Portal and Identify Scrolls - Do we really need them?

I like Torchlight 2 solution:

The items drop unidentified, the ID Scrols are ingame BUT!
item identify is done via Right Click on item (like in D3) and ID scroll is automatically consumed.

Its simple... one click is better that two clicks + searching for small scrolls in inventory. And effect is exacly the same.

Same with Portal Scroll... i think taht Portal GEM should be removed from game, Town Portal Skill should be INNATE skill on all clasees and chars and this skills should use a Portal Scroll from inventory as a regent.
I also think that Portal should have some cast time (interruptable by DMG) and cooldown to prevent mechanic abuse and 'making game easier with portal abuse'.

My 2 cents.

I don't mind the current system except that I hope that the portal scrolls/skill is disabled in PvP.

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Amarena wrote:

Sometimes I think Townportals should not be dropable. Some reasons:

- It would rise the demand for wisdoms (vendor would still sell TPs for wisdoms)
- It would rise the demand for TownPortal Gem
- It would reduce the traveling to town, making the game more immersive in some points.

These are some I could think of

I really like this idea.

edit: I also like Kabraxis' UI tweak idea for IDing items - if you have an ID scroll, right-clicking on an unIDed item should ID it. Mixed feelings on the TP ideas.

Identifying new magic items is part of the "culture" of the game. If you dun like the accumulating piles of ID scrolls, how about this?

An ID scroll reveals one mod. This means that two mod blues need two scrolls, and rares... At higher levels, there will be some value as rares need to be evaluated. The only drawback I see is how clunky this would be, unless you clicked on the item and an ID scroll, and were informed of how many scrolls would be needed to completely ID it, and you could then authorize how many to use, and, *POOF!* they all go off at once.

If you happened to come up short, you could still use the identified mods, but you might find yourself itching to know about that last one or more.

As for Portal scrolls, at-will returns to town should have some restrictions. I have a Portal gem, and my characters who are high enough level to use it do... Unless they lack a spare skill slot, and then they go back to scrolls. All I really use it for, then, is to save Portal scrolls. If the skill gem didn't exist, I wouldn't miss it.

But I would miss the scrolls. I like to set one in any area in which I dun already have the waypoint, including boss lairs. Otherwise, if I die (and it happens to us all), I dun wanna have to come back in through the last waypoint, and fight my way back, hopefully before the area in which I was killed resets.

Your mileage may vary, but that'd just suck. ='[.]'=

The scrolls are clearly important to the economy and blah blah. They shouldnt be going anywhere.

Though I definitely support a reduction in drop rate... Having half a storage tab filled with stacks of these is a little crazy. It would be far more interesting if the drop rate was reduced dramatically late game, or a different system was put into place like Ray above me suggested.

Since playing D3 a lot, I find this old style of having scrolls very annoying. There's really no point to it, you're always going to get your items identified, and you're always going to use town scroll if you need to go back to town, having scrolls is just forcing you to have a smaller inventory for no reason.

A benefit of ID scrolls is that there's some suspense after picking up an item. Sure, that's why D3 has a system where you have to identify rares, you just don't need to carry a billion scrolls to do it.

Same with TP, going back to town is just more or less the most boring part of an ARPG. This is alleviated by town portals, but at the cost of your inventory being full of townportal scrolls. Again, D3 does it right, having the ability to use a town portal at will. Sure, put a cooldown on it etc if it makes the game "too casual", but really, having to keep a ton of scrolls for it is just bothersome.

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Randomlee wrote:

Do we really need this mechanic?

Really, it's only in the very early part of the game where they honestly matter. By the time you reach the end of normal you typically have a large supply of them. I understand they serve as currency for buying base items from vendors and such, but I can't help but think there might be a better way.

It might just be that I miss gold.

I can say this is a mechanic I did not miss in Titan Quest.

What do you guys think about it?

i agree with the idea
this was one of my favorite features of titan quest
cus if you really think about it its a pretty pointless thing to have to ID an item what purpose does it serve? other than you can sell unid items to people which i think is silly anyway.
the only reason you could really argue to keep this scrolls in the game is because they are the bottom line currency for vendor trading and they would then have to kick up the amount of lower orbs dropped to compensate

so for poe i dont think i would work that well
tho as a whole for this genre i prefer no scrolls i think they are just a waste of space in my stash in every game

same with TP scrolls just add a damn TP button why make a person carry scrolls for just that purpose?

I really hate the D3 system. The channel on town portal is fine, keeps people from cheesing so easily, but ID’ing yellows vs anything else is pointless. You either have things to ID or you don’t. It’s just another of the many ways that D3 is half ass’d, white drops being another big one.

The current POE ID system works great with the exception that we need something to do with them late game. I could see taking portal scrolls out as drops, then using wisdoms to buy them as one solution. That or adding a recipe that converts huge numbers of wisdom scrolls into something much higher up the currency chain. At 58 I have piles of misc currency mats that I don’t use in recipes just taking up space. Since they can all be converted to wisdom scrolls, a mass dump recipe would help cut down on the buildup of all currency items.

As many other posters have said, it’s also a nostalgia thing, and a good one. In the end, if you don’t want scrolls taking up space, leave em in the bank. We get four tabs as is, two slots isn’t an issue.

Identify scrolls are part of this kind of game. If you automatically know what everything can do, you might as well have all white items, for all the interest you'll get out of finding things.

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Rahabs wrote:

I really hate the D3 system.

Why would you hate a system that removes a needless outdated concept?? Why the need to ID things? Its the sort of mechanic that game designers copy from D1 without ever actually considering why it existed in the first place.

TP are done much better, no cheesy portal running in D3. ID scrolls are a joy to be free of, still have the little buzz of excitement when IDing rares. Everyones happy (except you it seems)

POE does many things very well, but some things are clearly just where the devs have copied genre staples without considering the point in them. I also think that GGG intend to sell portal gems and possible ID gems as cash shop items, cause basically having to use scolls is inconvenient and irritating and selling convenience items is how they will keep the servers running.

Although thats just my suspicion, I have no evidence of that, so take it as you will.