Inventory should STAY in its slot.

[Duskslayer]

Greeting fellow denizens.

I think the time has come for devs to fix this nonsensical method of tossing everything in the first available slot in the inventory array there is - and scrambling presorted items in random slots. This is worse than Programming 101 - ie utter sloppy-hack-job programming.

I would like my inventory to stay where it was put. I'm sure we all detest trying to locate all items we've just looted - which have conveniently been scrambled in with all other pre-sorted items we had. Loot items should be added via (perhaps) an inversed array atleast, so they are thrown in the LAST empty slot, and work their way backwards.

This has gone on far enough - and I am not happy. Absolute unprofessionalism.

Please sign this if you agree your inventory should be sorted nicely.

Thanks.

[ballsz]

I've always thought that too. It's just plain bad programming, and it is something that everyone uses so it deserves more attention than it's getting. Its frustrating going through the Inventory, even more so than the AH.

[Jay203]

1) arrange your inventory
2) lock them

[Autolycus]

I also completely agree. This has irrated me since I started. +rep for taking the time to post about it.


1) arrange your inventory
2) lock them

I do arrange and lock my items, but it doesn't solve the problem described in the OP.

[Tobril]

1) arrange your inventory
2) lock them

If you know how to keep weapon sets from migrating when switching back and forth please enlighten the rest of us.

[DoctorWhofan]

Locking doesn't keep the slot forthat item.

I would love it fixed so /signed.

Not sure if they could. I haven't played a game where it was locked.

[jcTharin]

1) arrange your inventory
2) lock them

i did not know that if you lock something it would go back to its previous spot after you used it.

[sacredtheory]

/Signed
100 times /signed

[Autolycus]

i did not know that if you lock something it would go back to its previous spot after you used it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't.

[twigzz]

/signed

This would make life sooo much more organized! :D

[MrCow]

i did not know that if you lock something it would go back to its previous spot after you used it.

It doesn't go back to its previous spot. What occurs is that when you swap a single item for a single item (like switching belts or two-handed swords) your equipped item will go to whatever slot the selected item existed at.

Video demonstration (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3vLB_R1Z8Y)

This means if you stash all of your accessories, armor, clothing, and jewelry equipment in an area of your inventory it will stay in that area. The inventory generally only becomes a mess when you are doing many-item for a single item swaps (two weapon fighting to a single weapon) or many-item for many-item swaps (two weapon fighting for another two weapon fighting set).


Please sign this if you agree your inventory should be sorted nicely.

Just to interject, petitions and other things where /sign is used within these forums have shown to be historically inadequate at getting results.

[sacredguyver]

When I switch equipment I put on my hotbar, they switch in the exact same spot, no matter where they are in my bags (and all my locked equipment is kept in the very last one, with new loot going in the first). The only time this doesn't happen is when I use two weapons in the "Weapon Set" boxes under the normal inventory. When I click on one of those, and then switch back to my previous item, whatever was in the set is placed in the first available slot of the first available bag.

Of course, I keep a very, very, close eye on where everything is located in my inventory, so I don't see this as much of a problem. Especially since in every other game I've played, newly acquired items always show up in the first slot they'll fit in, requiring me to sort them out myself.

[Jendrak]

Personally I don't see what the big deal is for several reasons.

1. Freshly looted items have a green "glow" around the item so they arent too hard to find.
2. Weapon sets (if you are useing the pre-set box's) are pulled from anywhere in the inventory so whats the point of organizing them.
3. Even if you have 12 different goggles (for example) you proably have them all hot bared anyway so what does it matter where they end up.
4. For collectible's and other items that are in bag's most are (or should be IMO) set on auto-gather anyway.
5. with 20 hotbars anything you need access to is already a click away so why bother.

My point is that at best this is something minor fluff and shouldn't be high on the priority list. If they have some extra time and nothing better to do then fine but if not it make sno difference to me either way.

/not signed

[Kromize]

The DEV's apparently like to skimp on the coding for the game. "Want an inventory? Sure, just make list, and whenever you put an item in, search from the front for an open slot, perfect!"

[iBrute]

I haven't played a game where it was locked.

Must not of played WoW. Nice.

I agree too. It is KINDA annoying but not much of a deal since haphazard nonsense is more easily interpreted by a scatter brained individual ;). It would be nice if they did fix but, just wondering how you can lock a particular item to a slot. Hadn't seen that option

[finalf18]

Just wanted to point out that this request would be very hard for the game developers to implement and would have some possible side effects:

1) To be able to move an item back to its original slot that slot must first be empty.
2) For that slot to be empty then each worn item would have to be "locked" onto a particular slot and no item could be placed in it while that item was worn. (The other option being to allow items to be placed in those "locked" slots and then moving them to a free slot when the "locked" item was switched out. But this would be an issue as an empty wepon set can be used that de-equips up to two items that could force two other items it a full inventory into the overflow area).
3) The effect of keeping these slots "locked" is that there would be up to 15 empty "locked" slots for each of the items that is worn. (Now while this might be helpful to keep things organized, I for one would not want to loose 15 slots for this feature)
4) While I too have had some issues with reorganization happening, especialy on my sceptor swaping mage, I would hope that the engine devs have better things to do then trying to figure this out at this time (ie. fixing any of the other numerous issues that are much more annoying or adding more interesting features such as auction house searching)

But that's just my $.02.

[donfilibuster]

I can see the point that the bags are just bags and you can use the weapon sets and hotbars yet a little tidy up feature or two won't harm.
However by the time you go to 'vendoring' the green boxes aren't there anymore and it's all jumbled so you have to go through every item to see which ones go to pawn shop and which ones are keepers.

One idea is of course locking the slots.
If you lock all your worn gear that'd be indeed 15 slots lost for no real reason but if you only lock weapons that's only 1-2 lost slots at a time put to good use.

Another idea is to have an auto-sort button where a single click group things by type like weapons, potions, wands, etc.
Perhaps this is easier to code than real sorting options or filters.

[BrinLondo]

/signed. I also lock my inventory. The only thing that doesn't seem to move around on me are spell components. Then again I could say if "locked and loaded" in a certain order.

[Bobthesponge]

Personally I don't see what the big deal is for several reasons.

1. Freshly looted items have a green "glow" around the item so they arent too hard to find.
2. Weapon sets (if you are useing the pre-set box's) are pulled from anywhere in the inventory so whats the point of organizing them.
3. Even if you have 12 different goggles (for example) you proably have them all hot bared anyway so what does it matter where they end up.
4. For collectible's and other items that are in bag's most are (or should be IMO) set on auto-gather anyway.
5. with 20 hotbars anything you need access to is already a click away so why bother.

My point is that at best this is something minor fluff and shouldn't be high on the priority list. If they have some extra time and nothing better to do then fine but if not it make sno difference to me either way.

/not signed

/signed

this is the big deal, per your arguments...

1. Freshly looted items have a green "glow" around the item so they arent (sic) too hard to find. true, but that doesn't last. in fact, if i remember it only applies to the last chest you looted, not everything you loot in the quest. i know i get a bunch of quest loot that doesn't have that lovely glow after, for example, a Shroud. the point is that vendor trash gets mixed up with your weapons and items. some of it is easy to pull out (handwraps if you're not a monk) but at first glance a +3 longsword can look much like a +4 longsword.

2. Weapon sets (if you are useing (sic) the pre-set box's (sic)) are pulled from anywhere in the inventory so whats (sic) the point of organizing them. (sic) i organise them so that i know exactly what i have and, by default, what i need. if i look at tab 2 to find all my dwarven axes for my fighter i expect them there. i don't want to have to rummage through my bag.

3. Even if you have 12 different goggles (for example) you proably have them all hot bared (sic) anyway so what does it matter where they end up. (sic) see above. it is organization and ease of locating that which you are looking for. if you want to check if you just pulled something that you can use or if it is vendor trash you don't want to look all over your backpack.

4. For collectible's (sic) and other items that are in bag's (sic) most are (or should be IMO) set on auto-gather anyway.correct. anything that goes in a bag doesn't enter into this discussion because auto gather makes it pointless.

5. with 20 hotbars anything you need access to is already a click away so why bother. (sic) now we're just repeating ourselves and you really missed the point of the OP's rant. nobody cares what is on their hotbar when they are rummaging through their inventory looking for things. this isn't about equipping when in the middle of a fight this is about things being put back where they came from rather than the closest place possible.

another point to bring up is that it's much easier to know how much backpack space you have left if it is organized. this is important when you are running quests like Tor where you can pick up a ton of junk and don't want to clean out your backpack constantly. (this is assuming you don't ignore the gold piles or that you don't let your backpack fill up and then just keep searching the piles until you get gold.) it is also important when you are Shroud crafting and you need to have backpack space free for the ingredients and a shard. yes, you can sell to the skelly but his prices are pretty low. and, of course, just in general adventuring your backpack can fill up without you noticing if you don't sell for a while.

it seems obvoius to me that you only play melee toons and that you never have UMD on any toon because you have overlooked what happens when you aren't swapping weapons but still are using weapon slots. i have a couple of casters and a bard that are constantly swapping out scrolls and wands with their weapons and by the end of a long quest i have to reoganize my entire backpack. it is a serious pain. is it more important than fixing lag? i don't think so, but i am a programmer myself and i can't see how keeping track of which backpack slot an item came from would be that difficult. maybe it is - i don't know the DDO code - but it should be looked at at least.

[krud]

Just wanted to point out that this request would be very hard for the game developers to implement and would have some possible side effects:

1) To be able to move an item back to its original slot that slot must first be empty.
2) For that slot to be empty then each worn item would have to be "locked" onto a particular slot and no item could be placed in it while that item was worn. (The other option being to allow items to be placed in those "locked" slots and then moving them to a free slot when the "locked" item was switched out. But this would be an issue as an empty wepon set can be used that de-equips up to two items that could force two other items it a full inventory into the overflow area).
3) The effect of keeping these slots "locked" is that there would be up to 15 empty "locked" slots for each of the items that is worn. (Now while this might be helpful to keep things organized, I for one would not want to loose 15 slots for this feature)
4) While I too have had some issues with reorganization happening, especialy on my sceptor swaping mage, I would hope that the engine devs have better things to do then trying to figure this out at this time (ie. fixing any of the other numerous issues that are much more annoying or adding more interesting features such as auction house searching)

But that's just my $.02.
^ This ^

not to mention what happens when you fill up on loot. What happens when all your inventory slots are filled? You can't switch weapons anymore?

[Cam_Neely]

+1

This totally messes with my OCD. Not what I wanna waste my time on when I have a chance to play.

[Xeraphim]

1) arrange your inventory
2) lock them

1) Check.

2) Does not work.


This has forcibly cured my OCD by sheer stress.

[arminius]

I have found that clustering stuff that never moves (i.e. is never actually equipped, like potions, gem/ingredient/collectable bags, and spell components) in one or two backpack bags makes it much, much easier to find everything else. I put that stuff in the 2nd and 3d bag. The 1st bag is mostly weapons etc, that switch in and out replacing each other, and everything new ends up in the 4th or 5th bag.

Sifting through only 2 bags isn't so bad.

[LordRavnos]

/signed

[osirisisis]

/signed

[Jay203]

well, i guess i just don't carry as much sets of weapons as the rest of ya then :D:D:D:D:D

usually when i swap 2 for 2 they tend to stay where i locked them when i swap them back

although if you swap from 1st set to second set, the ones form first set would take over the spot the second set currently occupies, and then if you swap to 3rd set, the second set would take over where the 3rd set used to occupy

the only way you can make it so they stay where they are is if the items don't get moved on to the equipped slot and stay in your inventory and continue to take up the same space while "equipped"

don't really see other way around that without a lot of dev time spent on it via planning, coding, and testing

[Duskslayer]

Just wanted to point out that this request would be very hard for the game developers to implement ...


Why are people so concerned with how "hard" something is for the poor down-trodden devs? This is a clear PROBLEM that needs to be solved - and that is the devs JOB (for which they get handsome salaries for).

This needs to be addressed. Many MMOs have very clean inventory locking and sorting setups. I can understand that at LAUNCH this was an acceptable method (and I am not talking about F2P launch here!) - it have been about half a DECADE since this sloppy inventory code has been around - it is high time we clean up the "mess" and make DDO the BEST of the BEST.

And to make it:
BEST. Game. Ever. ...we need to be able to point out the flaws - and Devs need to take interest in fixing them.

[SirAggravator]

I have found that clustering stuff that never moves (i.e. is never actually equipped, like potions, gem/ingredient/collectable bags, and spell components) in one or two backpack bags makes it much, much easier to find everything else. I put that stuff in the 2nd and 3d bag. The 1st bag is mostly weapons etc, that switch in and out replacing each other, and everything new ends up in the 4th or 5th bag.

Sifting through only 2 bags isn't so bad.
This is very similar to I do too and it works great. I make sure bags 1-3 are
filled with stuff that does not move around.
e.g. my clothes, my boots and my motorcyle here (generally bags 1-2)
and potions, spell comps etc (in bag 3).

This leaves bags 4+5 filled with weapons and anything new that comes in

Spending more time to play DDO and less on IMO (Inventory Management Online)

Using this method I also freed up some hotbar spaces
e.g. Pendant of time, haggle items, etc. as I know it's always in the first bag.

[Tapsimanxer]

id like to see items of the same category bundled together too. it would help if they did that automatically. being twf, then switching to s+b, then switching to scroll/wand. messes up my weapons. pairs i like to use are on the weapon sets, but sometimes i like to mix them up. having to look for a single rapier out of 7 pairs, almost all with icyburst is difficult.

/signed

[finalf18]

Why are people so concerned with how "hard" something is for the poor down-trodden devs? This is a clear PROBLEM that needs to be solved - and that is the devs JOB (for which they get handsome salaries for).


Geez ... if yo're going to quote someone and ask a question at least read the rest of the post to see if there is an answer. I case you missed it, see below for your answer.



4) While I too have had some issues with reorganization happening, especialy on my sceptor swaping mage, I would hope that the engine devs have better things to do then trying to figure this out at this time (ie. fixing any of the other numerous issues that are much more annoying or adding more interesting features such as auction house searching)

But that's just my $.02.





And to make it:
BEST. Game. Ever. ...we need to be able to point out the flaws - and Devs need to take interest in fixing them.

Like I said, many people, myself included, would agree with you that the the inventory managment system is lacking in some respect. But at this time there are many more critical issues that need to be addressed before this one in my opinion. That being said, we the players should not feel limited to not bring our concerns to the attention of the devs and discussing possible solutions to them on the forum. So, if you know of an inventory managment system that you prefer, and could integrate well into the DDO engine, please feel free to talk describe exactly how yopu would like it to work in this thread.

P.S. Down with non-standard colored test.

[Bogenbroom]

First off, I don't get were people say this is a "problem." It is an annoyance, sure... but not a real problem.

Second, there are perfectly valid reasons why this is not in place now, that mostly revolve around what happens when your inventory is full.

Personally, I think it would be great if there was an auto-arrange function, or even an inventory view that was the same as the shopping view. That would be a nice add-on. Of course, if it were me, I would only allow the auto-arrange feature to be used by characters with a Wisdom higher than 13, but that is just me.

[Lordress]

it doesnt need autoarrange..doesn't need sorting tabs ect...it just needs to stay where i put it!

I sort em all out..put stuff where it should be, then the game shakes it up, and it's a mess again. Just make some in game super glue; i'll glue em down myself!


/SIGNED

[IronClan]

UI is the first thing people see and experience the game through... UI is way more important than some people realize. As a new player my first major pet peave was the UI, settings that don't stick, inventory that moves around by itself in ways I don't want it too, the UI doesn't scale to the screen size so in wide screen high res the hotbar icons are completely unreadable and even if they were readable all the bracers look the same the potions are nearly impossible to tell apart (even in lower res)..

Anyway not to turn this into a general UI rant but putting "locked" items back into the space they were locked in (as in switching weapons) would be a simple way to immediately improve the UI dramatically.

[SardaSlayer]

/Signed

This is a classic swap problem from comp sci 101. How many slots does it take to swap 2 items? Answer is 3.

Current algorithm for hotbar swap uses only 2:
1) Move equipped item to first empty inventory slot (fail if no slot available).
2) Move desired item into equipment slot.

Purposed algorithm:
1) Move equipped item to first empty inventory slot (fail if no slot available).
2) Move desired item into equipment slot.
3) Move unequipped item to empty slot created in step 2.

I estimate this change would take about .5 hours to code.

[Duskslayer]

Oh yeah. This is still a mess!

[StrangelyFatal]

/signed

This isn't hard: add a bag, don't remove items from the bag when equipped, don't move items in the bags.

And while I agree that text search in AH is more important, there's no reason to skip low hanging fruit.

[IronClan]

I don't agree with the AH search being more important... I deal with the clumsy UI 100% of my game time... I deal with the clumsy AH only a percent or two of my time, and once you know minimum levels well, you can filter out 90% of what you're not looking for on most of the catagories. We'll get AH search first I'm sure, I just think the UI feels and looks like something they put in during beta as a "placeholder" UI and then the UI guy quit or they had to push through, and they left a UI that is surpassed by RPG's that came out 10 years ago.

[markhoge]

They are making a change to inventory in (I believe) Update 7. They talked about this in the latest DDOCast. It was a Ask The Devs episode. You should definitely take a listen. They are not really fixing this problem, but they are making it so it really does not matter.

[KillEveryone]

I've not had much problem with it once I started putting stuff that doesn't move on the last page or 2, depending upon how much **** I'm carrying.

Anything else that gets swapped is on the 3rd or 4th page and all loot ends up in the first few pages. Anything I locked I can easily find since I'm looking for the locked symbol, and move it to it's page when I'm done with a quest and going into another for a run and move anything that is unlocked to the empty spaces.

I don't lock anything until I'm ready to sell...unless I see a SP pot...and when I lock it, I'll move it to the 3rd page then go quest some more.

I spend very little time arranging inventory because I don't really need to. Anything that is consumable will have it's number displayed in the hotbar and the hotbar doesn't care where in your backpack anything is. When I bank stuff, I'll tidy up things but that is about the extent of my management.

[Tinrae]

/signed

[Adarro]

OP
\signed


Just wanted to point out that this request would be very hard for the game developers to implement and would have some possible side effects:

1) To be able to move an item back to its original slot that slot must first be empty.
2) For that slot to be empty then each worn item would have to be "locked" onto a particular slot and no item could be placed in it while that item was worn. (The other option being to allow items to be placed in those "locked" slots and then moving them to a free slot when the "locked" item was switched out. But this would be an issue as an empty wepon set can be used that de-equips up to two items that could force two other items it a full inventory into the overflow area).
3) The effect of keeping these slots "locked" is that there would be up to 15 empty "locked" slots for each of the items that is worn. (Now while this might be helpful to keep things organized, I for one would not want to loose 15 slots for this feature)
4) While I too have had some issues with reorganization happening, especialy on my sceptor swaping mage, I would hope that the engine devs have better things to do then trying to figure this out at this time (ie. fixing any of the other numerous issues that are much more annoying or adding more interesting features such as auction house searching)

But that's just my $.02.
Actually, it wouldn't have to be nearly as restrictive as you think.
Positioning would store a 'preference' not a written in stone pre-allocated exclusive spot.
I.e My Banishing Bastard Sword of Greater Bugbear Bane could store position 1-4:2 (bag 1 slot 4:2 on the grid), and then use the same or similar rules they use to determine which thieves' tools or stack to use. If that slot is used up, then use the one closest to it. It's not a 100%, but would at least keep your searched for item on the same page / bag 90% of the time, which is huge.

This eliminates problems 1-3 on your list.
4a. if the item you're searching for is vendor trash or something that just needs to be dumped to make space for other things, I agree.
4b. If what you're looking for is one of the many non-hot-barred, highly situational scrolls / scepter / rarely used items that is about to make the difference between victory and a 'wow, i had the item to remove that from ya... sry', then I disagree. The auction house is a very important, but non-battle affecting convenience for me. Grabbing the right pot / scroll on my clicky-heavy pally or my way 'too many options Wizzy while kiting through a firewall' is an entirely different matter.

[AyumiAmakusa]

For now, an easy fix would be to NOT put anything important in the first slot of every bag space. Let the junk loot toss and randomise all they want. It won't affect your organised stuff. This should hold out until they make a fix.

[FluffyCalico]

Easy fix make equipped items still take a slot in inventory...that is how you make sure it has the same place to go back to and that nothing else fills the spot while you have it equipped. This however would make it so you have less spots as all your equipped gear would take a spot in inventory and then people would cry over that

[Meetch1972]

/signed

I like the OP's idea of having all items looted go straight into the highest possible slot, while having inventory rearrangement through item choice use the lowest.

While locking gear to bag slots is probably not workable, at least that inventory fill method would reduce the amount of vendor trash getting mixed in with your gear.

[Godsblight]

To be honest from a programming stand point everyone's opinions are viable and programmable. The thing is from a business and developers standpoint, this might get done around the same time as the perfection and complete balance of the whole combat system.

[krogyy]

as i experienced it, the problem regards only the weapon slots. when changing items in any other spot (save maybe rings but i do not swap them often) the item swapped out takes the place of the item swapped in.

for weapons is really a problem atm but it is easlily solvable:
- main hand swapped out takes place of main hand swapped in
- off hand swapped out takes place of off hand swapped in

/fixed

[patang01]

The changes proposed for update 7 is to show everything in list form with filter options such as 'weapons', 'items', 'unlocked' etc. It's a 'fix' of sort and might not be visually appealing but a lot of major games solve it by doing it that way. It would be helpful though since I could actually see all the unlocked stuff to vendor or put in AH.

Only question would be if you can filter several options, like unlocked and weapons.

[IronClan]

Lots of words like "solve" and "fix". UI's in games with inventory management have been getting it right for decades, there's literally no need to re-invent the wheel... It's like Turbine's rolling out this "list" inventory, "look we took a square and added 4 extra sides, now it's an octagon, so it rolls much smoother than a square". Yeah but Turbine everyone's had CIRCULAR wheels for ages now!

It's worse than that IMO, this list inventory sounds like something out of a Nintendo RPG... newsflash Dragon Warrior text list inventory is not advanced... They could do something like NWN, Morrowind or Baldurs Gate... But for some reason they don't feel that the players only way to interact with the games items, needs polish or visual/size differentiation.

All armor should not have the same icon... Lots of different ring icons... but for some reason they left in the green and silver bracer place holder icons for 4 years. Helms have lots of visual variations, yet boots are almost all identical grey or green with little to no variation to make quick intuitive identification...

Turbine is expecting their new users to literally memorize identical icons on their hot bars with very few visual cues... But they change 1d6 to 1 to 6 for new players? Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees... If they want to make the game more approachable try bringing the UI into the 21st century.

Sorry for the rant but the UI in this game is a near constant irritation, spending 5 minutes every few hours trying to figure out where everything auto-jumbled to because I switch weapons frequently is not fun. This is fresh for me, because I spent a few hours doing Splinterskull last night and by the end of the night it looked like some Hobgoblin Witch Docter had landed a fireball directly inside my backpack.

Truth is I am not and never have been overly "OCD" about inventory organization. I just like to put things on separate pages (that's pretty much the extent of my organization), so i know which tab to look in when I need a potion that's not on my hot bar, or I'm banking a couple weapon sets in favor of others for an upcoming quest. I mean just basic: consumables in tab 1 equipment in 2, items in 3, loot and junk/unsorted stuff in 4 and 5. Yet I can't even keep my consumables together, or my weapons/armor/shields on the same page because someone at turbine apparently didn't know that they solved the ancient mystery of not randomly jumbling inventory in RPG's 20 years ago...

[Duskslayer]

It's worse than that IMO, this list inventory sounds like something out of a Nintendo RPG...

Heh, true! My Commodore 64 D&D had better organization!!

Perhaps the devs have not brushed up on their olden code methods?

10 LOAD "BAG01.PRG",8,1
20 LIST

RUN

SYNTAX ERROR! Er.. hmm....?? :)

[Akrilus]

/signed!

[ahpook]

Putting things in specific tabs doesn't help solve the problem as even if something stays in the tab it moves around. After a few swaps its position on that tab will be essentially random. Trying to find the correct weapon on a tab full of similar looking weapons while you wait for hover text to pop up is an irritant.

The problem has always been quite simple to solve. Items that are equipped maintain a lock on the spot in the bank tab. Nothing else can go into that slot. Add another back pack tab for everyone to compensate those 15 "lost" spots in the backpack. Someone's estimate of 1/2 hour was probably a little low but not by much.

But it sounds like Turbine is going to solve it through other means which is also fine. That option has also been proposed by a number of us over the years so it is nice to see that they are finally getting around to it.