Item Stacking?

So I just watched the Shroud of the Avatar demo and noticed that items don't seem to stack yet (separate boards and dowels are what i saw). I just hope they implement something like UO where you can stack the same boards/ingots/reagents together to save on bag space or else it gets a little crazy. I'm guessing they'll do this but didn't have it ready for the demo or at least that's what I hope!

 

I also was concerned about that. It really wouldn't make much sense if they didn't implement the stack option.
But you could always have separated bags for each item I guess.

 

I saw that as well and I pray to the gods that stacking will be in the game, for a crafter and resource gatherer like myself it is a necessity!

 

It could a damper on mass farming to leave it non stackable..I'm actually ok with no stacking..a bit more realistic as well as a nuisance to farm which would make it more annoying to resource farm and keep the prices higher..or maybe it's at the 3 month mark and they were just trying to show a basic idea..I'm confident stacking "will" in fact get implemented

 

I noticed the same thing, and honestly it's something I'm very concerned about. I have faith that stacking will be implemented, but I won't be comfortable about it until I know for sure.

The other thing I noticed is that storage in containers is free form. You click and drag into the container and drop it wherever. I really dislike that kind of system. I prefer to have a container with X number of slots, and one item/stack per slot. It might just be a bit of OCD in me, but the idea of containers being that unorganized really bugs me.

 

Well, I believe they've told us that you'll be able to choose a grid system or freeform, so I think your bags will be organized the way you want.

 

Yeah what sir frank said. Some want free form (such as myself), others want slots. They are going with my favorite choice - optional. Please everyone.


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Optional really doesn't make sense to me, because it kills the point of free form. The whole point behind free form is that players and NPCs can hide things behind other items, and so searching a body becomes rifling through their belongings. If people have an option, it negates that, because you can never hide things.

If its grid-based, though, I prefer the Diablo-type system where some items take up more slots than others. I've noticed even in the free form system that's in the demo, every item is very tiny comparative to the visual size of the bag. That made sense in U7 where the items were the same size as they were on the ground tiles. Would like to see very larged size items in bags versus small size items, and the same true for the grid system.

 

Hiding something? Really? To me that just sounds absurd. I'm not trying to be insulting by saying that, it just totally mystifies me. If I loot a corpse and see on one side of the bag there's a bunch of stuff all piled on top of each other, of course I'm going to look under it all. Or even better I'll just hit the Take All button (God please let them add that button) and sort through it all later.

I know that we all want to play a new and original game, but we all want to play a good game as well. And there is a reason why pretty much every game with an inventory in the past several years has some kind of bag slot system with either a set max number of slots, or a weight mechanic. Just because something has been done in a game before doesn't mean it has to be avoided. Those mechanics are popular for a reason.

 

I think NPC's hiding things is a stretch. Really, to get around the PVP issue, the option could be that I can see my own bags in grid form. Items taking up different amounts of the grid is fine with me. Items shrinking to fit one square in a grid is fine with me too, as long as I can tell what the item is. I'd like to be able to stack duplicate items, so that I see one block with a chair in it, and a small number that tells me I have 8 chairs. It's a game, and I don't really care how realistic it is for me to have 8 chairs, a long table, and a picnic basket in my pack. However, Chris Spears indicated that they'd put some restraints on what large items you would be able to carry, so I'd only be able to carry a couple of chairs in my backpack, and the table would go on the paper doll in the place of another bag. So I think there may be some stacking of small items, like arrows or darts, but nothing like barrels, chairs, thrones, etc.

 

How so? That's what the free form inventory system was used for in the single player Ultima games. You would search for keys under linens in drawers, or under pots. So you, as a player, searched underneath things, but not necessarily every time because you didn't want to go to the trouble. You only searched when you wanted to go to the trouble of it, because you suspected something was there. Sometimes you'd search a whole house. That was fun -- it was role-playing.

Personally, I would want the concept to be extended, and for a dead body to appear to the player in a paperdoll form, where the player has to search through the paperdoll inventory. Some of my favorite aspects of pen-and-paper role-playing, in AD&D, was searching every nook and cranny of dead bodies.

I can't say about other players, but I don't simply want a loot-craft-and-combat game. Its not a realism fetish, its about making a game world that's not about game mechanics and is more about the personality of the world.

But the more important question is, if this isn't the plan, what use is free form inventory at all? There is no point, IMO. So, might as well remove the option and just give us a grid-based system. Just choose what we're going to have. Giving the option is a cop-out.

 

Ok. I guess I meant NPC's hiding things on their corpse, in their packs. When I played pen-and-paper games, we were more interested in moving the game along than spending a lot of time describing how we were going about searching a corpse. Searching a house is a different matter entirely.

If the more important question is why use freeform inventory at all if grid will be an option, I think the answer is that it's a nod to people who used freeform in Ultima to express themselves artistically, as well as to hide keys and whatnot. That will still be possible if it's an option for ME to see MY bags in a grid, while if I peek into your bags I see a jumble.

 

Move the game along to what? There are many ways to tell a story, and one of the ways is the surroundings and the affects of persons in the game.

What I'm talking about can be even such as... items stored in hidden compartments on bags, inside someone's shoes, in pouches on his belt, or sewn into the seams of hats. The search process would go along fast in play, but you would want to take extra care to make sure you didn't miss things. It would just add detail to the game and to the story.

Not sure I understand the free form system from an artistic expression perspective.

 

As teens, we had a Saturday to explore a cavern. We didn't want to spend time going over a body they way you describe. We wanted to get into the depths of the cavern. Evidently, my group was not into as much realism as yours. That's ok, isn't it?

And apparently, people in Ultima Online used the freeform system to create patterns and art in their bags. I never played, so I don't have better examples. Richard Garriott has referred to it many times.

 

Running a real life pen and paper club (specifically based on role play), for most of my adult life this had always been a heated discussion.

Fights taking 3x as long because players wanted to describer their every action OR people felt cheate because they where rushed... gm's and players delving into the mechanics or scenarios or searching for loots, etc.

Eventually I found a solution that worked for everyone and in fact I had a couple people come to me long after the fact and say, wow.. you where right and your solution really made the experience better.

What I came up with was, unless otherwise said by the gm, fights where quick and to the point (don't describe your coolness). Searching for loot was done by handling a list of paper to the group afterwards . OR "This fight you are entering is going to be a true challenge' would mean - Ok this is a important fight, its a boss fight, its a major villain, etc.. describe your actions in detail! Role play.. this is MEANT to take hours.. or "You get the sense that treasure may not be as easy to find or as obvious as normal".. meaning - get creative on your searching and you r looting, look around, look for clues and hints - this is a STORY or important to the story.

When you make EVERY fight detailed and fully scripted with cool actions.. and every looting session a long ordeal of looking for loot creatively.... then it ceases to matter anymore. Where as if there are special times when it is important, it adds to the story, etc.. then it becomes exciting, meaningful, and you wait for those occasions with more anticipation. LOTRO has done a very good job recently of translating the looting like this into their game. On the world map, its auto looted right into your bags automatically. Why? These are green mobs, semi bosses, wandering critters, etc.. the looting isn't fun or important. Same when going through a dungeon.. UNTIL you get to the bosses.. the bosses looting is done manually by opening a chest or clicking on a corpse. It becomes more important. Sometimes groups roll to see whos going to pop that sucker open, or someone new to a guild may be the one that gets to do it. Meaningful, because its not something your doing all the time.

Course, until l had players try it a variety of ways and then actually tried It that way, they didn't buy into it.. ( I think most of those players now tend to favor the solution I came up with), so I don't expect anyone will take me at my word. Some of that flavor can also be harder to import into a graphical based computer game or may not apply at all, but the base principle still applies.

 

Of course you don't want to put in details that don't add to the story, but I don't see that as a major issue if you don't make mobs and looting the point of gameplay. Why have fights that aren't major fights? Why are hordes of "baddies" running around everywhere for? I guess in MMORPGs the point is to increase your skills, but that's a bad mechanic in itself; that's grinding.

I personally like to pare down the adventure in a way in which every loot is a meaningful loot, and in the cases a body doesn't have anything important you know that right away from the context. Current MMORPGs go overboard in giving you easy ways to grind, loot, and earn money.

LOTRO, to me, is a pain in this regard in many ways. I don't like the whole orientation around grinding and looting. I don't like the fact that critters carry on their bodies their body parts, and you take a bear claw out of a bear's inventory instead of intentionally cutting it off his body. Yes, it makes it take longer to do, but you shouldn't be needing to do this as a matter of routine, and doing it as a matter of routine shouldn't be encouraged as a game mechanic. Because that's not what the game is about.

I know this is a game, but role-playing games shouldn't be too "game-y". They shouldn't turn into a beast that's all about mechanics and calculation and macro'ing. Everything should be hard, not just because its realistic, but because it makes it less like a game and more like an adventure.

 

As to why you put in all those fights and loot, that aren't majorly meaningful. Immersions. A sense that you went through hordes of creatures to get from point a to b, and that you have rewards to show for doing it. Wow - you did that? your a hero man! Not for leveling (I also don't use Experience points when I run pen and paper. I level my group when it makes sense to do so.). Yes you can just wave your hand and say "Ok, you've travelled for weeks, killed hundreds of creatures,, here's your loot from doing it, and now lets go fight the boss". I however personally find it more rewarding to actually have a feel of doing those things, by having done them, but without having massive amounts of times spent doing it. Its a way to fall in the middle of immersion and mechanics, and mechanics facilitating story and rp. Its the journey not the destination that matters.

This is a huge conversation though and ultimately I find it a scale. Lets call it on one side of the scale a 1, and on there other a 100. 1 is All immersion little mechanics (Prime Time adventures, dogs of war, chronicles of amber). On the 100 side of the scale is all mechanics that don't facilitate immersion or rp but offers great balance (D&D 4.). I'm at 50 on the scale (d&D 3.5). Some people fall on the 100 side (I call these people the WoW players or the hack and slash players, or the people that play it like its an arcade game). Some people fall on the 1 side of the scale. The point is, if you have 10 people on the 1 side and 1 person on the 100 side playing together, it wont be fun for the 100 person. But if you have a good mix from both sides (or people not to the extreme sides), then you can still play together and have a very rewarding experience - so long as your willing to understand NO ONES WRONG.. its just different tastes, and that a little compromise is needed to meet more towards the middle so you both get what you want.

Now if im building a new game group, im going to find people that are as close to me on the scale as possible (which by the way almost no one is at 1 or a 100.. people tend to be closer to one side or the other but not usually to that extreme). When building a game for thousands of people, this just is not possible. You have to be more in that middle ground as possible. One way to do this is by providing different options, so people can do it the way that feels best to them, and it doesn't hurt anyone else. That's why im all about options, when there can be one. Most of the games out there right now (Rift, Wow, LOTRO), are more near the 75 side of the scale. We are all here because a Sandbox Multiplayer online game by Richard Garriott, is going to have things from that 25-50 side of the scale. However if they take their little slider and go ALL the way to 1, then where going to end up with another one sided game that will appeal to very few. So to build something everyone can play together they need to be more in the middle, which from everything ive seen is where they are going. A lot of times this will be done by having an option.. Auto look check box, or not auto loot check box.. free form inventory or grid box inventory, etc... The options let people balance the immersion vs. mechanics to what fits their likes the best.

I agree with you about your feelings about LOTRO, that's why it was a game I settled on for a while until this came along as I had my eye on Richard Garriott and his plans for the last couple of years. I didn't like where he was originally going a year+ ago, and am very pleased at the direction he has instead went . Yes, LOTRO is one of the grindiest games iver ever played. It DOES do some things well though. Im a fan of the cosmetic systems, the WAY the loot system works (with a few tweaks... but the way it works, not necessarily the grinding loot.. just the way it goes into your packs and the way the loot tables work. Its a very good and balanced system that facilitates both immersion when its important, and speed when its not. WHAT you get from loot is an entirely different subject *chuckles*).

Ok, that's a wall for me.. something I normally don't do. I only did so because this was a topic I was just discussing with a real life gamer about recently. So im going to call it quits for a while, and ill be back later, although probably not to this thread. I will only usually post one time (although I keep reading/skimming them) in a thread that is hitting two+ pages, and then I no longer participate. ive said what I have to say, other people have said what I would want to say, and repetition goes nowhere good.

 

I personally settled onto LOTRO because its one of the only MMORPGs that takes a mature tone to things. It tries to create a rich, believable atmosphere. A lot of MMORPGs have a really "kiddie" feel to them.

Even then, I stopped playing and play more single-player games like Unreal World and Skyrim.

 

Item stacking.. For sure the dowels from the demo would have been stackable. Can't think of one reason they wouldn't be. I also think I recall them talking about meaning to implement a visual number etched into the quiver representing the number of arrows you have, which supports some specialized stacking at least.

@Redfish: I really like your idea of Diablo style different sizes for object icons. Inventory & weight management have always been important features for these types of roleplaying adventures, and especially so in these games where nearly everything is tangible and usable. Almost everything 'can' be picked up, so the classic 'pick everything up and worry about it after the quest is over' frame of mind just isn't an option. This is why taking time to loot things is so important, you'll almost always need to play the 'what's important enough for me to carry?' game.

 

I agree that inventory management will be important, in the same way it is in Skyrim. Yet you can create that same kind of mechanic with just simple pack slots. You have X amount of pack slots, and each item/stack of items fills a slot. I just don't want to have to play tetris when putting stuff in my inventory.