Please, don’t embarass yourself.
But that is exactly the point. You need those code changes anyway for the lootfilter. The queries aren’t the hard part.
So why not use the correct queries from start? It’s a very low hanging fruit. Implementing a halfhearted solution would just frustrate players. You don’t win anything with that.
I would like the ability to share and use customized loot filters.
Warning: Loads of speculation next…
When they said this would be a lot of work, I was surprised. I didn’t think it would. So then I started thinking why could that be.
It’s my rough guess that their biggest problem is that item categorization is currently not easy to query and could increase load on the servers. Categories (item types and quality) exist currently only on the “excel” data files, and in a format designed to obtain an item from a category, not a category from an item. They are great for item generation, but not so good for querying from an item back into a category. If you seen those files you’ll know what I mean.
The game client cannot perform the filter itself, because most likely the only thing it is getting is the item code and checksum. I’d suspect they would prefer to implement this by adding more information to the item object in the client so it – and not the server – could perform the filter. This would also simplify the issue of multiple players in the game seeing things through their own filter. The server wouldn’t have to worry about any of that.
But this would be a breaking change that affects the interface of a major object structure in the game that is used everywhere; in your inventory, stashes, when trading, in the save game file…
Now, I’m all for a full blown filter (although I have very little use for it). But I know that one subset of that filter will necessarily be item quality. And that can be easily filtered without any of the complications above. So give me that, while you work on the hard part. That’s my logic.
So about the clutter, you will still interact with the loot if clicked, as say opposed to a certain game with loot filters that when not shown you cannot even click it. This limitation would also be hard to overcome.
I can also just speculate, but current lootfilters are implemented on a different layer. I think there is more than 1 possible approach. For performance it has to be clientside. Basically you have to change the view part. Something along adding a property the view can toggle. The item already has all the values it needs to select from.
so if you create a lootfilter no matter if basic or advanced, this change has to happen is the more complicated part. If you then just add the basic or advanced options isn’t that hard if you got the bases. That’s why I think it’s better to develop a month longer and do it right and not quickly release it halfhearted.
The comment I recall from Llama’s video from one of the devs was that there might be certain times where even high end players would still want to see low end items; my guess is he’s referring to white/gray bases with/without sockets for runewords, or maybe he meant things like chipped/flawed gems, which even high end players might want to see for the purpose of combining runes.
I think what he was referring to as a filter is “don’t show me items below X item level or X rarity.”
Personally, that’s not what I would want as a filter, but rather to change the color of certain text (like rejuvenation potions to purple, heal pots to red, and mana pots to blue), and then to shorten existing text so that “Super Mana Potion” could be shortened to “S.Mana Pot” or something like that. This way, you could still have the same number of items on the ground, but taking up far less screen real estate when viewing what’s on the ground.
I think the visibility of loot in this game is the one thing that is completely unacceptable about it. Which is a big deal because thats what the entire game revolves around once you get past the main story on normal mode.