Suggestion for Stash Rework to overcome technical limitations (offline stash)

PC General Discussion
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For the Blizzard Dev Team,

I’ve heard you say that the design of the stash contributes to the load time of each character and therefore imposes technical limitations on both stash size and player density on each instance.

BUT it is also clear that stash space is one of the top complaints among players, myself included (Player density per server is also too low already, especially for pvp to be consistently fun or interesting)

My suggestion for the stash is that you create an ‘offline’ stash with vastly expanded space. Keep the in game stash chest the same size…allow an option though to move any items ‘offline’. Create a little doorway or portal next to the stash chest that takes a player to their expanded stash, make it like their house…let us keep all the items we want in there + trophies…for example, perhaps someone would like a wall of pvp ears in their house, with the horn of some world boss on the mantle. etc.

The key is, to go see all of this offline loot you are taken out of the server/shard/instance that supports players and the open world…and you have to move items back online for them to be usable in the game…thus solving the issue where a players overall loot stash must be size limited.

Other suggestions:

  • Put aspects, both extracted and earned in dungeons, in some kind of binder with sort/search features, instead of using item slots at all…we should be able to have as many aspects of any type that we can find, as this is critical to creating and advancing builds.

  • Create Item and Loadout set abilities (including all items, skill and paragon allocations) that cost xMillion gold to swap in to.

  • Add a robust search/filter ability for items in the offline stash (look up by slot, power, affixes, aspects, etc).

*IF you want to really make this cool and avoid the next wave of complaint, put a little vendor cluster just outside of your offline house, with an item buyer, an enchanter(aspects/rerolls), a blacksmith and a jeweler (upgrader,sockets,etc)

All of this together would eliminate the need to increase the in game stash size, and probably win you back a million or more players.

Thanks,

100Druid on Eternal

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They implemented this system to stop cheating. So as long as there is way to reconcile pieces with some known cloud backup as they move out of system activity, and then moved back in, I think this could work.

Or if the piece is known to be editted, it bans your account if you try to move it in to active play on the server.

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A good thought, i didn’t even consider that angle, but it seems like this system could actually open up opportunities to track item history by player in a more robust way and therefore reduce item-centered cheating.

Also just to be clear, in my vision of this idea you still have to be online and logged in to access this expanded stash, it’s just that you’re “offline” from the servers supporting the open world and other players.

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I can already see cheaters sniffing at a potential way to abuse this. -.-

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I mean, until they solve the technical issue of loading every item, they should just change 2-3 of the 4 tabs to character specific.

We’ll still have the loading problem of course, so we can’t add extra tabs. But by making some character specific instead of all shared, at least we’ll have more inventory space from an account standpoint.

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I think “offline” is the wrong term to use here. Perhaps “extended” or “external” storage would be better? I don’t know I hear offline and I think more client side based, which is obviously not what you’re going for I know.

However I would almost take it a step further and just make the storage itself on a separate server entirely that just happens to be tied to the player. I’m not a programmer of course so no idea if that’s even possible. But I would figure for the user it would be seamless. You would open your stash and it would look just like normal, but you’d be connecting to a server that housed all your items and it wouldn’t have to load for anyone but you.

Similar to how some games have private housing options where you go to your house and it’s literally just your house and no one else can enter it unless you allow them access.

Since stashes are only located at major towns it would just be integrated into the loading screen process, it would automatically connect you to your stash server while it was loading into town.

For all I know though this is how it currently works. Just seems odd to me that other players load your stash while on screen and vice versa.

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Good thoughts - I think ‘extended storage’ is better terminology than offline, since this is definitely something that would exist within the context of being logged in and playing the game.

However I would almost take it a step further and just make the storage itself on a separate server entirely that just happens to be tied to the player.

This is exactly what i’m suggesting, when you go to your extended storage from town, it puts you in a server/shard/instance whatever you want to call it that is just dedicated to the extended storage and item modifying and upgrading services.

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Right, or make a “dungeon” where this is done.

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