[Suggestion] Inventory slot system rework - slot assignment, protected slots, hotkeys

[Mikuchan.7261]

**So, inventory and bags.**

Now the supposedly bugged bandolier have been fixed and isn't "safe/invisible" anymore in that you can salvage and sell stuff in it.

Fair, it was never meant to be that.

But that it was invisible was really useful for me in order to protect the unidentified gear and farmed leather, etc from salvage all.

However, it goes without saying that everyone wouldn't want that.

I also found part of it annoying. Say for example you overflow the normal invnetory with identified gear from a use all action on the unidentified gear and flood the bandolier. Now you have to either move everything out of it or manually salvage things in it. (with how it worked before the fix)

I like invisible bags, but always have to fill them up with random stuff to not get loot in them. They're convenient but inconvenient.

I'd love to have dedicated slots for crafting materials too, but I wouldn't want a whole bag for it, just a few slots.

 

**Customizable inventory slots**

Let us customize the inventory by selecting what slots are to be invisible, what slots are to contain equipment, consumables etc.

You can also overlap settings when applicable, for example invisible consumable or invisible equipment.

I'd prefer if this could be done regardless of what bags you have, but to keep the economy as is, for example with a 20 slot invisible bag, you get to assign up to 20 slots to be invisible, the rest will work like normal slots.

Because you can overlap them and you may need an odd number of slots, you can equip more bags than you have bag slots, but you can only get inventory space from the amount of bags you have bag slots for, the rest just give customizability to existing slots.

This lets us choose to have a number of invisible consumable slots for the unidentified gear, while not dedicating a full 32 slot bag for it, causing other issues. We can choose to keep 15 out of 20 slots of that rare fractal equipment box for rares and just have the 5 other slots be normal inventory slots.

To make things simple for new players and players new to the system and players who aren't interested in this change, the slots are assigned like they currently are by default and you have to re-assign them yourself the way you want them.

 

**New protected inventory slots**

You can set certain inventory slots to protected. What this does is that even if all other slots are full, these slots will not fill up even if they're empty except for the type of items they are assigned to contain, no more blue items filling up the slots you want your consumables or crafting materials to go in.

 

**Hotkeys for inventory slots**

This may not be super useful once we get our tonic wardrobe, toy box and most importantly our build templates, etc.

However it would still be nice to be able to assign hotkeys to certain inventory slots of your choosing, triggering the primary action (use, equip, etc depending on item) when you press the hotkey (keeping any warnings there currently are). For example I can put my infinite salvage kits on hotkeys to quickly trigger them without having to scroll to them, or I could put that harp on a hotkey so that I can start playing without even opening the inventory. Tonics - consumed. Consumables - also consumed. Hotkeyed gear equips and swaps out for equipped gear. Bind multiple gear slots to the same hotkey to swap out the whole set with one click.

 

**New protected gear swapping slots**

In addition, there would be slots specifically for swapping to alternative gear, assigned manually like the other slots as described above.

So what happens is that you place your alternative gear sets in protected gear swapping slots, then when you swap them out, either with the fancy hotkeys or by doubleclicking them or what have you, the equipped gear goes into these slots. The important part is that when you for example equip 2 weapons and replace a two-handed weapon, there will be one slot left over. This is where the protection comes in handy. The empty slot won't fill up with cogs and other junk when you kill stuff and then when you want to swap your staff in and replace your double daggers, the first dagger take the place of the staff and the second dagger pops in into the slot next to it, regardless if there are empty slots before or after in the inventory.

[geochan.9184]

Current system with how bag works is fine as it is

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

The current system has every feature you're asking for _except_ you can only choose it bag-by-bag, i.e. it's limited to 8-, 12-, 14-, 18-, 20-, 24-, 28-, or 28-slots.

* Any bag with special features includes "non-compact"

* Invisible bags hide stuff from vendors (but not from Zommy).

* You can move invisibles to the bottom so that they don't get used until you're dangerously full, in which case, it's time to do some inventory management anyhow. If you only want 8 slots to be invisible, just make an 8-slot invisible bag (or buy from the TP).

 

If ANet were to work on overhauling the inventory system, I would prefer a ton of other proposed changes over this one. Besides the economic implications, it feels complicated to use (lots of micromanagement of slots for each character) and complicated to code.

 

Among the other sorts of things that people have proposed:

* Ability to determine what sorts of things are considered 'junk' when you sell.

* Changing how loot drops in the first place (e.g. something like unidentified gear)

* Changing how the gear upgrade system works (so we don't deal with runes & sigils in the first place).

* Adding sinks for things that are currently vendor price.

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

My biggest pet peeve with inventory management is that runes & sigils are sorted as crafting materials! I use the sorting bags, but the Craftsman's bags get gradually clogged during salvage. I'd be happy with pretty much any other sorting!

[Mikuchan.7261]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> The current system has every feature you're asking for _except_ you can only choose it bag-by-bag, i.e. it's limited to 8-, 12-, 14-, 18-, 20-, 24-, 28-, or 28-slots.

 

It's ok that you may not want the features, but it's a bit ridiculous to say that the features are there when they very clearly aren't, don't you think?

What's the point with that?

 

> If ANet were to work on overhauling the inventory system, I would prefer a ton of other proposed changes over this one. Besides the economic implications, it feels complicated to use (lots of micromanagement of slots for each character) and complicated to code.

 

What's preventing them from doing multiple features in an overhaul? It's an overhaul after all.

What are the economic implications when you need as many bags of each kind with the proposed system as you did before, with the current one?

There is no micromanagement, in fact, there's no management at all. You do a setup, once done, you're good to go. You can then completely forget about it for all time or change the setup whenever you want. Click the default button if you want to return to normal sorting.

You indeed need to do it per character, however if you do nothing at all with it, as I said, the slots are arranged the way they are right now. So there's no change if you do nothing about it. It's opt-in in that sense. You choose your own complexity of your setup.

Further, how complicated it is to use is up to the UI design, not the features.

Say for example that you enter a slot edit mode from the inventory options menu. You mark the slots you want to change via drawing selection boxes and ctrl/shift-clicking them like you would in any graphical OS UI. Then you have a sidebar with tick boxes and radio buttons for the settings for the slots, for example invisibility, protection and what type of items they support.

That would be quite fast and easy to use in my eyes.

And it would provide very useful sorting features.

 

As far as coding goes, it's only conjecture since none of us knows how the ANet code is built.

To you it may sound complicated. To me it doesn't.