Poll of the Day > One thing i hate about loot based games is lack of storage.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Games that focus on guns, legendaries, etc. Almost always have crappy storage. Why make a game where someone would want to collect everything but have nowhere near the storage for it.

To make you want

Stop being a horder

VampireCoyote posted...

To make you want

Which is ironic, because it makes me do the opposite.

I'm a compulsive collector. If I'm playing Skyrim, I'll pick up every single item I see, and I'll store it all in separately sorted containers in my home. When I'm playing Minecraft, I'll pick up every piece of cobble I drop and store them in chests, even if that means I've got like 37 chests worth of cobble that I'm never, ever going to use. If I find a lava pool in my way, I will move it into a place where it can be easily stored a single bucket at a time rather than "waste" any of it by dropping gravel or sand (or pouring water). When I played Kingdom of Loathing, 90% of my planning and play-style was built around building as large a display case as I could, with at least one of every item ever.

I'm playing Stardew Valley right now, and I've already got 11 full chests (color-coded and sorted/separated by function) in Winter of year 1. I barely like selling any of the stuff I'm mining/foraging/farming - I just hoard it all away for possible future use. And I'll eventually be buying/tailoring one of every hat and lots of outfits.

But give me a game with limited storage, and I basically stop caring about everything. Items? Fuck 'em. Who cares? If it isn't better than what I'm already using it's basically trash. Loot explosions in Borderlands? Barely care at all. Destiny? Lack of storage is a large part of why I stopped playing entirely. And even before that, I saw pretty much zero reason to ever play raids - why bother doing missions to earn unique items if you've got no place to keep them?

Grinding for gear that I'll just toss as soon as I find something slightly better? Yeah, not interested. There's plenty of other, better games out there for me to waste my time on.

Give me a game where I can store items for nostalgia sake or just to hoard them, and I'm much more likely to spend time farming for them (or even potentially spending real money on them). But limited storage space pretty much kills my interest in dealing with inventory at all.

For the HOARD

On the other hand I almost don't see the point of storage, much liek real life if I'm storing something in a container it's probably something I'll never touch again.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But give me a game with limited storage, and I basically stop caring about everything. Items? Fuck 'em. Who cares? If it isn't better than what I'm already using it's basically trash. Loot explosions in Borderlands? Barely care at all. Destiny? Lack of storage is a large part of why I stopped playing entirely. And even before that, I saw pretty much zero reason to ever play raids - why bother doing missions to earn unique items if you've got no place to keep them?

But there is item storage in Destiny, and it's shared between all your chracters so you can load your new chracters up.

On the other hand, if you did have nigh-unlimited storage, would you ever be able to find what you were looking for?

Cruddy_horse posted...

But there is item storage in Destiny, and it's shared between all your chracters so you can load your new chracters up.

Lack of sufficient storage.

Original Destiny started out with abysmally piss-poor storage in terms of amount. They increased it, but the increase was still way too small. They may have increased it even more later, but by that point I'd already punched out and will never give a single shit about the franchise again.

Sharing it between characters actually makes it worse, not better. Sure, it facilitates trading between characters, but if I'm playing three different classes I'm going to have three times as much shit I want to store. So my shared storage basically winds up being 1/3rd as useful to me as it would be if it was fully separate (though shared storage is fine if you can have massive inventory).

It also didn't help how they handled shaders/colors, where you'd have keep a shit-ton of shaders taking up inventory spaces if you ever wanted to change your colors around, or you'd basically just have to pick one or two color schemes and stick with them (at which point the entire concept of shaders as rewards - or worse, microtransactions - becomes frustratingly pointless). Though Destiny 2 decided to handle those waaaay worse (at least in the beginning - again, I've kind of stopped paying attention to how they handle stuff because I no longer care about the franchise at all).

I'm not even sure I'd accept "server space" or "bandwidth" as acceptable excuses for why you need draconian limits on storage size, because it would only become an issue for a minority of players, and because it doesn't take up that much data to store non-unique item IDs in what is essentially a text document list.

It wasn't the only problem I had with Destiny, but it was definitely a factor in why I quit.

yaknow, a simple option would be the ability to call a shop at any time... especially if you have a fast travel option to begin with

adjl posted...

On the other hand, if you did have nigh-unlimited storage, would you ever be able to find what you were looking for?

Sort functions for alphabetized or lists by category/stats would make finding whatever you're looking for pathetically easy.

Sure, it might get difficult if you've got a ton of stuff and a swiss cheese brain that can't remember the names of things ("I want that helmet, but I can't remember what it was called, what class it was, or what its stats were. But I kind of remember what it looked like, so now I have to scroll through everything and hope I see it and recognize it from a tiny inventory icon"), but most people who hoard usually have their own personal organizational tricks, or just remember what they've kept and why.

In a truly robust system you could even potentially allow players to add tags/descriptions to items, so you could write something like "My first helmet" or "The sword my brother gave to me when he died" and be able to search for keywords. But that would be a ton of effort and dataspace so I'd never expect any dev to do something like that, even if I would absolutely love it personally.

Lokarin posted...

yaknow, a simple option would be the ability to call a shop at any time... especially if you have a fast travel option to begin with

Yeah but then if it was like a normal shop that you can buy normally limited resources from like Ammo or healing it'd trivilize the game and make inventory pointless. Even just being able to sell everything you find would destroy the economy, not like any game economy is balanced though.

Borderlands/2 is pretty bad with this, though I think the 3rd one is a bit better, but can't remember.

Cruddy_horse posted...

Even just being able to sell everything you find would destroy the economy, not like any game economy is balanced though.

The difference between calling a shop/instant selling and going back and forth between a shop? 10 minutes!

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm playing Stardew Valley right now, and I've already got 11 full chests (color-coded and sorted/separated by function) in Winter of year 1. I barely like selling any of the stuff I'm mining/foraging/farming - I just hoard it all away for possible future use. And I'll eventually be buying/tailoring one of every hat and lots of outfits.

I use that room under the bedroom for my chest. I also color coded them based on whats inside. One has all the stuff I grow per season, separated by season, and alphabetical. And then I have ones for stuff I forage each season. And then theres the fish. And different foods I made. And wine waiting to be aged. I think I have like 2 fridges. That game lets me do too much I am also trying to collect every piece of clothing/hat I can get, as well

I kinda wish this was the case for minecraft. It would be nice every time I start a world not to have to worry about storage and have a detailed log of everything for Bedrock.

Even if we had to make the item, not having yo worry about storage in survival would be neat. I can't play Creative because it feels like the blocks have no value.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Lack of sufficient storage.

Original Destiny started out with abysmally piss-poor storage in terms of amount. They increased it, but the increase was still way too small. They may have increased it even more later, but by that point I'd already punched out and will never give a single shit about the franchise again.

Sharing it between characters actually makes it worse, not better. Sure, it facilitates trading between characters, but if I'm playing three different classes I'm going to have three times as much shit I want to store. So my shared storage basically winds up being 1/3rd as useful to me as it would be if it was fully separate (though shared storage is fine if you can have massive inventory).

It also didn't help how they handled shaders/colors, where you'd have to keep a shit-ton of shaders taking up inventory spaces if you ever wanted to change your colors around, or you'd basically just have to pick one or two color schemes and stick with them (at which point the entire concept of shaders as rewards - or worse, microtransactions - becomes frustratingly pointless). Though Destiny 2 decided to handle those waaaay worse (at least in the beginning - again, I've kind of stopped paying attention to how they handle stuff because I no longer care about the franchise at all).

I'm not even sure I'd accept "server space" or "bandwidth" as acceptable excuses for why you need draconian limits on storage size, because it would only become an issue for a minority of players, and because it doesn't take up that much data to store non-unique item IDs in what is essentially a text document list.

It wasn't the only problem I had with Destiny, but it was definitely a factor in why I quit.

lmao

boot up destiny 2 and see if you can even understand what anything is now

LinkPizza posted...

I use that room under the bedroom for my chest. I also color coded them based on whats inside. One has all the stuff I grow per season, separated by season, and alphabetical. And then I have ones for stuff I forage each season. And then theres the fish. And different foods I made. And wine waiting to be aged. I think I have like 2 fridges. That game lets me do too much I am also trying to collect every piece of clothing/hat I can get, as well

I usually start out making chests as I go, making a new one every time one fills up. At first it's mostly just everything getting dumped in the same chest with no real order, but after the first few, I start to color-code and sort them to better organize stuff.

Usually by the end of the first year I've got a rainbow-colored ring of chests all around the outer edge of my house (leaving a gap to get in the front door). Once everything is going well and I've started making consistent money (generally around the time I get to the point of being able to make kegs and wine), I'll start upgrading my house and building a ton of sheds around the farm. Then I shift the clothing and souvenir chests into my bedroom (or the room under it, which I usually turn into an office of some kind), and shift decorations and furniture into the basement (along with a chest or two for aging wine and storing my winning fair display items). Then I put three light blue chests in the corner of the kitchen to act like a pantry to store all my food. And once I have kids, I'll usually have a chest in the kids' room with all toys and stuffed junimos.

For sheds I usually make a farming shed, a fishing shed, an animal shed, and a workshop shed. Along with multiple keg sheds for making wine, coffee, and tea.

In the farming shed I have three chests per season (one for forage, fruits, and seeds, one for flowers, and one for crops), each color-coded (light green for spring, dark green for summer, orange for fall). I've also got four extra chests - white for winter forage, dark red/brown for mushrooms and cave carrots, yellow for desert/island stuff, and black for tree saplings, fertilizers, and unused scarecrows and sprinklers. It's also where I keep my seed makers, and I'll occasionally use the leftover middle space for preserve jars or cactus plants.

My fishing shed has a ton of chests to hold multiple quality levels of each type of fish (which usually winds up taking 3-4 chests), which I color teal. Then an extra light-blue chest for forage (seaweed, algae, shells, coral, etc). A black chest for lures and bait. An orange chest (as close as I could get to gold) for the legendary fish. Then four worming bins and all of my recyclers, and a bunch of preserve jars for making caviar.

My animal shed usually gets set up near my barn and coop, and winds up being where I store all my cheese/mayo/cloth/oil machines for processing animal stuff, along with a chest where I keep my leftover milking pail, shears, hay, and anything else animal-related I'm storing.

The workshop shed is basically just workbench with a black chest on either side (with one chest having all my ores, wood, stone, and other materials, while the other chest has all my gems and minerals). Then I've got another chest or two for storing whatever minerals or relics I can't fit in the other chests. This shed is also where I keep all my furnaces, kilns, and wood chippers.

My keg sheds are basically just a large collection of kegs I use to make wine (especially once I've got the greenhouse working), while I'll usually have one shed devoted to coffee (with 32 kegs and 48 plant pots with coffee) and one for tea (same general layout).

I usually also put a chest in the mines (to hold my "adventure gear" - mostly bombs and food) and one in front of the Skull Cavern (same). Sometimes one down on the ocean docks (if I'm putting crab pots there). A couple in the side room once I get the island farmhouse.

And after I've gotten pretty much everything else sorted out, I usually make a "clubhouse" of some kind to store weapons/rings and a few other souvenirs and decorations, which I decorate in different ways depending on what sort of character I'm pretending to play as (ie, I've had an "elf" character with a forest-themed room, a pulp adventurer one with a sort of Victorian club with bookcases and displayed relics, a mermaid-themed one with fishtanks and aquatic decor, etc).

If you ever looked at one of my playthrough files and looked at the stats that show you how much of every item you've ever crafted, chests are probably my #1 most commonly crafted item.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I usually start out making chests as I go, making a new one every time one fills up. At first it's mostly just everything getting dumped in the same chest with no real order, but after the first few, I start to color-code and sort them to better organize stuff.

Usually by the end of the first year I've got a rainbow-colored ring of chests all around the outer edge of my house (leaving a gap to get in the front door). Once everything is going well and I've started making consistent money (generally around the time I get to the point of being able to make kegs and wine), I'll start upgrading my house and building a ton of sheds around the farm. Then I shift the clothing and souvenir chests into my bedroom (or the room under it, which I usually turn into an office of some kind), and shift decorations and furniture into the basement (along with a chest or two for aging wine and storing my winning fair display items). Then I put three light blue chests in the corner of the kitchen to act like a pantry to store all my food. And once I have kids, I'll usually have a chest in the kids' room with all toys and stuffed junimos.

For sheds I usually make a farming shed, a fishing shed, an animal shed, and a workshop shed. Along with multiple keg sheds for making wine, coffee, and tea.

In the farming shed I have three chests per season (one for forage, fruits, and seeds, one for flowers, and one for crops), each color-coded (light green for spring, dark green for summer, orange for fall). I've also got four extra chests - white for winter forage, dark red/brown for mushrooms and cave carrots, yellow for desert/island stuff, and black for tree saplings, fertilizers, and unused scarecrows and sprinklers. It's also where I keep my seed makers, and I'll occasionally use the leftover middle space for preserve jars or cactus plants.

My fishing shed has a ton of chests to hold multiple quality levels of each type of fish (which usually winds up taking 3-4 chests), which I color teal. Then an extra light-blue chest for forage (seaweed, algae, shells, coral, etc). A black chest for lures and bait. An orange chest (as close as I could get to gold) for the legendary fish. Then four worming bins and all of my recyclers, and a bunch of preserve jars for making caviar.

My animal shed usually gets set up near my barn and coop, and winds up being where I store all my cheese/mayo/cloth/oil machines for processing animal stuff, along with a chest where I keep my leftover milking pail, shears, hay, and anything else animal-related I'm storing.

The workshop shed is basically just workbench with a black chest on either side (with one chest having all my ores, wood, stone, and other materials, while the other chest has all my gems and minerals). Then I've got another chest or two for storing whatever minerals or relics I can't fit in the other chests. This shed is also where I keep all my furnaces, kilns, and wood chippers.

My keg sheds are basically just a large collection of kegs I use to make wine (especially once I've got the greenhouse working), while I'll usually have one shed devoted to coffee (with 32 kegs and 48 plant pots with coffee) and one for tea (same general layout).

I usually also put a chest in the mines (to hold my "adventure gear" - mostly bombs and food) and one in front of the Skull Cavern (same). Sometimes one down on the ocean docks (if I'm putting crab pots there). A couple in the side room once I get the island farmhouse.

And after I've gotten pretty much everything else sorted out, I usually make a "clubhouse" of some kind to store weapons/rings and a few other souvenirs and decorations, which I decorate in different ways depending on what sort of character I'm pretending to play as (ie, I've had an "elf" character with a forest-themed room, a pulp adventurer one with a sort of Victorian club with bookcases and displayed relics, a mermaid-themed one with fishtanks and aquatic decor, etc).

If you ever looked at one of my playthrough files and looked at the stats that show you how much of every item you've ever crafted, chests are probably my #1 most commonly crafted item.

Thats how I start, as well When I first get enough for a chest, I just make one until it fills, then I make another. Im not sure how many I have to have before I start color coded and separating them but its usually enough to where I need to find certain things

I never thought about it, but I should probably make a shed Then I could do something else with that bottom room Though having stuff there is nice because I can do stuff before I leave the house

But seeing how you do stuff, I should probably make more chests I have quite a few, but not that many. And you have them all over the place

I do have a chest for next day items, though. Like if the Luau is tomorrow, I make sure I have the ingredient ready early and put it in the next day chest. Or gifts for birthdays (and just weekly gifts when I was still working on most of the friendship meters)

LinkPizza posted...

I never thought about it, but I should probably make a shed Then I could do something else with that bottom room Though having stuff there is nice because I can do stuff before I leave the house

I usually just decorate the house to look nice. The room below the bedroom is usually my office/study (and I'll put the farm computer in there, make a desk/table with a dwarven gadget on it so it looks like a computer desk, and an office chair in front of it), the one above and to the right of the bedroom usually winds up being more of a sitting room (so it winds up being where I put the sewing machine and throw in a couch and some chairs). The kids room has lots of toys and decorations, and the upper left hallway room wind up being my gallery (where I put a bunch of statues, sculptures, vases, that giant bear, etc).

(Oh, and talking about the house reminded me - I'll usually put an extra chest in my wife's room and throw some stuff in it that they'd like. So Abigail gets a bunch of Amethyst, some adventuring gear, a Golden Pumpkin, etc. Leah gets some driftwood, some pine cones, a bottle or two of wine, and the like. Haley would get sunflowers, daffodils, and some coconuts. And so on. Not for giving them gifts, but just to add to the "realism" of it being our house and them having souvenirs and stuff just like I do.)

Once everything is set up (and I get the coffee maker) my usual morning routine is head up to check the fortune statues, then walk to the kitchen, grab coffee, kiss wife. Then I head out the door and do a lap around the farm doing the daily chores. If I need stuff (for birthdays, the luau, fair, etc), I usually grab it out of the basement the night before so it's already in my inventory when I go to bed (because it also helps remind me what I'm supposed to do for the day if I save and don't play for a few days).

I tend to map my farm out into different sections (especially if I'm using the four corners map, which is perfect for this). So there's an "industrial" section (with my workshop, 1-3 sheds full of Crystalariums making diamonds, lightning rods to make battery packs, and the slime hutch), a ranch section (barn, coop, animal shed), a marine section (fishing shed, crab pots), a brewing section (the greenhouse, brewing sheds, all my bee houses), and the farming area (with the farm shed and planting area/sprinklers). And I'll just go from one to the other and do all the chores there before going to the next one. Depending on the map, I can change this around (I may cram more into larger maps, or put less stuff in smaller maps). As an example, on the river map, I'm kind of separating stuff onto different islands.

I also tend to turn the quarry into a massive tree farm (plant about 40 or so trees, tap them all, put stone path tiles all around to prevent unwanted trees or stones from spawning, put torches behind each tree to light the whole thing up). I'll usually start with relatively even numbers of oak, maple, and pine, but then once I've got like 100+ of each sap (and after I've made all my kegs so I don't need any more oak resin) I'll usually turn the whole thing into a maple farm (because that's worth the most of the three).

Once I get the island farm I tend to just fill the entire farming area with ancient fruits and iridium sprinklers (which I usually use to grow the Qi crops for that challenge beforehand).

I was always bad at organizing. Ive seen some crazy good designs before. I try to sectionalize, but it usually doesnt last long. And then things start getting out of hand. And then, its not as even as I wanted it to be Stuff is in the wrong section It becomes a mess But I keep trying. I have to try the different maps more. I was trying to sort of match the other maps with different husbands and wives

I sort of fall somewhere between total organization/optimization and the really obsessive decorators who make every inch of their farm into intricate designs. I generally leave a lot of empty space between things because I think it's more aesthetically pleasing. And I try to be as symmetrical as I can with stuff.



LinkPizza posted...

I have to try the different maps more. I was trying to sort of match the other maps with different husbands and wives

I set myself deliberate design/playstyle differences based on each map. So for instance I decided for the river map my character was part mermaid (ie, grandpa boned a mermaid, and that's part of what ties us to the valley/all the little islands), and I tried to focus a little more on fishing and fish ponds. For the forest map I decided I was part elf, so I leaned more into foraging. For the hilltop map I was playing as an industrialist (I basically put the character into a suit and gave them sunglasses to look like a Man in Black) who maybe had a touch of dwarf blood, so I mostly focused on mining and Crystalariums (and I went with Joja and money instead of the Junimos).

For one run I chose the brown jacket at creation and put the fedora on as soon as I could get it at the fair, so I looked kind of like Indiana Jones, and for that run I mostly focused on combat in the mines.

That sort of RP also kind of helps me decide which girl I romance (because it's always one of the girls). I basically just stick to Abigail, Leah, Haley, and Penny - so my elf run I went with Leah, my industrialist married Penny, my more adventurous runs I go with Abigail, and I occasionally just throw Haley in on a whim to break things up.

In theory that sort of RP could also help influence what I name all my animals, but if I'm honest I generally just name them all the same thing across every run. Like, my horse is always Thunder, I always have a pig named Porkins, one of my ducks is always Wadsworth, I usually name my brown chicken Henrietta, my void chicken Shadow, and my blue chicken Blueberry - and so on. I still play around with some of the other names (because I haven't come up with "perfect" names for every one yet), but on my last few runs I've started running with Angora and Cashmere for my sheep. And on the run I'm playing now, I think I've finally come up with a name for the lizard that I like, because that was always the hardest one for me to name (I used to go with some variation of Elizabeth or Elizavieta for the lizard pun, but this time around I named it Emilia Lizardo as a Buckaroo Banzai pun).

My RP choices also kind of influence how I decorate my house. With my elf I tried to go for more natural and wood tones, for the industrialist more modern styles, and for my pulp adventurer more Victorian-style designs (hence why they got the "Adventurers' Guild" for their clubhouse).

It helps change things around a bit so each run feels somewhat different, and I'm not just doing the same thing in the same way every time. It can also change my priorities - in some runs I focus on just trying to get my farming done and kind of ignore the mines and fishing, in other runs I barely farm at all and just try to get to the bottom of the mines as quickly as possible.

I'm always the only one playing Minecraft... and then when someone else does they're an online multi-player type. I wish more people played it solo and talked about it that weren't kids.

I had an online friend from Remnant who played it, but her son kept getting her in trouble because she was playing with the "same guy." Didn't matter I have a girlfriend or that she talked to the lady on the mic. Goddamn insecure husband ruined my playmate :(

Maybe one day we'll get ai friends for minecraft. It would be neat to have fellow group mates who built near you, but were npcs you could nourish and cultivate that had personality. I have faith one day they'll have something like that. That animal crossing game looks somewhat closer to what I mean, but never tried it.

I RP a little, but I havent gone in that deep. Maybe Ill try something similar to that next time