Item Stacking & The Dev Team

[RaDian FlGith]

Okay... the DevTeam frequently agrees with the player base that more items should stack. The more items that don't stack, the more potential for that particular item to become a storage burden. Take sand and granite for example. Now, I understand that on older items, this is an issue because they were coded way back when (though, frankly, they should be able to find and adapt that code, because ingots are both hued on upper end, AND stack, but I digress).

What gets me then is why don't NEW items stack from the start?

Candy canes. There's no reason they shouldn't have stacked.
Cocoa butter and bags of sugar and all the other chocolate stuff...

I mean, really?

Really?

It's about time that the Dev Team starts to look at things from the player perspective and realize that making things that don't stack is inconvenient. I understand that maybe it's an artwork issue (that somehow renamed artwork causes problems when stacked), but if that's the case, ask the art department to create a new piece of art for it. I know it may seem daunting, but does it really take more than 2-3 hours to make a bottle of vanilla for an experienced artist? SHOULD it take 2-3 hours to make a bottle of vanilla for an experienced artist?

I just don't understand what the issue is, and I think it's high time it got addressed on a permanent basis:

If an item being introduced is (1) a commodity or (2) an item that will be present in great abundance and (3) is NOT a weapon or something with unique statistics per piece then it is introduced as a stacking item, regardless of what it takes to make that happen. It makes sense from a player standpoint, and it ALSO makes sense from a design standpoint (why have thousands of database line-items when you can have a few?).

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

I'd be happy if we saw a Publish/Patch sysle that was noting but "making things stack", or dealing with a bunch of player desired issues along those lines.

Item stacking, commodity deed redeeming, etc.

No new content, no bigtime rebalancing, just a BUNCH Of stuff along those lines... all of the "little" things.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

Yeah, it would be nice. Though, in all honesty, I understand old bugs get put by the wayside.

What I still don't understand is why -- knowing that people hate it when items are introduced that SHOULD stack but DON'T stack -- that they just go ahead and do it anyway. I mean, sure, they could argue they want the chocolate ingredients to remain rare (which would astound me, but then, since their idea to get more stuff for cooks to do involved putting the rare ingredients as rare drops off of rare paragon spawns which, as you and I both know, most cooks are capable of downing in the first place...), but then, aren't they rare enough by virtue of being hard to get?

I mean, honestly, there are things I just don't understand why they chose to program a certain way, why QA wouldn't raise a flag and say, "Whoa, shouldn't those stack?" and why it would make it all the way to release without a single Dev going, "You know, that's just not right."

Where's the connect to the actual playing of the game anymore?