Inventory - limitations or not?

[DraQ]

Muh realism arguments are retarded; RL ''adventures'' aside from caring shitload of gear and loot had to gather wood for fire, clean their clothes, polish their weapons and take crap... wait they had /mules/slaves/squires for former three things

Which:

• Only applies after murderhobo phase
• Relies on delicate balance between costs of the upkeep and paying off hired help and phat lewt
• Creates interesting situations when said hired help absconds with your stuff or gets eaten by a dragon.

None of which applies to massive/unlimited inventories.

 

[Tigranes]

Anyone desperate enough to spend their leisure time hauling virtual loot back and forth should be shot. It's not the game's problem.

Making shops too easy to reach (e.g. accessible by menu, which in fact was the case in one late-game FF, I think) trivialises the experience of coming back from a dungeon outing eager to see what you can buy next and what noticeable increase in your powers have been achieved. Just like we'd prefer to level up in chunks rather than have our Guns skill increase in fractional increments with each kill. That said, there should be an effort to place shops in easy to reach places, rationalised as well as possible in terms of lore & architecture, and 'everything not nailed down' looting should be discouraged by other means - e.g. enemies dropping broken equipment, heavy depreciation in prices with repeat sales of single item, weight, etc.

 

[Aenra]

Anyone desperate enough to spend their leisure time hauling virtual loot back and forth should be shot. It's not the game's problem

Over-simplifying.
I've touched on this before, we've been playing RPGs for decades now, along with that comes a certain amount of experience/expectations:

- You cannot know when or if you may happen to need what kind of vague/initially superfluous seeming item. In my opinion, you shouldn't either.
- You cannot know if the economy is balanced or not, whether and to what an extent it is or is not a steep curve and as such, whether all that extra loot you left lying would have made the difference near the end
- You cannot ask for incline (in terms of thinking, difficulty, etc.) or be playing it come to that and not accept that the odd hoarding of secondary value items also adds to the strategic value of a title. This fight was hard, this fight became easy because i kept 'x' potion or item or piece of armour
It's all game-depending. Same with weight, grids, storage areas or lack of, etc. This is something that is (or should be) tied to design.

And even if the game makes it obvious none of that is the case?
Over-projecting.
Who the fuck are you to tell me if i should or should not hoard? Human nature. Finders keepers. Save for a rainy day. Shiny. Besides, look at you. You denounce hoarding, but ask for shops in easy-to-reach places? Really. What's next? NPCs to take your stuff to the vendor and come back?

 

[Eirinjas]

Most RPGs don't even account for hunger, thirst, or exhaustion, but let's be pedantic about inventory management.

 

[Alex]

My preference is for personal inventory to be as limited, and limiting, as it would make sense to be. But also to have separate inventories for things like pack mules, teser's discs, wagons, etc. This means that it is possible to carry a whole lot, even inside a dungeon, but what you have access inside combat is limited. It would also be nice if handling the loot was done more or less automatically, like in X-Com.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Most RPGs don't even account for hunger, thirst, or exhaustion, but let's be pedantic about inventory management.

Dungeon Master had all three --- food, water, and stamina --- back in 1987, and it also had innovative inventory management that has rarely been surpassed. Why should we accept ?

 

[28.8bps Modem]

My feeling is that weight or item limits as implemented in the majority of RPGs are legacy crap that don't materially affect gameplay in an enjoyable fashion. Think back to the days of yore when games like Laser Squad made inventory an interesting puzzle. You could load down your soldiers almost infinitely, but there were in game penalties for doing it, to the point that you would often see the real world mirrored in your squad equipment. If you wanted a trooper with a heavy laser or a rocket launcher, it often made sense to have a second, lightly armed trooper who would cart around the ammo. It made you think about just who in your squad should have heavy armour, and who could get away with lighter armour or none at all in trade for being more mobile. In short, inventory with some simple rules binding it to gameplay made material differences in how you played the game.

In New Vegas, to take the example from the OP, the inventory weight limit is a pointless annoyance. Together with weak differentiation between weapons and ammo being just scarce enough that you can't use one gun consistently, but not scarce enough to make you reconsider how you play, all the inventory limit does is put a modest limit on how much time you can spend in the field between trips back to town to drop off the accumulated junk. How is that an interesting game system? You carry around 3 or 4 guns that are all broadly similar, and maybe one for special occasions, and all their related ammo and to enable the stupidity you have a pack weight that would make World's Strongest Man contestants blush.

In contrast, think of the early game in Fallout 2 when ammo is outrageously expensive, and decent guns impossible to acquire. You have an interesting decision to make as to whether you should use the spear or not, even if you're bad with it. You can get a free pipe rifle, but whether you want to use your scarce 10mm ammo with such a dodgy weapon is an interesting decision. You can get yourself a 10mm pistol if you fight through a horde of rats for it, but is it actually worth it to do that now, or should you come back later? If it made healing expensive too, it'd be almost perfect. The interesting gameplay here comes not from satisfying some arbitrary item limit, but from putting interesting limits on what is available to the player, and asking them to make a choice.

Cut back on the number of pointlessly similar items in games, make the differences between items materially affect the gameplay, add interesting trade offs for having large inventories. Whatever. Just don't pointlessly ape tradition with a meaningless hard limit on inventory size.

 

[DraQ]

Less inventory => less items to manage => less micromanagement

Vice versa. No, really, are you fucking dumbfuck. The less inventory space you have, the more micro-management is there to be done. Fire up JA2 ffs.
How much micro management of inventory did you make in Gothic games? None.

"None" is the amount of micromanagement you have to do if you have no inventory.
Otherwise you pick items either because they are useful to you, might potentially be useful, or have monetary value.
The more space you have, the more items, even of low utility and value, you will scoop up, the more you will have to shuffle around, haul around, pawn off, etc.
If you only have room for what you wear, main weapon, spare/situational weapon and lightweight misc stuff you will only pick up better/more useful gear, plot items (like notes), misc stuff you need for what you have in mind (like alchemy ingredients you actually need), and high value lightweight stuff like gems, jewelry, rare ingredients, etc.
If you have a room for fucking everything, you pick up fucking everything - rusty swords, filth-encrusted fur "armor", soiled loincloths, etc. and make a massive garbage dump out of your inventory.

Tested the difference in the exact same game differing only by the mods used. You won't top that.

Having limited inventory also adds disposability to the list of potential advantages of an item. Using an item you can easily replace instead of a superior variant you'd have to hold onto like your dear life allows you to just dump it and make room for more valuable loot (and that should be the main point of crafting, actually - the advantage of being able to decouple yourself from the gear you carry.
More meaningfully distinct gameplay strategies => better RPG.

DraQ, you're intelligent person most of the time, but you have a talent to be total dumbshit at times.

Well, you have been becoming increasingly dumbshit lately yourself which is a bit of a letdown.
Also, thanks.

To use them effectively under inventory restrictions i'd have to constantly fast travel

Stop right there criminal scum.
Limited inventory only makes sense if it limits the shit you want to pick up. Fast travelling back and forth is a bit of gamebreaker here.
Either have no fast travel, add upkeep costs over time, clean the locations up as the player leaves them or some combination of thereof.
Having merchants not accept stuff below some cutoff value also helps and is reasonable (if you were a merchant what would you expect to do with five dozen shit encrusted fur skirts?).

And i haven't even tried hardcore mode + skilling survivalist branch. Think there would be even more problems then.

So you're basically talking out of your ass then?

I dunno. I like challenge that is directly posed via ACTION in any sort of game. Gothic games, for example, were very challenging for a first time player at least. Challenge that comes from ability to overcome trite routine is another thing. Challenge for accountants.

Then stick to fucking action games - why do you even play RPGs? In RPGs action is but one facet of the challenge - there is also logistics, planning, paying attention to the details (ideally playing dumb should get you fucked) and so on.
More, in RPGs action is usually the weakest facet (sadly).

 

[Tigranes]

Anyone desperate enough to spend their leisure time hauling virtual loot back and forth should be shot. It's not the game's problem

Over-simplifying.
I've touched on this before, we've been playing RPGs for decades now, along with that comes a certain amount of experience/expectations:

- You cannot know when or if you may happen to need what kind of vague/initially superfluous seeming item. In my opinion, you shouldn't either.
- You cannot know if the economy is balanced or not, whether and to what an extent it is or is not a steep curve and as such, whether all that extra loot you left lying would have made the difference near the end
- You cannot ask for incline (in terms of thinking, difficulty, etc.) or be playing it come to that and not accept that the odd hoarding of secondary value items also adds to the strategic value of a title. This fight was hard, this fight became easy because i kept 'x' potion or item or piece of armour
It's all game-depending. Same with weight, grids, storage areas or lack of, etc. This is something that is (or should be) tied to design.

And even if the game makes it obvious none of that is the case?
Over-projecting.
Who the fuck are you to tell me if i should or should not hoard? Human nature. Finders keepers. Save for a rainy day. Shiny. Besides, look at you. You denounce hoarding, but ask for shops in easy-to-reach places? Really. What's next? NPCs to take your stuff to the vendor and come back?

Almost all rpgs give you far too much loot and money. If that were fixed first... But thats a pipe dream. Point is that designing with obsessive loot cargo players in mind isnt necessaery.

My original post already specified why making shops too accessible is problem, and in fact my entire post is about not making it too easy... so are you just talking to your own dick?

 

[Gnidrologist]

"None" is the amount of micromanagement you have to do if you have no inventory

Or if there's no need to make decisions every time you find new piece of armor/weapon/spell scroll in yet another dungeon.

If you have a room for fucking everything, you pick up fucking everything - rusty swords, filth-encrusted fur "armor", soiled loincloths, etc. and make a massive garbage dump out of your inventory.

Given how you need huuuge amounts of money to pay for training, the game literally encourages you to do that. There's no other means to acquire money, but sell crap. The same goes for most other open ended rpgs. It's rare that one can make most of his money via quests. If that was true, i'd agree with you, but elderscrolls type of design with weight limit will just test player's threshold of attrition.
Do you enjoy backtracking to dungeon you just cleared from 200 skeletons several times just to get all those rusty swords sold to have money for raising armor skill? I don't.
Do you like interrupting your seamless journey through the wasteland for fast-traveling back to Gunrunners to offload surplus service rifles? I don't. But i NEED money, to get those implants so what's the alternative? Larp?

 

[Aenra]

My original post already specified why making shops too accessible is problem, and in fact my entire post is about not making it too easy... so are you just talking to your own dick?

Your original post is a pile of shit served on a platter. Let us quote your conclusion:

That said, there should be an effort to place shops in easy to reach places

bit of a hint: When your best playing card is using the word dick, chances are it ain't much of a card anyway

 

[deuxhero]

Rather than go back and forth on how inventory limits effect looting, why don't we cut looting out from the economy? Loot still has its purpose of actually using the stuff even if you make the majority of the player's money from it.

In Alpha Protocol most of your money came from looting raw cash deposits. This makes sense because selling a bunch of used guns, many of which aren't worth more than a few hundred USD new and were legally owned with serial numbers making them super hot, isn't the main character's business.

I don't remember if you could even sell items in the game.

 

[ArchAngel]

My dream RPG is where you can only carry as much stuff on your team members as you could in JA2 or old Xcom. Also the game lets you buy/rent horses, pack mules and carts that can also carry realistic amounts of loot and can be killed/destroyed.

Of course I expect that game to have realistic economy where stuff does not cost 1000s of gold because it is unrealistic anyone carries so much around.

 

[thesheeep]

How many games (RPG, I mean) are actually out there where you do not get filthy rich by the end of the game?
Even in all the glorious ones (Fallout, Arcanum, ToEE, ...) money is a non-issue at the end.
I'm also beginning to think that the questline in BG2 was made to have a reason to have so much money.

Underrail tried something nice by having limits what each merchant actually wants (and how much of it). Yet I still ended up being filthy rich by the end, because the only thing I ever needed to buy was health and psi "potions".

I remember not being filthy rich at the end in IWD, but that was only because magic items are just ridiculously expensive. Not really a good method.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Well, end of Shadowrun Ding Dong, you can barely rub two nuyen together.

 

[Gnidrologist]

That's the other end of the stick. Having no loot at all. In the nu-Shadowrun you can only sell the weapons/armor that are equipped in the weapon/armor slots and all the weapon loot is only found in set places, not randomly anyway. And they give laughable money. All significant income comes form the quests. On the other hand, there's fuck all to buy anyway so it's all .

Wonder if there was really any rpg, to have sensible system in this regard. My memory has started to be a bit rusty so i don't remember any in between those two extremes.

Also, shitty balance.
Why did you need all those money chips in DX games anyway? There's literally nothing to buy in any of them. At the same time, money stashes in TES games or NV are close to nothing, yet there's loads of expensive stuff you might want to buy. Resolution - be a pack mule.

 

[typical user]

I still haven't found a game with good economy system in end-game. The reason is that if you kill someone then either he won't drop anything which is unrealistic or if he does then you will be swimming in loot as you kill more and more enemies.

I guess the only way to make cash relevant in the end game has to indroduce new economy mechanic like base management that will require huge investments.

New Vegas tried really hard with weapon repair costs but otherwise money was useless there. I wish games would require to bribe NPCs because everything I play, paying to skip is actually the least profitable way to solve problems as you don't get XP, unique items or there is another easy method that doesn't require paying chips. In Skyrim I remember there was a dark elf that would ask for your money and in return he would open up new dungeon and give side quest. The problem was he asked for like 1000 gold which was laughable sum. In Fo2 you have had an option to inquire good tips from locals for coin which was nice.

 

[adrix89]

Dragon's dogma manages to strip me of cash with all the enhancements,forgeries and DLC armors, although I haven't finished the game yet.
Probably won't buy and upgrade everything by the story end game.
Without this kind of gold sinkholes and the OCD to collect everything no RPG will have money problems and probably not much use either.

What I really like to see is a game where gold is a form of power in that you can buy units and equipment and use them like in a strategy game.
Mount and Blade was something like this.

 

[Beastro]

For me it depends on the game and if inventory management seems to be a part of the feel of the game.

Take for instance the difference between Neo Scavenger and Underrail. Inventory management is key to the former and I'm fine with it since it plays such a huge role because it's organic - it's not tacked on. In the latter it's just a hassle, and to save myself from cheating even worse by speeding the game up, I just used cheat engine to get rid of the weight limit. Since I did that my enjoyment of the games gone up without losing out on anything that would come if I did the same to NEO and completely fucked it's core resource management angle.

Really, for RPGs, unless they stress some measure of survival in the game play then there's no point. For Fallout NV, no weight limit would fuck with Dead Money, but with PoE you're always close to a town to sell, so why add the added tedium of ferrying your shit from your stronghold castle to town over and over?

 

[kangaroodev]

It's quite weird how having no limitations in gothic works well, you can just loot everything and the game progresses normally. I imagine that more games can be like this without overpowering your character, but I guess in the end it depends on the game. One thing in gothic 2 is that most items you pick up aren't very valuable, so it's a bit harder to loot a lot and become instantly rich. Even killing some bandits to sell their weapons requires that you have a higher level.

The thing that makes inventory limiting useful in my opinion is the need to go to towns more often, so rpgs that don't give you reasons/quests to keep coming back to a town near you may just force you to go anyway just to sell your inventory. And the feeling of selling your loot like it's some usual job is kinda nice.

 

[laclongquan]

Currently playing UFO Afterlight. Shit just got real.

At impossible setting, aliens rape my asses pretty regularly. Settting up 2-4 TNT and mines just to get rid of one Roller is normal, and the return is zero, because fuckin Roller, mang. But fighting Reticulans set up a curious experience every time: Damn midgets got too much loot. I regularly have to leave Earth-model ammo behind just to have the space to grab loots. And wearing Transport suits with humongous inventory is too risky for the fight, since most of them are in highly hostile environment and we might get screwed for greed. This is early game where we fight with no Psi-absorber, so highest charisma character solo to prevent mind controll.

Do I feel reward over leaving loot behind? Ugh no~ Shits are not that necessary, but not that plentiful to justify leaving it behind. Fucking UFO is too small mang~

 

[DraQ]

"None" is the amount of micromanagement you have to do if you have no inventory

Or if there's no need to make decisions every time you find new piece of armor/weapon/spell scroll in yet another dungeon.

U casul bro?


Besides, if you have unlimited inventory, then even if you don't have to make decision the amount of micromanagement increases as your inventory clogs up with shit and it takes more and more time to find what you actually need (or to sell your ever growing mountain of clutter).

If you have a room for fucking everything, you pick up fucking everything - rusty swords, filth-encrusted fur "armor", soiled loincloths, etc. and make a massive garbage dump out of your inventory.

Given how you need huuuge amounts of money to pay for training, the game literally encourages you to do that. There's no other means to acquire money, but sell crap.

Most interdasting, do continue.

The same goes for most other open ended rpgs. It's rare that one can make most of his money via quests. If that was true, i'd agree with you, but elderscrolls type of design with weight limit will just test player's threshold of attrition.

Curioser and curioser.

Do you enjoy backtracking to dungeon you just cleared from 200 skeletons several times just to get all those rusty swords sold to have money for raising armor skill? I don't.

I don't, therefore I don't.

Do you like interrupting your seamless journey through the wasteland for fast-traveling back to Gunrunners to offload surplus service rifles? I don't. But i NEED money, to get those implants so what's the alternative? Larp?

I don't remember all that much from FO1, at least in terms of gameplay balance minutiae (other than .223 pistol + eye shots = winrar, that is), but open ended RPGs tend to be massive. This means that there is almost always a better way to spend your time than running back and forth between a dungeon and town ferrying bulk amounts of clutter of negligible value. For example you could be visiting other locations and picking up only high value stuff.
It becomes especially true if there is no or limited fast travel (so that round trips between town and current dungeon take actual time) or if there is some sort of upkeep cost involved to discourage wasting your time.

Of course there is always room for improvement - for example why would a craftsman or trader intent on selling his goods buy bulk quantities of inferior quality items? They are there to make money, they make money by selling stuff and they presumably have stuff to sell already, in amounts suitable for the demand for given kind of item. Sure, if you offer items of exceptional quality, material or large intrinsic value, they will swallow, but cheap clutter and low quality gear should at most sell at recycle value and in small quantities too.
It wouldn't be hard to implement too - just set up a value threshold that is subtracted from a buy-back price before any remaining calculations, and if adjusted value hits 0 the item is refused.

In Alpha Protocol most of your money came from looting raw cash deposits. This makes sense because selling a bunch of used guns, many of which aren't worth more than a few hundred USD new and were legally owned with serial numbers making them super hot, isn't the main character's business.

also this.

Another obvious improvement would be areas getting swept of loot if you leave. It's reasonable to assume that a dungeon holding untold riches will only hold them as long as there are measures or occupants inside keeping people from just walking in and taking them out - if those measures or occupants are removed, the riches will soon follow. Some occupants, like bandits, will also GTFO with their stuff, if you get part way into their hideout inflicting losses, then go away to sell off some loot, if you do so while on a job to, for example, free a hostage, this job will be botched as well.

Lastly, some items simply don't last when lying around for prolonged periods of time.

There are ways to make player only take what they need and do it fast, those ways don't need to clash with general immersiveness and can be simulationist in their own right.

 

[Gnidrologist]

U casul bro?

No, just not sperg.

And i don't see how you refuted anything i said. Either you collect crap and sell it to progress or larp ninja cartographer or something.

 

[DraQ]

And i don't see how you refuted anything i said. Either you collect crap and sell it to progress or larp ninja cartographer or something.

Of course you collect crap and sell it, but unless you claim that there is simply no way to raise enough funds without scooping up and then peddling every single wooden bowl and soiled loincloth because there is not enough good loot in the entire gameworld (in which case modern medicine can't help you) you're going to progress much faster and in much more enjoyable way if you only scoop up things that are actually valuable or actually useful to you and then proceed to the next quest or location.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Where did i say a scoop every piece of cutlery? Even just gathering relatively good expensive weapons makes inventory full quite fast, especially if playing without companions. Given that a lot of you guys play with Sawyer's mod that reduces the weight limit even more it can be impossible to even clean out a single vault/cave without a trip to shop amidst it.