Vender Item Icons

[Aerden]

I was wondering what the reasoning was behind using guild icons beside item names versus the items actual icon. I would think having the item icon would make finding your item a lot easier. You could still separate the items into sections with the guild name as the header.

[Niwashi]

When you're going to buy something from a vendor, you generally know the type and level of what you want, not the specific appearance of the item. It's much easier to find if they use the standardized icons for each item category (which in the case of weapons or tools is the class icon for the class that uses that weapon/tool).

For example, a Macuahuitl doesn't look much like a dagger, but they're both GLD weapons. You'd usually go to the vendor just knowing you want the next GLD weapon, so it lists them both with the GLD icon.

[Aerden]

Touché. Still, it would be better for crafting materials since you can identify the item by their icon and they don't have any inherent level to sort by.

[Bixby]

I think it's also a PS3 memory limitation. The PS3 can only hold so many icons in memory at once, which is (at least part of) why our inventories are paged. Not enough room for inventory + armory + the entire DoH goods vendor display if they used the item icons for everything.

[Aerden]

I can't imagine that would be the case. Each icon would be probably in the realm of 1-2 KB given their size, so it would only use a fraction of a percent of the memory, even for venders with a many items. There must be another reason.

[Niwashi]

it would be better for crafting materials since you can identify the item by their icon and they don't have any inherent level to sort by.

Oh, I see. Yes, in the case of crafting materials I agree with you. Their system works pretty well for equipment, but crafting materials can be hard to find since their category isn't always obvious. And within each category the order seems random.

I'm not certain the individual icons would be much better, though. For one thing, the icons on those lists are smaller than those on our inventory page. At that scale, a walnut and a chunk of iron ore would both just be roundish brown things, hard to distinguish from each other.

The category icons are designed to be simple enough to be easily distinguishable at the size they appear in those lists, so I think their overall strategy is right. They just need better categories when it comes to crafting materials. Some of their classifications don't make a lot of sense. (Like why are feathers listed as cloth?) And within each category, the items need to be sorted.

[Aerden]

Yeah they would need to increase the size of the icons for it to be distinguishable.