Increase Inventory or Change Something? ITEM CREEP

Our non-equipment items have grown 264% since the game's launch, but our inventory has grown zero%.

Item Creep.

As a developer and IT person, we have something called "requirement creep" (scope creep), meaning that over time a software project will gather more and more requirements if the original scope was not well defined. I think that same thing is happening with PoE. We have league after league that adds new content, new mechanics, and of course, new items, which mostly make their way into the main game, which take more inventory, which of course makes you more money for stash purchases (which is fine), but also takes more inventory.

We've had the same inventory, same 6 portals to maps, same original 4 stash tabs, but growing MTX stashes and growing item count in the game. And of course nearly-unlimited accounts with 24 character slots each, but that sort of non-MTX inventory management would waste all of our time as players.

Note: I refer to "items" here as non-equipment, non-flask, non-jewel items, which includes orbs, fragments, div cards, maps, and gems. These are all extra items we pick up, generate, use, save, and/or sell. Also, I tried to be accurate with numbers, but it's human to err, so please mention any mistakes.

Stash Tabs Expansion: 4 new tabs (all MTX): currency, div, essence, quad

Items at launch: 278 (26 base currency + 4 fragments + 92 maps + 156 gems)

Items now: 735 (and that does NOT include the 215 sealed prophecies, nor the 34 quest items)

Number of currency items increased (and has grown significantly since Awakening!)...



There's a reason those who play frequently in non-SSF leagues don't pick up 99% of the crap that drops. We've accepted the fact we don't pick up all of that crap, since it's just not productive to do so. Sure, we grab some of that crap early in levels, but rather quickly we're finding ourselves just picking up the most valuable items and ignoring the rest. Veterans of PoE who've played double my time here can certainly attest to that, and most likely pick up exponentially less than I do.

I'm posting this since a user's question came up in the recent developer Q&A about adding a "pouch" to the inventory to pick up and store currency. While that's a small fraction of what we collect (ie: maps, fragments, div cards, etc.), it would help mitigate this item creep. That's one option.

As PoE is right now, I'm still perfectly happy playing. But inventory management is becoming more and more a "beast of burden".

Possible solutions?...

1.) Increase inventory: add more slots, perhaps a row for currency at the top/bottom, or just another tab for currency like a "pouch", or something?

2.) Compress/reduce items. Do we really need to keep map fragments around? Why not just drop the whole map or whole key? Adjust drop rate, or track progression and then drop final item when progression reached? It would made trade easier for sure. Same with quest items. While it's cool to see the quest item on the ground, and pick it up, we really don't need to have it take up space in our inventory: it serves no purpose other than to annoy the player. The most ridiculous of these are the disproportional amount of quest items in Act 3. But my biggest complaint?: gems. I honestly don't know how to solve the 174 gem crisis, but for inventories and stashes everywhere, this is a pain.

3.) Stash-all-the-time: no more clicking on a stash in-game, just let us pull up our stash all the time (perhaps Shift-I, Ctrl-I, or a new default keybinding?). Yeah, I know, radical idea. But imagine: no need to take up inventory space by carrying specific skill gem layouts and gear for specific situations. No need to worry about selectively picking up items for that single-portal zana quest, atziri map run, or even the lab. And this is SURE to make your MTX sales skyrocket, when more people buy more stash tabs. It will even sell more of those quad tabs which are total fail for me since I can't upgrade to them from other tabs.

Right now some people are playing Path of Trading and/or Path of Inventory Management. Let's at least help reduce or remove one of those so that we can play more Path of Exile again.

Thoughts? Think my ideas suck? Think they're genius? I'd love to hear it all, especially alternatives.

EDIT 4/12/2017: Added Essences

I think you make some very valid points and really like the way you explained this scenario, hopefully some devs see this.

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I was wondering if there has been any consideration of a form of a side pouch for dedicated currency pickup, as inventory slots are valuable and I usually can't afford to carry all the currency that would otherwise enhance my experience of maps and such without sacrificing that space I would otherwise need.

This is a cool idea that the community occasionally suggests. I haven't talked to the team about it recently but it sounds like the kind of thing that would be considered for a later expansion.

From the 4'th part of the Dev Q&A, definitely caught my attention.
Would indeed be sweet if got some inventory space, a secondary, smaller one, dedicated to currency seem's like an awesome idea.

But probably not for some time :/

I think a good example of why this is needed is how the Currency stash is basically required now for QOL.
When the game first came out, there was a smaller number of currency items, and less need to save things to fuse them (Like tasisman necklaces and essences). Now? Crap man, if you don't have a currency tab, you're kind of fucked.

Personally, I'd integrate currency tabs INTO the exile (so its a seperate pouch that stuff automatically goes into seperate from your inventory and you keep on you at all times, like How Gold is kept seperate from inventory in other ARPGS).

also, it'd be neat if they added in a new currency called "Dust of diffusion" or something like that that you could Click to open up a vendor screen while out in the wild to sell stuff as you go-- make it be fairly rare but Unsellable to vendors, so that its ONLY use is for being able to sell in the field on occasion, like when you're in a Labrynth or map.





GGG could also make insane amounts of Real life money selling 1-2 Square (as in, ring size) inventory extensions (Up to a max of a full 1 square length extra "layer" so you had 6 deep inventories).

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pikez wrote:

I think you make some very valid points and really like the way you explained this scenario, hopefully some devs see this.

Thanks, yeah I hope they do. Something needs to change with item creep.

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Snowflakesz wrote:

Would indeed be sweet if got some inventory space, a secondary, smaller one, dedicated to currency seem's like an awesome idea.

But probably not for some time :/

Yeah, I think we missed our pleading time frame for 3.0, but there's always 3.1, 3.2, etc.

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aleksandor wrote:

Personally, I'd integrate currency tabs INTO the exile (so its a seperate pouch that stuff automatically goes into seperate from your inventory and you keep on you at all times, like How Gold is kept seperate from inventory in other ARPGS).

That's a great idea. Why not just do that? Make the currency tab part of the character instead of the stash.

I can just say this game is becoming to frustrating regarding inventory menagment.
Inaf to say its besicly unplayable with out curency stash tab, well the level of unconfort is just absurd. Regardin other miscelenious, its besicly missing game conted becouse of insuficient inventory space, att best.
Lets just say this days having 10 exalts in chaos is abouth 10x10 stash space. Wen it come to missing space for actual content that line whas long crosed and this stones now make it so obvious its probably so demotivating for new players becouse its just so in your face.

Maybe if it was a necessity to pick up all these items I could see justifying increased inventory. Manage your inventory better and stop picking up every item you don't need.

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munkytos wrote:

Maybe if it was a necessity to pick up all these items I could see justifying increased inventory. Manage your inventory better and stop picking up every item you don't need.

It's easy to tell when someone doesn't read a post, but just responds to the thread title, because obviously you missed this...

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cipher_nemo wrote:

There's a reason those who play frequently in non-SSF leagues don't pick up 99% of the crap that drops. We've accepted the fact we don't pick up all of that crap, since it's just not productive to do so. Sure, we grab some of that crap early in levels, but rather quickly we're finding ourselves just picking up the most valuable items and ignoring the rest. Veterans of PoE who've played double my time here can certainly attest to that, and most likely pick up exponentially less than I do.

Did you count essences?

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SudianX wrote:

Did you count essences?

Doh! Good catch! :-) I'll update OP.