It scares me how suggestible I can be. I worry that one day I’ll walk past a sign saying “heroin makes you big and strong!” and that’ll be it. Most recently, I saw all the Diablo III stuff and duly thought “durrrr I wud like 2 play dat”.
So I load up Diablo 1 (now almost unplayable in this day and age. While it was scarcely inventive as sequels go, the improvements Diablo II made to the formula can’t be overstated). I play some Mythos. Most of all, I play Titan Quest. Amusingly, my Steam friends list revealed that several people I know have also been playing Titan Quest lately. My, what a coinkydink.
I’d slaughtered my way through a good seven or eight hours’ worth of beastmen and harpies before I had one of those catch-yourself-in-the-mirror moments. What was I doing? Theoretically, I was killing an awful lot of monsters, big ol’ hero that I was. Actually, I was obsessively picking up shiny things from the ground until a number of small squares on my inventory screen were full up, teleporting back to town to sell said shinies, then repeating the process. This was not, I realised, making me a better person. I’ll stress that I’m fine with a few hours of mindless hacking, slashing and looting (though I’ll tire of it before too long), so my objection is not to the basic nature of these games. It’s an objection to the fact my hacking, slashing and looting is so regularly interrupted by thankless commuting. And lo, I became annoyed enough with both myself and the game(s) to make some sweeping generalisations. Not novel ones I’ll admit, but as we’re in digs-at-gaming-clichés mode today anyway… Whee!
Thus has it ever been, thus shall it always be. It’s how RPG inventory systems are – from Diablo to WoW to Deus Ex, it’s always about running out of little squares to keep stuff in. But while story/character-led RPGs tend to be a little more restrained in their loot/inventory treatment, often sensibly employing it to prevent players becoming overpowered, the pure-action likes of Diablo, Titan Quest, Mythos et al actively make storage restrictions an essential mechanic of the game. All that relentless dungeoneering is extended and broken up by regular return trips to the shops. You don’t have to to make ‘em, but oh you will, because you need that sweet, sweet cash for better toys.
Some Diablolikes are more thoughtful than others, and occasional evolutions such as potion stacking have taken some of the pain away, but no-one seems in any hurry to replace the system. Instead, they’re going to increasingly ridiculous lengths to keep it on life-support. Titan Quest even has a button to automatically re-arrange items so they’re stacked as neatly as possible, maximising the available space. Well, I say automatic, but it doesn’t do it for you. You have to press a button every single time you want to rearrange, and half the time it doesn’t result in the right-shaped gap anyway, so you end up shuffling kit around manually. You should be saving the world from demons, but no, you’re mucking about with spreadsheets so that you’ve got space for an extra pair of bracers.
And Portals! I mean… These are worlds capable of incredible teleportation magic, the ability to travel instantly over miles of land, and what’s it used for? Shopping. Not banishing evil or revolutionising society or sticking one hand through so you can wave to your mum from the other side of the world. Just. Shopping.
Is it fun, this unending cycle of luggage-rearranging and travel? I don’t know that it is. It’s compelling for sure – but so’s watching all those coloured blocks dance around when your hard drive’s defragging itself. Creepily, from this compulsion has spun all manner of weird little tricks and delays that offer the illusion of personal achievement. They’re most common in MMOs – like buying additional slots in the WoW bank, or a 1000g backpack with two more spaces in it. Every time, I get this brief burst of pride. Yeah! I’ve won… more room! I haven’t achieved anything. All I’ve done is jump when the game says ‘jump.’
Would having more slots in my backpack make my game more enjoyable? No, it’d just make it slightly less annoying. Because that’s the horrible truth of it – WoW and cos’ inventories are deliberately designed to be annoying, so the games can forever hold the tempting carrot of less-annoying before you. Your reward for long adventures is convenience – but crucially never quite enough convenience.
Elsewhere, it’s less cynical but still this blindly accepted side-effect, like getting hangovers from booze or that horrible black bit at the bottom of bananas. No-one actually tries to do anything about it. Instead we get painkillers such as Dungeon Siege’s mule or Dungeon Runners’ Bling Gnome. They’re there to ease the burden of constant space-shortage, but in a way they just emphasise what a ridiculous, mechanical system it is. When a game offers its players so extreme a fix as a Gnome that can eat loot on the spot and crap out gold, it’s a pretty clear sign that a critical element of the game isn’t as fun as it could be. It is, of course, also a very canny way to lure free players into picking up the boxed copy.
If these sorts of lengths are being resorted to, why even try to mask that the inventory/shopping mechanics are totally artificial? Those Diablo-esque portals might as well just connect directly to the shopkeeper’s pockets, selling any item there and then with a right-click. That way you get to keep on killing and killing without interruption, without worrying that you’ve only got two squares left, so the next drop had better be a dagger or a bracelet and not a giant helmet adorned with 40 rhino horns. Inane, you say? No more so than the fact there’s a guy hanging around in a city somewhere with pockets full of infinite weapons, happy to buy infinitely more weapons from you (no matter that they’re dripping with bits of ogre brainmatter), even though quite clearly no other bugger in the entire world is buying anything from him.
Admittedly it’s part and parcel of the inherently statistical nature of RPGs, though it’s a deviation from the original D&D approach – where your character’s strength affects how much you can carry. That’s a take on the concept more common in RPGs that think beyond base hacking and slashing, and one I much prefer. It’s still a statistical limitation, but it at least has the pretence that this is something to do with real-world factors, not how many pixels are on the inventory screen or your character’s mystic inability to equip backpacks until he’s level 28. I oddly enjoy that Oblivion has a spell that temporarily increases your maximum carry weight. It was still artificial and ludicrous as all hell, but I chose to learn that spell, I chose when to use it, I elected when to augment it with a potion that increased the effect. It felt as though I was flexing the game and my character to my purposes, not simply being restricted by a cynical/pointless/archaic limitation on the developers’ part.
Of course, I’d still really, really like to see my character visibly carting around six sacks of potions and forty swords. That’s my idea of next-gen.
Oh God. Have I really written 800 words about how I’m annoyed by RPG inventories? I do get far too het up about these things. Don’t even get me started on how you have to buy weapons off your own employee in Mass Effect…
Related Stories:
OTOH what about adding complexity, rather than stripping it down? With Morrowind I spent endless, obsessive hours working the head of the mage’s guild up to the point where I could sell things for good money and buy them back cheap. It’s funny that I remember that as a high point of the game, and sorely missed it in the watered down Oblivion version. I guess what it represented for me was the establishment of a relationship, not just the offloading of loot. I had to painfully grind that relationship to the point where it became beneficial, at which point I could afford to rock 100% golden saint soulgem imbued gear(OT: I also really missed the ability to wear clothes over your armor, which allowed you a ton of enchantment possibilities..) And yah, it was painful, but at the time it seemed worth it in a way that grinding 50 mobs didn’t.
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.
In my last full Oblivion game I had an Orc warrior who I basically used to axe my way to the top of the mages guild so that I could enchant everything with muchos strength and haul tonnes of goodies around.
@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.
It sounds like what’s being complained about is the ir-reality of the inventory system. Obviously, as computer power ramps up, MORE reality in inventory systems is what’s needed.
Who ELSE remembers having to buy a pack mule so your Strength 8 Magic User could carry his spellbook & material components around on adventures?
@mujadaddy :
Realistic inventory system doesn’t require much computer power
Also : Realism doesn’t equal fun.
i like the system that two worlds has, where you can pick stuff up and combine it with the same item if you already have it, with a slight boost to stats.
this allowed for letting the player stick with the armor/weapons he liked visually for a lot longer as they could be ‘boosted’ down the line to ‘compete’ with stuff you found later on. not always, but often enough that it made looting worth the effort throughout the whole game. rather than it being ‘garbage’ after some point, like it is in most games.
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.
i’m playing through immortal throne for the first time now. and i have 11 million gold pieces. why? i have no idea. but i can’t stop picking up everything.
sidenote: what happens when i beat immortal throne? do i run through the entire thing on the next level of difficulty?
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
@K the corpsedragger
GENIUS!
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.
I remember trying to figure out how many inventory slots I had in Anarchy Online (including bank) – and ended up at 3200 I think. Needless to say I still ran out of inventory space constantly.
I don’t think endless loot drops everywhere is needed. What is needed is money, and cool loot from the bosses (in fact that would probably make bosses even more worth killing).
When someone gives me money to develop my own game one day I’ll solve it all by only dropping gold and tradeskill items from monsters. Then I’d be letting players spend this to make the armor, weapons, potions and gadgets of their own desired design – and make these tradeskilled items the best in the game – but requiring uber tradeskill drops from the top monsters for the very best.
Who wouldn’t want to decide the look of their own gear instead of being “forced” to go with whatever strange design the top monster of the day drops?
One could still make sure it’d be possible to signal uberness visually – by putting in limitations in available tradeskill designs based on e.g. level – or limit color use for lowbies Etc. But at top level you’d still be able to pick a favorite design, even if it was introduced at level 2 – and still have the same uber stats as someone wearing the high level looks.
I’d always be the mask wearing rapier wielding guy.
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.
A great read, thanks.
IMO, and like with so many other things, WoW does it best.
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?
Scandalon: Coins from a wererat isn’t really so bad on the scale of things. Remember, a wererat is a person who can take the form of a rat. People carry money!
Not that you don’t have a point, you just picked a bad example. The classic d&d reasoning for arbitrary loot from arbitrary monsters was that it consisted of whatever was left in their lair by previous adventurers the monster had slain. This makes complete sense; you kill the monster, then loot its lair and find gold rings and a dagger on a half-eaten decaying cadaver. At some point game developers forgot the explanation and just made the loot spurt out from the monster like some hairy evil pinata.
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.
In Neverwinter Nights Shadows of the Undrentide (I believe that’s the correct expansion) inventory space is not a problem at all for at some moment in the game you are able to get a bottle that fits nicely in one single space in your inventory. Upon the bottles use a genie appears and allows you to both buy and sell from his little shop, the items he sells aren’t that bad at all either. So if you are carrying a bit too much luggage or if you want to buy a nice little blade for the road just rub your little bottle and you’re good to go. It was a fantastic addition in my mind.
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..
Did anyone tried Fate? Inventory system is like Diablo, except you can get your pet dog or cat to drag your loot back to town to sell while you continue to hack and slash in the dungeon! I thought that was an ingenious way to get rid of the open-portal-to-town-and-sell-stuff thingy.
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.
Action Wolf: Yup, was much smoother.
You know, I’d never thought about it, but why is weapon degradation a big deal for shooters, but not hack’n’slash looters? Nobody seems to have the same grudge against weapons breaking in Diablo that they do for the idea in, say, Far Cry 2.
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…
For anyone else who’s just getting into (or back into) Titan Quest, I highly recommend the recently finished, enormously ambitious Lilith mod:
http://www.titanquest.net/forums/modifications-editor/11959-lilith-will-demon-battles-jalavia.html
It’s a complete new campaign, supposedly 40ish hours of gameplay on Normal difficulty (I’m about 15 hours in). The text-y elements are thinner than the original, though serviceable. The gameplay, however, is leagues ahead — it makes the original campaign look amateurish. The monsters are better-tuned, providing more difficulty and far more variety in combat. Loot is more rare and more interesting. Even minor bosses are genuinely hard — not the “oh wait, did he have a gold star?” experience of the original. Oh, and the terrain design is far more interesting as well — areas have genuinely distinct atmospheres (and appropriate music).
In other words, a few months after Titan Quest hollowed out for me (mostly because it was just too damn easy), this mod has sent me into total relapse. Good stuff.
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…
Ever played Bard’s Tale? An action-RPG game, but with very little vendor problems. Weapon advancement is linear. Example: first sword does 20 damage, next one 50, next one 60 and has a magic aura, next one 80 with magic aura and mana burst and so on, so every new weapon is a direct improvement with all the benefits of the inferior one. Also, all items you pick up are automatically converted into money, and when you buy a better weapon / armor, the old one is converted into money too.
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.
Voltaggia I think the problem is offering a good, simple inventory system without however losing customisability. I don’t want my character to just get the next best, I want to get the next best fitting to my play style, my strengths, or the playstyle I want to try next. So I might try a weak but fast weapon which may pierce armor, or a slow but strong weapon which may stun an opponent, or two hander for added effect or a 1 hander for the shield carrying ability or a ranged weapon for obvious reasons. Different weapons for different situation is also interesting, for example how you need different weapons and strategies for different monsters in Monster Hunter…. I’d like developers to expand such features, but coming up with good inventory systems is a must also. Still, I don’t think I’d find Diablo II esque inventories a problem if the rest of the game was good, and if they didn’t give you a shitload of junk loot that you actually NEED to make money…
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.
In WoW you can have, with bags and banks, more slots than you’d truly need, but to get the most of your bag slots you’d need fortuitous drops and/or shed loads of wonga.
Heh, well, that wasn’t that case for me.
Really? I can’t imagine ever or wanting having enough stuff to need (let’s say, with fairly big bags plus free bank slots) 90 item slots. :p
though there are times when i find a nice protracted inventory reshuffle extremely satisfying
Well, my fondest memory of solved inventory dilemma’s must be the Djin shop keeper in a bottle you get at some point in the “Shadows of Undrentide” expansion for Neverwinter Nights.
A good shop with exotic expensive items and a point to sell all your pointless loot, and best of all you can carry him with you!
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.
You know, they could solve a lot of the problem by reducing loot drops that are worth taking to fairly few, and giving you so many stupid loot drops that you don’t bother picking them up.
Example:
You wander through a ruined mountain town. There are pickups everywhere, from old empty lanterns hanging on the walls to boards you can pry loose to use as clubs. The most anal-retentive players will clean out the town, stripping everything that they can interact with and selling it even though it might fetch zero currency. Then again, other players will pass it all by, grab what they need right then, maybe a couple pieces of valuable loot, and move on.
The problem with Diablo is that you end up finding a full load of loot that has about a 5% chance of being something you want to use, but a 60% chance of being something worth selling. Because of this, most people don’t bother checking the value of things they pick up since so much of it is valuable.
Morrowind did it right. If you cared, you could clean out every little thing in every cave, dungeon, and house. You could pick flowers all day. There was enough junk in a single house out in the swamp to load you down. But it wasn’t worth taking back, so you generally left it.
Except the really nice pieces. And you could totally tell what was worth taking and what wasn’t. Steel armor? Meh. Ebony longsword? YES MOAR PLZ
I think the idea of always-existant inventory is a great one. Solves all the problems of pickpocketing too. Plus your carried / worn equipment can take damage from incoming attacks in a predictable manner. No longer do you need to have an “armor” stat based on what armor you’re wearing. If the incoming attack hits your armor, it will damage the armor and possibly penetrate to hit you. You can choose to not wear a helmet for better visibility, or not wear gauntlets so you can use your bow and pick locks easier. But if you get hit in the hands, it effectively bypasses your armor.
And if you’re carrying a backpack full of GP, you’re better-protected from behind. But someone could hit your pack and make all the shineys spill out!
I want to play that game. Tell Blizzard to spend some of their shiny gold rocks on a truly revolutionary game and see how many people leave WoW.
@Derek K.
“And at least in D2, if you had unlimited space, you’d have unlimited charms, and thus UNLIMITED POWAH. ”
fixed.