@Sgt-Palooggoo
I am glad you posted this. I saw a post a few days ago from a returning player that asked the question of what the heck happened with the barrel inventory menu. The first reply explained what happened and everyone got use to it. I did not respond then because I wanted to give it some thought. My spouse and I rewatched some our recorded game play sessions comparing then and now in the last few days.
Now that I have, I can firmly state it is still the worse communicated, most poorly designed change to come to the Sea of Thieves. Yes, we can still play the game, however it changed the simplistic, fluid style of gameplay that was so perfect to the unique and exciting gameplay Sea of Thieves offers. It was not even necessary at the time and still is not critical to have the updated version in place.
It was to basically give us cursed cannonballs and maps in a barrel. Any pirate who knows what they are doing simply keeps all the cursed cannonballs in their personal inventory. All the extra maps just litter up our voyage menu. Some will say wait! It also puts bananas, planks, and cannonballs together. So what. There was never a problem collecting things hat required it all be placed in one barrel.
The biggest issue is opening the new barrel inventory menu is like pressing a [PAUSE] button right in the middle of playing the game. It completely changed the look and feel of the game. Sea of Thieves gameplay at it's best was fast and fluid. The exciting, nail biting, and pulse raising moments of swords clashing, guns firing, and cannonballs raining down on your head and ship are now muted while covering up and graying out what use to be so smooth and seemless.
What made Sea of Thieves truly standout as a shiny sandbox full of tools for us to play with was both how we chose to use those tools and the simple, yet intuitive way we used to moved through the world around us as we constantly interacted with it. Now it has a big menu that no longer fits and makes the world less exciting at all the wrong moments.
There were three parts to a mega thread dedicated to the barrel change and countless loose posts that passionately spoke to the immersion in the moment breaking change. There were many ideas and suggestions proposed to bring back the great flow and feeling that was lost. Sadly it all has been ignored and archived.
Take all and an empty indicator were good and necessary tweaks to the new inventory system. It should not have stopped there. The old system does not have to return entirely replacing, even though many players would want it to, the new barrel inventory menu system. A blend of the two would keep the new functionality and bring back the best feel of the old system.
Proposed Enhancement to Barrel 2.0:
Have each barrel have a Grab option. Approaching the barrel it shows the top/first slotted item. It would say Grab Bananas or Grab Planks depending on what is on top. Each tap of the Grab button pulls out one of that item. That item is now in your hand ready to use like before. It is a quick way to spot and grab what you need exactly when you need it. If possible, maybe the rest of the stored items could move up to quickly grab as well when the first slot is empty.
Talk All is still an option. However, pressing and holding the Grab button opens the barrel menu to look deeper inside showing all the items stored in the barrel. No menu opening up over the entire screen when you do not want it to.
On our ships we have dedicated banana and plank barrels. There should be no reason to open a menu to pull the only item out of those barrels right now. However, to keep the barrels the same, the same Grab option allows us to just "reach in" for a banana or planks. If we get more food and more wood types for planks, the top/first slot option will allow us to ready the particular item for a quick grab when needed.
Storing items in a dedicated barrel should not prompt opening a barrel menu. If we can place only one item in a specific container, then we should be able to dump that item in that container quickly without the need to open a menu and select the only that can be stored.
An alternative would be to have a mixture of dedicated barrels and combination barrels. Barrels marked such as bananas or cannonballs let's us grabs items from it the old way. Plain, unlabeled barrels open the new barrel menu.
No matter the method used blending the old and new ways of interacting with containers, the sound level needs to remain the same. The screen wide menu that grays out what is behind it, needs to be replaced with two small character and inventory menus.
There are other ideas out there. I hope Rare will revisit this and make the feedback everyone gave have value. Thanks for the opportunity you gave here to revisit this topic until then.