Advanced Inventory Management

Would love to see additional features to the inventory search field. I know Looty works decently well for racking all of your items into one view but, I am thinking more practical use for an advanced search. Below is a list of stuff that would be really helpful using a better search function.

1. Find ranges
Long time coming is the need to search for a range of items that are a specific type of item like a Helm between ilvl:83-86, or a gem between level 1 and 10 and when I say 1 I don't mean, any number that starts with a 1 like, 11, 12, 13, 14..etc. I also would like to add clauses in my search like "or/and" as well. So much QOL being able to search a range.

2. Find vendor recipes
Highlights sets of items based on the syntax to get all items that contribute to the recipe across your inventory. This allows items to be highlighted that contribute. Right now, the vendor recipe system is many times too cumbersome to navigate even if you happened to memorize your favorite recipes. I need to be able to have recipes as a syntax to find all items in the recipe. Imagine your dump tab and you are able to type, recipe:chaos, and you see everything that contributes to that recipe, color-coded! This brings me to my next request.

3. Color coded item highlight
Right now it's a list lookup function and only highlights in a white border. It would be helpful with "Find vendor recipe" if I searched something like, "recipe:currency" and it highlighted inventory items via color system much like how we can color-code tabs. This would color code my inventory allowing me to know that "red" outline were items that contributed to a Chaos vendor recipe versus say a Chisel that might be in blue.

4. Saved searches
I want to build my searches and then save them on a GUI so I can just need to click instead of type it out. This would let me rapidly manage my inventory with a number of search list functions making inventory management much easier.

5. Draw select function
I want to be able to draw a box in an inventory window to select groups of items all at once so that I can move an entire inventory all at once. In practice, when I fill up from a map and I bounce out to empty my bags to my stash tabs, I don't want to click every item. Just let me grab say the left 11 columns of items and drag it over to my stash. I don't want to move it all, because I keep some things on me like scrolls, augs, alts or alchs for strongboxes. Also, the draw select function could be used for the next item to select actual empty inventory space as well to set rules for that inventory by sub-partitioning it.

6. Advanced Affinity with Partitioned Inventory tabs
I would like to use the draw function to pick say 1/3 of my inventory and set the affinity just for that space. Using the above functions, I could have all my rings go to one area of my tab, or better yet, all influenced rings, ilvl:85+, with tier:1 life. By partitioning with affinities, I don't even have to do that ungodly task of looking at every time after each map and pinging POE Trade to see if it's a keeper or not. I just set the rule locally and it already filters the good stuff from the bad stuff in my inventory based on the affinity rules I created. Now, I would only have to look at my partitioned spaced to see all of those items. It doesn't eliminate the need to look at items but, it certainly cuts down the noise of having to do it on every item.

Concluding Thoughts
What does all this mean? It means that as we become more efficient with our inventories we seek to grow the inventory. You want people to have lots of loot. It means more tabs for GGG so more store revenue, a reduction in site POE Trade hits for pricing (which reduces costs for GGG and improves search speed for players), the player economy is bigger, items are more accurately priced, and the player markets get more efficient. It's good for everyone. This game also has a paralyzing effect via analysis which I think creates a cognitive load for the player that exhausts them quicker than otherwise doing tasks that are monotonous, costly, and stressful. Using currency at earlier levels certainly is. Having better ways to manage inventory and converting trash loot to currency for lower-level players helps that player retention as well. It allows them to more easily make money earlier and doesn't impact the overall drop rates in Wraeclast and the economy as a whole. In effect, it acts as a subsidy to lower-middle-class players who still pick up trash loot versus the upper-class who only pick up the more valuable stuff. Hope we see more developer investment into inventory management as the monetary benefits for the dev time spent would certainly be realized.


Talidus

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trepcsuit wrote:

What does all this mean?

That the main problem isn't the search functionality (except for maybe the tabs where search doesn't work at all, like map tabs), but the amount of bloat added to the game over the years.

I agree completely. The current stash system they have in place is very archaic when it comes to actually searching for items. Imagine in 2020, still being forced to only search for your items through 1 tab at a time instead of being able to just type in anything in the search box and having it search through all of your tabs. A game like Runescape has had this functionality since early 2010, and here we are with PoE only now coming out with just "tab affinities", a feature that Runescape ALSO had back in 2010. All of this seems like a QoL that has been purposefully ignored by the devs for too long and definitely needs more improvement than what's in the game currently.

And to be frank, this whole "let's make the item management cumbersome" mindset because it "adds value to items" is so annoying. It's like "you want to play the game? You have to clean your room first!". If they only realized how much value QoL adds to the game when it comes stash and inventory management, maybe people would be able to enjoy the actual game more instead of Tetris and Search for items for 30 minutes through your 20 tabs simulator.