Tim Cain is just so damn cute, I enjoy listening to him. Also, I broadly agree with encumbrance. I started thinking about it a little more seriously (I am not a game designer) a couple of years...
Tim Cain is just so damn cute, I enjoy listening to him.
Also, I broadly agree with encumbrance. I started thinking about it a little more seriously (I am not a game designer) a couple of years ago when I put quite a lot of time into the original Diablo after playing Grim Dawn a lot.
Trying to be broad strokes here so I don't get too long winded, but I really love having to make the difficult choice of what to carry. It gives more weight (no pun intended) to the stuff that you need to bring with you to survive (your armor, potions, etc) and the items you can actually pick-up to replace your old stuff with or sell. When a game just has a limitless inventory, I personally find myself completely overwhelmed and eventually not wanting to bother with the game anymore. See Grim Dawn and even Divinity: Original Sin 2. The inventories become so vast because you can carry everything that they become this chore to sort through and everything becomes essentially meaningless.
Not to mention, having encumbrance encourages a player to actually use the stuff they have. I don't recall what game it was that I had been playing relatively recently, but I recall stuff like buff potions, grenades, etc all have weight (it may have been Caves of Qud, now that I think about it) and when you suddenly can't pick up anymore stuff, you start thinking, "Well, maybe I should use some of these consumables to cut down" and thereby begin to free up space for more things.
Encumbrance is one of those things these days that gets a bad name, but ultimately has a tendency to make games more bland and shallow. People like to equally complain about RNG, another gaming zeitgeist, which the removal of tends to make things generally less interesting.
Absolutely agree with you comment on enumbrance. Playing Skyrim/Fallout 3/4/New Vegas the ridiculous amount of things my character can hold is terrible to the role-playing aspect and makes the...
Absolutely agree with you comment on enumbrance. Playing Skyrim/Fallout 3/4/New Vegas the ridiculous amount of things my character can hold is terrible to the role-playing aspect and makes the objects cheap and irrelevant. They're just data, not "real" objects.
Also, I have noticed that it is pleasant to watch Cain. I didn't have a word for it, but I think "cute" is what I'd use to describe it. Dude's cute! Lol
It's an interesting point you made about being forced to use your stuff. When playing Diablo II, I tended to hoard potions, but also felt fewer qualms about using them because they freed up some...
It's an interesting point you made about being forced to use your stuff. When playing Diablo II, I tended to hoard potions, but also felt fewer qualms about using them because they freed up some space. (Yeah, I did a lot of transferring from inventory to belt during quieter moments -- that time spent wasn't exactly a plus.)
I always rather liked Torchlight's system, in which you have a pet you can periodically send back to town to sell the stuff you've looted but don't want to keep. You couldn't get them to buy new stuff for you, though (or so I seem to remember). It felt like a good balance, but after watching this video, I wonder if it came with some hidden costs that I didn't see at the time.
Tim Cain is just so damn cute, I enjoy listening to him.
Also, I broadly agree with encumbrance. I started thinking about it a little more seriously (I am not a game designer) a couple of years ago when I put quite a lot of time into the original Diablo after playing Grim Dawn a lot.
Trying to be broad strokes here so I don't get too long winded, but I really love having to make the difficult choice of what to carry. It gives more weight (no pun intended) to the stuff that you need to bring with you to survive (your armor, potions, etc) and the items you can actually pick-up to replace your old stuff with or sell. When a game just has a limitless inventory, I personally find myself completely overwhelmed and eventually not wanting to bother with the game anymore. See Grim Dawn and even Divinity: Original Sin 2. The inventories become so vast because you can carry everything that they become this chore to sort through and everything becomes essentially meaningless.
Not to mention, having encumbrance encourages a player to actually use the stuff they have. I don't recall what game it was that I had been playing relatively recently, but I recall stuff like buff potions, grenades, etc all have weight (it may have been Caves of Qud, now that I think about it) and when you suddenly can't pick up anymore stuff, you start thinking, "Well, maybe I should use some of these consumables to cut down" and thereby begin to free up space for more things.
Encumbrance is one of those things these days that gets a bad name, but ultimately has a tendency to make games more bland and shallow. People like to equally complain about RNG, another gaming zeitgeist, which the removal of tends to make things generally less interesting.
Absolutely agree with you comment on enumbrance. Playing Skyrim/Fallout 3/4/New Vegas the ridiculous amount of things my character can hold is terrible to the role-playing aspect and makes the objects cheap and irrelevant. They're just data, not "real" objects.
Also, I have noticed that it is pleasant to watch Cain. I didn't have a word for it, but I think "cute" is what I'd use to describe it. Dude's cute! Lol
It's an interesting point you made about being forced to use your stuff. When playing Diablo II, I tended to hoard potions, but also felt fewer qualms about using them because they freed up some space. (Yeah, I did a lot of transferring from inventory to belt during quieter moments -- that time spent wasn't exactly a plus.)
I always rather liked Torchlight's system, in which you have a pet you can periodically send back to town to sell the stuff you've looted but don't want to keep. You couldn't get them to buy new stuff for you, though (or so I seem to remember). It felt like a good balance, but after watching this video, I wonder if it came with some hidden costs that I didn't see at the time.
Part 2.