Inventory UI design/Premium Stash Tab criticism.

Premium stash tabs. Currently on sale for a dollar.

The ability to rename and recolor the tab is a minor convenience at best. If anyone has been playing for consecutive months, and puts forth any effort to organize multiple stash tabs into custom categories, you quickly become calibrated, and muscle memory takes you to where you need to go depending on what youre looking for. A colored tab barely assists in this process, because you know (or should) where you stash x item in which tab. A colored tab is hardly worth paying for.

Unfortunately Ive already purchased some. I truly do believe this is a great game developed by a group of individuals concerned with only making the finest experience possible, which is my motivation in offering this criticism. Though I know it likely wont be received well by devoted, albeit zealous supporters. I don't consider my supporting money a waste, despite the fact it was exclusively spent on stash tabs before the other shop purchases were available.

I do not believe User Interface convenience, (which indirectly leads to players overall enjoyment of the game), is something that should have a pricetag.

That being said, a feature I personally would pay for is a stash tab search.
I had a very neatly organized stash in closed beta. A stash for currency, each row devoted to a specific type. A stash for jewelry, organized by rings and necklaces, subdivided by base type. Individual stashes for 1-20 gear, and 1-20 weapons. And so on for gems, flasks, whatever. Straightforward enough, and yet it still took WAY too long to find what I needed.

For instance. Lets say I was going to kill Merveil on a new character. I need cold resist. I tab over to my rings stash tab, and the search begins. Sure, I have all my saphire rings neatly in a row. Each one has different stats to analyze, and thats not so bad in itself. Then I remember that one of my 20 or so rare coral rings has cold resists on it. So I have to mouse over all of those. Then I have a chain belt somewhere that has cold resist on it. I could have a belt only stash, but that doesnt seem practical. Is it in the 20s gear, 30s gear? So before you know it, Ive spent 20 minutes gearing up for a 5 minute fight. This is just one example, it could be applied to any stat, or combination of stats that you could need. Naming a stash tab and giving it a color does nothing at all in helping you find your own gear.

Solution: Stash Search field. Type in a stat, word, level requirement, whatever, and it highlights all the tabs that contain items that meet your criteria, and then highlights the borders of the items themselves that contain the criteria.

Again, this really should be implemented for free, as its cruel to put a pricetag on intentionally tedious design versus convenience. But I'd pay for it.

Additional suggestions:

- Item graphic icon borders with corresponding white/magic/rare/unique colors on items as they appear in inventory/stash. Simple to execute and aids in organization.

- Itemlevel should be somewhere on the item description mouseover, rather than needing a command to be entered.



Last edited by Craptain on Jan 26, 2013, 1:08:28 PM
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I'm definitely not against easier stash navigation. At least I can't think of a good reason to be. Maybe someone else will though. :P

-devoted, albeit poor supporter

They said I was mad! They said it couldn't be done! But now who's mad?!?!
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Guadagno wrote:
I'm definitely not against easier stash navigation. At least I can't think of a good reason to be. Maybe someone else will though. :P

-devoted, albeit poor supporter



There really isn't a reason to make a non-skill based aspect of the game (i.e. user interface) much easier and more accessible to everyone.
bump
Would like to hear more feedback on this.
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Craptain wrote:
A colored tab is hardly worth paying for.

That's why they call them "cosmetics". You don't really need colored tabs as they are not extremely helpful, but they sure look very nice.

I think a search function should be free, because such functionality doesn't fall into "cosmetics" anymore.

"
- Itemlevel should be somewhere on the item description mouseover, rather than needing a command to be entered.

Absolutely agree.
When night falls
She cloaks the world
In impenetrable darkness
Last edited by morbo on Jan 29, 2013, 1:07:51 PM
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morbo wrote:
That's why they call them "cosmetics". You don't really need colored tabs as they are not extremely helpful, but they sure look very nice.

I think a search function should be free, because such functionality doesn't fall into "cosmetics" anymore.


Fair enough, but its clear the main intended purpose of them is to aid in organization, despite being labeled as a cosmetic purchase.
Last edited by Craptain on Feb 6, 2013, 10:32:03 AM
Since I'm not playing hardcore, and don't participate in races I don't really need to find my stuff that fast, but a search function would be really nice.


I imagine it like this:
- You enter one or more search terms
- The attributes/names/types of the items are searched for these words
- The stash tabs that don't contain any items in question are greyed out
- The stash tabs that do contain items in question are coloured in their respective colour
- The items in question are coloured normal, the other items are greyed out
[Optional]
- Stash tabs that don't contain any items in question are hidden until the search terms are removed or the stash window was closed once.
EDIT:
To be able to provide a level for the search would also be nice, but actually it's not really neccessary imo. I could just search for all items.


Since I have 10 premium stash tabs anyways I don't really care if this is free, I just don't want to buy any additional stuff to have it XD.
Last edited by grasmann on Feb 6, 2013, 12:29:28 PM
I'd be happy to pay for a stash search feature.
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dangerbar wrote:
I'd be happy to pay for a stash search feature.


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