Are inventory weight limits a useless mechanic?
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There are a great many reasons to have an inventory weight or item limit. I'll just list the ones that come to mind immediately:Johny_X2 said:
1) Limitations restrict what a player can carry which can force a player to balance their priorities for success and survival. This is commonly seen in Survival Horror games and RPGs where basic survival is designed to be somewhat taxing (Fallout New Vegas for example). It can also be used to force a player to use items in novel or unusual ways.
2) Limiting what a player can carry and offering a player a meaningful way to get rid of excess baggage subtly urges players to revisit hub areas to offload such things. This can be used to help ensure the story advances or that players are aware that quests are being handed out.
3) Limitations, when done realistically, can add the inherent realism in a game which can be important when a key aim of the game is simulation.
4) Limitation of what players can carry can allow for performance improvements which is especially important when dealing with large numbers of players or characters with an inventory as having caps allows for simplifying assumptions to be made when designing various systems.
In most RPGs, some combination of the above four reasons as well as simple tradition in the genre explain why it tends to be a fixture.
Not neccesarily.
Take a look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which already got a mention earlier in this thread.
Weapons and armor in the game are usually fairly heavy, as are anti-armor bullets. Regular ammo and medkit/food also take up weight, albeit less.
When you carry a little weight, your stamina lasts virtually forever. Then, the more items you carry, the longer it takes for your stamina to recharge and the faster it is depleted during sprint. When you hit the "red" zone, your sprinting capabilities basically end. IF you decide to carry even more than that you simply can't move.
It's very gradual, which makes it better.
Stalker ain't the kind of game in which you should lug around 80 guns. With this system, you can decide which items you want to take with you and which you want to leave behind - you can decide to carry 4 guns, but then you'll have less space for ammunition and healthpacks. You can decide to carry a hazmat suit and a bulletproof suit, but then you'd have less weight available for your gear..
It makes for interesting choices while still allowing for freedom - you don't have an arbitrary "two guns only" rule.
Take a look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which already got a mention earlier in this thread.
Weapons and armor in the game are usually fairly heavy, as are anti-armor bullets. Regular ammo and medkit/food also take up weight, albeit less.
When you carry a little weight, your stamina lasts virtually forever. Then, the more items you carry, the longer it takes for your stamina to recharge and the faster it is depleted during sprint. When you hit the "red" zone, your sprinting capabilities basically end. IF you decide to carry even more than that you simply can't move.
It's very gradual, which makes it better.
Stalker ain't the kind of game in which you should lug around 80 guns. With this system, you can decide which items you want to take with you and which you want to leave behind - you can decide to carry 4 guns, but then you'll have less space for ammunition and healthpacks. You can decide to carry a hazmat suit and a bulletproof suit, but then you'd have less weight available for your gear..
It makes for interesting choices while still allowing for freedom - you don't have an arbitrary "two guns only" rule.
Thank you! As a Dungeons and Dragons Player and DM both, I have MANY MANY times asked the question: Yes, I know it's within your weight capacity, but WHERE in your backpack are you fitting that Seven Foot Longspear? Or, And How many Tower shields were you planning on carrying the 10 miles back to town? My other favorite was "I fill my backpack with these Adamantine ingots!" Ok, sure. They weigh 500 lbs together, and your backpack is made of canvas, sewn with Twine. It is now ripped, and in need or repair. If you are going to have ANY inventory management, do it right. It's no fun if your charatcer can carry every item in the world.Zach Myers said:
Weight-Limits definitely add to the experience if you're interested in role playing but as a game play mechanic, it seems kind of useless. Kind of like weapon-limits in FPS games; the claim is that limitations force players to think strategically but in practice it just slows you down half-way through a dungeon because you know you have to quickly get out, sell off some of your crap and then go all the way back through...
I think they still have their place, but only in certain games. In games like Baldur's Gate or classic Fallout games I think they make sense, because those are more slow paced games with more focus on planning. But the Souls games walk the line between an action game and an RPG and having such an action focus makes the inventory limit feel slightly out of place. I would guess the reason behind it would be to add more difficulty, in the sense that you could only bring limited gear with you and thus, may not be ideally equipped to deal with some enemies. However, for me a staple of the Souls games has always been that you want to keep moving forward but risk losing your souls with every encounter. It is a battle between the temptation to play it safe and the temptation to just risk whatever's around the next corner. Making you go back to town to store items stands in the way of that (which is probably why Dark Souls 1 and 2 did away with that)
Personally i loved the weight limit in the STALKER games, it reminded me a lot of my hiking trips into the mountains in real life, having to contend with my meager 80 pounds of kit (a near backbreaking load) not lasting me more than a week without me having to resupply from the wilderness (rifle and hunting licence in hand)
I understand more "gamey" people disliking them but I think weight limits define, to some extent, what kind of game it is. Something like STALKER is very survival and difficulty based, games that don't restict inventory weight or size (not that I can think of any right now) are more about story and game play than planning and foresight.
This can be argued for almost every mechanic from more complicated combat systems to how in depth party management should be. Its all about preference
I understand more "gamey" people disliking them but I think weight limits define, to some extent, what kind of game it is. Something like STALKER is very survival and difficulty based, games that don't restict inventory weight or size (not that I can think of any right now) are more about story and game play than planning and foresight.
This can be argued for almost every mechanic from more complicated combat systems to how in depth party management should be. Its all about preference
Which makes it doubly impressive because as far as I'm aware RE4 is the only RE game without a crap inventory system.Mikejames said:
I thought that Torchlight handled this very well. Here's your familiar/pack animal it says. Why not sent him/her/it back to town with all your junk while you continue exploring? Why yes Torchlight I think I will.Shoggoth2588 said:
I find inventory management being part of my gameplay just something else the game has me being - sure it's somewhat arbitrary, but as others have mentioned there are some reasons for inventory limitation that seem obviously useful for devs - making players visit hubs to sell things off, keeping inventory slim makes players assess character's equipment on a regular basis to keep the best stuff in circulation, keeping a tab on how much in game money the player can make - in Dragon Age, which the OP specifically mentioned as a "I don't know why this game has this" I can tell you the surplus gear you get and can sell off is limited in itself (monsters do not respawn) and the economy of the game is thus limited to a point where players can not buy many of the best items from shops based on what they get from selling that stuff off alone, forcing a player to either accept that economy or embrace the crafting system to expand their wallet power.
Another thing I think it's there for is for the devs/game designers to show the players how much loot the game has. Loot is a powerful motivator for most players and having to manage your inventory frequently does call attention to how much stuff you are getting for what you are doing, which is a positive reinforcement to keep doing it that's built into the game.
Another thing I think it's there for is for the devs/game designers to show the players how much loot the game has. Loot is a powerful motivator for most players and having to manage your inventory frequently does call attention to how much stuff you are getting for what you are doing, which is a positive reinforcement to keep doing it that's built into the game.
I've never played Torchlight but that sounds like a brilliant work-around. Torchlight is a bit old though isn't it? It's a shame other RPGs haven't taken to using a similar mechanic despite other RPGs having companion characters who could act in much the same way.ThingWhatSqueaks said:
And just how many guns would you like to carry? How many gunz can YOU carry? How many guns do REAL soldiers bring into battle? 2, maybe 3. All while wearing 60lbs more than a fully Kitted out Knight in Full Plate armour, longsword, Dirk, shield and we'll give him a Flail and a Sir-coat for good measure.Sleekit said:
Where do you want the line to be Guy? I personally LOVE the gun restriction. Hell, if what I brought isn't doing it, I'll just kill you, take your gun and steal ammo from the corpses of your comrades.
As far as RPG games go, if you want more than a realistic carrying capacity, (which should include BOTH weight limit AND backpack Tetris) Include a MAGICAL bag of Holding. D & D has had that shit figured out for almost 50 YEARS now. Some magical or Technological macguffin which reduces the mass or stores in an extra dimensional space.
Ta-DAAAAAA!!!! Now you can have your 500 cakes, and die of a Diabetic Coma too! AND you don't have a system which caters to lazy or stupid inventory management.
I can Has Games Studio now?
It forces you to make choices about what you take with you. I don't think that makes it useless, if anything, it grants more depth to the process of making decisions in games.
I like the OP's point about weight limits punishing exploration, that's not an aspect I'd considered before.
I really don't buy into the idea that the limits assist immersion in any meaningful way, though. I've lost track of the number of times in Bethesda games where I've wanted to loot one last enemy, but to do so I've had to eat six potatoes, drink some cheap potions, drop the pillow I accidentally picked up earlier, then dropped loot with a poor cost/weight ratio until I bring my total down to some arbitrary number (then accidentally re-encumbered myself by picking a flower on the way back). I don't see any bit of any of that that enriches the realism, or the feeling of being lost in a fantasy world.
And games where that arbitrary number is influenced by your character's strength stat, thereby meaning mages need to make extra vendor runs before they're allowed to keep playing the game, make that annoyance oh so much worse.
Inventory tetris isn't a lot more compelling, but I do still have a soft spot for the pack mules you could hire in the first Dungeon Siege game. Those guys were awesome.
I really don't buy into the idea that the limits assist immersion in any meaningful way, though. I've lost track of the number of times in Bethesda games where I've wanted to loot one last enemy, but to do so I've had to eat six potatoes, drink some cheap potions, drop the pillow I accidentally picked up earlier, then dropped loot with a poor cost/weight ratio until I bring my total down to some arbitrary number (then accidentally re-encumbered myself by picking a flower on the way back). I don't see any bit of any of that that enriches the realism, or the feeling of being lost in a fantasy world.
And games where that arbitrary number is influenced by your character's strength stat, thereby meaning mages need to make extra vendor runs before they're allowed to keep playing the game, make that annoyance oh so much worse.
Inventory tetris isn't a lot more compelling, but I do still have a soft spot for the pack mules you could hire in the first Dungeon Siege game. Those guys were awesome.
No I don't and what's wrong with telling those people that they made it too easy for themselves instead of opting for inventory limits. Most people probably don't find inventory management to be a fun part of a game, more like a chore.Risingblade said:
Actually, the consumables talk reminds me. Consumables in an awful lot of games have a habit of either being not worth the hassle of digging through the UI to find them, or being too awesome to risk using, since you might then not have them later. Both of those issues lead to consumable apathy, and in games that assign a weight value to those effectively unusable items that just makes them not worth owning at all (aside from a handful of critical health/mana potions, Rad-Away, etc.).
I find weight limits to be a great mechanic for adding realism, but I feel that a lot of games have the problem of being stuck between reality and fantasy, where while there is a weight limit, the volume of a product doesn't seem to matter. In Skyrim, for instance, its possible to carry around upwards of 200 cabbages. What the hell? You'd need at least five or six shopping trolleys to wheel that number of produce around. I just feel if you want to add realism, go whole hog, and if its too restrictive for the type of game you want, don't only implement mechanics halfway. Instead, remove them.
all valid points (with the exception of that one weirdly angry guy who went on a tangent about MMOs and shooters for no good reason), the majority opinion seems to be that it balances out the game's economy, not letting the player grab and sell every single pick-uppable object in the game, and balance out the difficulty by making player consciously aware of the choices they are making.
Here's a counterargument though: aren't there ways of getting around all those potential issues in a more elegant, more convenient fashion? The game can limit the number of healing items the player can carry; it can not let the player sell every single piece of stick they find lying about and make shopkeepers more picky about what they accept as loot; solve clutter with an inventory filter and, as for the choices... it's less of a choice between 'should I drop this expensive armour here and lose it forever so that I can take the new one' and more of a 'crap, I'm halfway through this dungeon now, should I run back to the nearest town, sell the old armour, run back and pick up the new one or should I just leave it here?
I don't think it actually makes the economy more balanced in any way. All it does is slowing the player down and makes looting more inconvenient. There's usually nothing stopping you from coming back to the dungeon later to grab the rest of the loot. The weight limit is not restricting this - it only makes the execution more boring. And I don't think that punishing a player with boredom and frustration is a sign of good design.
To me, in many games the weight limit is just a lazy measure that, while partially dealing with some of the problems mentioned here - does not get to the core of the issue and as an end result, only serves to annoy the player.
Please note that I'm talking about seemingly arbitrary inventory system in RPGs in which he gameplay doesn't focus on survival and resource management and/or does't sufficiently build all the rest of the mechanics with the inventory solution in mind and vice versa.
Here's a counterargument though: aren't there ways of getting around all those potential issues in a more elegant, more convenient fashion? The game can limit the number of healing items the player can carry; it can not let the player sell every single piece of stick they find lying about and make shopkeepers more picky about what they accept as loot; solve clutter with an inventory filter and, as for the choices... it's less of a choice between 'should I drop this expensive armour here and lose it forever so that I can take the new one' and more of a 'crap, I'm halfway through this dungeon now, should I run back to the nearest town, sell the old armour, run back and pick up the new one or should I just leave it here?
I don't think it actually makes the economy more balanced in any way. All it does is slowing the player down and makes looting more inconvenient. There's usually nothing stopping you from coming back to the dungeon later to grab the rest of the loot. The weight limit is not restricting this - it only makes the execution more boring. And I don't think that punishing a player with boredom and frustration is a sign of good design.
To me, in many games the weight limit is just a lazy measure that, while partially dealing with some of the problems mentioned here - does not get to the core of the issue and as an end result, only serves to annoy the player.
Please note that I'm talking about seemingly arbitrary inventory system in RPGs in which he gameplay doesn't focus on survival and resource management and/or does't sufficiently build all the rest of the mechanics with the inventory solution in mind and vice versa.