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.
Honestly I think the problem with encumbrance, and why people tend to hate it so much is counterintuitive. Many RPGs that impliment encumbrance actually allow you to carry too much stuff. In...
Honestly I think the problem with encumbrance, and why people tend to hate it so much is counterintuitive.
Many RPGs that impliment encumbrance actually allow you to carry too much stuff. In baldurs gate 3, there are so many items, and your character can carry so much stuff that inventory management very quickly becomes an overwhelming chore.
If you compare that to something like diablo, where you can only carry a few items, or even with a shooter like fortnite, people don't worry about their inventories much. There's a limited amount of items you can have, so every time you see a new item you evaluate whether you should carry it based on the mental model of what you already have.
You don't have to open an inventory screen, sort by weight, constantly remind yourself of what you have on you. It's a much more intuitive and immersive way of dealing with the problem.
I mean, if you're in an RPG and you're wanting to feel like you're really on an adventure, breaking that flow to do bookkeeping is really a bummer.
How often did Frodo take all of his stuff out of his pack to weigh each item every time he found something new in Lord of the Rings, after all?
I do prefer the grid or a limited inventory over weight. Playing Daggerfall right now and weight is a concern, which is better than nothing, but definitely not ideal.
I do prefer the grid or a limited inventory over weight. Playing Daggerfall right now and weight is a concern, which is better than nothing, but definitely not ideal.
I agree. Weight is also not intuitive. You can't feel how heavy things are in video games, which means you need to have some hidden weight stat that you need to hover over or drill down into an...
I agree. Weight is also not intuitive. You can't feel how heavy things are in video games, which means you need to have some hidden weight stat that you need to hover over or drill down into an item to discover, and those weights will not always be in line with what you expect. (I think I remember playing a game with 5 lb apples or something). It's just more immersion breaking.
A grid is nice because it's really easy to see how big things are, both in the game world and in an inventory UI, and volume is just as much a constraint for how much stuff you can carry in real life as weight is. The only issue with a grid is that inventory Tetris often becomes an unintended, immersion breaking minigame. Especially when the developers decide to do stupid stuff like adding L shaped, or, god forbid, cross shaped or even z shaped items.
My favorite implimentaton is just simple rectangles that are all easy multiples of the smallest rectangles that the game has.
I can carry one longsword in the space of two broadswords, or four daggers, or eight potions. No need to spend a ton of time rotating stuff around. Just stuff it in my bag like I would on a real adventure. If it fits, great, if not, leave it behind.
A big issue for me is that for games with randomized stats on a gear, I quickly get into a state where nearly everything is somewhere on the Pareto frontier because of the high dimensionality of...
A big issue for me is that for games with randomized stats on a gear, I quickly get into a state where nearly everything is somewhere on the Pareto frontier because of the high dimensionality of the stats. It the beginning it's not too hard to find an upgrade that Pareto dominates something I already have and makes it a no-brainer to sell off the old thing. But towards the end, the stats can cover such a range that this is difficult. That feeling that I might want a different point on the Pareto frontier is what leads to me being a pack-rat with analysis paralysis.
I kind of like the old days of the early, simpler RPGs -- This character fights with a sword. He is using the Silver Sword. I now have access to the Gold Sword. The Gold Sword is strictly better than the Silver Sword, so I buy the Gold Sword and sell the Silver Sword. The End.
I'm thinking from a JRPG perspective, but my disposition is much simpler: I like grabbing stuff. I don't like not grabbing stuff. I like hoarding and having options for a battle. But I also get...
I'm thinking from a JRPG perspective, but my disposition is much simpler: I like grabbing stuff. I don't like not grabbing stuff. I like hoarding and having options for a battle.
But I also get why this gave old JRPGs the issues of being easy. You got access to 99 of every item and every single spell in your repetoire. It's nearly impossible to balance against that kind of resource bank by a player character.
So that's why more modern JRPGs tend to limit resources only while in battle. Kingdom hearts is the simplest example where you can have 99 of every item, but you can only stock 3-6 (depending on progression) items once you enter a battle. This lets you hoard all you want but still makes you consider what resources to carry into a battle. That seems to be the best balance between gameplay balance and flow of progression.
I think the scarcity fits in genres like horror or survival, but RPGs are already hard enough to pace as is. I'd personally rather not spend more time bookkeeping my inventory than I need to.
I think, like a lot of design, it depends on the design goal of the project. I recently completed Dovra Forgotten Kin and it had infinite inventory space in an RPG because the game is about...
I think, like a lot of design, it depends on the design goal of the project.
I recently completed Dovra Forgotten Kin and it had infinite inventory space in an RPG because the game is about exploration.
It allows the player to go to a quest hub, pick up quests, then leave and basically not come back until you feel like it which could be tens of hours later. The design is excellent.
Pit that against something like Fallout where actually wandering the wasteland back and forwards, retreading paths and sweating over which loot to carry home is part of the experience. Obviously it adds hours to the game too, all the backtracking to go to the store or storage pads out gameplay, but it can be fun if done correctly.
Drova at least does two things to compensate, I think. It doesn't give you too much. Sure you can pick flowers and the like, but getting more stuff is definitely a choice you make when you learn...
Drova at least does two things to compensate, I think.
It doesn't give you too much. Sure you can pick flowers and the like, but getting more stuff is definitely a choice you make when you learn the harvesting skills to get more stuff off creatures.
It really forces you to use your stuff. Whether that's healing plants or whatever, you really need to either be eating them or making them into creams; same goes for food items and making them into something more edible for longer food buffs. Even harvesting creatures, the game is kind of insisting you sell that stuff because it's so stingy with its economy, so you never really feel (at least in my 10 hours) overwhelmed with stuff in your inventory.
Gothic was the same; unlimited carry, but you picked stuff up because you really needed it and it was consistently useful, rather than just being a packrat in something like Skyrim, where you perceive that something might come in handy, but the game is generally so frictionless, you don't need all that stuff.
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.
Torchlight had an interesting take, but I actually prefer Diablo 1 or 2 to it for inventory management. To me, filling up on stuff poses you an interesting choice, especially once you're full up...
Torchlight had an interesting take, but I actually prefer Diablo 1 or 2 to it for inventory management. To me, filling up on stuff poses you an interesting choice, especially once you're full up on stuff.
If you have potions, do you just continue through the dungeon until you've freed up more space? Or maybe you spend some identify scrolls to look at a few of the things you've picked up and determine if they're actually of value. If not, dump them and pick up the new thing.
Failing those, you now have the choice of whether you should press on or take a breather. I like the in built breaks the game gives you by forcing you to go back to town once your inventory is full-up; it creates this interesting tempo to the game where you're deep in the shit, but then you need to go back and calm down, talk to people, sell and reprepare yourself to go back out to press deeper into the dungeon.
Strong opinion: Encumbrance should be a toggle in the options menu in most games, ESPECIALLY gigantic RPG's with hundreds/thousands of items. I am an adult nowadays with many other hobbies and...
Strong opinion: Encumbrance should be a toggle in the options menu in most games, ESPECIALLY gigantic RPG's with hundreds/thousands of items.
I am an adult nowadays with many other hobbies and time sinks. If you're a game dev and you want me to actually play your game to the end, you either better NAIL the inventory system for your particular game if you want me to play it with encumbrance, or allow me the ability to turn it off. Whether that be in the options or with mods, I'm fine with either. I probably have ADHD (haven't been diagnosed), and if I have to specifically sort through every item on every single body/chest I loot in a 30+ hour game because I'm near my weight limit, I'm going to stop playing. It's not a question, it's a guarantee.
Examples of really long games I have actually finished:
All of the Divinity's since Original Sin
Elden Ring
Cyberpunk 2077 (with a mod that disables encumbrance)
One common thread between all of these is the lack of encumbrance to worry about. I can absolutely guarantee I would not have finished these games if encumbrance had been forced upon me. I am playing the game to enjoy the gameplay and story, not to spend literally 20 hours of actual life sorting an inventory system. I could go organize some area in my house if I wanted that experience.
Another very strong opinion: EVERY game from now on that has a large inventory system should have a search bar that I can just type part of the item name in and filter my inventory for it. Cyberpunk (and CDPR games in general) have this problem where the thumbnails they use for items are just BAD. Like, it's hard to find items in all of their games because the thumbnails can blend together so much. Honestly, it's shocking that CDPR has such a bad inventory system in Cyberpunk after all of these years making big RPG's, they need to get their shit together in that regard.
Okay, on the topic of inventory systems, here's another strong opinion: Any game with an inventory system on PC should also design it in such a way that I can move around the inventory system with the WASD/movement keys. My hand gets tired in RPG's from so much mousing around icon lists. Example: My usual key bind to open inventory is Tab. So I should be able to hit Tab and then just start using my WASD keys to move around to whatever inventory items I want. Either E or F is used to open the info/options menu for the item. Then the other of those two keys is the "Use" or "Equip/Unequip" buttons. If your inventory system has multiple tabs, then the 1 and 3 keys work well to move between tabs. There should also be a hotkey that selects the inventory search bar I mentioned above so that I can start typing in that box if I want to filter. Then, the same hotkey takes me back to the inventory moving around it with WASD (tilde would work well as this hotkey, or Shift+S.) Cyberpunk actually does a pretty good job of this system, except they don't have a search bar and their inventory filters don't actually do what you want a lot of the time.
I haven't played them all, but Divinity Original Sin 2 has character carry weight limits, because I have to micro manage mine all the time and it's tiresome. Am I missing something or have I...
I haven't played them all, but Divinity Original Sin 2 has character carry weight limits, because I have to micro manage mine all the time and it's tiresome.
Am I missing something or have I misunderstood what you meant?
Pro tip: just use a trainer with an "infinite carry weight" cheat. It makes the Divinity games (and Baldur's Gate 3) less tedious and more fun. That's what a friend and I did when we played...
Pro tip: just use a trainer with an "infinite carry weight" cheat. It makes the Divinity games (and Baldur's Gate 3) less tedious and more fun.
That's what a friend and I did when we played through the Divinity games, we each loaded up a trainer and increased our playthrough difficulty as an offset. It was a much more enjoyable experience than our previous attempts at the games, since we didn't have to, as you mentioned, micromanage our inventories or, even worse, designate a specific party member as "the mule" and micromanage their inventory.
And since we upped the difficulty, sure, we could carry dozens of potions and scrolls around, but we were burning through them at a much faster rate to survive combat encounters. At least in Divinity's case, it ends up balancing out quite well.
Weird aside but while I was watching this I was thinking of games where I ended up in inventory hell, sorting through hundreds of worthless items I picked up for no reason, and aside from Skyrim...
Weird aside but while I was watching this I was thinking of games where I ended up in inventory hell, sorting through hundreds of worthless items I picked up for no reason, and aside from Skyrim which is obvious, for whatever reason the other one I thought of was South Park - The Stick of Truth. I was surprised to learn Tim Cain worked as a programmer on that game.
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.
Honestly I think the problem with encumbrance, and why people tend to hate it so much is counterintuitive.
Many RPGs that impliment encumbrance actually allow you to carry too much stuff. In baldurs gate 3, there are so many items, and your character can carry so much stuff that inventory management very quickly becomes an overwhelming chore.
If you compare that to something like diablo, where you can only carry a few items, or even with a shooter like fortnite, people don't worry about their inventories much. There's a limited amount of items you can have, so every time you see a new item you evaluate whether you should carry it based on the mental model of what you already have.
You don't have to open an inventory screen, sort by weight, constantly remind yourself of what you have on you. It's a much more intuitive and immersive way of dealing with the problem.
I mean, if you're in an RPG and you're wanting to feel like you're really on an adventure, breaking that flow to do bookkeeping is really a bummer.
How often did Frodo take all of his stuff out of his pack to weigh each item every time he found something new in Lord of the Rings, after all?
I do prefer the grid or a limited inventory over weight. Playing Daggerfall right now and weight is a concern, which is better than nothing, but definitely not ideal.
I agree. Weight is also not intuitive. You can't feel how heavy things are in video games, which means you need to have some hidden weight stat that you need to hover over or drill down into an item to discover, and those weights will not always be in line with what you expect. (I think I remember playing a game with 5 lb apples or something). It's just more immersion breaking.
A grid is nice because it's really easy to see how big things are, both in the game world and in an inventory UI, and volume is just as much a constraint for how much stuff you can carry in real life as weight is. The only issue with a grid is that inventory Tetris often becomes an unintended, immersion breaking minigame. Especially when the developers decide to do stupid stuff like adding L shaped, or, god forbid, cross shaped or even z shaped items.
My favorite implimentaton is just simple rectangles that are all easy multiples of the smallest rectangles that the game has.
I can carry one longsword in the space of two broadswords, or four daggers, or eight potions. No need to spend a ton of time rotating stuff around. Just stuff it in my bag like I would on a real adventure. If it fits, great, if not, leave it behind.
A big issue for me is that for games with randomized stats on a gear, I quickly get into a state where nearly everything is somewhere on the Pareto frontier because of the high dimensionality of the stats. It the beginning it's not too hard to find an upgrade that Pareto dominates something I already have and makes it a no-brainer to sell off the old thing. But towards the end, the stats can cover such a range that this is difficult. That feeling that I might want a different point on the Pareto frontier is what leads to me being a pack-rat with analysis paralysis.
I kind of like the old days of the early, simpler RPGs -- This character fights with a sword. He is using the Silver Sword. I now have access to the Gold Sword. The Gold Sword is strictly better than the Silver Sword, so I buy the Gold Sword and sell the Silver Sword. The End.
And in the late game to get fancy there might be a fir swrd, an ice swrd, and maybe a thn swrd as a treat.
I'm thinking from a JRPG perspective, but my disposition is much simpler: I like grabbing stuff. I don't like not grabbing stuff. I like hoarding and having options for a battle.
But I also get why this gave old JRPGs the issues of being easy. You got access to 99 of every item and every single spell in your repetoire. It's nearly impossible to balance against that kind of resource bank by a player character.
So that's why more modern JRPGs tend to limit resources only while in battle. Kingdom hearts is the simplest example where you can have 99 of every item, but you can only stock 3-6 (depending on progression) items once you enter a battle. This lets you hoard all you want but still makes you consider what resources to carry into a battle. That seems to be the best balance between gameplay balance and flow of progression.
I think the scarcity fits in genres like horror or survival, but RPGs are already hard enough to pace as is. I'd personally rather not spend more time bookkeeping my inventory than I need to.
I think, like a lot of design, it depends on the design goal of the project.
I recently completed Dovra Forgotten Kin and it had infinite inventory space in an RPG because the game is about exploration.
It allows the player to go to a quest hub, pick up quests, then leave and basically not come back until you feel like it which could be tens of hours later. The design is excellent.
Pit that against something like Fallout where actually wandering the wasteland back and forwards, retreading paths and sweating over which loot to carry home is part of the experience. Obviously it adds hours to the game too, all the backtracking to go to the store or storage pads out gameplay, but it can be fun if done correctly.
Drova at least does two things to compensate, I think.
It doesn't give you too much. Sure you can pick flowers and the like, but getting more stuff is definitely a choice you make when you learn the harvesting skills to get more stuff off creatures.
It really forces you to use your stuff. Whether that's healing plants or whatever, you really need to either be eating them or making them into creams; same goes for food items and making them into something more edible for longer food buffs. Even harvesting creatures, the game is kind of insisting you sell that stuff because it's so stingy with its economy, so you never really feel (at least in my 10 hours) overwhelmed with stuff in your inventory.
Gothic was the same; unlimited carry, but you picked stuff up because you really needed it and it was consistently useful, rather than just being a packrat in something like Skyrim, where you perceive that something might come in handy, but the game is generally so frictionless, you don't need all that stuff.
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.
Torchlight had an interesting take, but I actually prefer Diablo 1 or 2 to it for inventory management. To me, filling up on stuff poses you an interesting choice, especially once you're full up on stuff.
If you have potions, do you just continue through the dungeon until you've freed up more space? Or maybe you spend some identify scrolls to look at a few of the things you've picked up and determine if they're actually of value. If not, dump them and pick up the new thing.
Failing those, you now have the choice of whether you should press on or take a breather. I like the in built breaks the game gives you by forcing you to go back to town once your inventory is full-up; it creates this interesting tempo to the game where you're deep in the shit, but then you need to go back and calm down, talk to people, sell and reprepare yourself to go back out to press deeper into the dungeon.
But I'm a big fan of boredom in games.
Strong opinion: Encumbrance should be a toggle in the options menu in most games, ESPECIALLY gigantic RPG's with hundreds/thousands of items.
I am an adult nowadays with many other hobbies and time sinks. If you're a game dev and you want me to actually play your game to the end, you either better NAIL the inventory system for your particular game if you want me to play it with encumbrance, or allow me the ability to turn it off. Whether that be in the options or with mods, I'm fine with either. I probably have ADHD (haven't been diagnosed), and if I have to specifically sort through every item on every single body/chest I loot in a 30+ hour game because I'm near my weight limit, I'm going to stop playing. It's not a question, it's a guarantee.
Examples of really long games I have actually finished:
One common thread between all of these is the lack of encumbrance to worry about. I can absolutely guarantee I would not have finished these games if encumbrance had been forced upon me. I am playing the game to enjoy the gameplay and story, not to spend literally 20 hours of actual life sorting an inventory system. I could go organize some area in my house if I wanted that experience.
Another very strong opinion: EVERY game from now on that has a large inventory system should have a search bar that I can just type part of the item name in and filter my inventory for it. Cyberpunk (and CDPR games in general) have this problem where the thumbnails they use for items are just BAD. Like, it's hard to find items in all of their games because the thumbnails can blend together so much. Honestly, it's shocking that CDPR has such a bad inventory system in Cyberpunk after all of these years making big RPG's, they need to get their shit together in that regard.
Okay, on the topic of inventory systems, here's another strong opinion: Any game with an inventory system on PC should also design it in such a way that I can move around the inventory system with the WASD/movement keys. My hand gets tired in RPG's from so much mousing around icon lists. Example: My usual key bind to open inventory is Tab. So I should be able to hit Tab and then just start using my WASD keys to move around to whatever inventory items I want. Either E or F is used to open the info/options menu for the item. Then the other of those two keys is the "Use" or "Equip/Unequip" buttons. If your inventory system has multiple tabs, then the 1 and 3 keys work well to move between tabs. There should also be a hotkey that selects the inventory search bar I mentioned above so that I can start typing in that box if I want to filter. Then, the same hotkey takes me back to the inventory moving around it with WASD (tilde would work well as this hotkey, or Shift+S.) Cyberpunk actually does a pretty good job of this system, except they don't have a search bar and their inventory filters don't actually do what you want a lot of the time.
I haven't played them all, but Divinity Original Sin 2 has character carry weight limits, because I have to micro manage mine all the time and it's tiresome.
Am I missing something or have I misunderstood what you meant?
Pro tip: just use a trainer with an "infinite carry weight" cheat. It makes the Divinity games (and Baldur's Gate 3) less tedious and more fun.
That's what a friend and I did when we played through the Divinity games, we each loaded up a trainer and increased our playthrough difficulty as an offset. It was a much more enjoyable experience than our previous attempts at the games, since we didn't have to, as you mentioned, micromanage our inventories or, even worse, designate a specific party member as "the mule" and micromanage their inventory.
And since we upped the difficulty, sure, we could carry dozens of potions and scrolls around, but we were burning through them at a much faster rate to survive combat encounters. At least in Divinity's case, it ends up balancing out quite well.
Part 2.
Weird aside but while I was watching this I was thinking of games where I ended up in inventory hell, sorting through hundreds of worthless items I picked up for no reason, and aside from Skyrim which is obvious, for whatever reason the other one I thought of was South Park - The Stick of Truth. I was surprised to learn Tim Cain worked as a programmer on that game.