Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello fellow capsuleers,

first of all, there is a TL;DR at the end of this post, for the slightly impatient type of guys amongst you

Now to the point:
The other day i was managing/sorting some of my inventory on my Jita trading Alt.
Like many of you, i use containers for this, but i quickly ran into the limitations, you face, using this method.

If an item is NOT located in your item hangar, but in a container, you are missing some of the options in the right-click menu.
To be exact:
- Get Repair Quote
- Create Contract
- Reprocess
- Repackage
- Trash It

Furthermore, you cannot place containers (repackaged or not) inside of containers, since ,apparently ,this containerception would cause some serious database carnage.

Many players have complained about this in the past, but to this day, we haven't seen a solution for this.
At first i thought, maybe with the introduction of Brain In A Box, the database would finally be able to handle all those things, but then another thought came to mind. Why not go without containers entirely?

So, if we don't use containers anymore, to sort our stuff, what would we use instead?

My proposal is, give us the ability to create custom folders in the item hangar, just like we have in the Quickbar in the Market window.

To illustrate, i'll use the inventory of my Jita Alt (which currently looks like THIS) as example.
With a Quickbar style of Item Hangar, it would look something like THIS.
Now, to navigate through all these folders, it would greatly help, if we could select custom icons for each folder (see HERE). There are already more than enough suitable icons in the market window, which could be used for that.

With this way of sorting, all items could be stored in the Item Hangar, without the need of containers. Specific items are just made visible/invisible depending on which folder they "are in" (are assigned to) and which folder is currently selected. All options in the right-click menu (like Repair, or Repackage) will be available on all items, because everything is physically stored in the top level of the Item Hangar. No containerception, no database carnage. This also provides the possibility of multiple levels of subfolders, see HERE.

A few things, that have to be taken into consideration, though:

If all items, which were previously stored in containers, now are located in the top level of the Item Hangar,...

1. ... all unassembled ships (which are then automatically moved to the Ship Hangar) will now appear under the "Hangars" tab in the Station Panel (see HERE).
This would completely clutter up the Hangar Station Panel of players, who have a large amount of unassembled ships in their inventory.

Possible Solution: Unassembled ships, which are put in the Item Hangar, will stay there and not automatically be moved to the Station Hangar, untill you assemble them.

2. ... creating a Contract can become pretty confusing, if you have a lot in your inventory and you select the items in the 2nd part (2/4) of the Contract Creation window.

Possible Solution: Give the Contract Creation window the same Quickbar style of navigation, see HERE.

3. ... the Personal Assets window would need a redesign aswell. (Sorry, no Mockup for that )


So, this is basically it.
Wow, this took way longer than expected... If you have made it this far, i thank you for your time.
All constructive feedback is welcome. And if you like the concept, i really would appreciate a bump or like, to spread the idea.

Regards,
Damjan Fox

TL;DR
Give the Item Hangar a Market Quickbar type of Navigation, to improve item sorting and managing, while avoiding containers.
Pic1, Pic2


----EDIT1:
At the beginning, this idea was designed to improve the usability of the item hangar. But today i saw this thread on reddit and the problem this player has, to sort all his ships. I then realized, that customizable folders would be a huge improvement to the ship hangar aswell (how did i not see this in the first place?).

This way of sorting would give every player, who has to deal with a lot of ships in his ship hangar (PVPers, Directors, etc...), the ability to categorize and quickly go through hundreds of ships.

I could see something along these lines being incredibly useful for a more accessible hangar. As far as selecting items for contracts go, I like this, a lot. As a part time station trader, this would be make my life all the more colorful.

The custom icons would be far more pretty than ugly cans. Great mockups, they really communicate the idea well. Did you do that in photoshop or something else?

Thank you for your feedback so far!


Yes, i made the mockups in Photoshop.

Also Supported. +1

Sure, whatever makes you happy.

Supported.

@Rivr Luzade
Thank you for your feedback.

But to make it clear, i never intended this to replace containers entirely. Creating folders would be completely optional.

If sorting with containers works for you, with this method implemented, you wouldn't even see a difference. Since you don't have to create folders, nothing would change for you.

But i'm sure, there are many players out there, me included, who dislike the restrictions caused by containers.



Only the contents of the selected folder would visible. Very much like with containers now. There is no need to load the entire inventory. This would mean no extra loading time or lag, compared to containers.


It wouldn't be that difficult to add the ability, to open folders in seperate windows.


I'm sure each player has his own way of window placement and sorting. If you think, that this method is not the right for you, i can of course accept that. But like i said above, if you decide not to use this new option to create folders, nothing would change for you. So players could choose, which method works best for them, folders, containers or a mixture of both.

Regards,
Damjan

Begs the question how that would work. When you dock, the selected default option would be Item Hangar where you see all items. At least that's under the current system.


They certainly do. Your system, however, would require to have a high window in order to see most of the list and not depend on EVE's weird scrolling and category jumping/expanding mechanisms.

However, don't get me wrong (despite my rather unpleasant comment). I would really like to see some improvements on the Inventory handling: among other things that ship hangars (cargo bays) always remain collapsed so that I do not have to scroll through dozens of ship hangars to reach the Corp hangar section. Should CCP take a cue from your idea, they should also look into that.

Added to first post:

At the beginning, this idea was designed to improve the usability of the item hangar. But today i saw this thread on reddit and the problem this player has, to sort all his ships. I then realized, that customizable folders would be a huge improvement to the ship hangar aswell (how did i not see this in the first place?).

This way of sorting would give every player, who has to deal with a lot of ships in his ship hangar (PVPers, Directors, etc...), the ability to categorize and quickly go through hundreds of ships.

Like this.

Would also be nice to have in ship hangers.