up hundreds of little light things but heavy ore will take up more of your carry capacity. This will also make it easier to have a crafting system with different quality levels. Banks/warehouses would have a volume limit per deposit box but not a mass limit.
The only real negative is that the inventory UI would need to turn into a list rather than squares and items already created would need to have volume added. I calculated a pretty basic formula to do a quick convert in my previous thread with a good break down for misc items that don’t easily fall in the formula. List based inventories are also a ton more user friendly to sort and use over bags of bags.
Trasak
There is a problem with doing things like making quest items and crafting resources not take up room in that you will instantly know when something is a quest item or a crafting resource.
Part of the mystery (fun?) in Everquest is there are a ton of items dropping and most things have *some* use, but you have to find out whether it has a use and what it is.
When Orcs usually drop copper coins, rusty weapons and cloth armor, but then you get an Orc Scalp recovered as 'loot' you maybe think "Hmm. Why am I getting this? Who might want this?" and you ask around. I say this because I did exactly this in EQ yesterday :) Orc scalps are actually used in a couple of different quests, I think...
Then you realise a lot of Orcs use Orc Picks as a weapon which you get as loot. They are really heavy and not worth much and you probably sell them because you can barely move after 3 or 4, but turns out there's a guard that will take them as a 'bounty' quest for faction. That was actually not greatly designed coz they were a bit too heavy and the guard wasn't encountered til an area of much higher level and you needed to give him 100s to get enough faction for the next quest, but the point is this: -
If quest items and crafting resource just disappear into an infinite space, infinite encumberance space, the mystery, tactics, exploration and even social aspects are removed. There's no need to ask around to see if it's worth carrying them around. You won't get lead to that different area to find the guard that wants them. You won't have to consider the bag space and whether you risk being barely able to walk in order to deliver a lot of bounties at once. You won't decide you can't carry them, but maybe try and sell them to a big brute of an Ogre who is desperate for faction with the guards so he (evil race) can deal in Freeport (neutral city). You might even forget you ever collected them and never do anything with them completely missing whole storylines and opportunities for fun.
Having said all that, as always there may be good compromises. Certainly for crafting I didn't find a lot of fun in constantly travelling from bank to workshop overloaded with stuff, especially when you throw in possible trips to the trading post to buy and sell. The commerse side is fun, but the packhorse impersonation, not so much. Maybe there's scope for allowing bag-bank-workshop-tradepost transfers *for a price*. Much like I think player selling should be, there could be systems that are 'taxed' or simply have a cost such that, most of the time, you will want to do it manually, but on occassion, like when you have 100 logs or 10000 coins or 20 backpacks, it might be economical or simply less painful to be worth paying to have them shipped/couriered/whatever.
In Guild Wars 2 you could simply press a button and everything in your pack that was a crafting resource just magically moved to a crafting section of the bank. When you crafted you simply had direct access to your crafting bank. They totally considered the 'tough part' to be obtaining the stuff in the first place and everything else to be easy. That was probably too far.
What I would like is for bank, workshop and tradepost to be sensibly close for once so that most of the time you don't need that, but that you could, if you wanted, work in your workshop all day making lots of items, make it available to the tradepost in one lot (but for individual sale and getting it transferred for a cost and maybe having a sales tax applied) and then having the proceeds put in your bank.
I'm digressing somewhat, sorry. To get it back to bag space, the only time I really had problems was when crafting and trading and I think that could/should be eased, but otherwise, as long as items and quests and loot is designed well, there shouldn't be a problem.
disposalist said:There is a problem with doing things like making quest items and crafting resources not take up room in that you will instantly know when something is a quest item or a crafting resource.
Part of the mystery (fun?) in Everquest is there are a ton of items dropping and most things have *some* use, but you have to find out whether it has a use and what it is.
When Orcs usually drop copper coins, rusty weapons and cloth armor, but then you get an Orc Scalp recovered as 'loot' you maybe think "Hmm. Why am I getting this? Who might want this?" and you ask around. I say this because I did exactly this in EQ yesterday :) Orc scalps are actually used in a couple of different quests, I think...
Then you realise a lot of Orcs use Orc Picks as a weapon which you get as loot. They are really heavy and not worth much and you probably sell them because you can barely move after 3 or 4, but turns out there's a guard that will take them as a 'bounty' quest for faction. That was actually not greatly designed coz they were a bit too heavy and the guard wasn't encountered til an area of much higher level and you needed to give him 100s to get enough faction for the next quest, but the point is this: -
If quest items and crafting resource just disappear into an infinite space, infinite encumberance space, the mystery, tactics, exploration and even social aspects are removed. There's no need to ask around to see if it's worth carrying them around. You won't get lead to that different area to find the guard that wants them. You won't have to consider the bag space and whether you risk being barely able to walk in order to deliver a lot of bounties at once. You won't decide you can't carry them, but maybe try and sell them to a big brute of an Ogre who is desperate for faction with the guards so he (evil race) can deal in Freeport (neutral city). You might even forget you ever collected them and never do anything with them completely missing whole storylines and opportunities for fun.
Such memories in my head after reading this... Not only was there odd uses for various 'Junk' that you picked up in EQ, but sometimes you had to lug that 'junk' all the way across the world (ie. Hours of REAL time traveling) before you could hand it in to a quest giver. Not to mention the fact that things that drop in one place don't always drop in another place, and even gear that seems pretty common where you are leveling up is not available in a different leveling zone at another starting city.
I recall way back in the very beginning of EQ (like first few weeks after launch), when almost everyone was still like under level 20. We (my buddy and I) figured out that in the Freeport area the Dervish Cutthroats would sometimes drop this ring called 'Cutthroat Insignia Ring' that had +2 dex on it. This was a really nice item for a level 10'ish player at the time. But you couldn't really sell it to anyone, because everyone already had 2 of them. The only thing you could do was sell them to the vendor for a few gold.
BUT....
Over in Qeynos area they had NO Dervish Cutthroats there and so the level 10'ish players there would pay huge amounts to get these awesome +2 dex rings.
At the same time in Qeynos area was an item called 'Onyx Earring' that dropped from Gnolls. This had +2 Agi on it. But in Qeynos everyone already had them and so again... vendor fodder. BUT... in Freeport area, there are NO Gnolls with Earrings.
Back then, the journey between Freeport and Qeynos was a really tough trip, since at level 10 - 15 you were traveling through some higher level areas where death was a big threat, and without any teleporting yet at that level you had to run the entire way. It usually took us about 30 min - an 1 hour just one way. Without any deaths that is. But if we loaded up every single possible slot in our inventory and bank with Cutthroat Rings, ran all the way to Qeynos and sold them to the players there, we could rack up a bunch of plat. Then we would fill up our bags and bank with all the Onyx Earrings that everyone was just letting rot on corpses. Then a nice risky jaunt all the way back to freeport and 'Bob's your Uncle' another big score of Plat.
Now why do I bring up this little story in relation to a 'Bag Space' thread?
If there was no real issue with bag space, where players needed to carry various things around with them, everyone could loot all the Rings and Earrings they wanted off the corpses of the mobs they killed. Then our little scheme would never have worked out. It would have taken us hours to farm those Rings or Earrings on our own time. And then we would never have found the time to make that harrowing run across the world to sell them off to the highest bidders in the City across the land. But since your bags could get full quick, people started ignoring loot they deemed worthless. This made it easy for us enterprising business folk to take advantage and make our fortune at such an early level. (note to those who will probably comment: We always asked people if it was ok to loot the corpses they left laying around... we didn't just come in all ninja style and take things without asking).
Anyway... just my visit to memory lane :-)
From watching the streams, I think they are going with inventory management the same way EQ/EQ2 did/does.
Six (yes 6) slots and thats it! However, you can put a bag or box in those slots and bags and boxes can range in capacity from 4 - 40 slots each. So you can potentially have 240 slots to use.
I'd be putting stuff in my bank that wasn't necessary..some crafting tools that perhaps have to be used at a crafting table. I tend to organize when I have little space. But I doubt that inventory space in Pantheon will be such a problem that its a constant frustration. I tend to play crafters, and I like to explore. First thing I would be doing is buying bags off a vendor or another player, til I could make my own.
Cana
Yes, my first goal will be to get as many bags as possible. And my first crafting goal will be to make them. Of course, gotta make that money so that I can purchase bank slots whenever I can. I tend to max out whatever. I will also be using alts as mules until I get the bags organised.
I like the suggestions about "stacking" ... one fur fits all I reckon! One tooth stack, not rat teeth, wolf teeth stacks. Bone bits from every creature to be stacked as bone bits :D
Then theres the plants, wood, fur, cloth, metal etc - I'd expect different stacks of each type of plant, same for the wood, etc. If it's used for crafting then it should be stackable. If it isn't used for crafting then let it all be under a generic stack type.
There should also be numerous vendors around, so that we can sell stuff, in order to make currency (dont know if it will be plat, gold, etc) which can be used to get bags. Low level vendors should also sell 4, 6, 8 & 10 slot bags. When you start out, I dont mind having a number of bags limit which slowly increases as you reach each level milestone. Weight limits would be fun though.
I would also like to be able to use the post as a de-facto storage system initially - you know, mail stuff to the alt, and the alt doesn't pick it up. All mail should have time limits though.
I keep thinking about storage, for a pack rat, it's imperative that I have more storage ... more more moar Moar MOar MOAr MOAR!
>When Orcs usually drop copper coins, rusty weapons and cloth armor, but then you get an Orc Scalp recovered as 'loot' you maybe think "Hmm. Why am I getting this? Who might want this?" and you ask around. I say this because I did exactly this in EQ yesterday :) Orc scalps are actually used in a couple of different quests, I think...<
Good point - a wallet works best when the game gives you quest-related or currency type items that are obvious for what they are. Which Pantheon may or may not do. I agree that non-obvious items should just be treated as any other drop - let the player figure it out.
Koala said:Please Pantheon developers, give some thought to this - the latest MMO's have finally fixed these issues (Armor & weapons do not count in bag space - even for the hybrid classes now), then there's the quest items - no bag space taken up there, then there's the tools for crafting - most have one tool fits all. A
I don't see in any way how this is "fixed" or a quality of life improvement if equipment does not take up space. It's the same thing as saying that the game would be fixed if you don't have to quest or kill mobs to gain levels, you just gain levels but pressing a level up button. I mean, that would only be taking a few more steps to this need of "fix" mechanics, right?
Every mechanic can be switched to 'easy mode', but that certainly doesn't mean you fix them. Anyways, who would be the authority to what dictates mechanic X changed = fixed?
Everything in your bag should take up space and add to your encumbrance. Some items take up more space and weigh more than others; it's a classic RPG system. I would not imagine that equipment you are wearing takes up space, but it certainly adds to encumbrance.
Bag space is a great opportunity for crafters. The amount of space available is a balancing issue for the developers for figure out. I think some reasonable amount of space limitations are entirely appropriate.
You don't want to create a situation where everyone is basically a vacuum cleaner. Some thought should need to go into what to collect and save vs leaving on the npc.
How much bag space is required depends on quite a few things.
1. How many different "vendor fodder" items will there be. As OP mentioned will be there be unique items for every animal, e.g. rat fur, wolf fur, fox fur, bear fur... or just "Furs".
2. How often / available are vendors to offload vendor items? Will it be easy to travel back to a town to sell or will you be spending hours out 'in the field'? If it is easy to go and sell then it's not much of an issue if you accumulate a lot of items that fill up your bag space, but if you are spending 6 hours in a dungeon and 5 of those hours is spent discarding items because bags are full then it becomes an annoyance.
3. How much will things weigh, and are some classes more or less capable of carrying more? Example, if Encumberance is determined by strength then most casters and support classes will be unable to carry much. Also in old Everquest the monks had a severe penalty to their armor class if they exceeded a certain weight. As a result the monks needed to have other people carry loot for them.
4. Will there be "pack mule" options? E.g. can you buy or hire mounts / pets that can carry loot for you? Obviously this would just be "extra bags" but depending on the answers on the above 3 questions having such options might help alleviate the issue of "full bags" (at least until the pack mule is full too...)
As for quest items I am certainly a fan of those going into their own "no-weight" wallet or bag of their own. This makes sorting through items easier and it removes frustration like having to throw away items you could have sold for a profit just because you gotta hang on to those 2 rat furs and 3 rat tails for a quest. There are also arguments for and against having a simiilar bag/wallet for crafting ingredients, however you could also argue that for someone not doing crafting those items count as vendor items to be sold for a profit (or sold on a market / auction hall), so why should "money loot" not take up space in bags. Shouldn't all "potential profit" loot come with the drawback of taking up space and weight?
Also, in some games at least, being a tailor and crafting backpacks with additional space was a nice way to both make a profit for yourself as well as a nice way to equip your (inevitable) alternate characters with some nice inventory space.
I'd love to see things like "bag of holding" in the game though where you could craft a bag, have it enchanted, and then have a bag with nice inventory space and where items have no weight. This would be a nice item to get for weaker classes (assuming inventory has encumberance based on strength stat) and would add to the "magical world" feeling in the game. Of course, such items would be expensive to craft, and thus expensive to buy.
This all said though; No matter how much bag space you have you will always fill it up and need more.
Kittik said:From watching the streams, I think they are going with inventory management the same way EQ/EQ2 did/does.
Six (yes 6) slots and thats it! However, you can put a bag or box in those slots and bags and boxes can range in capacity from 4 - 40 slots each. So you can potentially have 240 slots to use.
Ok, once again. This team had zero to do with EQ2, nothing. EQ2 was soley done by Sony. Nothing from EQ2 will be in this MMO.
This team did EQ1 & Vanguard.
So if you know those games, then you know how this MMO will look.
zewtastic said:Kittik said:From watching the streams, I think they are going with inventory management the same way EQ/EQ2 did/does.
Six (yes 6) slots and thats it! However, you can put a bag or box in those slots and bags and boxes can range in capacity from 4 - 40 slots each. So you can potentially have 240 slots to use.
Ok, once again. This team had zero to do with EQ2, nothing. EQ2 was soley done by Sony. Nothing from EQ2 will be in this MMO.
This team did EQ1 & Vanguard.
So if you know those games, then you know how this MMO will look.
Since the premise of EQ2 was based on EQ1, there is alot of similarities, even if it was not the same development team.
And there are people here that played EQ2 but not EQ1 or Vanguard and vice-versa.
zewtastic said:Kittik said:From watching the streams, I think they are going with inventory management the same way EQ/EQ2 did/does.
Six (yes 6) slots and thats it! However, you can put a bag or box in those slots and bags and boxes can range in capacity from 4 - 40 slots each. So you can potentially have 240 slots to use.
Ok, once again. This team had zero to do with EQ2, nothing. EQ2 was soley done by Sony. Nothing from EQ2 will be in this MMO.
This team did EQ1 & Vanguard.
So if you know those games, then you know how this MMO will look.
Whoa!! Settle down. You are correct, but that doesn't mean I was wrong with what I said. EQ2 an EQ had the same inventory system. 6 slots each, and both games allowed those 6 slots to be filled with a bag to expand your inventory.
Trustar said:Bag space is a great opportunity for crafters. The amount of space available is a balancing issue for the developers for figure out. I think some reasonable amount of space limitations are entirely appropriate.
You don't want to create a situation where everyone is basically a vacuum cleaner. Some thought should need to go into what to collect and save vs leaving on the npc.
I agree. Part of the challenge should be exploring the game and learning what items drop in an area, which of those items are worth keeping and which items take up too much space for the money they provide. What items are quest items or crafting items, what items are junk and what items are vendor fodder. What items are worth keeping? Explore the game and figure it out.
Developing one's character isn't just getting more levels, it's learning where to get more and bigger bags, it's finding a crafter and buying bags from them and building a relationship with crafters. Eventually we should be able to have plenty of space, but that should all come with time and effort in the game, not handed to a new character at the start of a game.
I do though like the argument that equipped items should not take up bag space. That makes sense since if you are wearing an item, it's not in your bag.
I don't like the idea that quest or crafting items do not take up space. You are holding onto those items so they should be in your inventory. I also do not like the idea of separate bags for quest or crafting items. As noted above, learning what items are useful should be part of exploring and learning the new world you are living in.
When the game mechanics tell you which items are crafting items and which are quest items, it makes the game easy. We don't want an easy game .. that is why we are following Pantheon. Challenge in a game isn't just about harder fights, it's about being dropped in a complex MMO world and having to figure things out on your own.
Arbeor said:I agree. Part of the challenge should be exploring the game and learning what items drop in an area, which of those items are worth keeping and which items take up too much space for the money they provide. What items are quest items or crafting items, what items are junk and what items are vendor fodder. What items are worth keeping? Explore the game and figure it out.
Developing one's character isn't just getting more levels, it's learning where to get more and bigger bags, it's finding a crafter and buying bags from them and building a relationship with crafters. Eventually we should be able to have plenty of space, but that should all come with time and effort in the game, not handed to a new character at the start of a game.
I do though like the argument that equipped items should not take up bag space. That makes sense since if you are wearing an item, it's not in your bag.
I don't like the idea that quest or crafting items do not take up space. You are holding onto those items so they should be in your inventory. I also do not like the idea of separate bags for quest or crafting items. As noted above, learning what items are useful should be part of exploring and learning the new world you are living in.
When the game mechanics tell you which items are crafting items and which are quest items, it makes the game easy. We don't want an easy game .. that is why we are following Pantheon. Challenge in a game isn't just about harder fights, it's about being dropped in a complex MMO world and having to figure things out on your own.
I was going to toss in my two cents, but then I read your post and I'll just co-sign your thoughts. Inventory management is a game within the game. It can be frustrating at times, but that's all part of the charm. You can't packrat everything, you gotta decide what has the most value.
There's different ways really to handle bags.
The EQ way where a bag has a set number of slots and a size limit. The issue with this model is that if you put a small item in it, you don't get to use up the remaining space, it's just lost. So just to clarify, let's say you have an 8-slot bag of giant size. You can either store 8 giant sized items or 8 tiny sized items, but still only be carrying 8 items. I'd like to see that 8 tiny sized objects only take up a tiny amount of space. You then add the bag weight to your encumbrance.
Another method, which is one that I like, is that bags are not limited by slots but rather by volume. As you store items in the bag, available volume is reduced based on the size of the item. Of course, in this model, encumbrance still matters as well. This would avoid the slot problem.
bigdogchris said:There's different ways really to handle bags.
The EQ way where a bag has a set number of slots and a size limit. The issue with this model is that if you put a small item in it, you don't get to use up the remaining space, it's just lost. So just to clarify, let's say you have an 8-slot bag of giant size. You can either store 8 giant sized items or 8 tiny sized items, but still only be carrying 8 items. I'd like to see that 8 tiny sized objects only take up a tiny amount of space. You then add the bag weight to your encumbrance.
Another method, which is one that I like, is that bags are not limited by slots but rather by volume. As you store items in the bag, available volume is reduced based on the size of the item. Of course, in this model, encumbrance still matters as well. This would avoid the slot problem.
There are ways to reflect the size.
A potion bottle would take 1 slot.
A two-handed sword would take 4 slots.
This means you can place 4 potion bottles in that "Large Item" backpack for every two-handed sword you place in it.
The drawback with such a system is the tetris-game, where items take X slots in a certain shape so you have to stack the items like tetris to maximize the use of the inventory.
Planetside 1 had such an inventory system.
Using volume then there shouldn't be any slots at all. Just "blank" space where you freely click-drop/drag items. It will make items more jumbled together, but then slots don't matter anyways.
Drawback using Volume compared to Slots is that with slots you could place 100 potion bottles in 1 slot (assuming they are stackable), but in a volume based backpack you might only be able to squeeze in 5 bottles due to volume being filled and then have to deal with multiple stacks of the same item.
However, this largely also depends on the design of the game. How many different items are we going to be carrying around? Will we end up with 27 'Rusty Shortswords' from hunting gnolls or kobolds? Will large item drops be more rare, but also worth more?
Are we going for a full arcade style or realism?
Everquest is quite arcade. Afterall you carry 8 backpacks (try doing that in real life) which can hold 50 swords, hundreds of potions, hundreds of metal ingots, multiple sets of armor and so on. You basically carrying more than you could fit into a pick-up truck in real life.
The realism approach though means you'd be able to carry, maybe, 3 large weapons and another 15-20kg of equipment (depending how strong / fit your character is). That would mean the amount of loot you could carry is very limited, thus harder to come out of a dungeon crawl with significant amounts of items to sell. Then again, depending on design of game, this might be a better way cause then you wouldn't see an auction hall / market flooded with near-worthless items since players would focus more on getting the small but valuable items, such as gemstones, gold coins, smaller trinkets/baubles/artifacts that has a much greater value-vs-weight/size ratio.