Encumbrance - Old Hat or Core Pillar?

[lackblogger]

Yet another discussion topic brought to the fore while playing Wrath of the Righteous.

I came across this quote while reading various comments about the game from various people:

"For both games I recommend mods to have your characters move faster outside of combat and encumbrance removal. There is no fun to be had there, it's just your time being wasted in an already very long game".

Which fascinated me.

Encumbrance is a key feature in Wrath, they make a very big deal of it, it's integral to the resting system and is tailored in such a way as to govern your loot selection. Removing it removes a key mechanical element of the game.

Of all the ways Wrath wastes your time, this isn't one of them.

For just one example: Is there a mod to remove the "tell me about yourself" dialogue options and strip down dialogues to solely 'need to know' information? This strikes me as a much more useful way to reduce the game's time wasting and removal of genuinely unfun content.

But, once again, maybe I live in a world that both doesn't exist and never did exist? Or, if it does exist, it exists in mathematically small numbers.

Why is there even a mod to remove encumbrance in existence? It's a cRPG you fool, why are you playing them if you don't like encumbrance?

Anyway, let's see what you all think, eh?

You enjoy the concept of encumbrance? Or you find it a time waste hassle?

 

[SirJames]

Hate inventory encumbrance, hate limited inventory slots.

I'm fine with equipment load such as wearing heavy armour slowing you down.

Elden Ring, etc, is my favourite approach.

 

[bjon045]

I like an encumberance system when it is based on what your character is actually using i.e. armour, sword and what's on your belt. Ideally I like to have a wagon or camp where I can store all the other items so they don't contribute towards encumberance but they shouldn't be switchable during a combat. I like how it encourages multi-class characters to ensure they have the appropriate strength to be able to wear heavy armour etc. I like it for the sake of realism mostly - I like magic and suspending belief in most things but having some limits is good.

 

[Ivanwah]

I used the mod to move faster out of combat in Kingmaker, but it also made the time move faster. The first game where I noticed that feature built in was Pillars 1. There was even a mod for PoE that made the "fast mode" twice as fast which I used. Yeah it looked like a Benny Hill skit when the characters moved from one part of the map to the other, but it really helped alleviate my annoyance with the slow moving characters. I Don't know why that feature isn't in more new games.

I also turned off the option for encumbrance affecting movement speed out of combat in Kingmaker (At least I think there was such an option). I don't see the point of that, beyond some superficial immersion. One could argue that it could affect some encounters. For example, your slow moving tanks fall behind the rest of the party and then you get ambushed and party wiped because of that. But you never get ambushed in that game. In fact, you are always the first one to notice the enemy, and if you turn on the pause when enemy spotted option, you can always reform your party to an ideal formation. I also think there was an option to make the whole party move as fast as the slowest character, which would make sense immersion-wise (it's only in dumb horror movies where the party thinks it's smart to split up).

In turn, all that option did was make you move slower. And if you love exploring like I do, and explore every corner of every map (and there are a lot of maps), time wasted moving slowly quickly added up. I don't know if I would have ever finished the game that way. It took me about 200 hours the way I played, and the last third was really a slog where I was done with most of the mechanics of the game and just wanted to see the end of it. If I played it the "slow" way, I think it would have added 50 more hours with the amount of out of combat movement I did, and I think I would have given up at that point.

 

[kborom]

Given I love loot I also love a bit of inventory management and depending upon the type of game this tends to be fine to me and encumbrance is a minor issue.

So Skyrim and other open worlds are weight based whereas isometric action RPG's tend to be unit based and that also tends to work for me. Playing Wolcen at the moment and I have restricted being able to even pickup the first couple of types of inventory so that works well and I don't get completely swamped.
The more realistic attempts, eg Kingdom Come Deliverance, were far too restrictive and affected gameplay to the degree that I found a mod to over-ride the limit. I also don't like attempts to slow you down where extra game time is added purely out of a simple mechanic.

 

[bkrueger]

I am in the camp of @SirJames and @bjon045 : Encumbrance by wearing a heavy armour (like in Elden Ring) makes sense as a mechanic, since you have to make a trade off between armour and agility. Encumbrance by weight of your inventory or limited inventory space is an unnecessary annoyance in my eyes, because it forces you to sell or store inventory every ten minutes.

In general I don't like games, where micromanagement of stuff takes a relevant amount of time, so in particular I don't like survival games based on eating, drinking, sleeping, inventory management and such. I find that boring. Of course that is a question of personal taste, I can understand, if other people like things of that kind.

 

[Vaelith]

There are two games that have dealt with this topic best to my tastes.

WH40k Rogue Trader: No need to play Tetris with the inventory, as space is unlimited and weight doesn't play a role. Armor is balanced around mitigation vs dodge, weight doesn't matter. Excess loot can be sent on the fly to the cargo hold of your ship to be traded for favor at your convenience. Money doesn't even exist, you're infinitely wealthy, and you only need the "trust" of the trade companies to acquire their goods. Actually brilliant, on all accounts.

Dark Souls / Elder Ring: Again, no need to play Tetris thanks to the unlimited inventory. You can collect and stash any amount of items or gear that you wish. Encumbrance is only a mechanic to balance armor vs mobility, similar to how WH40K works, but adapted for an action game where WH40k is balanced for a TB game.

With that said, when the inventory space (and not necessarily the weight) is a core balance feature, I'm thinking of games like Resident Evil, for example, I can understand it, much like in games that give you more abilities than can fit in your skill bar, so part of the game is to choose your loadout and strategy, as a means to balance the game's difficulty. I don't love it, though.

If I ever mod a game for my initial playthrough, it's to trivialize inventory weight/space, in games where it doesn't make any sense to just burden or cripple your experience for the sake of the tediousness of having to run back and forth between adventures and merchants.

 

[lackblogger]

In reply to all so far:

Inventory space is a different topic with it's own set of issues and one that is much more rational to mod IMO. I'm thinking games where 1 gem occupies the same amount of inventory space as one anvil, etc, lol. But, yeah, different topic.

On topic, I'm glad everyone agrees that individual character encumbrance is still something they consider a core pillar.

However, I'm a bit surprised that everyone seems to dislike inventory weight.

In the Pathfinder games, for example, the game does do a great job of explaining that you should be adventuring light and only ever transport heavy goods if you are in particular need.

As such, you don't hoard useless items. You don't pick up every leather jacket and dropped great axe. You don't have to run and sell everything the moment your six leather jerkins, worth 2 gp each, weigh you down.

And in Kingmaker I did this without too much issue and, so far, just finished act 1, in Wrath I've always travelled at 'light' speed and have spent very little time at all either managing inventory nor trading.

I've spent more time reading what every spell in my inventory does than all of my looting and trading combined. Which is a different inventory issue.

So I suppose the question is: What are you all picking up that's weighing you down so much? Are you just stubbornly refusing to ignore trash loot (something that games have been encouraging you to do for 30 years)?

 

[Ivanwah]

In Kingmaker, there was a lot of loot worth selling, and I used that money to buy BP for kingdom management. I also hoarded every healing potion I could find since I found them to heal a really minuscule amount of health compared to their price. And since there was a lot of time sensitive quests I didn't want to spend my time resting and risk a quest failing so I spammed the potions after some tough fights. Sometimes almost 20 potions per character. And if I anticipated to be in such situations multiple times, You can see how I had 200-300 light healing potions, 100+ medium healing potions, etc, and it quickly added up. Also, fire and acid flasks were a great tool against insect/spider swarms when I didn't have my Alchemist in the party, so I hoarded those as well. I also kept unique items and collectibles until I could get back to the base, but I don't know how much the latter weighed.

 

[bkrueger]

My answer would be the same as before: If somebody likes a micromanagement simulation, that is completely ok for me. But, for me personally the opposite holds: If loot is not useful (not even for selling), it shouldn't be there in the first place. And if it is useful (and if it is only for selling), I want to be able to collect it without having to waste time by often travelling somewhere to store or sell it.

In the end it is a question of approach to gaming. For me playing a game is like reading a book or watching a movie and I wouldn't appreciate a book describing, how somebody finds random items and goes to town selling them. I also wouldn't appreciate a book describing, how the protagonists go to toilet every few hours, sleep every night or eat three times a day.

 

[Carnifex]

I'm ok with encumbrance as it does serve a use in games, yet I also greatly appreciate when the items that are meant to be sold have a category all their own, making it easier to sort and dispose of them. There are some quality of life choices that I find really useful within games.

 

[lackblogger]

@Ivanwah , this is one of those posts where I'd like to rate it with multiple emojis, such as both laugh and like in equal measure.

@bkrueger , your post is a good example of how detachment from P&P roots can effect player immersion and confuse the discussion.

The reason a lot of cRPGs, and particularly those based on some kind of P&P system, litter the game world with Leather Jerkins isn't because they are gold drops in the guise of items. It's because in P&P all monsters have loot tables.

So when you kill, for example, a goblin, the DM evaluates what is dropped from the loot table. Usually some rubbish armour, a weak weapon and a few gold pieces, maybe a copper ring or amethyst as well if you're lucky with your looting dice rolls.

Players who are attracted to the computer version of their P&P game then feel cheated if the monsters aren't dropping the correct loot.

Interestingly though, you've got the right idea, but just in the wrong place. A lot of games now have 'junk' loot finds. In Wrath there's a gazillion 'junk' items that serve no ingame or P&P purpose, but are just there to act as coins-by-another-name, and are usually strewn about random chests like confetti.

Now, these would be greatly beneficial to convert to simply replacing them with a coin value, because it would VASTLY declutter the already over-cluttered inventories. No adventurer wants to be either rewarded by nor hoard with pride 14 grinding stones or 25 ornate small statues of cats. Well, at least when there's no shelf to put them.

A game like Diablo completely abstracts the concept of P&P loot and turns it up x 1000. So a Goblin can drop anything from The Golden Armour of Hercules all the way to Minor Chimney Sweep Boots, and usually both at the same time, plus about 14 other random things.

But even in Diablo games, the player isn't expected to pick up and sell every single item, in that respect it still has the same heritage as regular RPGs. AKA: you get a 'drop' and then select what you want/need from the assorted treasures.

The addition of so much 'crap' loot in modern random RPGs, from junk to crafting items and from food to unlimited gem variety, must make it very difficult for a non-P&P heritage player to discern WTF is going on. So they just whack the 'loot all' button and then despair later.

It's one of those things that's no-one fault, per-se, but is just a result of a natural entropy of concepts evolving without focus. How would a modern player know the difference in heritage between a Leather Jerkin and a Decorative Flower Pot? Lol.

 

[bkrueger]

@lackblogger : What you write about the historic roots of useless loot in P&P may be true, I have no problem with that. I would only add: Historical roots are an explanation but no justification.

 

[booboo]

I am fine with unlimited inventory slots (as a convenience), but I do think what you pick up should have weight....unless you have some convenient way of mitigating that. So getting a bag of holding was always a great point in D&D, because weight/encumbrance limits effectively vanished. And it makes sense mechanically - a magic extra dimensional space (in as much as magic makes sense). Being a pack rat who can pick up 5 metric tons of crap while adventuring, and contneu dashing about, and not have it weigh anything, doesn't make any 'game sense' to me. Unless you have a camp retinue and/or donkey to haul it about. Although I understand it can be a pain.

 

[Ivanwah]

@lackblogger I don't think that is inherently a P&P concept. If I fight a creature that has a sword, a shield and a light armor, I would expect to be able to loot those items. If that creature dropped a bow and heavy armor, that would be immersion breaking. That might have been done that way in P&P games, but that is a logical way of doing things. If there were no P&P games and CRPGs were the first time someone made a roleplaying game, I believe it would have been done the same way.

I believe the reason to pick up items you've "outgrown" is to sell them for money (obviously). If a game gives you no reason to spend money, there would be no need to pick up those items. For example, if you get a good starting gear from the beginning and get better gear regularly through adventuring and questing, there is no need to hoard low level items for profit since you don't need the money.

Some games don't do that in the beginning (you get decent gear, but it becomes underpowered by level 3, for example) so you have to grind some money to buy the next batch of gear that would last you until level 5. But usually, by the half point mark of the game you get gear that could be useful to you until the end of the game so there is no need to spend any money. You might get even better gear by the end, but you'll usually get it from a quest or something similar.

Then there are games like Kingmaker that have a money sink (in the form of kingdom management in Kingmaker). Like I mentioned, I spent a lot of money on BP in that game (by my estimation more than 200k). Since you could lose the game if your kingdom failed, and I couldn't bother with the mechanic by the middle of the game any more, I spent all that gold on BP so I didn't have to bother with it anymore.

Witcher 3 had something similar in the form of enchanting, introduced in Hearts of Stone expansion. If I remember correctly, you had to invest a lot of money on the enchanting workshop. By that point, I only spent money on alcohol and other alchemy ingredients, repairs, and upgrading witcher gear, but I always had enough money for that from quests and adventuring. For enchanting, the fastest way to make money was to pick up underleveled gear that was of no use to me in order to sell it.

I think the core issue is whether the game has a functioning economy. If I need to spend a lot of money on something in the game, there should also be a way for me to earn that money. The fun way to earn it is through questing/adventuring. Neutral way would be to have some kind of passive income (investing in businesses, taxes, etc). The not so fun way, and the one most games go for, is looting a lot of useless crap and selling it.

 

[daveyd]

I am pretty much in agreement with those that say limits on the individual character are good (heavy armor leading to slower movement or perhaps requiring a min. strength) but I usually don't want to deal with an overall weight limit.

I don't really see the point other than for the sake of realism. Of course, if we're being realistic then gold also needs to have a weight, which is something I don't see much of in cRPGs. The problem is realism does not necessarily mean fun. I think having an individual character encumbrance but not a total weight limit for the whole party stash is a nice balance between realism and keeping looting and inventory management quick and fun rather than a chore.

That said, I'd really like to see more RPGs that don't fill every barrel and crate with crap. Unless it's a core pillar of the game, like say a post apocalyptic RPG where you're scrounging for supplies or crafting materials. But in general, having loads of junk items to pick up that's only use is to sell / trade is not particularly fun.

 

[lackblogger]

I don't really see the point other than for the sake of realism. Of course, if we're being realistic then gold also needs to have a weight, which is something I don't see much of in cRPGs. The problem is realism does not necessarily mean fun. I think having an individual character encumbrance but not a total weight limit for the whole party stash is a nice balance between realism and keeping looting and inventory management quick and fun rather than a chore.

That said, I'd really like to see more RPGs that don't fill every barrel and crate with crap. Unless it's a core pillar of the game, like say a post apocalyptic RPG where you're scrounging for supplies or crafting materials. But in general, having loads of junk items to pick up that's only use is to sell / trade is not particularly fun.

Money does have weight traditionally, and some games did that, though I can't remember which ones right now.

This is another example of how things get lost through facsimile. The reason a modern RPG has 'copper ring' as junk loot, along with silver rings, gold rings, etc, is precisely because money used to have weight.

And the money used to be copper, silver, gold, Platinum. 100 of one is equal to 1 of the next tier. Drakensang: The River of Time is the most modern example of this being put into the computer game version that I can think of.

So you reduced the weight of the money by constantly trading up the 100s into higher value 1s.

And then this is why gems, like various metal rings, plague modern RPGs as a common form of 'junk' loot.

Because gems, like rings, would be worth multiples of currency but weigh just a fraction of the weight. So a gold ring might be worth or 10 or 30gp or whatever, but weigh only the equivalent of 5gp. An opal would be worth, for example, 20gp, but weigh the same as 1gp.

An awful lot of cRPGs give the player 'free inventory' with regards to gold, remove all the trading up of different metals, but leave all the associated elements, such as rings and gems, rendering them as utterly pointless 'atmospheric aesthetics'.

So, ironically, it's desires such as yours, to remove a key element of the game, which has resulted in the proliferation of the very thing you don't like. At least for western RPGs.

Inventory was and should be a very important aspect of an RPG, it should make choosing between STR and any other stat on level-up a very important decision.

By removing inventory as a mechanic, you're actually severely gutting what makes RPGs fun. The Choice and Consequence of so many different aspects of the game.

And this is before you get to the joy of finding magical loot, such as, as @booboo states, the absolute heaven of finding Bags of Holding. Oh well, enjoy your pointless gold ring and amethyst loot drops, we couldn't think of anything else interesting to give you because you've rendered most of it pointless. How would you like Farmer's Hoe of minor knee grazing +1 damage to plant-based life-forms? Yes, let's just put stuff like that everywhere instead

 

[Leoking]

I'm not very selective with what inventory system I prefer.

I'm a big fan of the the grid-style inventory where each item takes up its size on the inventory menu that you'll have to sort by grid size. I like all of them to be honest.

 

[Stingray]

Money does have weight traditionally, and some games did that, though I can't remember which ones right now.

I know that money (gold) in BG3 had weight, quite a bit of it actually. My pile of gold weighed a fuckton by the end of the game Had to move it around strategically between characters, and divide it up at times.

And the money used to be copper, silver, gold, Platinum. 100 of one is equal to 1 of the next tier. Drakensang: The River of Time is the most modern example of this being put into the computer game version that I can think of.

So you reduced the weight of the money by constantly trading up the 100s into higher value 1s.

Solasta has this - there's copper, silver, and gold.

 

[JFarrell71]

Encumbrance is something I like more in theory than I do in practice. Having to shift items around to fit in a space, or dropping/selling things constantly to free up weight, isn't fun and adds nothing meaningful to a game for me.

I don't know if people have brought this up already (I didn't see it in posts I read and scanned) is that even if you think there should be such a thing as carry capacity for "realism", I rarely if ever play games that set the limits at a point where it's at all realistic. Sure, Skyrim (as just one example) has a carrying capacity you can't exceed... but you can carry far, far more than any person could or would ever carry before you get to it. Nobody in real life could or would haul around seven suits of leather mail and 12 broadswords. So in most cases "for realism" is not a worthwhile argument for such a system.

If being a packrat is needed in order to make money, that's not a very good reason either. I tend to think of games in terms of stories being told, and in no good story ever has there been or will there be pages of our characters shifting stuff around in their packs, or going back and forth to merchants to unload random crap. It's uninteresting.

Like many have said, I like tradeoffs in terms of gameplay, so encumbrance does take on a worthwhile role in games like Dark Souls. But of course you can carry a massive amount of stuff in Dark Souls... you just can't equip whatever you want without penalty (or sufficient stats to remove that penalty).

Encumbrance also plays a part, or would, in games that actually take a more realistic approach, restricting you to what a person could actually tote around and maybe giving you a horse with horse bags so you can have some other things near at hand. Games in which survival elements (weather, food, etc) play a role are good games to model this sort of thing in. Heroic fantasy games, imo, are not.