Suggestion to simplify item storage (and ease server strain?)

[venuswaltz]

In LoD the stash size was increased. Why? Because people always want more room to store items. But with many trades involving dozens and dozens of pgems, it is simply not enough. The result: muling. Entire accounts made for the sole purpose of storing items. Experienced players may have a dozen such accounts, all full of mules.

There are two main problems with this system:
1) Wasted space. The server doesn't know that the character L33T-MULE26 is only being used to store items; so instead of just keeping track of the items, the server is keeping track of that character's skills, experience, quests, wps, etc. etc. - all the stats that are necessary for a regular character, but completely unnecessary for a mule. Remember, the more information there is to keep track of, the slower the server will run.
2) Irritation. Muling without a second CD and comp is very risky and somewhat time-consuming, not to mention hard to keep track of. I'm sure the Diablo II community (aka the people Blizzard needs to buy their products) would be thrilled to have access to an easier method of item storage. And more happy players = more people buying Diablo.

My suggestion is to take the concept of the Stash one step further, with the creation of a Trophy Hall: a small room - just one screen, say 1/2 the size of the Act 4 town area - containing 8-12 Stash-type chests for the storing of items. But instead of merely increasing the item-storing capacity of each individual character, the Trophy Hall is shared by all characters on an account. So if you happen to find that precious 6-socket ethereal berzerker axe with your Sorceress, you simply drop it into one of the chests in your Trophy Hall, and now any character on that account has easy access.

Other details:
- Trophy Hall is made accessible by a special Waypoint which appears as an option once you have beaten the game with at least one character on that account - just like the ability to create a Hardcore character.
- Relatively little additional code is required, as the Stash already exists, and the graphics for the room itelf could be taken from an existing area, for example: the room containing the Travincal waypoint; a section of the Act 5 mini-dungeons (Abbadon, etc.); a room from the Mausoleum; or pretty much any other area.
- Think of the server space saved when people no longer have to create a new account just to store all their perfect gems - the efficiency gained would seem to be well worth the effort of implementation.

This would be a good addition to the next patch, or as a feature in a new expansion pack. It seems to be more of an xpac-sized feature, but that's not to say it couldn't be done in a patch.

[Ikeren]

Me, I prefer adding layers to my stash. You have a bar at the top. Each layer is the size of the way it currently is. The bar at the top has the numbers 1-10 on it. Click a number, go to that layer.

[Kahir]

In LoD the stash size was increased. Why? Because people always want more room to store items. But with many trades involving dozens and dozens of pgems, it is simply not enough. The result: muling. Entire accounts made for the sole purpose of storing items. Experienced players may have a dozen such accounts, all full of mules.

There are two main problems with this system:
1) Wasted space. The server doesn't know that the character L33T-MULE26 is only being used to store items; so instead of just keeping track of the items, the server is keeping track of that character's skills, experience, quests, wps, etc. etc. - all the stats that are necessary for a regular character, but completely unnecessary for a mule. Remember, the more information there is to keep track of, the slower the server will run.
2) Irritation. Muling without a second CD and comp is very risky and somewhat time-consuming, not to mention hard to keep track of. I'm sure the Diablo II community (aka the people Blizzard needs to buy their products) would be thrilled to have access to an easier method of item storage. And more happy players = more people buying Diablo.

My suggestion is to take the concept of the Stash one step further, with the creation of a Trophy Hall: a small room - just one screen, say 1/2 the size of the Act 4 town area - containing 8-12 Stash-type chests for the storing of items. But instead of merely increasing the item-storing capacity of each individual character, the Trophy Hall is shared by all characters on an account. So if you happen to find that precious 6-socket ethereal berzerker axe with your Sorceress, you simply drop it into one of the chests in your Trophy Hall, and now any character on that account has easy access.

Other details:
- Trophy Hall is made accessible by a special Waypoint which appears as an option once you have beaten the game with at least one character on that account - just like the ability to create a Hardcore character.
- Relatively little additional code is required, as the Stash already exists, and the graphics for the room itelf could be taken from an existing area, for example: the room containing the Travincal waypoint; a section of the Act 5 mini-dungeons (Abbadon, etc.); a room from the Mausoleum; or pretty much any other area.
- Think of the server space saved when people no longer have to create a new account just to store all their perfect gems - the efficiency gained would seem to be well worth the effort of implementation.

This would be a good addition to the next patch, or as a feature in a new expansion pack. It seems to be more of an xpac-sized feature, but that's not to say it couldn't be done in a patch.

Great idea, if thers anyone out ther with connections to the blizzard devolopment team you should pitch this idea to them!! I know thers so many times i wish that i could just put it in the stash and have another char pick it up.

[Diabolico x64]

The fact is, Blizzard doesn't want you to mule items. That's why it was never supported. No, they won't ban you over it, but if you've got a problem with the way muling gets done, they don't care.

They want you to make decisions over which items to keep, and which not to keep, and their plan is somewhat working. Even if you can run two copies of D2 at once and mule like that, it's still a bit of a bother to do that.

[venuswaltz]

That's a good point Diabolico, but as long as Blizzard isn't dead set against any sort of item swapping between characters in an account, there's room to make a good feature here. I think that because it has been quite a while since LoD came out, the issue for Blizzard right now is keeping players interested despite the fact that they have played through the game a gajillion times and tried all the characters. It seems to me that the major reason Diablo II continues to be so popular on Bnet is because of the natural formation of a game economy. The ability to collect and trade items, to build a wealthy account up from nothing, is I think what keeps so many players interested after they have experienced everything that single-player mode has to offer. Why else do people spend so much time MFing, doing Pit runs, looking for those godly items?

So really Blizzard has a choice to make. On the one hand, I can see why they would want to limit stash size; this way, you really have to think about what to keep and what not to keep. There's a lot more strategy and intelligent gameplay there, than if you can just save every item you come across, or just collect Pgems forever until you can afford whatever item you want. But on the other hand, trade has become a huge part of playing on Bnet, and catering to those people who deal in many valuable items may be important to keeping the game alive.

If they want to stay with a very limited stash size, I would suggest they limit this feature to a single Chest instead of several. Spread over an account full of characters, one extra Chest won't make much of an impact on how much you can store; but it would allow you to move your most valuable items between characters to allocate them as needed. If someone's offering an Azurewrath for an Ist rune, and the only Ist you have is on your Necromancer, you need a way to give either the Ist (pre-trade) or the Azure (post-trade) to your melee character.

So to sum up: DII is not a pure RPG. Because of the relative limitations of characters in comparison to other games like Dark Age of Camelot, Diablo has evolved into a combination of an RPG and a management/administration type game, a la Neopets and other games of that sort. I kid you not. There are many similarities in how these games are played by the experienced and the elite, and they are largely centered on trade and wealth. As such I believe the best choice for Blizzard is to encourage this aspect of the game to grow, and accomodate it.

[JustBeee]

I so much agree with you!
That would make everybodies life easier, us players, and the servers.
Additional sugegstions:
1) Magic Bags.
Magic bags are items one can found, like any other item, and they behave like the horradric cube (in it's storage aspect) - but change in size.
It can also be magical / unique - for example: it slowly repairs all items in it.
2) gold
Gold ... you should be able to buy EVERYTHING with gold.
Trade for everything as well.
There should be NO gold limitation, or at least much higher cap.
There should be no sell cap on items when selling to town people.
An additional coins can be created to save the big numbers, besides gold
(IE: Platinium = 10k gold, Mithril = 10k platinium et.)
Based on that, it leads to the next and final point:
3) Stores.
Stores are places you manage.
It is treated as a stash - you put items in it,
But in addition: you set a sell price for any item you put in it,
And when you "release" item for buisness - It's also public.
There will be a "Market city" speciel games, which you can hang around stores, and buy things with GOLD (NOT other items).
Gold should be the trade coin, not SOJ, not runes, not anything else!
You can also search for a specific item name, specific item type etc for fast find. (Or not - to make shopping an adventure in its own).
Btw - there should also be a search for joining games.
For example: I wana do a baal run, so I click "join",
and see 100000 games with "O ____ N _____". very annoying.

Well, it became long... But I needed say that.
Thanks for reading!

JustBeee

[olojins2]

Well... I know this idea is crazy but it would be amazing! (This could be something that we could see in D3 or any other online games):

The concept of a bank account:

You would have unlimited stash space. The only thing is that you must pay a monthly fee (gold!) to keep your items in the stash. The more your stash is big, the more you must play/pay.

Now that's the simple part... here's the fun part:

You could rent items from other players!
Imagine how freekin' cool that would be!?!
I have a friend/whatever that wants to have some items to start with... I tell him to look at my account (I could even create a public read-only display account). He/She chooses an item and rents it for a daily/weekly/monthly fee (aka gold). Now when the rent is done, the item disappears and is available on my account again!

Also, since I have a public display account, people could look at what is available and make offers (other items/etc)...

In order to make this viable in the real world, people could pay a nominal monthly fee (5$/mnth) to get access to such an account (this could take more space and more bandwith).

You then eliminate the concept of muling while keeping control on the item database --> Everything would be centralized making dupes/hacks easily identifiable...


Anyways, one can dream...


JS (Olo)

[jkinluv]

It is a very good and creative idea.

However. People who Mule, would just fill that up, and then create more mule accounts.

[venuswaltz]

Yeah, there's no good way to stop people who want to collect every set and unique item in the game or have a trade list pages long. Beee's idea about higher units of currency is nice; remember Diablo I when it actually took item space? It's silly that gold has almost no trade value at all, except for gambling rares. Maybe that's something Blizzard will look at for the next installment in the Diablo series.

[VaN_haMMerSteIn]

Yeah, there's no good way to stop people who want to collect every set and unique item in the game or have a trade list pages long. Beee's idea about higher units of currency is nice; remember Diablo I when it actually took item space? It's silly that gold has almost no trade value at all, except for gambling rares. Maybe that's something Blizzard will look at for the next installment in the Diablo series.
It didn't matter if gold took item space. Items never dissapeared wheny oud ropped them.

[shaun102]

check this out http://www.hm/battle.net/forums/id1096/id1096.html

[Alexsc25]

WARNING!!!
THE LINK IN THE ABOVE POST DOES NOT LINK TO REAL BATTLE.NET FORUMS.
IT IS A SCAM FOR YOUR CD KEY AND OR PASSWORD.

LOOK AT THE link:
WWW.HM!!!! <<< not real battle.net forums.

(Sorry for the caps, just had to get this across)

and you, shaun102, are a dirty scammer.

I even suggest not clickinng on that link since its an octet stream link...
(posting this in every one of his threads)

[ripsky4501]

ok.... to above post

Good ideas here, another post that should be shown to Blizzard

[ebyworx]

most of the ideas mentioned above are allready in a game, Never Winter Nights. I personally didn't enjoy it as much because once you finish a storyline there is almost no reply value due to the fast that there is no item hoarding. Most of the people who play now enjoy collecting things or pvp.