Inventory, Banking, and Travel

I know this has been discussed before as I have seen previous discussions referenced here, on reddit, etc. I wanted to bring up the issues of storage and travel however and give my thoughts. I am definitely for somewhat limiting a player to make choices but I am not sure that the current balance is working and here is why.

When you start off you can max favor and keep most items you find, but eventually as you max numerous crafting skills you end up needing to keep hundreds of items just to craft stuff for basic work orders or the skills you use (tailoring requires its own bank at minimum to even remotely attempt to make money or gear out with it). Different threads, cloths, cotton, carded cotton, etc. and not just one stack but numerous. Don't even get me started on toolcrafting as the number of items is staggering. Cooking and alchemy are no better. I ended up spending almost all my time running around different zones to my different banks just to craft work orders or make a few items, even with great organization and items bunched together by what you are doing it is still not possible to craft or be fairly self sufficient without making serious concession in time.

(If the economy were more robust then maybe we could keep less items and just make work orders to get things "in a bind" so to speak. However I don't believe this will hold up after launch either as players tend to want to make their own stuff and will not want to wait for orders to be filled; or they are like me and love to get their own stuff and be as self sufficient as possible.)

The end result of this process is that we spend a majority of our time running to the various banks and hoarding items just to be able to craft. Now, I understand part of this is a design decision but I see more comments with people being frustrated by this than nearly any other topic. There has to be some balance between "difficulty" and "fun" or you end up with a game that isn't just challenging but also tedious and burning people out to get around the "difficulty" in making storage decisions.

Currently the majority of players I talk to are using alt accounts to bank to make the game playable, unless you are trying to force additional sales of the game (number of copies I mean, at launch) I would think that this is an indicator that there isn't a good balance in how much storage we get per zone. Also having your storage spread between 3 zones (minimum) makes the tedium get pretty bad.

My suggestion to reach some balance is to extend the maximum storage count for each NPC once we reach soul mates and also allow us to buy slots for reasonable prices (like the storage in Serbule) to extend how much storage we get. Say 100 councils for 1 extra slot, 200 for 2, etc. I don't care what the council cost is but the ability to spend money to have more bank space on my main account is nice and might even lead to us not needing "alt accounts" or "bank accounts" as many have. We also "need" the transfer storage that is currently 8 slots extended to at least 20. Muling items is a total chore and this isn't fun game play.

I am of the mindset that I will just end up running 2 or 3 accounts to get around this and don't mind as I have done this in other games, but I think this suggests that the storage and travel system isn't balanced and ask you to reconsider it with an alternative: in this scenario the "cost" of keeping these items isn't just making choices as much or giving up items, but being willing to spend councils (or seriously, even cash) to extend the banks to some extent. My preference is to do this vs. "making" us have mule accounts as both cost real money but one is far less tedious (having it all on one account). I am not suggesting a "pay to win" type mechanic as I hate this stuff and just came from a game where this was around, but in the end if we can trade then to some extent another account will be equivalent of just buying storage space; but more tedious. For example if the game costs $50 per account but I can buy the same amount of storage with a "VIP" system for my main account then obviously most would choose to have the "VIP" system instead.

Thanks for posting your feedback. As you know, this has been discussed many times and we have addressed it many times. The short and concise answer is that it is indeed a design decision. It's not intended that players max out every skill or collect/store everything along the way. There are many ways to increase storage but there will always be a limit. As for traveling, mounts will be introduced later in development which will help with travel and storage as they will have their own storage availability.

The VIP subscription will add additional player storage and perhaps additional storage in general. Again though, storage is intentionally limited.

Thanks again for your feedback!

Yes, many people feel the need for mules and find the restriction to storage annoying at times. However, there are already planned changes to storage for the future. The biggest of which will be bags and/or containers. These will let you sort stuff and I believe the idea is it will also in some ways expand inventory. And we are not sure what other systems are planned on top of that even. With the zone centralized storage we also gained easy access to our other forms storage, although this is probably temporary, it certainly changed the storage dynamic greatly.

Travel is exactly the same, new systems are planned. The mount system is one. Also with just this last update totally new teleport locations and recipes were added, given that things were in place for part of it for a long time, i think this new system was planned from very early on. It certainly addresses part of the lack that teleporting had. And new creative systems to add onto teleporting might also be in the works, like those we just got.

Most people will agree with you, things need to change. There has already been hints and clues that changes will be made and until all the systems are in place it would just be more work to make patch work changes, that need to be undone later. The devs need to know that we don't find it fun, but we need to understand that the game isn't finished and we can look up info that changes are planned already to make things more interesting.

A better solution to storage would be to have shared storage associated with most professional groups (alchemy, cooking, leatherworking, tailoring, etc.) along with an item storage and a general storage... then have those items shared between relevant NPCs. In other words, you storage with joeh would be the same as your storage with hogan which would be the same as your storage with other weapon/armor vendors that have storage. Similarly your storage with innkeeps would be shared with other innkeeps, your tailoring storage with tailors would be shared among other tailors, etc. NPC favor then not only becomes a means of expanding available storage, but expanding points of access to that available storage.

Storage constraints, along with travel speed, poor soloing options for some skills and skill costs (particularly the 51+ and 61+ tiers), are a few of the things that kick newer players harder than long time players. They're also choices that will unnecessarily limit the game's potential audience.

While we are on this topic again, I have a couple random suggestions:

How about adding temporary storage for newbies? When they first come to Serbule, Nelson Ballard could offer to store their items for a month or two until they find a better place for them. Anything still stored with Nelson after that time will be sold (or maybe put into withdraw-only storage).

I think storage is especially important to newbies - they don't know what items are useful yet, they don't have favor with the storage NPCs and if they follow the in-game tip to hang on to stuff they don't know about, they will run out of space very fast. And then probably try to make room by selling a stupid random item like a stomach, and hate themselves later for it. (Yes, they could ask in chat about an item before selling it, but there are a lot of items in PG...) So, I think giving them some breathing room to get oriented in the game and figure out what items are what would be really nice.

Along the temporary storage lines, giving players the option to rent space on a weekly or monthly basis could be helpful (maybe even paying for it with certain items instead of councils). I'm not that fond of that idea since I want all storage to be mine forever, but it's something that could be used in addition to storage crates if someone just wants to go adventuring right now and worry about inventory management later. Another possibility could be storage where players pay each time they deposit and/or withdraw an item.

Something that I'd personally love is a town-based delivery service that could deliver gifts to NPCs or deposit items in remote bank storage locations. Found a piece of great druid gear that you know Silvia would love, but you have no room in your bank and no time to sail to Sun Vale? Just pay the handy imp delivery service the low, low fee of 50 councils, and they'll make sure it gets to Silvia on time and gift-wrapped. Got a couple nightmare flesh and pork shoulders you want to store in your existing ice fishing stash with Ukorga? Use the delivery service.
(Currently, I don't really use storage in zones outside of Serbule except as a temporary dumping ground for clearing out my personal inventory. Depositing items is the big issue for me there. I wouldn't mind, for example, designating Eltibule to be my flower growing spot and visiting Sie Antry every time I want to get out my flower seeds and garden. However, I do not want to go to Eltibule every time I accumulate 2 daisy seeds, 3 marigolds and 1 strange dirt in my inventory and need to store them somewhere until I'm ready to use them.)

Delivery service is a great idea. Use one of the empty houses in the towns for a post station. Maybe costs could be coupled with distance. You could mail stuff from your warehouse in X to your storage in Y, too.

Also, the "muling box" should be expandable a bit.

You have one storage with Hulon we already have it implemented that we can access from other zone, should be made available to all areas. when you unlock a storage from npc it goes to Hulon that means removing the recently introduced storage shelf, all unlocked npc storage would go to Hulon every single one you unlocked in all the regions you could be in Rahu opening up and rummaging through unlocked storage from Serb or Kur.

As a week old player I got 4 characters with full inventories and storages and I dont even craft for real yet. I don't know what will be useful in next quest or after next patch, I dont know if that new item i got is rare or not. Managing my items takes like 30% of my playtime and sucks a lot of fun from game. I'm pretty sure space would be valuable and limiting even if current amount was quadrupled. Simply foraging, surveying and hunting at single location can easily get more loot than I can carry. If I drop most items I'll end up grinding more when I'll need those items. Not sure what's a point of that. Drop and farm later or run to Serb for 20 minutes session of moving items around - both options seem like a timesink without purpose.

Another thing that would help a bit would be an option to turn in quest loot partially. If NPC wants 2 super oak logs and I have only 1, i'd like to give it to him and not drag it with me until i get second one.

I think we will have a mailing feature incoming (i'm not 100 % on that, just a guess). The storage system improved A LOT, now we have a viewing point per zone and a search function, another guess is those are just the start, we definitely will have a fleshed out storage system. @Atis my suggestion would be to take things 2-3 at a time or you'll go insane. I.e. focus on tanning+leatherworking+cooking and gardening, maybe some surveying, get those up, start tailoring and alchemy, etc. Some crafting skills go well in pairs like alchemy and sigils scripting, gardening and tailoring+cooking.
Not sure this helps but what I did-start by getting all storage in serbule (so u don't need alts) then use the remote storage options to stash things that you will be using later (for example I stored all my mushrooms+stomachs in the crystal dungeon for months till i was ready to start cheesemaking).
As a week old player you don't need alts, you need to up the favor and unlock more and more storage, that's how this feature is intended to work. Alts bypass the system, they become necessary at some point but at higher levels when you have various crafts already maxed and the need to stash the materials for all these crafts.

Sorry, i was under impression it's exploration game, not standard run to level cap. Efficiency is cool when I know what I'd like to minmax but at my first weeks I would prefer to explore, including trying out different skills, talking with all NPCs about their quests, looking under every rock and that requires lots of storage space. Why would i want to up "tanning+leatherworking+cooking and gardening, maybe some surveying", what's in it for me? What's so magical awaiting at last level of tanning? Ability to tan a Whooping Cool Skin instead of Shoddy Skin?

Game is not advertised as a typical grinder, maybe storage and other systems should be less about cold hard efficiency and more about explosive curiosity?