this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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encumbrance is a completely reasonable mechanic to stop a player from carrying around 18 metric tons of items
Yes, encumbrance does stop a player from carrying a lot of inventory.
But my question is, why do we want to limit that behavior? Is the concept of living some items behind fun? Is forcing the player to make multiple runs to the same area to get everything interesting gamplay?
Personally I am getting pretty tired of doing inventory management every 5 minutes in BG3. It's not as tiring as some other games, but it feels more like a chore than gameplay.
because people have a limited amount of weight they can carry
there is an argument to be made about more elegant execution and better balance but I think it's silly to disregard the mechanic as a whole
this is just an example, and the effects on gameplay would vary widely depending on the genre, but just imagine if Tarkov had unlimited inventory space
you should have to risk multiple trips back and forth in dangerous areas if you want more loot, or otherwise find a way to increase efficiency such as using vehicles. If developers don't add ways of increasing efficiency or enjoyability, then the real issue lies in the execution of the mechanic, not the existence of the mechanic itself
People need to use the bathroom reguarly, but that's not an interesting game mechanic. So of course it's left out. Especially in the case of baulders gate or starfield, "realism" has entirely gone out the window when we are elves, wizards and space ship captains.
And as it should be! The real world sucks, people play games for fun. I'm just not sure where the fun is with encumbrance, just like I wouldn't find to stop at the bathroom way point every few ingame hours very much fun either.
inventory capacity directly relates to economic balance in most games, as opposed to bathroom and meal breaks which don't add to the gameplay loop in a positive way.
being limited by carry capacity isn't supposed to be fun in itself, it's meant to bring realism and balance to the economy. say you have to return to town to sell items, but you find a cool valuable sword along the way; you might have to sacrifice something of lower value like a consumable in order to fit everything in your pack. the sacrifice brings a level of adversity and decision making to the game, instead of a limitless mary sue character who mindlessly presses "loot all" and "sell all".
also, fantasy games are still realistic in that they follow the rules of their own universe. In the baldur's gate universe, elves and magic are commonplace, but there's no "canon" reason people should have unlimited carry weight or infinite pockets. If mages were able to power a self-propelled wagon which carries your items, then THAT would make sense, but an endless list of items hidden away in an inventory GUI kinda brings you away from the immersion, even if the game's premise isn't set in reality
Well, actually. I hate to do this. There totally is, to both examples. One of the random things a charcter might say when looting an inventory item is "I should really have a bag of holding", which is an in universe item that holds unlimited things that has existed in the tabletop version for like forever. way to have unlimited inventory and. And wizards/sorcerer have a level 1 spell that everyone can start with called tenser floating disk that is just a mini platform to carry things.
See encumbrance also exists in the dnd tabletop version of the game. But I have never known a group that actually tracks and enforces the weight of individual gold pieces like the manuals say to do. Realistic? Sure. But a lot of hassle. So in universe explanations have existed in the realm of Faerun for decades.
In starfield I know you can get a drone to carry things for you. Is there a reason why you can't have a fleet of them? I mean it's sci fix, IRL warehouses have drones working togther to move boxes. Why can't the player? Lots of in universes could fix these problems.
Look, we can disagree, if you think making choices on what to leave behind is interesting then rock on. I would hazard a guess that you rarely leave half of your loot behind for non encumbrance reasons just because it's fun to come back. I will say though, since known of this is combat based choices, I don't think Mary sue really applies here. This is all book keeping, not the gameplay that we were looking forward to. When was the last time a gameplay trailer bragged about how heavy their currency is or how small their bags are. 😝
yeah idk the details of baldur's gate since i haven't played it yet. but my point still stands in other universes. And if the only gameplay element you look forward to is killing NPC's, then why are you playing baldur's gate?
If you give me inventory space enough to carry 18 metric tons but then make it so I can't move, that's not reasonable. Reasonable would be to limit the number of items I can carry and/or limit inventory item stack sizes.
...they are limiting the number of items you can carry...with encumbrance. Am I missing something or is this just a 'you' hang-up?
The question revolves around reasonableness. You've designed a storage mechanism (inventory) so you have a mechanism in place to limit what players carry. Sure. You've created a stack mechanism to keep like items together in your storage mechanism because people will bitch about having 10 bobby pins taking up all your inventory space. Okay. Now you introduce weight as another limiting factor and slow them down when they already have to make multiple trips...unreasonable.
I do not understand how you are conceiving of encumbrance as another layer on top of inventory slots instead of an alternative to it.
If encumbrance and inventory slots were layered atop each other, there should be a state where you have used up all available slots while still having remaining capacity in encumbrance: a thing that never happens. I have never seen a game with encumbrance reach this state except maybe Soulsbournes and that's more about stat-gating equipment you can use than preventing players from carrying more things.
In this case, I should not have.