Are inventory weight limits a useless mechanic?

Roofstone

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I'd recommend the mod Caiphus above me recommended, it helps with immersion.

RJ 17 said:
Villainy is no excuse for bad manners. Even, especially, towards assassins.
 

IFS

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It depends a lot on the game, Dark Souls doesn't have them because you hardly ever sell anything so it wouldn't make much of a difference, Demon's Souls does have one because its more focused on preparation and it forces you to balance what supplies you take with you (how prepared you are) with keeping enough space for new acquisitions. In a game like Skyrim though having no carry restrictions would let the player just loot EVERYTHING they find and sell it off, which would further break Skyrim's fairly broken economy, and worse mean that players would spend more time dealing with inventory clutter and selling stuff, neither of which are the game's strong suits.

Games that emphasize preparation or limited supplied work pretty well with inventory limits in my opinion, if only because they add more challenge to managing your resources.
 

Kotaro

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Mr.K. said:
Well you do need limits on your inventory otherwise people will just stack up some shit that will make them immortal....
Exactly. Just look at a couple of Castlevania games:
In Harmony of Dissonance, you could hold 99 of each item, and having 99 Potions on you made the game stupidly easy.
In most of the later games (Aria of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia to name a few), this was reduced to 9 for each item, and this helped. But it was still really easy once you found a way to get a decent supply of Super Potions.
Curse of Darkness, while not a particularly good game overall, had the right idea, with a different limit based on the item, with more powerful items having a lower maximum number (for example, you could only carry one Super Potion).

So yeah, item limits do have their place in certain games.
 

EvilRoy

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I've never found weight limits to be much of a help to my immersion, although I do understand why they might need to be in a game.

As a matter of balance, weight limits make a lot of sense in sandbox games like fallout, where in order to keep from leaving the world feeling nearly devoid of items and sundry trash, there really needs to be a lot of crap around. At the same time, however, a lot of that crap is extremely useful - acting as parts for repairs, new weapons, upgrades or in some cases ammunition for the scrap cannon. So while the world needs to be waste deep in garbage in order to seem like an actual post-apocalyptic wasteland, they also can't let you haul around an infinite amount of it because its just too useful. The only way to fix this would be to make the sundry items nearly useless so you wouldn't want to pick it up anyway, but that would suck the fun out of checking every drawer or jumping in ever dumpster looking for stuff.

So yeah, I agree that weight restrictions can be annoying, but I totally see why they need to be in a bunch of games. If you want to have more than the odd resource available per area, or if you just have a huge damn map to traverse and scour for items, there has to be some way to limit how much stuff you're allowed to carry.
 

godofslack

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Honestly I think the weight limit reduces inventory management by removing bloat. I've played Skyrim without inventory limits and the only thing that happens is that I forget to sell stuff and end up with enough leather armor for it to be legally classified as a herd, all the food in skyrim, countless partially poisonous potions and enough Dwemer bars to build a city. And thing is every time I went into my inventory to find a potion or some food I spent a few minutes searching and god forbid I pick up a book, good luck finding that one underneath the cutlery I've accidentally picked up during my travels. I mean for me inventory limits are just a big sign that says "Hey time to empty your inventory of all the useless stuff!" I mean I know I don't really need the 0.5 weight apple that heals 2 health but that doesn't stop me from pioking it up.
 

purplemonkey555

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Well, sometimes a weight limit can have and effect on the gameplay itself by limiting your options in combat, causing you to plan on what you may need to bring. I agree that the Fallout/TES system of "running freely" or "Oh god I can't move" is poorly done, but some games do it right. Look at Dragon's Dogma, where having hardly any items on you lets you move super fast but if you carry a lot you start to get bogged down until you drop some off. I'm sure there are other games like that but that was just the first one to come to mind.

The only other thing I can think of is that it can keep your inventory clean. I often find that in games where you have infinite inventory space, I usually start dropping/selling things or putting them away anyway because I don't feel like sorting through five pages of swords to find the one I want to use.
 

nomotog_v1legacy

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008Zulu said:
I like the Deus Ex inventory system, it was Tetris style as mentioned above. There was another inventory style system that I like, but I can't remember the game it was from. That game's system was your coat pockets was your inventory system, if you wanted something, you had to open your coat to get it out. Annoying, especially during combat, but it added a nice sense of realism.
The one with the pockets was alone in the dark the remake. They could have fixed that annoying combat fumbling by just pausing time well you were in you inventory. It wouldn't really hurt immersion too much. I rather liked the idea of AITD's inventory, but in practice it had problems. The inventory was really limited. I think it was about two sets of four pockets and you had a lot of items you could carry. Some would be remarkably good in one kind of encounter (taped glow sticks), but they would be directly fighting items that were good in a lot of encounters (Taped fire bottles). Then the game would start taking away item slots as the game progressed increasing the pinch even more. Oh and it even had a crafting system too.
 

MrBaskerville

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Depends on the game, if the game is stuffed with things you need to pick up and is encouraged to pick up, then it would be annoying, if the game was carelessly designed around the idea that you have a limited inventory, then it might be quite cool. It all depends on context.
 

dumbseizure

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Wait, Demons souls had a weight limit for inventory?

I don't remember there being an inventory weight system in Dark Souls 1 and 2, just a "think I might wear this" weight system, or did I miss something?

Anyway, for me it depends on what the game is trying to achieve. In something like Dragons Dogma I liked it, because at any point if you were over encumbered you could just give some stuff to a pawn or sell it.

But in Dark souls 2 for example, I'm glad they didn't put one in, seeing as the only person you can sell stuff to is Gavlan.

I'm not really annoyed by them, for me its more of whether it fits into what the game is going for.
 

AuronFtw

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Johny_X2 said:
What it often boils down to, however, is excessive inventory management. Which is, for most people at least, not fun.
Just going by this thread, "most people" don't see it that way at all. It's typically only in RPGs with other inventory management aspects, and is best used in games aiming for immersion in a survivalist experience (fallout games are A+ perfect examples of ones that do use inventory weight limits as a great restriction, both much more harsh than most RPGs but also much more fitting). Not always, though; sometimes they're used to trim your item list down - in pokemon, your ability to carry thousands of every item on the planet led to them having to split the bag into multiple pockets because a single "bag" would be an absolute mess if there was no limit. JRPGs often have no inventory management in their UI, so your "item list" gets bogged down with dozens/hundreds of outdated or useless shit unless you meticulously prune it to get rid of older versions or lower tiers of items when necessary. Weight limits are just one way to help alleviate that problem.

They shouldn't be overused, and they really shouldn't be used in any game where they aren't reinforcing the "theme" of the game. In survival horror, post-apoc scavenging, or any similar themed games, the amount of stuff you carry being limited is a perfect immersive restriction. In a game made by lazy developers, it can wreak havoc on a your game experience if it's constantly breaking the flow... but for the most part, that's filtered out fairly early in development. The only RPGs I can think of with those systems tend to have them for a reason - Baldur's Gate adhered vehemently to AD&D's rule system, including item weights, but the RPGs that took heavy inspiration from that game (kotor, DA and even mass effect) drop the system because it didn't fit their game's tone or style.

I'd argue that Elder Scrolls games aim for as immersive an experience as you can get in a fantasy world, and item weights are a part of that. Various mods for those games can increase (or decrease) the player's desired level of immersion, often letting you carry infinite items around or decreasing item weight to 0 for entire types. That's "cheesy" for anyone aiming for immersion, but if you just want to roam around, slay dragons, kill bandits and never worry about flogging all your shit to a vendor, it's a perfect solution. Typically, though, your weight limits are well made; even in the very restrictive Fallout games, your strength score and various perks increase the amount you can carry, and in TES games you typically don't fill up to the max unless you do several dungeons in a row without heading to town once (or carry a thousand dragon hipbones on you at all times, for whatever reason).

All in all, no, they're usually fine how they are. Excepting the occasional incompetent development team, they're usually only found in games where they belong. A big part of RPGs is the meticulous attention you pay to your character; skill point allocation, badass gear, decisions you make that influence the world around you and sometimes even your own appearance. After all that, looking after your items is nothing.
 

sageoftruth

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There are certainly places for it. It was a pretty good addition to the early Resident Evil games, since the item limit kept you from stockpiling supplies and becoming an unstoppable powerhouse.
 

Revnak_v1legacy

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It depends on whether it's being used to limit the player's options, forcing them to think strategically about their inventory, or if it is being used to limit how much loot you can plunder, which is total bullshit and a massive waste of time.
 

sageoftruth

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dumbseizure said:
Wait, Demons souls had a weight limit for inventory?

I don't remember there being an inventory weight system in Dark Souls 1 and 2, just a "think I might wear this" weight system, or did I miss something?

Anyway, for me it depends on what the game is trying to achieve. In something like Dragons Dogma I liked it, because at any point if you were over encumbered you could just give some stuff to a pawn or sell it.

But in Dark souls 2 for example, I'm glad they didn't put one in, seeing as the only person you can sell stuff to is Gavlan.

I'm not really annoyed by them, for me its more of whether it fits into what the game is going for.
Yep. In Demon's Souls there was a Ring of Herculean Strength to increase your inventory capacity, but basically you gave all your extra items to a guy named Stockpile Thomas who would just hold onto them for you. Thankfully, you didn't need to have your ores with you when you saw a blacksmith. You could leave them all with Thomas and still get the upgrades you wanted.
 

sageoftruth

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Sleekit said:
wait...let me get this right...so the weapon carrying limit that came in with Halo is generally viewed as modern/realistic/cool/whatever and one of the big things that particular much vaulted game supposedly introduced to the FPS genre for the better...but a carry limit in an RPG like game is somehow a gaming abomination now ?...
Does anyone really like that element from modern FPSs? I figured people just complacently accepted it.
 

BakedSardine

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I hate carry limits, but think there should be a kind of hybrid system that let's you convert loot directly into money if you can't carry it. Most people generally only want to carry 1 melee and 1 ranged weapon (if given the option) and the only reason you usually want to carry more loot is to sell it. Just take the "carry back to the shop owner" mechanic out.
 

Username Redacted

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Ed130 The Vanguard said:
Well its either that or Item Tetris because being able to pick up anything with no limit would result in a mess of an inventory, broken game mechanics (like carrying enough ammunition to start WW4 in Fallout 3) and more.

Also your case in point is the exception not the rule to inventories and sounds like the implementation of it was either retarded or part of the game lore.
***** please! I had enough ammo in Fallout 3 to start AND finish WW4. ^_^
In theory I think the idea of weight based inventory management can work. In practice I'm having a hard time coming up with a game in which it actually did work. Whereas Tetris style inventory has numerous examples that work. Most notably Resident Evil 4 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Speaking of Demon's Souls I never really minded it since I like to travel light, plus I always keep a Ring of Herculean Strength on me just in case. I think it was only a bother once, and all it amounted to was discarding consumables like grass and maybe bolts or arrows. No biggie.

It does seem arbitrary. If you consider a weight limit adds to "realism", it still doesn't solve the Hammerspace issue of where the fuck are you storing everything you pick up. But again I've never been truly bothered by it.