Diablo III: Blizzard Talks About Inventory Management

Players of the Diablo titles have always had a love/hate affair with the inventory management of the games, due in part to the “tetris inventory” system that’s all too common in action RPGs. With each item taking up a specific size, housecleaning of one’s inventory becomes a time-wasting metagame of sorts.

Blizzard’s community manager explains the progress of developing Diablo III’s inventory management and where things stand at the moment.

Inventory management and the systems that surround it are something we're obviously interested in, but not something that can really be tuned until we have more of the item game fleshed out and tuned itself. It's hard to know exactly the best way to handle inventory management when the items, types, pickup frequency, and removal frequency can't really be measured with any real accuracy.

Gold is picked up automagically, and it's because it's one of those things that you always want to pick up. You'd never not pick up gold, unless you're playing Diablo II maybe. PAH-ZING! If there are other item types we feel fall into that category they may be automatically picked up when you walk over them too.

We want inventory management to include player choice and interaction, and so while we're definitely not opposed to new ideas and while we're certainly drawing inspiration from many places, we want to maintain that inventory management doesn't become an automated process.

[ With regards to accidentally picking up items on the ground and how Titan Quest allows players to disable “common” items from being highlighted ]

This is a feature in Diablo II, and will likely return in some form in Diablo III. Type /nopickup into chat. Items won't be picked up unless you hold down Alt.

Source: Battle.net