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Which RPG got inventory completely right?

dibens

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Imho Diablo inspired NWN grid based inventory is far superior. It's transparent, you can open inventory without opening character sheet, you can easily assign all items (including sword and board setup) to plethora of quickslots by simply dragging and dropping them, and since the inventory is multi-tabbed, I can just put all the items I use in the first page and the rest of the crap and loot in the rest. It's not perfect by any means, but meh.

Just wondering, why isn't it perfect? What could be improved?

Mostly presentation and clunkiness of the action wheel. You have to right click the item and move the mouse over the corresponding options to to see it's stats or drop it from inventory. After spending years on Diablo 2 it seemed counter intuitive. but it's a nitpick really, since DnD games are very conservative as far as item variety goes, so you can tell if sword is +1, +3, or unique just by looking at it.

My biggest issue is that items take too much space (2x1 for pots, 5x2 for big weapons) and icons are way too big in general- they could have been scaled by 75%-50% and still look pleasant to the eye and in turn make the inventory more functional.

I haven't played the game in a while, but I think I had problems with correctly quick-slotting dual weapons as well, as it would put the wrong weapon in the offhand upon activation.
 

SCO

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Is transparent inventory supposed to be some sort of advantage in a game? (even if it has item interaction with environment, aka, the dreaded 'puzzle', like a filthy adventure).
 

PorkaMorka

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Does JA2 1.13's extremely great inventory system lose points because JA2's looting system is so tedious and time consuming? I think it might.
 

The Round Peg

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I like the paper dolls in Ultima 7 Serpent Isle. I have not seen anything like it in another game since then, which is a pity. It was a good idea with much potential for improvement.

The realistic representation of backpacks as inventory in Ultima 7 was also another great idea that should have become the de facto inventory system for Western RPG but have never caught on. The backpacks in Ultima 7 could become cluttered and disorganized just like a real backpack. However, organizing and arranging items in my characters' backpacks backpacks was kinda fun in Ultima 7... until the game messed up and reorganized everything, which could be really frustrating after I had spent so much time sorting through everything.

Ultima 7 actually pioneered many great revolutionary ideas. Those ideas had so much potential for further improvements. Strangely enough most of those ideas were never picked up by later games.
 

SCO

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Guess exult fixed that 'messed up' thing? I think that my backpacks there stay the way i leave them.
 

wormix

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I don't think any game has a perfect inventory system, although some come close.

Ultima 7's inventory is pretty cool but the absence of information and item inspection really hurts it for me. In a game that sets out to create an alternate world, I don't see why each item wouldn't have its own description for you to read.

Apart from the aesthetics, each item has its own weight and size values (yes, even gold) but there's no way to tell what they are except by experimenting. Even though you might not realistically know exactly how much a sword weighs, or that two loaves of bread is equal in size to four apples or whatever, this information should be available to the player as it's something the character would be able to work out just by holding or looking at the items.

Underworld lets you go bagception as had been mentioned, but each bag & your backpack has a limit of 8 items.

Wizardry 8 had a nice party pool system where each character shares the burden, and it took an extra turn to 'retrieve' an item from this pool during combat. But each character had a limit of 8 items they could carry. Considering that the game took into account encumbrance and that the party inventory had a scrollbar, why was there this limitation?

King's Bounty, while not a proper RPG, had a grid based inventory that got larger as you picked up more items. Something other grid-inventory games could draw from. However it wouldn't let you have empty space between items which was a shame, although it did have sorting by type & value.

I think when it comes to comparing inventory systems it's important to break it down into the system (backend, how it'd work in P&P) and interface. Many games have systems limited by their interface, or other design limitations. At least that's the only reason I can think of for some of the limits in most old school games.

Then there's games with plain bad interfaces like Stonekeep. Would it have been that bad if you could open a full screen grid inventory, rather than the 'slick' 'streamlined' side scroll inventory? Same with Fallout & Daggerfall. The idea itself wasn't bad, just the interface and way you interacted with it made it unbearable.

Other games had importing & exporting of characters, which probably had design limitations on how many items characters could carry.

Most newer games have alright inventory systems in that they follow the 'limitless' inventory limited only by weight, but have absolutely horrendous interfaces to go with them. Whether it's items having no icons, or just icons for categories (Skyrim, DA2), or the icons themselves just not being unique enough (DA:O). The Witcher 2 from what I remember had decent icons but only displayed a handful of items at once (thanks XBOX!).

In terms of my perfect system I think my criteria would be
-Inventory limit only from encumbrance, and possibly item size
-Every item having a weight & size value, no matter how tiny
-Items represented with iconic icons in inventory (one of the things the IE games did very well IMO)
-Ability to manually move items around in a limitless grid, leaving spaces between them, but also view your inventory as a list allowing sorting (which wouldn't move your manually placed items)
-Descriptions for every item

Ultima 7 modified to display item weight & size, and have indications for how much more crap you can stuff into a bag would make me happy too, but this system doesn't suit every game.
 

Mastermind

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Is transparent inventory supposed to be some sort of advantage in a game? (even if it has item interaction with environment, aka, the dreaded 'puzzle', like a filthy adventure).

Puzzles are awesome. RPGs should have more of them.
 

empi

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Oh, and try trading 1,200 or 2,500 money/caps when you had 5,000 or 6,000 of them. Fallout inventory system only lets you +1 or -1 at a time. It let you jump to the maximum amount but not directly to a certain number. It pissed me off when I tried to get 2,500 out of 5,000, and I needed to keep pressing +1 and then slowly, carefully adjusting between +1 and -1 to get the exact amount. That applied to any item not just money in Fallout. Trading anything is a chore and nuisance in Fallout.

Or you could just type 1200 or 2500? (Presume you're talking about Fallout 2? In FO1 you could only select a maximum of 999 at a time, pretty sure you can still just type the number in that too)
 

SCO

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He probably didn't know. The interface is not exactly made to cater to affordance, if he never read the manual (actual reason that tutorials got popular: gamerz-dudebros don't like reading).
 

The Round Peg

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the biggest reason Fallout 2 inventory sucked was the single column inventory, which took forever to scroll to items and could not be rearranged.
 

Phelot

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JAGGED ALLIANCE 2 1.13!!!!!!!!!!!

Otherwise, I'm ok with any old grid based system. Actually, I don't even mind a U7/DivDiv system either. OCD takes care of all the clutter.
 

golgepapaz

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Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
JA2 most definitely. Finding vests most suited to your mercs profession. The backpacks you left on the ground after arranging your arsenal.
It all came together very well. Only time that I've enjoyed the inventory management..
 

empi

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Saying cleave just gives me the image of Cleve going up to weak normal humans and and splitting them in half in a fit of neanderthal rage. Maybe I been playing too much PoE.

Anyway, like a lot of things, JA2 1.13 did this very fucking well.
 

Deleted member 7219

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Is there a way of getting rid of that stupid gif? I can't be the only one who is sick of it.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The worst thing is, BioWare inherited and reused that shitting inventory system from Black Isle. BioWare was still using a variation of that garbage system in the first Mass Effect. Then people (mostly new players with little patience for poor interface design) started complaining, "WHAT KIND OF SHIT IS THIS?!?" I had always known Fallout inventory system was a piece of shit, but all the old-timer fan boys (or fan grandpas) had ignored it. Finally the Mass Effect, which sold a lot of copies and a lot of people had played, finally let people realize what a piece of shit that inventory system of Fallout was.

Uh, WTF are you talking about??? This is complete fiction. There is absolutely no relation whatsoever between Fallout's inventory and Mass Effect's.

Mass Effect had a shitty inventory because it was a console game. Bioware made a bunch of of games with COMPLETELY diifferent inventory systems before ME (and KOTOR)
 

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
The Fallout inventory was horrible because at least the way I played I always carried tons of items and when you can only see six at a time it's a pain.
And as much as I approve of sentimentalism and nostalgia the inventory in Ultima 7/8 sucks dick. Maybe it's an Asperger's thing but I'd carry 16+ different bags and sorely missed a way to label or sort their contents, especially with how much a packrat I am. Everything must be organized impeccably. Inventory management shouldn't be something that takes up 5% of my play-time.

I remember it clearly now, the bags. I had to memorize the location of each bag, of course. Here's as many as I can remember on the spot:

1 reagents,
2 spell books,
3 notes,
4 gems,
5 food,
6 keys,
7 plot items,
8 armor,
9 weapons,
10 throwing weapons,
11 potions,
12 crafting ingredients,
13 adventuring supplies,
14 currency,
15 unsorted items,
16 unsortable items,
17 temporary items,
18 books,
19 rings & amulets

Edit: oh and in Ultima 8 I also had these:
20 combining bag for Necromancy
21 Sorcery tokens (charged)
22 Sorcery tokens (not charged)
23 Theurgy tokens
24 Necromancy spells


Maybe if you're not a sperg it was a decent system but if you're remotely like me it was terrible, taking up all my time to sort and resort and align. So I basically had to memorize the location of all these bags just to feel comfortable because having two items of different categories in the same bag is abhorrent to me.
 

SCO

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You should feel grateful if you're a sperg because it's 'simulationistic' (yes i invented it now, problem sperg?).
 

SCO

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Sigh... it is like a adventurer would have to sort his bags. Well, a bit.
 

mondblut

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Anything that is NOT a tetris nor an endless scrolling list.

Preferably not overly complex, too. Take JA2-13, managing all these LBEs with narrowly specialized slots for everything takes more time and effort than managing weapons and armor. I'd rather choose between containers of different sizes, thank you, no need to ask me to choose between a rifle mag container, an AK mag container and a large mag container.
 

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