Cluttered inventories ruining gaming

[HitAnyKey]

I do think cluttered inventories does make gaming worse not better if your into crafting. I wouldn't say it ruins gaming. I know when I was a kid I loved complexity and trying to recall what worked with what. I still do. But inventories do give me a bit of a headache sometimes.

In games that make crafting a bigger part of the experience they should have a more intuitive menu system. i.e. If you hover your mouse over an item it will tell you how many of these you have. And it should let you see the recipes that it can be used with. I believe some games have this feature in some form or another. Yes it does kind of spoon feed you a bit. But so what lol

Either that or give me infinite space and allow me to index my items by name or item and I would be a happy camper.

 

[Midwayman]

I do think cluttered inventories does make gaming worse not better if your into crafting. I wouldn't say it ruins gaming. I know when I was a kid I loved complexity and trying to recall what worked with what. I still do. But inventories do give me a bit of a headache sometimes.

In games that make crafting a bigger part of the experience they should have a more intuitive menu system. i.e. If you hover your mouse over an item it will tell you how many of these you have. And it should let you see the recipes that it can be used with. I believe some games have this feature in some form or another. Yes it does kind of spoon feed you a bit. But so what lol

Either that or give me infinite space and allow me to index my items by name or item and I would be a happy camper.

The trouble isn't that crafting exists. Its that it generates a million unimportant items you have to sort through. Ideally crafting items would be weightless or however you want to hand wave it and be sorted on different tab than regular items. That way if you don't play crafting it never affects you. You still can loot to your heart's content and not worry about managing it.

 

[Martimus]

The trouble isn't that crafting exists. Its that it generates a million unimportant items you have to sort through. Ideally crafting items would be weightless or however you want to hand wave it and be sorted on different tab than regular items. That way if you don't play crafting it never affects you. You still can loot to your heart's content and not worry about managing it.

In my opinion, the main issue is that games which require a lot of inventory clutter don't provide basic sorting and organization options, like the kind you see on windows explorer. With simple sorting options, the clutter would not be much of an issue.

 

[Blue_Max]

FO4 isn't alone but it sure shows one critical flaw and that's in naming.

Modify an "Assault Rifle" and it becomes a "Hardened Assault Rifle" (or something like that.) When you go looking for your favorite assault rifle later, it's now much further down the list and certainly not grouped with other assault rifles, modified or not. Fallout:NV did this better, Skyrim a little better still, but it's a long way from 'seamless'.

Grouping items to make them easy to find/use/sell should be as simple as possible. I want to play a GAME, not an Inventory Simulator.

 

[Stg-Flame]

I'd rather pick up everything I come across and be ready for something that I may have to craft at a later date rather than having to backtrack for the same items.

Fallout 4 only requires Junk which you can tag so you're only picking up the items you will need. After you play for about ten to twenty hours, you will know exactly what components you are lacking and what you need. If you're picking up every armor piece and pipe pistol you come across then you're going to have a cluttered inventory.

 

[kypron77]

I agree with you guys, there should be a separate tab or screen in your inventory dedicated solely to crafting materials, in any game that wants to incorporate crafting. It would be best if it had a grid showing all crafting materials possible to get in the game, with a fixed location for each item, in a bold unique look for each item. As you collect the crafting materials, or use them, the count would change on the crafting item, with unlimited stacks in the one spot. This would allow you to completely ignore crafting if you wanted, with the separate screen, and not have to organize crap.

I guess it's not so much the sheer number of crap to collect that bothers me about crafting, it's the lack of a uniform, organized way to deal with it. How anyone can think constantly shuffling crap around, having a big jumble of crafting items and weapons all mixed together, is any fun I have no idea. I've been playing Grim Dawn, and it is bugging me a little bit. There are many types of crafting items, and once you have three of one thing you can combine it to make a better version. I don't mind the loot overall, but the game still suffers from "craftitis" somewhat, I hate having to organize a big jumble of nonsense, and the little icons are really difficult to distinguish from each other. And you can't ignore crafting in this game, you need to unlock shrines with these same items you augment items or craft items with......

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Inventories have become something badly designed since games have moved towards being console ports or at lease multi-platform titles which are developed primarily for the consoles and given no love for the PC.

Developing good inventory systems really isnt that hard, even if you have a lot of items, it's just a case of picking sensible ways of displaying and ordering the content, and most importantly filtering it. We have games with massive open worlds and thousands of unique items and then really diabolical console orientated inventory systems, it's no surprise that this becomes a problem really.

A handful of games use this to force the player to be tactical in their choices with resource starved games like Resident Evil, and even in FO4 to a certain degree, carry weight is something you can put points into increasing, same with additional party members. So it's not always down to stupidity, sometimes the developers want to invite you to making a decision that trades one benefit for another to keep things more interesting.

 

[motsm]

I have a problem with inventories being designed for controllers and TV's in PC games, rather than mice and monitors, but I wouldn't be playing most of those games anyway. So if the inventory is properly designed for PC users, I'm fine with carrying around hundreds of items.

 

[norseamd]

As the OP rightly said, The Witcher 3 managed to do it pretty well with the assortment of useful/not useful stuff. However, the crafting in the same game was a serious nightmare for me.

I wasnt impressed with how The Witcher 3 implemented alchemy and crafting.

 

[Midwayman]

I have a problem with inventories being designed for controllers and TV's in PC games, rather than mice and monitors, but I wouldn't be playing most of those games anyway. So if the inventory is properly designed for PC users, I'm fine with carrying around hundreds of items.

Yah, Its kinda hilarious if you have a 4k monitor and have to deal with font and layout designed for NTSC. Its time to kill SDTV support.

 

[thejunglegod]

I wasnt impressed with how The Witcher 3 implemented alchemy and crafting.

Well yes. Read my post again. The crafting part was a nightmare. I was just happy with the assortment of items in the inventory that's all.

 

[norseamd]

Well yes. Read my post again. The crafting part was a nightmare. I was just happy with the assortment of items in the inventory that's all.

What didnt you like about the crafting system in particular?