Inventory - limitations or not?

[Drax]

Fuck you I like larping a hobo.

 

[Alienman]

Even hobos don't take everything

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

I saw one a few days back, but he only had a bottle of booze. Maybe he was level 1... :D

 

[Damned Registrations]

I've never understood the hoarding psychos who could just leave a brick on the "loot all" button. Is it too much decision making to just grab the valuable stuff and leave the trash? If you complain about multiple trips to town... well don't fuckin' do them. Look at your average loot pile, 90% of its value is in that magic item and a pile of jewelry you can easily carry anyway.

Reasonable weight / space limits are a good thing, as well as vendors who refuse to buy trash.

It's too much of a pain in the ass in games with a large amount of loot. I don't want to sift through 30 pieces of loot every 10 minutes to find the ones with good value to weight ratio. Looting everything is even more of a pain obviously, but why is it a pain in the ass at all? Why should I need to deal with micromanaging inventory in a turn based game where it costs me nothing in game to stare at item stats until I've achieved the most efficient result? Trash shouldn't be dropping in the first place. If you're going to tell me I have the option of looting some leather boots but they are of no value, why not let me loot the underwear too? Or skin the corpse? Collect every rock and pebble in my path? Trash doesn't warrant a decision.

 

[Anthedon]

Gothic all the way. Limiting stuff the player can lug around may have been sensible when games were a few megabytes in size, if that.

Now it's usually a nuisance that belongs in Early Access survival trash and not in a good RPG.

 

[Multidirectional]

I like the way it is in Dark Souls. Carry all you want with you but there's a weight limit and mobility/stamina regen impact that counts for items that are actually equipped.

 

[Shadowfang]

Gothic all the way. Limiting stuff the player can lug around may have been sensible when games were a few megabytes in size, if that.

Now it's usually a nuisance that belongs in Early Access survival trash and not in a good RPG.

Yeah, back then games had limited inventory due to the technological limitations. That and being isometric.

 

[Ludo Lense]

I hate inventory limits with a passion in games that aren't survival games or mission based. It is a just for a bit of pen and paper feel that is lugged around uselessly.

99% of the the time they are completely against the core experience of the game and have no meaningful choice.

Now if you are playing a survival game like say State of Decay or This War of Mine where you have to haul supplies that feed into a base-building aspect then sure. Every piece of gear fights for a potential scavenge spot, that is good design.

Instead most inventory limitations just mean several trips to the shops.

Oh and the "realism" argument is nonsensical. Zweihanders were carried in carts during most military campaigns. Not to mention the whole point of a squire was to be a pack mule and maintenance boy.

 

[Neanderthal]

Personally I think survival and attrition should be far more of an issue in RPGs: You're travelling through untamed lands with few or no roads, tearing though virgin woodlands, wading through swamps, shivering on open moorlands, freezing on bare mountainsides, and then at end probably descendin into a hellhole to fight for your life. Plague and disease decimate populace regularly, theres no medicine to speak of, you are either lucky enough to develop a resistance, healthy enough to survive, scrounge enough gold together to afford a miracle or you die. You are one of a small band trying to gain fame and fortune, risking your life in places no sane folk'd go, you've got no squires, packmules cos you can't afford em yet. Initially you've got a pack on your back, your pockets, belt pouches an your hands, an don't forget you gotta keep that sword an shield ready or get jumped by monsters or bandits an killed.

As you gain levels an wealth you should slowly gain options, not be given everythin at beginnin, start wi: A mule, a wagon that party travel in, horses wi saddlebags, henchmen to carry an guard your shit, squires when you become gentry who can more ably look after emsens, until your basically leadin a small expedition into wilderness or depths. An then theres all spells, start wi a Tensers floating disk carryin a few pounds, then you slowly get more an more options as you level up, until you've got extra dimensional caches an bags o holding that make for a fairly much unlimited inventory.

What do we hav instead: Theres no danger in world, monsters and enemies aren't fearsome they're bags o XP, you kill thousans o foes wi'out takin a scratch an are a small extinction event all by yoursen. Theres no attrition an your always at maximum health an potency from start to finish, none o your adventures mark you body or mind. Environments don't matter, clothing don't matter, and you never freeze, hunger, thirst, shit, piss or show any hint o vulnerability. Dungeons aren't horrendous hellholes they're opportunities to hoover up loot, an you can wander around an clear em at will, no danger, no tension, no fuckin hint o why everybody in world int doin same shit as you. The backpack that your characters not even carryin can hold literal tons o shit, an if thats not easy enough for you you can waltz to an fro from town to dungeon wi no hint o danger an all rest o loot'll not be taken by anyone else, cause that'd be so harsh. An this is o course good design because theres definitely not enough handholdin an accessibility nowadays, we should hav more because games don't play emsen enough.

If I were GMing a game an core experience were just walk forward, fight, talk, fight, talk, fight, talk, boss fight, talk, sell five ton o shit that been hoovered up, well i'd be fuckin ashamed o mesen as a GM, an me players'd not come back. Yet games get away wi this shit all time, an devs get thanked for this fuckin streamlinin an feature strippin even when talkin an fightin are shit, for not developin systems, for destroyin any sense o internal consistency their worlds got, an offerin nothin but a core experience rather than a well developed game that springs to life an drags you in like we expected a game to do a quarter o a century ago.

An o course folk'll say decline int real, my hairy arse it int.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I hate inventory limits with a passion in games that aren't survival games or mission based. It is a just for a bit of pen and paper feel that is lugged around uselessly.

99% of the the time they are completely against the core experience of the game and have no meaningful choice.

In pen & paper games, people tend to ignore or at least greatly simplify encumbrance, limiting the amount of items carried in characters' inventories only to the extent that the amount or weight of items is obviously ridiculous. The reason for this is that repeatedly recalculating encumbrance is a sufficient irritation so as to outweigh the gains, to say nothing of trying to make encumbrance more than a binary outcome where remaining below a limit has no repercussions and anything above a limit is disallowed. Computers make inventory limitations far easier to implement as the computer does the calculations for the player and maintains graphical illustrations for the player, whether this consists of tallying up the weight of items held by each character or limiting each character's inventory to a certain amount of slots or both simultaneously. Furthermore, it's far easier to implement gradual/stepped effects from encumbrance in a computer game, whether that means slower real-time movement as in Dungeon Master or a smaller number of squares moved per turn when in combat as in Pool of Radiance.

As for contradicting the "core experience" and lacking "meaningful choice", inventory limitations serve add to the logistics that are an essential part of the RPG genre. The player needs to assess the value of the items held by their character(s) and determine if each one is worth the added encumbrance or the opportunity cost of not carrying a different item instead. This especially serves the core experience of dungeon crawlers where the character/party is stuck in the same dungeon for the entire game (e.g. Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, The Stygian Abyss, The Legend of Grimrock) and thus has a survival feeling to it as the player struggles to make use of the limited resources found within the dungeon. However, even in a more expansive game, with the usual merchants who buy & sell a variety of goods, inventory limitations require the player to make a trade-off between the positive value of carrying more items with them as they set forth into the dungeon/wilderness and the negative value of having slower movement and being able to pick up less treasure, rather than simply packing an unlimited amount of supplies, vacuuming up every last trivial item scavenged in the dungeon/wilderness, and hauling every last piece of trash back to civilization.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

People who mod their games to have low carry weight are the type of people who don't spend 200 hours lugging junk back and forth, the play the game without having unlimited items in combat with which to beat every encounter. in a game like NV where you can carry 100 outfits of + to every stat/special and tons of guns it makes a big difference. Besides, if you're playing the game under those circumstances you listed, you're also playing with survival mode, where you can't wait 3 days for shops to restock, because you will die.

I like carry weight to be based off of stats, because I like feeling like my builds are different, and carrying millions of items at 1 str breaks muh immurshun. It works in NV imo, but I also don't mind games with unlimited carry weight either.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

More important than inventory limitation is item and resource scarcity IMO.

 

[Raghar]

Weight Limit systems are good enough for me, fuck grid inventory minigame.

As you clearly see, grid inventory can be AWESOME. (In unpatched version.)

Also I like inventory in all complex UFO games.

 

[kwanzabot]

I've never understood the hoarding psychos who could just leave a brick on the "loot all" button. Is it too much decision making to just grab the valuable stuff and leave the trash? If you complain about multiple trips to town... well don't fuckin' do them. Look at your average loot pile, 90% of its value is in that magic item and a pile of jewelry you can easily carry anyway.

Reasonable weight / space limits are a good thing, as well as vendors who refuse to buy trash.

this

 

[Excommunicator]

Item tetris is LOVE, item tetris is LIFE.

It is objectively the best system out there because it never devolves in utter hording shit that make everything meaningless.

Item hoarding tedium gets worse when you use a Tetris style system. Perfect example is the Dungeon Siege games where you spend an inordinate amount of time rearranging items to fit everything in.

Tetris works when the backpack is minimal like in Deus Ex where one large item precludes you from many smaller ones but doesn't require extended rearrangement.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Perfect example is the Dungeon Siege games

Wut, Dungeon Siege is hardly a good game, but it even did the fucking inventory tetris on its own man.

 

[Excommunicator]

And even with auto-rearrange Dungeon Siege still had more Tetris than most other games

 

[Ellef]

As you clearly see, grid inventory can be AWESOME. (In unpatched version.)

Also I like inventory in all complex UFO games.

Sadly, I cannot see how grid inventory can be awesome - as in, I literally cannot see it.

Some meme assistance.

 

[Eirinjas]

Hi, I'm Eirinjas, and I like to hoard things. *hangs head in shame that I've brought on family*

I remember playing Diablo back in the day and having to leave piles of gold in town on the ground, because it took up too much inventory space - wretchedly tedious realism(?).
In Thief you can rob an entire town of it's gold coins, fine china and silverware and still prance about unencumbered without making a clattering racket - unrealistic, but my sense of fun and immersion were never harmed by it. Actually, I'm convinced Garret stole Santa's magic Christmas bag.

 

[Excidium II]

Hi, I'm Eirinjas, and I like to hoard things. *hangs head in shame that I've brought on family*

I remember playing Diablo back in the day and having to leave piles of gold in town on the ground, because it took up too much inventory space - wretchedly tedious realism(?).
In Thief you can rob an entire town of it's gold coins, fine china and silverware and still prance about unencumbered without making a clattering racket - unrealistic, but my sense of fun and immersion were never harmed by it. Actually, I'm convinced Garret stole Santa's magic Christmas bag.

To compensate for that garret wear tapping shoes so even a light step on a hard surface alerts everyone in the vicinity.

 

[Eirinjas]

I liked the way the Infinity Engine games handled the balance between inventory space & item weight.

 

[Drax]

I like big fucking tables with information and cross-referenced ratios about everything so I can assess my 5470 items in a professional way.

 

[Ludo Lense]

..

That is nice all and but is is pure theory and in practice it makes for terrible gameplay.

I include the dungeon crawlers without economy in the survival scope really. Basically any game that has legal tender associated with items in its core experience should remove the inventory limitations since it all adds to multiple trips to the shops.

Gothic 2 has unlimited inventory and shops carry infinite money to exchange for goods. Yet it is one of the best RPGs ever made especially in the world building and verisimilitude department.

I find it very hard to believe that adding limitations there would have made the game better.

 

[Raghar]

As you clearly see, grid inventory can be AWESOME. (In unpatched version.)

Also I like inventory in all complex UFO games.

Sadly, I cannot see how grid inventory can be awesome - as in, I literally cannot see it.

Have you tried to left click on the image and try to find a grid? The right one is you big box for storing weapons. Big grid is on your back for large weapons and heavy ammo. Smaller grids are for hand guns SMGs and ammo. Before they simplified stuff. Ammo could be grouped by actual size of magazine. Thus pistol magazine could have 3 magazines per square, large shotgun magazine required one whole square (which had brutal gameplay implications).

Or you can pirate it and play it and scream. Why we can't have this stuff as a RPG with big environments, dialogues, and long story.

 

[Anac'raxus]

You can fix the "several trips to the store" thing by making loot vanish if it's not in the player's party inventory after a certain amount of time. Unless the player can have a guard posted, or gets his characters to bury/hide the stash inconspicuously (that chest sitting there in the open is not inconspicuous) then there's probably no reason why someone else can't swipe the loot while the player's party is off visiting a store. Also, making in-game time actually matter would make players think about whether it is worth it to take the time to sell everything (if it would cost 100 zloty worth of supplies and hireling wages to sell all of the 100 zloty trash pile then players shouldn't bother selling the trash).

However, excessive real time costs should be condemned as "play time" padding. There is usually no reason "visit shop X" can't become a button on a UI once a player finds shop X, as long as that player's characters have to spend in-game time to visit the shop and pay all the costs and suffer all the risks implied by that. Making a player waste his time backtracking when game time simply doesn't matter and the risks are negligible (only respawning trash his characters can kill without using any store bought supplies at that point) shouldn't be considered part of a good game design. (If there are some risks like changing terrain, changing factional control of an area, or a real chance of getting lost then you can force some backtracking, but you can still make most of the travel abstract so the player only has to deal with the relevant areas.)