To be fair it’s just another - albeit small - downside to the current way the system is installed.
We’ve a few established things after all.
The mechanic was meant to stay in because of trading functionality.
This functionality was scrapped.
The pickup of common affix shards has extremely low meaning.
The storage in the inventory for any crafting material has actually zero meaning.
So this leads back to the argument ‘the pickup itself has meaning’ which yeah… ‘opportunity cost’ after all.
Opportunity cost only upholds itself if the picked up material has ‘value’ though. We’ve already established 2 major points for that:
- Common affix shards hold solely meaning very early in the game, loosing all of it before long as shatter/removal becomes the sole reasonable way to acquire them reliably quickly.
- There is a possible system upcoming which would provide a exchange option for affix shards.
That’s the current status of them.
Now, what does that mean though?
Ignoring the second point it means there is barely reason to uphold the status quo. Itemization of all crafting materials is currently non-functional. It serves no purpose, there is not a singular viable argument to be made which doesn’t boil down into pure tedium while still providing a upside which can even be argued about. So that part simply has to go, there is no excuse for it, even with the second argument.
Which leaves when it would actually need to be ignored, which is the opportunity cost for picking it up and hence the value for the necessitated clicks derived from it. The conversion mechanic which is upcoming. This one leads to a potential opportunity cost.
But… that in itself is a weak argument. Opportunity cost means that the value needs to warrant the effort, which you’re already proclaiming yourself… isn’t there. If the sole reason for opportunity cost is ‘I don’t need to do it anyway so I can just ignore it’ then that’s a failed design-choice simply. It’s so unimportant that people neither read them, look at them or even bother picking them up at times despite standing right on top of them.
Hence a conversion system can simply be created with that situation in mind… or by removing the useless mechanic underlying the current status simply while you’re at it. Since it has no value before it doesn’t need to have an enforced possible value pushed forward.
Which leads me to the actual downsides, hence pure detriments of the current implementation.
If we solely - as I’ve proclaimed - provide auto-pickup for common affix shards then the whole outcome is something totally different already.
Why?
Because there were some interesting aspects mentioned.
First of all displaying drops.
We already have established that common affixes have barely value, emphasizing them hence is not needed… but! They take away from the drops which have actual value provided to them. Glyphs, runes, rare affix shards.
Those actually warrant presentation, hence removing the clutter which has the same way of being displayed as glyphs and runes for example would put emphasis onto them. The current status is a detriment as it removes the visibility to see them.
Next up we also have a secondary effect of having no auto-pickup, which is the risk versus reward factor.
As it was mentioned it has a - likely involuntary - created factor of trying to pick up rare crafting materials which can lead to death, hence loosing the gained result before being able to pick it up.
The issue with that is… that does only relate to runes, glyphs and rare affix shards as it’s already showcased… that doesn’t exist with the common affix shards since even early in the game people don’t really give a crap about them. Maybe a new player… but it’s a cheap time-sink trap at best for them to interact with it in that way as it looses relevance really early in the game.
So, auto-pickup for common affix shards has a slew of negatives and nigh no upsides to exist. Visibility for the important stuff is decreased, clicks are increased which is tedium without function there and also they have basically no value. The sole upsides being the opportunity cost and the risk/reward factor which are nigh non-existent for those.
Once again, common affix shards, not glyphs, not runes, not rare affix shards. Those can be talked about separately.
So yes, it’s a QoL functionality which definitely should be implemented as there no reasonable thing standing against it. The only one being a possible implementation of a mechanic which can be implemented either way in a viable and properly balanced state, not reliant on this function at all.
