Are inventory weight limits a useless mechanic?

[Ranorak]

I never really had a problem with weight in Skyrim, but I get the feeling that some people heer find the need to open every container and take every single piece of loot that is not nailed down to the dungeon.

I don't even look at most gear in skyrim. If I kill an enemy I usually just take his gold and possible lockpicks/arrows.
I only look at the mundane weapons if I need a upgrade.
Only if the weight to gold ratio is high enough will I take an item with me.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

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.

See, you keep bringing up "I'm halfway through a dungeon and full" - but that is not an inventory limitation issue. It's a Player issue - you didn't clear your inventory for going out to play in dungeons ahead of time, like you should. OR It's bad placement of loot as an issue. Too much loot (or pick-up-ables) in one place, and the devs/designers aren't considering the limitations of inventory when doing the placement.

Yes, obviously those would both go away with unlimited inventory, but limited inventory isn't the direct cause of the "halfway through, gotta clean up" issue - it's just the factor that highlights the shortfall of either the player or the devs in that situation.

And, no, I have to disagree - in some RPGs it is an economic regulator. Not in all of them, for sure, but those with limited loot in the game proper item management at the proper times gives the player an advantage of money vs. a disadvantage for poor management.

The Deep Roads in DA:O is the best example I can think of off the top of my head - you go down there lean you can do one trip, open all the boxes, come back full, sell all your loot and leave. You screw it up and you've got to make a second trip or destroy items and lose that money - which is limited if you skip out on the clumsy crafting.

As I already said, punishing the player for not adhering to the dev's expectation by tedium is not good design. I do not see why the player should be forced to go through a scheduled inventory cleanup before every mission and punished if they don't. You can blame it on the player failing to play properly but the fact is that the devs made a conscious choice to annoy the player for no good reason. It hardly brings any choice or challenge to the table, only inconvenience.

Also, the thing about Dragon Age is that overloading your inventory will not make you unable to collect more items and sell them. It only forces you to backtrack to the nearest vendor and back, wasting your time and boring you out of your skull.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Snip.

Snip.

As I already said, punishing the player for not adhering to the dev's expectation by tedium is not good design. I do not see why the player should be forced to go through a scheduled inventory cleanup before every mission and punished if they don't. You can blame it on the player failing to play properly but the fact is that the devs made a conscious choice to annoy the player for no good reason. It hardly brings any choice or challenge to the table, only inconvenience.

Also, the thing about Dragon Age is that overloading your inventory will not make you unable to collect more items and sell them. It only forces you to backtrack to the nearest vendor and back, wasting your time and boring you out of your skull.

Well, what you see as tedium and punishment I see as actually pretending I live in the world the devs made for my character so I guess we are at an impasse there.

 

[Bat Vader]

For me it depends on what type of game it is. If it is a game that is in no way realistic than I say add a no backpack limit. If it is a game that is meant to be realistic like a survival sim or something than I say add a backpack limit.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I find the way that Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 handles weight to be the perfect way. Weight of all carried items is not considered. Carry as much as you want with the only penalty being that you may have more junk to sort through if you're caught needing to rearrange your gear in the middle of combat. Actual equipped item weight, however, is extremely important and, for the most part, fairly logical. It's also something you can overcome in large part if you build your character that way but at the cost of maybe spending points to allow yourself to carry more at the expense of other important stats.

That said, I don't think every RPG needs to have a weight limit factor at all. If you're going to implement one, though, it should absolutely be done DS style.

 

[Therumancer]

I feel inventory limits work as long as they aren't too strict, as resource management is part of an RPG. I'll also say that said I find it kind of ridiculous when you say have "Silent Hill: Origins" logic in game design where to add tension they make it so melee weapons (mostly improvised) tend to break, BUT you can carry a ton of them, leaving to you carrying like 5 TVs, 3 IV stands, a couple of scalpels, 4 pipes, and 3 guns around with you or whatever.

I didn't mind Demon's Souls (what time I've put into it) terribly as it's system gave you a reason to head back to the hubs and such, which I think was kind of the point. It's also a decent way of dealing with clutter and the game having to track too many objects when pack rats decide to pretty much carry around everything (turning it into a junk collecting contest and using whatever is most convenient rather than an exercise in strategy and planning), but again when the inventory becomes a mess due to other ridiculous design mechanics that tends to be a problem.

This is just my opinion of course. It depends on the type of game. Honestly I find inventory limits more annoying in say "Action RPGs" like Diablo than I do with games like Dark/Demons Souls. In the former the whole point is to collect loot and having to travel back to town periodically slows the pace of the game (Action RPGs where you can say have a pet sell for you or whatever are nice, but even so they could just let you sell when you want to), in the latter the whole thing is about survival and progression, and inventory helps add to the tension by adding another factor to worry about (I just found a nice set of armor, do I return to town and re-set the level so I can stash it, or continue on and hope I don't find anything else that's too heavy...). Within that environment and game intent it doesn't bother me as much since that was the intention, and it works. What's more it helps, especially later on, when stuff starts to change in the hubs, by ensuring the player has to go back, in looking for where say Stockpile Thomas has moved to you become likely to notice new NPCs, dialogue, etc... which might have appeared over the last few hours you were doing suicide runs on the level of your self (never leaving the basic stone/portal selection area as you continually ran lemming-like into the jaws of death).

 

[cookyt]

More often then not, I've found inventory systems to get in the way of what I care about in an RPG. I turned it off in Fallout 3 during the Mothership Zeta DLC[footnote]A lack of shops and permanent containers for loot does not make for an enjoyable DLC experience[/footnote] and never looked back.

Funny enough, in Demon's Souls I remember defeating the executioner woman in the graveyard next to first area and climbing down the well shaft behind her to get the loot - a complete set of very heavy armor - only to find that I didn't have the capacity for it. I was at a loss because I couldn't go back to the nexus, else the loot would disappear when I returned. What ended up happening was that I accidentally pressed the circle button as I was going through my inventory trying to decide what to do. My character took a back step, and fell to his death in the bottomless pit behind him. I only managed to pick up half the armor set, so I ran around for a while like a warhammer space marine who forgot his pants at home. What a waste of a resurrection!

 

[Saulkar]

I personally think that the Misery Mod for STALKER: COP has done inventory management best. There is no arbitrary size limit attached to your inventory as one would assume you have more than one bag, satchel, or pocket to ergonomically put everything in rather than one arbitrarily shaped and sized bag but you do have a weight limit and you can carry more than twice it comfortably as long as you do not mind walking and being rendered too tired to dodge an angry mutant ready to murder you. Even before you hit it your endurance is gradually impacted more and more.

 

[lunavixen]

I actually don't mind the weight system for inventory management as long as it's not poorly done, it actually makes more sense to me than a lot of other systems in RPGs especially the ones with sets slots (like in the original Resident Evil where items pretty much take up an identical number of space regardless of the size) or that have no inventory management at all that lets you take everything that isn't nailed down.

I think the weight system and the system where you have a set number of slots but items are diferent sizes and take up varying amounts of room (like in Diablo and RE4) are the best choices.

 

[thewatergamer]

For me it really depends on the game

in RPG's such as skyrim or dark souls I think it makes sense, your character can't go lugging around everything he picks up and I think it adds to the game, making you do much more resource management

However that said, I can see why some people dislike it and in some games it just wouldn't work

 

[WanderingFool]

-snip

Thoughts? Do you also find weight limits infuriatingly useless and annoying in most RPGs? Can you actually think of examples within the genre where they actually have a place and serve to make the game better?

Discuss

Well, you're right, it is basically a system designed for stopping the gameplay to sort through your crap. But yet, its also realistic in a sense.

Let me ask you this, why would you carry 3 suits of armor when you only need one, and you (are most likely) already wearing it? I think you basic prtoblem, is that you are a packrat, and the games inventory system is making it hard for you to attain your packrat fix.

I know, Im the same way. Every item I come accross goes through a mental filter that asks me if I really want to pick up the item.

To me, the weight limit is the games way of telling me thats its time to hit the shop and sell the useless shit.

 

[BarkBarker]

I hate having to constantly decide what is worth carrying or not, it feels like a arbitrary decision forced upon me as I am forced to consider "what do I need to live....and what do I need to actually make a goddammit profit in this dungeon?". Seriously, I can understand the desire the limit my capabilities, but then you should alleviate the massive drawbacks, like needing to know an items worth at the store or how it meshes with your gear back at the hut. I need to make a informed decision, else you are just TRYING to piss me off and I'll stop playing the game and go play a game where I have a inventory limit....by number, not by FECKING WEIGHT.