The current system:
In A Realm Reborn a player's inventory current looks like (Fig. 1) when opened. Each "page" has 25 slots which comprise a 100-slot inventory. It appears by clicking on a "page number" that the inventory box will flip to the corresponding slots. To move items in your inventory you must flip to different "pages" of your inventory while dragging and placing items. Items that are gained by the player populate in the first box before spilling over into subsequent pages.
The problem I see:
It looks and feels rather inefficient to manage your items in this fashion, having to click an item and then a corresponding "page" and then placing an item in a slot when the game now employs and boasts a drag-and-drop system.
My suggestion to resolve it:
An option illustrated in (Fig. 2) to display all four "pages" of the inventory at once, so that a player can more easily visualize their inventory space. Note how I've segregated different types of equipment and consumables into different bags for easier reference. The screen space it takes up is comparable to some of the other interfaces we've seen that can be brought up in the micro menu or by key stroke. In addition to the poorly-MSPainted graphic I made below, each page could also be brought up with a different mappable keyboard stroke that can be set in a options interface.
For example:
I (brings up your entire inventory, all 100 slots as seen in Fig. 2)
F1 (Page 1 only as seen in Fig. 1)
F2 (Page 2 only as seen in Fig. 1)
etc.,
World of Warcraft, for example, uses a bag system with a different amount of slots for each bag. Since A Realm Reborn does it differently by allotting a static 100 slots, there isn't quite as much of a need for malleable window size. If a player should click the tab to display key items or crystals, the window itself would revert to it's original smaller window size. Key items and crystals could possibly be displayed on the same extra page, or perhaps there's enough screen space to include them on the main inventory window.
I feel that this interface would better assist people who are constantly switching between various types of play including: combat, gathering, crafting, and questing and the items they correspond to. I don't feel that this sacrifices a large amount of screen space to accomplish as well. I think this will make inventory management a bit less tedious so that we can spend a little less time messing around with sorting items in the interface and a little more time enjoying what A Realm Reborn has to offer.
What do you guys think?
For reference, the original screenshot Square Enix released that I used to build these mock-ups: http://i6.minus.com/ibjWjloC6zTuNe.png
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
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