You shouldn't have to do that. (Destiny)

by scarab , Wednesday, January 07, 2015, 13:44 (3403 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

i'm saving duplicates of good guns, so i can spread them out.

[snip] It is my hope to eventually have a "good enough" set on each character that i can switch between them without having to vault items.

I understand why Bungie wants to restrict in-combat gear access to a small subset of all that you, the player, own. But the Vault is such a bad way to do this.

I wont list all the bad things about the Vault because I'm sure that you know them already.

Instead I'll just say how gear management can be improved - how Bungie can keep in-combat restrictions without forcing the player to jump through hoops.

Glossary

I'm going to define some terms here so you know what I mean when I use them.

Equipped

There are ten items of each category that you can switch between using the options menu whilst in a combat zone. These items are equipped but your character can only have one of these items in his/her hands or worn on their body when not in the options menu.

So you can have ten helmets available to wear in a combat zone but only one of those ten is worn when you are not in the options menu.

Currently Equipped

Using the helmet example above, this is the helmet that your character will wear when in the world.

Gear Category

Primaries, Specials, Heavies, Helmets, Chest Pieces, Gloves, Boots, Shaders, Ships, etc are all categories of gear.

But I'm going to use the term: Gear Category to refer to things in the user interface.

You know that you can carry ten Primaries, ten Specials, and can hold ten gloves at any one time without having to use your vault.

The Character page UI has a square icon for the currently equipped item of each category. These icons are found to the left or to the right of the character model.

If you have other items of that category equipped then you can see a small grid of shadow squares beside the current item icon. When opened this becomes a large, 3x3 grid of colourful icons.

Closed Gear Category

This is the UI that is displayed when your cursor is not over a Gear Category - when the category is not active.

When a Gear Category is closed the only visible UI item is the currently selected item's icon.

Opened Gear Category

When you move the cursor over a Gear Category icon then the shadow grid expands into a large 3x3 grid of, colourful, icons that show your other equipped items.

This 3x3 grid and the currently selected item's icon beside the grid constitute the opened version of the Gear Category UI.

My Solution / Vault Replacement

Get rid of the Vault as a place. Make it a page on the options menu that only appears outside of combat areas (it appears in orbit or in the Tower).

The layout would be similar to the current Character page. There will be a gear grid in the middle instead of the character model.

When you navigate to the vault all gear categories will be in their closed state - only the currently selected/equipped item of each gear category will be visible (just like in the Character page).

The gear grid in the middle of the page will be empty.

When you cursor over a closed gear category the category grid will, immediately, open (just like in the Character page)

So far it's just like the Character tab but there are three differences:

• once a 3x3 grid is open it stays open (it wont close if you move off the grid)
  
• to move from one gear category to another you have to hold the cursor over a closed gear category for about 1/4 of a second.
  
• the empty gear grid in the middle will be populated with ALL the items of that category of gear that you own and are eligible to equip right now.

To equip an item of a given category:

• open that item's category
  
• find the item in the grid in the middle
  
• select it

Notes:

If an item is already equipped or you already have all ten slots of that category equipped... then you will not be able to select it. It will be drawn dark just like items in the current vault when you can't select them.

When you select an item in the middle it will be added to the Gear Category but it will not be removed from the middle grid. This has two benefits:

• it will still be available for other characters (you never need to put it back to share it)
  
• positions of items stay fixed so you can get to know where a certain item lives in the grid and can find them easily even if you are always swapping items. Relative item locations persist for fairly long periods.

To un-equip an item of a given category:

• open that item's category
  
• find the item in the item category
  
• select it

Notes:

When an un-equipped item is removed from the Gear Category, the other items remaining in the Gear category are shuffled up. The item's icon in the middle grid will be drawn light instead of dark.

Summary

Implementing the Vault as a page on the options menu that is only available outside combat areas lets Bungie restrict the number of items you can access in combat zones but doesn't force you to go to the Tower just to access your Vault.

Keeping items in the middle grid lets multiple characters have the same weapons equipped. You also don't need to remember where the weapon is (is it in the Vault? does Hunter have it? Warlock?).

As all characters can have the same weapon equipped, you don't need multiple copies and you don't have to fiddle with your vault so often. You don't have to play the vault mini-game where you have to work out the optimum way to switch weapons between characters and vault and vault to characters. Life becomes so much easier.

-PS

I realise that you could have a tab on the Character page to switch between character mode and vault mode but I suspect that it would be less clutter to have a separate page for the Vault.