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TL;DR: Character-specific storage for untradeable items.
The Problem
Since MapleStory's launch, over 13 years ago, the number of different items in the game has increased a hundredfold. But the maximum size of a character's inventory has only increased by a third.
Most items (that aren't just discarded or sold to NPCs) can be moved to storage and thence to other characters. But as the game progresses, more and more items that are introduced are "untradeable". Once one has acquired one of these items, one is faced with a difficult choice: give up an inventory slot to keep the item, or drop it and lose it forever.
Both events and permanent content tend to award these untradeables: equipment, chairs, titles, scrolls, potions, boss souls, coins, and more. Older characters who participate in events and play through new content, accumulate more and more of these items over time. Many of the rewards are "useless", either because they were purely decorative even when awarded, or because power creep has made them obsolete. However, some people view them as memorabilia, and are loathe to part with them. These people end up with an inventory so full of untradeables that they have little room for the items that are actually of use.
The Suggested Solution
Add a new feature to the game, named
The Attic, like the place in a real-world house where people store memorabilia and rarely-used items (like baby's first shoes, or the Christmas tree decorations).
The Attic has the following features:
- Has a UI similar to Storage. This makes it easy to code and intuitive to use. Note that this means slots are not pre-assigned to equip/use/etc/setup. Each character is free to fill their Attic with whatever items they like to collect.
- Specific to each character. This is to preserve the untradeability of whatever is put inside.
- Can only hold untradeable items (including items that could be made tradeable-once). This is so the Attic is not used as just more storage for such things as potions or crafting materials, that can be put into the regular Storage. Note that on Reboot, this includes all equipment.
- Can contain Cash items that can't be moved to Cash storage. For example, the snapback hats from the Heroes of Maple event.
- Can only have items inserted or removed once a day. As described above, the Attic is meant for memorabilia. Items that are kept for sentimental reasons, and have no real use. Restricting access to once a day will prevent people from using it to avoid expanding their inventory, by storing alternate equipment sets (e.g. drop gear) or other frequently-used items. Note that looking into the Attic should not be restricted. Collectors like to stare at their hoard.
- Very large. Ideally, the Attic should be "infinite." At the rate that MapleStory gives us untradeable chairs and titles, they alone would overflow any finite storage sooner or later. If that's not possible, the size of the Attic should be a function of the size of the character's regular inventory. This would reward people for expanding their inventory, without adding yet another cash grab for players to complain about.
Brief discussions of other solutions suggested for the same problem
- Increase maximum inventory size
This would only be a temporary solution to the problem, because new events and content keep raining more and more items on us. Also, this could be abused by people who don't collect memorabilia, and would use the entire inventory size for useful items. A limited "bag" of useful items is a staple of all RPG's.
- Add more bags, and allow more bags of the same type to be used simultaneously
Only solves the problem for specific items, and temporarily at that. Also, an inelegant solution, requiring one to go through several layers of "inventory" to find any one item.
- Make chairs and titles into collections, like mounts and medals.
While this is a good idea, and probably necessary if the Attic can't be made "infinite", it does not solve the problems of the Equipment, Use, and ETC tabs.
- Make all, or most, "untradeable" items into "movable in account only"
This would certainly help to reduce inventory clog, and most users would be happy with this solution. However, it would greatly blur the "role playing" lines between characters, if they can share equipment and even quest rewards. It would also lose Nexon money on Sharing Tags and (Platinum) Scissors of Karma.
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