Beasts of Burden and "Stash" Inventory

[Gumbercules]

I'm perfectly fine with the abstracted, infinite capacity way that Obsidian is going to deal with the stash. However, I like the idea of having beasts of burden mostly as a cosmetic/thematic thing as well as an indicator of when the party can camp and access the stash as you said.

 

It mostly depends on how big a hassle it is to implement. For instance, if you go from a no-camping area to a camping area without any sort of loading screen or other break, does the beast just apparate out of thin air? Does the game load it for you ahead of time so that you find it tied up and grazing while it waits for you? What if this is a new area that you hadn't seen before? Did the beast get there ahead of you and tie itself up? (I actually wouldn't necessarily mind accepting the beast of burden as just a visual indicator and suspending disbelief in that last example, but other people might)

 

Even if they don't include beasts of burden that serve the game mechanically in any way, I hope we still at least see them in the game in a cosmetic sense. Horses, mules, oxen, and the various domestic and farm animals would have been extremely important in the Middle Ages, so it always feels weird when RPGs skimp on featuring them in the background.

[AGX-17]

It's weird...this is something that some people woldn't care much for (or would rather leave it abstacted) but the car from Fallout 2 was pretty much loved by all - or was quite symbolic for that game at the least. I'm not seeing the difference. Can someone help me?

 

A car has power and security compared to a beast of burden, a pack animal like a donkey or ox is slow and stupid and prone to wandering off or getting stolen (you can't lock a mule or the burlap sacks it has slung over its back.) There's a reason most farmers in the first world now use tractors and combine harvesters rather than oxen. The car getting stolen in Fallout 2 is a one-off that occurs in one of the most populated cities in the game, and it's stolen by people who have the knowledge and skill to bypass the security of your car as well as operate it. In the medieval world, all you had to do to steal an animal was untie its reins and then lead it away from where it was tied.

 

For people who live in conditions where animals are no longer a utilitarian necessity, people for whom seeing a horse is a novelty tourist experience (you would have to search far and wide to find an ox if you live in the developed world,) animals don't come across as the best solution when they've already played games with more efficient alternatives (magic bags, teleportation spells, etc.)

 

Generally, I don't like the idea of a defenseless beast of burden taking up a party slot arbitrarily (all other companions except the first 4 will refuse to travel in the presence of a donkey? How do you justify this in the game world?) much less the idea of this beast being subject to death or theft. What's the point of carrying all this stuff if the ass gets killed at the bottom of a dungeon and now you've got 3 dungeons' worth of loot lying at the bottom of a dungeon?

Edited December 21, 2012 by AGX-17

[cyberarmy]

I concur with AGX-17 on mule thing.

 

As for our stash, it can be simple a bag/chest of holding that we need some preparations before taking any objects inside so we need some free time/space.

[Alexjh]

It's weird...this is something that some people woldn't care much for (or would rather leave it abstacted) but the car from Fallout 2 was pretty much loved by all - or was quite symbolic for that game at the least. I'm not seeing the difference. Can someone help me?

 

A car has power and security compared to a beast of burden, a pack animal like a donkey or ox is slow and stupid and prone to wandering off or getting stolen (you can't lock a mule or the burlap sacks it has slung over its back.) There's a reason most farmers in the first world now use tractors and combine harvesters rather than oxen. The car getting stolen in Fallout 2 is a one-off that occurs in one of the most populated cities in the game, and it's stolen by people who have the knowledge and skill to bypass the security of your car as well as operate it. In the medieval world, all you had to do to steal an animal was untie its reins and then lead it away from where it was tied.

 

For people who live in conditions where animals are no longer a utilitarian necessity, people for whom seeing a horse is a novelty tourist experience (you would have to search far and wide to find an ox if you live in the developed world,) animals don't come across as the best solution when they've already played games with more efficient alternatives (magic bags, teleportation spells, etc.)

 

Generally, I don't like the idea of a defenseless beast of burden taking up a party slot arbitrarily (all other companions except the first 4 will refuse to travel in the presence of a donkey? How do you justify this in the game world?) much less the idea of this beast being subject to death or theft. What's the point of carrying all this stuff if the ass gets killed at the bottom of a dungeon and now you've got 3 dungeons' worth of loot lying at the bottom of a dungeon?

 

However, pack animals do have advantages over vehicles even in the modern world - notably they are cheaper to buy, cheaper to run (let them graze and they do it themselves) and are able to cross terrain that no vehicle could do, particularly in mountainous and desert regions.

 

I don't think the game fundementally needs a mule, but, there are things that could be done to make them a worthwhile tactical choice. Take up a party slot sure, give it say, 6 characters worth of (top of pack and/or stash) slots and perhaps some sort of bonus in regards to camping and you have a party member which has merits to inclusion. Should it die at the bottom of a dungeon as you say, that's tough, but thats part of the gamble of having it in your party in the first place, though it should probably run away fairly readily and be reasonably tough.

 

As I say I don't think P:E *needs* a mule, but its certainly possible to make having one or not a valid strategic choice when considering composing your party.

[NerdBoner]

yeah i'd be down for a Ox cart or something similar being present at campsites and outside dungeons.

[Dream]

It's not about realism as much as it is about being able to carry 100 leather armors in a pack and 200 swords. All looted from the dead corpses of bandits. Then carrying all of that to town to be sold away quickly with the click of a button. That's the main issue with unlimited space in a stash. And a stash that the adventurers are "carrying."

 

So what's reasonable, 10 times what a normal person can carry? 100 times? 1000? At what point do our hammerspace bags fill up and we begin having to use the mule?

 

Besides the whole "must pick up everything to sell!" mentality kind of goes away on its own since in most of these games the "basic" items become worthless really quickly compared to the price of **** you need to buy. On top of that money as a whole usually becomes meaningless by the end when you're able to afford everything easily anyway.

[rjshae]

Rather than having the beast of burden take up a precious character slot, what the developers could do is have an iconic box showing the current transport mode. Start off with a boot icon (representing the party lugging their own goods), then spend money to upgrade to laborer lackeys, a mule, pack lizard, wagon team, guarded caravan, flying carpets, pegasi, interdimensional portal, ... what have you. The transport mode defines the size of your Stash inventory and how quickly you can move about the map. It also establishes the likelihood of travel encounters and what shows up when you appear on the encounter map.

 

For loot, stuff that is valuable at the start will soon become less and less value compared to the more expensive gear. That type of stuff can be abstracted because you would just be selling it to pay your basic bills. If they wanted to model it (say in Expert mode), they could have some type of debt meter that increases when you're not adventuring then decreases based on the corpses you loot.

[AGX-17]

However, pack animals do have advantages over vehicles even in the modern world - notably they are cheaper to buy, cheaper to run (let them graze and they do it themselves) and are able to cross terrain that no vehicle could do, particularly in mountainous and desert regions.

 

I don't think the game fundementally needs a mule, but, there are things that could be done to make them a worthwhile tactical choice. Take up a party slot sure, give it say, 6 characters worth of (top of pack and/or stash) slots and perhaps some sort of bonus in regards to camping and you have a party member which has merits to inclusion. Should it die at the bottom of a dungeon as you say, that's tough, but thats part of the gamble of having it in your party in the first place, though it should probably run away fairly readily and be reasonably tough.

 

As I say I don't think P:E *needs* a mule, but its certainly possible to make having one or not a valid strategic choice when considering composing your party.

 

So when was the last time you saw a business in the US or Europe using mules to transport their goods instead of trucks, trains and cargo ships?

 

I REST MY CASE, YOUR HONOR

 

JUSTICE OF THE PEACE: "Case dismissed."

 

It's only in the developing world that people use these animals for the purposes of transport, and only because they can't afford motor vehicles or the fuel to power them. Trucks, trains, planes and automobiles are economically vastly more efficient for any operation larger than a subsistance farm.

 

You can buy a passable used car for less than the cost of an average mule in the first world. A good horse will set you back much more than that. And mules aren't used for much more than transporting people on rough terrain where no motor vehicle can proceed (like into the Grand Canyon.) And the farmers who can't afford a combine harvester or what have you still relies on trucks to ship crops to market before they spoil. I have a nagging suspicion you don't actually know anything about farming in the developed world.

 

It's not about realism as much as it is about being able to carry 100 leather armors in a pack and 200 swords. All looted from the dead corpses of bandits. Then carrying all of that to town to be sold away quickly with the click of a button. That's the main issue with unlimited space in a stash. And a stash that the adventurers are "carrying."

 

So what's reasonable, 10 times what a normal person can carry? 100 times? 1000? At what point do our hammerspace bags fill up and we begin having to use the mule?

 

Besides the whole "must pick up everything to sell!" mentality kind of goes away on its own since in most of these games the "basic" items become worthless really quickly compared to the price of **** you need to buy. On top of that money as a whole usually becomes meaningless by the end when you're able to afford everything easily anyway.

 

As I hear it, a mule can carry about 20% of its body weight, tops. They're used for endurance, not strength. If you wanted to carry a huge amount you'd need a wagon and a team of oxen (easy to steal, both.) A horse can carry more (30%,) but doesn't have the stamina/endurance of a mule.

 

The concept that makes the most sense to me is to have companions not in your party guard your oxcart and escort it between locations, and have you some kind of safe storage area in some towns like a vault in the stronghold.

Edited December 21, 2012 by AGX-17

[Somna]

I miss portable holes.

[Lephys]

So when was the last time you saw a business in the US or Europe using mules to transport their goods instead of trucks, trains and cargo ships?

 

It's only in the developing world that people use these animals for the purposes of transport.

 

It's good to know that the non-developing medieval world of P:E, with primitive firearms, will contain extensive international highway systems paved with extremely smooth asphalt, as well as railway systems.

 

You know what? Wizard familiar: Battle Mule. Problem solved. *dusts off hands* u_u

[Hormalakh]

So what's reasonable, 10 times what a normal person can carry? 100 times? 1000? At what point do our hammerspace bags fill up and we begin having to use the mule?

 

Besides the whole "must pick up everything to sell!" mentality kind of goes away on its own since in most of these games the "basic" items become worthless really quickly compared to the price of **** you need to buy. On top of that money as a whole usually becomes meaningless by the end when you're able to afford everything easily anyway.

 

Point taken. However the "stash" is meant to be a "party stash" not a single person's, so it really doesn't matter how much "weight" someone can carry. The whole thing is an abstraction anyway. As for specifics item counts, that is obviously up to the devs to figure out what works best. However, currently, the stash is considered "infinite."

 

As for the mentality of "sell everything you buy" you'd be surprised how often this happens if it's allowed. People will carry every little thing that they can and will try to sell it. Why wouldn't you do it if you couldn't? Think back to the older games, did you NEVER stop to pick up all the leather armors and short swords unless you didn't have space?

 

I don't think money should suddenly become a non-issue mid-way through the game and many others also share my sentiments. Look at the other threads on this board in regards to "economy" and you'll see.

 

All of this to say that once again, this isn't really meant to be that huge of a deal. It was just something to help understand the "lore" as well as play with a few not-so-important mechanics of the game (like fast travel, limiting stash space). I wanted to put up this quote from Mr. Josh Sawyer that I found in another forum that deals with this, emphasis mine.

 

 

Here's another question: why are you using an infinite stash of field-inaccessible loot that you fill with a button that somehow magically whisks loot away to the most convenient places in all the land instead of town portal scrolls and spells that provide you with a degree of control over what you do with your inventory, such as where you store items and where you sell them? You said the problem you're trying to solve with the send-to-stash function is the inconvenience of having to travel back and forth to unload your inventory. Were there any alternatives that the team discussed? Why were they suboptimal? Why wouldn't town portal scrolls and spells work?

The team did not discuss alternatives because no one objected to anything in the system Tim and I proposed. Also, we were trying to solve two problems: forced marching back to merchants and also continual inventory shuffling. Your individual character backpack that was large enough in BG to carry three suits of armor, five longswords, 200 arrows, eight stacks of potions, five scrolls, and assorted gems is now a shared backpack that can hold all of that and more. I'm not going to come up with a lore reason for why it works that way because I don't think the majority of players care. Additionally, I think any lore explanation I would come up with would be absurd. I'd rather just say, "This is how the inventory, pack, and stash systems work," and spend our narrative/world building time on designing interesting areas, characters, factions, and choices for the player to interact with.

 

...Your stash is effectively an infinite backpack that is always with you but can only be accessed at specific locations.

 

 

So ultimately, it really doesn't matter to Josh what the in-game lore is for such a thing, nor does he think he can come up with something that isn't absurd. I agree with him. I wouldn't dare imagine that too much time should be spent on this if the benefits don't outweigh costs. It's why I asked for everyone's opinion - I'm not sure what's worth the dev time and what isn't. It also doesn't matter for a lot of other people either, what the lore reason is. But it's a "fun" little thing that makes the world a little bit more "alive."

 

At least I think so.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Hormalakh

[Alexjh]

So when was the last time you saw a business in the US or Europe using mules to transport their goods instead of trucks, trains and cargo ships?

 

I REST MY CASE, YOUR HONOR

 

JUSTICE OF THE PEACE: "Case dismissed."

 

It's only in the developing world that people use these animals for the purposes of transport, and only because they can't afford motor vehicles or the fuel to power them. Trucks, trains, planes and automobiles are economically vastly more efficient for any operation larger than a subsistance farm.

 

You can buy a passable used car for less than the cost of an average mule in the first world. A good horse will set you back much more than that. And mules aren't used for much more than transporting people on rough terrain where no motor vehicle can proceed (like into the Grand Canyon.) And the farmers who can't afford a combine harvester or what have you still relies on trucks to ship crops to market before they spoil. I have a nagging suspicion you don't actually know anything about farming in the developed world.

 

I did say modern world, not modern developed nations. There is still extensive use of pack animals in North Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and even some of the poorer parts of Eastern Europe. Plus as established P:E isn't set in a modern world, it's set in one probably contemporary to the 1600s.

[Lurky]

I like this thread, and I agree that giving opinions and throwing ideas around is valuable, as long as they're well thought out and not demanding. I'll try to help too, since this is a mechanic that interests me.

 

First things first, I'm a total packrat and a big hoarder. I have a tendency to push to the limits my characters, even if I have to play inventory tetris for several minutes to balance the weights of my party and keep as much loot as I can. This means that I really liked Sawyer's idea about having a big stash to have a place to throw all your loot into. Even if it's unlimited or if it's just really, really big, the ability to keep all the loot I find makes me very happy indeed.

 

However, I also have to say that I do care about the lore, too. I love Sawyer's inventory idea, and I'd love to have something like that in the game, but having it without any kind of ingame acknowledgement is going to be jarring. Even if there's no possible perfect explanation for a mechanic like this, I think it's better to at least acknowledge it ingame in some way, rather than handwaving it with "that's the way the game plays".

 

 

To put an example, I'm reminded of Portal. You can do things in that game like falling endlessly between two portals while gaining momentum, removing one portal, and landing as if you hadn't accumulated so much speed that it would turn you into one big red stain on the floor or anything. This is because implementing some sort of distance or velocity threshold that killed you after a big fall would hinder the player's ability to solve the physics puzzles at their leisure, so this breach of reality was pretty much for the sake of fun gameplay. However, this is completely unrealistic, and players pointed it out during testing several times. Turns out, players do notice, and care about details like this.

 

To solve this, what Valve did was adding heel springs to Chell's model. Now, the notion that some little springs like these could stop the players from certain death on landing if they've been falling at terminal velocity for a while (there's an actual achievement for that!) is ridiculous. But it was something. It was acknowledged in the game, and the players were pretty much appeased just with that explanation. Something that simple, and it worked.

 

 

I'm aware that Portal and PE are not the same. PE will be more serious than Portal, so making ingame jokes about violating the laws of physics for fun and profit like Portal does to handwave stuff like that probably won't be an option. But there are other possible options, be it in the form of portable holes or magical teleporting transportation of stuff, or whatever.

 

From all the possible solutions, I'm digging the idea of beasts of burden. It addresses the elephant in the room, and since PE has magic and gods and unexplained stuff in the lore, maybe the beasts of burden could have some magical ability to carry a lot of stuff, to better handwave the gameplay mechanic. On top of that there's all sort of fun things you could do with them, from upgrading them (and giving you the choice to spend more now and be able to collect more stuff later vs keeping what you have) to occupying a companion slot (and giving you the choice of more space or more punch in combat, but that could be hard to balance... but didn't some people want an animal companion too, like a dog?), to simply having the beasts helping for fast travel too. Hell, I'm willing to sacrifice the infinite capacity of the stash for just "a hell of a lot of capacity" if it leads to better lore/gameplay integration. If it's big enough it'll rarely matter anyway, as you'll have to worry about health and resting too, and there will be some point where it's preferable to go to camp before continuing to explore.

 

In short: I think it's better to have some acknowledgement or handwave for this mechanic rather than having nothing at all. Maybe not the majority cares about details like these (how do you know that, anyway?), but some players do care, and will point them out. We're discussing it now for a reason, after all.

[JFSOCC]

Rather than having the beast of burden take up a precious character slot, what the developers could do is have an iconic box showing the current transport mode. Start off with a boot icon (representing the party lugging their own goods), then spend money to upgrade to laborer lackeys, a mule, pack lizard, wagon team, guarded caravan, flying carpets, pegasi, interdimensional portal, ... what have you. The transport mode defines the size of your Stash inventory and how quickly you can move about the map. It also establishes the likelihood of travel encounters and what shows up when you appear on the encounter map.

I don't dislike this idea. As long as there is some trade-off. (pegasi needing to eat expensive magic berries which means you only want them if the gear you transport is valuable)

[Nonek]

I like the idea, it's a nice explanation for the stash (for me the angel is always in the details) and it could be used for further adventures. Such as T-Ray half inching the mule and upgrading its storage capacity, as in New Reno. Or there could possibly be a more complicated explanation of the stash, a trans dimensional safebox or some other more weird explanation. There could even be a quest involved in gaining the feature, thus making it all the more valuable to us and integrated with the world around us.

 

Perhaps while wandering through the slums you become lost and turning a corner happen the bazaar of the bizarre, a maze of buyers and sellers from across the multiverse, where everything can be bought and sold for a price. Here the stash is found, a common possession for the merchants of that otherwordly place, but among your most cherished treasures. A little box talisman, linking the possessor to a fabled place of storage called "the vault of the ninth world."

[Umberlin]

 

Here's another question: why are you using an infinite stash of field-inaccessible loot that you fill with a button that somehow magically whisks loot away to the most convenient places in all the land instead of town portal scrolls and spells that provide you with a degree of control over what you do with your inventory, such as where you store items and where you sell them? You said the problem you're trying to solve with the send-to-stash function is the inconvenience of having to travel back and forth to unload your inventory. Were there any alternatives that the team discussed? Why were they suboptimal? Why wouldn't town portal scrolls and spells work?

The team did not discuss alternatives because no one objected to anything in the system Tim and I proposed. Also, we were trying to solve two problems: forced marching back to merchants and also continual inventory shuffling. Your individual character backpack that was large enough in BG to carry three suits of armor, five longswords, 200 arrows, eight stacks of potions, five scrolls, and assorted gems is now a shared backpack that can hold all of that and more. I'm not going to come up with a lore reason for why it works that way because I don't think the majority of players care. Additionally, I think any lore explanation I would come up with would be absurd. I'd rather just say, "This is how the inventory, pack, and stash systems work," and spend our narrative/world building time on designing interesting areas, characters, factions, and choices for the player to interact with.

 

...Your stash is effectively an infinite backpack that is always with you but can only be accessed at specific locations.

 

 

I'm glad he decided to talk about it, and go into some of the reasoning. Personally, as far as I'm concerned, he's right, I don't care enough about a justification for 'how it gets there' to really get up in arms over this. I played Monkey Island, Guybrush stuffed things of ungodly proportions down the black hole of his pants for storage. This works for me. I'd be happy with another manner too, like some of the things suggested in this thread, definitely, but this works for me. I'm not saying it will make every last person on earth happy, personally I'm from the moon, but, I just can't see this bothering me at any point.

 

Not to say some of the things you, and others in this thread, brought up weren't interesting. A lot of that could have been neat too, but, like he said, I'm just not entirely sure a large portion of the potential user base cares - we have plenty of 'endless inventory' RPGs and ARPGs out there, with happy customer bases, to prove that an infinite system is quite acceptable to quite a few people. In this case, we not only have that, but it acts more as a 'storage', than anything, meaning your actual pack and equipment are finite and have combat restrictions. So, in a way, as far as I'm concerned, we get the best of all worlds.

 

My two cents. I still think the thread was worthwhile though.

[rjshae]

A few points:

• Just to enhance the plausibility a bit, I think there should be some circumstances in which the party can not access their Stash. For example, if they step through a one-way portal into another dimension, there's going to be no way they can transport loot back to their resting place. Hence, any circumstance in which they do not have access to a resting spot, they shouldn't have access to their Stash. Likewise, any time they are operating under a countdown or when they are being held prisoner.
  

• To limit potential exploits, they may need to limit what you can do while your stash is open. For example, if you are placing new loot in your stash, they would need to prevent the older stash-based loot from being transferred or dropped.
  

• What I would like to know is whether you get access to your stash when you're at a store. Will you need to transport salable goods to the store, or will it always be available?
  

[JFSOCC]

I like the idea, it's a nice explanation for the stash (for me the angel is always in the details) and it could be used for further adventures. Such as T-Ray half inching the mule and upgrading its storage capacity, as in New Reno. Or there could possibly be a more complicated explanation of the stash, a trans dimensional safebox or some other more weird explanation. There could even be a quest involved in gaining the feature, thus making it all the more valuable to us and integrated with the world around us.

 

Perhaps while wandering through the slums you become lost and turning a corner happen the bazaar of the bizarre, a maze of buyers and sellers from across the multiverse, where everything can be bought and sold for a price. Here the stash is found, a common possession for the merchants of that otherwordly place, but among your most cherished treasures. A little box talisman, linking the possessor to a fabled place of storage called "the vault of the ninth world."

I really like this idea, in some form or another.

[Hormalakh]

Stash is available at CAMP, HOME, STORE, and probably a few other places.

[rjshae]

I do hope they don't follow the path of those ridiculously overpriced backpacks in DA:O.

[Dream]

I do hope they don't follow the path of those ridiculously overpriced backpacks in DA:O.

 

I hope they don't follow the path of ANYTHING from dragon age.

[Umberlin]

How much for the holy sword of ungodly might and destruction +7?

 

5 gold.

 

How much for that back pack?

 

An arm, three legs, your next four unborn children, twelve kingdoms, a donkey and all the wealth of the universe. Plus tax.

[AGX-17]

So when was the last time you saw a business in the US or Europe using mules to transport their goods instead of trucks, trains and cargo ships?

 

I REST MY CASE, YOUR HONOR

 

JUSTICE OF THE PEACE: "Case dismissed."

 

It's only in the developing world that people use these animals for the purposes of transport, and only because they can't afford motor vehicles or the fuel to power them. Trucks, trains, planes and automobiles are economically vastly more efficient for any operation larger than a subsistance farm.

 

You can buy a passable used car for less than the cost of an average mule in the first world. A good horse will set you back much more than that. And mules aren't used for much more than transporting people on rough terrain where no motor vehicle can proceed (like into the Grand Canyon.) And the farmers who can't afford a combine harvester or what have you still relies on trucks to ship crops to market before they spoil. I have a nagging suspicion you don't actually know anything about farming in the developed world.

 

I did say modern world, not modern developed nations. There is still extensive use of pack animals in North Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and even some of the poorer parts of Eastern Europe. Plus as established P:E isn't set in a modern world, it's set in one probably contemporary to the 1600s.

 

The idea of the developed, capitalist world is implicit in the use of the word "modern." And you're deliberately ignoring the fact that people who use pack animals in most of the developing world would use motor vehicles if they could afford to. Unless you're living in the Andes and only a Llama (which aren't even very good as pack animals, they're used because they were the only option available to ancient Andean peoples,) can traverse the narrow path to your terraced home village, you're probably envious of that guy in the comical photo of an overloaded truck.

 

Regardless, all my points about the insecurity of pack animals waiting alone outside the dungeon door, clambering down the stairs and slipper cave floors to the mega-demon who lives at the bottom for no particular reason still stand.

[Crowseye]

I actually think it's unfortunate that major developers of cRPGs have ditched pretty much any effort to represent gear and inventory management with any type of realism. But then, I'm from the old school where one's supply of rations can limit how long the party can spend in the wilderness as well. I also like the idea of being able to acquire a pack animal as a feature of the party camp that funcitons as a sort of mobile "bank," alas.

 

In any case, if an inventory system doesn't have anything to offer from a strategic or tactical standpoint, then arbitrary item limits (see Dragon Age: Origins, most MMOs) are exercises in tedium and time consumption IMO. If there's no meaningful difference between decisions about what to carry in one's inventory and when, then inventory should just be infinite (like the KotORs) or you're really just artificially padding the gameplay time under the pretense of trying to represent carrying capacity. Well-made encumberance systems offer meaningful tradeoffs between gear worn and gear carried that affect things like combat and add a layer of functional realism (encumbered characters are less effective at performing tasks). Tetris systems, when used effectively, also force the player to make meaningful decisions about what to carry (see Deus Ex). Even where they create a situation where repeated loot hauls are necessary, encumberance and tetris systems can add consequences to other facets of the game that an arbitrary item limit alone does not (unless it were exceedingly small).