Inventory is Excessive Micro-Management

agelonestar · April 18

The inventory issue is a key reason people quit the game. It literally drives people away.

I’d honestly prefer that the crafting bag was included in the base game. Give me - as a long term ESO+ subscriber - some other benefit to replace it.

Ultimately I would rather keep players in the game.

allochthons · April 18

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

1) Know your build's gear. Don't experiment, that's what the PTS is for.

These are all good ideas, but as always, some of them are not available to console. We don't have access to PTS.

Does console have a way to mark junk and auto-sell it? I haven't played with all the add-ons to see. I know Lazy Crafter has a few options to deal with what we get from daily crafting writs, but I haven't played with them much.

(Did anyone else watch the Artemis II livestreams, and suddenly realize just how important Inventory Management actually is? 🚀)

Frayton · April 18

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

It Back when there was no sticker book and no option to use transmutation stones to recreate a piece of equipment, I would've agreed.
But these days it is really comfortable to organise inventory. Well, at least for me with my 12 character non ESO+ account. There are just a couple of habits that one needs to cultivate and there will never be any inventory bloat.
1) Know your build's gear. Don't experiment, that's what the PTS is for.
2) Use the sticker book, don't hoard gear. With 1500 transmute crystals it is possible to make 60 pieces of gear at once. That is 5 characters!
3) Get all the free storage space. Bank (240), Inventory (200 per character, 10 characters are free), Storage Chests (360).
4) Use motives, plans and recipes when you get them. Sell them at once, if you know them.
5) Use up your consumable materiels. Craft potions, glyphs and food to sell them on guild stores. The good ones sell like candy. The others mostly sell as raw mats for good gold. Only the provisioning mats that are not used for commonly used food and for daily crafting writs need to be sold to regular merchants, 5 gold apiece.
6) Use Houses for storing furnishings, not the bank.
7) Hoarding is bad for mental health. Sell like crazy! Use Master Merchant or Tamriel Trade Centre to know real value and fill up all of your 30 slots in every one of your guilds.
Remember: The bank inventory is limited to 240 slots, but the amount of gold is limited to 2.1 billion.

There is more, ofc. But these are the most important.

I know you're trying to help, but this actually highlights just how bad the inventory problem is. If we have to plan and play around inventory management, then there's a problem with inventory.

SaliciaKeyz · April 20

agelonestar wrote: »

The inventory issue is a key reason people quit the game. It literally drives people away.

I know this from experience. Ive had friends get bored of the game from it. It’s mentally taxing for new players.

I’m not sure why anybody above is advocating against solutions.

Also, nobody is expecting a full craft bag for free. But having a 25 or 50 max stack size bag would alleviate a lot of pressure from all the items which we have less than 25.

I use ESO+. I just want my friends to stop getting chased away from the game because of this. It’s a really bad reason to lose so many players.

fizl101 · April 20

allochthons wrote: »

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

1) Know your build's gear. Don't experiment, that's what the PTS is for.

These are all good ideas, but as always, some of them are not available to console. We don't have access to PTS.

Does console have a way to mark junk and auto-sell it? I haven't played with all the add-ons to see. I know Lazy Crafter has a few options to deal with what we get from daily crafting writs, but I haven't played with them much.

(Did anyone else watch the Artemis II livestreams, and suddenly realize just how important Inventory Management actually is? 🚀)

Autoloot + on console allows for autojunking and selling

Al_Ex_Andre · April 20

agelonestar wrote: »

The inventory issue is a key reason people quit the game. It literally drives people away.

I’d honestly prefer that the crafting bag was included in the base game. Give me - as a long term ESO+ subscriber - some other benefit to replace it.

Ultimately I would rather keep players in the game.

Players who want to play free, quit the game, yes.

ankeor · April 20

As someone who doesn't play with ESO+ I don't think they have to make it part of base game.
They will not do it anyway as it is main source of income for them.

But first thing they can do is right now realisticly is to stop mobs producing garbage.
We get trash from almost everywhere form "tresures" you need to sell to merchant to white/green/blue non-set items.
Just disable them from dropping all together.
Second is as others suggested make items stack up to thousands. Poisons stack up to 1k so it should be doable.

Yudo · April 20

Leveling up was one of the worst experiences due to inventory.
Every time I made some amount of gold It would go to that darn bag merchant.
Eventually I maxed out and it became a bit better, but the amount of filtering requires too much knowledge and time because you cannot afford to hoard everything.

You have to be selective and get rid of most common and low value items. Decon aggressively. Without eso+ you use your bank as crafting bag, and coffers as bank and use addons to save time where possible.

katanagirl1 · April 20

SaliciaKeyz wrote: »

agelonestar wrote: »

The inventory issue is a key reason people quit the game. It literally drives people away.

I know this from experience. Ive had friends get bored of the game from it. It’s mentally taxing for new players.

I’m not sure why anybody above is advocating against solutions.

Also, nobody is expecting a full craft bag for free. But having a 25 or 50 max stack size bag would alleviate a lot of pressure from all the items which we have less than 25.

I use ESO+. I just want my friends to stop getting chased away from the game because of this. It’s a really bad reason to lose so many players.

So what is it that new players are holding onto that is filling up their inventory? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t see why it would be a problem. If they are not crafting, then they will sell all the gear they are not using, and if they are crafting, then they will decon and/or research items. The only backup would be when research times get long, and the times don’t anymore after the latest change. If they want to do daily crafting writs, only one style mat is needed, the one their character knows by default.

The only thing I can think of is autoloot. I don’t use it, it is not worth picking up trash loot, trash potions, or even glyphs for me. When deconning items, don’t keep all of the style mats and other mats and sell them.

Am I missing something?

The real inventory problem is later when you have multiple sets of gear to carry around, multiple foods, multiple potions, and tons of siege equipment.

AScarlato · April 20

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So what is it that new players are holding onto that is filling up their inventory? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t see why it would be a problem. If they are not crafting, then they will sell all the gear they are not using, and if they are crafting, then they will decon and/or research items. The only backup would be when research times get long, and the times don’t anymore after the latest change. If they want to do daily crafting writs, only one style mat is needed, the one their character knows by default.

The only thing I can think of is autoloot. I don’t use it, it is not worth picking up trash loot, trash potions, or even glyphs for me. When deconning items, don’t keep all of the style mats and other mats and sell them.

Am I missing something?

New players

1. Have no money, so they need to loot trash to have any money at all.
2. Don't know what they should keep or not. You are kind of imputing a level of game knowledge as to what to keep or not that new players don't have.
3. Unless they spent $50 on a vendor summon, will spend a lot of their time not being able to even pick up trash loot or going repeatedly to town.

katanagirl1 · April 20

AScarlato wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So what is it that new players are holding onto that is filling up their inventory? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t see why it would be a problem. If they are not crafting, then they will sell all the gear they are not using, and if they are crafting, then they will decon and/or research items. The only backup would be when research times get long, and the times don’t anymore after the latest change. If they want to do daily crafting writs, only one style mat is needed, the one their character knows by default.

The only thing I can think of is autoloot. I don’t use it, it is not worth picking up trash loot, trash potions, or even glyphs for me. When deconning items, don’t keep all of the style mats and other mats and sell them.

Am I missing something?

New players

1. Have no money, so they need to loot trash to have any money at all.
2. Don't know what they should keep or not. You are kind of imputing a level of game knowledge as to what to keep or not that new players don't have.
3. Unless they spent $50 on a vendor summon, will spend a lot of their time not being able to even pick up trash loot or going repeatedly to town.

The price of bag space and bank space has been dramatically reduced. What more should be done?

Inventory management is an issue in any game. I started ten years ago and didn’t find it a problem and I did daily crafting writs and didn’t have eso plus for 2-3 years.

AScarlato · April 20

katanagirl1 wrote: »

AScarlato wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So what is it that new players are holding onto that is filling up their inventory? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t see why it would be a problem. If they are not crafting, then they will sell all the gear they are not using, and if they are crafting, then they will decon and/or research items. The only backup would be when research times get long, and the times don’t anymore after the latest change. If they want to do daily crafting writs, only one style mat is needed, the one their character knows by default.

The only thing I can think of is autoloot. I don’t use it, it is not worth picking up trash loot, trash potions, or even glyphs for me. When deconning items, don’t keep all of the style mats and other mats and sell them.

Am I missing something?

New players

1. Have no money, so they need to loot trash to have any money at all.
2. Don't know what they should keep or not. You are kind of imputing a level of game knowledge as to what to keep or not that new players don't have.
3. Unless they spent $50 on a vendor summon, will spend a lot of their time not being able to even pick up trash loot or going repeatedly to town.

The price of bag space and bank space has been dramatically reduced. What more should be done?

Inventory management is an issue in any game. I started ten years ago and didn’t find it a problem and I did daily crafting writs and didn’t have eso plus for 2-3 years.

Inventory management is very easy in XIV and other MMOs I've played. It's actually really hard to run out of inventory in that game as an early-game character. This game more than any other I am aware of inundates you with different items to loot. It's a lot.

Having inventory issues is a common complaint, and while you had the patience, knowledge, and desire to overcome them a lot of people will just not find it worth the hassle. Which is the point of recurring threads like this one here and elsewhere.

PoveusRonin · April 20

AScarlato wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

AScarlato wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So what is it that new players are holding onto that is filling up their inventory? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t see why it would be a problem. If they are not crafting, then they will sell all the gear they are not using, and if they are crafting, then they will decon and/or research items. The only backup would be when research times get long, and the times don’t anymore after the latest change. If they want to do daily crafting writs, only one style mat is needed, the one their character knows by default.

The only thing I can think of is autoloot. I don’t use it, it is not worth picking up trash loot, trash potions, or even glyphs for me. When deconning items, don’t keep all of the style mats and other mats and sell them.

Am I missing something?

New players

1. Have no money, so they need to loot trash to have any money at all.
2. Don't know what they should keep or not. You are kind of imputing a level of game knowledge as to what to keep or not that new players don't have.
3. Unless they spent $50 on a vendor summon, will spend a lot of their time not being able to even pick up trash loot or going repeatedly to town.

The price of bag space and bank space has been dramatically reduced. What more should be done?

Inventory management is an issue in any game. I started ten years ago and didn’t find it a problem and I did daily crafting writs and didn’t have eso plus for 2-3 years.

Inventory management is very easy in XIV and other MMOs I've played. It's actually really hard to run out of inventory in that game as an early-game character. This game more than any other I am aware of inundates you with different items to loot. It's a lot.

Having inventory issues is a common complaint, and while you had the patience, knowledge, and desire to overcome them a lot of people will just not find it worth the hassle. Which is the point of recurring threads like this one here and elsewhere.

I played the unlimited free trial on FFXIV and once you get around 30 or so if you do all the crafting, inventory can be an issue. The main difference, in that one it is easy to tell what items you can hold on to and which ones you can junk.

Here, you want to level your crafts just so you can make furniture for example, you have to have it seems like everything. I'm sure it's not really but I have full 240 bank slots taken up with single stacks of crafting stuff, 1 box with just enchanting supplies, and the rest filled with various other items that I either want or am afraid of getting rid of since I'm not sure if I will need it.

So I play less and less. I have to reach a certain amount of time played (my standards) before I'll subscribe to any game and this is keeping me from reaching it.

Thoriorz · April 21

I can't imagine playing without ESO+ (craft bag). I could easily do without practically all the other ESO+ bonuses, but the craft bag—I definitely wouldn't play ESO without it. It's true that there are plenty of add-ons that make bag management easier, but even so...

Right now, I have two accounts (40 characters) where I have ESO+ active, and one account (8 characters) without it. I only use this third account for prov., alchemy, and enchanting daily writs, and just managing materials for that alone is pretty annoying—and the idea of having a main account without a craft bag is hard to imagine...

KazaiDaGod · April 21

<snip>

Solvar · April 21

The one hope I have is that Zenimax has made some improvements (reduced crafting time and faster mount upgrades) to make the new player experience better, so maybe they will look at this. And the things they sped up could have been bypassed with money (getting instant research scrolls or riding scrolls), and one has to imagine that the sales of those will go down quite a lot with the changes, so not everything is cash driven.

I feel like inventory and bank space has not kept up as the game has added stuff. Going back to the original game, there would have been a lot less style materials - for that matter, there wasn't even jewelry crafting, and expansions sometimes add provisioning or alchemy materials. The inventory & bank space might have been workable when ESO first released, but with each additional crafting material added, gets worse and worse.

FieryPhoenix · April 21

The ESO plus trial only happened once during 2025 in August (according to UESP) so that’s not a guaranteed thing. The bottom line is that inventory management is burdensome even to those who do choose to pay for ESO plus and doubly so for those who do not (or cannot) pay for plus. ZOS needs to do something to improve this situation.

Elvenheart · April 21

AScarlato wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

AScarlato wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

So what is it that new players are holding onto that is filling up their inventory? I’m genuinely curious because I don’t see why it would be a problem. If they are not crafting, then they will sell all the gear they are not using, and if they are crafting, then they will decon and/or research items. The only backup would be when research times get long, and the times don’t anymore after the latest change. If they want to do daily crafting writs, only one style mat is needed, the one their character knows by default.

The only thing I can think of is autoloot. I don’t use it, it is not worth picking up trash loot, trash potions, or even glyphs for me. When deconning items, don’t keep all of the style mats and other mats and sell them.

Am I missing something?

New players

1. Have no money, so they need to loot trash to have any money at all.
2. Don't know what they should keep or not. You are kind of imputing a level of game knowledge as to what to keep or not that new players don't have.
3. Unless they spent $50 on a vendor summon, will spend a lot of their time not being able to even pick up trash loot or going repeatedly to town.

The price of bag space and bank space has been dramatically reduced. What more should be done?

Inventory management is an issue in any game. I started ten years ago and didn’t find it a problem and I did daily crafting writs and didn’t have eso plus for 2-3 years.

Inventory management is very easy in XIV and other MMOs I've played. It's actually really hard to run out of inventory in that game as an early-game character. This game more than any other I am aware of inundates you with different items to loot. It's a lot.

Having inventory issues is a common complaint, and while you had the patience, knowledge, and desire to overcome them a lot of people will just not find it worth the hassle. Which is the point of recurring threads like this one here and elsewhere.

Another thing is that there are now so many more items in the game now, like sets, than there were in the beginning. When I first started out as a new penniless player with limited knowledge with just base game if a set piece dropped and I wanted to think about collecting that set for my character, I had enough space to hold onto it for a while I continue to play and try to get more pieces. The longer we play, the more we learn about what we can get rid of and what we might want to keep, but in the beginning, it’s normal to just keep everything until we figure that out. And now if a new character happens to try to play in multiple zones since they can go anywhere, a lot more set pieces will be dropping into their inventory.

wolfie1.0. · April 21

To the OP, one option is to obtain a few more accounts at base game. Especially during sales, they can be pretty cheap. Get up to at least 10. Then start a guild with a bank. To me its worth the investment and takes the bite from not having plus.

PoveusRonin · April 21

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

To the OP, one option is to obtain a few more accounts at base game. Especially during sales, they can be pretty cheap. Get up to at least 10. Then start a guild with a bank. To me its worth the investment and takes the bite from not having plus.

So, inventory is hard to manage and the suggestion is to get 10 accounts to manage?

wolfie1.0. · April 21

PoveusRonin wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

To the OP, one option is to obtain a few more accounts at base game. Especially during sales, they can be pretty cheap. Get up to at least 10. Then start a guild with a bank. To me its worth the investment and takes the bite from not having plus.

So, inventory is hard to manage and the suggestion is to get 10 accounts to manage?

The goal is the guild bank and the storage access. 500 slots allows for tons of storage and easy transfer to another account. You dont even need to use those accounts. They just need to be paid ones for the guild access.

Also, its a suggestion, not a requirement. But during a sale its cheaper than a year of eso+ and its less for each family member that has an account.

Elvenheart · April 21

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

To the OP, one option is to obtain a few more accounts at base game. Especially during sales, they can be pretty cheap. Get up to at least 10. Then start a guild with a bank. To me its worth the investment and takes the bite from not having plus.

If you do some searching on the forums, you’ll find out that when ZOS realizes all of those accounts are one player, they get closed down.

Edited to add: I only know that because the idea occurred to me too, but I wanted to be sure it would work before I invested the money and the time so I did the research.

Ingel_Riday · April 21

I hate to say it, but it's tedious by design. Zenimax (as in the company, not ZOS proper) did the same thing with Fallout 76. Create problems and sell the solutions.

Inventory is purposefully wretched and awful to compel you to get ESO+, at which point it becomes exceedingly friendly and nice. It's all on purpose. To get you to buy the solution to the problem that ZOS made to sell you the solution. It's on purpose, baby.

You're right. It sucks to not be a subscriber. It's meant to suck. Nothing for it.

Personally, the only reason I pay an annual subscription fee is for the unlimited crafting bag and extra bank spaces. If they made inventory not suck without the subscription, I would literally unsubscribe. Most of us would. The value proposition for subscribing has been stripped down to the crafting bag over the years, and ZOS knows it. They ain't fixing anything because, for them, it's not broken.

PoveusRonin · April 22

I was hopeful when the word battlepass (words? battle pass) were/was uttered that maybe they would have it on the subscription tier and stop with the silly inventory games.

At this point, I really don't understand why they have it not required to subscribe if they make the game this unfriendly for their players to not have an active sub.

mdjessup4906 · April 24

I play dps, tank, pvp, solo dungeons, and want to make a healer, and have a dozen sets of gear for each role. I also loot everything and sell loads of stuff on 3 different traders. Its an insult that I am constantly out of space even with eso+

Grafahel · April 24

There are some good tips in this thread for organizing inventory, honestly I played for years without ESO+ and it's very doable once you've upgraded your bank space a bit. Having all the chests for your houses also helps (used those for maps, surveys and furnishings). You just can't go full on hoarder mode with a lot of stuff and may have to spend some gold now and then to acquire mats you need from a guild store. Prioritize certain items you need most often (and can't just buy from merchants) and keep them in the bank, sell the stuff you don't actually need or use immediately, and accept that you can't keep everything.

The stupid part is that I just started a new character and I kinda miss the charm of having to build up a little stash of resources and going out gathering stuff, instead of being a trust fund kid with endless resources at my disposal.

Frayton · April 24

Elvenheart wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

To the OP, one option is to obtain a few more accounts at base game. Especially during sales, they can be pretty cheap. Get up to at least 10. Then start a guild with a bank. To me its worth the investment and takes the bite from not having plus.

If you do some searching on the forums, you’ll find out that when ZOS realizes all of those accounts are one player, they get closed down.

Edited to add: I only know that because the idea occurred to me too, but I wanted to be sure it would work before I invested the money and the time so I did the research.

This can't be right. Do you have any direct links to posts that explicitly say this? I've searched and didn't find anything, and even asked AI like you did and got a totally different response.

Elvenheart · April 24

Frayton wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

To the OP, one option is to obtain a few more accounts at base game. Especially during sales, they can be pretty cheap. Get up to at least 10. Then start a guild with a bank. To me its worth the investment and takes the bite from not having plus.

If you do some searching on the forums, you’ll find out that when ZOS realizes all of those accounts are one player, they get closed down.

Edited to add: I only know that because the idea occurred to me too, but I wanted to be sure it would work before I invested the money and the time so I did the research.

This can't be right. Do you have any direct links to posts that explicitly say this? I've searched and didn't find anything, and even asked AI like you did and got a totally different response.

I’m thinking you may be correct, it may be if people do this when they offer free accounts is when they get into trouble:

When I researched it several years ago to try it myself, this might be what I found at the time. So if I’ve told anybody wrong, my apologies!