Inventory management: The Master List

[ebon pier]

I have been playing this game for about a month and am loving it.

However, there is one glaring issue with the game.
Here is my average nights gameplay:
Log in
Go do dungeon/quest. Inventory full after 15 minutes.
Go do inventory management- run around to gift to NPCs for favor, run around to NPCs to sell. go to storage, want to put stuff away but storage is full despite being “like family” with respective NPC.
45 minutes later, Begin crafting to make space/level crafting skills. Run from storage to NPC 100 times to make all of the crafts and components, create an inventory mess of bottles/byproducts/products/ leftover partial components/other (Muslin, Firkin, compounds, etc).
An hour later, Realize I need 1 mycena mushroom to complete a flake, to complete the suspension, to complete the rennet, to complete the cheese, one mushroom let’s me use materials to open up 5 different inventory spots. None up in Serb, run around for 5 mins to find one to go back to create the end product.
Inventory manage again to put away everything I used to level crafting skills.
As I level and get more materials, I have to begin spreading stuff into storage across multiple zones. Now I have to ride from Serb to hills to elt to put everything away.

By now I have 30-45 minutes before bed time. I have a decision to make. Go do something and login to an hour of inventory nonsense tomorrow, or do nothing so I can have a fresh start tomorrow to actually play the game.

A couple of notes:
-almost every single item in the game has purpose and use. this isn’t a bad thing but there are how many items, compared against how many storage spots? I don’t know that the answer is to make less items useful, but it certainly increases the necessity of more storage.

• just last night there was a discussion in world chat about people creating guild with only themselves, with the sole purpose of gaining all the guild storage. When you have a system incentivizing isolation in a massively MULTIPLAYER game, you have a problem.
• I like how the crafting is interconnected, especially for cheese making but even everything else. I.e. Use textiles to create Muslin/carpentry to make firkin/mycology to make suspensions. It makes it interesting. However, when the inventory problems are so present, it becomes particularly burdensome.
• I’m sure this will get better over time. I’ll have more zones with more storage and more options. However, then I’ll have more materials to have to worry about, more zones to have to run to. I’ll max favor on NPC and have less of that, but they will be replaced with new ones that I have to travel further to see.

Here are a couple of ideas:

• I can appreciate that you have to participate in the favor system to unlock more storage. However, why couldn’t folks with “best friends” or “like family” favors have even more slots? 100?
  -crafting out of the storage. What’s the skill or experience in running from Fainor to Joeh besides wasting time?
  -make storage available anywhere. Maybe restricted to just towns proper?
  -connect storage across zones so I don’t have to run to different zones.
• why is equipped gear included in the inventory space? I can’t imagine what this adds to the gameplay experience.
  -maybe the community storage cap could increase? I don’t know how high this would have to go to be impactful and it’s certainly not going to single-handedly fix the problem.
  -increased stack size?

[maiden abyss]

You did get more storage for each level of favor, now you have to level up to soul mates for more.

It is easier to craft in the casino I find since I can access all my stuff from one spot mostly.

Equipped gear spots aren't really taken, we were given back the same number of slots to compensate.

I don't think you really need to save everything right away, just the stuff you use all the time. I've been playing for 4 years now and only Serbule and casino storage are even close to full, plus a little in Rahu for stuff that is rarely used, or will be needed for future events.

[vernal hinge]

this game kind of defines itself by inventory management. there are a lot of ways it will get better (in addition to unlocking more space in the NPC boxes with higher favor, there is specific storage connected across specific zones in the council storage machine, and "crafting out of storage" is a skill you learn after getting some favor with a particular npc, and there is another NPC who unlocks a reverse "store in stacks in all storage" ui affordance)

people can mod your leggings and shirt with pockets (16 for cloth, 10 for organic, 8 for leather and metal, in either or both) for a few thousand councils to pay for the cotton (and you might find someone willing to do it for free but just take into account they're being quite nice by doing so), it's highly recommended once you get some pants you'll wear for more than a few playtime hours

and there are also cargo pants and leggings that provide no bonuses or stats but do provide a crapton of inventory space, which can be nice when you're not at the point where stats matter yet or when you want to put them on to not worry about inventory space while crafting

[graceful canopy]

https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Storage

[solid pelican]

Thank you for making this post. At this very moment I am blocked from playing this wonderful game because I cannot deal with the stress of needing to empty my inventory. I know about all of the strategies. I've followed the guides. I have taken significant steps (processing items, unlocking skills to use the items, even throwing valuable stuff away, of course NPC favor as much as possible, mount storage, etc. etc. etc.), and even real money to try and solve this problem. Here I am yet again, unable to play at all.

It literally hurts my brain. It's way too much. I'm sorry. My first suggestion would be: Stop having a pig drop it's feet, it's hide, it's intestines and it's bone outright and instead have it be processed into a carcass that can then be further broken down as needed by another skill. The same with mining. Instead of all kinds of gems and ores and what-not causing your inventory to burst at the seams, have just one simple chunk of ore and then a skill to further derive materials from it. Then give smelting recipes to refine the ores and other possible materials.

Finally, increase stack sizes for certain items.

I love this game, though. I really do.

[hollow field]

Ooh! I didn't see this before, but i made this earlier which might help
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2746512166

In spite of knowing in theory how to manage inventory i am still drowning in the tide of items, haha.

[lament patio]

I just want a search menu for storage... especially that community chest.

[graceful canopy]

If you type /i followed by a term it highlights them in your inventory and in any open storages

[cursive smelt]

Or if you click on the magnifying glass at the bottom of your inventory window.

[empty dove]

Ctrl-F

[empty dove]

I do agree with the flat "more storage for favor levels", but I think it would benefit those most hurt by inventory woes if the earlier levels of favor with an NPC gave a few more slots of storage, generally-speaking (i.e. "Friends", or something far short of "Like-Family" or "Soulmates").

[fallen aurora]

(Radical suggestion, but I think any npc who we become Like Family or Soulmates with should offer us storage.)

It is a darn shame that some NPCs just don’t offer anything else at like Close Friends and beyond.

[chilly vale]

I wanted to add my experience as a new player to this thread - PG is the best MMO I've played in years, but the inventory/storage system is as painful as the rest of the game is amazing. This is the overwhelming consensus from every new player I have spoken to, and I often see this game described as the "inventory management MMO" by experienced players. I want PG to see the huge success it deserves so badly, but in a game with so many items, where nearly everything has a purpose, and where players can access all skill lines, the current storage management system is extremely unfun. Many new players are overwhelmed by the amount of items and I worry they won’t give PG a chance, leading to dwindling player numbers. This is only going to get worse as content continues to develop and I think we need a rework of the inventory system or some quality of life features.

Some suggestions:

• Make all storage NPCs connected - not just across one zone, but all zones. The issue we face isn't the amount of storage - there is an absolute TON available in the game through NPC favor. The main problem is running around between zones, dumping your stuff before you can join daily quest runs or play with your friends. It’s so time consuming and it feels like I spend more time managing my inventory than actually playing. If this is too OP, gate it behind a quest line, balance the storage numbers in some way, even make the convenience a VIP feature. There must be some option to make this better

• At the very least, could we have connected inventories between zones and their dungeon instances? For example, in Serbule, make the storage in Serbule Crypt (Gilded Chest & Sir Arif) and Crystal Cavern (Dalvos's Abandoned Storage Chest) accessible from the Serbule bookshelf. This storage isn't used at all otherwise, because going to these instances is too inconvenient

• Increase the stack size for all items e.g. instead of 5 bottles of milk taking up a single slot, why not 99 for a single slot? Or 999 for some items? WoW implemented this change eventually after years of random stack sizes and feedback from players. PG is so carefully tweaked in many ways, so I'm assuming there must be a reason behind the current stack values - but this change alone would be a HUGE quality of life improvement. Would it really be such a bad thing to have 99 bottles of water and fertiliser take up one slot each when gardening?

• Create a separate 'toolbag' for the various tools we need for gathering/looting (e.g. skinning knife, handsaw)

Some comparisons from other MMOs I've played:

• Elder Scrolls Online has a 'crafting bag' for subscribers - any crafting components you loot go into this bag automatically and are pulled automatically during crafting. This is the best system for inventory management I have seen in any MMO and I would 100% pay for any subscription, extra one-off cost, or supporter package / addon if we could get this in PG (‘Practical Summoning’ is already part of the way there)

• FF14 has an 'armory' system - as with PG, FF14 players can use any combat/crafting skill lines. To manage the various gear sets, there is a completely separate inventory where you can store your gear, and switch between these automatically without clogging your main inventory. I want to try out so many different skill lines in PG, but having different gear set combinations in my inventory/saddlebags would require even more frequent runs between storage NPCs

I'm aware that an inventory system rework will also affect other aspects of the gameplay e.g. perhaps people would be less likely to sell things to NPCs, and the 'buy used' tab would be less populated. My main thinking is - would the game be BETTER or WORSE with these features implemented? I believe an inventory/storage rework would be welcomed by the vast majority of players and let us spend more time enjoying all the fun things the game has to offer. Thank you!

[fallen aurora]

I would be down for the first two suggestions

[empty dove]

This is all great, and I am totally for this. But I think that stack sizes might not be changeable in some cases (iirc, and I may be wrong as all hell). This was one of the articulated trade-offs of not having a "wipe" upon release, as "old crufty code" (trying to remember a Citan quote, forgive me for likely mangling it somehow) that would have been updated or removed now won't be.
Again, I may be misremembering, or things may have changed since, so take the stack size constraint with some uncertainty.

Otherwise this is gold suggestion

[chilly vale]

Surely there are workarounds for hard-coded stack size limitations? e.g. change Bottle of Milk to Bottle of Milk (legacy), code a new Bottle of Milk with increased stack size, and offer a trade between legacy and new items at an NPC? I'm not a coder though, so this may be asking for the impossible 🙂

[empty dove]

Maybe, hence the disclaimers, since I definitely don't know either. Just trying to recall a post Citan made announcing they were NOT doing the dreaded wipe and why.

[chilly vale]

I'm too new to have been part of any wipe discussions - I shudder at the thought!!!

[fallen aurora]

Well Citan also said they would do a selective wipe of items anyways?

[maiden abyss]

Citan has explained his decisions before but I don't remember the reasons, other than that it is deliberate, particularly regarding gardening/water bottles, including the location of the water sources.

[empty dove]

I don't recall a partial wipe, but might be wrong

It was stated that any wipe would be of fleeting benefit, anyway

[graceful canopy]

#general message

[fallen aurora]

“So no item wipe is planned anymore. We may still need to wipe individual items, or even whole classes of items, or reset specific skills, etc., during beta, but we won't be making any big wipe at launch.”

[lament patio]

Wait really? I know about I search but didn't know it highlighted things with a storage open. Holy shit ty

[lament patio]

The community storage def helps for new players and alts but it's kind of a bandaid. It's also dynamic so not always going to have a high amount in it. I also think almost all should stack higher. All food to 99. Phlog to 9999. Honestly the dozen different kind of phlog seems a bit much. Maybe make it just 4 like prisms. Empty glass to 99. Pretty much most things should stack to 99 minimum. Obviously some exceptions I understand why eternal greens only stack to 3.

[lament patio]

Eso had the only crafting system I got into and maxed every craft. No other game has been and to do that. Then there is FFXIV where I haven't touched crafting at all because you have to change into a crafting job and it's a hassle. Pg and wow are somewhere in between.

[flint bramble]

I've also given this subject a lot of thought. Due to the amount of items in the game and the very limited space characters have, I'd say that inventory limitations are an overall hindrance to the fun of the game. I spend far too much time trying to micromanage my inventory. It is not a fun feature. There have been times I haven't logged in to play because I know I need to manage my inventory before I can go actually play the game.

Is micromanaging inventory space a feature people enjoy? (actual question, not being sardonic)

[solid pelican]

I have this same exact question. Honestly, I'm relieved to see that there are some likeminded players in here on this topic. I don't know why I never worked up the courage to say something about how I felt about the inventory management. I guess I was assuming that people must like it. I couldn't find too many statements from the developers about it.

[graceful canopy]

In my opinion, if you simplify storage too much, the game world would become very stagnant. One of the "fun" things people like about the game is how active the world feels with other players you encounter in passing. If you were able to summon from, or send to, any storage in the world then players would more likely come to a stand still. As you level up storage becomes a minor concern, because you get tons of in-world storage, ability to send to currently stored items in zone, craftable storage, LEC storage, LEC summonable vendors, ability to make alts, expanding guild storages, and now the huge Community Chest is always being refilled it seems unlikely to expire.

I know this "back in my day" stuff is rarely helpful, but even the transfer chest used to be much smaller for moving things to alts. We have saddlebags you can send to from inside dungeons and you can privately store on player vendors with reserves for alts. Things are better now than they were at any time in the past.

[flint bramble]

I mean, if we talk about back in the day, IIRC I think one of the original reasons MMORPGs restricted inventory space was because the servers. Clients loaded the full inventory of every other player character near them. Servers would crash when too many PCs were close to each other.

I assume that issue was long fixed.

[graceful canopy]

I never viewed it as a limitation of the server and more an intentional game design to force you to think about what you are keeping or selling

And the aforementioned movement to organize them

I think Jack did mention that like 700+ slots on a chest had some impact on performance though, that is probably unrelated to this.

[solid pelican]

I gotta agree about the connecting all of the storage idea. I'm not personally a fan of that. I like that players have to walk from location to location, but right now I think the issue that I have is how many items you acquire from a relatively short time spent hunting or killing enemies. It's no time at all before you have to go sifting through the items and depositing them here and there, which puts dungeon delving on hold for a very long time. It's the experience of spending 15 minutes killing, and 1 hour and 45 minutes sorting through items to make sure you don't throw something important out by mistake. The info panels are fantastic, but they take time to investigate if you're a new player.

You're not looking at an item at a glance and immediately making a determination about it's value. Someone like me who is relatively new is processing all of this information, which is copious.

[flint bramble]

Yeah. I spend a lot of time micromanaging inventory. To the point I have no desire to try to do tradeskills because I just don't have the storage room.

Some of this might be on me. I only use the community storage chest, saddlebags, and my character. I have no desire to have to look through several different npcs to find an item I stored with a different individual. That is a hard no on the meter of what I find fun vs just plain tedious.

[graceful canopy]

That negates a large part of the game, gaining favor....

[solid pelican]

They fixed that somewhat with the search feature. A part of me wishes the crafting stations could have some storage containers next to them. I know also that embedded deep with the progression are these additional benefits that improve the inventory management, but maybe it should be a little more front loaded so that the new player experience involves less micromanagement.

[flint bramble]

I'm still gaining favor with people, and having fun with that mechanic. It changes the prices they are willing to pay, the amount of money they have, the quests they are willing to give me, the training they will do for me. Why tie that to storage too?

[solid pelican]

I was never a fan of this concept, either, but it is a massive part of the game. Also, I may be wrong, but I think there's a bookshelf or something centralized in each zone that consolidates all of the items stored at NPCs in that zone. So you at least don't have to go from individual NPC to individual NPC.

[graceful canopy]

A storage tutorial on all the features could definitely help alleviate some new-player pain points

[flint bramble]

Tutorials are nice, but I still go back to my first thought. What does forcing people to have to micromanage inventory between multiple npcs bring to the game? How does it make it more enjoyable? Do people like this feature?

I mean, if people really enjoy it, then that's great. This game is a very unique one and the main target demographic isn't going to be the same as other MMORPGs and shouldn't cater to the lowest common denominator. I'm very ADHD and there's just no way I can keep organizing between multiple people without burnout, so I am the lowest common denominator on this one. I am curious what others think.

[chilly vale]

Forcing players to run between different zones / storage NPCs, just to prevent the world seeming stagnant seems like a really broken approach 😦 I think the world will always seem alive because players travel between areas for lots of reasons - dungeons, gathering, quests, hanging in items for favor. Removing storage from the list of reasons to travel may result in less traffic, or it may have no effect at all, since players will be freed up to do more fun things in the game

I haven't heard of others describing storage as a minor concern to be honest, even high level players. I get that things will open up over time with lots of options that didn't exist in the past, but as someone mentioned earlier, this seems like a bad aid on a system which could be reworked into something better. I'm not saying the solution is worldwide storage accessible from anywhere - that was just food for thought

[empty dove]

Dag, sorry, but as someone that's had to start over and experience the pains of such all over again, I attribute the lack of conversation about the topic to veterans forgetting how terrible it can STILL be for new players. I got to the point of not having inventory woes, and then had to experience them all over again. It's not about how the issue goes away after a certain establishment in the game, it's about how this is an issue at any point in the game experience.

Lack of accessibility to storage is the problem. Just because "you can get X slots here from Y NPC" doesn't mean it's of any use to many folks, given the additional complication of not being to use the Enter the Light Serbule and Rahu portals more often than every 8 hours. This means all that wonderful Serbule Hills storage is less useful because of the cost of access.

You can't tutorial your way out of inv hell. I know this.

Greenberg also made a post about the same thing awhile back, and they're a veteran with more lemons than any in-game nature spirit

[lament patio]

well that didn't workf or me 😮

[flint bramble]

That's a pretty good point. Even on noob island I was having inventory management issues. I'm a seasoned (old) MMORPG player, so that wasn't a deal breaker for me. The amount of inventory storage isn't really the issue alone, but when combined with just how many different items there are in this game and the fact you cannot easily sell items due to no AH and vendors being limited on gold, I end up just tossing items on the ground constantly. Considering every new zone or dungeon I go into is littered with items, I think I am not alone.

Give me unlimited crafting goods storage as part of the monthly fee like ESO and I'd already be subscribed and probably leveling every tradeskill I could

[cloud night]

Please focus on this as soon as possible. There are some good ideas here. I would rather see this fixed than anything else. It is very painful to deal with right now and everyone has to do it all the time.
Honestly it is just wasting players time that we can't spend on playing the game we enjoy.

I would even go as far as disabling the current system and building it from zero and as pure utility storage with no progression. Shared bank everywhere that is big enough for everything. There are so many interesting things to do in the game.

Why should people even spend significant amount of time thinking about storage when they want to do anything in the game?

[chilly verge]

We have "Tradeskills" Tailoring for instance could be used to make bags that would fit in inventory slots that hold a set number of items with the bag slot size increasing with the higher level recipes.

[solid pelican]

I think you are really getting at the issue here. I get the sense that this isn't a mid to late-game problem. The guides and resources available make it abundantly clear that there are inventory management solutions available right now. It's that the solutions aren't available for new players. The inventory management challenges are frontloaded. I think I've made some significant progress myself, but I'm not over the hump to where I can play the game the way that I personally want to by exploring, completing quests, hunting and crafting.

There may not be a significant amount of advocacy for changes to the game that resolve this issue because so many of the players in the community might be veterans who have already overcome the inventory management challenge, and it's no longer a problem for them. They're flush with discrete benefits that have been accrued slowly over time (Higher Endurance, Council Vault, NPC Favor, Carpentry Crates, and so forth).

It's also probably not an issue for players (unlike me) that choose to specialize one character and create alts for other activities. I personally don't prefer alts. I do everything on one character, which I'm sure contributes heavily to my inventory management woes.

[ebon pier]

100%. I actually engage in the world WAY less because of the inventory system. No joke. My original post wasn’t really an exaggeration. In a 5 hour play session I might literally spend 3+ hours on inventory related activities (which does admittedly include running items to NPCs for favor. I’m ok with that part). If I could play the game for 4/5 hours, I’d be engaging in the world more but actually engaging in it meaningfully, not running to a storage.

I can’t count the times I’ve seen something in world chat, “last call for pudding” or “need help killing X in X zone” or “casino daily X/6” or any number of activity, and I thought to myself, damn I’d love to do that but I have 6 inventory spots available so I can’t.

[ebon pier]

Some great suggestions here. I don’t need every problem fixed, I think it’s a compounding factor. It’s low stack sizes, limited spaces, zones separated, some inv separated inside of zone, abundance of useful items, limited crafting from storage. etc. I could handle any of those independently; hell I could handle any 2-3 of those factors. All 100 at once is where it becomes super prohibitive

[ebon pier]

Agree with the thoughts but I don’t see it as only an early game issue. Admittedly I’m relatively new so I can’t say, but with each new zone bringing new storage, that new zone also brings a new tier of item that requires use of that storage. It also adds another zone to have to run to

[ebon pier]

I’ll throw another suggestion out there. I understand some form of independent player housing is coming. When it does, what if it had huge storage (500 spots?), but huge end game costs for end game players, and maybe unlockable crafting stations, even if there were a huge grind. I would feel helper knowing that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. It would incentivize me to push forward and engage with the game even more.

[chilly vale]

I know, I'm the EXACT same. So many missed opportunities to play because I don't even have enough slots free to pick up quest items. Thank you for creating the initial thread, it looks like a lot of players are experiencing the same issues here

[graceful canopy]

I think this light already exists tbh, you just need to look for it...

For instance, you mention running to storages.... Later on you do a lot less running and a lot more teleporting.

[ebon pier]

When I started playing, the group in my discord all asked what I was playing, and within a week probably 15 more guys had picked it up. It’s by far the biggest gripe we all have. Few guys quit explicitly because of it already. Hate to see it when the game is really good otherwise

[graceful canopy]

You also make generalizations about "new storage being filled with new tiers of items in each zone" but that isn't always true either. For instance, Hulon offers purchasable storage for any item accessible from most zones (Council Storage) and the Red Wing Casino has one NPC that offers up to 100 slots in one area for any item (among other storage NPCs for specific items). These are just two examples, among many. Exploration is encouraged!

Skills like transmutation and augmentation also help you manage the dump of gear in dungeons and transform them into useful materials to improve your combat gear. These materials also stack unlike the original piece of gear.

Eventually you have a lot of "tricks" to manage your gameplay time effectively, but getting to that point takes some dedication.

[ebon pier]

That is fair-ish. There’s still a cost in it (even if, admittedly, the cost is relatively small to an end game player. It’s not 0), but that is helpful.

Question for you. How many binds does a max teleportation player get? I know of 2. That would help no doubt.

It’s still a band-aid that doesn’t negate that the system compounds about 15-20 factors of inconvenience. As I get to end game there will be more items/tiers as well. It also adds more zones to have to run(or teleport) to, which actually INCREASES the time

[graceful canopy]

The Storage wiki page I linked at the top of this thread includes many of these options.

[ebon pier]

Transmutation has helped with in-dungeon management for sure. Still have 3/4x more time managing when I get out of that dungeon, than I spent in it. However, it helps not have to leave gear on the ground

[chilly vale]

I think the intended point was - new zones/content are likely to give rise to new items e.g. higher tiers of animal skins, new cooking items, mushrooms, ores, wood etc. I think the worry was that storage from new NPCs being added alongside those zones may just be filled with the new items, though appreciate the reality may not be quite so pronounced 🙂

[graceful canopy]

you get a primary teleportation bind, a secondary teleportation bind, a heart's home bind (most recalled), a recall beginnings (travel instantly to last place you entered zone), rare drops include teleports to serbule docks and gazluk animal camp, if animal for three hours you get free recall to Animal Town, you also get a mushroom circle bind, and if you use it with un-recall you effectively make that two. You also have consumable items which cast portals to almost any zone / dungeon in game, the daily portal from casino, and a rotating boat ride from Rahu. I might even be forgetting a few....

[chilly vale]

I am really looking forward to being in a position to teleport around the various zones and dump things more conveniently - I'm working towards that, as I'm not sure the storage problems will be a priority for the devs, or whether the view is that things are working as intended

[chilly vale]

I have been playing for ~2 weeks and my transmutation is 50 😂

[graceful canopy]

Right, I think that is a common issue that the devs are balancing all the time.... convenience vs actually being incentivized to progress and feel rewarded for doing so. Many initial suggestions come from the new player experience (which is a good thing), but they lack the knowledge of all the options available to them.

So changing core aspects of gameplay to suit players suggesting things based on a lack of information wouldn't make a lot of sense. However, if the knowledge is readily available and people still feel that progress isn't worth the time invested, then that is definitely an issue.

[chilly vale]

I don't think the suggestions from new players necessarily come from a place of ignorance - from my perspective, having scoured the wiki, I'm asking whether there is a better way to manage a very unfun system. I don't think anyone has looked at the page for 'Storage' and thought "ah, problem solved". The sheer size wiki page, listing the many possibilities and disconnected options, actually speaks to some of the problems players are raising in the first place. Suggestions are also coming from veteran players who are aware of the existing systems

[chilly vale]

Is storage really a core aspect of gameplay? I get that "you will be able to do more as you progress", but this is a completely different sentiment for storage as it is for other aspects of the game e.g. combat. New players, or veteran players on new characters, aren't saying "I can't solo a level 90 elite - change the gameplay mechanics so that this is possible for me". We are saying: we are being forced to spend a significant amount of our gameplay managing inventories across various storage options, instead of actually having fun in the game. I'm completely in favor (pun intended) of working towards increasing storage / unlocking additional options through effort - but the current balance is not even close to being tuned correctly, at least for new players or veterans on new characters. If this isn't a problem for you, great, but it seems to be a problem for many new and veteran players. Does improving the current system negatively impact players who are already happy with it? Or would it be a positive thing for all players?

[graceful canopy]

Yes to both the first and second questions posed, because it would make the game feel more themepark and less like a real world simulation imo.

[solid pelican]

I feel I should clarify that anything beyond early game I was mostly speculating about. That speculation is based on the unlocks (light at the end of the tunnel) that become available later and which I've read about. I'll defer to your experience on whether or not it remains a problem beyond the early game. To your point about multiple tiers of items; one thing I noticed is that I often found myself in possession of items that were of much higher tier than I could do anything with.

[solid pelican]

I'm curious. Does it seem that this is the general consensus? I can only speak from my own perspective, but I'm deeply familiar with Transmutation, Teleportation, Practical Summoning, the Red Wing casino, Cargo gear, so on and so. That entire wiki page that you described. I have even created my own spreadsheets to track the value and usage of items. But that all requires time investment prior to it all becoming useful, and in that time the experience is what I would describe as mostly inventory management, and a blocker to my fun.

I apologize if I'm coming off as argumentative, but I think some of the most important feedback to consider is from new, uninformed players. They can tell you where the design might be unintuitive, and the entry point to a game is critically important in my humble opinion. I'm not sure why a developer would want to bring in only people willing to "dedicate" themselves to a game. The game should draw you in.

I mean this is getting way off topic. I'm won't say anymore, because like I said, I have nothing but positive thoughts about everything else this game has to offer, and I really don't want to come off as disrespectful.

[empty dove]

I know, as a veteran, all the storage and inventory lifehacks and I AM STILL DEALING with lowbie storage issues over a year later. This is not due to lack of information, lack of implementation, or lack of effort. It's due to all these well-fleshed out storage NPCs being fractionally-useful as a result of the fact that just because an area has ample storage doesn't mean that storage is CONGRUENTLY-useful compared to other areas (Casino and Rahu storages are far more valuable per-slot than, say, Serbule Hills storage because of the travel cost inherent to that storage space being only locally-accessible).
Perhaps the Practical Summoning skill can be extended to allow access to all storages at any aggregate storage bookshelf, storage-giving NPC, or storage-accessing item (such as transfer chests). Perhaps storage bookshelves simply are able to access ALL NPC storage. Whatever.
The issue concerning storage space, as I see it, results more from the partitioning of available storage as restricted by zone than from the lack of available storage. In short, having to run back and forth between zones just to manage inventory is fucking terrible, and I would not wish that on the worst humans this planet has produced. Yet here we are.

There are other vets that echo this sentiment, again Greenberg made an entire discrete thread on it, and Pallai has commented about inventory woes both in response and during the organization of their gourmand event. It's a real problem for the game, not just a nuisance.

[next geyser]

There was an accidental solution in the form of a bug a year or so ago. It let practical summoning work from -any- personal storage container and it was fantastic until they "fixed" it. If it was stored in a container, you could summon it to craft, anywhere. It let you utilize storage in far a way places you hardly ever visit and I will keep saying how great it was until they reimplement it.

[visual topaz]

Something that I haven't seen mentioned in the thread is how the Serbule Dynamic Safebox going from 1-5 slots, to 20-30 slots (not sure about this period), to now consistently hovering above 100 slots (currently 130 !!!!!) after the Vidaria update did not seem to impact these problems new players are having. With that in mind, I think that any solution that boils down to "more slots" would not work.

For the record before I say anything: I have over 1500hours played and have nearly all storage slots + related travel/convenience options unlocked.

It's one of the things that made me like the game at the start. I'm a huge fan of beginning at absolute zero and working up, and the extremely limited storage is one of the ways the game makes you feel progression when you reach serbule the first time. Along with upgrading from hardtack, switching out your cobweb-covered gear and getting your first thousand councils to buy necessities, fighting for every scrap of favor with the NPCs to unlock one more row of storage gives a wonderful sense of progression in the first hours of gameplay.

For a long while now I've progressed to the point where storage is no longer an issue. I get satisfaction from having well organized crafting areas, being able to sort 90% of my loot just by going through rahu/casino + serbule, and being able to utilize out of the way locations for long term stashing, like saving higher level skillbooks for the future, or massing work orders to be able to complete several at once. And it's only satisfying because the game makes you work for it, both to go out and get favor and to have the knowledge to tell which items are worth storing and where.

Rather than any changes to the system, I would like to see the game push harder the intended way of dealing with storage woes, which is to get rid of things you don't immediately need. See this forum comment by Citan: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2529-This-game-ultimately-feels-demotivating-to-me&p=18282&viewfull=1#post18282
No one should be spending hours on inventory management, that's surely not the intended way to play the game. But since that's the experience of many separate people, it has to be the game that's wrong at communicating the issue. I have no idea how to approach fixing this.

I want to say this in closing - if the objective is to get as many people through the door as possible, then neutering the entire system by adding a global storage just like people are used to in other MMOs is clearly the right call. That's based off the number of newcomers and Steam reviewers that have a problem with it. But I think there's value in this progression system of the game, and hope that it can stay in some form

[solid pelican]

Hey! Thanks for sharing this post! I am fully satisfied with Citan's response to this issue. Some highlights that I think are important and relevent:

1. "Actually, there are a lot of benefits to the game's item design, and only one serious down side: the 'everything is useful to somebody so nothing can be thrown away' problem."

This is the problem simplified! This makes me feel understood.

2. "I'm not removing a thousand types of items, and I'm not giving players a thousand more storage slots, so the problem... will always be a problem."

Yes! These (in my opinion) are the only true viable solutions to this problem. I firmly disagree with global shared storage, and personally, I think the quantity of item types is the biggest problem. But I also see that it is a trade-off, and respect the decision to keep so many item types.

3. "No game design is perfect. If that's the game's big flaw, eh, I'll live."

The acknowledgement that this is a valid issue feels good.

If I'm honest, I think the feeling of being dismissed (being told to trash more items, unlock more features, read this wiki page), instead of engaging in dialogue, was keeping me from wanting to return and overcome the inventory management challenge.

These statements here from Citan make me want to play again.

Oh and this idea about restricting skills is brilliant. That's one solution I was thinking about, as well. Maybe not make it so you have to reach 100 with a skill to pick up another, but some form of temporary restriction that applies to new players and reduces the scope of items that they feel compelled to collect would go a long way.

[chilly vale]

Thanks for linking the forum post - though isn't this from 5 years ago? 5 years of development is a long time and inventory management will have changed since 2020 - both in terms of added convenience (larger Serbule chest, pockets, etc) and item bloat. This goes back to my thoughts about tuning and balance - perhaps an extra 500 NPC storage slots have been added since 2020, but were an extra 2000 items also added? Given the new skill lines, abilities, zones, item tiers etc, do we have a larger ratio of items vs storage slots now vs in 2020? Perhaps we don't and new players are even better off than veterans were 🙂

The concept of selling items you don't immediately need could work in principle, but items which are actually useful are immediately bought by long term players who don't have storage woes. This is why you see the same items over and over in the 'buy used' tabs. Then if you decide you want to level a particular skill, you need to grind out key items which you have just sold for pennies, and can't buy back from NPCs.

One observation also - this thread does seem to be quite a bit bigger than most others posted recently. Not everyone here is necessarily crying out for inventory improvements, particularly veterans who have already put in a vast amount of effort to get where they are, and are rich enough to teleport freely between their maxed out storage locations. But the volume of posts here could suggest that a good proportion of players would like changes. I can see that the PG team have constantly tweaked and changed things for the better over the years and I hope the frustrations of inventory management vs fun gameplay could be considered. The solution doesn't have to be as binary as 'give everyone 1000 slots instantly' or 'remove 1000s of items from the game'. There are lots of suggestions from new and veteran players here that could improve things without being so extreme

[vernal hinge]

The intention is really not to sell those items to merchants or buy from used, even though that happens, because the arbitrage the NPCs demand makes it much more effective to sell directly to players. Unfortunately for lowbies the only real venue for that stuff is work orders, which only express demand, not supply (and only the demand that isn't willing to pay full price at the player stalls). Anyone early on is locked out of vendor stalls and truthfully anyone who isn't one of like 24 council multimillionaires is at a disadvantage even if they have a stall, because being in A matters a lot for the bulk sales of the everyday stuff like gems and whatnot

And the interaction between all the mechanics for equipment is frankly insane lol, everyone just vendors or phlogs all that because there's literally no point taking the energy to sell a dropped or crafted piece of eqp beyond like a handful of choice endgame things

(or staples like cargo gear)

[lyric wraith]

Inventory is one of the things you earn in the game, like favor, skills, money, or levels. There really is a lot of storage in the game, even at first if you get all the npcs in serb to like you.

Yes, it annoys people that they can't hoard everything, and npcs run out of cash to buy. That's a reason to explore other zones, and get more storage. It may not seem that way to new players.

[empty dove]

It's more about accessibility, because traveling between zones adds additional cost that scales inversely with time invested in the game (i.e. new players end up running between zones more often as a matter of neccessity rather than ignorance or lack of storage).

[lyric wraith]

A lot of that is solved by horses though, and saddlebags. Even low level horses give a huge advantage.

[empty dove]

The 8 hour Enter the Light dungeon portals for Serbule and Rahu are the big gate, and as much as I grumble and accept it, I was NEVER happy with the ramifications given that change because of the way it compounded storage woes.

That's not a solution if you don't have a saddlebag?

I have one and that does not prevent me from having to zone-hop all the time everytime I play.

[lyric wraith]

Of course not, but how hard is it to get a beginner saddlebag?

[empty dove]

I'd imagine for a new player, that REALLY might not be a solid assumption that it's easy

Some of us are not socialites

[lyric wraith]

Didn't say easy, and it certainly is work. But it should take some work to achieve.

[empty dove]

Exactly! That work you mention is horrible and tedious AF, and has caused a good amount of new players to quit.

[lyric wraith]

I quit WOW because it was too easy and got boring so fast.

So it can swing both ways. The difficulty of PG also attracts players.

Just different viewpoints on the game.

[empty dove]

Yes but if it also scares them away, what's the value in even attracting a few oddball pain gluttons?

It's a commonly-shared viewpoint amongst new and yet-established players that inventory is a nightmare. And Greenberg even chimed in, so its not like all vet players are just fine with the way it works now.

[lyric wraith]

Greenberg? He fucking wants to store a million lemons.

There is nothing that will satisfy him. 🙂

[empty dove]

That wasn't the motivation for his post, and you should definitely read it if you have not yet

Should have just kept me trap shut

[lyric wraith]

I'll try, but seriously? I've read so many posts bashing the game for lack of storage, that it's difficult.

I scrolled up and down a couple of times. Where did greenberg post?

[lyric wraith]

eh, same. Not something us talking about fixes. I'll play either way.

[chilly vale]

I'd be surprised if the frustrations of inventory management attracted many people. The difficulty of PG appeals to me from lots of perspectives. Inventory is just tedious. I am feeling burnt out from it and I'm a new player

[chilly vale]

I don't know who Greenberg is but I found the post here

https://discord.com/channels/592041654677012480/1254325074148855910

I've just read through the post. It's the same frustrations shared in this thread and lots of great ideas for improvements. Does anyone know if/when the PG team respond to community suggestions? That one was nearly a year ago

I love this game but I just can't bear to spend so long on inventory management

[lyric wraith]

Not the inventory struggles themselves, but the early game difficulty overall, that matched many old-school games. Which frankly, is so much better now. It was the fun of earning things, whether that was money, gear, favor, and yes, inventory space.

Greenberg's suggestions will certainly get passed on. Also, Greenberg does have several alts who only have lemons in their inventories.

[visual topaz]

Fair enough, it is an old comment. I think it is still relevant because 1) there's no newer statement on this issue as far as I can see and 2) the problem has seemingly not changed since. I mean, the OP of that thread pretty much has the exact same outlook as people in this thread.

I don't want to dwell on whether the new player storage size is better or worse since it's not just new players that struggle with storage. For what it's worth though, if you check the quick notes page on the Wiki, there does not seem to be a lot of items added in the past 5 years that would clog up inventories of new players. It's mostly lategame zones, dungeons and lategame skills like Saddlery, genetics. (There are exceptions ofc, like animal fat)

This thread was created after the vidaria update, which came with +100 slots to the chest available to everyone right in the starting town at no cost. The update otherwise AFAIK did not add any items a newcomer could find. That to me is a clear sign that this problem is not just about the amount of available storage, but about how people approach/perceive inventory management

In regards to your second paragraph - I think it is intended that you struggle with storage at the start. Consider how much faster it is to level your combat skills after you have one maxed. The number of skills locked from you until high level. How much gardening produce you lose out on if you don't already have flower arrangement, or how training skills like blacksmithing leaves you reliant on others until you have leveled several supporting skills. I perceive storage management to be another such obstacle to be overcome - at the start you just have to endure suboptimal gameplay, like getting rid of useful items sometimes, even if you end up needing them in the future. Just like other such mechanics you can get help or throw money at the problem, but at the end of the day you get to feel joy from overcoming a challenge and getting rewarded for it.

But the volume of posts here could suggest that a good proportion of players would like changes

I agree with you - if the objective is for the game to get more players, it seems as if it would help to reduce inventory management. I am continually surprised that there have not been any big changes on this front so far.
However, I worry about this mindset. You mention "New players, or veteran players ... aren't saying 'I can't solo a level 90 elite - change the gameplay mechanics so that this is possible for me' ".
But to me, this genuinely seems like a fair comparison given that AFAIK so far, none of the suggestions in this thread brought up
any sort of cost, drawback or progression system associated with adding more storage slots or global/long range storage access.
It seems to me like people are hitting one of the many many obstacles the game puts in front of you and just asking for it to be removed.

I am thinking that this is a result of the whole storage management mechanic & the way you are supposed to approach it not being intuitive.
And I believe that, instead of making the storage management aspect of the game less of a thing, it would be better to find a way to make it obvious how you are meant to approach it.
You are supposed to not be able to store everything, or even most of what you want. Out of the way storages are only meant for items you don't interact with often.
Item distribution needs to be planned out. Things of that nature
Like I mentioned before, I think this system is very satisfying when mastered, so I would hate to see it go. I wish the game was better at showing what it takes to get to that point.

[graceful canopy]

This is a space to discuss suggestions with other players. Devs chime in if / when they can but it isn't an expectation.

[prime finch]

I def understand the lack of inventory space and the stuggles that come with it. What really worked for me was conning asking friends to play with me and we broke up the non-combat skills amongst ourselves so that our precious inventory could be split amongst all of us and what we're specking into. Its not the perfect solution but it works for us.

[smoky mist]

I saw people recommending global reaching bookshelves, while maybe unpopular how about a middle ground where they can access adjacent zones? (Ex: Serb can access elt serb hills and SV storage)

Or maybe a craft able consumable scroll that functions like a portable bookshelf so you just have to be in zone and not have to find a NPC w storage to access it

[chilly vale]

Oh I see, thanks for explaining. I also just read the pinned Guidelines post which mentions that that suggestions should actually be submitted through an in-game menu. I must admit, I thought these threads were intended as a place for the PG team to engage with the community on suggestions, but that was only based on a comment from Citan expressing interest in a different topic (player market data). But yeah, having scanned the 6 storage/inventory threads posted in the last year, you are right... it seems there's no official acknowledgement or response to these. So I guess the forum post from 5 years ago is the latest dev opinion we have to go on

[tender flower]

Storage is a constant issue, even for me having unlocked most locations. I spend more time running around with storage issues than playing the game. I made alts to have some be permanent animal forms - just for fun, and now they've been turned into storage mules.

[vernal hinge]

I feel like there's definitely a lot of design space to really push forward the anti-hoarding design conceit so people feel less compelled to stuff every NPC to the gills with every single item they've been told is "valuable, you'll need it later". Items and councils in storage are items not participating in the economy, after sll

The biggest aide to me personally is "money now is more valuable than money later, even if i sell something i will have to rebuy in a few months at the same or slightly higher price the value i got out of the councils now makes it a net gain", but that's just individual expectations-management advice not an actual mitigation, which the game could definitely use

One thing i would love to see is some sort of "armoire" item that would allow you to auto-swap a loadout with storage to make that specific, very unavoidable in the system as it is, inventory management problem less of a hassle

Because you literally cannot avoid hoarding several sets of equipment if you have multiple builds at cap

[bright egret]

Agreed ! Only been playing a couple of weeks and the “inventory game” is overwhelmingly brutal. It locks up my brain when I log in.

[young ginkgo]

I find the game incredibly cool, but I hit a like late early game point of trying out a lot of crafting skills and the hour of inventory management (per session) I felt obligated to do hasn’t had me logging in in months.

[empty dove]

An inventory-management strategy is REQUIRED to play this game beyond lvl 1. The consequences may or may not have deterred some number of players from the game that may otherwise have found sufficient enjoyment from it. I think that is the biggest cost, really, how many people might have enjoyed the game in an alternate universe where it wasn't a virtual skill to manage storage.

Game's biggest weakness, by far. Moreso than graphics, at this point.

[royal wadi]

My two cents as someone who started playing about a month ago: Inventory management is a challenge, but a manageable one and one I enjoy. I like having to create a strategy, and I like of progression of unlocking more storage and more mobility. I played mostly blind and solo, didn't find the "more info" button until a week or two in, ran around on foot for ~20 hours because I thought the horse I tamed was single use, and boy did I ever sell and drop things that I later wished I'd kept

Stomachs?

I think most of us agree that the game would be less motivating with infinite personal inventory, but I'm very supportive of making the burden lighter for people other than me and Klimesh who like the game for its other aspects and hate the inventory. Even I've dropped an F bomb sitting down for a casino crafting session, realizing I forgot an ingredient and having to run back to Serbule again

I really like some of the ideas discussed here, like linking sub-zone storage (i.e. accessing Sir Arif's storage from Serbule), adding constraints/mechanics to encourage players to specialize or otherwise reduce hoarding, endgame player/guild housing with big storage, increasing stack size for some items, and slightly reducing the number of item variants (i.e. # of phlog types = # of prism types). I'd like to see the current item summon be either default or even easier to unlock, and add another item summon that crosses zone borders with a cooldown

[fossil citrus]

They've done a lot of inventory adjustments over the years. The most recent one being the community chest. In my opinion inventory is just part of the game and they have systems built around it like favor for NPCs to unlock their storage, they have pocket gear, horses, saddlebags, transfer chest, small box of space, fairy pocket, the whole shebang. The longer you play the more you realize you have plenty of space. Once you find it all of course. Players just have to get out of the hoarding habit and use what you have or just sell it off

Maybe the idea of having to run around everywhere to put up the items is the main problem

Some sort of magical storage that you can summon that is connected to everything. Make it hard and rare to get but at least it would make people definitely shoot for it.

[smoky mist]

You could make a questline where you get to link 3 zone storages of your choice together. Add a quest to break the chain and maybe a cool down to being able re-establish the link to new zones.

3 is arbitrary obviously. It could start as 2, increase with favor or skill level or maybe town level (povus?)

Maybe up to 4 once statehelm becomes available or maybe a second link web becomes available so you just don't have everything easily available

[lyric wraith]

I seriously think people don't use the storage crate enough.I put them down a ton, and then a shoddy one to unload later when I'm at the bank. Bank is in so many zones that it's great as temp storage until I move stuff into the storage in Kur, Casino, or Rahu.

[smoky mist]

What about creating a new set of crate recipes ( or changing the old ones) that increases material cost but produces a crate with multiple uses. Would make em easier to hand out to newbies instead of having to give them multiple crates and take up more inventory/bank slots

Might make them more popular

Alternatively make them stack gasp

[devout spire]

The easiest solution to all the storage and crafting ingredient issues is one that was already implemented on accident via a bug. The spell that allows you to summon crafting components from any storage in town glitched and made it so you could summon from ANY storage. That was the best couple of months ever. We were finally able to make good use of distant storage and save the local storage for gear and adventuring items. I still adamantly believe that if a Greater Summoning spell were available to learn, even if it was a hard to get quest reward like the Summoning spell, it would be a huge benefit to the entire game and community.

[lyric wraith]

But then people would want the reverse, so they can store stuff that way. 🙂

[devout spire]

Well, I can't predict how greedy people are nowadays, but that time period was the happiest I've ever seen the community, with a couple masochistic exceptions, of course 😜

[eternal oyster]

Teleport 50, Transmute 90, 200 Xog and 50 Royal Jelly. Seems good.

[zinc spade]

I do like the progression of storage in gorgon, and i do not think it's a big deal having to travel around the world. But i also think it could be less harsh. More storage per favor level, more if not all Npcs having storage sounds nice too. The inventory management never ends in the game. It does get more managable sure but i would prefer it if the game was even more so. Don't think there is a need to change any fundemental systems though, just giving more options helps a lot. And the community chest was a good start on that, along with saddlebags. Looking back on the past i am not sure how we even managed pre saddlebags, but we did:D Still, i would not complain if they added more storage options in the game. I can't see any reason anyone would, even those that like the Inventory management aspect.

[young ginkgo]

Personally, I think adding more storage to basically everyone is a good idea, including on the player (gear sets getting a separate storage? Perk of riding maybe saddlebag causes your first and second gear sets to not use any space/automatically stores in the saddlebag on swap?) anything to keep the inventory management aspect as a fundamental part of the game that you have to work towards without it being this seriously tedious and damning portion of the early/mid game. It just haults your momentum in the game right now.

[devout spire]

Gear taking up storage is something that always struck me as odd. I'm wearing my clothes AND carrying them in my backpack at the same time? How am I wielding my sword and shield INSIDE my backpack? Of lesser import but equal oddity, WHERE is my backpack? I can only assume I'm hiding it in my prison wallet, since it's nowhere to be seen. Makes me wish I'd gotten the backer package that let's you make your own magic item. Gently-Used Prison Wallet (patent pending) 🤣. Seriously, though, it would be neat if backpacks were like saddlebags; craftable and with varied graphics. Start out on the island with a Shoddy backpack and work your way up, instead of just "magically" getting more inventory space as you leveled.

[vernal hinge]

gear used to not take up storage, persona inventory didn't take up slots. they collapsed the two and gave everyone new inventory slots equal to the number that they used to have as inventory, so inventory sizes before and after were ultimately identical. so if they make equipment take up its own inventory again, we will get fewer slots to compensate, simple as that

[eternal oyster]

Just making equipped gear not count against inventory would be nice. It makes no sense that it does in the first place. My shirt i am wearing does not take up space in the backpack I am carrying IRL even

[vernal hinge]

it does make sense, in the overall context of the game, where equipped inventory used to not count against backpack space but there were also <number of equipment slots> fewer total inventory slots

and they decided that was fiddlier than just giving you that many slots and letting you use them for whatever, equipment included

[young ginkgo]

Yeah I mean this does make sense in that context, in this way then the ask is yeah more Inventory space lol

[hazy sedge]

nvm one more <@&592051994135625778>

[tawdry pivot]

I have a big issue with inventory management taking a lot of time in games. Its not fun, its frustrating, its a waste of time. While I don't have a problem with favour and unlocking NPC's or travelling. I do have a problem with the little stack sizes the 5 and 10 ones should be 99 and the 99 should be 999. It would just be another bandaid but at least less time is used faffing about with inventory management as this game has so many items and it will only increase with time. Then there are items that shouldn't take inventory space or their own special storage: gear, mount equipment and tools

I could word this better, add to it and format it better but growing me barley!

[empty dove]

So with regard to the inadequate stack size issue:
(also, recalling from memory things Citan said, and corrections are welcome)
Part of the reason for the initial "wipe" of money, favor, and items for existing characters upon launch was to "clean up crufty code" which was later articulated to include things like stack sizes for many commonly-used items (less so things that stack to 1 and were made to stack to 5, but rather, things that stack to 99 that should stack to more and don't, but the fix requires a wipe). I am not privy to the technical reasons why this is so, but I remember this being a stated consequence of the decision to NOT wipe at game release.
Again, this is merely from memory, but the whole THERE IS NO WIPE UPON RELEASE seems pretty darned solid.

(For clarity, there were many reasons stated by devs for the reversal on the decision to wipe at launch, and many had nothing to do with crufty code)

All of which are solid AF

[hazy sedge]

I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering to leave my guild despite having great fun there just due to the appeal and value of a solo guild for extra storage

the inventory management is such a pain that the extra storage feels more valuable than being part of an active and supportive guild

[empty dove]

Your guild will not change your inventory woes. Full stop.

Devs have indicated in the past that guilds-for-storage-only will be discouraged/nixxed

AFAIK

[tawdry pivot]

I'm still not in a guild but one of my alts (Morphineuss) got his own guild now and its indeed to deal with inventory annoyances.

Same solution to what I did in World of Warcraft before they increased bank slots and stack sizes.

[sleek elm]

Many interesting and different opinions and ideas in this thread, i think several people hit some nails with storage.

Like i can see some common issues with storage that many players have mentioned before.

I understand certain storage mechanics exist to balance the world, but the question is wheres the sweetspot between inconvenient mechanics to lead players for a specific gameplay and quality of life for enjoying the game.

As an example, i rather log and store stuff on an alt than go to sir ariff and interact with hes storage. Like someone mentioned before

Its important to also understand theres an intended design behind storages, but that design feels detrimental in many cases, detrimental in the sense that it doesn't add anything but inconvenience, and if that inconvenience doesn't reward it will try and be avoided. Thats one of the reasons people use alts, to reduce the inconvenient nature of storaging.

Crafting classes such as cooking or cheesemaking and more, that relay in certain items that stack in a very small amount makes it virtually impossible to hoard stuff in the long term without having to opt what to keep or not.

While its understandable that by design, having a reduced stack size and making storaging hard to play with forces people to "get" what they must, store what they need and when they exhaust their savings they would have to "re-visit" the world.

So its a circular design that interpellate many mechanics, we could call it an ecosystem. I believe it would be interesting to try and improve the storage experience.

[hazy sedge]

this ^. Storage alts/storage guild > having to run to remote regions and even more remote npcs in said regions. The pain of having to use sheets to track what's on which alt and the millions of councils to build up the slots in a storage guild are the smaller evil than wasting hours upon hours running back and forth between far apart storage locations on one character

[vernal hinge]

i'll stick with the opinion i've voiced before, that all these things that feel like a storage problem are actually a "things don't move easily enough in the economy" problem. right now the solution to this is basically "don't hoard" which means selling things you know you'll need later to turn them into councils now so you can get more councils that eventually you used to buy those things again with later

and if people are having trouble making that happen it represents an opportuntiy for the game to ease that

because the game can add storage forever and it will still fill up forever if that's the only thing the game is doing to relieve the pressure of storage

[sleek elm]

Many people opt to have personal solo guilds just to access the overall benefits like the storage. Which is way more beneficial to a single player than to a guild. Because for relatively low cost you can have a lot of extra storage in all towns for personal use, while for a group its a shared feature.
To reach to such conclussions requires to experience the game to try and circunvent storage limitations. Alts would be another one.

I think Also the community chest was intended as a relief valve based mostly in the main currency to encourage long lasting players and millonaires to use some money. I think it should be more accesible. A while back saw someone brainstorming in global, that community storage should also be unlocked by activities.
Giving as an example: completing certain amount of vidaria quests would unlock (x) community storage inventory slots, i believe something like that would definitely make more sense, to actually encourage a wider and more diverse range of players to actively contribute in the unlocking of community storage, i think thats perfect

[hazy sedge]

I can agree with that. That items don't move easily enough. I was actually just thinking that I'm beginning to see why other mmos limit the number of crafts any one player can have. If you can only gather and process a selection of all the mats ingame yourself, you will automatically hoard far less. In that regard PG's extreme freedom to do almost everything on the same char is actually feeding the problem. If you have access to all crafts, you have use for all raw materials there are and thus your storage demand increases many times fold. (I'm not saying that the game should remove that freedom, just wanted to point out that this is something contributing to the storage issue and should be kept in mind. Limited storage and unlimited crafts don't mesh well)

[vernal hinge]

just fyi albanjo, we already know that those activities do unlock community storage

it's not fully transparent but the correlation is clear

[sleek elm]

:0 they do? Haha mb

[vernal hinge]

yeah naipir my biggest and best advice for pretty much every new and old player is "release your hoarding tendency" lol

get a stall and fill it with that shit you don't need right now

[hazy sedge]

I am already selling a ton of stuff, but it is a droplet of water on a hot rock

[vernal hinge]

and don't worry about buying it later

councils now are worth more than councils later

[hazy sedge]

I had a stall like 3 weeks into the game and been using it ever since

part of the issue is that because so many people hoard so much there just isn't consistent demand for many things

you occasionally see someone mass-buying certain item for a week or two when they are powerleveling a craft but outside of that it's a massive hit and miss whether stuff sells

[sleek elm]

Yes, its very important to address the nature of the need to hoard and how that translates into playing the game, if theres a benefit or not. That would also depend on the play-style and overall knowledge and overall stage of the game progression. As for newbies the criteria for hoarding Is very different to an advanced crafter of any sort.
Theres a big role on how things are traded and used. How some things may drop more than the uses they have, or some may drop less than they should. Increasing-decreasing the overall need and values of such ítems.

And then, theres the speculation. Hoarding for not knowing actual ítem values, stockpiling for later use, saving stock for selling, waiting for new content to re-purpose already existing ítems, and propably a numver of other reasons why someone would like or not to hoard stuff.
Then theres the marketability, how often can you find people that would want or pay for what ítems. Some ítems can be so specific in their use and people been saving them for so long they may not even be worth selling.

I honestly believe that adding content Is a good opportunity to re-signify already existing ítems so their value and uses increases and contributes to an organic market. Like it happened with many of the classes added, such as ww or vampirism. There was a moment of scarcity of magnifying glasses on the vamp hype, that not long after got back to normal pricing.

[cloud night]

The core argument is that while Project Gorgon's storage system may have been an intentional design choice, I think its consequences are bad for the game in the current state.

The system creates a frustrating cycle where:

Inventory management becomes the main game. Sometimes it feels like you spend more time sorting and traveling than actually playing, leading to burnout.

Tedious workarounds are the only solution. The lack of quality-of-life features like bigger stack sizes, connected storage, and an easier trading system forces players into inconvenient habits like creating solo guilds just to get more space.

The multiplayer experience is undermined. The design promotes isolation and individual hoarding instead of community and social play.
I don't understand why people argue for keeping it like this. If you want to hoard it all you just create alts and you own guild anyway. It just sucks. The improvements so far feel like temporary fixes that don't address the main problem.

On top of all of this:

The game's events contradict its design. The system incentivizes hoarding by offering powerful, temporary items like "super potions" and event-specific resources, which directly clashes with the philosophy of limited storage and makes the inventory problem even worse.

At the end of the day the question is:

Would PG be better without the fixation on limited storage system?

I personally think from player standpoint this the worst thing currently in the game.

[sleek elm]

yeah i agree the game experience tends to be more about inventory management than anything else. Inventory management should be accessible and not detrimental to the game experience

[lyric wraith]

I think a lot of the problem is player habit and expectations. No matter how much storage the game adds, there are always people screaming about not enough storage. Sometimes a few questions shows that while they want storage, they don't want to work to unlock it. Or unlock all the teleport options that make traveling to storage easy
Other people are just hoarding everything regardless of it's use, or the availability to buy from a vendor when needed. Dump that stuff, you don't need it, and can't sell it to anyone. They also don't need it.

[empty dove]

Can't hoard things without space!

[cloud night]

1. Re: "Player habit and expectations"
   You're right, player habits play a role, but the core issue isn't a lack of storage—it's the inconvenience of the system itself. The problem isn't that people don't have enough space; it's that the process of managing that space is so tedious it becomes the dominant part of the game.

2. Re: "Not wanting to work for storage or teleports"
   This isn't about players being lazy. The issue is that the game's solutions, such as traveling to scattered storage locations, are so time-consuming they feel like a chore. The fact that players are creating solo guilds and storage characters demonstrates that they are willing to "work" to get around the intended system, which shows the system itself is flawed.

3. Re: "Hoarding everything"
   The game's design is what encourages this behavior. When nearly every item has a potential use, and events push players to collect massive amounts of resources, the game is actively incentivizing hoarding. Blaming players for this is a misunderstanding of the system's contradictions, where it both limits space and rewards the collection of huge quantities of items.

[empty dove]

This is the best response on this thread so far

Most articulate and demonstrative

[lyric wraith]

Addressing the third point: The game may encourage hoarding, but indiscriminate hoarding without looking at what you are chucking into storage leads to more work, the need for more storage, and frustration.
And, it's encouraged by too many people. A new player asks about keeping something like pig's feet and the answer is 'Keep everything'. I keep nothing for Shamanic Infusion. Everything is easy to get, usually bought off of jack or or one of the leather merchants. No one should be hoarding stuff like that, but they do.

I bring this up because it is an example of working against yourself. If you don't like running to storage, don't like having to keep everything, don't like playing inventory control
-Then do the things that make a lot of that go away. Don't save the crap that is easy to get, that has no use, and especially if it doesn't stack. I took a year away from the game, and when I came back, I quit doing anything I didn't feel like doing. Dumped tons of stuff from all my storage, quit worrying about dailies, spent all my money whenever I felt like.
When I need something, I go farm it or buy it. I don't need to hoard it all.

[tawdry cove]

Unfortunately, you never know when something will suddenly become valuable. 'Pigs feet' may soon be a coveted resource for Level 100+ something or other... like Metal Claws for +DD recipes... formerly worthless.

[lyric wraith]

FOMO. You have a choice: The anxiety of worrying that something will be needed later, or the frustration of hoarding everything.

[tawdry cove]

I try to keep at least 1 stack of 'everything'.. just in case. It takes time to 'level up' your inventory just like everything else in PG.. but it's rewarding once you do. I 'do' save everything (neatly), but I have 'hundreds' of unused inv slots at this point (mostly in remote areas like FR & Gaz), but still.. Inventory is just hard at the beginning when you haven't earned it yet.

[lyric wraith]

It is, which is why I discourage the idea of telling new players to 'Hoard it all'. If a new player can get stacks of something, 99.9% of it isn't worth keeping.

[sleek elm]

100% agree, the current design of the game encourages hoarding. At the same time that makes storaging inconvenient and tedious.

Saying players are lazy and blaming them is reductive and takes away the focus on the actual design problematics that should be discussed exhaustively

[hazy sedge]

I am all for having to work for storage, but not on the scale of having played for several months, sitting at hundreds of hours of playtime and despite sinking both mats and councils beyond count into favour, I only have a fraction of all storage unlocked. And that aside, a lot of storage is just so inconveniently far away from the areas I regularly pass through, that it feels like a chore to actually run back and forth to it to use it.

And I also honestly don't see the argument of having hundreds of empty storage spots very late in the game as valid. That is because by that time I will have levelled a lot of my skills, especially my crafts and thus only have a use for a fraction of all items that I gather now to eventually level crafts once I got enough mats to really make use of good exp buffs. Once I only need to keep stuff I require to make myself high level stuff, I can of course ditch 90% of the materials. But until then it is a massive problem.
And furthermore it definitely is an issue if it causes many players to quit before they ever even get close to the point of having enough convenient storage to no longer worry about it.

personally I would already be happy if we could just get one extra storage slot per x amounts of favour points past reaching soulmates so we can consistently keep grinding up and expanding our favourite storage locations. Would also reduce the overall item load since more items would be sunk into favouring.

[sleek elm]

But one thing is the steep nature of the learning curve and another thing is how inconvenient is to store stuff. Empirical observation is a key part of the learning curve, to try and understand what materials are used for and perhaps intue their value based not only on their use but also their actual item value and market availability. It is not an easy task, specially for a newbie.

But we are not talking only about newbies, we are trying to encompass multiple game stages here, from the experienced players, to the crafters and the newcomers. Many different experiences based on the actual stage of the game each player is going through.

A noob may not know low tier items for shamanic infusion are easy to get and may hoard them. But lets be real, who stores 20 stacks of horns without knowing its purpose or use and then complain because they don't have space. We are talking about a basic degree of storage criteria.

Thats one of the biggest things about the learning curve, to learn what to save and what not.

I don't think anyone enjoys keeping or hoarding items just cuz, i think people enjoy the idea of the potential use of items they keep, whatever its their use. Nobody likes to trash items that may be usefull or worth more than actual vendor price.

[hazy sedge]

and regarding "Don't keep stuff you can just buy". Many of us still have a ton of uncaps and ability level-ups breathing down our necks, so we are constantly short on councils. We can't just throw stuff away and rebuy it when we need it without cutting into our uncap funds and thus directly delaying our progress. And if we don't make that progress, we do not get access to more ways to earn councils and without more councils we are back to not being able to afford to ditch and rebuy things.

[lyric wraith]

By 'don't keep stuff', I mean 'sell it'.

[sleek elm]

speculation is a big reason why someone would hoard at all, and its fine the game thrives on that

[sleek elm]

i would really like to know whats the amount of characters that have solo guilds just for the storage, that could be a good metric on how people uses storage

not a lot of people like to talk about it so i would guess a lot are using that feature

[lyric wraith]

Another choice you can make. If you are speculating on something going up in value, you accept the loss of storage. I know people that have kept stacks and stacks of game chips, blue dragon scales, featherballs, etc for years hoping they go up in value. That's up to them.

[lyric wraith]

quite a few, but it's a two-edged sword. More storage, but you have to pay for it. And guild points become very difficult to get. Citan has also said that the days of 'storage guilds' may come to an end.

[sleek elm]

I hope they address the reasons why people would do that in the first place. But overall cost / inventory efficiency by just having a lvl 0 guild Is very nice

[lyric wraith]

Different people, different play styles. Some people are survivors of old guilds. Others just want to have their own, and not be part of something else. Certainly, some like the storage.

[cloud night]

Ok here tried to make a case why it is good to keep and why it should be dropped:

1. It is a deliberate design choice that contributes to the game's unique identity. Without this system, the game would be fundamentally different and, to a core group of players, less engaging. The challenge of inventory management is seen as a key feature, not a bug.

2. The rest of the game is so compelling that players are willing to tolerate this system. In this view, the storage system is seen as a flaw that adds no real value, but the game's other strong qualities—its world, lore, and skills—are enough to keep people playing despite the inconvenience.

No matter which one is true the fact is that around half of people who voted in the pool above are using alts to go around the system tells me it is not doing what it is supposed to.

So either commit to the idea and get rid of alt storages, solo guilds etc. Or go the other way and redesign the system completely.

[empty dove]

Not a choice, though!

I have anxiety over NOT hoarding things, AND hoarding too many things (that I still need for immediate leveling)

[lyric wraith]

I'd rather let Citan figure out what he wants to do with things. Which at this point is finish statehelm.

But neither of your proposed options are viable right now. Getting rid of alts would piss off a ton of people and not something anyone wants. Completely redoing the storage system is not on the table now (if ever) until Statehelm is done.
He has said he wants to revisit stacking quantities, which could help a lot.

[empty dove]

And also said that addressing the stack size of many commonly-complained-about items would be impossible without a wipe, which has been stated to be no longer in store for the game. Proposed solutions being inadequate does not detract from the issue whatsoever.

It's a problem, and it's a problem that anyone without a privileged experience of the game can and DOES feel.
I used to be above this phenomenon because I was established. Two plus years after trying to re-establish, and I still feel this pain.

[lyric wraith]

Eh, I'll shut up then.

[tawdry cove]

Please don't shut up! We're here for civil conversation, and your points and counterpoints are valuable. Keep engaging!

[vernal hinge]

Too late, they're gone

[tawdry cove]

...

[sleek elm]

Yeah i mean we have no say on the matter except personal opinions based on each player's experience.

I would say its hard and complex to propose alternatives or specific suggestions specially without fully understanding the current inventory design (speaking for myself).
I find it hard to suggest a good idea that could aliviate some aspects of the game without disrupting it's overall ecosystem for worse.

I think its not only important to suggest specific ideas but to actually try and understand the storage system, criticize and argue about it so we can pin-point it's problematics and flaws, in the diverse criteria of the wide sprectrum of players.

I don't think theres an easy answer, i think theres plenty things on the plate and even if i wanted to suggest a simple idea it wouldn't be appropiate nor crompehensive. I could say just double stack sizes but that will only shift the inventory capacity treshold, and the idea would be to understand the consequences.

A starting point for sure could be to improve stacking sizes of many items.

[sleek elm]

ah damn just realized walrus left, why he was doing good providing counter arguments

[hazy sedge]

okay, I didn't expect to come back to this after 2 days to see someone left the server over it, but that just does drive home how sore of a topic it is. People have and still do quit over it (be it the discord or the game)

[hazy sedge]

yeah. Can't say I agreed with all of their arguments, but it was valuable insight into how someone well-established in the game sees the storage system - which is apparently a completely different perspective than the one we 'newish' players have

I honestly don't remember if I stated that cleary before, but - personally - I don't actually have a big issue with the amount of storage in game. And I have zero issue with having to work to unlock it. The big issue I HAVE with storage is all the time wasted running back and forth to store or retrieve something. It's USING the storage AFTER UNLOCKING it that feels like a massive chore. Hence why I prefer using a solo storage guild, even if building it up eats massive amounts of councils over running to storage I for example have in FR or Gazluk several times a day - pretty much after every bigger farming session that fills my inventory.

So with that in mind, here is a suggestion to help with the inconvience of running all over the map to store away a haul from a farming session. I wrote that up on my 17h trainride yesterday and tried to add both views - that storage should be worked for AND that it should be easier to use - into it. Here goes:

The casino has many doors that don't actually lead anywhere.
Use one of these and place a new room. In that room place an npc called "Redwing Vault Manager". Would make sense that they have one. In that case you could place him through the door behind Irkima. Since Irkima handles work orders, it makes sense that he is close to a storage location. And since Irkima mentions that the WOs are delivered via teleportation, it also explains why we could remotely access storage locations with their help.

Said NPC offers the possibility to remotely access storage locations. From Lady Alethina and her Aurest Missions we know that the code to make quests level restricted is already a thing. Use the same to place a restriction of level 50 on linking the first storage location, lvl 70 on the second and lvl 90 on the third. As for what zones to link either let us players choose or make it zones appropriate for the level of the unlock. So for lvl 50 Kur, for 70 Gazluk or the Fae Realm and for lvl 90 Povus. To accomodate crafters you could also make the requirement either combat or crafting level (though since crafts are more difficult to level, maybe make the craft requirements 10 levels lower, so 40/60/80).

That way we could access more storage in a convenient way. But since it merely links to the zones, we still have to go there, find the npcs and favour them up to get access to their storage. If we link a zone without having any storage unlocked there, there won't be anything to remotely access. You could even implement a mechanic where we have to visit the connected storage npcs at least once every 14 realtime days. If we don't, they're pissed at us for neglecting to visit them and we need to calm them down with a hangout.

That way storage does become more convenient, but we still need to work for it. My issue isn't with having to go and unlock storage, it's with the countless hours it takes to run back and forth between unlocked storage every week to manage all the stuff I get. Using the storage is the part I currently perceive as a chore, not getting it in the first place.

Actually, since it's tied to the Casino, you could make us work for it a bit more and have us also pay 50/100/150 red wing tokens in addition to the level requirement to unlock linked storage zone 1/2/3. Could even do a weekly upkeep of 5/10/15 red wing tokens (so 5 per linked zone). If we don't pay the upkeep, we cannot use the service until we pay said upkeep again.

now feel free to rip into this, I'm actually curious about good arguments for and against it

[maiden abyss]

Personally, I think this is all self inflicted. I save only what I regularly use or have plans for in the near future, not "everything in case" of a possible new thing. I only use storage in Serb, Casino & Rahu, none totally full, and empty storage all over the map. I have no inventory management issues. I sell vendor trash and always had councils for unlocks. However, I do like this idea a lot. It will make my simple system even more simple. 🙂

[hazy sedge]

to be honest, part of the reason I run out of storage in the convenient locations (aka Serb, Casino and Rahu as you said) is that I often just don't have the time to properly sort/sell stuff. Instead often I return from some dungeon and farm run and then a group forms for content I want to do or an ingame friend asks for help with something, so I just 'emergency dump' stuff in the nearest storage to tend to it later. That creates a lot of redundancy and cleaning that up at a later date takes ages. Hence why a way to manage several zones at once would be great. Could dump stuff there and then fuse small amounts of item x in storages A, B and C into a single full stack of item x in location A without having to run back and forth between A, B and C

on that note, the option to automatically move items from our inventory into nearby storage locations that already hold the same item could be expanded to storage locations as well. A button we can hit and it fuses all fragmented piles of the same thing into one location that has enough space for it

grouping is one of the reasons inventoy quickly gets annoying. You can hardly ever form a group on short notice without the group needing to wait on half the members because they need to empty their inventory (and I have held up groups for the same reason why more often than I'm comfortable with)

it just feels wrong to be online in game, not have anything specific going on but when someone asks you "hey, wanna join for xx?" you need to reply with "sure, just gimme anywhere between 10-30 minutes to free up my bags so there is a point in doing xx"

[sleek elm]

it is personal playstyle based, it couldn't be any other way. But the same way you aknowledge you only save what you can immediatly use people can also storage things they can use in the future.

For example, superbuff potion is designed to last 24h and people is encouraged to train within those 24h. Wouldn't be understandable to try and save up materials to optimize material/cost/training of skills?

Being able to store stuff can aliviate a lot of the grind thats required for doing actual content.

So what you are pointing out is key to understand how storage system works. Im not going to sell my stacks of plain mushrooms because i don't have storage while im planning to level up chesemaking.

Instead ill make an Alt, get a horse, lvl up 10 riding get horsebags and get plenty more slots at a relatively low cost. Or i could make a solo guild, or buy more character slots, have a guild on each character, and so on.

But that example is just one crafting class, imagine multiple. Not saving some materials is way more detrimental than hoarding them, its just not any material. We ain't talking about hoarding horns just cuz, again we are talking about players with basic criteria to store stuff for things they need and not merely speculation of value increase.

Some cases its more hurtfull to sell items than to actually store them. But number 1 rule of inventory management and basic criteria is to get rid of useless stuff or things that are not going to be used in the short-mid term.

My playstyle is, i don't craft a little everyday. I craft a lot when i have enough materials saved up, i try to use my time efficiently yet its not mandatory. Training crafting for me is a medium to an end and not a particularly joyfull experience by itself. Other players can differ but thats important to understand too, people have different playstyles.

I don't think its fair to say people play the game in the wrong way, i think its valid to discuss the mechanics.

i don't know lets say u wanna lvl up sushi prep, i could just not save up watercress. Have 0 and the day i wanna train any skill that requires watercress ill have to invest a considerable amount of time farming it, trying to get it from buy used" or player shops at an obsene high price. Or i could pasively get it over time and store 2-3 stacks for the day i decide to lvl up the skills that require watercress.

Game design itself encourages players to start saving up things they may need in the future, the fact people don't its merely due to storage capacity limitations and learning curve. If you don't know you will need something in the future you won't save it, unless you understand things may" have a future use and its not worth selling it to mushroom jack at a fraction of what other players pay.

So, yeah theres plenty considerations and we could go on all day, analyzing (or trying to to) every situation and why players would like to hoard items. Bottomline is the majority of the game mechanics encourages hoarding.

[maiden abyss]

No one said anyone was wrong. I said it was self inflicted, and it is. There is no rule that they must store everything. Its a choice. I too save all mushrooms, and stuff that I craft regularly and stuff that I'm going to craft soonish just like you. I just dont save feather balls and IOUs and stuff. If I right click an item and there are no crafts/recipes that I use or vendors I need favor for it is sold. Doesnt sound too different than you. I just dont have inventory issues. I think noobs take it too literally when they are told to “save EVERYthing” so they freak out trying to have it all and not selling enough stuff for their unlocks.

[hazy sedge]

oh and a way to address stacking issues that cannot be changed without an item wipe would be to use the mechanic that i. e. huge fae honeycombs have. You can break those down into several smaller ones. So for items that stack badly (for example bottles) there could be a crafting recipe for a "set of bottles/sixpack of bottles" (the name really isn't the important part here) that allows us to combine several items into one of those collections of items (that can also stack to a reasonable extent) and once we need the base items again, we can just break it down via right click

[hazy sedge]

I think it's 50/50. I fully agree that many newbies take it too literally to 'save everything' but it's also an issue that in the beginning, when none of your crafts are levelled yet, there are way more things you will soonish have a use for than later when you have many crafts already leveled somewhat AND have more storage unlocked on top. Like at this point there are many things I can now throw out/sell savely because I no longer require them (due to low level recipes giving crappy exp), but early on all of it was useful but my storage was extremely limited. That in itself is an issue I see. Over time your demand for things decreases because instead of a wide range of low- to mid-level stuff you 'only' require a choice selection of high level staff but at the same time you also get more storage over time. And your increase in buying power over time also factors into it. Later you can easily buy stacks worth of low level stuff on demand. Early on you cannot, so you either hoard or miss out.

[sleek elm]

i play since alpha, recently came back to the game. My current gameplay is 90% based on increasing my storaging capacity, and i don't hoard silly stuff i hoard stuff i need or thats valuable. Have 8 characters most of them are inventory mules. Have like at least 50 occupied slots only in firkins and kinderkins since its not worth crafting them when you can buy them used from a vendor. I could craft them everytime i need them, but that would be a waste of time and resources.
So, my criteria, i believe its not really missguided, wrong or detrimental, im using existing features to optimize the use of playtime. Except those features are sometimes annoying to deal with.

[hazy sedge]

and since synergies and crafts requiring stuff produced via other crafts interlink all skills, every single one you hold back on to avoid hoarding is a direct detriment to your overall power gain. A lvl 90 with just combat at 90 won't be able to hold a candle to someone who hoarded and thus can make their own gear, has tons of synergy levels and many additional ways to generate councils in addition to level 90 combat skills.

[sleek elm]

and some people don't even wanna discuss these things in fear they get even more nerfed somehow. Like seen walrus said citan is "going to take care of alt guilds", i wonder, what is going to happen with all those players that adapted to the game design, how will address things like that.

Players that already invested a lot of effort and time in alt guilds will try to hide it from the nerf radar, seen plenty PG players play like this.

[hazy sedge]

I'll gladly give up my storage guild once we get a better official solution. But until then it serves me well and even if I don't get the councils back, it's a worthwhile investment since a storage guild is the best interrim solution for MY criteria (not claiming that it's the best solution in general; people have mentioned many different approaches to the storage situation in this thread and most of them are valid, then just don't suit my preferences/needs as good as a storage guild does). Councils come and go quickly anyways, so it's well worth sacrificing them for (temporary) relief from storage inconveniences

[vernal hinge]

I won't talk to the whole thing but i want to point out the tension between "making firkins/kilderkins when i want to craft wastes time" and "managing my extremely overfull inventory all the time wastes time"

Like i'd wonder which of those two paths actually takes more playtime to manage, all told

[hazy sedge]

fair. It does boil down to whether you prefer spending time to manage your storage to have stuff when you need it or spend time chasing down/gathering the stuff when you need it. Crafting on demand is only faster if you hoard the mats in advance, which is again hoarding

[maiden abyss]

yeah whatever works. I think if I ever got to the point of needing more storage I wouldnt want to have to do all the running around either. I”d make alts with cargo clothes and park them near the transfer chests in the the same places I use now.

[sleek elm]

It Is relative to your overall storage capacity, the items you have for such crafts and what you consider Is convenient or inconvenient. I find buying certain ítems like firkins to be more convenient than crafting them, for a diversity of reasons. But thats just an example

[hazy sedge]

^ this. It's basically the same as a storage guild, just that in that case you decide between the effort of relogging to transfer stuff and keeping track of what's on which alt for the alt approach and the cost and time to build up a storage guild and run to the guild chests for the guild approach. So just like with hoarding vs getting on demand, it's about which inconvenience you prefer.

both approaches (and also just not hoarding) all have the shared goal of reducing the amount of time spent running back and forth between storage locations

[cloud night]

One thing people who say you do it wrong or players should not do that have to realize are changing people is almost impossible.

So what you are doing is that you are arguing for mechanic that is filtering out people from this game. There is nothing inherently wrong about that. This is not a game for everyone, but even in current small population this is probably the most divisive and disliked mechanic.

1. Do you really want to keep it around in the same or similar state?
2. Do you think just a couple of small things will change that?
3. How many people are you willing to loose over it and will sticking to it bring more to the game?

Please feel free to correct me if i am wrong about this.

[vernal hinge]

what people aren't trying to convey is "you're doing it wrong", what they would like to convey is "here's what I tried that worked, and maybe it will work for you, too". you're right that people enjoy different things, and since everything in a game is inherently a waste of time in some respect, it does indeed boil down to what, how and who finds a specific piece of grind in the game either tedious or pleasant, which includes inventory management. the people who make those decisions are considering those feelings, in either direction.

the tone of your own post makes the implicit argument that the sane, reasonable position is the one you hold, and that the insane, unreasonable one is the one the game is (so far) taking, which is justified by asserting that that position will be a detriment to it financially, by limiting its reach (since, of course, it's the rational, normal people position and thus the one that will be the most commercially successful). your feelings about it are valid, but please don't hold it in your head that other people who don't have them are unreasonable, insane or incomprehensible

[tawdry pivot]

This isn't even just a PG issue, this is an issue that plagues most MMO's. Inventory management isn't fun, its cumbersome. At best its unnoticeable The 'it keeps the world alive' isn't a great defense either. There's better, more fun ways to achieve that. There's many ways they can solve it or we can dance around it (mules, personal guilds <-not great but better than default). I don't expect fast solutions, small team and small project but there are systems that can be done better. Mail system to me is also lacking.

[long hound]

The encumbered animation, with the player slowing like their pants are full of shit, portends the game. Soon you'll notice the giant red bag on your buff bar when you're standing at your wee little storage. Then you'll get a boss debuff dropping your inventory slots. It's intentional that inventory affects your gameplay--this is a Fantasy RPG

Before diving into Project:Gorgon, Citan and srand were prolific bloggers. Citan went from pundit to developer. Thanks to archivist BetaNotus compiling so many pages, there's a broad history of their thoughts published on a variety of topics starting here https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Category:Game_Blogs.

From the archives: This Blog Post was part of the Elder Game blog. It was posted by Citan on June 24, 2011: https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Elder_Game:_World_vs._Game,_Emergent_Gameplay,_and_the_Fun_Loop

A lot of time and energy has gone into this discussion, but the thread has become quite cluttered and hard to parse. Aside from the few brush-ups, the biggest downside currently is that people's solutions are being lost in the jumble.

Would it be possible for you to collect your ideas and begin new threads around solutions?

[hazy sedge]

sure, I will just start with my most recent suggestion then and move it to a thread of its own

[long hound]

#1404908219792490637 message

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#1399836945735094312 message

[long hound]

https://discord.com/channels/592041654677012480/1407832300359782573

[long hound]

https://discord.com/channels/592041654677012480/1413554857981382776

[long hound]

https://discord.com/channels/592041654677012480/1415775928067555441

[long hound]

https://discord.com/channels/592041654677012480/1461730617241899124

[long hound]

Inventory management: The Master List