Leaving Items in the crafting window deletes them upon exiting the game

[the8anarchist]

See topic title

friend of mine was screwing around crafting some items and kept leaving them in the window and exiting the game, this results in them being deleted from the character

[Sarno]

This isn’t, strictly speaking, a bug.

Moving the thread from Bug Reports to Feedback and Suggestions.

[magaiti]

How is it not a bug?
You are basically saying that problems on client side (disconnect/blackout) is a guaranteed item loss, and that’s intended. Nice feature.

I mean, I like pretty much all game design choices you went with so far.
But this one should at least be considered a bug and be fixed by release.
Every self-respecting ARPG allows storing an item in the crafting window.
Because losing an item you care about, for a stupid reason like blackout or a slip of mind, isn’t fun.

[the8anarchist]

I would ask that you reconsider your stance on this issue. While you and your team may not consider this a bug, it is something that still unduly punishes a player, for as Magaiti said, momentary forgetfulness and/or situations beyond human control.

There is also the matter of if you keep this “feature” in the game on release and others discover it they will consider it a bug, and if they were to lose an item of significant value to them they would be… less polite about voicing their complaints.

I suppose then ideally you would have something in place to clear the crafting window and return all items to the inventory or crafting stash if the window is closed out, or the player unexpectedly exits the game.

[Sarno]

To clarify, I’m not saying “we’ve discussed this and are happy with the current functionality.”

For this to be a bug, we would need to specifically have decided to have the crafting slot act as permanent storage, have written code to that effect, and encounter an issue where that code is failing to achieve that for some reason. That isn’t the case here.

If we either haven’t discussed something, or just haven’t gotten around to something yet, that doesn’t mean we won’t make changes - it just means that the current functionality isn’t a bug. I’ll raise this issue and see where we stand on it, and if it’s likely to be changed soon.

[magaiti]

Okay then, there’s a broader term, “defect”. Customers are not happy with current functionality. It doesn’t matter if it’s intended or incidental. Either way we want it “fixed”. We want your product to succeed. Contemporary ARPGs have this issue sorted out, and we expect no less from yours.

Making crafting slot act as storage seems to be the most safe and straightforward way to handle this.
Other solutions, such as force-putting item back to inventory, have complications. What if inventory is full, will then item fall on the ground and possibly be lost?

One other way i can see it solved is to reserve space in the inventory (tiles occupied by the item before it was moved to crafting slot) for as long as the item is in the crafting slot.
But when to return it back to inventory? Returning as soon as he crafting window is closed is less inconvenient. Returning on leaving game/disconnect may introduce possibilities for duping.

[Sarno]

Last Epoch is in beta. This means that the game is still under active development and not yet completed. As a consequence, some Quality of Life functionaity may not yet be available.

I’ve raised the issue internally as I previously said I would, and while work on this has not yet been assigned to someone and given a priority, I’ll continue to speak with the team about it and ensure either that it happens, or that we at least have a reason for it not happening.

Bug reports and suggestions on improvements go through different processes, and are handled by different teams (though admittedly we do currently have substantial overlap). As an argument on whether something is a ‘bug’ or ‘defect’ is not constructive, I’m locking the thread.

[Sarno]

While this hasn’t yet gone through testing and been approved for inclusion in a future patch, we have gotten the crafting slot working as persistent storage internally.

Re-opening the thread.