Add descriptive icons to loot on the ground to better support Self-Crafting-focused playstyle

What (example):

(Cropped to the same size as image embedding area to preserve the scale of things in the image)

How will it help Self-Crafting?

PoE2's crafting system is mostly one-directional (crafting is mostly irreversible), and, thus, requires a constant stream of new crafting bases. Which, in turn, means that a player needs an efficient way to pick base items they want to craft out of all of the loot. As of now i see 3 ways of doing that, none particularly good:

1 - Just reading the item names - By about the end of campaign the amount of loot becomes too high for this to be a viable option.

2 - Automated filtering using loot filters - Requires tweaking the filter every time your priorities change (so, at the very least every time you make a new build, more realistically - every time the slots you want to upgrade change (be it because you've just upgraded a lot or have a surplus / shortage of crafting materials or some other reason)). The fact that there isn't an in-game filer editor very much doesn't help here.

3 - (the shizo option) Encoding item information in Text Colour, Background Colour, Border Colour, Beams and Font Size (see image below) - Works rather well once you set it up, but takes a lot of effort to make (hours to develop and tweak a color scheme, learning how to write / stitch together an item filter) and, given it's association-based nature, probably requires personalized... at least tuning. Also, you do very much run into the issue of having not enough... let's call it encoding space.

And, in contrast to this, economy-focused item filtering is one subscription to NeverSink's or someone else's filter away.

In summary: Crafting has a significant additional barrier to it's use (or at least to relying on it for progression) in the form of needing to set up and maintain a thing that will help you discern crafting bases you need from the rest of the loot. Icons like ones in the example would remove that barrier, because they will be that helping thing, but a player wouldn't need to make and maintain them themselves.

Shizo-encoding of item information example (cropped):


Specifics of the suggestion:

1 - The job of these icons is to clearly convey what an item is, what general properties it has. Not to show it's power (it is constant so dealing with it can be left to automation (item filters)).

2 - Icons should only show behavior/usage-changing differences; interchangeable items get the same icon - going to the example image, Crecent and Slicing Quarterstaves get the same icon because they are both no-implicit phys Quarterstaves; Crackling Quarterstaff gets a different icon because it's base damage is Lightning; same would go for, say Barrier Quarterstaff, because it has a Block Chance implicit; all Staves have different icons because they grant different Skills.

3 - Quality, Corruption and other similar properties get a secondary icon (see Slicing Quarterstaff in the example image)

4 - Background behind the icon should not be affected by Background Colour property of the item filter to preserve icon readability (see example image below).


A sad note at the end
It seems like you, in general, massively underestimate the importance of peripheral systems for / their influence on gameplay.
- From this making your crafting system require a constant stream of new items to craft but then not changing your loot display system to support that.
- To in general wanting to restrict player trading but then having your loot display system be fine-tuned for player economy. (Sure, most of that fine-tuning is NeverSink's work, but still, it was you who decided to to outsource this part of your game's gamedesign onto the community and who made the base rules of how filters work)
- To designing your skill system around skill combos and, in general, active usage of many skills but then making default WASD keybinds be inconvenient for active usage of more than 3 skills, because for pressing skills past that you use the same fingers as you use for movement
- To probably more things that i didn't notice yet or forgot about.

This leads me to believe that, because your peripheral systems have been taken from PoE 1, PoE 2 will eventually be shifted by those systems into something that closely resembles PoE 1. Which is quite sad, because i like the core gameplay of PoE 2 much more than i do that of PoE 1.

These screenshots must be old, because they're using pre 0.2 item names.
Once you've played a bit of endgame you should already know what each item base is at a glance.

I'm not sure how an icon is going to help you with that, since all it's telling you is that item's archetype, not its stats. For that you still need to hover over it.

What you should do (and it takes literally a few minutes) is go into filterblade, scroll to 'Hide Armour Classes & Weapon Types' and disable every weapon/armour archetype that you're not interested in on that particular character.

This will declutter your screen instantly and only specific (e.g. pure es, pure armour, eva/es etc.) white/blue items will show up.

"

These screenshots must be old, because they're using pre 0.2 item names.

Yes they are, because i've had this idea for a while, but have only now gotten around to posting it.

"

Once you've played a bit of endgame you should already know what each item base is at a glance.

You still have to read the names though. Which takes effort and, also, realistically, requires stopping.

"

I'm not sure how an icon is going to help you with that, since all it's telling you is that item's archetype, not its stats. For that you still need to hover over it.

What you should do (and it takes literally a few minutes) is go into filterblade, scroll to 'Hide Armour Classes & Weapon Types' and disable every weapon/armour archetype that you're not interested in on that particular character.

An icon would help by removing the need to figure out how to and then to hide things on FilterBlade.

Like, just subscribing to NeverSink's filters in... wherever you do it in your profile... and playing the player economy game is massively less effort than figuring out how to use FilterBlade and then tweaking your filter there (and then re-tweaking once your priorities change) (And then still ending up with a mostly economy-focused filter).

With good item icons (and maybe a good default item colouring scheme?) the entry effort into a crafting-focused playstyle would be... zero. You wouldn't need a filter until... i actually don't know. Furthest i've gotten to before moving to other games was t13-t14 Waystones in 0.1, and even with just my shizo item colouring scheme i didn't feel any need for automated filtering.

It would take me a lot longer to learn a ton of tiny icons than just reading words that I already understand. So please no. Just learn to use Filterblade.