beyond the backpack..

[judeobscure]

some item management ideas..

 

-allow us to create and bury/hide our own loot caches/chests. with the abiility to make treasure chest maps either for ourselves or for someone else should we need/want to trade the map.

 

-non monetary/barter-based transaction with people other than merchants such as gifting and entrusting to villagers/strangers/etc with branching friendship/betrayal options.

 

-pack animals to carry more weight but that need to be fed and either looked after (perhaps with a villager we've befriended) or hidden while we're off fighting/exploring.

 

 

other ideas..?

[Felithvian]

-allow us to create and bury/hide our own loot caches/chests. with the abiility to make treasure chest maps either for ourselves or for someone else should we need/want to trade the map.

 

Who's "someone" else?

 

This is not Ultima Online. Simply trading a treasure map to a npc wouldn't feel quite right. Treasure Maps functioning as paychecks?

[Felithvian]

I mean, the treasure map would equal the value of all the items you buried.

Edited November 20, 2012 by Felithvian

[BetrayTheWorld]

And who in their right mind would -believe- you when you said, "I have this map worth ten thousand gold..."

 

Certainly sounds like a scam to me.

[teknoman2]

and why not just dump the stuff into a chest in your house? or fill up a chest in the dungeon you are exploring with all the spare loot and keep going, then if you are full again, go back and dump more in the same chest and later, when you are done with the dungeon, make a couple of trips to get all the stuff to your house or the trader

[Kecaw]

To be frank ... i dont see the use for this, let me say something, in what "old school" game did you really need like tones of space to carry stuff? i mean by that the "good" items that can bring some gold to you, there weren't that many to begin with, sure it was a problem when you had like ton's of gems that didnt stack but really ? i dont see any use for a system like that.

[Juneau]

Personally in a world where magic is present, I think "magic" bags should be as common as clothing.... I like being able to just pick stuff up and not worry about it until I've finished my quest.

 

If my character can afford to buy decent armour, weaponry, spells etc.. etc... then he can bloody well buy a magic bag!

[wanderon]

Frankly I liked the BG1 option of safely caching your excess loot in any container that was handy as long as it was not an area that would change after future events occured . I typically kept a stash in Beregost and Nashkel early on and after opening the gates to BG City spent a half hour or more traveling back and forth moving everything from those stashes to the barrels outside the Elfsong where I arranged them in some sort of working order - perhaps alphabetically...

 

The concept made sense to me (assuming I had the means to magically ward or hide them from pilfering) - and even better it made my inner packrat extremely happy and I suspect the owners of the Elfsong may have eventually found and used the massive amount of stuff that was left over there at the end of the game that I could not be bothered to sell since I doubted the cash would help at all in the final battle!

 

The concept worked in IWD as well and on one memorable occasion when my rogue was the only survivor of a dungeon battle I was able to gather all the loot and the companions gear and stash it in a lizard statues hidey hole while I took the parties bodies and a bit of armor and weapons for each back to town to ressurect them and we then returned to claim them and finish the dungeon.

 

Frankly I am not a fan of the community backpack but I suspect thats what we will be getting but I would be interested in some of the OPs ideas altho I suspect they would have to be done on a very limited scale (programming every NPC to accept items sounds difficult to me but I'm no programmer).

[rjshae]

Unless you're playing in expert mode, to me it would make a certain amount of sense to abstract some of the loot system. We don't need to be bothered with every little detail of looting the corpses and selling of the low-cost, mundane items. Nor do we need to track the spending of that money on food, drink, clothing, repair, and outdoor gear. Just assume that the one takes care of the other and you can get on with the more interesting aspects of the game.

[wanderon]

Unless you're playing in expert mode, to me it would make a certain amount of sense to abstract some of the loot system. We don't need to be bothered with every little detail of looting the corpses and selling of the low-cost, mundane items. Nor do we need to track the spending of that money on food, drink, clothing, repair, and outdoor gear. Just assume that the one takes care of the other and you can get on with the more interesting aspects of the game.

 

I'm mostly against this sort of "ease of use" stuff - to me it's the little things like having my character/party physically handling loot and dealing directly with merchants that flesh out the game and put me in the world acting as my character would act - doing what he needs to do - Much like the character in a novel I don't need to eat 3 times a day or take a dump but I do prefer it when I have to rest at regular intervals and when choosing a place to rest may effect whether or not I am interrupted and when NOT resting often enough effects my combat abilities.

[Streamlock]

Oh, for the love of all that is good in gaming. I know this game is supposed to hark back to the old Infinity engine games, but the inventory management mini-game that was Buldar's Gate was just stupid. I don't mind items having mass, I don't mind items taking up some kind of space in your backpack/bag/whatever.....But that whole game of squares was just got horribly absurd.

 

I actually didn't mind it the first 50 hours or so of a playthrough-but whatever novelty it held wore thin, ruptured, then collapsed in on itself.

 

I'm dead serious, the "Micky Mouse Backpack Organizing Simulator" very well may hold some value as some kind of Facebook social nongame-for for the love of God-Don't bring that part of the classic Infinity engine games back! If you want a backpack simulator-go boot up an old Ultima game (talk about silly).

 

(I'm probably going to get hammered by the folks that think mages should have to manually fix the bindings in their spellbooks in some obtuse click and drag fashion, but oh well).

[rjshae]

^^^^

Yes there are going to be players who don't want to mess around with a detailed inventory system, even though it is more realistic that way. It does get a little tiresome when the inventory grows significantly. Possibly there is something they can do with the Expert mode to enable detailed inventory, then keep it lightweight for the casual gamers.

[Streamlock]

^^^^

Yes there are going to be players who don't want to mess around with a detailed inventory system, even though it is more realistic that way. It does get a little tiresome when the inventory grows significantly. Possibly there is something they can do with the Expert mode to enable detailed inventory, then keep it lightweight for the casual gamers.

 

Detailed is fine, as long as it makes some kind of sense and the interface is designed to handle it intuitively.

 

For instance, when swapping out party members, to have to swap one out to get both your party so you have to manually transfer every item, then swap again......Or in classic Buldar's gate fashion, have to dump 2 of potion A to make room for a full set of dragon scale armor just becuase they wouldn't stack in the same square as potion B-that you have 50 of (and carry another 49 of without penalty)...........Is just silly.

 

The inventory system of the old infinity engine games are not bad because they were to detailed, it was just plain bad. It could be argued that the lack of 'detail' (a single arrow taking up the same space as a full set of armor) was as large as an issue as inculsion of a detailed inventory.

 

Project Eternity would benifit from a detailed and easy to use/intuitive interface and design. The two are not mutually exclusive. It doesn't need an option to enable bad game design for nostolgia's sake.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Streamlock

[terryrayc]

Well I think if it are getting homes, we should have storage in our homes, so this is probably not an issue. What I would like to see though are Skyrim style mannequins in our home that we can put armor sets on and then enter out house and see them...I know it only adds visual value but it's nice to see how many sets you can get. I'm also all for items having weight. I always had problems with games that let you throw 12 full sets of plate armor in your backpack and still run around like the pack is empty.