Yea, actually, why is it that we can't see a visualization of our character in the inventory menu? That seems a little goofy to me. We can see the item we are about to put on, but we can't see what it looks like... on.

I swear to jeebus the first few minutes I was in the apparel menu I thought I was doing it all wrong. There must be a way to see my character, I reasoned.

I could always see myself well in Oblivion. The only character shot I have now is with her on a barstool, and it's not even angled properly. Of course, I also can't find a way to get it on here from my iPad, anyway, so...maybe it doesn't matter.

Yeah, this is a huge problem for me as well on xbox 360. I don't know how anyone can NOT be annoyed by this. Items are not even alphabetical, no order for anything when stored. It is all just a jumbled mess. It is pathetic. And what is worse, is that if a patch is ever released, it will probably cause our items to disappear out of our inventory, when we go to remove it and then put it back in. Or something terrible like that. I have so many reasons for why I shouldn't have ever started a new game until 2013.

My personal favorite: on the 360, it's X to place things in a container, but X is "take all" to take something out, and A to take things out one at a time. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've wanted one item, only to hit X and completely empty the chest back into my inventory. Makes. Me. Mad.

Completely agree about the lack of categories in containers too.

One other thing while we're at it. Anyone else hate how you'll be taking one thing out, or buying something, and it will just jump down to the next item on the list without warning? I've bought a number of unintentional items that way.

Yes, the design of what keys will be used is horrible. There are workarounds though...if the highlight stays on an item then use the key you have bound to "move backward" and the key you have bound to "move foreward" to scroll the entire list...the highlight will actually move a bit in the scrolling direction, but will at least jump to the next item...sometimes it's enough to "jog" the interface into working properly. The dedicated arrow keys also seem to scroll the lists and change the selection.

Also, have you noticed that when you remove an item from one of these partially sorted inventories that some of the items which have very similar names (a good example is soul gems with some empty and some filled) will swap places when you remove an item from the list? Essentially, what is happening is that the entire inventory is being sorted each and every time an item is added or removed...talk about overkill. Either there was no object oriented effort in the inventory system i.e. no inventory class which included insert item and delete item methods (highly unlikely). Or, the developers actually encountered a problem with the inventory system during development (very likely) and instead of fixing it they tried to mask the symptoms by forcing a sort each time there was an inventory system call even if it's a simple call to delete one item. Heads should roll for this kind of crap. Skyrim is a very excellent artwork...why let one screwed up developer ruin it for everyone? There's plenty of starving developers including myself that have never tried to cover up problems.

I've actually seen this kind of thing before when the programmers were either not able or not skilled enough to fix the existing code or rewrite the code properly. It totally reminds me of my programming classes in college...most of my classmates were just downloading sample code from the web and changing the variable names and reorganizing the code so the instructors wouldn't know. The instructors actually built their own sophisticated web crawler than checked the entire web to compare homework assignments with everything out there on the web. The only problem is that some of the code out there have some flaws...and they spent like 10 hours (yes...they were in there still at 6AM when I came into the lab the next morning) trying to get it to work when all they needed to do was spend the 3 hours implementing the code from scratch like they were supposed to.

Speaking of unruly storage....

How come the Whiterun house has an apothecary satchel on the alchemy stand but in the Solitude house (5x the cost) the nearest storage to the alchemy/enchanting rooms is in the next room?

And I love how I have a stack of Common Soul Gems (7) of common souls and 8 other single-stack Common Soul Gems of common souls.

I would rather they got rid of quest items all together, I can sort it out myself. If you drop a quest item, it will remain there for ever, if you sell it, when the merchants inventory resist the quest item will still be there. This would be a much better system IMO.

The biggest fail is not categorizing the INV, you waste so much time having to scroll through so many different items. Not everyone wants to waste gold furnishing houses in the beginning. So you're left w/ only 4 containers to organize all your [censored].

I blame the plethora of mouse problems because it's a [censored] console port and the interface was never designed to be used w/ a mouse.

Oblivion's UI was far superior and that's not saying much.

Perhaps I'm just lucky, but every time I place something in a chest, wardrobe, night stand, etc, everything is always placed in there in alphabetical order. This works out best with ingredients and I need to find something quickly. I don't place all my items in one place, because I use different containers to store certain things according to what they are (ore, hide, gems together; all alchemy ingredients in one place; books in one spot; armor/weapons in another; all potions somewhere else). Every house has space to do this in, if you furnish it completely. I play on PC, so maybe this is how it works here. The only time I've ever encountered where the item was not in alphabetical order, was when I needed to put extra iron daggers in the barrel by the armor rack in the house in Solitude, but they were at the very bottom of the list. As far the key commands, I sometimes accidentally hit R and "Take All" from said container and I end up with 1600 pounds of stuff, but I just then put everything I don't need back in the container. I'm sorry you're having issues. I thought it was alphabetical for everybody O.O

ooooo, I missed Container Categorization in my perusing. I've got the other 2. Cheers.

From what I've seen, it only applies to weapons and armor. Even if you dump all kinds of stuff into one chest, it'll sort by section (Armor, Weapons, Potions, etc). However, the armor and weapons in the chest will be in random order. I've looked and it's not based on weight, value, damage, etc - just straight randomness.

Unfortunately, this is true. Some things of the same type seem to be sorted alphabetically. For instance, all potions might be grouped together and sorted alphabetically, but that's it. Poisons won't be, and anything else won't be.

It almost seems like they were trying to make some sort of categorical approach, but I have no idea how any professional could have arrived at the current system.

All of this. It's much easier to take things out of a chest than it is to sort through 300 items and put them all individually back in. Whyfore you do this, Bethesda?

Also, the jumping thing is annoying as well. I keep accidentally buying bear pelts and tankards, stuff I don't need. I have no idea why it does this.

Have they patched the inventory system at all, as of 1.5? Has there been any indication anywhere that they've even considered it?

I agree with all this. Seems like an easy patch to make a "Sort by" button for all inventories (chests, character ...)

misc objects are sorted alphabetically while equipment is sorted by rating, use multiple chests, easy enough

No. It is working as designed, after all. Poorly.

HI Varus! Good to see you.

I do agree. Inventory is in need of serious re-vamping. The absence of sorting of any kind is puzzling. The fact that ocassionally similar items are named differently and thus not stacked doen't help either. How I wish, say, all health potions would be listed alongside. On a side note, and I'm sure not everyone will agree with me on this, I would favour a weight and space constricted inventory.

yes, the inventory and container system is horrid.

yes, we should be able to put quest items into a specific quest-container within the game.

yes, we should be able to put unwanted quests on a deeper sub-menu.

Another thing that would be nice is the option to see which spells I already own when I'm shopping for new spell books.

That might be a little harder to do, but it would be SO nice. It would replace me needing to literally write down every spell in my inventory before I go shopping. That gets old.
The opposite should also be nice. Considering how hard it is to read multiple books in this game (the screen losing focus on books once you read one), I occasionally miss a spell tome that I've picked up in a dungeon, and then sell it.

It would be nice if spells I don't know yet would be marked in the inventory when I'm in the selling screen.

I have this issue where, while I'm storing items from my inventory, the other items that my character is carrying are constantly rearranged with every item I store. Sometimes I accidentally store something I didn't mean to because the inventory keeps "shifting".

This is true. I play on PS3 and the inventory is no picnic. Too often I accidently unload whole chests or eat valuable ingredients when I am trying to organize stuff in chests. And the total lack of the ability to sort chests alphabetically or otherwise affects all platforms.

Whiterun is the only house with a place to store alchemy ingredients in close proximity to the alchemy lab. That makes no sense to me, but at least you can move when overencumbered. Such lack of storage would have been more of a problem in prior games when you were glued to the spot when overencumbered.

furthermore, why is the 'zoom' mode so weak for these items? Why can't with get real zooming in and out on objects?

the menu system is horrible on everything. at least you pc gamers get real hotkeys - stuck on console all you get is the (un)favorite menu.

I wonder if #5 is also what happens on the PS3 where we often have to button press multiple times to get a menu to do something. although button events seem to get missed everywhere.

The inventory system is [censored]! It is a system that might have been used in gaming years ago, hence [censored].