Baldur's Gate Do Infinity Engine-style RPGs need inventory constraints?

[Immortal]

The more casual things are made (Group Stash of Infinity / Unlimited Rest) - The less opportunity we have for things like Bag of Holding / Carry Weight Management or spells like Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion (which I saw implemented in a NWN mod).

Every time something is slashed for "Convenience" games lose something.. You can see this in MMO's too with the over-simplification and over-hand holding they all do now. The result of an entitled culture of man babies who drone on and on about how "I have a job now and don't have time for games that require effort".

Root of the whole fucking decline if you ask me. If your strapped for time just play a couple hours, save and come back to it, simple really, much better than demanding a less detailed game that plays itself a lot more.

Recently a codexer posted on this forum saying how he had zero time for RPG's and couldn't get into them now that he was a father with kids and had a busy job and a house to look after.

What we later realized (through post history) is that he also had been spending upwards of 8 hours a week watching every episode of Naruto as well. Like seriously dude - your gonna bitch about games taking too much time between your family and job when your sitting around watching a kids anime show.

Sorry I don't have time to play these Fancy Smancy 40 hour snore fests.. I gotta go make a bowl of cereal and watch cartoons.

 

[Irenaeus II]

This is particularly hilarious to me because my brother plays TESO and watch Naruto. He also says hardcore cRPGs (actually real cRPGs, not action games with RPG elements) take too much time.

 

[ArchAngel]

All the rings and necklaces went into gem bags. But we didn't pick up ordinary weapons and armors and there were no crafting components.

There were no gem bags in Baldur's Gate. That was added with the Baldur's Gate II engine.

Why do people keep mentioning vanilla bg1 in beamdog topics.

Do you also go to New Vegas topics and talk about mechanics lacking in Fallout 3?

 

[Delterius]

Said by the guy that has a second account to hide all his retard-ness of his previous one.

And I did read your whole post, it changes nothing, my points still stands you are just too big of an idiot to understand it.

Weren't you just throwing a bitchfit a few pages back that the spell descriptions didn't make sense? Now you're getting all spergy about inventories. You're the classic RPG gamer: You don't like seeing progress or worthwhile additions to the RPG genre, you just want shit to stay the same as it was when you were 12.

Lolwut. You just said the guy wanted a very prevalent aspect of the old games to be changed and then immediately accuse him of being a nostalgic fanboy who doesn't want anything to change.

 

[Immortal]

All the rings and necklaces went into gem bags. But we didn't pick up ordinary weapons and armors and there were no crafting components.

There were no gem bags in Baldur's Gate. That was added with the Baldur's Gate II engine.

Why do people keep mentioning vanilla bg1 in beamdog topics.

Do you also go to New Vegas topics and talk about mechanics lacking in Fallout 3?

I mean.. yea we kinda do..

 

[Rake]

A big part of having encumberance rules is that you'll need to actually get a Bag of Holding to (partially) transcend them.

Yes but it came to a point where the game has trained you in the inventory mentality. I don't believe people suddenly started to pick up generic short swords in order to fill the BoH.
More propable (and what i did) is that they used it to put aside items that they were usefull, but in a not immidiate way (like crafting components for Cromwell) in order to not have them take inventory space. And by that point in the game the items that you aren't using but you want to keep are starting to become too much

 

[Infinitron]

There probably are players out there who fill their inventory with every thing they see and then become a bit annoyed when it gets filled up and they have to start choosing what to drop and what to keep (or return to town to sell)

If inventory management isn't a core mechanic of the game then having an optional stash doesn't seem like an awful idea

 

[Immortal]

There probably are players out there who fill their inventory with every thing they see and then become a bit annoyed when it gets filled up and they have to start choosing what to drop and what to keep (or return to town to sell)

If inventory management isn't a core mechanic of the game then having an optional stash doesn't seem like an awful idea

Except when you have 400 cultists masks that you would normally leave on the ground except it's unity and you don't want all those corpses added to your save game file causing huge amounts of memory bloat.
Inventory Management should be a core mechanic of any true RPG that revolves around going on adventures.

 

[Delterius]

A big part of having encumberance rules is that you'll need to actually get a Bag of Holding to (partially) transcend them.

Yes but it came to a point where the game has trained you in the inventory mentality. I don't believe people suddenly started to pick up generic short swords in order to fill the BoH.
More propable (and what i did) is that they used it to put aside items that they were usefull, but in a not immidiate way (like crafting components for Cromwell) in order to not have them take inventory space. And by that point in the game the items that you aren't using but you want to keep are starting to become too much

I did not wish to imply that the BoH matters as a stash, just saying that one aspect of progression in BGT is going through BG1 with only the strenght of your backs and then finding a BoH in BG2. To hell with the hoarding simulationism from PoE.

There probably are players out there who fill their inventory with every thing they see and then become a bit annoyed when it gets filled up and they have to start choosing what to drop and what to keep (or return to town to sell)

Sure, there are people out there who never had any contact with a grid based inventory before and don't know the concept of picking up things that actually seem useful, but they'll learn as they play. Just as I did back in 2010 when I first played these games, they'll soon realize that most of the useless things they picked up sell for less than a handful GP (if they can be sold at all).

There's no point at all in a Stash aside from making mass looting faster, a goal that can be accomplished much better with a global inventory window that includes the loot that is on the ground. As I said, learn with the better things that PoE did, not the meh worthy vaccum simulator.

Besides, of course inventory management is part of the game. That's when you set your quick items and also when your character's strenght attribute comes into play.

 

[Infinitron]

Sure, there are people out there who never had any contact with a grid based inventory before and don't know the concept of picking up things that actually seem useful, but they'll learn as they play. Just as I did back in 2010 when I first played these games, they'll soon realize that most of the useless things they picked up sell for less than a handful GP (if they can be sold at all).

There's no point at all in a Stash aside from making mass looting faster, a goal that can be accomplished much better with a global inventory window that includes the loot that is on the ground. As I said, learn with the better things that PoE did, not the meh worthy vaccum simulator.

DX:HR implemented a hard limit on the inventory that let you carry only one of any weapon type a a time. I have seen LPs of people ferrying guns one at a time out of the combat zones to shops to sell them. Yes, they're being retarded, but unlike the case of degenerate rest spamming, what they're doing doesn't really affect the game's difficulty all that much - it's just a peculiar activity that they feel like doing. Doesn't seem like a horrible idea to help them out a bit.

Nobody's forcing you to vacuum. You can pretend the stash isn't there and play, or disable it in the options menu if you can.

Besides, of course inventory management is part of the game. That's when you set your quick items and also when your character's strenght attribute comes into play.

Meh. If you really want to make inventory management core, have your game cause dropped items to disappear when you leave an area. Well, either that or add a complex suite of "travel mechanics" to your game with monster respawning, ambushes, food, time limits, etc, so they can't travel back and forth and empty out areas. Yeah, just making items disappear is probably easier.

 

[Delterius]

Meh. If you really want to make inventory management core, have your game cause dropped items to disappear when you leave an area. Well, either that or add a complex suite of "travel mechanics" to your game with monster respawning, ambushes, food, time limits, etc, so they can't travel back and forth and empty out areas. Yeah, just making items disappear is probably easier.

That sort of thinking is pretty cool, as it means you aren't limiting the game and desires for the whole prospect of an adventure instead. But aside from some quality of life issues, I'm fine with the way things are, personally.

 

[ArchAngel]

Said by the guy that has a second account to hide all his retard-ness of his previous one.

And I did read your whole post, it changes nothing, my points still stands you are just too big of an idiot to understand it.

Weren't you just throwing a bitchfit a few pages back that the spell descriptions didn't make sense? Now you're getting all spergy about inventories. You're the classic RPG gamer: You don't like seeing progress or worthwhile additions to the RPG genre, you just want shit to stay the same as it was when you were 12.

Spoiler

In before you out yourself as a 40+ year old whining like a bitch about electronic games of pretend on the internet.

I think you need to learn to read. I was giving advice or suggestions to avenger how they can simplify spell durations desciptions so new players can more easily learn the system.
They did make some changes for the BGSoD that do that with weapon equipping but they need to go further and make spells easier to understand for newbies.

 

[Irenaeus II]

add a complex suite of "travel mechanics" to your game with monster respawning, ambushes, food, time limits, etc, so they can't travel back and forth and empty out areas.

I find that amusingly awesome for some reason. Not monster respawning, which is retarded, but simulation of monsters migrating to empty areas

 

[ArchAngel]

All the rings and necklaces went into gem bags. But we didn't pick up ordinary weapons and armors and there were no crafting components.

There were no gem bags in Baldur's Gate. That was added with the Baldur's Gate II engine.

Why do people keep mentioning vanilla bg1 in beamdog topics.

Do you also go to New Vegas topics and talk about mechanics lacking in Fallout 3?

I mean.. yea we kinda do..

Well it is pointless just as it is pointless to keep ignoring that beamdog's bg1 is not the vanilla bg1.

 

[ArchAngel]

Nobody's forcing you to vacuum. You can pretend the stash isn't there and play, or disable it in the options menu .

PoE is forcing us. You cannot ignore it because you cannot drop items, there are no limited loot bags and game gives you so much crap because it is expecting you to pick up everything and quicksell later.

 

[Infinitron]

Nobody's forcing you to vacuum. You can pretend the stash isn't there and play, or disable it in the options menu .

PoE is forcing us. You cannot ignore it because you cannot drop items, there are no limited loot bags and game gives you so much crap because it is expecting you to pick up everything and quicksell later.

You can drop them into containers. But this is more about a hypothetical stash system than any particular implementation.

 

[Immortal]

All the rings and necklaces went into gem bags. But we didn't pick up ordinary weapons and armors and there were no crafting components.

There were no gem bags in Baldur's Gate. That was added with the Baldur's Gate II engine.

Why do people keep mentioning vanilla bg1 in beamdog topics.

Do you also go to New Vegas topics and talk about mechanics lacking in Fallout 3?

I mean.. yea we kinda do..

Well it is pointless just as it is pointless to keep ignoring that beamdog's bg1 is not the vanilla bg1.

You say pointless.. I say hilarious. Have you seen the Codex Fallout 3 Let's play?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

This. I mean, inventory management isn't really a "core" mechanic in BG. It was just one of the ways people did it at the time. There's this weird idea that making the inventory less of an annoying fucking core = destroying something pure about Baldur's Gate, but honestly, what the fuck kind of regressive horse shit is that?

Doesn't this encourage more people to loot every single piece of trash though, not just a few of the most OCD types? I thought a fixed inventory discouraged this sort of shit (as well as, arguably, encouraging people to actually use a few consumables like potions).

And if you really want to make life easier for people who want to pick up every single piece of vendor trash to later sell, isn't the logical endpoint to just convert it to cash instantly as they find it? Is filling an infinite stash with 300 short swords and then hitting "Sell all" when you find a vendor a core mechanic by your definition?

 

[Tigranes]

There probably are players out there who fill their inventory with every thing they see and then become a bit annoyed when it gets filled up and they have to start choosing what to drop and what to keep (or return to town to sell)

If inventory management isn't a core mechanic of the game then having an optional stash doesn't seem like an awful idea

When there are morons involved, the morons are always the problem.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Why do you even have the ability to loot garbage if it's garbage players are just gonna leave there? Verisimilitude?

Well, going by feedback I've seen on some games there does seem to be an expectation that enemies should drop what they used as a general principle. I'd say it's up to the player whether something is useful or not. At the beginning of a game you may need a short sword. While that may be a trash item later on, deciding when they would stop dropping would entail the designer drawing a line somewhere... for every single item in the game. I've had my fighter pick up a shitty staff in an emergency as I had no blunt weapons.

I don't see what's so bad about a weight limit and a few inventory slots instead of encouraging further OCD hoarding and trash accumulation. By all means streamline stuff like scroll management - as those scroll cases did, for example.

 

[Delterius]

Why do you even have the ability to loot garbage if it's garbage players are just gonna leave there? Verisimilitude?

Uhmm... yes?

Skyrim doesn't have a magical super stash of infinite encumberance and people don't complain they can't pick up every single fur cap and candlestick. Think about that for a second. Everyone new to the Elder Scrolls series comment on how you can interact with anything that isn't nailed down. Everyone new also picks up a lot of useless junk. But they don't really expect the game to go out of its way to let them loot the entire world. This audience, which is as mainstream as it gets, does, in fact, learn to select what is useful and what isn't.

Likewise, people already do and have always liked the loot system in the IE games as they are. Why? Not because they can pick every single mote of junk and sell to NPCs for fortunes of 0 to 2 GP each.

Rather, because the game has a system in place that allows them to interact with the NPC's body in a more realistic manner. That the game doesn't throw anything into the ether when you are pickpocketting or looting their bodies. Interactivity begins at the second you get to see those items and decide for yourself what to bring with you.

That is why the Stash, while not a horrible thing per se, is a completely pointless idea.

 

[Neanderthal]

It's strange because i've always enjoyed inventory management, I see it as a strategic component as much as anything else, recent game that I think got the inventory right was the first Witcher. Well laid out, everything had its own space, realistic amount able to be carried, felt just really right to me. New game inventory felt like an abortion in comparison.

I'd really like to see a game where a character has a backpack, last one I remember off hand was Fallout with combat armour.

Played the old Lone Wolf books last year on Seventh Son from Project Aon, character was limited to 50 gold crown in his pouch, eight backpack items, and twelve special items. I enjoyed that aspect of management. Simply didn't pick up shit because I saved space for important gear. Be nice to see a developer have the balls to implement such a system.

 

[Infinitron]

If you want inventory management that's truly meaningful, a large percentage of items in the game should be stuff you'd seriously consider using on a frequent, moment-to-moment basis during your adventure, and not just crap that you haul back to town or hoard. Inventory constraints as an upper cap on the amount of money you earn on dungeon-delving excursions just isn't interesting enough.

What Torment: Tides of Numenera is trying to do with cyphers may or may not end up being an inadvertent stab at addressing this

 

[Delterius]

I don't quite understand the argument. The only mechanics worth having are the ones which are core and all encompassing? Everything should be a sleek game with indie trappings? We can't have NPCs drop all their items as they die if the player can't easily haul everything back to town?

 

[Neanderthal]

If you want inventory management that's truly meaningful, a large percentage of items in the game should be stuff you'd seriously consider using on a frequent, moment-to-moment basis during your adventure, and not just crap that you haul back to town or hoard. Inventory constraints as an upper cap on the amount of money you earn on dungeon-delving excursions just isn't interesting enough.

What Torment: Tides of Numenera is trying to do with cyphers may or may not end up being an inadvertent stab at addressing this

Yes generally I agree, Betrayal at Krondor got the inventory right in that respect I think, everything had a use or a value and was used on a moment to moment basis. Healing supplies had to be used, else you'd simply not regain enough health from resting, weapon buffs were massively effective (though this was later borked by the Silver Spider,) the Eyeglass was continually used, ropes saved for dungeon pits, hammers for armour, whetstones for your blade etcetera. It was a real wrench to drop or sell anything in that game, as you knew it always had a use.

There of course were armours and weapons to lug back to sell, but it was far more effective to stock up on less bulky and more valuable gems and stones, rather than making repeated boring trips to and from slain corpses to the nearest merchant. In my opinion these corpses should have been looted and stripped as soon as you were out of sight anyway, peasants and bandits should have no constraints about this.

And the great descriptions that went with everything, seriously BoK must have had more prose than Torment, Neal Halford has been criminally underused after such a barnstorming introduction. Better than Feist in a lot of places if you ask me.