Guild Wars 2

I recently came back to the game and after having played some other games it was painfully obvious how tedious it is in GW2 to manage bags and inventory.

There are numerous items in the game that appear to serve no other purpose than to consume space in one’s bank/inventory in order to drive bank/bag slot upgrades.

Moreover it seems that for every 60 minutes of playtime in WVW, I am spending up to 10 minutes of that hour doing little more than salvaging/selling blues/greens/yellows, as well as the almost ludicrous amount of excess crafting materials.

Why set the limit of crafting materials so low? Whether the limit is 250 or 1 million it consumes the exact same amount of space on the server, so this arbitrarily low limit is clearly all about adding tedium in order to make a few extra bucks.

It’s something I never enjoyed when I was regularly playing but after having taken a break from the game it’s obvious how much of my playtime is required to perform this tedious and unavoidable inventory management busy-work.

@Anet: please consider unravelling this tedium and make the game more about fun again. Please.

scerevisiae.1972:

Moreover it seems that for every 60 minutes of playtime in WVW, I am spending up to 10 minutes of that hour doing little more than salvaging/selling blues/greens/yellows, as well as the almost ludicrous amount of excess crafting materials.

Bag space is a luxury good in this game. It takes about 1-2 minutes to salvage/sell an inventory of 120 items +30-50 loot bags if you:

- salvage everything up to rares
- salvage all rares except for 4-5 which are worth selling directly
- wait with opening all loot bags until enough room is cleared, then repeat the process

If you are not caped at 160 inventory space (all upgrades, 20 slot bags), 80 (no upgrades, 15 slot bags) is an easy to achieve bareminimum, 100 (no upgrades, 20 slot bags) or 135 (all upgrades, 15 slot bags) are attainable. Rember to check for alternative 20-slot bags besides buying them off the TP (Fractal bags, Halloween bags, etc.).

I personally use a system of: 1 normal 20 slot bags, 3 green fractal loot bags, 1 rare fractal loot bags, 1 exotic fractal loot bag, 1 invisible bag.
With the inventory sized to 20 items per line (bags hiden) I have an instant overview of where what is and needs to get salvaged (no need to watchout with salvaging).

[alternate characters who have no inventory size upgrades get 1 green fractal loot bags, 1 rare fractal loot bags, 1 exotic fractal loot bag, 1 invisible bag]

scerevisiae.1972:

Why set the limit of crafting materials so low? Whether the limit is 250 or 1 million it consumes the exact same amount of space on the server, so this arbitrarily low limit is clearly all about adding tedium in order to make a few extra bucks.

Same as inventory space. Bank space is a luxury good. 250 slots base are more than enough to keep selling off your bank materials to a minimum.

Inventory management is as tedious as you make it to be. Some small preperation beforehand though will reduce your management time significantly.

scerevisiae.1972:

Whether the limit is 250 or 1 million it consumes the exact same amount of space on the server, so this arbitrarily low limit is clearly all about adding tedium in order to make a few extra bucks.

1 million would takes 3 bytes to store, whereas 250 takes 1. Since the expanders break the 1 byte limit however, the actual limitation is likely either 16 or 12 bits (65k or 4k).

The limitation does serve a purpose other than wasting your space and making you want to buy more. If there was no limit, the trading supply would dry up as most people would simply deposit and forget. If you’re having a problem with excess materials, dump your storage and return to depositing them.

As for the problem with excess loot, it’s the downside of the casual design. Personal loot was supposed to make you feel more rewarded, but since everyone gets something, the downside is the value of the loot. In comparison, you’d probably be getting no loot in an older MMO in WvW-like content.

Inventory management takes way to much time that’s why we are getting lot of request for items that do it for you like salvage all junk stuff and I would love one that sell all your mats stuff on TP

It takes a few seconds to deposit all / compact.
It takes a few more seconds to salvage all your blues and greens with low level salvage tool(s). Turn on rarity colours to help.
Click O for the TP and see what is left and worth selling.
Drop rest off in a bank / salvage with higher level salvage tool(s).
Whatever is left takes seconds to get rid of at a vendor.

These requests for convenience items don’t work because they have too many variables. You want to sell minor sigils and runes as vendor trash, someone else doesn’t. Someone else thinks even major sigils and runes are trash. Millions of other people are horrified by that. You’d need a completely new bunch of menus.

Sell all mats on TP? For what price? Buy it now? Lowest bidder? A bit higher than lowest bidder?

Gets over complicated to automate so it should stay simple and the responsibility should remain with the player.

Healix.5819:

scerevisiae.1972:

Whether the limit is 250 or 1 million it consumes the exact same amount of space on the server, so this arbitrarily low limit is clearly all about adding tedium in order to make a few extra bucks.

1 million would takes 3 bytes to store, whereas 250 takes 1. Since the expanders break the 1 byte limit however, the actual limitation is likely either 16 or 12 bits (65k or 4k).
.

In practice, the sb column type is likely going to be an int, so anything up to 1 ^ 32 is going to consume the same amount of space. Even with micro optimising to save 2 bytes per row, 1 million rows is a saving of 2 megabytes.

Point is that it’s an arbitrary limitation intended to cause player friction in order to drive cash upgrades.

The game launched with 250 deep crafting storage. It was like 2 years in before they added depth expanders.

They added the wallet and put many token currencies into it.
Whenever it’s appropriate they convert token like stuff into wallet currency.

The only clear money grab is the account wide inventory slots. But you are late to that party. Not that it is ever too late for that particular grievance.

Healix.5819:

scerevisiae.1972:

Whether the limit is 250 or 1 million it consumes the exact same amount of space on the server, so this arbitrarily low limit is clearly all about adding tedium in order to make a few extra bucks.

1 million would takes 3 bytes to store, whereas 250 takes 1. Since the expanders break the 1 byte limit however, the actual limitation is likely either 16 or 12 bits (65k or 4k).

Not quite, it depends on how Anet has coded their game. 250 can be represented in only 1 byte. But in practice you would keep the bytes the same for the amount that each slot can hold. If each slot can hold up to 1 million items, then each slot would automatically be assigned enough bytes to represent up to 1 million items from the start. It makes crawling through the database so much simpler than having variable sizes for how many bytes represent the quantity of items in each slot in storage

I’ve yet to play a game in which inventory management wasn’t an issue. You do stuff, you get loot, not all of which is immediately useful — you have to decide what to keep and what to toss.

GW2 is lekittenous than nearly any other game I’ve played, since there’s a ton of stuff that goes into the wallet, deposit-all for mats, and one can sell via the TP without visiting an NPC.

That’s not to say it’s trivial — there’s still tons of stuff to process. How much time that takes is a matter of organization, preferences, and willingness to accept that loot requires much the same attention as a garden does (weeding out the stuff you don’t want, etc).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’ve yet to play a game in which inventory management wasn’t an issue. You do stuff, you get loot, not all of which is immediately useful — you have to decide what to keep and what to toss.

GW2 is lekittenous than nearly any other game I’ve played, since there’s a ton of stuff that goes into the wallet, deposit-all for mats, and one can sell via the TP without visiting an NPC.

That’s not to say it’s trivial — there’s still tons of stuff to process. How much time that takes is a matter of organization, preferences, and willingness to accept that loot requires much the same attention as a garden does (weeding out the stuff you don’t want, etc).

A new Wilde Kitten has arrived.

What is lekittenous?