Inventory is unmanageable

SteveCampsOut · June 2014

badmojo wrote: »

Blackwidow wrote: »

Even you admit there are lots of inventory issues, yet you fight to keep the system as is.

Amazing.

The only option to actually fix this would be to essentially make your bank space unlimited. Why would an unlimited bank be good for this game?

Real Banks don't start capping what you can put in them at all, but you're only insured for up to 250,000 per bank account. You can put millions in, you just won't be insured for all of it. Why shouldn't game banks mirror real one? What we currently have aren't real banks at all! They're glorified "Storage Units" wrapped up in a Banking Bow. The only reason anyone put's money in them is to transfer it to an alt!

kassandratheclericb14_ESO · June 2014

badmojo wrote: »

kassandratheclericb14_ESO wrote: »

I just fail to see how we are supposed to play "how we like" and be limited to crafting just one craft on one character.

You're not limited to just one craft per character. But, when you try to pick up everything and level everything at the same time, you're going to run into lots of inventory issues.

Start with provisioning. Level that skill up quickly at low levels. Once you've reached 50, which shouldn't take very long, stop picking up ingredients you don't need. Keep track of which items you need for your current food and only worry about keeping those. Maybe learn the rare ones and save those too, even if just to sell them later.

Alchemy does take longer than provisioning, but once you've learned the traits of each reagent, you don't need to pickup and keep them all anymore. You can figure out which 3 you need for your potions and then collect only those.

Enchanting is a tough one, but only if you're like me and want to keep a collection of runes in storage for a rainy day. If I had issues with space I would simply turn every runes I get into a glyph on an alt, or trade glyphs with another person. If the goal is to get level 50 enchanting, and not to collect runes, there shouldn't be much issue with inventory space.

For wood, cloth, and metal working it's really simple, just deconstruct everything and sell most of it to either players or vendor it. It's worth keeping a stack of the trait stones in your bank, racial material too, but that can also be bought from NPCs, so not needed. Obviously keep the upgrade material, but that's only about 9 slots.

What does that even leave? Some trophies, rare stuff like kuta runes, pets, soul gems, maybe some unique weapons.

There isn't all that much you actually need to keep in order to level up your crafting skills. I find it's just the urge to keep everything that makes inventory unmanageable. If someone wants to become a master craftsman in every skill, the inventory space is going to suck, but if you level them up gradually over time, without saving every material associated with every craft, you'll do fine. It's not like Jute is ever going out of season, it'll still be growing there if you ever need it.

I'm not trying to do them all nor do I pick us everything. I am not even past the second level of these as I am always having to dump something. it takes a bit of stuff to manage to get these things done and often finding the one thing you need (especially enchanting it seems) takes a bit of time. Again...I'm not an idiot. I have three alts I play regularly and I gave up alchemy because it was too much. I am doing cloth/leather, provisioning and enchanting. I am probably going to have to give up enchanting if it keeps on like it is.

I really don't want to have to start slow, just on one character. Limit how many I can do if that is what they want and be done with it. Don't tell me they will make crafting enjoyable, don't tell me I can play how I want when I can not and don't pee on my leg and tell me it is raining. Even if I limit my bank to two crafting and my three alts then it would still be very hard, do-able? Probably but I would still be spending a lot of my playtime to figure out what I should keep, what I need to keep to maybe research (since this takes some time) or breakdown for parts, needing that one part for the enchanting and holding on to the rest since I have to have all three.

I don't keep any of the racial material at all unless its something I don't see at the NPC.

I am not saying what you have told me doesn't have merit. What I am saying is that 1) The limiting of crafting wasn't really something in the deal when they first began talking about how much we would like all this. 2) Your ideas and suggestions still require some doing. It takes some though and time that I would rather spend playing or thinking about my character(s). I have 3 characters and all wear different armor and are at different levels. So yeah I keep stuff as I go for them and yes, it does take a bit of bag space. 3) I am also a RPer and yes I like to keep those costumes. 4) I'm not in a guild nor have I yet found one I wish to be in. I suppose it is inevitable I find one but I don't want to join a guild because I must. I don't wish to join a guild that isn't RP and I don't wish to be forced to do content at a certain speed (which seems inevitable with many guilds.)

You may argue that my bank doesn't work because I'm not working it the way to make it work. I guess you would be right. My argument is they can limit your crafting without making you play the inventory mini-game that exists. I don't want to spend my time doing this.

I say limit the account to 2 crafts, let you pay gold to gain more (alot of gold) or to switch out, give crafting its own shared bank tabs, make added bank tabs continue to cost alot of gold and limit the amount of space per purchase and keep them shared.

This would give the room needed for all these things those of us that have said we have trouble, it keeps crafting limited which is obviously what they want, doesn't make the banks huge and still makes players work (ie gain he gold) to buy the added spots or they can even be tied to levels.

Anyway I have said my piece multiple times. I will keep an eye on this but there is not sense making a circular argument. So you all have fun.

Blackwidow · June 2014

badmojo wrote: »

The only option to actually fix this would be to essentially make your bank space unlimited. Why would an unlimited bank be good for this game?

Why does it have to be a tiny bank or UNLIMITED?

No chance there might be a compromise somewhere in there?

Let me guess.....

No.

badmojo · June 2014

Blackwidow wrote: »

badmojo wrote: »

The only option to actually fix this would be to essentially make your bank space unlimited. Why would an unlimited bank be good for this game?

Why does it have to be a tiny bank or UNLIMITED?

No chance there might be a compromise somewhere in there?

Let me guess.....

No.

For 768,500 gold you can have 240 bank spaces. But, that doesn't seem to be enough for some people. What exactly is this magic number that you think will solve all your inventory problems?

I'm not saying it HAS to be unlimited. I'm saying if you can't make it work with 240 bank slots, I have doubts you could make it work with 500. Like I said, the inventory space is a buffer, the bigger you make that buffer, the bigger the mess you have to clean up.

The only solution I can see to remove the need to clean up that mess, is to make it unlimited.

---

I guess I have to repeat myself, because you keep insisting I have mule characters. I don't play 8 characters, I play 5 with 3 on hold for when I care to play those. 4 of them are specialized in crafting, they all have over level 20 in their craft, most are over player level 10. If you want to call those mules, whatever, to me they are characters that I role play, even the Khajiit clothier that talks funny.

Here's a list of them..

main - VR1 - NB - Redguard
Enchanting 25 & Provisioning 50
100 slots

Blacksmith - 13 - DK - Orc
Blacksmithing 24
80 slots

Clothier - 6 - NB - Khajiit
Clothing 30
80 slots

Woodworker - 9 - TP - Bosmer
Wookworking 22
70 slots

Alchemist - 30 - TP - Imperial
Alchemist 49
90 Slots

Bank = 100 slots
Guild Bank = 500 slots

For a grand total of 1020 inventory slots that I use to make it work. And like I've said many times before, I could easily do it without the guild bank, I just wouldn't have a stock pile of provisioning ingredients for every level.(Which is something I don't really need anyway, since I'm not trying to run a business.) So, with 520 slots across 6 characters, I could carry on without changing anything about my game. My bank usually sits about half empty because I use it mostly for swapping items.

I could potentially have another 270 slots across those characters, but I don't need, or want to spend the money on it. I'm constantly tempted to click the bank upgrade button, I have the gold, but it wouldn't help me, I feel like it would be wasted money at this point.

Please don't just focus on the guild bank, I know you like to focus on that one point. But, trust me when I say it's not really the reason I'm doing okay inventory wise. I'd post screen shots of the items I have in there if you really cared. It's mostly full stacks of race/trait material, about 4000 pieces of fishing bait, and like I said, thousand and thousands of food ingredients that I felt the need to hoard over my 15 or so days of gameplay. Also, there's some assorted potions and food/drinks that are of no use to me and could just as easily be sold for the gold. But, I figured if I had the 500 empty slots, might as well fill them.

How many slots is your shared bank? If you say anything less than what all your gold could buy, then I don't see the validity to your complaining about inventory space.

ZOS_HugoP · June 2014

Greetings folks,

As this thread was turning into an unhealthy argument, we had to moderate it. Please keep it civil and constructive in the future. Further inflammatory ad/or disrespectful comment, may result in this thread being locked.

Thank you!

Blackwidow · June 2014

badmojo wrote:
240 bank spaces. But, that doesn't seem to be enough for some people. What exactly is this magic number that you think will solve all your inventory problems?

Again, double the space.

Answered for the 100th time.

I'm not saying it HAS to be unlimited. I'm saying if you can't make it work with 240 bank slots, I have doubts you could make it work with 500.

Why? You seem more than capable with 240 bank space, plus 4 mules and a personal guild bank for just yourself and you seem okay.

I guess I have to repeat myself some more, because you keep insisting I have mule characters.

You do. You already admitted it and then took it back.

It's my opinion that any increases in bag/bank space will make them irrelevant, therefore they might as well be unlimited.

So adding 10 more spaces makes the bank unlimited?

"After that I have 4 characters who hold associated materials. Tailor, Blacksmith, Woodworker, Alchemist. Leaving 4 main accounts for me to play on, which are the four classes & three factions."

You have 4 mules and you use a guild bank for your personal items and you say there is nothing wrong with the current bank system.

Have a nice day.

badmojo · June 2014

You can pull up all the quotes you want from me. I'm completely honest in my posts. Mule, character, whatever, does it change anything?

I once said it wasn't a mule, it was a crafter, and ever since then you've been locked on to that one thing like it even matters. It's just terminology, no matter what we each call it, it's a character with inventory space, I won't deny that. But, what's your point?

Blackwidow · June 2014

badmojo wrote: »

You can pull up all the quotes you want from me. I'm completely honest in my posts. Mule, character, whatever, does it change anything?

It changes everything.

The fact that you even have to ask means you don't know what you are talking about on this subject.

I once said it wasn't a mule, it was a crafter, and ever since then you've been locked on to that one thing like it even matters. It's just terminology, no matter what we each call it, it's a character with inventory space, I won't deny that. But, what's your point?

I'm really tired of answering this over and over. So I tell ya what. I'm just going to quote myself. You feel free to read it as much as you like until it sinks in.

"You have 240 bank space, plus 4 mules and a personal guild bank for just yourself and you say there is nothing wrong with the current bank system."

Let me know if you have any follow up questions.

badmojo · June 2014

Yeah, I do, can you please open up that mind of yours and put your thoughts into words? I can't read your mind, I can't tell what you're thinking, when you say stuff like "The fact that you even have to ask means you don't know what you are talking about on this subject." it does nothing to help you explain what you're saying.

I recognized that inventory management would play a big part in this game when I played the beta, so before the game was released I took the time and effort of figuring out which characters would do which jobs, to minimize the inventory issues. After the game shipped I realized the guild bank had huge potential for improving any inventory issues I might face down the line, so I promptly got on to of the issue and got 10 people into my guild.

But, for some reason you think I'm special and the steps I took to eliminate the problem of inventory are somehow unique to me and me alone. You imply that my usage of multiple characters and a guild bank are strikes against me, against my opinion on this subject.

I feel the complete opposite, I feel like people who haven't taken an aggressive stance on tackling their inventory have no grounds to complain about it. You've ignored the tools at your disposal, you've worked yourself into a difficult position, you refuse to change your playstyle or inventory strategy, but you want the game to change around you and your playstyle.

Please explain to me why my usage of 4 crafting characters(and a guild bank) discredits my opinions on the inventory space issue. PLEASE be specific and don't just throw out some general statements of dismissal. Please explain why these tools, offered to everyone, should be ignored when talking about inventory space.

badmojo · June 2014

Hell, if you really got aggressive about it, you could find 4 friends and all share 5 guild banks for 2500 slots. You aren't locked to your 240 +110, even if you do ignore the advantages of alts.

Allyah · June 2014

kassandratheclericb14_ESO wrote: »

badmojo wrote: »

kassandratheclericb14_ESO wrote: »

I just fail to see how we are supposed to play "how we like" and be limited to crafting just one craft on one character.

You're not limited to just one craft per character. But, when you try to pick up everything and level everything at the same time, you're going to run into lots of inventory issues.

Start with provisioning. Level that skill up quickly at low levels. Once you've reached 50, which shouldn't take very long, stop picking up ingredients you don't need. Keep track of which items you need for your current food and only worry about keeping those. Maybe learn the rare ones and save those too, even if just to sell them later.

Alchemy does take longer than provisioning, but once you've learned the traits of each reagent, you don't need to pickup and keep them all anymore. You can figure out which 3 you need for your potions and then collect only those.

Enchanting is a tough one, but only if you're like me and want to keep a collection of runes in storage for a rainy day. If I had issues with space I would simply turn every runes I get into a glyph on an alt, or trade glyphs with another person. If the goal is to get level 50 enchanting, and not to collect runes, there shouldn't be much issue with inventory space.

For wood, cloth, and metal working it's really simple, just deconstruct everything and sell most of it to either players or vendor it. It's worth keeping a stack of the trait stones in your bank, racial material too, but that can also be bought from NPCs, so not needed. Obviously keep the upgrade material, but that's only about 9 slots.

What does that even leave? Some trophies, rare stuff like kuta runes, pets, soul gems, maybe some unique weapons.

There isn't all that much you actually need to keep in order to level up your crafting skills. I find it's just the urge to keep everything that makes inventory unmanageable. If someone wants to become a master craftsman in every skill, the inventory space is going to suck, but if you level them up gradually over time, without saving every material associated with every craft, you'll do fine. It's not like Jute is ever going out of season, it'll still be growing there if you ever need it.

[...]I gave up alchemy because it was too much. I am doing cloth/leather, provisioning and enchanting. I am probably going to have to give up enchanting if it keeps on like it is.

[...]

I say limit the account to 2 crafts, let you pay gold to gain more (alot of gold) or to switch out, give crafting its own shared bank tabs, make added bank tabs continue to cost alot of gold and limit the amount of space per purchase and keep them shared.

This would give the room needed for all these things those of us that have said we have trouble, it keeps crafting limited which is obviously what they want, doesn't make the banks huge and still makes players work (ie gain he gold) to buy the added spots or they can even be tied to levels.[...]

I'm curious why alchemy is the one you decided to get rid of for space. That is one of the easiest to deal with inventory-wise. Keep one stack of water for the highest level you can craft and use the alchemy ingredients as you get them. Sell whichever potions you don't use. If you need inventory space, the first thing that should go is enchanting materials. That **** is brutal on space.

As for your suggestions towards inventory and crafting, they are good suggestions but they really just trade out one type of inconvenience for another. Instead of being able to choose whatever you want to work on at any given time, you would be forced to wait levels or spend money to gain the ability to craft. If people are going to be inconvenienced either way, it would really just be better to play the game as they already made it.

As crafting materials is probably the bulk of most people's banks, I'm not sure adding a whole other tab just for crafting materials is really viable for limiting crafting. And if those tabs need to be bought anyway, it is basically the same as just buying more bank space (which we already can).

Blackwidow · June 2014

badmojo wrote: »

Yeah, I do, can you please open up that mind of yours and put your thoughts into words?

What do you think I mean? Seriously?

You have 4 mules. What could be wrong with this picture? You think having 4 mule bank characters is a perfectly valid way a MMO bank should work?

You have your own personal bank with 500 slots along with your 4 mules and are telling other players that 240 bank slots are more than enough for them.

You act like a banking guru and tell them they should not be granted any more space, because if they can't handle 240 bank space they could not handle any bank space unless it was unlimited. You don't even see this as a flat out insult.

You have no problem with a broken system that you have taken advantage of and tell others the system is just fine, suck it up, you are not responsible, you are playing wrong.

You have no clue why a player would keep multiple levels of materials, even though you claim to have a wide variety of different level of characters. How can you be this clueless unless this is on purpose?

You claim you love to play a banking mini game, but you have 500 more bank space than the average player, and you still have to use 4 mules, so even that is disingenuous.

Does that clear it up for you?

One last point, you would not ask for less bank space if we started with twice the bank space. You just want to argue just to argue. If you say otherwise, I call B.S.

I will not reply to you anymore. I know you will just try to back peddle most of what you said, so let me just say in advance, nice try, but I'm not buying it.

Have a nice day.

badmojo wrote: »

Hell, if you really got aggressive about it, you could find 4 friends and all share 5 guild banks for 2500 slots. You aren't locked to your 240 +110, even if you do ignore the advantages of alts.

Icing on the cake.

"why can't you guys just take advantage of the guild bank system like I did?"

Evergnar · June 2014

If they would just change how the shared bank space works with multiple toons it would be different story.

Even with just one character the current prices for bank space is not balanced well. At early levels they are punishing and characters are trying to save up to buy a horse as well.

Any change that could be made to the current system would be a positive and would allow players to focus on the game itself.

Neutronium_Dragon · June 2014

"Unmanageable" inventory/bank - as I see it, the number of slots isn't so much the issue as the Skyrimesque "pages and pages of scrolling through lists" implementation. This would be less painful if there were more categories and better ways of sorting within them (group by profession type, by armor type, etc), but what it really needs is a grid-slot system or really *anything* that lets the player see and manage their entire inventory/bank from a single (non-scrolling) screen.

babylon · June 2014

badmojo wrote: »

Also, how can you even complain about this if you haven't upgraded your bank and bag to the maximum? Wouldn't that be like some level 20 complaining about VR content?

The cost of upgrades is another part of the problem. That, and the fact that not only are upgrade costs prohibitively expensive, but they only give a miserly 10 slots per upgrade.

Mescalamba · June 2014

I think this bank "issue" comes to that certain schizophrenic way of dealing with things.

Account bound guilds, which mostly are just replacement for AH (my lengthier opinion on that forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/103777/issue-with-guilds-includes-solutions).

Shared bank is one of main issues. It does make sense to certain degree, but regular way (mail what you want to your alt) is rather simpler. Plus if bank wasnt shared, it would be actually BIGGER gold sink than it is.

Despite lots of things is account based and shared, and if you pre-ordered (or play Imperial) you can play on any side of conflict, you actually cant play with your guildmates, if they are not on same side.

Yet, you will go in VR thru enemy side.

And you dont have shared Achievements (character based, not account).

Im sure this game is pretty good in encouraging some type of schizophrenia, cause nobody sane could invent this. If it was my choice, I would simply scrap it and used what I described in my solution and went "mostly normal MMO way". Cause despite I like quite original and innovative approach that ESO has in many things, I dont like it at places, where its original just for sake of being original and makes only issues which wouldnt be there, if something thats proven to work was applied.

In certain aspects ESO feels like putting your left arm under your right leg and trying to scratch your head with that left arm in same time.

Arora · June 2014

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CAPABLE OF MASTERING ALL CRAFTING CLASSES. ......
In most mmo's you pick one or two crafting fields and master them if you do this you wont have a massive amount of crafting materials. Get a Guild Bank with a few trusted friends and keep others there.

shiva7663 · June 2014

Arora wrote: »

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CAPABLE OF MASTERING ALL CRAFTING CLASSES.

I suppose that would be true if it weren't for the fact that you are wrong.

Allyah · June 2014

babylon wrote: »

badmojo wrote: »

Also, how can you even complain about this if you haven't upgraded your bank and bag to the maximum? Wouldn't that be like some level 20 complaining about VR content?

The cost of upgrades is another part of the problem. That, and the fact that not only are upgrade costs prohibitively expensive, but they only give a miserly 10 slots per upgrade.

Gold sinks are very important in this game. It might be hard to imagine but they have balanced the amount it costs (considering all gold sinks) quite well. Not perfect, of course, but no MMO ever will be when it comes to things like that. They aren't so expensive that you can't upgrade them every few levels and I'd certainly prefer paying less for 10 slots per upgrade than paying a larger chunk for more slots.

shiva7663 wrote: »

Arora wrote: »

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CAPABLE OF MASTERING ALL CRAFTING CLASSES.

I suppose that would be true if it weren't for the fact that you are wrong.

Yes. But add the word 'quickly' to the end of that sentence and it becomes true... or, at the very least, possibly true.

khele23eb17_ESO · June 2014

Reduce item bloat. Add a crafting mats tab and a trophy tab in the bank. Done.

Bahz · June 2014

It takes only 30 min to invite random newbs into a new guild to get access to 500 slots. I enjoy the game much more with a large inv. most news also don't know how to leave the guild ;-)

phtony06b14_ESO · June 2014

Meanwhile SWTOR still doesn't have shared account storage (supposed to be added this summer), nor does WoW (last I played unless you created a solo guild). So at least ESO has that. Guild Wars is the only game I've seen to get it right.

But the fact that there are so many items in game that you want to keep: mats for crafting, items for researching, potions/food for alts, gear/gear sets for alts, unique disguises/costumes, different armor/weapon sets for different builds, the boatload of treasure maps we got for pre-order, pets, unique quest rewards, and so on.

The point needs to be made that for some people, crafting/hoarding is how some people want to play their MMO. Their $15 spends like the rest of us.

Viable solutions:
1.Personal banks.
2.Consolidation. (I looked in my bag earlier & had 10 different level potions from level 40-VR2). Why?
3.Personal housing with storage chests ala Skyrim.
4.Change the guild bank requirement so people can have one of their guilds be their personal bank instead of requiring 10ish+ people to be in the guild.
5. Increase bag/bank size.
6. Install bank slots for mats that don't count against the bank total (ala Guild Wars).

Those just off the top of my head. It can't be that hard to come up with some solution to an obvious problem.

kassandratheclericb14_ESO · June 2014

Allyah wrote: »

kassandratheclericb14_ESO wrote: »

badmojo wrote: »

kassandratheclericb14_ESO wrote: »

I just fail to see how we are supposed to play "how we like" and be limited to crafting just one craft on one character.

You're not limited to just one craft per character. But, when you try to pick up everything and level everything at the same time, you're going to run into lots of inventory issues.

Start with provisioning. Level that skill up quickly at low levels. Once you've reached 50, which shouldn't take very long, stop picking up ingredients you don't need. Keep track of which items you need for your current food and only worry about keeping those. Maybe learn the rare ones and save those too, even if just to sell them later.

Alchemy does take longer than provisioning, but once you've learned the traits of each reagent, you don't need to pickup and keep them all anymore. You can figure out which 3 you need for your potions and then collect only those.

Enchanting is a tough one, but only if you're like me and want to keep a collection of runes in storage for a rainy day. If I had issues with space I would simply turn every runes I get into a glyph on an alt, or trade glyphs with another person. If the goal is to get level 50 enchanting, and not to collect runes, there shouldn't be much issue with inventory space.

For wood, cloth, and metal working it's really simple, just deconstruct everything and sell most of it to either players or vendor it. It's worth keeping a stack of the trait stones in your bank, racial material too, but that can also be bought from NPCs, so not needed. Obviously keep the upgrade material, but that's only about 9 slots.

What does that even leave? Some trophies, rare stuff like kuta runes, pets, soul gems, maybe some unique weapons.

There isn't all that much you actually need to keep in order to level up your crafting skills. I find it's just the urge to keep everything that makes inventory unmanageable. If someone wants to become a master craftsman in every skill, the inventory space is going to suck, but if you level them up gradually over time, without saving every material associated with every craft, you'll do fine. It's not like Jute is ever going out of season, it'll still be growing there if you ever need it.

[...]I gave up alchemy because it was too much. I am doing cloth/leather, provisioning and enchanting. I am probably going to have to give up enchanting if it keeps on like it is.

[...]

I say limit the account to 2 crafts, let you pay gold to gain more (alot of gold) or to switch out, give crafting its own shared bank tabs, make added bank tabs continue to cost alot of gold and limit the amount of space per purchase and keep them shared.

This would give the room needed for all these things those of us that have said we have trouble, it keeps crafting limited which is obviously what they want, doesn't make the banks huge and still makes players work (ie gain he gold) to buy the added spots or they can even be tied to levels.[...]

I'm curious why alchemy is the one you decided to get rid of for space. That is one of the easiest to deal with inventory-wise. Keep one stack of water for the highest level you can craft and use the alchemy ingredients as you get them. Sell whichever potions you don't use. If you need inventory space, the first thing that should go is enchanting materials. That **** is brutal on space.

As for your suggestions towards inventory and crafting, they are good suggestions but they really just trade out one type of inconvenience for another. Instead of being able to choose whatever you want to work on at any given time, you would be forced to wait levels or spend money to gain the ability to craft. If people are going to be inconvenienced either way, it would really just be better to play the game as they already made it.

As crafting materials is probably the bulk of most people's banks, I'm not sure adding a whole other tab just for crafting materials is really viable for limiting crafting. And if those tabs need to be bought anyway, it is basically the same as just buying more bank space (which we already can).

I gave up alchemy because my highest level character was the crafter and I wanted to make potions to be a useful thing in the game...and make them for all my characters to use (I don't want to craft to sell or whatever, I want to use it) and as each character is lower than the other then I had to keep a large range of materials to craft for all of them. If I was only doing alchemy for the one character it would most likely be fine. The same goes for the cooking...to be useful to all my characters it involves keeping a range of things.

And I understand what you mean about trading one inconvenience for another. It is 1) more of just admitting that you can not, always, play like you want and 2) the crafting items in its own tab (even when limited to the number of crafts you can do) would open up space so you wouldn't have to worry about the costumes you wish to keep or trophies or the armor you are going to break down or give to another leveling character.

If they limit of how many crafts you can do then it means they get the result they want to begin, limiting the crafting. When they use the inventory system to limit the number of crafts you can do it can and sometimes does, limit your playstyle much more because inventory issues can bleed over to other aspects of the game, not just the limit of crafting. This limiting factor can be solved by some folks in different ways but just as many the current system will be problematic in my opinion.

Thanks for a nice post and questions BTW. I appreciate it.

Taiminator · June 2014

I agree that the available inventory and bank space in this game does not match the vast range of items needed to be farmed for crafting, researching and keeping different sets of items for different situations. One shouldnt be forced to make mules and keep logging in and out different characters that even have to share the same bank space. Please change this.

ozgod22_eso · June 2014

A comment I keep seeing in defence of the current system is: "you can't level all professions at the same time". I don't know about everyone else but I'm definitely not trying to level all professions at the same time - I'm actually trying to level my characters before levelling my crafts. What I AM doing though is levelling my characters on a more or less concurrent basis because I'm not quite sure which toon I'm going to main and I want to see how they all play. All my professions are essentially levelling purely via deconstructing items I find, I'm not actually using the mats I find to levle them. I try to use up raw materials I gather (ores, cloths, etc) when I run short of inventory space by making items that I then send to an alt to decon but even if you make 100 items the alt isn't going to level up its crafting skill that much from deconning those items.

The reason I like keeping things I find (especially provisioning and enchanting mats) is because it can be a huge annoyance to have to re-find mats you had, but couldn't use because you didn't have the time or skill points on alts to level those particular crafts, and so had to sell/vendor the items. Things like salt, canis root, pepper...they're not exactly easy to find. Going back and re-farming items you had but had to dispose of because you had no space is very tedious and boring and not fun.

End of day this system is just not designed to cater for the inventory requirements of multiple alts being levelled at the same time that find materials as they level up. It works fine if you are levelling one character and have 7 alts to act as storage. But not when you have 4 active characters whose bag space cannot be used for storage.

As I mentioned before you have a shared bank with 60 slots. If you had one character you were levelling, you basically have 60 bag slots + 60 bank slots = 120 slots, plus 420 bag slots from those alts for a total of 560 slots. Once you decide you want to level a nightblade along with your sorcerer for variety and to experience that class, your available bag space shrinks to 280 slots per character. If you decide to level a third alt at the same time then your available inventory further drops to 140 slots per character. If you have four, which allows you to experience all classes around the same time, you will have 105 slots per character. Assuming you use four bank mules to store inventory along with the bank, which is the workaround. If you choose to not use that workaround (I can't imagine it was intended design to use character slots for bank mules) you really have your 60 bank slots divided by 4 which is 15 slots per active character.

I'm convinced they didn't intend for players to level multiple characters at the same time. Why would players want to do this? I would suggest because a) they want to check out the different classes ESO has to offer; and b) they haven't figured out their main character yet and want to do so before they level their sorcerer to 50 then realise they wanted to play a dragonknight instead.

ozgod22_eso · June 2014

badmojo wrote: »

Yeah, I do, can you please open up that mind of yours and put your thoughts into words? I can't read your mind, I can't tell what you're thinking, when you say stuff like "The fact that you even have to ask means you don't know what you are talking about on this subject." it does nothing to help you explain what you're saying.

I recognized that inventory management would play a big part in this game when I played the beta, so before the game was released I took the time and effort of figuring out which characters would do which jobs, to minimize the inventory issues. After the game shipped I realized the guild bank had huge potential for improving any inventory issues I might face down the line, so I promptly got on to of the issue and got 10 people into my guild.

But, for some reason you think I'm special and the steps I took to eliminate the problem of inventory are somehow unique to me and me alone. You imply that my usage of multiple characters and a guild bank are strikes against me, against my opinion on this subject.

I feel the complete opposite, I feel like people who haven't taken an aggressive stance on tackling their inventory have no grounds to complain about it. You've ignored the tools at your disposal, you've worked yourself into a difficult position, you refuse to change your playstyle or inventory strategy, but you want the game to change around you and your playstyle.

Please explain to me why my usage of 4 crafting characters(and a guild bank) discredits my opinions on the inventory space issue. PLEASE be specific and don't just throw out some general statements of dismissal. Please explain why these tools, offered to everyone, should be ignored when talking about inventory space.

I don't think your finding workarounds that a lot of us are also using discredits your opinion at all. You did what the rest of us have done - find a solution that gets around the inventory limitations in the game. There are already addons like Bank Manager available from www.esoui.com that make it easier to transfer items from active toon-to-bank-to-mule than doing it manully. But you could flip this around - why be so beholden to the game's current design when you yourself have found workarounds, such as using legitimate character slots for storage, creating guilds and utilising what was designed as a shared space for storage of the guild master's personal items, just to name a few initiatives players have come up with (or should I say resurrected from past MMOs before design changes alleviated inventory issues).

Should we have to be finding these workarounds to get around the limitations of the game's design? Wouldn't it be easier to just change the design rather than continue to find a workaround for it?

This is what I'm confused about. I apologise if I paraphrased your viewpoint incorrectly, but what I'm hearing you say is that "yes there are inventory issues if you choose to hoard items, and it's understandable why some players choose to hoard items, but there are workarounds to get around the game design so just use the workarounds rather than change the design".

dragnier · June 2014

Guild Wars 1/2 did a great job of fixing the bank space issue. They made crafting ingredients stack to a certain amount and have their own storage tab in the bank with one slot for each ingredient which held one full stack.

Once that was full, you could still store them as stacks in the normal bank slots too, but that was at your own choice.

I think the stacks for those in GW1 were 250 or something like that instead of the 100 we have here though.

I have to admit, however, that if I had the ability to store up to one full stack of any crafting ingredient before that began to impede on my normal bank space, I wouldn't have purchased any bank expansions yet most likely.

nightside187b16_ESO · June 2014

Yea this is about to make me leave the game i dont want to spend 1 hour each time im playing sorting my stuff .

Vendersleigh · June 2014

ozgod22_eso wrote: »

End of day this system is just not designed to cater for the inventory requirements of multiple alts being levelled at the same time that find materials as they level up. It works fine if you are levelling one character and have 7 alts to act as storage. But not when you have 4 active characters whose bag space cannot be used for storage.

As I mentioned before you have a shared bank with 60 slots. If you had one character you were levelling, you basically have 60 bag slots + 60 bank slots = 120 slots, plus 420 bag slots from those alts for a total of 560 slots. Once you decide you want to level a nightblade along with your sorcerer for variety and to experience that class, your available bag space shrinks to 280 slots per character. If you decide to level a third alt at the same time then your available inventory further drops to 140 slots per character. If you have four, which allows you to experience all classes around the same time, you will have 105 slots per character. Assuming you use four bank mules to store inventory along with the bank, which is the workaround. If you choose to not use that workaround (I can't imagine it was intended design to use character slots for bank mules) you really have your 60 bank slots divided by 4 which is 15 slots per active character.

I'm convinced they didn't intend for players to level multiple characters at the same time. Why would players want to do this? I would suggest because a) they want to check out the different classes ESO has to offer; and b) they haven't figured out their main character yet and want to do so before they level their sorcerer to 50 then realise they wanted to play a dragonknight instead.

I am levelling 7 characters at once and find it works fine for me, even though 6 of them are crafters.

badmojo · June 2014

ozgod22_eso wrote: »

Should we have to be finding these workarounds to get around the limitations of the game's design? Wouldn't it be easier to just change the design rather than continue to find a workaround for it?

This is what I'm confused about. I apologise if I paraphrased your viewpoint incorrectly, but what I'm hearing you say is that "yes there are inventory issues if you choose to hoard items, and it's understandable why some players choose to hoard items, but there are workarounds to get around the game design so just use the workarounds rather than change the design".

I think these aren't so much as workarounds, but rather game design decisions that ZOS consciously made when they designed the inventory system. I don't think it was ignorance that led them to create a system with such small bank space to start. I think their intentions were always to have us play/use multiple characters and also to come together to form guilds to access additional storage. Sure, they might not have wanted everyone to just invite 10 players and use their guild bank as their own personal storage. But, I think they knew it was a good possibility that people would do that, and they took it into consideration during the games design.

In my opinion, a game is only broken and needs fixing when nobody can make it work. If there is any "workaround" to the problem, then it's not a problem, it's just a difficulty. I personally love difficulty in my games, especially games like this that require hundreds of hours to really enjoy.