Things you notice while gaming.

[Owain Taggart]

BTW howcome when you kill enemies be they people, zombies, or monsters/aliens suddenly there is loot and weapons on their bodies, and yet no means of storage from where they came from unless they were shoved up their butts? :s

In a related manner, how characters in adventure games can carry so much! They can easily pull a ladder out of their pocket! It's the same thing with RPGs, though at least with RPGs you have carry limits and bags that help explain how you can carry more stuff. They both have conditioned us to the hoarder life

 

[BK613]

In a related manner, how characters in adventure games can carry so much! They can easily pull a ladder out of their pocket! It's the same thing with RPGs, though at least with RPGs you have carry limits and bags that help explain how you can carry more stuff. They both have conditioned us to the hoarder life

I remember when EQ2 launched the coinage had weight and you had to visit a banker to convert from a lower denomination to a higher one. So here you are, ripping through some dungeon killing and looting when all of a sudden you find your movement is reduced because you now have thousands of copper coins (gathered a few at a time) and have now exceeded your toon's weight allowance. Didn't take them long to add auto-currency conversion to the game. Realistic inventory management sounds like a good idea, but in terms of gameplay, you can end up spending too much time in town instead of playing.

 

[Owain Taggart]

So here you are, ripping through some dungeon killing and looting when all of a sudden you find your movement is reduced because you now have thousands of copper coins (gathered a few at a time) and have now exceeded your toon's weight allowance.

Haha yeah, I've had a similar problem with both the Elder Scrolls and Fallouts, in that everything you picked up had weight to it, which then became even more of an issue when they introduced building things and the requirement for materials. Seriously, why they didn't just drop the weight limit for certain things or at least make materials not weigh anything sounds like a lack of foresight, as something that originally would have been labeled junk would now be considered a resource. In the end, what I ended up doing was download a mod that made those materials not weigh anything. Certain games give different weight properties to certain things, such as quest items and money which don't count towards the weight. I'm kind of surprised money would end up being counted as part of the overall weight.

And along similar lines to Elder Scrolls and Fallout would be Horizon Zero Dawn and the incredible shrinking inventory space. No matter how big your inventory is, inventory space is always taken up by crafting materials. Which is ridiculous given that in terms of gameplay upgrades, they have you upgrade separate pouches for different items, ie crafting materials, herbs, modules. But as far as the game goes, they all share the same inventory space. How does that work?

 

[BK613]

Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion. You learned to do that value-divided-by-weight math in your head early on.
I do agree that inventory systems in games always seem to stretch credibility to the limits. Used cleverly by devs though, it can provide a way to balance a toon's abilities. Without a weight limit for example, a toon could carry a dozen or more swords, each tailored to a different kind of fight. Having swords encumber the toon puts a limit on that kind of gaming the system.

 

[Owain Taggart]

. Without a weight limit for example, a toon could carry a dozen or more swords, each tailored to a different kind of fight.

Oh, I agree that there should be a weight limit, but there are certain things where applying a weight limit doesn't make sense when you take certain aspects of a game into account. Or sometimes they fail to properly take into account how their design affects gameplay, as it can also be a UI issue. I'm not saying there shouldn't be weight limits, but that it's often poorly thought out, as in the case with Horizon Zero Dawn.

For instance, in most RPGs, most quest items don't count towards the weight limit, and so should money. Anything that the game deems integral shouldn't be, because they're less an inventory item, and more part of the gameplay system. I've had unfortunate experiences with games that didn't do that and couldn't pick up essential quest items because of the inventory being full. That's quite irritating. The thing that made HZD's inventory annoying was that it was a UI communication issue. It became a confusing mess that constantly was maxed out.

 

[BK613]

Agree. Verisimilitude versus game-play is always difficult to get right (and somewhat subjective to boot.) I've notice a trend in the past decade or so of giving players tokens off of kills to turn into some vendor NPC rather than loot drops off of actual MOBS. Not a fan of that; reminds me of playing skee-ball at an arcade where the machine spit out tickets to be turned in for prizes..

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, that does seem rather cold. And it's natural for people to want interaction, even from within a game. I think it's why the much maligned Fallout 76, which originally had quests given by terminals, eventually had NPC quest givers.

In a related way, it's also why I've always preferred the 3rd person adventure games with a character you can see moving around the screen and able to interact with other characters, vs first-person adventures like Myst, which have been largely void of character interaction, thus less personality and less story-driven gameplay, towards more puzzle-oriented escape rooms.

 

[BK613]

FP shooters are the only format where I like that point of view.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Right, because it makes sense from a technical point of view, because you then feel more connected with the character and their actions. At the same time, Third-Person Shooters work as well, more out of giving players a different sense of perspective.

What really annoys me is when a game suddenly switches genres at the 11th Hour. So, let's say, you're playing an RPG, and you've amassed all these skills, one would assume that you'd eventually use those skills against an end-boss, right? Well, NO, not according to Two Worlds II, which switched the fighting into a shooting gallery and took none of the skills into account, instead having you use predetermined places to shoot volleys of arrows at a flying dragon.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

In a related manner, how characters in adventure games can carry so much! They can easily pull a ladder out of their pocket! It's the same thing with RPGs, though at least with RPGs you have carry limits and bags that help explain how you can carry more stuff. They both have conditioned us to the hoarder life

Playing a Minecraft a lot, this issue is even weirder.
Minecraft has a specific hard inventory limit.
But, each inventory slot allows with a few exception to carry a stack of 64 of every block/item.
Now, think of each block as a 1m^3 volume cube: stone, granite, gold, diamond, iron,…

inventory limit is 27 slots plus 9 hot bar slots I believe? so a minecraft character can easily carry 2304m^3 of iron for example.
And that is before taking into account shulker boxes, which provides 27 slots itself, and you can carry 36 of those, resulting in a carry capacity of 82,944m^3 of iron (or other type of blocks).

I am not counting Ender chests, as those basically represent storage space in something like a pocket dimension.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Playing a Minecraft a lot, this issue is even weirder.

Oh yeah, definitely an issue. Although they made it easier to overcome by making storage boxes available. Could you imagine if they hadn't made items stackable? Problem would be even worse, and there are items that in certain cases don't stack. Now, I haven't played Minecraft in quite some time, but I'd always wished for more of a customizable hotbar. There's no reason why you couldn't techically have a more customizable interface with the ability to have more hotbars. Stardew Valley has a similar issue, although unlike Minecraft you can actually run out of room to store your boxes due to the lay of the land being limited. What I also like about Stardew Valley is that you technically have two hotbars that you can alternate between. Maybe Minecraft needs something similar.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

I noticed that Marvel Avengers sucks

 

[NCC-73515]

FP shooters are the only format where I like that point of view.

I was fine with 3rd person in games like the first few Tomb Raiders and Max Paynes, but then they moved the camera to one side, and it bothers me so much that I simply don't play these games XD

 

[BK613]

I was fine with 3rd person in games like the first few Tomb Raiders and Max Paynes, but then they moved the camera to one side, and it bothers me so much that I simply don't play these games XD

I was actually saying that I use the first person point of view only in FP shooters. Most other games that offer a choice I play in 3rd person.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I noticed that Marvel Avengers sucks

You just noticed that now? :P

I'd heard it was quite a mess.

 

[XCV330]

That one kind of makes me laugh. Teenager can fend off an entire army of experienced soldiers. It's not just games it's TV, movies and animation.

Kingdom Come Deliverance solves that problem.

17 Year old with Sword gets killed
over.. and over.. and over.. and over.. and over

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

You just noticed that now? :P

I'd heard it was quite a mess.

I only just started playing it on PC..... It's super boring and generic. Not much fun but I want to do the single player stuff but I'm not really having that much fun with this at all.

Also the whole AIM story just sucks and is sucky

 

[XCV330]

KCD has one of the funniest quests I have ever played

warning: one cartoon butt on display for a few seconds.
I present, drunken Father Godwin

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[Christmas Canon Spock]

Seriously, why they didn't just drop the weight limit for certain things or at least make materials not weigh anything sounds like a lack of foresight, as something that originally would have been labeled junk would now be considered a resource.

In Fallout 3, specifically, a lot of the junk had to have weight because there was a specific weapon designed to fire junk out of it. The more weight the item had the more damage it could do. But, those items were also used in a crafting recipe. Fallout New Vegas was worse because there was a lot more junk items and a lot more crafting, but it was built on a short schedule with the FO3 engine. 4 I think had the same time of weapon of firing junk, but I could be wrong.

But, yeah, inventory management in Fallout (the main game I have experience with) is a pain because you don't know what is and isn't actually usable. I've gotten to the point in playthroughs of having the wiki up for recipes so if I come across an item I don't even question if I should hoard it.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

KCD has one of the funniest quests I have ever played

warning: one cartoon butt on display for a few seconds.
I present, drunken Father Godwin

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Accept third party cookies

What a delightfully bizarre game. I must try this