[Suggestion] A tiny change to how you pick up weapons off the ground

[Berserker Pride]

This is a really small request that I suppose most people won't have a problem with(I hope).  Currently if you are an archer and have two stacks of arrows a bow and a sword you can not simply pick up a shield off the ground while holding your sword.  You have to switch to your bow switch the bow with the shield and then pick up your bow and up to two stacks of arrows.  I think a much easier way to handle this would be to automatically switch out your used stack of arrows for the shield.  If you are grabbing the shield the game shouldn't assume that you don't want bow anymore.  It should assume that you will settle for less ammo and gain the shield.

As it is right now there is no way to drop arrows or bolts without dropping your crossbow or bow first.  Which leaves you 3 items to look for on the ground.  This can take a while.

Also an option to have your current equipment pop up on the right when you pick up an item.  If you have full slots you should be able to simply choose what you want to replace by clicking on it.  This would be an option and you could still replace your current item quickly by hitting F.  Maybe if you held down F instead of clicking it the inventory screen could pop up.

I also suggested that the slot with a looted item would be faded in the equipment menu to indicate which item will not be bought next round should you survive.  This way if you picked up a better melee weapon than the one you purchase you would want to "buy" the melee weapon in the faded slot.  Then if you live the weapon isn't bought if you die you lose the looted item and buy the crappy sword anyway.

 

[Johnny Morphine]

My brother and I were just having this discussion the other day. He's almost always an archer and hates the way weapons are swapped out. I've had similar issues with infantry builds, especially when I survive a round with some equipment I picked up, which then causes the stuff I'm paying for not to even show up for me, even in cases where I had an empty slot available for additional weapons.

So my bro posited that when picking up equipment from the ground, you can (optionally) have your inventory slots show up on the right. Click on one of those slots, and you've successfully (and with all guarantees) swapped out the item you wanted to lose.

In my case, since I'm always infantry, I don't have the time to stop and click on things on the screen when I'm surrounded by three guys. So a more intelligent automatic system for picking up gear would be much appreciated. I like your suggestion so far. The same principle could be applied when picking up anything, really. But it should never be the case that you find yourself without a useful weapon after picking up some stuff of the ground - and yeah, this has happened to several people (though not recently that I know of - perhaps they got that far with their fixes).

Another nice add-on would be to be able to see what additional stuff you picked up and survived with in your equipment slots between rounds, so you could choose to dispose of it or move it to a different slot until you drop it or you die. That'd also save players a lot of frustration.

 

[Skyrage]

When picking up items in general, it should be way easier to actually select what you want to pick up. Most of the time it's a huge pain in the ass to even get the item right on the cursor.

 

[Johnny Morphine]

I just noticed that with the last update, actually. I can't even pick up my own javelins most of the time, no matter where I am in relation to them. It still seems to work with shields and weapons reliably (though not as well as many of us would like), when you can see them, but I believe I've been seeing dropped items completely vanish lately. Trying to snag a new shield off a corpse can be a real pain sometimes, even when they had an extra one to spare.

 

[brunoxyz]

Yes, I got used to looking for hours until I found the spot where you can actually pick up the weapon you want, it should be improved.

also I hate when I pick up a shield and it drops my main weapon or bow. Though I am not sure what to suggest to make it better.

 

[Aitchison]

Yeah I do think there should be some sort of selection involved, not just computer assumption. It would have to be a quick simple system as you are in the heat of multiplayer combat. You do not want to be messing around trying to go through select screens.

 

[Johnny Morphine]

Yeah, just a simple prompt with the right side of the inventory selection screen would suffice. Hit your use button on some junk sitting on the ground, your gear slots pop up, you click a slot, prompt vanishes, and the slot is updated. I think that's as quick of a manual system as we could get, short of having a screenfull of options concerning what types of items to automatically override when you pick something up.

 

[Lord Mur]

yeah finding yourself infantried as an archer does get a bit old. good shout

 

[Trelin]

Don't you drop what ever weapon you currently have equipped?  Can anyone confirm/deny this for sure?  I'm not 100% certain, but I think that's usually the case.  But I agree that dropping the depleted half of your arrows would make the most sense.

 

[Aitchison]

Yeah, just a simple prompt with the right side of the inventory selection screen would suffice. Hit your use button on some junk sitting on the ground, your gear slots pop up, you click a slot, prompt vanishes, and the slot is updated. I think that's as quick of a manual system as we could get, short of having a screenfull of options concerning what types of items to automatically override when you pick something up.

That sounds good, quick and easy with little time spent fiddling around with weapons.

 

[Berserker Pride]

Yeah, just a simple prompt with the right side of the inventory selection screen would suffice. Hit your use button on some junk sitting on the ground, your gear slots pop up, you click a slot, prompt vanishes, and the slot is updated. I think that's as quick of a manual system as we could get, short of having a screenfull of options concerning what types of items to automatically override when you pick something up.

That is a wicked idea.  It would solve all the issues with picking up an item.

 

[Johnny Morphine]

Don't you drop what ever weapon you currently have equipped?  Can anyone confirm/deny this for sure?  I'm not 100% certain, but I think that's usually the case.  But I agree that dropping the depleted half of your arrows would make the most sense.

I think that usually is the case for melee weapons. For shields, it seems to have been a bit trickier. If you'd like to drop one of your shields instead of your current weapon when you pick one up, I've found that if you sheathe your weapon, you can drop your shield instead of your primary, so you can get a little bit more freedom over what gets dropped that way. Since I refuse to be an archer I can't say for certain, but I don't think there's any equivalent way to drop arrows.

Anyway, there's not a whole lot of time for you to have to go through so many steps like that in the first place.

And then if you survive the battle with the equipment you picked up, there's really no telling what you'll end up with when you respawn. My brother had something funny happen when he was an archer. He managed to pick up a shield or two after his arrows were gone, then killed everyone remaining and survived. When he respawned, he had two shields, a bow, arrows, and no melee weapon. Something like that. In any event, it was something completely ridiculous and unexpected.

That sounds good, quick and easy with little time spent fiddling around with weapons.

That is a wicked idea.  It would solve all the issues with picking up an item.

Certainly hope they're reading this stuff, up there above the clouds....

Then the next logical step would be to fix the way you have to switch weapons twice to get back to your primary if you've got three on you, or picked up a third, or - even worse - a fourth... but that's another issue for another (though related) discussion.

 

[Commodore_Frank]

So my bro posited that when picking up equipment from the ground, you can (optionally) have your inventory slots show up on the right. Click on one of those slots, and you've successfully (and with all guarantees) swapped out the item you wanted to lose.

There's one thing you forgot there. I also suggested that in a pinch, you could press the use button a second time to make it swap out using the current system. Sometimes as an archer, I just pull out my bow and want to dump it for a shield quickly if I'm getting rushed by some axe/javelin chuckers. Double tapping it would dump my bow for the shield, and I'd be ready to go without having to click anything.

Priority on what it drops would also be nice, as a second stack of arrows/bolts is pretty much always the least important thing you're carrying.

 

[Johnny Morphine]

There's one thing you forgot there. I also suggested that in a pinch, you could press the use button a second time to make it swap out using the current system. Sometimes as an archer, I just pull out my bow and want to dump it for a shield quickly if I'm getting rushed by some axe/javelin chuckers. Double tapping it would dump my bow for the shield, and I'd be ready to go without having to click anything.

Priority on what it drops would also be nice, as a second stack of arrows/bolts is pretty much always the least important thing you're carrying.

Seconded. Allowing you to double tap an item would eliminate the need to have some clunky option that would force a player to use one system or the other.
So add a quick inventory interface for picking stuff up and putting it in the correct slot and make the old system smarter for on-the-fly item grabs, and this concept that they made such a big deal about before the beta release would finally live up to its potential.

 

[yanivno]

i like the idea.

 

[Berserker Pride]

It would also be cool if when you picked up a shiny nord voulge as a khergit lancer or something when you went to the equipment screen it would either have a weapon box crossed off, or it would show the axe.  That way you could change the box with your weak-ass sword to something more useful.  As it is you usually end up spawning without something important like your shield even if you changed your sword for the axe in the first place.  Its pretty wierd what you end up with if you survive the round.

 

[Johnny Morphine]

Certainly.
Just a half hour ago I picked up a heavy board shield when I was equipped with a scimitar, heater shield and javs as a Vaegir Spearman. That's 3 slots filled to start. Next round, it spawned me without my javs. So I survived again that time too, but before the next round I changed my javelins from the third slot to the fourth, and it let me have them while keeping both the shields. A system like the one you just described would have prevented the confusion.

 

[Berserker Pride]

The only problem with that would be if you were the last guy to die and didn't have time to change your equipment.  But you could fade the box to indicate captured equipment and still select something for that box incase you die.  So you click the faded box and select the sword.  It won't overwrite your voulge but it will buy the sword should you die.

 

[Caveman]

Rather than having to use the mouse to select which slot you want the new item to go in, just press use followed by a number 1-4. much faster.

 

[Berserker Pride]

No what I mean is that when you hit esc and go to the equipment menu one of the weapon boxes will be greyed out to indicate that you are holding a captured weapon.  So that tells you to put something in that box that you won't need unless you die.  What box is greyed out will be random depending what you initially replaced to grab the weapon.