I do not understand why the Devs have implemented massive inventory restrictions in the way that they have. Does it add anything to the game? Does it improve user experience? Does it make things more fun? I just don’t understand how it benefits the Devs, or the players, or the storyline, or anything.
In most classic RPG games, there is often some kind of inventory management system. You start with a small backpack that can carry 20 items (or whatever). You can usually upgrade that to a Medium/Large/Giant bag, or whatever their terminology is. Those often scale in a way that allows you to continue to collect items without noticeable progression restriction. It also includes some aspect of realism from the context of a wandering hero that has restrictions on what he/she can carry. You can often add additional “bags” that allow you to carry even more items. In addition, many games also have a Chest or Armory back at the Keep/Castle/Citadel that you can empty your mobile inventory into for later use, but you’ll have to return to that location to add it back into your mobile inventory or active equipment. In addition to that, most games that offer different heroes will utilize that Chest or Armory at the Keep/Castle/Citadel as a means to share equipment across all the heroes, but they ALSO MAINTAIN THEIR OWN STORAGE OF EQUIPMENT. That means that if a hero can carry 50 items, then every hero can carry an additional 50 items that may be beneficial to them vs gear that is specific to other classes.
All the good games are designed in a way to allow inventory to scale with what the hero is likely to need without being overly restrictive. Many games make this process completely seamless and happen very naturally through gameplay with little effort or focus. Other games require specific attention and if you neglect it, you’ll feel it. In the end though, they all allow for sufficient storage of what is needed in the game. PQ3 does not currently do this.
In PQ3, you have 5 different heroes that all share the exact same Chest inventory. They have no personal inventory capacity. There is no Armory in the Citadel to empty inventory into. There are no bags that can be obtained to increase inventory. The only means of increasing Chest inventory is through leveling Northhelm, which can only happen with multiple playthroughs of the storyline and is an extremely slow process that does not even come close to keeping pace with a player’s inventory needs. At the point that he is completely maxed, I believe you have a max inventory capacity of 120 (correct me if I’m wrong).
So, how much storage does a player need? Let’s look at what’s available. There are 5 different mastery versions of each item. Mastery has a significant impact on items, so it is reasonable to expect that it is preferential to have an item with the specific Mastery that is most beneficial to the hero you are playing. That means you may need 5 version of any given item. There is 1 weapon slot, 6 armor slots and 5 Accessory slots. That’s 12 gear slots. There are 15 different sets of gear that each offer something in 6 of the 12 possible gear offerings. That’s 90 unique gear offerings. If you attempted to get each one in each Mastery, that’s 450 gear items. That’s nearly 4x the amount of gear than what is even possible to carry with a completely maxed out Chest.
If we’re being completely honest, we’re not going to need 5 versions of every single gear offering. Some gear doesn’t pair well with certain classes or masteries. But, the problem with a game that is almost entirely driven by RNG is that if you get a Legendary (or even Epic) item with the wrong mastery or wrong set type, you’re still likely to keep it because it’s better than other options you have. So the inability to adjust mastery in gear or trade set types creates an artificial need to keep more than what is optimal. Also, with the addition of the set bonuses (which I like), you again have a need to keep gear that itself is not considered optimal for the hero, but the set bonus now makes it desirable, if not even preferred.
So, even if you threw out 30% of the available gear because you don’t think you’ll ever need it or use it for a given hero, that still leaves you with 315 gear items that you may be interested in storing and leveling and evolving. That’s well over 2x what is possible to carry… and I think that’s exactly what everyone is feeling. I posted a while ago under .35 that my biggest frustration in the game was inventory management. Constantly having to figure out what desirable item I’m going to have to salvage. When they doubled Northelm’s inventory bonus, I was very happy… for about 2 weeks, until I maxed it out as well. My inventory is currently at 95 and I’ve been maxed at 95 for weeks now. Every chest I open bumps against my inventory limit. Every new desirable item I get requires me to choose which legitimately useful item in my inventory needs to be salvaged. There is no reprieve in sight. Northelm is sitting at 3/10 crystals. It may be another month before I get him to 10/10 and even then, he only adds 20 more slots. The inventory limitation does not appear to benefit the game and is a constant point of frustration. Please allow sufficient storage capacity for players.
Suggestions:
- Make Northelm’s Inventory increase 2x what it is today.
- Offer an Armory in the Citadel that provides item storage. Base storage at something like +100 with options to increase.
- Change gear mechanic so that you find items and unlock masteries. You would only ever need one of each item and that item can have different masteries unlocked.
- Change storage mechanic so that only unique set items count toward inventory and you can store all 5 masteries for an item and it only occupies 1 storage space for the unique set item.
- Remove inventory increase from Northelm’s function and manage inventory capacity in some other, less frustrating, way. Give Northelm a different, useful, function.
