Do you use weight?

[Xaeyr]

Do many of you give your items a "weight" so that your characters can only carry so much before it starts to takes it's toll on them?

 

[CrazyCrab]

I would, but Ive got so many features already that it's not worth the hassle.

It would also be complicated to distinguish between ''empire'' and ''party'' inventories...

But yeah, otherwise Id use and include a ton of loot, with the player rarely being able to take it all. Makes looting more interesting I think.

 

[DarthVollis]

Instead of weight I included rotting food so that people could not horde up on food. For example after a little time Apple becomes Rotten Apple.

 

[arekpowalan]

Like the one featured in Super and Virtual Hydlide? I don't think so. It'll only give the player a needless burden.

Don't get me wrong, I like the personal inventory in Dragon Quest series and limited equipment slots in MS Saga, but in RPGs, tools and equipments should be organized and easy to carry around. In DQ, you have limited bag space, but you can use anything avaliable in your bags without a penalty, plus the inventory screen is easy to organize between characters. On the other hand, the equipments in MS Saga are limited and grow along with the newer, endgame mobile suits. Equipments only matter upon the suits' augments and combat capacity in battle scenes. You can carry 99 of any item in the inventory screen otherwise.

Forcing the player become smart with what they bring into battles is a good idea, but once equipments and tools start slowing you down and you need to either limit the augments or leave stuff behind in a bank to "lighten up", there's a chance the player gets annoyed. I believe that RPGs aren't supposed to make player feel insecured about one's own belongings. Instead, the gamer should be motivated to utilize the system, by choosing right items and equipments for the right timing.

Unless you plan to have the player be very cautious about the inventory, especially in horror, survivor, or resourse management games like Resident Evil and Survivor Kids, I don't see why to make the game harder this way.

 

[Dragnfly]

I was never a fan of the weight systems WRPGs are so fond of because it just felt like false realism to me, like being able to "go anywhere" but still being stopped by tall grass. Take Skyrim for example. Yes, you can only carry so so much. So so much being, like, 20 full suits of iron armour. That's not realistic at all. It just makes me throw out one of my 50 frying pans so that I'm not crawling on the ground for being 0.01kg over my encumbrance limit.

If I ever did impose inventory limits it'd be a space limitation. Preferably with items having different shapes so I can Tetris them into my backpack, with some items able to stack to a certain amount. That was loads of fun in games like Persiom or Resident Evil 4.

I'm also fond of those rare systems where you can only take X amount of items into a battle, but you can carry however many you want when out of a battle. That's the inventory system I was looking into for my current project.

 

[captainproton]

I don't really like the notion of inventory weight in an rpg, especially if essential key items are factored in.

I do, however, like the idea of heavy equipment affecting your stats. Your Gigaplate Armor may have great defense, but it drops your agility, evasion and crit rate.

 

[Kuro DCupu]

Nah... Sounds good for solo serious game type. Big NO for any other than that IMHO.

Not trying to be realistic or something here, but I only thought what's good.

 

[Foron]

Instead of weight I included rotting food so that people could not horde up on food. For example after a little time Apple becomes Rotten Apple. Uh, idk. Mods like iNeed get pretty annoying when all of your food rots.

I would, but Ive got so many features already that it's not worth the hassle.

It would also be complicated to distinguish between ''empire'' and ''party'' inventories...

But yeah, otherwise Id use and include a ton of loot, with the player rarely being able to take it all. Makes looting more interesting I think.

I'm not judging anyone's decisions on these, but I've played games (Skyrim) that have these systems in place.

I think things could be realistic, as long as it doesn't become annoying.

I absolutely hate when I have to an item just to make room (probably because I'm thinking my computer will explode, it's not the best...at all). It sucks to be moving along, when suddenly...can't run.

And food, is also a risky thing. Because if you have negative side affects to hunger, and then make food limited (anyway possible, really), that could make someone miffed. But at least in Skyrim, you can get carry weight mods, mods that use the more useless items, followers, a house, etc.

So there are all sorts of ways to alliviate this problem in Skyrim, but in a RPG Maker game? That could be a bit...hair-pullingly frustrating.

I don't mind you guys using these, in fact I hope it goes well. Just make sure you try to balance it.

To the OP, no.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

I forget if it was Grandia2 or the Lunar games (I wanna say it was Lunar) that had a system where you had a main inventory, but your characters had their own personal inventories that they could only access in battle. I liked this system, even if I always forgot to restock my items. We use a system like this in Winter Blossoms, but Yato's coded it to restock for you after battle (to the best of your inventory's capability) so if you forget, it's not too big a deal.

I don't mind weight systems in games as long as it's not an obvious ploy to try to make the player spend real money. (MMOs that make you pay for better inventory capability make me sad ;( ) It's fun during the early parts of the game, where you're finding new things constantly and the decision of what to take and what not to take has a bit more impact. It's annoying later parts of the game where you're grinding things out and want to carry hordes of things around at once, but instead have to run back and forth between your current activity and your bank/home/storage/shop constantly to get anything done. It loses its charm there and is a HUGE time sink. *coughSKYRIMcough* *cough walking back and forth between the house and the blacksmith at a crawl because I just want to carry everything anyway cough*

Those backpack tetris style systems, like Dragnfly mentioned, truly are pretty fun. My only real experience with a game that uses that is Might and Magic, but I enjoy the "How can I order this stuff to fit this one more thing in my bag??" bonus puzzle ;D (MM6 for sure, doesn't have any grindy reasons to carry around tons of something around, so that aspect never really becomes a problem like a limited inventory did in Skyrim. Just trips back to town during dungeon looting - but I suck at the early parts of game and need more trips back to town to HEAL then I do for selling treasure. Later, the game gives you easy ways to travel back and forth.)

Any of these systems are fine, but you really have to think about the player and what impacts this will have on their gameplay. If your game encourages item hording, it's probably not a good idea. If you want to encourage the player to use their items, make hard decisions and sacrifices with their loot, then a system that limits what they can carry makes sense.

 

[Wavelength]

I've never seen a Weight system that I've actually liked in an RPG.  So I haven't even considered ever using it in my own games.

My current game timeblazer doesn't have Gold in it (instead of buying items, you receive them based on your performance in battles and action games), but in my other projects I have opted to prevent the player from getting 99 of everything simply by keeping the game economy very tight.  Powerful items and equipment are appropriately expensive and unless the player is playing through the game with exceptional skill, she will have to choose between different purchases because she won't have enough money for everything.  Additionallyhe economy doesn't massively "scale up" over the course of the game (a late game monster might drop 5x the amount of money as an early game monster, not 100x), so even late in the game she will need to choose between stocking up on potions or springing for a better piece of armor.

I also tend to be against the "limited space inventory" systems (even though they're at least more intuitive than Weight) unless there's a really good reason to have them, because they tend to feel restrictive and the player has to waste time shuffling things around.  If anything, I think the best way to handle this is having a limit on the number of items you can bring into a dungeon (this is really smart because it means your 500 HP Hi-Potion is now much better than five 100 HP Potions), but no limit on the amount that you can carry once you're in there (and of course restore the rest of the player's inventory once they leave the dungeon, for convenience).

 

[CrazyCrab]

One of my problems with not having any limitations (weight / ''tetris'' limited space for example) is that you have to make the loot somewhat unrealistic.

I mean, youre fighting a soldier, he dies, he drops nothing - why? The weapon he was using was perfectly fine, why would it break every time you kill one? If you have realistic drops there + unlimited inventory you just flood the player with items and pretty much infinite cash. In skyrim you get realistically flooded with items, but you don't pick everything up, same with Dungeon and Dragons games like Neverwinter Nights.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

But what's more important when you're making a game: mechanics that try to make things as realistic as possible to the point of negatively impacting an aspect of the gameplay or mechanics that give realism a bit of a side-glance to allow the systems to be appropriate to the sort of game? (And even then, it is actually more realistic to say "You can only hold 50 of those swords in your pocket." than "You can only hold 999 of those swords in your pocket." Honestly, you probably can't hold ANY of those swords in your pocket.)

Your inventory system should be a reflection of what matters most to how you want people to play the game.

Like, look at Recettear, for example. This is a game about running a store. You can go out in dungeons with adventurers and find items to sell. The inventory you can carry back is limited. This fits well with what the theme of the game is. It's largely strategy. What do you think will sell better, sell for more, have more use to your store? You want to bring back items that have value towards your goal of making your store better/making more money to pay off your debt. It's a decision making thing.

But on the flipside, what was Skyrim's limited inventory trying to say to me as a player? I still don't really know. It always just felt annoying and I never really felt an impactful moment of "should I take this or that." Throw in the fact that Dragon drops are stupidly HEAVY - it really just became a waste of time in terms of gameplay. If a developer told me they put that in just for realism, I think I'd cry (maybe kick them in the leg a little for good measure), because a lot of the game's aspects encourage you to horde your stuff. (leveling something like blacksmith naturally while playing never felt like a plausible goal)

 

[Wavelength]

I mean, youre fighting a soldier, he dies, he drops nothing - why? The weapon he was using was perfectly fine, why would it break every time you kill one?

Maybe it has to do with the giant meteor I just finished him off with? 

 

[whitesphere]

When I consider this question, I ask what does "weight" add to the game?

So, if I were making a survival game, like Oregon Trail (that's what it is, really), I'd definitely use Weight, because limited supplies is a core concept of the game.    Or, if you have a Zombie Apocalypse game, it's quite fair to make a core part of gameplay "Do you want to carry that rusty sword, or that can of lighter fluid?"  Because survival games are supposed to be challenging from scarce resources.

But, if you have a classic fantasy RPG, unless it is a core part of the gameplay, what does it do?

I think the most crucial time for item limits is already there --- combat.    Out of combat, I could guzzle 999 Heal potions if I want.  In combat, each round I guzzle a Heal potion is a round I'm NOT beating up the enemies/casting spells/whatever.

If I want to limit the amount of money the player gets, so they can't get infinite money from, say, killing 1000 guards and selling their swords, I have several alternate ways (that could be used together) to solve this:

1. Add a virtual economy --- the more of something I sell, the less it's worth.  And, conversely, the more of something I buy, the more expensive it becomes.

2. Make shopkeepers have limited amounts of cash (which does replenish over time).  After all, that scruffy old man selling Antidotes in the desert probably doesn't have 300,000 Gold to buy your Awesome Sword of Death.

3. Make shopkeepers only purchase items related to what they are selling.  So if you get those Eyes of Newt drops, you need to find some Alchemists who will buy them.

4. Make some of the item drops worthless for straight selling but useful for trading.  I'd reserve this for only a few items, because it would quickly become VERY annoying.

Those are "realistic" without really being too frustrating for the player.  Some of these even open up new RPG side quests ("Where is a vendor who will buy the Sword of Infinite Blackness?")

So I prefer more creative approaches to solving the infinite money problem.   As for "limiting what the player can bring into battle", I don't see that as a problem for the reason I mentioned. 

 

[Makio-Kuta]

3. Make shopkeepers only purchase items related to what they are selling.  So if you get those Eyes of Newt drops, you need to find some Alchemists who will buy them.

I forget what game it was, but rather than just flat out having stores NOT buy items, all shop keepers will buy anything, but they will pay less for things that aren't related to their own business. The blacksmith will buy our Eye of Newt, but you'll get more value if you wait and sell it to the alchemist in the next town.

(But a system like that would tie in with limited inventory space haha because then you have to decide "free up the space now, or hang onto the item to make more money")

 

[Foron]

Throw in the fact that Dragon drops are stupidly HEAVY...

Try adding the ability to harvest Dragon Meat. That's almost horror game scary.

 

[DarthVollis]

In many games there are some much time that I end up doing nothing because I have everything I need (mainly from Hording) or being overly prepared. The reason I included Rotten Food in my game is so that there is a reason for farming and a player has to think before adventuring. There are going to be some food items that take a long time to go bad and some that take shorter amounts of time. I did not want someone to walk around with 99 Apple Pies (example) for the entire game. 

Plus your character will need to take care of needs such as hunger, thirst, and rest in the game as well but it will take some time to actually receive negative effects for being either one of these.

 

[Foron]

In many games there are some much time that I end up doing nothing because I have everything I need (mainly from Hording) or being overly prepared. The reason I included Rotten Food in my game is so that there is a reason for farming and a player has to think before adventuring. There are going to be some food items that take a long time to go bad and some that take shorter amounts of time. I did not want someone to walk around with 99 Apple Pies (example) for the entire game. 

Plus your character will not to take care of needs such as hunger, thirst, and rest in the game as well but it will take some time to actually receive negative effects for being either one of these.

Cool.

 

[DarthVollis]

Sorry about that there was a typo in my post.

Plus your character will need to take care of needs such as hunger, thirst, and rest ...

 

[Makio-Kuta]

I love the perishable food idea. Are you going to have things like beef jerky that last longer but are less filling vs things that rot quickly but have better effects? So you can debate between buying 99 beef jerky or 20 pies? ( can you eat rotten food and get negative status effects xD ?) anyway, this is a good idea that sounds like it ties into the game play. Exactly the sort of reasoning that supports limited inventory in a game.