Weapon Swapping - "Dude, where's my gun?"

[BeefBacon 1185]

I'm sure we've all done it. We've been happy as Larry, going from town to town with nothing out of the ordinary and then you realise - shit, where's my gun? Oh, that's right. It's about two miles away in the middle of a forest because I swapped it with my SMG.

The SMG would usually be sitting in your backpack, but because you had it out when you decided to swap it with the gun on your back, it took the slot on your back. Then when you 'holstered' your rifle, you dropped it on the floor instead of putting it on your back.

This has happened to me several times. It's frustrating. It's also frustrating when you have your SMG (or any weapon that you store in your inventory rather than on your back) in your hands, and maybe you'll pick up an item, or you'll reload or you'll do something that puts a single-slot item in that SMG-sized hole in your backpack. Then when you put it away... you drop it on the floor because there's no space.

So what do I propose? Firstly, give my Inventory Overhaul suggestion a read. That alone would solve at least one issue I described, amongst others. Secondly, perhaps items, weapons, so on could have a storage memory so they remember where they were originally stored. These slots would then be reserved for that item when it is in your hands. Even if there is room elsewhere in your inventory, that item will always go back to the slot where it originally came from, and other items will be unable to take up that reserved slot (though perhaps other items could occupy that slot if there is no other space available.)

A similar system was in place a while back, where the 'ghost' of an item that was stored in your inventory and which is now in your hands would remain in your inventory as though it weren't in your hands. It worked pretty well, I'm not sure why the devs removed that.

Anyway, let me know your thoughts.

[Radibor78 26]

I have the same problem from time to time and it is quite annoying, but on the other hand sometimes, when you run out of storage space but want to store some more items while keeping e.g. your gun in your hands using the space the gun took in your backpack as storage it would be not so good if that storage space was reserved for that gun. So when I thought about it there are two different sub-problems here:

(i) Automatically added items. Let's say you have a hunting knife in your hands to skin and quarter a chicken, then the meat, bones, guts and feathers are automatically added to your inventory and if that fills your inventory which leaves no space for the knife and you used a shortcut to put your knife back in your inventory it's on the ground.

(ii) Manually added items. You have the gun in your hand open your inventory and see the 4 free slots and place e.g. a can of beans you just found in there not remembering that this space was reserved. And then later on when you holster your gun it's dropped.

So, to address this a combination of reserved space as you mentioned in your post and other measures would be helpful. So first if you take your gun from your inventory to your hands the space should be reserved in your inventory in the way that automatically items will never be placed there. Secondly, if you open your inventory manually the space should be accessible to store items there if you want to, but the inventory slots should have a slightly different background color, so you can easily see that those slots are required by the item in your hands. And finally third if you are in a situation where you gave a command to your character that requires an item to be moved from your hand to your inventory and there is not enough space to do that it should not be silently dropped but instead either cancel the action with a message in the bottom left (red colored) that this action cannot be done due to the lack of inventory space OR the action is done and the item dropped as it is now, but also a message should appear (red colored) at very least inform the player in a clearly/explicit way that an item has been dropped.

The first two options would prevent accidentally loosing items due to swap and inventory layout issues and the third would ensure that if a situation where an item needs to be dropped occurs the player gets a notification so the item can be picked up again if the drop was not intended. So actually a combination of your proposal with reserved space and item 'ghost' with a explicit notification. Of course the first two issues would be obsolete if the inventory management is changed in the way you described in your "Inventory Overhaul" thread, which is a very nice way of inventory management, but would still leave the issue of holstering an item in your hands with a full inventory (third part above).

[BeefBacon 1185]

5 hours ago, Radibor78 said:

 sometimes, when you run out of storage space but want to store some more items while keeping e.g. your gun in your hands using the space the gun took in your backpack as storage it would be not so good if that storage space was reserved for that gun

Yeah, hence why I said maybe that space could be reserved unless there is no other space in your inventory. I often find that even though I have plenty of slots in my inventory, items I pick up will go into the space I reserved for my gun anyway - so it'd be better if items would only occupy that slot as a last resort. But yeah, I can definitely see the benefits of being able to free up space in your inventory by carrying an item in your hands.

Having said that, the manual placement idea is good. Maybe a mix of the two - items will not be automatically placed in the reserved slot if there is other space available, but you can place them there manually if you wish.

And yeah, my Inventory Overhaul suggestion wouldn't completely fix it, but it would help, and it is related since this is also inventory-related.

[odin_lowe 3686]

You need to be conscious of your decision and inventory management. 

Eventually, with the addition of the weight system, we might see less and less "one man army" carrying a main rifle, a hunting rifle, an SMG and pistols...  At least I hope so. Double carrying is horrible in player interactions. "Please put your gun away while we interact." "I can't, I'm double carrying."... gets shot...

Quick tip though for those who like to double carry and don't want to lose their weapon while switching items, etc, you need to put both weapons on the action bar, this way you can easily switch between the two without any risks of loosing one. 

Honestly, I haven't lost a gun that way for the past 1000 hours...

When you can familiar with the mechanics, you get almost glitch proof.

[General Zod 1114]

It's even worse when you have your pistol or SMG from back pack in hands, you pick up something by double click and it's placed where the gun used to be, you put the gun away and it ends up on the ground which you realise much too late to ever find it. 

2 hours ago, odin_lowe said:

Double carrying is horrible in player interactions. "Please put your gun away while we interact." "I can't, I'm double carrying."... gets shot...

You're such a good guy, talking to a guy who has a gun in his hands instead of shooting him first. 

Edited November 16, 2016 by General Zod

[BeefBacon 1185]

17 hours ago, odin_lowe said:

You need to be conscious of your decision and inventory management. 

Eventually, with the addition of the weight system, we might see less and less "one man army" carrying a main rifle, a hunting rifle, an SMG and pistols...  At least I hope so. Double carrying is horrible in player interactions. "Please put your gun away while we interact." "I can't, I'm double carrying."... gets shot...

Quick tip though for those who like to double carry and don't want to lose their weapon while switching items, etc, you need to put both weapons on the action bar, this way you can easily switch between the two without any risks of loosing one. 

Honestly, I haven't lost a gun that way for the past 1000 hours...

When you can familiar with the mechanics, you get almost glitch proof.

This topic doesn't concern double carrying, it concerns swapping a weapon on your back with a weapon stored in your inventory. Hell, instead of a rifle and an SMG, let's say it's a splitting axe and a machete. Same difference, as the machete can be stored on your back.

"Being conscious" of inventory management isn't a constructive response. If players broke their legs and died every time every time they jogged up stairs, and the only solution to fix the problem was to walk up stairs, you wouldn't dismiss someone complaining about it with "you should be conscious of speed management." It shouldn't happen in the first place. I remember way back when the alpha was first released, when you logged out your inventory would be reshuffled. If, during the reshuffling process, an item suddenly couldn't fit any more it was destroyed. Players had to organise their inventories in such a way that meant items wouldn't be lost when they logged out. Is that being conscious of inventory management?

[General Zod 1114]

As for the conscious of inventory @odin_lowe mentioned, sure but an item dropped on a ground / floor would make sound thus alerting me of what just happened. Add that to the game and we can talk. 

[odin_lowe 3686]

@BeefBacon  Sorry man, but it just don't happen to me, like, ever...  (I don't remember the last this happened to me.)

The way I place items in my inventory, the way I pick items and interact with objects in the environment makes this "issue" null to me.

I remember the days when the inventory used to reshuffle itself when you logged out, and while we waited for a fix, we knew how to distribute items so it would not "flush" items out.

Currently, it's only logical that if you have a 3 vertical space left in your inventory, have an hatchet in your hands, pick up an item that takes one space, making your available space and position insufficient to place the hatchet back, it would get thrown on the ground. Thus why I said being conscious about your inventory management, as it seems the problem originate from a player picking up an item while the space he had left to replace the item he had in hands, insufficient. 

Why do you pick more items if you know you don't have the space to replace your "in hands" item back?

For me, being conscious about the inventory space is also about knowing where the items I pick up go. Let's say I have pistol in my hands (2x2) and I still have a 2 space left in my vest, and 1 space left in my check shirt. I decide to pick up a can of food, and instead of placing it in the vest or the shirt, it places the can of food in my 2x2 slots that was used for my pistol, in my backpack. Then, before removing my pistol from my hands, I move the can of food from my backpack, to either my shirt or my vest. Only after that will I remove my pistol from my hands, making it go back to it's "designated" location in my backpack.

So you see, the way I use my inventory prevents me from loosing any items do to this.

Sorry I don't share this experience, I wish you get a fix for this eventually. But for the time being, I'd say maybe be a bit more careful??

[BeefBacon 1185]

28 minutes ago, odin_lowe said:

@BeefBacon  Sorry man, but it just don't happen to me, like, ever...  (I don't remember the last this happened to me.)

The way I place items in my inventory, the way I pick items and interact with objects in the environment makes this "issue" null to me.

I remember the days when the inventory used to reshuffle itself when you logged out, and while we waited for a fix, we knew how to distribute items so it would not "flush" items out.

Currently, it's only logical that if you have a 3 vertical space left in your inventory, have an hatchet in your hands, pick up an item that takes one space, making your available space and position insufficient to place the hatchet back, it would get thrown on the ground. Thus why I said being conscious about your inventory management, as it seems the problem originate from a player picking up an item while the space he had left to replace the item he had in hands, insufficient. 

Why do you pick more items if you know you don't have the space to replace your "in hands" item back?

For me, being conscious about the inventory space is also about knowing where the items I pick up go. Let's say I have pistol in my hands (2x2) and I still have a 2 space left in my vest, and 1 space left in my check shirt. I decide to pick up a can of food, and instead of placing it in the vest or the shirt, it places the can of food in my 2x2 slots that was used for my pistol, in my backpack. Then, before removing my pistol from my hands, I move the can of food from my backpack, to either my shirt or my vest. Only after that will I remove my pistol from my hands, making it go back to it's "designated" location in my backpack.

So you see, the way I use my inventory prevents me from loosing any items do to this.

Sorry I don't share this experience, I wish you get a fix for this eventually. But for the time being, I'd say maybe be a bit more careful??

Yes, I understand your point, but what you described is a workaround. We shouldn't have to deal with workarounds. Yes, if you pay attention it's something you can avoid, but it's not something that we should have to pay special attention to.

If you found that you couldn't fit something in your bag that you could previously fit in there, you wouldn't just limply let it fall out of your bag and then somehow not notice that it had fallen out.