Suggestion: The initial in-game item-filter

Hi all,

This is related to the goals of reducing the reliance to a number of external tools required to play the game. In this post it is about how there should be 2-levels of item filters, basic and advanced, and how they should work in conjunction. The advanced filter is the one we currently have, and the basic filter is the new both beginner-friendly and easily adjustable for the build.

### Basic goals for the filters
The basic filter would in no way replace the current filter system. As said by GGG the community makes the best filters and is hard to compete against. Which is why the filters should work adjacent to each other. The current playerbase already knows how to use the advanced filters, but new players might have harder time to try and enjoy the game if they need to setup 3rd party tools.

First the basic filter applies only visual cues, beam and minimal, then the advanced filter does what it does currently. In effect the basic filter would have 3 ways to show items: Default unmodified, highlight with a beam, and minimize the font size and opacity. The reason for not being able to hide items is that new players could accidentally hide useful items and then become frustrated and quit, while advanced players can have more start-to-end-game control with personal interests not fully present in the shared advanced community filters.

The basic filter should not be overwhelming to use. The best approach is to use the current filter rules, but reduce the number of available parameters for rules to ones that are easily adjustable and predictable at any point of the game without referencing wikis. This leaves out rules such as BaseType and HasExplicitMod, because they require meta knowledge of the upcoming items. My recommendation for the safe filter properties would be: Rarity, Class, Quality, AreaLevel, Sockets and LinkedSockets. In my experience this would be configurable enough, while leaving room for discovery.

I did not add GemLevel as a safe rule, because there are some gems which maxs at level 3 or 6, and I find this problematic.

### New rule: Tag
Related to the available rules there should be one more that is a new thing both for basic and advanced users: Tag. I briefly touched the subject in my Reddit post in here: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1rjzgp9/item_filter_suggestion_tags_in_items/

By introducing Tags as a filter rule, we now have a quick way to express the gems, explicit and implicit mods and uniques we are interested in. For example Ritual rewards shows items identified, from which we can quickly highlight the rare and unique items with the mods with life tags, and melee attack gems for our build. Another example would be to highlight with implicit minion mods on wands and rings for minion builds even in unidentified drops.

To make Tags even better, base type items should also have some tags. For example axes should have the following: axe and physical. Titan Plate would have: defenses and armour. It would make both advanced and beginner friendly gear targeting possible.

### Initial state
Even if one could say the goal should be to replace external tools completely, that is not often how to get things done. At times it is easier to first create something, then to make it better afterwards. While the rules based suggestions I have made are in my opinion profound, it would fall flat if the user experience and awareness are not good enough.

The basic filter should not just be hidden behind settings menu in fear of hiding an useful feature. More advanced approach is to either have the access to the filter options in settings via stash tab or NPC, where we can present the feature to the player early on. The configurations needs to be in the settings so they can be configured and tested in areas outside of towns, but just having access via menus can hide things from players.

UI-design wise, the basic filter is: Add row, move row, remove row. Each row is either a highlight or minimize rule, with at least 1 parameter defining the hit and miss of an item. It's a simplified version from Last Epoch loot filter, fitted to match the basic goals of the filters.

### Closing
With some modifications, this would also fit PoE2.

Thank you for participating, and happy gaming!