Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General RPG Rules : limited inventory space

brrr no xD reminds me of torchlight.. most hideous way ever of arranging inventory ..thankfully it's only a mockup

I love the way it was done in previous divinity games, but just combine tab system with nice sorting options and it's all good..and please stackable items for things like tomatoes and stuff

I prefer the oldschool inventory system where you could stack up to 99 (/254) of each kind.

I'm a gamer who loves gathering stuff and sometimes decide to reskill & equip my whole team.
For me having this freedom means pure fun.


That exactly is, why limited inventory space drives me insane:
-It's frustrating to throw away/destroy things you might need.
-It's frustrating to travel back to to town over and over again after killing 5 enemies.
-It's frustrating to travel back to town when you're at the end of a dungeon, notice your strategy isn't effective - and have to do the whole dungeon again just because you went back for swapping gear.


It is what it is - a limitation.
A limitation decreases your freedom.
Isn't that what we play games for?
Expering new worlds, doing the impossible?

I will only draw attention to the fact that some good limitations amount to challenges, not inconveniences.

That actually is true.
Though in my eyes it doesn't apply when talking about inventory space.

I fail to see how being forced back to town 3 times while clearing a dungeon makes the game more challanging, or makes me a better player.

It's an annoyance many games use to artificially increase playthrough time.
Removing 5 items spaces might lead up to ~4hours of travelling back and forth in a 40 hours game.
People don't like uneven numbers, so the new tag will say:
45hours of playtime!

There are better ways to keep people.
Especially since there will be tool for for users to add their own content I don't think the Divinity Dev's will have to use this cheap trick.
They can do better.

Uhm... I'm not sure it is apt to call realistic constraints an artificial extension of playtime, nor do I think that restricting the amount of things you can carry is the same as forcing you to haul things back to town all the time. That's just your conditioning speaking (or so I guess anyway, as I too feel compelled to collect everything in every RPG I play, like in almost every RPG before it).

When you find the miraculous sword, cast aside your merely astounding sword for some lesser adventurer to find. (Or hang onto that extra sword if you can carry the burden; that one might be worth bringing to a merchant.)

I think I'd like to run into a band of adventurers sporting equipment I have tossed away or ignored. Or perhaps professional scavengers paying to tag along with you and collect what you leave behind, sparing you the senseless looting and tiresome haggling, yet boosting your income.

But more important to immersion it is... that barrels store barrely stuff (perishables, liquids and such) and chests store chesty stuff (here goes gold). Weapons can be found on dead adventurers, or in more or less suitable furniture (dagger stabbed into table, club crammed into cabinet).

Also... Unlimited inventory in a world of fully interactive items? "He's got the whole world - in his hands. He's got the..."

I would not want the cheap trick of limited inventory, but I would like a game that makes it clear that you don't need to pick up even 10% of what you find (arbitrary percentage, assumes extreme amount of things found), and which lets you get away with not picking up anything you don't have an actual use for.

I'm also a pack rat, nothing must be left lying on the ground. Gets worse if items can be recycled, broken down, reforged, etc.

But even though I also feel inconvenienced by a limited inventory, I occasionally find it more of a challenge in inventory management rather than a chore, depending on how well it's made to seem like a justified necessity.

Just read this, some interesting points. My opinion:

1. I disagree with most people on the limited storage space. If your inventory is full, you need to choose. Is it worth it to go back to a merchant? If so, which piece of armor do I sell? If not, what do I throw away? In any sense, it means you can't go running around with a trillion health potions to drink your way to an objective. You shouldn't just be able to take anything with you, inventory management = meaningful choice = part of rpg-experience.

2. Stackable items are a must. Easier to use, looks less chaotic.

3. Crafting components should weigh less than finished items (not realistic, I know). When you pull a crafted weapon apart, it looses value (there is a cost to rebuilding for example not all components will be salvaged). This implements another meaningful choice in inventory management: sell it or salvage it?

4. A passive spell to increase storage space is a great idea!

5. Merchants should always be a gold sink. If you can repair stuff, you'd need to spend for potions. If you can brew potions, repairs are going to be expensive. Money should be something you need to use, an actual valuable commodity throughout the game. Not something you can pile up until you can buy the 'equipment of the gods'. Even if you'd play in a gold-efficient manner, you should only ever be able to buy one item that is better than what you have at that time in the game.

I know it's too late in DOSs development to do this, but I think CRPGs should start allowing players to buy big ticket items like horses, cattle, wagons, boats, houses including furniture, and castles including defensive walls and towers to alleviate gold issues in them. Who wouldn't like to have their own castle in their favorite CRPG? These high ticket items wouldn't necessarily need to have a game purpose other then the accomplishment of purchasing them, but they for sure could help dispose of gold in a more realistic way.

As for merchants in DOS, as long as they have an endless supply of gold I'll be happy, becuause I pick up any and everything, and in games like Divine Divinity I had no way the get rid of my house/yard/town full of items because of its bardering system.

You mean The Homestead at the End of Time?

I do enjoy rpg's for the possibility to experience and do things you can't do for real (and some you shouldn't of course :)).
Companies want to make money, so they use strategies like trying to make their product as addictive as possible. Unfortunately that turned the majority of games into a kind of 'copy' of RL by using the same methods:

Never be satisfied, ever demand more.
The perfect formula for creating the perfect customer by not letting him find some content as a content customer is a bad customer.
So we get swamped with stuf to collect, what we can't collect we can but, so collecting money besides the shinies is important as well to buy the myraids of weapons, armors, etc..

I don't say that this is completely bad as those instincts are in all of us and they bring us pleasure. but it also leads to quantity over quality and that's why most players are packrats and would drive a 18-wheeler into the dungeon if they could.
Just because a game is digital crack does not make it automatically a good game until you are already a conditioned junkie.

Too much stuff can distract from other aspects of a game by turning us into bookkeepers and merchants. I like such things being part of a game but not let this dominate it as it reminds me too much of RL.
I like to forget RL for a little when I play a fantasy game, not being becoming an extension of it.
So I am for smaller inventory as it adds more by managing your stuffby leaving older stuff behind.
I made the observationin games that as more we hord as less we tend to use it as the collecting craze turns us into horders.

Instead of tossing the stuff for other adventurers or making a stash for bad times, maybe you can donate items to NPC's to help them or influence their opinion about you? Manipulating them.
Feed some old rations to animals if you like. If they will not touch it then you know that you shouldn't have carried it for so long
So 'freedom' can also come from limitation by forcing us making our own decisions instead of collecting every last bit the game tosses at me to squeeze it for every possible coin. That let me feel like a dog fetching sticks.

I wonder how many of the packrats who cannot bear the knowledge of a dungeon cluttered keep their bedroom equally tidy. I am certainly not one of them. How can this chore be such a compelling aspect of a game?

Ah... Because it is part of a process that culminates in higher numbers (equipment boosting stats, or equipment sold to boost wealth to purchase equipment boosting stats). I suppose.

The awful fact is: I find tidying up dungeons as tedious as I find tidying up my bedroom, and not half as rewarding, yet I surely do it more frequently, tirelessly and thoroughly.

In order to enjoy games more and waste less time, I leave more loot. And learn to live with it.

I'd be perfectly happy with a game that put "Infinite inventory space" on the gameplay/preferences options screen, though. Have a meaningful limitation by default, without making the game depend on that, and let those who still wish to clear the dungeon do so in relative comfort. (Oh, maybe that's the real drive: Accomplishment. Finish the level, clear the dungeon, score 100%.)

That is probably the best thing about not having a questbook. If you feel a quest is finished, it is. You don't nééd to finish off that last guard, or collect all 30 herbs. We all know it can drive you mad when your book says something akin to '13/15 completed'.

It's a mistake so many games make. When I'm discovering castles, never say: "One out of five castles found". Because at that point if I'd die, my restless soul would roam the earth looking for a gamer to find the other four, so I could finally ascend to heaven.

Why not use a similar inventory system as was used in Jagged Alliance 2?
Different sized slots, where the bigger slots could also hold more smaller items. Plus item weight and a maximum carry capacity that depends on strength and impacts the performance of the (player) character. It also featured a map inventory system that allowed for instant visibility (and direct access if you were in that particular area) to all items in different locations on the map. Personally I've never come across a better inventory system anywhere else ever.