Reserve inventory space for item in hands.

[sokaku 50]

As a survivor, when I equip an item out of my inventory into my hands, the space in my inventory that this item was occupying should be reserved for when I return that item to inventory.

Putting the item on the ground and picking it up into hands would invalidate any inventory reservation.

A big problem with inventory management comes when you are looting and have equipped your pistol for example. Later when you go to switch to a primary weapon or melee, rather than returning the pistol to your inventory, it gets dropped on the ground because items you had picked up occupied at least one space needed for the pistol. Inventory needs to be constantly shuffled around to ensure space for equipped items is reserved.

[sanguine00 167]

I think that's how it used to work when Standalone first came out.  You'd put an item in your hands and it would still show in your inventory but with a hands icon over it (or something like that).

At some point they decided to go with realism® and make it so that if something is in your hands, then the space it took in your inventory is free and can theoretically become occupied by something else.

[nl 986]

It would be nice if we had reserved slots. I recently lost a Glock with magazine and silencer due to this and did not notice until I could not remember exactly where I switched items.

[Gobbokirk 546]

While it in the end it is up to us to keep track and free slots, I can't see any major issue with implementing something like this.
I especially like the idea of dropping it on purpose to clear the reserved state.
I am sort of picturing like a greyed out area in the inventory with a transparent icon for what ever you're currently holding.

[Red_Ensign 990]

14 hours ago, sanguine00 said:

 

At some point they decided to go with realism®

because when you're surrounded by zombies people often drop their gun on the ground and walk away because they picked up a can of beans.  XD

[sanguine00 167]

2 hours ago, Red_Ensign said:

because when you're surrounded by zombies people often drop their gun on the ground and walk away because they picked up a can of beans.  XD

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it.  On one hand, it empowers the user because we can see our hands as an extra inventory slot which gives us more flexibility.

On the other hand, it's more difficult to keep track of such things in a video game with an unavoidably cumbersome inventory gui, as opposed to real life where we would have all of our senses working for us.

I've gotten used to it and made a habit of keeping track of what's in my hands and where it can go in my inventory if I remove it from my hands.  But I still see people with thousands of hours in the game losing items because of it, which tells me it's not really ideal.

[Killawife 599]

Thousands of guns go missing in chernarus every year. This is the reason for it. It would be much easier if your character had a slot for melee, a slot for rifle, a slot for handgun etc. That way they wouldnt get lost so easily but it would make it more like any other game out there, which is bad.

[General Zod 1114]

Not to mention that the items tend to just take any random slot in the inventory. 

Edited January 19, 2017 by General Zod