an interesting discussion on Stash, Inventory, and management

Let me preface this by saying: I don't really have a strong opinion or lean one way or the other. I am genuinely interested to see what other people have to say on either end. I'm not sure why this popped into my head recently but it did, so here we go.

The Traditional Design:
1) Players have a finite inventory for picking up items "in the world"
2) Players have a nigh infinite stash that they then empty their inventory into at breaks
3) Part of the game loop involves managing what you pick up, what you leave on the ground, and the "tetris" of your inventory.

But......does it REALLY need to be designed this way? Or is this simply a carryover from the genre definers that simply decided that this was how it was meant to be?

What are the REAL drawbacks of having access to your stash AT ALL TIMES, wherever you are. Why do we "need" an inventory at all separate from our stash tabs?



A few common arguments I might see (or have seen) in favor of the status quo:
1) Realism: when we explore, we carry a bag with finite space.
2) Management of an inventory adds importance to drops
3) An inventory can make finding regularly used items easier, or trade easier.

Common arguments I might see (or have seen) in favor of infinite stash access
1) More fluid gameplay loop
2) No wasted effort, or at least less wasted effort on tetris
3) Always have the items you need, when you need them



I have a few personal thoughts on some of these:
1) Regarding the realism of exploring with a finite bag: we teleport to and from town and have an infinite stash. Why is a carry bag where we draw the line for realism? Plus....what kind of witch on the brink of starvation is carrying around 6 2H mauls?
2) Regarding the more fluid gameplay loop of infinite stash access: does it REALLY give us this, or does it ultimately lead to bloated stashes and much less organization and MORE wasted time?
3) Inventory adds importance to drops: in PoE especially, this ship has long since sailed given that we filter out 99% of all items that drop anyway.



I'm curious to hear what others have to say? Which would you prefer? Why? Any other options that I haven't thought about?

At minimum we should have a sort button in our stash tabs so we can click it once and it will Tetris everything for us. I hate having to constantly move stuff around.

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Lorwock#9495 wrote:

At minimum we should have a sort button in our stash tabs so we can click it once and it will Tetris everything for us. I hate having to constantly move stuff around.

That's an interesting aside to chat about too: I agree that autosort would MOSTLY be welcome.

However....just to play a bit of devil's advocate here; I have played games where autosort functions actually make inventory management quite a bit harder. I actually prefer organizing my inventory myself (when I have to) so that I know where things are without really having to look. This might also be preferable to those players who don't have affinity tabs.

And then if you have a game that gives you MULTIPLE options for auto-sort preferences....then again it goes back to the "why even have an inventory" question.

My opinion is this stuff is a slippery slope that can lead to convenient but shallow gameplay.

Why have npc locations instead of a cellphone?
Why have more than 1 npc?
Why use waypoints instead of GPS teleports?
Why have quest items to turn in instead of instant rewards?

Cause PoE in part a role-playing game. Our characters exist within a fictional world that maintains 'some' internal logic. Its not so much about realism as it is about consistency.

That being said, most of my favorite additions in recent leagues have been QoL changes. I was somewhat against being able to pause but I flipped on that pretty quick after trying it.

The "slippery slope" argument can be applied to ANYTHING that has ever been released or existed in any game, anywhere, at any time. EVERYTHING is a slippery slope. If this were truly a concern, nothing ever would change. EVER.

NPCS serve a different role than inventory/stash. They would STILL need to serve their role, and their individuality and locations MATTER to what they do. We could have an entirely separate thread discussing THAT situation. And it would be unique. NOT connected to this.

The point of this is taking a hard look at two interconnected-yet-separate systems to specifically highlight what QoL COULD exist in ONLY these two systems. The relationship between stash and inventory has pretty much nothing to do with npcs, except within the line of "Should we have access to our stash when we interact with an NPC", which I would argue "yes". Doesn't change a thing about how, why, or when we interact with NPCS.....it just makes interacting with them slightly easier.

Extrapolating this particular unique situation further to.......literally everything else in the game is kind of a silly argument and funny enough, itself a slippery slope.


You could argue your 4 examples, and I'd bet you'd get a wildly different response from others for each and every one. Because its NOT a slippery slope...they are disconnected ideas. They are WORTH discussing, but some might be more favorable than others.

My opinion is that you have to suspend disbelief way too much to accept that you have a near infinite stash at your fingertips when the fact is there's no in-game reason for you to have it.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

What are the REAL drawbacks of having access to your stash AT ALL TIMES, wherever you are. Why do we "need" an inventory at all separate from our stash tabs?

A few common arguments I might see (or have seen) in favor of the status quo:
1) Realism: when we explore, we carry a bag with finite space.
2) Management of an inventory adds importance to drops
3) An inventory can make finding regularly used items easier, or trade easier.

Common arguments I might see (or have seen) in favor of infinite stash access
1) More fluid gameplay loop
2) No wasted effort, or at least less wasted effort on tetris
3) Always have the items you need, when you need them

I have a few personal thoughts on some of these:
1) Regarding the realism of exploring with a finite bag: we teleport to and from town and have an infinite stash. Why is a carry bag where we draw the line for realism? Plus....what kind of witch on the brink of starvation is carrying around 6 2H mauls?
2) Regarding the more fluid gameplay loop of infinite stash access: does it REALLY give us this, or does it ultimately lead to bloated stashes and much less organization and MORE wasted time?
3) Inventory adds importance to drops: in PoE especially, this ship has long since sailed given that we filter out 99% of all items that drop anyway.

I'm curious to hear what others have to say? Which would you prefer? Why? Any other options that I haven't thought about?

From the very beginning of our journey we wash up on the shore with but what little we can carry in our backpacks. Getting to town, we get access to some more permanent stash space. 4 boxes.

That's where monetization for PoE comes in. If we want more, we have to pay up. And honestly? That's fine, they have to make their money somehow.

But there are also balance questions that need to be answered. If we always had access to our stashes, no matter where we are, item size becomes a non-issue. There is a reason why items come in different sizes. Inventory space matters. Stash space matters. Looting matters.

Adding always-access to your stash even while mapping? I don't have to choose whether or not I pick up a 6-socket item.

I want choices to matter is all

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

There is a reason why items come in different sizes. Inventory space matters. Stash space matters. Looting matters.

Adding always-access to your stash even while mapping? I don't have to choose whether or not I pick up a 6-socket item.

I want choices to matter is all

Does it really though? Like...that's an argument for keeping an inventory, but it isn't an argument for stash access while mapping.

The only change having access to your stash would make is the removal of needing to portal to town to do exactly the same task you'd be doing anyway within the map. Is that really a meaningful "choice" that YOU are making, or does it exist simply because its the only path left for us?

I can all but guarantee, if we still had inventory and items still had varying sizes, the additional access to our stashes wouldn't change many folks' playstyles. They STILL would be reticent to stop what they are doing and constantly move inventory items to their stash while mapping.


I get that all these things "matter": the question is to what DEGREE in the overall scheme of the game do they ACTUALLY matter. Looting would still matter, storage would still matter, choice on what to pick up would still matter.....it would just be ever so slightly DIFFERENT than what we have now.

Isn't that kind of the point of QoL? The initial designs have always MATTERED in some way.....but QoL is meant to remove tedium for tedium's sake, or otherwise streamline things in ways that would NOT have a "large" impact on the game. And this wouldn't. These things ALWAYS impact player choice and engagement, the point is to what degree

Perhaps for your take, removing the inventory entirely is a huge no-no. I agree, that would make item size matter very little, when it should. I disagree that it would change "looting" though....you'd pick up more items, but then your stash would fill exponentially faster, leading to you ultimately.....deciding to only pick up what you want to deal with ANYWAY.

And say you ARE a player without "infinite" stash space, and it fills up faster because you are looting more each map: this would be a boon for PoE's monetization...without any REAL meaningful change to how looting occurs. More experienced players would still filter and not pick up most items. This could be an argument that it makes additional stash tabs MORE p2w than they currently are....i guess. But if you are constantly filling your stash with mediocre loot, you are also wasting a ton of time at merchants as a tradeoff.




We could go even MORE granular here: why is 6 x 12 the right size for our inventory? Who determined that? Players dealt with a much smaller inventory and similar sized items in D2. Why did initial PoE developers decide to make it larger in the first place? More loot (in comparison to D2) certainly did NOT drop in the early PoE days to warrant a larger inventory. And we had no charms. Would you make the same arguments you just made if it were....half the size? Twice the size? Etc? Is there really a "too much inventory space"? You think the average player is going to fill up their inventory every map simply because they CAN by picking up every item? I don't really think that is the end result of this argument.

It all begs the question: are these choices you are making as a player because they are MEANINGFUL, or are they choices you are making simply because you are being boxed in by design choices that don't actually line up with the reasoning YOU think they line up with?