Suggestion for A Realm Reborn's inventory interface.

Just copy the way Aion does it, very simple, click to expand full view.

Guys, there was a reason it was only one bag in alpha, they wanted to test the server systems first and foremost, and having 4 bags up at once took considerable more than they wanted for the test, so they actually turned that function off. But it exists and will come in the beta. This question has also been asked before, as it has been answered many times before.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mbncd

Ugh, imagine trying to identify skins/wood/cloth/metal/etc by colour alone...

There's only so many colours they can really use and a lot of them will be similar. A silver/grey coloured ingot or an off-white spindle of thread, what could they be? As a big crafter, I'd spend more time mousing over the things to figure out what they are than actually using them.

I don't know if the list is the best solution but icons with no words at all is definitely not... Even if they had small font item names under each icon or something, that would be a great help in identifying what's what!

---

You would not have to mouse over anything, as long as you know the general idea of what is what like the icon is a ingot or a piece of lumber that is all you need to know for sorting purposes, which the icons do perfect. As to identifying what is what, no need for that because when you craft in ARR as seen in the demo video's you have a separate crafting mode, and all recipe's are in your crafting log, so when you choose something to craft it automatically shows and puts the materials needed for you along with names, as well showing you how many of each materials you have on you. With this new system not only is everything much simpler to do, but it's 100% faster and I'm sure once you try it, you will agree.

To OP,

You realize that they've already announced that they're planning to support multiple inventory windows?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdorraEloom

You would not have to mouse over anything, as long as you know the general idea of what is what like the icon is a ingot or a piece of lumber that is all you need to know for sorting purposes, which the icons do perfect. As to identifying what is what, no need for that because when you craft in ARR as seen in the demo video's you have a separate crafting mode, and all recipe's are in your crafting log, so when you choose something to craft it automatically shows and puts the materials needed for you along with names, as well showing you how many of each materials you have on you. With this new system not only is everything much simpler to do, but it's 100% faster and I'm sure once you try it, you will agree.

---

Except the crafting manual uses the same icon only system for ingredients. Again, if you're low on something and have to find out what you're low on, you have to mouse over it. Even if you aren't low on it and simply want to see what is needed for what, you have to mouse over it. Simply knowing that something is an ingot or lumber doesn't help at all for anything. You need to know what sort it is, specifically, to buy/hunt/gather more of the item, or to know what you can spare to sell/trade/dump. Just because you have some random ingot or some random piece of lumber, that doesn't mean anything in the crafting world. Specifics matter. Specifics are not conveyed in this system, thus I and many other crafters do/will find this system to be flawed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mbncd

Except the crafting manual uses the same icon only system for ingredients. Again, if you're low on something and have to find out what you're low on, you have to mouse over it. Even if you aren't low on it and simply want to see what is needed for what, you have to mouse over it. Simply knowing that something is an ingot or lumber doesn't help at all for anything. You need to know what sort it is, specifically, to buy/hunt/gather more of the item, or to know what you can spare to sell/trade/dump. Just because you have some random ingot or some random piece of lumber, that doesn't mean anything in the crafting world. Specifics matter. Specifics are not conveyed in this system, thus I and many other crafters do/will find this system to be flawed.

---

here is the video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-v8WeZX4QQ at 3:07 is where the crafting demo starts. As you can see when he is picking his recipe to craft in this case maple lumber, when he selects maple lumber to craft on the right column it shows that a maple log is required, it also shows that he currently has 95 NQ maple logs on him and 0 HQ maple logs on him. You can also access this crafting menu to see what you have at anytime with out even crafting. To check your stocks of materials in a quick glance.

When he selects Bone harpoon it shows that maple lumber and bone chip is the required materials to make a bone harpoon, also showing that he currently has 100 maple lumbers on him and 99 bone chips on him, so no need to mouse over anything to show what and how many of what you got, its in this other menu I guess called the crafting log.

So to sum up your concern lets say your riding your chocobo and you are planing on making some square shields, instead of going to some inventory list and spending time searching through all your stuff in your inventory all you do is hit the hot key to access your crafting log "N" or "C" or what ever you bind it to, and while riding your chocobo you select square shield from the crafting list and it will automatically show you what materials are needed to make that, and how many of each you currently have, all in a matter of seconds instead of stopping, and reading a long list of armors, weapons, materials all clustered together in some huge inventory list.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdorraEloom

here is the video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-v8WeZX4QQ at 3:07 is where the crafting demo starts. As you can see when he is picking his recipe to craft in this case maple lumber, when he selects maple lumber to craft on the right column it shows that a maple log is required, it also shows that he currently has 95 NQ maple logs on him and 0 HQ maple logs on him. You can also access this crafting menu to see what you have at anytime with out even crafting. To check your stocks of materials in a quick glance.

When he selects Bone harpoon it shows that maple lumber and bone chip is the required materials to make a bone harpoon, also showing that he currently has 100 maple lumbers on him and 99 bone chips on him, so no need to mouse over anything to show what and how many of what you got, its in this other menu I guess you could call it.

---

Ah, yes, you're right. I remembered the big icons and completely forgot about the name on the other side.

I still stand by what I said though, that you should be able to know what you're looking at from a glance in the inventory and a slight differentiation in colour does not provide that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdorraEloom

here is the video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-v8WeZX4QQ at 3:07 is where the crafting demo starts. As you can see when he is picking his recipe to craft in this case maple lumber, when he selects maple lumber to craft on the right column it shows that a maple log is required, it also shows that he currently has 95 NQ maple logs on him and 0 HQ maple logs on him. You can also access this crafting menu to see what you have at anytime with out even crafting. To check your stocks of materials in a quick glance.

When he selects Bone harpoon it shows that maple lumber and bone chip is the required materials to make a bone harpoon, also showing that he currently has 100 maple lumbers on him and 99 bone chips on him, so no need to mouse over anything to show what and how many of what you got, its in this other menu I guess you could call it.

---

As a carpenter, I will tell you now that it was already hard enough to distinguish logs and lumber without reading the text. You know how many different logs/lumber have nearly identical colours? Lots.

Your point is also moot if you are say a botanist or miner and you are just finished gathering. To find out how many of a specific material you have, you have no option but to dig through your inventory. Looking at a small box containing little boxes with nearly identical images for completely different materials is annoying, clunky, slow and frustrating.

An organised / categorized list separated by tabs, would be far more user friendly then a bunch of images that look near-identical.

Bags, lists, windows, whatever. I just wanna play already. Whatever they decide on I'm sure if it does not work it will be fixed or changed later.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Altena

As a carpenter, I will tell you now that it was already hard enough to distinguish logs and lumber without reading the text. You know how many different logs/lumber have nearly identical colours? Lots.

Your point is also moot if you are say a botanist or miner and you are just gathering. To find out how many of a specific material you have, you have no option but to dig through your inventory. Looking at a small box containing little boxes with nearly identical images for completely different materials is annoying, clunky, slow and frustrating.

An organised / categorized list separated by tabs, would be far more user friendly then a bunch of images that look near-identical.

---

why would you even want to go to your inventory list to check materials for something when the crafting log is the same, it just automatically organizes all your inventory in a sense that it filters out all armor and junk and only shows you crafting materials and how many of each you have ex... It even goes to the next step where you can pick the item you want to craft and it will summarize everything needed "By Name" not icons, even show you your current stock.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdorraEloom

why would you even want to go to your inventory list to check materials for something when the crafting log is the same, it just automatically organizes all your inventory in a sense that it filters out all armor and junk and only shows you crafting materials and how many of each you have ex... It even goes to the next step where you can pick the item you want to craft and it will summarize everything needed "By Name" not icons, even show you your current stock.

---

I am on WAR farming raptors. Why would I change to leatherworker just to check if I have enough raptorskin yet? Better still, Why would I navigate to 3 different places to check if I have Raptorskin, Raptor Sinew and Raptor Shanks (all 3 would presumably be accessed in different areas of the "crafting journal".

What if I don't have leatherworker at 40+ and don't have access to those recipes, yet I want to see how much Raptorskin I have?

Your whole point is majorly flawed. In your theory - why have any form of viewable inventory when you can view it in the crafting menu? What is an inventory for? It is designed so you can view what your character is carrying. It's not there just to hold stuff.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Altena

I am on WAR farming raptors. Why would I change to leatherworker just to check if I have enough raptorskin yet? Better still, Why would I navigate to 3 different places to check if I have Raptorskin, Raptor Sinew and Raptor Shanks (all 3 would presumably be accessed in different areas of the "crafting journal".

What if I don't have leatherworker at 40+ and don't have access to those recipes, yet I want to see how much Raptorskin I have?

Your whole point is majorly flawed. In your theory - why have any form of viewable inventory when you can view it in the crafting menu? What is an inventory for? It is designed so you can view what your character is carrying. It's not there just to hold stuff.

---

Let's say you are on war, farming raptors and you want to know how many sinews, skins you currently have, so instead of hitting "I" to access your inventory and searching through all your armor, weapons, materia, and other junk, you hit "N" instead to bring up the crafting log, and yes you can bring it up on war or any job, as its simply another form of inventory specific to crafting, and select any recipe you were planing to craft using your raptor materials, and in seconds it will show you something like this you have 10 NQ raptor skins, 2 HQ raptor skins 10 NQ raptor sinews all by name not icons, all in 1-2 seconds of work. than you know right away and press escape or close the crafting log and back you go to farming. Other way you would go into your inventory and search from a list of everything armor, weapons, junk and if you are carrying a lot of stuff could take 1-2min to find your raptor skins.

Just think of the crafting log as a separate tab in your inventory that filters out everything but crafting materials allowing you to faster see what materials you have and how many. Crafting log is not a mode where your sitting in crafting mode crafting, its an inventory list, only time you will go into crafting mode in the crafting log is if you hit synthesize after you select your recipe and if you are on war and try to do that, it will simply tell you to change to the correct crafting job to proceed.

[QUOTE=.
Your whole point is majorly flawed. In your theory - why have any form of viewable inventory when you can view it in the crafting menu? What is an inventory for? It is designed so you can view what your character is carrying. It's not there just to hold stuff.[/QUOTE]

Inventory is designed with icons for faster management, lets say you were killing stuff for hours filling your inventory but your not planning to craft for few days, so now you want to store all your crafting stuff on a retainer, well thats where your inventory icons come in, just by glancing at an icon you know what is armor that you should keep, and what is crafting materials that you will store to your retainer, making it super fast to swap your inventory. Crafting log is another form of inventory that is specific to crafting materials with more in dept details like names of the materials instead of icons.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdorraEloom

Inventory is designed with icons for faster management, lets say you were killing stuff for hours filling your inventory but your not planning to craft for few days, so now you want to store all your crafting stuff on a retainer, well thats where your inventory icons come in, just by glancing at an icon you know what is armor that you should keep, and what is crafting materials that you will store to your retainer, making it super fast to swap your inventory. Crafting log is another form of inventory that is specific to crafting materials with more in dept details like names of the materials instead of icons.

---

I'm all 50s with my crafts but plenty others aren't. The crafting log only shows recipes within 5 levels of your own level of that craft. It also requires you to find a recipe that includes the item you're looking for, which many people won't necessarily be able to identify off the top of their head. Non crafters in particular will not be able to use the crafting manual in this way but may still want to know what they have and how much they have of it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mbncd

I'm all 50s with my crafts but plenty others aren't. The crafting log only shows recipes within 5 levels of your own level of that craft. It also requires you to find a recipe that includes the item you're looking for, which many people won't necessarily be able to identify off the top of their head. Non crafters in particular will not be able to use the crafting manual in this way but may still want to know what they have and how much they have of it.

---

Good point, some will not be high level enough to see everything on the crafting log, I would assume in that case those people will be selling the materials in wards or NPCing them or storing. So ya they would have to select (with controller) or click with mouse anyways to store/sell/NPC thus showing them what it is in more details about the item anyways, straight from the inventory bags. Kinda like in 1.0 where you had to scroll down a list to select an item to sell it or store it or npc it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdorraEloom

Good point, some will not be high level enough to see everything on the crafting log, I would assume in that case those people will be selling the materials in wards or NPCing them or storing. So ya they would have to select (with controller) or click with mouse anyways to store/sell/NPC thus showing them what it is in more details about the item anyways, straight from the inventory bags. Kinda like in 1.0 where you had to scroll down a list to select an item to sell it or store it or npc it.

---

In 1.0, most people farmed to specific goals or even vague ideas like "a few hundred will be enough" over a number of hours. While farming, they would check their inventory lists to see how many they had and calculate things like how much they'd earned so far and how much longer they would have to farm to reach their goals. Those rough calculations were based on a glance at the item and then the number beside it.

Yes, navigating the list was cumbersome if the item wasn't within 10 slots of the start or end of a sorted category that could be easily reached with the touch of an arrow key. Yes, it was a long list. Yes, it was not the ideal solution. But yes, it did get one thing right: making the item type (specific type like maple lumber, not general type like some sort of lumber) clearly identifiable from a glance at that slot.

I'm not asking them to do away with icons. Icons can and do have their place. As has been stated many times, they can quickly and easily show what general category of item that specific item belongs to. That is not the be all and end all of item identification though.

I'm not asking for the inventory to list every minute aspect of the item in question without hovering over it or selecting it, but I do think a name at a glance is not too much to ask for and I am asking for that and I will continue to ask for that. If the devs won't provide it then I'm hoping someone who is good at (and enjoys) making addons will start thinking about this early and maybe even provide such a system in time for official launch, for the devs to adopt into official addons in time so the PS3 users can also benefit from it if they so wish.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdorraEloom

Let's say you are on war, farming raptors and you want to know how many sinews, skins you currently have, so instead of hitting "I" to access your inventory and searching through all your armor, weapons, materia, and other junk, you hit "N" instead to bring up the crafting log, and yes you can bring it up on war or any job, as its simply another form of inventory specific to crafting, and select any recipe you were planing to craft using your raptor materials, and in seconds it will show you something like this you have 10 NQ raptor skins, 2 HQ raptor skins 10 NQ raptor sinews all by name not icons, all in 1-2 seconds of work. than you know right away and press escape or close the crafting log and back you go to farming. Other way you would go into your inventory and search from a list of everything armor, weapons, junk and if you are carrying a lot of stuff could take 1-2min to find your raptor skins.

Just think of the crafting log as a separate tab in your inventory that filters out everything but crafting materials allowing you to faster see what materials you have and how many. Crafting log is not a mode where your sitting in crafting mode crafting, its an inventory list, only time you will go into crafting mode in the crafting log is if you hit synthesize after you select your recipe and if you are on war and try to do that, it will simply tell you to change to the correct crafting job to proceed.

---

You basically took the first line of my post, and ignored the rest of it. All of what you said has little to no relevance or solution to the common hypothetical scenarios I mentioned. I know what a crafting journal is, but I want to see how much of 3 separate items I have.

Not to mention the point that I thought you would have picked up on when I said

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Altena

What if I don't have leatherworker at 40+ and don't have access to those recipes, yet I want to see how much Raptorskin I have?

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdorraEloom

Inventory is designed with icons for faster management, lets say you were killing stuff for hours filling your inventory but your not planning to craft for few days, so now you want to store all your crafting stuff on a retainer, well thats where your inventory icons come in, just by glancing at an icon you know what is armor that you should keep, and what is crafting materials that you will store to your retainer, making it super fast to swap your inventory. Crafting log is another form of inventory that is specific to crafting materials with more in dept details like names of the materials instead of icons.

---

It is much faster to click on a category such as "Materials" in a submenu in your inventory and spam click/enter until everything is in your retainer's inventory then it is to click&drag each item across individually. If your point is being able to "move stuff by the little picture", then there is still that "little picture" that you love so much, better still it has a name of the item next to it as well!

If your point is click & drag, that is still extremely possible on a list.
If your point is "being able to see if it is a leather or a piece of gear" then that is mooted by category tabs.

I honestly can't see how a bunch of little similar looking icons is more effective then a icon with an item name next to it, sorted by categories.


As Crystal has stated, crafting requires specifics. The current system does not cater for this.

two words: add ons

OP: How can you make a suggestion on a system you have not yet used? Its like commenting on how a hamburger is made just from seeing the pictures....

Just give me my list back.

how about android/ios api soo we can use our phone / smart device as an inventory device!!!! ( journal device as well and gps )

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shamdeo

Fig. 2
http://i1.minus.com/itgVbMwU7fd7s.png

---

I am in love with Fig. 2. Can we plz have Fig. 2 for our inventory? I can imagine using the known system (carrying an item from one tab to another) will be too difficult/tedious for keyboard-only players, and I'm worried that as a keyboard-only player my needs are being ignored. I was able to do everything in 1.0 without a keyboard and am not in a position where using the mouse is comfortable.

There is no need to cramp the size of the inventory window, since our attention will be focused almost exclusively on managing items than battling while it's open.

edit: no, gamepad is not a solution. I like to be able to type without changing peripheral devices.

I am a huge lover of lists, I just feel more comfortable with them, but at the same time I'm really digging Fig.2.
It's cumbersome having to go through each bag individually, but I think that being able to view all bags at the same time would be awesome.

As was mentioned earlier about how file systems look and the option for a list or icon, those file systems also have the option to type the name of the file or folder.

I wasn't a big fan on the list option in 1.0 until we had the option to organize our inventory. But still wished I could have just typed 'Blue Colbalt' and my list would shrink to the smallest possible amount of resolutions. Then I choose X item. Could have this as well for both List AND Bag options.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Geesus

As was mentioned earlier about how file systems look and the option for a list or icon, those file systems also have the option to type the name of the file or folder.

I wasn't a big fan on the list option in 1.0 until we had the option to organize our inventory. But still wished I could have just typed 'Blue Colbalt' and my list would shrink to the smallest possible amount of resolutions. Then I choose X item. Could have this as well for both List AND Bag options.

---

Agreed.

I love type to search options for most things. Imagine having all crafts to 50 and then trying to figure out what some generic ingredient can be used in, going through each class' 5 level level ranges one by one. I'd love to be able to type into the top of the crafting journal that I want all recipes containing that name in them, either as materials or as recipe results or both. Same in the gathering journal and the inventory and store interfaces and the auto translate tool and just about anywhere that searching is required.

And no more of that "from the first letters only" nonsense, middle or end words should work too. So many times I've found no results because I've forgotten the first word >.>

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yrusama

keyboard-only players

---

*gigglesnort*


but seriously, people. you do realize add-ons can do exactly the kind of thing you're asking for, right?

which is why they're letting us have add-ons?

that's not to say you should stop asking for things to be in the default UI- but it is to say that if they don't get around to including it, you can always take matters into your own hands.