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Originally Posted by Lotrotk
Any system that prevents from stockpiling is a good one in my eyes: unlimited storage, drop, hide and collect later on, ... That would have me focus on becoming wealthy. Destroying on removal or a system of lose items ... it shifts the problem to intelligent resource management rather than dumb drop-and-retrieve.

I remember when playing The Settlers of Catan, when a 7 was thrown all players that held more than 7 resources were to dismiss half of it. The rule was applied for the same reasons: stockpiling ruins gameplay.


Intelligent resource management can be a great addition to a role-playing game. Generally, I think that the early stages of a game when you can't buy everything are much more interesting than the endgame when you've got loads of money and nothing you really want to spend it on. Becoming the richest person alive might give you the satisfying feeling that you've achieved something in the game, but it can also lead to boredom and frustration: The player might not bother to smash or open containers or to pick up loot anymore as the chances to find something useful are so slim. And selling stuff that you don't need is almost pointless when you already have twenty times more money than the most expensive items would cost.

I think that both inventory space should be limited and traders should only buy limited quantities of any item before prices drop, even to 0. That way, it might rarely make sense to run back and pick up stuff you couldn't carry the first time. And it could easily be explained in-game: "Another orc helmet? Sorry, but I still couldn't sell the last 20 ones you've brought me. I simply don't have any orc customers, and collectors of such trophies are rare. Maybe you'll get a few coppers at the scrapyard, though."

At first, I also found it hard to leave loot behind in The Witcher, but in the end I was glad I didn't run back and forth umpteen times just to make some money I wouldn't have spent anyway. In most RPGs, one ends up with tons of money and very little left that is worth buying. Truly limiting money as a resource and thus making it impossible to buy all of the best items might be the base for some interesting (though hard) choices in the late game. If heroes can't achieve everything, e.g. when they have just two curing potions for three sick people, why should they be able to buy everything?

It's plausible that the number of items characters can carry is based on their strength, but it's also a big advantage for those who consider strength their main attribute anyway, i.e. warrior-types. It would be nice if this was counter-balanced by other stats also having a non-combat use - intelligence could enable certain clever dialogue options, for example.

It would also be plausible to give money a weight. In many games, equipment has a weight that counts towards your carrying capacity, but you can carry limitless amounts of money. A single coin doesn't weigh much, of course, but it adds up. Assuming a gold coin weighs 5-10 g, 200 or 100 coins already weigh 1 kg, and a fortune of 100000 gold (500-1000 kg) could not be carried by anyone. A bank account might be a way out of this, though at a risk - the bank could be robbed, which might even be the start of a quest to get your money back. Collecting valuable gems and jewels could be another alternative: A diamond doesn't weigh much, but can be worth a small fortune in gold. Some traders might not accept gems as payment, however, and a few swindlers might try to sell you fake gems. If you've got some expertise in jewelcrafting/gemcutting, you should be able to see through their sham.

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I'd like the idea of allowing unneeded materials to be "broken" up into ... well, craftable materials - or at least into semething one could sell.

I also liked the Chests idea from the offline Drakensang games.


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Why not a combination of two stats: strength & constitution or "condition" as a new stat ? So running need stamina, too must carrying need also stamina. Carrying to much you can't run (like in DD) and after a while walking you feel (see the stamina bar lowering!) more and more tyred and you wish to go sleeping ... if you neglet this "feeling" (see lowering the stamina bar) you definitely must drop weight, otherwise you can't walk anymore and/or even fall on the ground :hihi: !

At least every kind of build need enough Condition for walking, especially running . And for each build a nice special move that use stamina (like in DD) is also great, imo.
And some big swords and other mighty weapons need more condition to use them because of the heavy weight !
For the Mages who spend many more points into Intelligence than Strength (for sure they will do):
maybe a mighty spell only builds with Intelligence high enough can use it, a spell which make their backpack less heavy for a certain amount of weight. And the more Intellingence, the better the spell !
BUT this spell works temporarily, starting with 1 or 2 hours (ingame time), time enough to go to a chest or shopkeeper.
You can see it as a Skill, but only avaible if your build spend enough points in Intelligence.

Playing a pure Mage this is a need to have, but playing a Battle Mage, this last build can invest in strength also ... etc etc ...

Besides, I like also the idea of a "Junk" Inventory tab like in Amalur, that's really handy !


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I usually advocate realism (er, realism in an entirely fantasy world + loads and loads of magic, but I mean make the fantasy and magic make sense, stand serious scrutiny), but this is one thing that's far too bothersome, considering how much of a stingy pack rat I always am. I'll very gladly "forget" about all that realism thing if it means unlimited inventory (a la Gothic, but would be nice if tabbed per type, though of course also including an "all" tab, not being forced to look through one by one if you want to see all)...

I can deal with limited carrying capacity on the character IF there is unlimited storage available elsewhere, and you can teleport there at any time, from the very start of the game, at no cost. (Plus, of course, being able to drop stuff and then pick it back up, at least as long as you don't leave the area, since some mentioned the Witcher issue.) But without that option it's terribly frustrating.


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Yes, a limited carrying capacity would be annoying, especially in a game where the intention is to allow a lot of world interaction (mushroom + weapon = poison weapon, healing potion + apple = cure potion, etc) and where everything not too big and not nailed down can be moved. At the start of the game it would be ok, but the first few levels should help with that, if you boost strength, and certainly by mid game you should not be making frequent trips back to a base or merchants to stay unencumbered.


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Gothic 1-2-3 had nice economic mechanism - you had literally unlimited inventory but even if you did pick up everything and the sell it - you still couldn't buy anything you wanted. That was really well done and the ability to carry all the junk didn't feel out of place, it as balanced out, even if via different aspects pf the game mechanics.

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Thanks.
Er, with me always playing mages, str is the last thing I think about increasing. If there are some default values at creation that can also be reduced, I take it down a notch to leave more points for other attributes and leave it there. Hence a good idea to at least have a spell that allows you to carry a whole load of stuff, maybe by accessing some pocket dimension or whatever other such trick. It'd probably reduce your max mana by a certain value, since it'd constantly use that much, or could simply need to be cast when you want to access it, whether to put things in or take things out.
Actually, never saw that in games before, or at least I don't think so, and wondering why...


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In Divine Divinity even just equipment bonuses to strength would help. Playing a warrior I was biased towards strength and agility (or constitution / hit points early in the game), and still ended up with enough intelligence and mana bonuses to have plenty of mana. I never played a mage, but I expect the opposite would be true, as well.

In Beyond Divinity there were two characters to split the loot between, and once you got your first summoning doll (relatively early in the game) you could have it carry an essentially unlimited amount of weight (when encumbered it wouldn't be able to move, but you could un-summon it and re-summon it elsewhere). The summoning dolls were creatures you could summon and control like your main characters (though not nearly as strong), who each had their own inventory.

In any case, it sounds like the character builds in Original Sin are expected to at least be competent with magic (4 of the 6 skill trees are magic and the ability to use chaos magic is the main part of the plot we know so far), so it is unlikely pure mages would be at a significant disadvantage even with a strength based inventory system.

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Two things drive the use of resources, and they have to be balanced: scarcity and necessity. If resources are scarce enough (like Malachite gems in Divinity 2), that promotes stockpiling, even if using them could be helpful. If resources are necessary to survive, players will use them even if they don't want to. In Divinity 2, resources like Dexterity/Intelligence/Willpower potions weren't really necessary, so they ended up getting stockpiled because of lack of use. In my recent playthrough, I had to force myself to remember to use the potions - not because I needed to, but just to use them up.


Originally Posted by Lurker

Intelligent resource management can be a great addition to a role-playing game. Generally, I think that the early stages of a game when you can't buy everything are much more interesting than the endgame when you've got loads of money and nothing you really want to spend it on. Becoming the richest person alive might give you the satisfying feeling that you've achieved something in the game, but it can also lead to boredom and frustration: The player might not bother to smash or open containers or to pick up loot anymore as the chances to find something useful are so slim. And selling stuff that you don't need is almost pointless when you already have twenty times more money than the most expensive items would cost.


Players not opening crates anymore is the fault of a loot system that isn't balanced right. It can't just have random generic items, all appropriate for your character level, it needs either some pre-placed very useful items, or better yet, a kind of high-class random item that is more powerful than most things you can find or buy in stores, but only has a small chance of appearing in random crates.

The difference between unique items and high-quality random items is that the uniques are all crafted for a purpose, all its attributes are focused. High-quality random items have very good attributes, but they're randomly selected.


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I think that both inventory space should be limited and traders should only buy limited quantities of any item before prices drop, even to 0. That way, it might rarely make sense to run back and pick up stuff you couldn't carry the first time. And it could easily be explained in-game: "Another orc helmet? Sorry, but I still couldn't sell the last 20 ones you've brought me. I simply don't have any orc customers, and collectors of such trophies are rare. Maybe you'll get a few coppers at the scrapyard, though."


A formula to reduce the amount of gold you get for every identical item after, say, the fifth one is an interesting idea, but it has some drawbacks. Some players are compulsive loot picker-uppers, and making you switch merchants just lengthens the amount of time they'll spend running to different merchants, instead of playing the game. This will probably start to get annoying sooner rather than later, and annoyed players aren't happy players.


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At first, I also found it hard to leave loot behind in The Witcher, but in the end I was glad I didn't run back and forth umpteen times just to make some money I wouldn't have spent anyway. In most RPGs, one ends up with tons of money and very little left that is worth buying. Truly limiting money as a resource and thus making it impossible to buy all of the best items might be the base for some interesting (though hard) choices in the late game. If heroes can't achieve everything, e.g. when they have just two curing potions for three sick people, why should they be able to buy everything?


Limiting the amount of money available is one idea, but I'm more in favour of late-game useful items that cost a lot of gold. Divinity 2 was pretty good in that respect, because merchants sold unique weapons that were better than anything you could craft or find randomly, but they cost a lot of gold. It acted as a gold sink.

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It's plausible that the number of items characters can carry is based on their strength, but it's also a big advantage for those who consider strength their main attribute anyway, i.e. warrior-types. It would be nice if this was counter-balanced by other stats also having a non-combat use - intelligence could enable certain clever dialogue options, for example.


That'll work, as long as you make it clear in the description of the attributes what they do. The bar for attributes opening conversation options would have to be pretty high as well, and get higher the tougher the challenge, so you can't have a fighter with 50 Strength getting the Intelligence options meant for the mages because he has 30 Intelligence in the late-game. Such bonuses would have to only regard the base skill, not any bonuses granted from items.

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It would also be plausible to give money a weight. In many games, equipment has a weight that counts towards your carrying capacity, but you can carry limitless amounts of money. A single coin doesn't weigh much, of course, but it adds up. Assuming a gold coin weighs 5-10 g, 200 or 100 coins already weigh 1 kg, and a fortune of 100000 gold (500-1000 kg) could not be carried by anyone. A bank account might be a way out of this, though at a risk - the bank could be robbed, which might even be the start of a quest to get your money back. Collecting valuable gems and jewels could be another alternative: A diamond doesn't weigh much, but can be worth a small fortune in gold. Some traders might not accept gems as payment, however, and a few swindlers might try to sell you fake gems. If you've got some expertise in jewelcrafting/gemcutting, you should be able to see through their sham.


Money having a weight is an okay idea, as long as the most expensive items you need to buy don't require you to hire a cart and donkey to carry your money to the corner store. Gems as currency is another good way to mitigate the weight factor.

One thing though: I seriously cannot see a game that has a jewelcrafting/gemcutting skill, never mind one that's worth putting precious skill points into.

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NWN 1 used both a grid and weight limitations, which I liked. Even if you can lift 400 pounds, are you going to be able to get your arms around 400 lbs worth of swords and shields? Probably not. Also, the grid system makes moving things around in your inventory far easier (NWN2 made every object the same size, to eliminate the tetris effect). Games like skyrim become frustrating, especially when you're carrying around 300 or so ingredients that you now need to drop into a bin one at a time.

On that note, please oh please don't make the same key for "Take All" work for "Give All". Or at least allow us to change them.

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One thing is for sure, we're not going Tetris style on the inventory. Every item will be 1x1 square so you don't have to deal with something this (mockup joke, meant to be funny):

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The biggest complaint I had about Divinity 2's inventory system was that most of your inventory space tended to be composed of a TON of Ores, Gems, Plants and potions in Broken Valley, and a lot of the time finding formulas to use them on was random luck, and there was no way to store them for later. (The increased storage space skill never seemed like a worthwhile use of skill points compared to killing enemies faster.) Someone in Broken Valley who just sold formulas might have helped with that.

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Dammit, ForkTong, you had one job... argh, lemme fix it for you:

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Something like the system Obsidian mentioned for their Project Eternity (a small number of alternate equipment slots, for items that the character can switch between on the fly; a limited pack, with items the character can access at any time outside of battle; and a stash, unlimited storage space that items can be instantly sent to while adventuring but which can only be accessed to retrieve items at inns or player's house/stronghold) would work quite well I'll say, though now that they said it I don't think it can be used by others, definitely not with a somewhat similar target release date. But maybe it could be worked out slightly differently yet still along the same lines? That'd allow you to still add limits if you want them without forcing players to discard items or backtrack like mad to whatever stash they decided to create for themselves.

As for the tetris effect, I go with a simple weight and bulk thing. Item X has weight Y and bulk Z, also a numeric value, and the pack can hold weight X and bulk Z, when an item would cause either total to exceed the maximum, it can't be stored there anymore.


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I'd like to have limited inventory, maybe just add to the game certain somewhat rare items(magical box?) which take not much space in the backpack but can accommodate few items. Perhaps even make it so that weight of items put into the magical box won't add up to total weight of carried stuff.

Last edited by Kell Aset; 05/04/13 01:51 AM.
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It`s interesting question-but what I want to say
I played Baldur`s Gate 1\2\ToB and I think there is terrible(but logical) inventory system because is quite small but later you`ll find(1) packets for gems and for arrows and I would like it to do in D:OS too

2)-In Diablo 2 there were belts for potions you can hang on maximum about 16 ones IIRC and I liked them too

3)-Again about Diablo 2 there was Horadric Cube and|or as alternative Magical packets in Neverwinter Nights which reduces weight of items inside it

4)In Morrowind there were spells "Plumelet" which also reduces weight of your backpack

So If in game will be limited-space inventory I think really good ideas about reducing and economy Inventory space was already inveted
and there no need to make another Death Star oh Wheel))

And I like Joram`s ideas and idea about strong economy and stealing Protagonists
But it`s important not go to extremes(in realism it`s just game) because it could destroy fun of gameplay

Last edited by James 540; 04/07/13 12:49 PM.

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The idea of getting pick pocketed isn't new. In Fallout 2 was a town where homeless kids were stealing from your inventory if you stood too close. It would be a nice addition for the occasional shady character to drop by your guys at a market place try to steal something.

In the case of inventory: I think it was Dungeon Siege 1, or was it 2, or both (dunno), which allowed you to buy a pet like a pack donkey for additional inventory space. I think that is actually a good idea.

In a realistic world the hero couldn't carry anything beyond 10 kg, nor a billion things and still be able to fight in any way.

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the idea of going with the strength of the character being able to carry more, was pulled off very well by the original fallout games, and i thought it was a very good system.

They also had perks you could choose that would give you a boost in the amount you can carry.

There has to be a limit obviously, i think the weight idea is a very good idea.


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... I don't understant the problem, as everyone will have the pyramids to go back and forth (like in Divine Divinity). An illimited but well ordened inventory may be great...

I mean, people who want to sell a lot of stuff can with pain (I teleport to the first merchant, I sell him everything I can, then come back etc...)... This is boooring in a game, isn't it ?


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1X1 square for each item with auto sort seems the best solution to me. In addition they can have a weight based restriction or a max amount for each square.

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