For me the issue itself isn’t actual a “big issue”.
My biggest concern is If we get this now with auto-loot, the next question will be: can we auto-loot gear specified by the loot filter and the next request will be something even more ridiculous… if you see where i am going.
I just hate any kind of automated processes in loot-driven games.
Autoloot is already half way there for shards and I agree that it is a slippery slope best avoided.
I’d rather fewer shards appear, only those you need, rather than autolooting them.
I dont “hate” it as such, but yes, I dont really like auto pickup except for gold…
To be honest if pushed for an opinion, I dont even really like the “group pickup” for shards that is active right now as I dont even look at shards anymore while playing… I just click and move on… I honestly dont even think about them until I want to craft something or shatter some gear I found.,… which as I understand it, is not what the devs intended…
You make a VERY good point… someone will see your auto pickup based on loot filter idea and think that is the best thing ever but you are right… where does it stop…
Yes and that auto-loot within a radius is relatively new still.
I was even ok with picking up shards one by one.
But one new feature follows the next “better” feature… the question is:“Where do you draw the line?”
The line will be different for different people and i say we already reached the line, other people will think differently and that’s ok.
That’s why we are here discussion.
I just have bad experiences with “giving in on the community” on too much and all of the sudden you have 100 so called “Quality Of Life” features which make your game a brainless asia grind simulator.
I agree, i do not like it either… but i can see that this feature alone reduce the amounts of clicks tremendously without automizing too much.
I already mentioned this in the thread i linked in one of my previous posts.
I did state there, that for me personally the only good argument are people with medical conditions need as few clicks as possible and that’s what the loot radius pick up achieved already.
IMO i don’t want to go any step further.
Lol! Good one… may have to steal that when the occassion warrants it… 
Haha this sounds familiar to conversations we’ve had on it internally. We’re still thinking on it too and are not opposed to changes if we find one we align on.
This is avoided by only having meaningful loot drop. The problem is that ARPGs always take this attitude that a ton of trash has to drop to make the meaningful loot appear more valuable.
I agree it can be, but (a) plenty of players would prefer that ALL shards just auto-loot–and I wouldn’t oppose that–however, (b) I understand what the devs are going for, so I sought a solution that satisfies both aims.
It stops where you identify the disconnect between what the devs want and the players want, and bridging that gap. I understand the concerns about allowing too much of the game to be “auto-pilot,” but lacking certain QOL features will come across to players as disconnected devs who don’t understand their players.
It’s worth mention that in the long-run it’s a pretty negative thing for a game to make players individually, manually loot items that they would want to just grab all of. Grim Dawn is an example of this. Nobody wants to sit there and click every single aug shard (those no longer drop, btw). It was through a mod called Grim Internals that this was fixed. I don’t know if the GD devs ever got around to adding this in officially, but this type of pointless monotony contributed to several of the very long breaks I’ve taken from the game. This type of looting adds no fun to the game.
This is the elegance of the solution I proposed in the OP. For loot to be meaningful–to have “weight”–it needs to stand out and be interesting. Mundane drops cannot do this, so forcing them into the same category as the interesting loot just makes the interesting loot less so.
I understand why the reply is non-committal, but I appreciate the acknowledgment of the topic.
I understand your approach and agree on the “weight” or value of the drops…
I just keep wondering if there is an entirely better/different way of doing it… rather than build/change whats there already…
For example… Why have shards drop at all? Why not make Runes drop exclusively - Decrease the cost of Shattering runes/increase their drop rate and then only obtain shards from shattering loot and possibly at a better ratio than currently… This reduces the shard clutter and mundane shard drops… It adds more value to loot - right now if loot has the good affixs but on a wrong base, its generally ignored - now it could be a valuable item to get shards from… and everyone is already farming loot anyway…
Sometimes I wonder why I always have to see everything from different angles… 
I actually have considered this option, but the problem it runs into is that you then incentivize hoarding all the drops that have those affixes while stash tabs are already really expensive for newer/intermediate players, and it introduces many extra interruptions to the gameplay that don’t actually make the game more fun.
I would consider such a system an improvement over the current one, so I wouldn’t hard oppose it. I just don’t think it’s as good of a solution.
Edit:
As an afterthought, I think the no-shard solution also introduces a lot more extra dev work, but it’s possible I’m mistaken about that. Just a guess when thinking about what actually has to be changed and how.
What about auto-looting shards that you have a certain number of?
If you already have 100-200 of X shard, just auto-loot it. Clearly, you’ve got enough saved up that you aren’t actively looking for them, barring a complete gear-swap.
Show only the rarer shards. It won’t be all the shards you want, but it’ll be most of the shards you don’t have alot of.
This would allow the ‘rare’ loot to show up and require clicking, while making ‘common’ shards disappear automatically, allowing you to know that you’ve already got extras. The only ‘abuse’ I could see would be people who have farmed out enough of every rare shard, a small enough chance to be negligible. If people want to farm 200 of every shard, just so they can auto-loot every shard… more power to them.
The problem I have here is that it still treats mundane and special shards the same. Like I said earlier, I don’t think quantity is the issue here. For loot to have “weight,” to be special, it has to stand out. I don’t think auto-loot thresholds provide this in a meaningful way, and in fact eventually turn the special loot into mundane loot.
Did you talk about a middle ground here?
in another thread I suggested to have a shard loot button. If pressed, it picks up all shards in a certain radius around the char.
This would still have some “weight” as there is an action to be performed. But it takes away the need to exactly click on a label. You can push the button while walking across.
Would also be a nice feature in regard to controller support.
I think if you read the rest of this thread you will be able to easily spot where I would object to this one.
That would be an improvement for sure
Well… if shattering runes were more acessible / cheaper/ more common… It wouldnt incentivise the hoarding… It would incentivise the shattering process to convert drops into shards… so this would have no/little impact on stash space… and as the game allows opening the forge from anywhere, you could do the shattering in-map without having to lug stuff back to town…
That would require the runes to have a very low cost. Even if they were 1/4 what they are now, it wouldn’t keep up with how much stuff someone might want to save for that purpose. The other issues would still be present, though.
This.
The feature is already amazing in terms of QoL. The difference between them vacuuming into your inventory or into the crafting inventory might seem negligible, but it’s a slippery slope. I honestly can’t really believe people have problems clicking on loot and then clicking “move to crafting storage” a single time. The more automated and less interactive the game becomes, the less invested people will feel. Many people seemingly want to just move through a monolith killing monsters without having to make choices about loot or click on materials, and that I feel is completely against the spirit of a loot-based ARPG. The QoL of last epoch is already well ahead of pretty much any game in the genre, so IMO people should just be grateful they aren’t looting for minutes like in the end game content of PoE. People will always ask for more, and I’m glad the developers have drawn the line where we are now.
I think players lose track of how much space they have available. Then that next shard send them over the top on having to click 3 extra times on I, press send to forge button, I then on their way again.
In NWN2 I did make a special tag for crafting but they had to buy a special bag for auto collection. The bag had a meta tag under it that searched for ITEM CATEGORY == ‘Craft’ and worked the same way as gold does now. The way they are changing the UI could align with that being the tag conduit to eliminate the “transfer” the forge is essentially a bag as it stands now.