Smarter Armor Behavior on Quickbar / Swapping armors / Manage item spilling when swapping armor

[Shendare]

TL;DR

Putting armor on the Quickbar and selecting it should equip the armor.

What ?

Selecting an armor piece that's been added to the Quickbar currently picks the armor up onto the mouse pointer. You then have to carefully move the mouse pointer over to the correct slot in the interface and drop it there to equip it.

Worse, selecting an armor piece on the Quickbar when you already have that armor equipped... unequips the armor, throwing any items in the extra inventory slots across the ground.

It would be much more intuitive and make much more sense if armor selected from the Quickbar were immediately equipped by the character. If it was already equipped when the armor was selected, nothing happens. (Don't un-equip it, please!)

Why ?

I am trying, but can think of no use case for Armor being placed on the Quickbar other than for it to be equipped.

Having multiple armor sets (i.e., equipment grids) for different task uses and being able to quickly switch between those pieces of armor by selecting them on the Quickbar just seems right. Logical.

Especially since the Quickbar already designates different slots for different instances of armor in the player's inventory, and even darkens them out if the specific selected armor piece is not currently available in the inventory.

Thank you for any consideration.

[ssilk]

It makes total sense, but is a bit in controversy to
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=93124 Would it be possible to make it harder to take off armor?

[Shendare]

Oh, nice. It actually sounds like it would address that problem completely as well.

The explained problem occurs for the user when they select the armor in their Quickbar that they're already wearing. It picks the armor up off their character onto the mouse pointer, spilling their extra items all over the ground.

This is explicitly addressed in the line from mine:

It would be much more intuitive and make much more sense if armor selected from the Quickbar were immediately equipped by the character. If it was already equipped when the armor was selected, nothing happens. (Don't un-equip it, please!)

[ssilk]

That happens also when you have different power armor, a bigger is exchanged with a smaller.

[Kyralessa]

That happens also when you have different power armor, a bigger is exchanged with a smaller.

True, but then it's your own fault for switching armor sizes.

The inventory-spilling problem occurs when you're switching the same size armor, but inadvertently perform the wrong series of keys or clicks and take one off before wearing another.

As I noted there, this is something nobody does on purpose.

[Haladon]

TL;DR

Swapping the armor set being worn can be made quicker if shift clicking one in your inventory swapped them with your current armour instead of displaying error message that there is already an armour there.

What ?

If we shift click on an armor in the inventory, it gets equipped. However, if we already have an armor equipped, it displays an error message stating that the armor slot is full. However when a player shift-clicks on an armor from the inventory there is only one obvious intention: to equip it. And to replace the one armor already equipped. (This is unlike weapons and ammo where there could be ambiguity on which slot to replace.)

Caveats

Currently Ctrl-clicking on an empty slot in the inventory also tries to equip all armors in the inventory. Ctrl-clicking is often used to top up ammo into the current weapons. Here there is no intention of changing armors and no obvious answer for which one in your inventory should be swapped with. I rather feel ctrl-click shouldn't even try to equip armors this way. It currently just equips the weakest armor.

Similarly, when a chest is open, trying to transfer items from the chest to your inventory with ctrl/shift-click on the items tries to equip the armor first. Failing that it moves them into your inventory. In this case as well, we don't expect to replace the equipped armor with the one in the chest. But rather to move it directly into our inventory.

So the suggested functionality should only be used when the player shift-clicks on the armor specifically and with the character interface only open. (Ctrl-clicking on the armor specifically can also be used as a substitute for shift-click).

Why ?

It makes swapping between different armor sets quicker. Currently to do this we have to drag the desired armor from the inventory to the armor slot in the corner of the screen.
There was another suggestion with the same end goal: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=96364.

[ssilk]

some of the rare cases, where the poster points me directly to the post he wants to be joined with

As said before, this conflicts - as it is till now suggested - with the issue, that two armors can have different sizes of inventory (either due to to different armor-types or due to stuff in the equipment grid). The remaining items are then spilled on ground. It’s a beginner trap. Link to that subject is above.

[Haladon]

some of the rare cases, where the poster points me directly to the post he wants to be joined with

When I searched and found the older post, I was a bit unsure if this idea is different enough to have its own post.

If item spillage is holding back implementation of either of these methods to swap armor, then we only need to restrict that particular thing from happening.
If the new armor set has equal or more slots or if there are enough empty inventory slots to cover the deficit: allow armor swapping by all these methods.
If it would lead to item spillage: display a error message: Cannot swap armors as it would lead to inventory overflow.

This could even be implemented for the current method of swapping armors by dragging the desired armor to the armor slot.
This could also be used when player tries to just remove the current armor.

As we can see, quickly swapping armor is not in conflict item spillage. Both problems need to be solved on their own. It just so happens that giving players the ability to quickly swap armors leads to more cases of item spillage.

PS: Mods that increase inventory slots through equipment grid items may need an error message of their own when the player tries to remove those items from the equipment grid of the currently worn armor.

[eradicator]

I wonder if the problem would go away if the player had three armor slots, and a hotkey to swap them - just like weapons. That way you wouldn't be manually switching armor all the time in the first place.

[Kyralessa]

I wonder if the problem would go away if the player had three armor slots, and a hotkey to swap them - just like weapons. That way you wouldn't be manually switching armor all the time in the first place.

I like this idea!

[Shendare]

I also don't see how being able to select the armor from the Quickbar is somehow too bad for dropping items across the ground when it's simply a shortcut for selecting the armor from inventory and clicking it into the armor slot, which does the exact same item dropping thing.

[ssilk]

some of the rare cases, where the poster points me directly to the post he wants to be joined with

When I searched and found the older post, I was a bit unsure if this idea is different enough to have its own post.

I’ll try to explain. The basic idea of this thread is to make it easier to swap armor. And there are different ways to do this. And all have in common, that there then needs to be a more clever way to handle item spilling - also because of the mods, that will then make use of this feature.

When I think like this about it, then it might be an idea to split the armor from the inventory.

There are some reasons for that, especially it would solve the spilling problem, because it is then obvious, that a smaller inventory cannot handle as much, as a bigger one. Besides that, does it increases the gameplay-value? Hm, difficulty to say... the split alone doesn’t increase it enough to argue for this changes, but maybe we will have more ideas around this....