Cigol says:

Please; email blizzard your suggestion above. Allowing us to sell directly from the inventory screen would save so much heartache. Maybe limit it to sales and force us back for purchases. I don’t know… just, do something because it’s a very laboured and annoying mechanic that I don’t even think adds to the addictiveness but takes away from it.

July 7th, 2008 at 11:22 pm

Whiskey Jak says:

Glad I ain’t alone on this one. Almost right after seeing the Diablo III footage I searched for my Diablo II copy, couldn’t find it, figured I “lost” it somewhere (more probable that my gf took the opportunity of us moving to a new house to “clean up” or something) and went directly to the Blizzard store and bought it back for 20$.

Two days later, seeing that Diablo II wouldn’t suffice, I went on my Steam account and bought Titan Gold Edition. I played the demo or something at work and liked it enough. I’m such a good little consumer… how depressing.

And I think I’ve played too much these last few days. My first reflex while reading this article was to put my pointer over the staff image to see what it was. Like I said… depressing.

As for Oblivion, my only grudge was when you see “You are over burdened” (or whatever the way that they phrase it).

July 7th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

EyeMessiah says:

Like everything that sucks about rpgs, it has unfortunately become an integral part of the genre and will take a long time to shake off. Also like everything that sucks about RPGS it represents the things that were easy to port over from REAL RPGS at the expense of leaving the hard things (the R & the P most often) behind. So instead of immersing yourself in a captivating fantasy world where YOU are the hero, you get stuck with some crazy minigame where you have to find the optimal way to stack identical cloaks so when you go back to town you can desperately extract some meaning out from the lives of the 600 identical quill-boars\gnolls\murlocks you have spent the last two hours mercilessly killing.

I’m in despair! The world of repetitive number crunching CRPGS that miss the point of REAL RPGS has left me in despair!

July 7th, 2008 at 11:27 pm

Pidesco says:

You completely missed the point.

The problem isn’t the inventories, the problem is that Diablo style dungeon romps are all about getting loot and kitting yourself with it. They’re not about saving the world, exploring new lands, meeting new characters, playing through a story or even just killing monsters. Diablo style games are simply glorified loot collecting. For some reason this is incredibly addictive for many people, but the problem isn’t the inventories. If you took the inventory away Diablo would automatically crumble because there’d be nothing left to do.

RPG style inventories are fine as long as they aren’t all there is to the game.

July 7th, 2008 at 11:28 pm

PsyW says:

The Mass Effect quartermaster buys nonstandard weapons (i.e. NOT crappy hahne-kedar standard issue Alliance equipment) from his own money, to provide you and your team with better than normal equipment. Basically, Bioware needed to put a shop on the Normandy and this is a decent attempt at justifying it. Anyway, I maxed out my first character at 9,999,999 credits, so I think it’s fair I pay him for the weapons he paid for…

What you should really be complaining about is the stupid arbitrary 150 item limit after which you are forced to reduce new items to gel. Luckily, it’s quite easy to mod out in MEPC…

July 7th, 2008 at 11:30 pm

Jochen Scheisse says:

And don’t forget the BLING GNOME!

July 7th, 2008 at 11:30 pm

Jonas says:

To be fair though, the problem isn’t really that your inventory is limited, is it? After all, Halo’s or Call of Duty’s inventories are even more limited. The problem is that earning money is an important aspect of the gameplay, and the best and fastest way to do that is to pick up any useful stuff you find (which in these games is quite a truckload of items) and drag it back to town to sell it.

Note that you couldn’t sell items in Deus Ex, and so the inventory tetris just served as a decent way to restrict your inventory and make you pick the weapons you want to use.

July 7th, 2008 at 11:39 pm

Atacama says:

You only used 1 spell like that in Oblivion? By the time I got to level 15 or so I was continually stacking 3 of them plus a couple of capacity-upping items. Every time I upgraded I would take more strength to carry more loot. I don’t play RPGs in general so I found it pretty fun to have a game with such a strong loot mining component (I was saving up for all the battlehorn castle stuff…). But, if every game was like that I would completely lose interest.

The only inventory-related thing that’s really irritated me is playing all the way through STALKER without a single opportunity to use any of the rocket launchers I found, because they’re too heavy. I could have shot a mutant dog with one, but I wanted at least a helicopter to ’splode. Next time (and maybe with Clear Skies if it’s similar) I’m using a weight mod.

July 7th, 2008 at 11:44 pm

Mil says:

I agree that inventories as they currently exist in most CRPGs seem like a strange compromise. I could understand limiting the player to a couple of large weapons for plausibility reasons, but if you’re going to allow them to carry ten swords, why not make it one hundred or one thousand?

July 7th, 2008 at 11:47 pm

yns88 says:

MisterBritish: Diablo 1 did that. Gold took up one slot in your inventory in stacks of 5000. So by the end of the game you either had half your inventory filled up, or rows of loot lined up the town square. There were some obvious problems with this: in order to buy anything expensive, you had to go and pick up all 15 piles of gold you had in town, and it ended up becoming hard to navigate without accidentally clicking on some gold. Not to mention the problems it had with multiplayer…

However, a better system is in most roguelikes, where each gold piece takes up a fraction of a pound in weight. Once it starts getting heavy, you’ve got to either stash it away somewhere or just spend it on something.

Also, like others have said, it’s really not the inventory that’s the problem; the inventory minigame is necessary in order to give the game any substance at all. That’s why you tend to only notice it so much in action RPGs, even though real RPGs usually have the same system.

Edit to Paul: The reason why Diablo is called an RPG is because it’s a descendant of the roguelike, which some consider to be an RPG. I personally would rather have all dungeon crawling games to be lumped into their own category; that way we won’t have all the genre-clashing that RPG fans get into.

July 7th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

Fede says:

yns88: I’ve heard about IVaN’s system, but I was wondering… couldn’t one simply get immFire resBlind and a huge amount of scrolls? Scrolls are light and if you can read them safely they should be a reliable life-saver, unless you can be insta-killed. So someone going on slowly shouldn’t have so many problems, is it correct?

July 8th, 2008 at 12:11 am

Sam Combs says:

I don’t know, I think the limitation of having only so much inventory space adds something to the game, when inventory management isn’t the whole game like in Diablo. For example, in Deus Ex. There really isn’t a point to picking up every single thing in the level, unless you’re OCD about it, since there’s no one to sell it to, and you can’t use half of it effectively anyway since you don’t have the skills for it. Items you need multiples of (medkits, multitools, lockpicks) stacked, so you could always hang on to plenty of those. The limited inventory space forces you to be practical and specialize. It also made the “blow everything up” style of play more of a challenge since you could only hold on to so many things that go boom.

The same goes for STALKER – I don’t understand why everyone complained about the limited carrying weight and quickslots. It adds another layer of decisions to the game – should I take this rocket launcher and dump that backup rifle I’ve been carrying around? Rockets are pretty rare, and my main rifle might break, but I do like to blow things up with rockets…

July 8th, 2008 at 12:13 am

Andrew Doull says:

Years of developing roguelikes has left me convinced that not letting the player sell anything is the best way to combat this particular inventory scourge. The trip to town component is just too much like work, and the lack of game world breaking inflation and infinite shop purses just as inexplicable.

July 8th, 2008 at 12:18 am

yns88 says:

Fede: I can’t really say for sure, since I haven’t gotten past the second dungeon. The game’s kind enough to reveal the identity of all scrolls, potions, and wands, and there’s no BUC status on items, but in order to make up for that the monsters are incredibly difficult. That said, going slowly and searching a lot really would help; sometimes stepping on a mine can kill you in one turn; this is even more true when you’re carrying a wand of fireballs that can explode at the slightest disturbance. However, only a fraction of the animals you kill can be safely eaten, and food quickly goes rotten unless tinned, so there’s a real limit to how slowly you can go.

(oh, and sorry for going so off-topic, here, I’ll try to get back on again)
Andrew: Sure, that’s one approach for it, but the problem you get into then is that the only way to buy things is to collect piles of gold lying around. I prefer either having shops within the dungeon or making sure that the dungeons never get too deep, and having the shopkeepers only willing to give you money for rare, quality items.

July 8th, 2008 at 12:26 am

Ginger Yellow says:

I think you could keep the loot lust and drop the tedious inventory management/recycling if they just made the drops worthless, GP wise. You can’t lose the loot lust and still have a Diablo-clone be a Diablo-clone. But if you make loot about being something to equip rather than something to sell (to a vendor), then you don’t have to faff about with portals and the like but you keep the addictive nature of those games. If you find something really cool that you can’t use (an awesome crossbow when you’re a melee specialist, say) then you can trade it with another player, but no NPC will take it off your hands.

July 8th, 2008 at 12:31 am

Noc says:

Sam Combos: I think the complaint in the article wasn’t about limited space.

The mechanic in Action RPGs has NOTHING to do with deciding what to pick up or not. It’s a given that you’ll pick up everything that’s not worthless and then run back to town to sell it then repeat. It’s not about making sure that you’ve got the equipment you need on you . . . it’s about trying to gather as much expensive junk as you can then open a portal back to town, sell it, then repeat the process until the end of the game.

July 8th, 2008 at 12:35 am

Tom says:

There is no cow level…
But seriously, Diablo is an insane game. Have you ever watched somebody play a character at the highest level?
Truly disturbing, especially when you know that this level 99 Barbarian this someone is showing off to you is just one out of 10 level 90+ characters that that someone has…
Anyway, he doesn’t really cares about picking ‘things’ up. its just killkillkillkillkill.
Much like fps, like doom, which too alow you to carry lots and lots of very big guns, but still stay agile, even though you don’t even have any feet…

July 8th, 2008 at 12:39 am

Stick says:

Another alternative:

Bard’s Tale had everything non-critical automatically converted to cash. Of course, that game’s central mechanic wasn’t loot collection…

I s’pose it’s hard to separate the Woo! Purple Unique Set Item of Extra Shiny from the Inventory Tetris of Blaaargh.

July 8th, 2008 at 12:45 am

EyeMessiah says:

In deus ex I once picked up every movable object in Unatco HQ and moved them all into my office. Including stuff that you couldn’t put in your inventory so I had to carry lamps e.t.c. one at a time. It took a long time, but once I was finished I was happy, and my office was filled almost to bursting point with awesome things.

July 8th, 2008 at 12:50 am

Dolphan says:

I’m playing Diablo 2 as well – planning to complete it for the first time. The trips to town are massively irritating. I like getting new stuff, sure, but I think I’d enjoy the game as much if I couldn’t sell items. The enjoyment comes from getting new stuff to equip (and most of all from levelling up and getting new skills to use to beat down tricky enemies or massive hordes) not the constant town portal spamming.

July 8th, 2008 at 1:01 am

Deuteronomy says:

Stalker’s inventory system was not a square based system friend. It was weight limited.

July 8th, 2008 at 1:08 am

veerus says:

At its most basic level we strive for bigger and shinier toys and since those toys cost money, we pick up whatever crap we can find off the ground to be able to sell it for money to buy the next best toy. The problem which inspired this great rant is that these games force us to pick up a lot of useless items so we can sell them to be able to afford that shiny toy we saw for sale. The solution seems simple to me — cut out the middle man. Instead of monsters dropping rusty axes and copper helmets, they could just drop money. Or if that’s unrealistic enough, they can drop their teeth or brains or something else that’s small, stackable and can be sold to townspeople so they can make their favorite pie out of it. The point here is to eliminate random worthless loot and substitute it by a small currency-equivalent item that doesn’t take up inventory space. Leave the item drops to the unique monsters whose loot actually matters. If D2 was this way, I bet you could go through the most of the first act before even considering going back to town.

July 8th, 2008 at 1:18 am

Arathain says:

One of the things that bugs me is the veritable explosion of loot that occurs every time I kill a bunch of things, 99% of which is utterly useless to me. Even if something drops that I might want (when identified, it’ll turn out to be useless as well, but you have to hope) I have to wade through acres of non-magical junk or weapons I can’t use just to pick the stupid stuff up. I’d like to see far fewer drops with a higher chance of being useable. Why do magic wands keep dropping for my Barbarian? Why enormous axes for my Necromancer? It would be easy to have the loot tables select for what you can use.

July 8th, 2008 at 1:23 am

Tunips says:

If I recall, Throne of Darkness had a system where the various shops were just another window on your inventory. And the collection and sale of loot was about more than just money. You could melt down stacks of useless items, and forge them into something much pointier.

July 8th, 2008 at 2:01 am

Orlandin says:

Let me start by saying I agree that the D&D method is a great way of managing the loot situation, but the other ideas are junk. The point of the loot system is to make decisions on what you want to keep or drop. Is it an upgrade, or keep it to sell. Keep it for a backup, or a different fight situation. I see inventory as another place to add strategy. The item eating gnome….that is just dumb.

July 8th, 2008 at 2:06 am

Atacama says:

@Sam Combs

I agree with you in general, but the problem here is that the sensible decision is not the fun decision, and STALKER is tough enough that I had to take the sensible decision.

Some people like that kind of thing though. I also can’t play stealth games because waiting 2 minutes for the guard to wander off (sensible) instead of just vaporising him (fun) doesn’t work for me.

Almost on topic: typewriter ribbons! Now, compared to that padding the game out via shopping trips is mild. Loot that can keep you alive vs save points that permit you to turn the machine off and go to work…

July 8th, 2008 at 2:29 am

malkav11 says:

I *hate* Halo’s gun restriction – it might add strategy, but at the expense of tactics. And the tactics are a lot more interesting in an FPS than long-term strategy.

I tend to also hate inventory limits, seeing them as mostly an annoyance. But there are ways to make them more interesting and less annoying. Removing the size-based slots, for example – these are easily the most irritating thing in Diablo and Titan Quest’s inventory systems. Doing away with selling – it’s fine to have specific treasure items and the like, but I should feel free to leave the standard equipment lying there, snagging only things that are genuinely special and interesting. Crafting – being able to break down loot into building blocks for shinier loot is neat.

Honestly, I thought the Witcher did a pretty good job – the inventory system could’ve been a bit cleaner, but your gear went in specific slots on your body and so you only took actual upgrades, which were rare. Everything else was some sort of small utility item, be it flint and tinder for starting campfires, or alchemical ingredients for making potions (by far the most common), or the potions themselves, etc. Only a couple of specific kinds of items were worth selling, so you didn’t have to loot everything and then run back to town all the time.

July 8th, 2008 at 2:59 am

El Stevo says:

I never had to worry about inventory size in Final Fantasy…

July 8th, 2008 at 4:04 am

Charcoal says:

here’s a little flash game you’ll love *smirks*

July 8th, 2008 at 4:31 am

Krupo says:

“I always liked the transmutation spell in Dungeon siege, instantly turns crap loot into gold!”
+1

“I miss those dancing blocks of colour from the defrag… The XP one is all boring.”
And the Vista thing is like non-existent and mysterious. WTF?

I think you’ve just pointed out why I preferred Colonization over most RPGs -> it’s all about collecting and selling crap, but with a real ‘economy’ thrown into the mix.

July 8th, 2008 at 4:54 am

F'yth says:

I’m another of those people playing Diablo 2 again. The constant trips back are kind of annoying, I agree (it doesn’t help that the grand/large charms take up such a large portion of my backpack).

That’s why I pretty much only pick up wands, scepters and the stuff I need.

July 8th, 2008 at 5:28 am

ThaYoost says:

well-written… loved it..

July 8th, 2008 at 6:04 am

malkav11 says:

Personally I would far rather collect a meaningful upgrade (or tactically diverse optional equipment) irregularly than showers of meaningless loot constantly.

July 8th, 2008 at 6:51 am

devlocke says:

Am I the only person in the world that just doesn’t care? As a person, I have a limited ability to carry stuff. When I’m playing a game, I just don’t see any reason that my character should have an infinite ability to carry stuff. I take note of the inventory systems as much as I have to, in order to play the game, which means I make decisions based on how they worked it out for the game in question. But it never even occurred to me to get upset about it, if I had to choose to drop stuff or portal back or whatever.

It’s been a while since I played Diablo 2 but I don’t remember ever being short of cash or freaking out because I had to keep making trips or anything. Never really noticed anything I couldn’t do without so extremely that I absolutely couldn’t drop something, if there was something I wanted to pick up, or alternately not pick up, if I didn’t want to drop anything.

I wear cargo pants because I like having lots of pockets. I’m a fan of carrying tons of stuff around. But jesus, it’s such a little thing in most games. And it makes sense to limit inventory.

July 8th, 2008 at 7:19 am

Albides says:

I’d wager it really is just a compulsive sort of behaviour that makes some people return constantly to town to sell loot even though they know full well they’ll never buy anything. There’s nothing rational in it.

Which makes sense, as games like Diablo and Titan Quest are 90% compulsion.

July 8th, 2008 at 8:11 am

Feet says:

I really can’t stand the brown bit at the the bottom of bananas. Strangely I was eating a banana for breakfast while I read this, and low and behold, brown bit. I was all like, “Huh”.

July 8th, 2008 at 8:33 am

Optimaximal says:

One solution = Progress Quest

100% automated inventory management

July 8th, 2008 at 9:32 am

Jetsetlemming says:

@Malagate:
I’ve said just about that very same thing in bullshiting with friends about game ideas. I’d love to see a game with no arbitrary weight or size limits- you can carry what can fit in your backpack, which can be any backpack or bag shaped object you find, with all the items physically simulated in the bag. Weapons are kept in holsters that you wear, customize, and have different options for such as where they sit on your body and at what angle. The more shit you’ve got, the more awkward and slow your movements, effected via a system like Euphoria where the weight of what you’ve got in real time effects your character animations. Character’s strength stat lowers the speed reduction amount of having heavier gear but does nothing for the awkwardness of being bristling with guns and items sticking out every which way.

July 8th, 2008 at 9:46 am

Malagate says:

@Kieron, well Conan was a Thief, a Warrior, a Hunter and a King. Not necessarily all at the same time, but yes he’d never shop. He just takes it. I thought there were already a bunch of games where you could just take whatever you wanted as long as you were good at stealing, sneaking and kicking ass?

@Jetsetlemming, hah that’s exactly what I had in mind. As a game where you can put arms, legs and mouths anywhere you like on a weird creature has been made, then it must not be that hard to have a system where you can place carryable items on a player model wherever they’d possibly fit.

July 8th, 2008 at 10:30 am

cullnean says:

money? he is conan and he TAKES!

unless its the robert jordan stuff which was shit!

July 8th, 2008 at 10:46 am

Malagate says:

If Conan walked into your bar and just took a whole Ampulla of Wine, and the barmaid, would you try to stop him? Fuck no!
I’ve warmed to the concept, more games like that please.

Also @ muscrat, I found that it wasn’t so bad in RE4, I mean anything you wanted to sell for huge profit was conveniently in an infinite treasure inventory, the only problem was when you were hoarding healing items, grenades and buying big guns. If you left it in it’s natural state then it would quickly devolve into madness and hours of obsessive rearranging yes, but as I liked to see it all neat and tidy I actually enjoyed colour coding the herbs and weapons. Oh so sad…

July 8th, 2008 at 11:03 am

cullnean says:

ok so the tried and tested inventry is poor but whats the altenative we can foist upon the industry, lets reinvent the wheel people.

July 8th, 2008 at 11:37 am

antonymous says:

this inventory mess exists because all diablo-likes are strictly descendants of Angband, one of the bearded roguelike grandfathers of the genre. The whole design with the base camp/town and the hack/loot/sell cycle stem from Angband. Of course there are other roguelikes which have made it a goal to eliminate all this repetitive crap, like Dungeoncrawl shops won’t buy anything and the inventory in that game is limited by weight.

But, the commercial games are still stuck in the early-1990s design schemes of Angband and its myriad variants, because along the way “grind” somehow replaced the whole “gameplay” thing for the punters.

July 8th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Shanucore says:

I think I’m just about the only bugger in the world that loved it, but ‘96 RPG Albion had strength-based weight restrictions that factored in the weight of gold. Sometimes that stuff got reeeeeally heavy.

In a slightly less vexing take on the formula, your characters shifted between unencumbered, encumbered, and unable to move, which was also affected by their fatigue. I quite liked this as it meant that you could try grabbing extra loot but you’d best not let your characters get too tired to lug stuff to a nearby storage location or merchant else you’d be screwed.

Of course being stuck in the middle of a room unable to move until you’d discarded a ton of stuff was really annoying, especially as dropped items disappeared for good. Still, there was an element of risk-reward in there, as well as time management and planning. When you actually have to *think* about this stuff, it works.

July 8th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

Calabi says:

I think its part of the players fault, they want every item to be worth something. I mean honestly what hero would go into a dungeon looking to loot from orcs.
“I want your hairy, stinking amour, your club, are those boots? and your teeth”

He’s there to find the big loot, at the end, in the large chest, defended by the huge……

How about instead of the loot exploding out of the corpses you have to get your hands dirty and rifle through its pockets and orifices. Rifle to far and you could end up with leprosy or even worse be named a Necrophiliac.

July 8th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

Yhancik says:

It reminds me of a conversation we had once on RPS (I think.. or did I dream it ?) about things in games that are more of an annoyance you have to get through than a real, interesting challenge (as the faceless combines in HL2).

About the inventory discussion, Stalker became much more enjoyable to me when I installed a mod that allowed me to trade with any Stalker. I think it wasn’t a bad idea. It’s not as unrealistic as allowing you to walk around with a houseful of stuff, and while making things a little easier, you still have to choose wisely what you’ll keep in Your inventory.
So, as it has been stated several times, it’s probably more about the economy in the game that the inventory micromanagement.

July 8th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

18Rabbit says:

@K The first step to overcoming an addiction is admitting that you have a problem.

I decided to get my loot fix from Dungeon Keeper 2 (I’m still pissed at Titan Quest for corrupting 2 characters and couldn’t think of a character I wanted to try in D2). I’ve found that I often run back to town just to break up the monotony of killing endlessly (and to see what else is for sale). I don’t think I’ve hunted until everyone was full yet. I think DK2 with the transmute spell, insta-travel back to town that arrives near the merchants and/or pack mules gives options for lots of different play styles. But really it’s all about the loot.

July 8th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

Derek K. says:

Maybe I’m weird, but I think D2’s system works well. You triage items, ignore a lot eventually, but at the beginning, when you’re broke, you hoard. Creates a nice dynamic, as you go from “Arrows? Those are like 50 gp!” to “Eh, it’s just a blue, who cares?”

And at least in D2, if you had unlimited space, you’d have unlimited charms, and thus unlimited power. The only thing I’d like to see is the store being closer to the portal. Having to run to the store was a bit of an annoyance. But I agree with the idea that D2 doesn’t force this on you at all – it’s those of us that can’t stand not having every piece of gold. If you just ignore all the stuff you don’t care about, you do just fine. Gold is, after a bit, meaningless. And yet we want more and more of it.

Also, D2 was 8 years ago. They did a hell of a lot of stuff really well. The fact that it *still* has a thriving community says that it really did do a pretty good job. ;) So back off my lil’ friend.

Also, on Twenty-Sided DM, someone proposed that all the “diablo-clones” be renamed TPLs – third person looters.

And yeah, back off the quartermaster, man. He was hustling his ass around scoring new stuff for you, and 95% of the time, you looked at it and went “Oh, that’s nice. I’m glad you spent 15 hours in negotiations and had to have unpleasant sex with a tusked alien to get that shotgun. But mine has a RoF that’s .1 faster, so no thanks.” I’m surprised he didn’t just shoot you in the head screaming “HOW’S MY STUFF NOW, ASSHOLE?!”

July 8th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Dave says:

I just started playing Titan Quest recently myself (thank you, Diablo III announcement) and am liking it quite a lot.

It’s actually a couple of steps ahead of Diablo II and similar stuff, in that Identify is automatic and Town Portal is free, and it has that sweet transfer inventory space (which, of course, could be much larger).

Even paper & pencil D&D 4th Edition has gone the way of simplifying and reducing inventory and shopping. Non-magical items normally have no resale value. Identification is free during any rest period. Magic items can only be resold for 1/5 their price (or converted into an equivalent amount of generic magical “stuff” to assist in enchanting items). DMs are encouraged to tailor loot to the players’ desires so they don’t wind up selling much stuff off. You don’t need to carry weapons made in four kinds of metal, nor carry an extra blunt weapon.

July 8th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

Chris Livingston says:

I had a whole set of featherwear in Oblivion. When I got too heavy I’d put on my feather boots and feather greaves and feather rings (one on each hand) and feather amulet and feather hoodie and drink a feather potion and so on.

I also had the keyring mod for Oblivion, because you’d wind up with hundreds of keys eventually, and have to scroll past them every time you opened that inventory page. It condensed them all down to a single keyring, completely eliminating that annoyance.

July 8th, 2008 at 4:25 pm

ReturnToNull says:

@Chris Linvingstone: I actually started collecting the keys and keeping them in a bucket in one of the houses, of course this eventually started crashing the game, or caused key explosions if the physics went wonky.

July 8th, 2008 at 4:46 pm

Yhancik says:

@mujadaddy :
Realistic inventory system doesn’t require much computer power

Also : Realism doesn’t equal fun.

July 8th, 2008 at 5:04 pm

Chris R says:

I LOVE item collecting. I played D2 for 4 years just doing magic finding runs looking for the next elite unique item… I play RPG’s not for the role playing, but for the items.

But that said, I don’t bother to pick up anything that’s a “white” item… and I’ll only occasionally pick up rare (green or blues) if I know that it’ll sell for a bit in town. Blue Scepters FTW!

Games like Diablo 1 and 2 are a bit like gambling really. Each monster you kill has the chance to drop a really nice item. If you kill something and it drops a cracked sash… leave it and move on to the next. Don’t bother picking it up. Inventory problem fixed.

July 8th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

Myros says:

The system I always thought would be better was something that happens automaticly behind the scenes.

ie Im off in Titan Quest on a 4 hour rampage, Ive picked up nothing except the items I need on me. The rest get picked up by the minnions I hired back in town, the next time Im back in town I can visist the ‘head minion’ and go through the junk to see if there is anything worth keeping that I missed. And then just 1 click instruct him to sell the lot, and allow him to keep a % in payment.

That system would fit with my game ‘logic’ (ie my ability to carry 30 suits of armor doesnt), be reasonable and a lot less of a pain.

Myros

July 8th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

mist says:

dhex: yeah, basically. Or do what I did: start over with a new character build, and finish the normal difficulty with that. Then, shuffle the items found by those two characters around, so that you’re a bit better equiped for Epic difficulty.

If you just go straight from normal all the way to legendary difficulty without ever replaying sections (either with the same or a different character) you’re probably going to have a really hard time because your items are far from optimal.

Which almost brings me on-topic: there isn’t enough permanent storagy space in Titan Quest (and I would guess most action-rpgs?) If you want to save all the set-items you’re eventually forced to create dummy characters that you only use to dump all your stuff in. Weird.

July 8th, 2008 at 6:28 pm

Tak says:

I’d like to see the ‘uberness’ defined by what makes a real-world craftsman uber or not: craftsmanship

If I see a broadsword, it’s a broadsword. If I inspect it closer, the differences between a master craftsman and a hobbyist is obvious. A better edge, more even thickness and density of the metal, near perfect balance, perhaps scroll work or finer wrapping or a nicer pommel, a more intricate (but still useful) hand guard, so on and so forth.

I’d love to see an RPG that finally gets that. Have the ubers running around in ’steel longsword of uberness incarnate +1′ and the newbs in ‘rusty shatstick’, but don’t make the uber one glow and sparkle or whatnot. Just make it more damn impressive. And, you can make drops be money, crap items that merchants won’t buy (but you might be able to use, so it’s not a total waste) and as mentioned some sort of basic crafting material.

OT: Yes, the puzzle mini-game that is inventory management sucks. At least MMOs have gone to ‘everything takes one space, you have X spaces’ instead of playing slide-the-shapes.

July 8th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

Scandalon says:

I just want to see fallen enemies drop only things that make sense, or not drop anything at all.
“You killed a whererat”
“You recieved 15 gold”
me: WTF?

July 8th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

Garrett says:

Depths of Peril handles storage limits in a very interesting way. In addition to having all inventory items take up only one square and starting with a crystal that can create unlimited town portals, you are also able to talk to the other covenants (guilds) from anywhere in the world, and this includes trading.

This means you can turn any item into cash without having to go anywhere. The prices aren’t always as good as what the weaponsmith offers, but the advantage is that your reputation with that covenant increases with every trade, making them slightly less likely to attack you and slightly more likely to give you a better deal with your next trade. You are also able to simply give items away, meaning you can turn your twentieth +1 Bent Dagger of Suck into a bit of free rep. Because you aren’t the only hero in this game, other covenants can also dump their junk on you, and refusing costs you some reputation.

Some games resolve storage limits by having no slot or weight limits–Gothic and Knights of the Old Republic come to mind. The problem with this is that you can literally carry the combined wealth of the whole world on your person. This sort of worked with KotOR after you got the ship (you could imagine that loot was taken back to the ship on a regular basis or something and the inventory was merely a catalogue of the cargo) but for the “solitary hero” games it just falls flat. It also means you can become impossibly wealthy by selling utter garbage that you wouldn’t have even bothered picking up with a slot- or strength-based system.

Oblivion stopped determined players turning rubbish into wealth by making some items have no resale value, but this was unfortunately paired with a system that tags stolen items, making only fences able to buy them; in Morrowind the shopkeepers could only identify their own possessions if you foolishly tried to sell them back.

Having an inventory system that works based on mass as well as weight would indeed be interesting, especially if the backpack/holsters/etc. could be seen on the character, and would resolve the problems with solely weight-based systems; in some games a gold coin has a weight of 0.1, meaning ten coins equal the weight of a short sword weighing 1.0. Such systems also allow you to carry 200 daggers in the same space as 20 broadswords as long as you meet the strength requirement.

One thing I’ve always wanted is for a game to allow items to be stripped down to their base components, ideally including smelting metallic junk into ingots. Right now you have to stop using that +12 Tempered Sword of Quite Awesome to start using the +20 Glowing Staff of Fiery Death, despite the sword’s enchantment obviously coming from the glowing gem mounted in the hilt. A crafting system would mean the variety of individual items available from stores or drops wouldn’t matter.

This would also give some real value to hauling junk items back to town–for instance, if the game had silver as a desirable weapon type but had mostly useless silver drops, you could collect 20 silver daggers (or even cutlery and coins and the like) and smelt them down to be able to make a useful weapon. Similarly, you could sacrifice gold or gems or whatever to add ornamental detail to your creation, possibly adding some elemental damage bonus against certain enemy types.

A crafting system would also mean the player could take personal pride in an item. Rather than your coveted +20 Blazing Bastard Sword of Bitter Wounds merely being the result of pure chance on the part of the game’s loot-generation system it could be the final outcome of looting and labouring, possibly including melting it down several times to get the desired construction quality. With such a system I could see myself spending about as much time crafting items as actually using them.

July 9th, 2008 at 12:41 am

Heltorne says:

Weird that noone mentions Ultima! Whether Ultima 6,7, 7 part 2, 8, 9 Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 ..etc..etc…even Ultima Online. You could carry only as much as your strength would let you, not to mention you could pick up almost everything you see, was interactive. Was based on weight, this was before Divine Divinity, Oblivion, Fallout 3..etc..

July 9th, 2008 at 3:25 am

Action Wolf says:

Anybody remember a Feudal Japan-themed Diablolike game called Throne of Darkness? That let you instantly convert loot to gold and repair weapons from level 1. And that was like a gagillion years ago.

July 9th, 2008 at 11:03 am

Al3xand3r says:

Because in Diablo II they might as well not break since a little bit of gold fixes them right up.

It’s all in the game’s pacing though. It added atmosphere in System Shock but I would hate to have it in Call of Duty 4 for example. If it fits the game, then fit it in, in a fitting manner! If not, just don’t try.

I thought Throne of Darkness was sub par, it kept me entertained even less than Diablo II. I guess part of it was not really seeing your advancement visually with all the new weapons and armor and such… I like seeing my shiny new stuff…

July 9th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

Janto says:

RE the visual feedback in Throne of Darkness, it was there, it just wasn’t great, like the Brick character always seemed to use a tetsubo (big man’s club) sprite whenever you gave him a pole arm. As you progressed and got the fancy armour, it became more visually obvious, in many ways the problem may have been the setting, since that’s why the game started you out in dresses rather than chainmail.

The trading mechanic worked well in Throne of Darkness, though.

As I recall, non-magic items were given to the blacksmith, who broke them down into points. More points, more advanced loot in the shop. The most important thing here being the advanced item’s ‘inventory’ of enchantment slots being much bigger. Don’t think any cash changed hands, although you did have to buy from the bugger.

Magic items could be sacrificed to the gods to give you extra spell points beyond your level, very good for the party’s mages, although advancement was still capped by your level. Not selling magic items for cash was a great idea.

Monsters dropped loads of ingredients which could be used on unenchanted items to create your own mutant magic gear which compared well with boss drops.

And it was accessible anywhere, the only restriction was that crafting could take a while, but you could be killing while you waited.

Having said that, I got bored with the rest of the gameplay and never finished the game…

July 10th, 2008 at 12:55 am

James T says:

I’m conflicted in STALKER, as I think the inventory system is a fair one (except in the way the damned thing auto-stacks in really inconvenient ways sometimes; don’t put my fucking anti-rads at the bottom of the pack!), but even if I suppress my packrat instincts, I find that once I’m carrying a decent amount of ammo for my guns, the mere act of walking quickly tires me out so I can’t move. It makes sense, but what with the great distances, I prefer to dash unimpeded to my destination, so, screw it, I use a trainer. Unfortunately, this severely unbalances endurance-sapping artifacts… but I still find the game sufficiently tough to be gratifying, so it works out nonetheless.

July 10th, 2008 at 10:00 am

Hmm-hmm. says:

Butler’ wrote: A great read, thanks. IMO, and like with so many other things, WoW does it best.

Wait, are you serious? Certainly, WoW has a lot of space for items, but remember that people generally play MMOGs for a long time. If you want to keep vanity items, old quest rewards and gear you like, different sets to use, and who knows how many trinkets, reagents, tradeskill-related items, tokens (I get a headache just thinking about all the tokens), mounts, quest items..

Let’s just say that given the type of game, I think that WoW doesn’t have that much space available at all if you disregard the use of alts for storage purposes.

July 10th, 2008 at 3:50 pm

Hmm-hmm. says:

Heh, well, that wasn’t that case for me.

July 10th, 2008 at 4:01 pm

FaceOmeter says:

though there are times when i find a nice protracted inventory reshuffle extremely satisfying

July 12th, 2008 at 2:42 am

FhnuZoag says:

Belated, but am I the only person who likes Diablo’s inventory system, and others like it (especially Res Evil 4)? I had hours of um, fun, rearranging my stuff into aesthetically pleasing schemes.

July 14th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

Psychopomp says:

@Derek K.

“And at least in D2, if you had unlimited space, you’d have unlimited charms, and thus UNLIMITED POWAH. ”

fixed.

August 26th, 2008 at 10:23 am