Hi all, nice to meet you my name is Francesco and I am a (relatively) new gameplay designer on Generation Zero
I am posting here today as we are looking into improving the way the inventory is organized and would like to collect some feedback on the specific topic of sorting items in the inventory. Here are a few questions to point you folks in the direction we are looking into:
What do you think would be the best way to sort items within different categories? (weapons, ammo, consumables, etc.)
If we were to implement sorting filters, what criteria do you think we should use to filter items in the inventory? What type of filters would you like? What type of sorting filters would make your life easier when it comes to inventory management?
What should be the default filter? In other words, the default way of sorting items in the inventory?
Let us know what you think, and thanks in advance to whoever wants to share their ideas
Weapons - quality, type (smg’s, shotguns, AR’s… etc), magazine size, damage
Ammo - caliber, usage (pistol, smg, ar… etc), type (FMJ, AP, HP)
Attachments - quality, type, grouped by weapon that they are attached to
Equipment - type
The default filter should be exactly the same as it was till last update - newer stuff goes to the bottom of the list.
Or in general with the inventory and looking for certain things it’s a bit of a time hassle.
and if you are a swiss army knife of ammo types that you go with as many weapon types as possible.
My suggestion is just basic filter where you can just press a simple button and you get for example 7.62 type and another press you get the möller ammo. etc.
For weapon attachment’s
Simple of just switch to types like scope,ammo clips. just to name a few.
For me the best way would be alphabetical although some prefer the “age” (newer at the bottom/top). Maybe this could be an option in the preferences (default inventory sorting).
Additionally changing the sorting to newest/oldest, crown-based and heaviest/lightest (per position not per item, so 3000 of an ammo type is heavier then 2 medkits of one type).
I think of buttons that could change the direction of the sorting when clicked again. So from A-Z to Z-A and vice versa.
In addition crown-based sorting needs a fixed subsorting. So all 5* items from A-Z for example. At the moment there is no sorting inside all equal items. That means when you have four 5* items and remove one, the sorting of the remaining three 5* items is shuffled/randomized.
would love to see, No filter, Alphabetical, weight on one side combined with Rarity or quantity to make it so that you can aither sort by alphabetical/Rarity so all 5c are with 5cs so you could easily tell how many extended magazines for exsample you have of each type or if you select just alphabetical all barrels, guns etc. would be set together regardless of quality but still in order from 5c to 1c and not mixed out of order it wouldnt make too much of a difference to equipment/ammo unless you select weight/(anything) it would just place the heaviest stacks to top but make it easy to manage
[A] The bare-minimum we want is for the randomise-everything that happens whenever we pick up anything to be reverted, a year ago item order-by-pick-up was persisted even when reloading the game, which we could leverage to manually sort.
[B.i] Ammo should be in a fixed order in your inventory and in lootables and storage, so I’ll always know my pistol ammo is at the top and rockets are at the bottom for example. I used to keep 1 round of each ammo in my bag always to prevent shuffling.
[C.i] Scrolling through a constantly shuffled inventory is one thing, but the potential to accidentally drop-on-the-floor precious items is downright dangerous. Not-shuffling mitigated this. Which is why I suggest a favourite-item system. Favourites should always be top-of-current-category.
[C.ii] Favourited items: should not be droppable; must be unfavourited to drop.
[C.iii] Favourites should persist between your multiple-characters.
[D.i] re:[C.i] maybe even allow us to favourite stackable-items like Advanced Medkits, specific Ammo, Adrenaline causing them to auto-loot from anything apart from personal strorage crate.
[E.i] Ah we should also briefly mention organisation of lootable corpses of. Currently that is also quite random. I’d like to see many of my above points apply unto what you’re looting.
[E.ii] Lootables have weapons organised to the top, in order of rarity, which is good, however after this recyclables and ammo seem to be randomised with weightless clothing randomly interspersed.
[E.iii] (In the case that re:[D] is not possible) Weightless items should always appear at the top of the loot-list as sometimes the list can be very long. Thankfully Schematics are already automatically at the top of any lootable corpse, though may be below multiple weapons/attachments
[E.iv] re:[B] also desirable in corpses, while [D] could also apply.
[F.i] In-use attachments should always appear at-top any relevant list. Currently they’re randomly mixed with unused ones, shuffled constantly.
[F.ii] naturally this should apply to items in the storage crate too.
[G] Given that in-use attachments persist for stored weapons, even when taking them out on other-characters the in-use icon should appear on items even when they’re in storage-crate.
Guys my post grew too big, gonna start my own tangential thread
I don’t have anything to say on the sorting itself but it would be great if there was some sort of favoriting system. You could select items to “favorite,” making them appear at the top of their respective tabs at all times.
As default filter I’d use is time-based before “quality sorted”. Because it’s tested and proven.
Item grouping:
no matter what major sorting method used, same caliber ammo, medkits, trap deployables, throwables are always stick next to each other. It should speed up searching through skimming list to find a particular item type. (filter by type?) For example if sorted by date (old style) - oldest item is on top, and it is simple medkit, then all other medkits are stick on top of list if at least one medkit is still in the inventory (other items will still stick to this place keeping the item type order). For this to work tags for items needed: combat throwables, lures (music/blares), distractions, support deployables, trap deployables etc.
quality sub-grouping: weapons ain’t that much of a problem within same quality due to not too big quantity (headache mostly comes from current shuffling), but attachments are the problem, since there’s a lot of them and it’s hard to keep tracking of what you have and where you have it (in chest, on gun or just in pocket). Constantly mounting and unmounting them saves a lot of space in chest, but it becomes tedious if said attachments can be installed on a lot of guns (like Reflex sight or 1-4x scope) and searching for it can take a lot of time. So grouping can be in order as they attached to gun - barrels, mags, sights and then optic modules.
“on gun” flag automatically bumps item higher/lower, so just stored in the pocket are either on bottom or on top of list.
I second for “favorite” item - you can’t do anything to it until you remove “fav flag” through prompt, which is special button. Question is - auto-fav for attached items (gun mods).
My friends and I have recently comeback to the game after a hiatus. We finished the main story line a while back and have now purchased Alpine Unrest. We are really enjoying it.
What is immediately apparent is the features and upgrades to the game that you have added during our time away. However, there are some improvements that I think everyone would appreciate.
The inventory system needs to be streamlined, both for the regular inventory and clothing.
For the regular inventory (carried and Plundra), it would be extremely useful to be able to sort whichever item type I am looking at by certain relevant information.
Ammo types: sort by quantity, caliber, guns they work with, etc. Having to scroll through a load of different ammo types looking for 1 in particular is frustrating to say the least (side note: 9mm smg and handgun should really be the same thing, there is no real reason for the two separate types in game). This way all 7.62 types could be next to one another. Or I could just find what I have most of and take that.
Guns: sort by ammo types, number of crowns, name. Sorting by name will allow me to see if I have multiple of the same type of weapon quickly. sorting by ammo type means my friends don’t have to ask me what type of ammo goes with which gun every time they run out of ammo with one gun or another.
Attachments: sort by equipped, what it can be attached to, number of crowns. It is not obvious what can be attached to what. Being able to sort by compatible PVG90 attachments (for instance) would be great, instead of having to remember the “rifle scope” doesn’t work with that rifle for some reason.
Gear (sprocket/cog): sort by gear type (health packs, explosives, noise makers, emp, etc. grouped together), and weight. Having to scroll through my inventory looking for simple health packs knowing that they must be in there is infuriating. Same with looking for weight I can drop once waddle mode has been activated.
Secondly the clothing inventory could use a tweaking. Since I can make clothing for different purposes and I can carry an infinite amount of clothing, it would be great if I could quickly find clothing that I like, or that has one advantage or another. Wearing camo to sneak up on baddies and then being able to change into bullet resistant clothing would be ideal. Currently I am afraid If I change my clothes I will lose the shirt I am wearing in a sea similar “less good” shirts.
I know you posted recently about Molotov cocktails and a grenade launcher, maybe being added, and those sound great, as can other big changes to the game I can think of. However, these (I think) smaller requests will go a long way.
I look forward to everything new you bring us in the future! But I am hoping these requests come sooner rather than later.
I am sure there are lots of other good ideas too! I hope this gets addressed in the coming update!
First of all, absolutely love to see the team taking a look at inventory sorting! and more specfically big thanks to you for leading a charge here of community input
So I’m just going to echo some things here, because i think the consistency of requests is important.
My preference would be;
Default - Chronological
Rarity - First designated tab as this would benefit new players who are used to the current system, old players that prefer the system, and easily storing high quality weapons in plundra etc
Damage - Meta players
Alphabetical - For word nerds/good ocd
Weight - For plundra efficiency
Now for some slightly more specific tabs that maybe would only appear when applicable;
Amount - helpful for ammo tab, item tab, and resource tab
Healing - Helpful for item tab
EMP - same as above
Explosive - Same as above (maybe could cover all gas cans for simplicity)
And this one last thing is kinda niche but other people might agree, a “star” system to mark items that will always be at the top of the list independent of the filter.
Interesting.
I don’t worry about dropping in-use attachments because they have the “attached” icon.
However if you bring a compensator and a silencer for swapping, you’d want both favourited and to avoid dropping either and you’d want to be-able to tell if you pick up a duplicate of either.
The only case I can think, is if you hold many guns in your inventory and want to autofavourite the attachments you like through the attachments-interface, using this to help you identify spares both new and old.
Considering… I think auto-favourite is not necessary and may add minor annoyance.
“auto-fav” was suggested with “I accidentaly thrown away/recycled mod on my gun” in mind, which is usually on top of list when tabs change.
Edit: experimental option - hide equipped items, but they still be present in the “equipped” 7-line tab. Up to decide is how much to hide - obviously guns and attachments, possibly some items, but hide ammo?
It’s not that niche - Borderlands 2 done it right from the start and it was very helpful to keep relevant loot (there was also “mark for trash”)
There is no, universal, automatic, sorting method that can apply to all different categories at once.
Only method that works for all categories at once, is manual, player defined.
By this, i mean players can sort items within every category as they see fit.
As far as filters go, there could be:
To add to the above:
Equipped/unequipped [*]
[*] This filter fits well on attachments list, where user can arrange the list to show all attachments equipped to the weapons at the top, while unequipped items are shown at the bottom.
Also, what i’d love to see the most, above everything else i’ve written in this reply, is:
In the Plundra, indicator at every weapon attachment, that is attached to a weapon inside the Plundra.
Just like we have indicator icons when attachments are in our inventory and equipped to a weapons.
I’d like Default to be the old filter, pre-December '20 update, that sorted items by age, where newest item was at the bottom of the list.
