I have, to date, spent almost 1 800 hours on this game over the years and one thing that repeatedly drives me away is inventory management. I am aware of and have looked at third-party inventory management solutions but find them to be very immersion breaking and that would drive me away even quicker.
I currently use a system of mules and can off the top of my head think of few features that would improve my enjoyment of the game more than easier inventory management. Perhaps in the spirit of the Illusionist already in game?
I might also suggest that item and inventory management is most likely one of the more daunting aspects of this game in its current or future state for a new player.
An easily accessible and, perhaps visual system might make for an easier segue into the game.
A major cause of inventory bloat is “I don’t know if I need to loot this, because I can’t remember the stats on the ones I have”. You end up with copies of the same item because you can’t make an informed decision easily while out killing monsters. You also can’t know what your other characters have. This just makes the issue worse, and once your stash is full it becomes even harder to organize.
When I begin untangling the mess it becomes a loop of moving items a few at a time to the character for whom holding the item is natural. Then once I have many in the same place I can begin comparing them and selling the ones I don’t want.
In terms of what is both practical to implement and useful to have, I think seeing tooltips of other similar items would be most useful. I could skip straight to the comparison stage and not keep the item in the first place.
I know that you feel this may break immersion, but I’ve started using Item Assistant and I can’t go back.
Yes, I probably don’t need to keep 13k+ items… but it’s neat and organized and searchable so I don’t mind. Duplicate items are easy to compare. I’ve even started keeping cool MIs which I just sold or destroyed before.
My old mules are now full-fledged characters I can level up and enjoy the game with.
If managing your items is a pain to you, I really advise giving it a try. If you don’t like it you can always get all your items out and back onto your mules.
Thanks for your input, I admit I have been on the verge a few times but once I start tinkering with it I just lose interest in playing.
I like a moderate amount of sorting and comparing items and feel that having to make decisions on what to keep is an attractive part of both the learning curve and gaming experience. But as @dandels said above, it is a constant struggle to just compare all the duplicates you get. To store everything you get in Item Assistant would seem to just push the problem ahead of you. Although I guess that comparing items there seems to be alot easier than what is currently possible in game.