The April 2 release of the latest incarnation of Conan Exiles, has brought the changes to the Inventory Management options which have caused quite a lot of attention from the player community.
Some players may have found some new useful features such as the Quick Stack option, which is pretty helpful. There are other changes that were made which have not been so well received.
Here are some of the problems with the current implementation.
- Sorting by Heaviest First already worked better before than it does now.
- The behavior of the Quick Select Icon changed from a visibility on/off function to a highlighter.
- Sorting by Type offers no advantage over using the Quick Select Icons as they once functioned.
- Clicking on a Quick Select Icon while Sorting by Type does not scroll the contents to the Top of the Inventory area, it only brings the first item into the area, sometimes at the bottom of the screen.
- Quick Sort Icons continue to disappear when there are no items of that class to display.
- The use of circle designs surrounding icons reduces their visible area and distinct individuality.
- The use or lack of use of color, makes the shape of the icon even more important as a design element.
- Adding a gradient color within the background makes the actual icon even harder to distinguish one from another.
- Changing position of the prior set of icons further adds to the confusion with adopting this new system.
Ideas to remediate this going forward
- Understand how Heaviest First was actually your greatest strength and how it was undone by this update.
Players who learned about the existence of sort by: Heaviest First always thanked me for helping them manage their inventories in a more efficient and natural manner. Since we are limited by weight and not slot count, the decision to carry or deposit something frequently came down to reducing our encumbrance.
The way this worked before, once set to sort by Heaviest First, if no Quick Select Icon was pressed, all of your inventory would be sorted in descending order of weight. More importantly, if you selected just one of the Quick Select Icons, it would switch context to just that category. You could only select one category at a time, just like today. Once a category was selected, it would hide all of the other inventory items, effectively returning the remaining items at the top of the available screen space.
The presentation of available items at the top of the screen space is key to keeping the user informed about what they asked to view.
When choosing any Quick Select Icon, you should restore all of those items in one contiguous block, as we have already indicated that we wish to sort by weight descending. Whether you choose to show us other items by weight, is up to you (currently they are “greyed out” but still visible. They should be presented after the selected category. Clicking any other Quick Select Icon should adjust the contents of the resulting inventory window once again bringing the resulting items to the TOP of the display area. There should be NO DIFFERENCE with viewing the items BY TYPE, as this was your second major failure. You already had a selector for viewing items by Type.
- Addressing the issues of Sort By Type
So, this exists.
When I sort by Type, initially I see no difference between my No Sorting view, and the by Type view. You know, the purpose of No Sorting should have been identical to the old Unsorted, which means that our layout preferences were preserved. Today, that is not the case.
If I choose No Sorting, then customize the layout, selecting to sort by Type will destroy my No Sorting configuration. Thanks a lot. The same happens if I customize my layout, the select Sort by Name.
Well, despite all this, say I want to sort by Type, it has to be useful somehow, right? Let’s use these Quick Select Icons to make a choice about what I want to view. I click the left-most icon because that has always been my weapons, right? Nope, it’s Materials now. I am thankful for tooltips, I now clicked upon Weapons, but I can’t see all of those I currently hold because they are off of the screen. Let’s scroll down with a mouse wheel. Oh my mouse wheel is acting up. I need to use the scroll bar with my mouse.
Now I select Consumables because I am hungry. Why do I only see a Aloe Potion, I can’t eat that. More scrolling.required.
But if I click upon Weapons now, look: It is automatically positioned at the top of the screen! Why can’t they do that for every category I click upon?!
To fix this mess, always scroll to the top of the items available in each category, even if you still show dimmed out other items, much as you handled the scrolling up from the bottom. If you need to trick out the Unreal Engine, just always scroll to the bottom before you reset to the desired category beginning position.
- Icons could have been much easier to view
Any icon that has a circle around it is no longer a true square, but is a tiny square within that circle. This circle might also have a thick border as do these new ones, which reduces the area for use even more.
Icons should probably be more fully developed using the existing familiar white coloration, without the circles. We don’t need to know where the boundary of the icon is to click upon it successfully. Most people who play this game have used a computer for decades and know what a toolbar is. Get rid of the gradient background. If you choose to introduce colors, don’t choose the same color for all icons. Our eyes would be quicker to identify the differences between two similar shapes if they had varying colors as well.
Finally, keep the positions consistent for the icons. This disappearing icon plan doesn’t help us make any better decisions about what to click. It just hides the ridiculousness of having a category just for the purpose of containing a campfire. That category is named Crafting Stations, by the way. There is also a whole category for Decoration Items and another for Treasure. Why wouldn’t you have just maintained the prior category for Placeables?
- Purpose Specific Chests and Containers
As the game now offers specialized chests for storing Mined materials, Wood cuttings, Hides and Leathers, Plant materials, Treasure and other chests that I have not been able to unlock, why wouldn’t you have had a plan to make the Icon specificity match those categories, so we could easily view in our player inventory what would be compatible within those chests. This has most import to me with regards to Treasure, though that concept has gotten old quickly.
I wouldn’t want a chest that only stores Weapons but not Tools. I also personally would store armor making materials with my actual Armor, though I do like the idea of storing armor separately, because 5 pieces and 5 items per row.
You might have thought about these sorts of containers when defining the idea of the Types or categories. I don’t really see the need for a separate Pet Items category, much as individual categories for Placeables, but you are still placing thralls into Consumables. Why do my coins not show up under Treasure again?
While composing this topic, unsurprisingly I noticed that I had written about this before.