Inventory System

[Philomena]

I wanted to make a suggestion about the inventory system. I know im just a random player and this won't hold a lot of weight but I think it is relevant enought to share.

The slot based system really does not feel great. having to constantly drop resources early on when you don't even know which ones you will want to keep. I think the devs were trying to do something to limit how many resources you can bring back from hunts to incentivise returning to your base to restock, and so you don't just amass a hoarde or resources on your character and then die and lose almost all of them.
A slot based system is appealing for simplicity, since the players don't have to do any math and its very visually readable. I think the PROBLEM with it is the contradiction of a highly limited number of slots with the fact that the slots themselves can hold an unlimited amount of any one single type of resource, and adding more slots will never fix that issue. it will just make it so you can pick up even more different resources and then when you do run out of slots you are more likely to have a bunch of different things with low stack counts that you have to decide between dropping.

My suggestion would be changing to a volume/weight based system. I know radical changes like that can be disruptive to development in terms of balance and player sentiment, but changing it early on will make the switch much easier in any case. The reason I think this kind of system would be preferable is because it still limits how MUCH you can bring back from a mission, but not HOW MANY things. there is even a system in the game that lays out a blueprint for this concept already: the salvage system.

if every item had a "weight" that is the same as it's salvage value (grey=1, green=2, blue=5, purple=10, orange=20) and your starting capacity was say 240 total (the equivalent of 24 slots with ten common items each) this would allow a similar amount of stuff to be carried as the current system, but without the player having to worry about how many types of items they pick up, or having to memorize stack limits, etc. having the "weight" based on rarity would also make it easier to understand for players and would add more intrinsic value to rarer items instead of the current system where everything is just one slot.

I don't think this would scale very well for pulling items on death, as if you retain the same scaling as with the general inventory slots you would rapidly end up in a situation where with say 50 units of inventory to save, you would have to choose between 2 orange items, or 50 grey ones, but keeping the item pulling as a slot based system I think would still work out for this concept. potentially making it so you could pull five stacks of up to ten items each, so you couldn't save huge numbers of a single resource, but could still bring back multiples of rare drops from great foes.

Lastly I want to say that the fact the devs prioritized the inventory size in their first patch shows that they are listening to player feedback, so please do not use this thread as an excuse to harass or insult them. Making a game is difficult, and there is no real way to predict what the general public will think about anything in a game until after they get to play it. I personally am loving this game in general, and think that the early changes to 18/5 slots as the base level may well be enough to solve the issue for almost everyone playing, but I wanted to share my thoughts and encourage others to do so because the devs cant fix problems they don't know about.

If you actually read all this, thank you very much for taking the time whether you are a dev or a player, and I wish you the best of luck uncovering the mysteries of the Enclave! :)

Edit: Forgot to mention that the current inventory system sorting itself by rarity would be incredibly convenient, as I wouldnt have to keep scrolling to the next page to make sure there isnt a single grey item there I could drop to make room.

[Sailor Gloom]

I really dont get peoples problem with the inventory, I havent had any issues with it. If I see a high grade material drop and I'm full I just drop any commons i accidentally picked up. Occasionally ill do a special run to grab some high grade mats if I realize im short, I haven't felt vexed for materials in general.