Inventory Philosophy in Design Philosophy

ID:153540
 
Oct 24 2003, 1:42 pm
I was thinking about having a limit on a players inventory...

I also thought up a few different methods of doing this.
They are:

1) The player may only carry 30 items forever and no more than 30 items.

2) Items have weight and a player can only carry so much depending on his/her strength/speed.

3) A player may carry 30 items and 1 more for every level he/she gains.

4) No limit whatsoever.

which do you think is the best method?
(I would like to set some sort of limit so number 4 is pretty much out of the question unless everyone says thats the way they like it)
#1 Oct 24 2003, 2:13 pm
2) Items have weight and a player can only carry so much depending on his/her strength/speed.

I prefer systems such as these. Weak people like magic users need the assistance of strong people like warriors to carry the really heavy loot.
#2 Oct 24 2003, 2:14 pm
Limiting the number of items someone can carry in a game is allways a good idea. It gets crazy when someone can carry a stockpile so large that they never have to resupply again. This would be especially interesting with the hunger you mentioned in the other post, since you would not be able to buy as many rations as you wanted.

In my oppinion, the best option is having weight of objects and determining how much you can hold by your strength.
#3 Oct 24 2003, 5:41 pm
I say go for weight and # limit. If you have a bag, you can only carry so much in it before it's full, and you can only carry so much depending on your strength. You could just try setting it up so your character can only lift so much, but at the same time the bag he/she is carrying can only hold so much. This also leaves space for you to have larger bags to buy that will carry more items.
#4 Oct 24 2003, 6:48 pm (Edited on Oct 24 2003, 7:24 pm)
well, I like the weight one but, you should have a place you can store items, like a shop that charges you to store items, exspecially if you have items that are important to the story line but weight a lot.

ETG

#5 Oct 24 2003, 9:53 pm
Vermolius wrote:
2) Items have weight and a player can only carry so much depending on his/her strength/speed.

This is good. I'd like to see a variation that is never really used in RPG's. Your strength/speed should go down according to how much loot you've got in your pack.
#6 Oct 24 2003, 9:56 pm
In response to DarkView (#5)
The game Castle of the Winds had a nice system where you could carry different items based on bulk/weight, and wifferent containers had different bulk/weight ratings. Carrying heavy stuff, and wearing heacy stuff made you slower.
#7 Oct 27 2003, 7:23 pm
#2 as long as the total weight (you can carry) is sensible an proportionate to the amount of items you can use. To decide on the weight you'll need to take the average of what most people carry at a time.
An example is in LJR's Kemet you could never equip yourself fully because then you couldn't carry anything else!
#8 Oct 27 2003, 7:39 pm
In response to Exadv1 (#7)
Exadv1 wrote:
#2 as long as the total weight (you can carry) is sensible an proportionate to the amount of items you can use. To decide on the weight you'll need to take the average of what most people carry at a time.
An example is in LJR's Kemet you could never equip yourself fully because then you couldn't carry anything else!

Actually, that's fairly realistic. Wearing a full suit of chain mail, a sword scabbard at the hip, a quiver and a bow slung around the back, and a shield doesn't offer you much room for carrying items. Even if you had the room, you wouldn't be able to carry anything under all of that weight.

Of course, you have to decide whether realism is what you're going for or not.
#9 Oct 27 2003, 8:26 pm
In response to Spuzzum (#8)
Actually, that's fairly realistic. Wearing a full suit of chain mail, a sword scabbard at the hip, a quiver and a bow slung around the back, and a shield doesn't offer you much room for carrying items. Even if you had the room, you wouldn't be able to carry anything under all of that weight.

That's why it should be your top priority to get yourself a bag of holding :).
#10 Oct 27 2003, 8:28 pm
In response to DarkView (#5)
This is good. I'd like to see a variation that is never really used in RPG's. Your strength/speed should go down according to how much loot you've got in your pack.

I did this in CTF and CTF2, but people just assumed the game was laggy and didn't think carrying around the whole castle armory would slow them down quite a bit.
#11 Nov 20 2003, 10:43 am
Personally, I'm going for the Weight restrictions.

Although i I like the Diablo2 Space restriction system, although i always thought Long Pole arm type weapons should be bundled together to save room.

Back packs and pockets and such could imitate the Diablo system fairly easily. And what was that D@D thingy, wasnt there a "Bag of devouring" that let u store extra stuff?
man that was so long ago..
#12 Nov 20 2003, 8:37 pm
In response to The_Cusp (#11)
Bag of holding. Bag of devouring would randomly eat items left in it. There was also a chance that it would try to eat the person reaching in! :P On a completely off topic note, casting dimensional pocket on a bag of holding destroys it and drops whatever it was holding. It does the same thing to a bag of devouring, but much messier :P

[EDIT]

On topic, I'm a fan of using many different methods. There is a weight limit and an item limit. This prevents people from walking around with 30 fifty-pound items or a gazillion 0-pound items :P

Generally, weight restrictions are a function of stats, whereas an item limit could be something increased through game play (ie: levels as you suggested). For example, a merchant might be able to carry more items than a non-merchant (just an example).
#13 Nov 21 2003, 6:42 pm
In response to sapphiremagus (#12)
Packing(the science of loading items with the greatest efficiency) was (and is) a highly sought after skill in the real world.

In World War I, it took longer(~2 years) to train a man for the supply lines, than it took to train a pilot or infantry man. It was a skill that was in great demand.

Packing would be an excellent skill to include in any game that makes use of encumberance, but would have a hugely steep learning curve, with a rapid drop off of efficiency.

In the Great War, horses were still used as beasts of burden, and this made loading especially tricky. Its much easier to load a truck, but they couldnt travel everywhere.

I'd like to hear some feedback from anyone that has ever done shipping/packaging on a large scale, especially objects with strange dimensions.
#14 Nov 22 2003, 6:24 pm
In response to ThreeFingerPete (#13)
I'd like to hear some feedback from anyone that has ever done shipping/packaging on a large scale, especially objects with strange dimensions.

Well, I'm the one who loads my car's trunk after shopping. =) I certainly don't think of myself as an expert, but there are three basic factors:

One, nothing can ever square up with everything else, so you need to rearrange objects until they all fit.

Two, heavy items are usually the ones needed first, but because they're heaviest they must usually be put on the bottom to prevent damage to the objects on top. (For example, a lantern buried beneath a stack of paper maps.)

Three, weight distribution must be even to ensure that the contents don't cause your vehicle to be unbalanced and skid around the corners.

Thus, any Carrying skill (like the one in Haven ;-)) needs to take these factors into consideration. That is:

1) The greater your Carrying skill, the more objects you can fit into a single container. Higher skill levels allow you to carry a larger number of items and can prevent wasted space. Low levels or no levels of Carrying skill mean you will only be able to use a certain percentage of your container's capacity. (Woe to the average person who dumps out the contents of an expertly-packed kit and then tries to repack it.)
2) The greater your Carrying skill, the less chance of objects being damaged during transportation. Also, less time is required to retrieve the objects. Thus, getting jostled will have less of a chance of damaging fragile items, and you will be better able to find and locate even a specific item from a fully-loaded pack with a minimum amount of time for removing and replacing objects in the way.
3) The greater your Carrying skill, the more able you are able to make the load seem lighter by properly distributing the weight to ensure that greater stress falls on stronger locations, and that lesser stress falls on weaker locations. This, in effect, allows you to carry heavier objects than your strength would ordinarily allow you to. (Most people who carry things aren't limited by physical strength, but rather by the stress on different locations on their body. You couldn't hope to carry a portable stove in a sack, but placing that portable stove into an external-frame backpack makes it lighter than air.)

I should mention that such a skill only makes sense in a game which is based on a simulation. A carrying skill for people in a standard RPG would be a waste of time, and a fixed limit based on physical strength is a much better idea there.
#15 Nov 22 2003, 7:24 pm
In response to Spuzzum (#14)
Spuzzum wrote:
(Most people who carry things aren't limited by physical strength, but rather by the stress on different locations on their body. You couldn't hope to carry a portable stove in a sack, but placing that portable stove into an external-frame backpack makes it lighter than air.)

First of all, as your excellently worded post points out, encumberance is less about strength, and more about volume/surface area. I tend to think that strength is the wrong stat to base it off. Aside from the last sentence in your post, you tend to argue the same.

Second, I have difficulties with the concept of making it easier for power gamers to carry even more junk. They tend to look for ways to max out their damage, with various strength increasing artifacts. By allowing them to carry more because of their advancement scheme just gives them added encouragement.

So while strength is a limiting factor with cartage, its clearly not the stat to use in such a skill, and while your informative post clearly shows that certain logical rules are applied to packing, they are not very tricky rules.

I think we agree that it only takes a minimal amount of intelligence to apply these rules. Certainly the average person can understand and apply them.

(Woe to the average person who dumps out the contents of an expertly-packed kit and then tries to repack it.)

Again sir, you speak nothing but truth, and futher complicate the issue!

So strength only helps so much, and the rules of packing are simple. This also rules out intelligence as the base for a "carry" skill. What do we need to be good at efficient, balanced loads, with limited space?

I would argue that an excellent spacial sense would help. This would be a blend of dexterity and intelligence, I would suppose, unless you have a perception stat.

A good spacial sense is developed by interacting with your invironment. A baby needs both hands and eyes to learn about the world.

The second thing you need to be good at packing is lots of practice. You sort of hint at this in your post...

nothing can ever square up with everything else, so you need to rearrange objects until they all fit.

I suppose if you always carried the same things, it wouldnt matter if you had a high "carry". In essence, you would be specialized in loading your own equipment, in the same way each time. In that sense, a player character WOULD be wasting time training for it. A merchant would not.

Thanks for your feedback Spuzzum.

I should mention that such a skill only makes sense in a game which is based on a simulation.
Thus, any Carrying skill (like the one in Haven ;-))

Havens an rpg, not a sim, right?
#16 Nov 22 2003, 9:37 pm
In response to ThreeFingerPete (#15)
I should mention that such a skill only makes sense in a game which is based on a simulation.
Thus, any Carrying skill (like the one in Haven ;-))

Havens an rpg, not a sim, right?

It's a "roleplaying game", yes, but only insofar as it uses the concept of roleplaying. It doesn't match up with the typical definition of "RPG" these days, where people place themselves into a unique world to whack on monsters. Most of the game so far is, in fact, an abstracted simulation.
#17 Nov 23 2003, 12:55 am
In response to Spuzzum (#16)
Just totally off-topic, but I think that any 'RPG' that bases itself on killing stuff isn't much of an RPG, unless, for instance, you are a soldier (in which case, by killing you are RPing).
#18 Nov 23 2003, 1:44 am
In response to Hazman (#17)
The acronym "RPG" has pretty much escaped the confines of its original "role-playing game" definition, methinks. But let's not have another debate/flame-war on this subject. Please? =P
#19 Nov 24 2003, 9:39 am
I personally use the weight system, as well as an adapted number of items system. Basically, you've got two hands as a humanoid, you can carry up to twice your size in items in your hands, but if you devote a hand to a weapon, (i.e. equip it) you can't carry things in that hand until you either sheath your weapon, or unequip it. Basically, you can carry 10 daggers, but you can only effectively use two in battle, unless you're throwing them. You can still put items into your backpack if you have one equipped, and this keeps your hands free. Alternatively, you could take some beast of burden along with you and equip it with a pack saddle to place things into, then again, you might risk it bolting in fear if you get yourself into combat along the way.