Stash: The Unlimited Inventory Mechanic

[Helm]

I sure hope stuff stacks. I would much rather look at: Longsword x 15 than 15 individual longsword icons. The cool part of all this is I will be able to afford the best merchant stuff in no time. With no restictions Im going to become the opposite of JFSOCC above. Im going to pick up every rock, stick and bauble until Im ridiculously wealthy. Maybe Ill name my toon "Hoover".

Why only Hoover when you can have the whole gang? Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and King Solomon.

 

[Gfted1]

 

I sure hope stuff stacks. I would much rather look at: Longsword x 15 than 15 individual longsword icons. The cool part of all this is I will be able to afford the best merchant stuff in no time. With no restictions Im going to become the opposite of JFSOCC above. Im going to pick up every rock, stick and bauble until Im ridiculously wealthy. Maybe Ill name my toon "Hoover".

Why only Hoover when you can have the whole gang? Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and King Solomon.

 

 

 

"Hoover" as in the vacuum cleaner. Im going to suck up every last trinket for resale.

[Amentep]

gfted's going to the Adventurer's Hall (Haul?) and his party is going to be Hoover, Dyson, Bissel, Eureka, Dirt Devil and Filter Queen.

[Gfted1]

Brilliant.

[Helm]

 

 

I sure hope stuff stacks. I would much rather look at: Longsword x 15 than 15 individual longsword icons. The cool part of all this is I will be able to afford the best merchant stuff in no time. With no restictions Im going to become the opposite of JFSOCC above. Im going to pick up every rock, stick and bauble until Im ridiculously wealthy. Maybe Ill name my toon "Hoover".

Why only Hoover when you can have the whole gang? Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and King Solomon.

 

 

 

"Hoover" as in the vacuum cleaner. Im going to suck up every last trinket for resale.

ahh, ok

[Doppelschwert]

 

 

Edit: @TRX850;

Weight limit is something always cheesy in RPGs for me. Im OK for warriors having higher wight allowence but when my 19STR half-orc walks around carriying 4 plate mail,3 studded leather armors or with 16 different weapons in his pocket, it just feels wrong.

Instead of some weight limit there can a system where you can have more equipment slots via armor/belts or some perk/stat while we can choose when level up. Or more weight= more stamina usage for skills/magics so if you invest on active skills mostly you need to travel light.

 

Yes, I'm ok with backpack/inventory loot being part of this new system. What I meant was "equipped" items. Gear that you've placed on your body, i.e. dragged and dropped onto your paper doll. I think spells that reduce strength should still be able to encumber a character if they are "wearing" heavy gear. And indeed, if what you are wearing under normal circumstances is too heavy, then that should encumber a character too.

 

 

Sawyer on his formspring:

 

JESawyer responded to Inertiax 8 Jan

What are some of the incentives to using a lighter armor type in PE? Is it just an encumbrance thing? Is will your movement speed be affected even if you have the strength to carry heavy armor?

You will attack, cast spells, and perform most other actions (not including standard movement) more quickly. A character in the heaviest armor will likely have somewhere in the range of a 30% speed (again, not movement) penalty to his or her actions. In the time it takes an unarmored character to complete a given action 10 times, a character in the heaviest armor will have completed the same action 7 times (roughly).

 

We are using this trade-off because it seems to pose a more interesting problem for players than a combat vs. non-combat trade (e.g. protection vs. carry weight or non-combat skill use) and it's not as mathematically straightforward as a damage avoidance vs. damage reduction model (i.e. dodging vs. absorbing hits).

 

Characters that stay away from the front lines (e.g. traditional long-range wizards and archery-focused rangers) may tend to wear less armor because they are not subjected to as many attacks. Some front-line combatants may wear light armor with the strategy that dealing damage more quickly will make up for their relative lack of protection.

 

 

However, that doesn't mean you can't have spells slowing people down. Edited February 1, 2013 by Doppelschwert

[Lephys]

It obviously has to be properly balanced and tuned, but I like to think of it like this:

 

Imagine a typical RPG weight-based inventory system, but with a more realistic (smaller) weight limit. So, maybe you can take a couple sets of armor, a few weapons, but that's about it for the heavy stuff, or you're all snail crawly (or just plain can't move).

 

Okay, but you might think "Man, this is pretty realistic, but is that really ALL I can carry? No exaggeration from reality whatsoever?". So, BOOM! You get an abstract stash. You can still take all that usable, valuable stuff that wouldn't fit in your actual representation of an inventory, but you can't use it yet.

 

I agree that it's quite abstract, at the moment, and a better explanation/implementation might be in order. But, I'd also stress keeping in mind that the game's currently in the midst of development, and they've been so kind as to share a purely mechanical decision. It could easily be explained in some better way, ultimately, in the final game (maybe you can't carry that much weight/stuff, but you can teleport things back to your stronghold or temporary campsite?). Hell, how do you even get exactly what you want out of a bag of holding? You just think happy thoughts, reach in, and "VOILA!"? If it's got 200 things in one little bag, in some manner of other dimension or magically-compressed space, how do you get things in and out of it? Maybe getting stuff in is easy, but getting stuff out takes time (Like... an hour?) that it's assumed you "don't have" (your party is not going to sit where they are for an hour because of various understood-yet-not-individually-represented factors, like food/hydration, torchlight, sleepiness, dangers of the area, time sensitive matters they're currently dealing with, etc.).

 

So, if it's assumed your party is basically in a hurry to press on until you're at a restable location, then that would explain why you can't just reach into a magically-compressed storage-room and pull out exactly what you want on-the-fly. *shrug*

 

And, as Diagoras and TRX have said, your equipment/top-of-pack (traditional inventory) could still be expanded/altered/upgraded and could still produce weight limitation effects and such (although, personally, I'd only like to see movement speed reduced during combat.)

 

All that being said, the fickleness of loot placement/availability (i.e. The Elder Scrolls games' "take this pebble, and this butter knife, and this piece of crumbley paper, and this lump of candle wax, and this insect leg, and this individual human hair!") should still be a concern to factor into the game's design and balance. Along with specific inventory segment size and weight limits and all that.

 

It's not mutually exclusive stuff. I don't think "we now have a form of infinite storage" (if they decide it'll be infinite) automatically means "Yay! Now we can just stuff the game with loot, all willy nilly!" Bad design decisions are still bad design decisions. 8P

[Ffordesoon]

I love it. Don't care that it's not "realistic." A weight limit isn't fun, but has some theoretical utility in gameplay. This system removes the unfun element, but keeps the utility.

 

I would be cool with a totally unlimited inventory, of course. I'm playing as an adventurer, not someone who tidies up a room.

[AGX-17]

If you don't want to manage a huge inventory, don't pick up every piece of garbage you find lying around on the ground. Easy peasy.

[JonVanCaneghem]

How about a solution that is reasonably realistic and also extremely simple and awesome?

 

Any large city will have a "scavengers' guild" for lack of a better term.  These guys aren't much for fighting, but they are great at hauling stuff out of dungeons and selling it at market.  They're basically jawas.

 

Now each dungeon would need a hidden (or not so hidden) condition where the dungeon would be considered "clear."  Maybe you need to kill the big baddie or 100% of the monsters.  Now say your party has just cleared out a huge dungeon, and has picked up the best magical items etc, but has left behind all the candlesticks, unenchanted stuff, and "trash loot" that has minimal value.  By all rights, that extra junk you left behind is yours for the taking, but you just don't have the time to haul it all out ('cause you got to save the world and all).

 

Back in town you head over to the scavengers' guild.  Here is an excellent opportunity to utilize a character with a high haggling skill, because you will basically be negotiating a contract for them to pick over that dungeon.  So you're hiring them to clear the place out, and then depending on your barter or haggling or charisma, you will be entitled to a greater percentage of the value of each item. 

 

So you could put a timer on this or not, maybe an ingame day up to a week depending on distance to the dungeon and the size of dungeon.  After the right amount of time you head back to the scavengers' guild and they show you what they've collected.  THIS is the bottomless inventory screen, where the scavengers are showing you everything they've collected.  So say you've negotiated an 80% cut.  At this point, you can just have them sell everything off and you'd get a payout of 80% of the value (which would be a nice lump sum of cash), and additionally you can look through and if you see something you want to keep, you can pay the scavs 20% of what you haggle that particular item to be worth (since your cut is 80% in this example).  Obviously a party with an expert merchant character would lose very little using this method of dungeon-clearing.

 

The fine print:

 

"Locked and/or trapped chests and any undiscovered hidden treasures will not be considered as part of the take of the contractee."

 

That is, you can't use the scavs to replace lockpicking/disarming skill.  As for "hidden caches", that would include things like loot hidden behind paintings or in other objects or places the player might not "search".  In other words, you can't use the scavs to "scout" a dungeon for hidden loot that you would then load your game to go search for on your own.  This also maintains the importance of player discovery, and of lockpicking and disarming everything in sight.  Things like barrels, bookshelves, and other unlocked or obvious containers would be fair game, as would anything the player unlocked/disarmed/found in his initial exploration.

 

So obviously some people would still be tempted to just do the old back and forth...  If spending an extra hour trotting back and forth is worth it for someone to gain an extra 20% or so, then by all means let them.  With this system, you have a very solid alternative with a very solid justification in game that is minimally invasive on the player's time.  Hell, even less of a time waster than the bottomless inventory, because with my solution the player doesn't actually take things out of barrels and manually sell them.  Functionally, the idea here is that everything you leave in the dungeon IS your "junk stash".  You would still want to pick up the most valuable and important things on your own run through the dungeon.  Optimally, you would still want to fill your (limited) packs with the best stuff, since you get 100% of the value of what you carry out yourself (obviously).

 

Finally, this mechanic opens up awesome possibilities.  The player will have a house and/or stronghold in Project:Eternity.  How about the scavs can pick up furniture and other adornments that you can then use to decorate your stronghold?  Slain and beheaded a dragon in the last dungeon?  Have the scavs carry it back so you can mount the head of the dragon above the glorious hearth in your stronghold!  Maybe even have special quests triggered by the scav saying things like, "hey, we found this key" or "When we rolled up this fancy rug we found a trapdoor underneath, but we didn't dare go in."  These little extras would ensure that people who were completionists would want to use the scavs for every dungeon.

[Ffordesoon]

@JonVanCaneghem

 

Interesting!

 

I'd like to request one clarification, if I could: are you saying that hidden caches we don't find will be wholly owned by the scavs (and thus not in the dungeon anymore), or that we'll have to explore the dungeon a second time to recover any hidden caches?

 

I'd be cool with the first, not so much with the second. Backtracking is dull, and being forced to make every dungeon "backtrack-compatible" might limit what Obsidian can do with the content inside the dungeon (e.g. no cave-ins).

 

I can, I suppose, see the appeal of the second approach, but it's not for me.

[Lephys]

How about a solution that is reasonably realistic and also extremely simple and awesome?

 

Any large city will have a "scavengers' guild" for lack of a better term.  These guys aren't much for fighting, but they are great at hauling stuff out of dungeons and selling it at market.  They're basically jawas.

 

 

Now each dungeon would need a hidden (or not so hidden) condition where the dungeon would be considered "clear."  Maybe you need to kill the big baddie or 100% of the monsters.  Now say your party has just cleared out a huge dungeon, and has picked up the best magical items etc, but has left behind all the candlesticks, unenchanted stuff, and "trash loot" that has minimal value.  By all rights, that extra junk you left behind is yours for the taking, but you just don't have the time to haul it all out ('cause you got to save the world and all).

 

Back in town you head over to the scavengers' guild.  Here is an excellent opportunity to utilize a character with a high haggling skill, because you will basically be negotiating a contract for them to pick over that dungeon.  So you're hiring them to clear the place out, and then depending on your barter or haggling or charisma, you will be entitled to a greater percentage of the value of each item. 

 

So you could put a timer on this or not, maybe an ingame day up to a week depending on distance to the dungeon and the size of dungeon.  After the right amount of time you head back to the scavengers' guild and they show you what they've collected.  THIS is the bottomless inventory screen, where the scavengers are showing you everything they've collected.  So say you've negotiated an 80% cut.  At this point, you can just have them sell everything off and you'd get a payout of 80% of the value (which would be a nice lump sum of cash), and additionally you can look through and if you see something you want to keep, you can pay the scavs 20% of what you haggle that particular item to be worth (since your cut is 80% in this example).  Obviously a party with an expert merchant character would lose very little using this method of dungeon-clearing.

 

The fine print:

 

"Locked and/or trapped chests and any undiscovered hidden treasures will not be considered as part of the take of the contractee."

 

That is, you can't use the scavs to replace lockpicking/disarming skill.  As for "hidden caches", that would include things like loot hidden behind paintings or in other objects or places the player might not "search".  In other words, you can't use the scavs to "scout" a dungeon for hidden loot that you would then load your game to go search for on your own.  This also maintains the importance of player discovery, and of lockpicking and disarming everything in sight.  Things like barrels, bookshelves, and other unlocked or obvious containers would be fair game, as would anything the player unlocked/disarmed/found in his initial exploration.

 

So obviously some people would still be tempted to just do the old back and forth...  If spending an extra hour trotting back and forth is worth it for someone to gain an extra 20% or so, then by all means let them.  With this system, you have a very solid alternative with a very solid justification in game that is minimally invasive on the player's time.  Hell, even less of a time waster than the bottomless inventory, because with my solution the player doesn't actually take things out of barrels and manually sell them.  Functionally, the idea here is that everything you leave in the dungeon IS your "junk stash".  You would still want to pick up the most valuable and important things on your own run through the dungeon.  Optimally, you would still want to fill your (limited) packs with the best stuff, since you get 100% of the value of what you carry out yourself (obviously).

 

Finally, this mechanic opens up awesome possibilities.  The player will have a house and/or stronghold in Project:Eternity.  How about the scavs can pick up furniture and other adornments that you can then use to decorate your stronghold?  Slain and beheaded a dragon in the last dungeon?  Have the scavs carry it back so you can mount the head of the dragon above the glorious hearth in your stronghold!  Maybe even have special quests triggered by the scav saying things like, "hey, we found this key" or "When we rolled up this fancy rug we found a trapdoor underneath, but we didn't dare go in."  These little extras would ensure that people who were completionists would want to use the scavs for every dungeon.

 

... *applause* ^_^

 

That's getting creative with it, that is.

[AGX-17]

How about a solution that is reasonably realistic and also extremely simple and awesome?

 

Any large city will have a "scavengers' guild" for lack of a better term.  These guys aren't much for fighting, but they are great at hauling stuff out of dungeons and selling it at market.  They're basically jawas.

 

Now each dungeon would need a hidden (or not so hidden) condition where the dungeon would be considered "clear."  Maybe you need to kill the big baddie or 100% of the monsters.  Now say your party has just cleared out a huge dungeon, and has picked up the best magical items etc, but has left behind all the candlesticks, unenchanted stuff, and "trash loot" that has minimal value.  By all rights, that extra junk you left behind is yours for the taking, but you just don't have the time to haul it all out ('cause you got to save the world and all).

 

Back in town you head over to the scavengers' guild.  Here is an excellent opportunity to utilize a character with a high haggling skill, because you will basically be negotiating a contract for them to pick over that dungeon.  So you're hiring them to clear the place out, and then depending on your barter or haggling or charisma, you will be entitled to a greater percentage of the value of each item. 

 

So you could put a timer on this or not, maybe an ingame day up to a week depending on distance to the dungeon and the size of dungeon.  After the right amount of time you head back to the scavengers' guild and they show you what they've collected.  THIS is the bottomless inventory screen, where the scavengers are showing you everything they've collected.  So say you've negotiated an 80% cut.  At this point, you can just have them sell everything off and you'd get a payout of 80% of the value (which would be a nice lump sum of cash), and additionally you can look through and if you see something you want to keep, you can pay the scavs 20% of what you haggle that particular item to be worth (since your cut is 80% in this example).  Obviously a party with an expert merchant character would lose very little using this method of dungeon-clearing.

 

The fine print:

 

"Locked and/or trapped chests and any undiscovered hidden treasures will not be considered as part of the take of the contractee."

 

That is, you can't use the scavs to replace lockpicking/disarming skill.  As for "hidden caches", that would include things like loot hidden behind paintings or in other objects or places the player might not "search".  In other words, you can't use the scavs to "scout" a dungeon for hidden loot that you would then load your game to go search for on your own.  This also maintains the importance of player discovery, and of lockpicking and disarming everything in sight.  Things like barrels, bookshelves, and other unlocked or obvious containers would be fair game, as would anything the player unlocked/disarmed/found in his initial exploration.

 

So obviously some people would still be tempted to just do the old back and forth...  If spending an extra hour trotting back and forth is worth it for someone to gain an extra 20% or so, then by all means let them.  With this system, you have a very solid alternative with a very solid justification in game that is minimally invasive on the player's time.  Hell, even less of a time waster than the bottomless inventory, because with my solution the player doesn't actually take things out of barrels and manually sell them.  Functionally, the idea here is that everything you leave in the dungeon IS your "junk stash".  You would still want to pick up the most valuable and important things on your own run through the dungeon.  Optimally, you would still want to fill your (limited) packs with the best stuff, since you get 100% of the value of what you carry out yourself (obviously).

 

Finally, this mechanic opens up awesome possibilities.  The player will have a house and/or stronghold in Project:Eternity.  How about the scavs can pick up furniture and other adornments that you can then use to decorate your stronghold?  Slain and beheaded a dragon in the last dungeon?  Have the scavs carry it back so you can mount the head of the dragon above the glorious hearth in your stronghold!  Maybe even have special quests triggered by the scav saying things like, "hey, we found this key" or "When we rolled up this fancy rug we found a trapdoor underneath, but we didn't dare go in."  These little extras would ensure that people who were completionists would want to use the scavs for every dungeon.

The idea of thieves' guilds and assassins' guilds are ludicrous enough. You might as well propose a stableboys' guild and a gaoler's guild. That said, the idea of hiring men to carry out the stuff isn't, at its root, bad.

 

Assuming there are enough free men shiftlessly lazing about the game's cities, it would be more believable to simply go and hire people to carry things for you. Better yet, they should be untrustworthy and selfish, liable to conceal the best stuff so they can sell it for their own profit.

Edited February 2, 2013 by AGX-17

[JonVanCaneghem]

@JonVanCaneghem

 

Interesting!

 

I'd like to request one clarification, if I could: are you saying that hidden caches we don't find will be wholly owned by the scavs (and thus not in the dungeon anymore), or that we'll have to explore the dungeon a second time to recover any hidden caches?

 

I'd be cool with the first, not so much with the second. Backtracking is dull, and being forced to make every dungeon "backtrack-compatible" might limit what Obsidian can do with the content inside the dungeon (e.g. no cave-ins).

 

I can, I suppose, see the appeal of the second approach, but it's not for me.

 

I'd say go with option 1, they just keep it.  As a player, you just have to get used to the idea that you want to scour the cave the first time and be sure to "discover" things that need discovering.  And of course, the scav team won't know where to go until you send them in, so if you really want to make a couple passes you can.

 

I think for this system to be feasible you'd have to make some exceptions, since some requests might turn out a bit ridiculous ("I found this really great place in the Underdark, loaded with loot!")  Caved-in and blocked-off dungeons will still happen, and you have to make the call over whether or not it could be feasibly scavenged.

Edited February 2, 2013 by JonVanCaneghem

[Alexjh]

Alexjh: No gems I really like!  They are light, obviously precious and covetable. And special bags for gems and a key ring sounds great too.

Vendor trash to me is to much of standard weapons and armour, no need for these. Let's just say that most such items are broken or got top be after combat or something. Thew few you do find could be normal ones and on rare occasions something more interesting. Vendor trash is really anything that are small nidbits of 1-5 gp kind of stuff, or as in Skyrim, all everyday stuff and home decoration stuff dropped into the maps with Bethesda's physics simulator. Such thins should be bolted clutter: eye candy. Also, vendor trash would be if consumables are too common: So no thanks to gazillions of potions and ammo (Perhaps arrows, bolts and bullets should be linked to the weapon itself with just some counter. No need to take up invo space with those.

For me it depends on the game - Personally  I find Bethesda's ever item is a thing you can grab approach to be one of the appeals of those games.  That isn't to say that I'd want the same feature in an IE style game like p:e as I wouldn't, but, it fits the tone of Skyrim to be able to grab every single thing.  If anything Skyrim etc don't go far enough - the thing they are missing is real interactivity between those items - the ability to throw and push normal items and for them to react differently depending on both what you throw them at and what they are. Throw a cast iron cooking pot at a guard should knock someone unconscious, throw a salmon steak on the floor and a bad guy might slip on it. Some potions might be flammable, some might extinguish fire, some might cause people to wheeze and so on. 

 

As I say, not for P:e but different games should do different things.

[JonVanCaneghem]

 

How about a solution that is reasonably realistic and also extremely simple and awesome?

 

Any large city will have a "scavengers' guild" for lack of a better term.  These guys aren't much for fighting, but they are great at hauling stuff out of dungeons and selling it at market.  They're basically jawas.

 

Now each dungeon would need a hidden (or not so hidden) condition where the dungeon would be considered "clear."  Maybe you need to kill the big baddie or 100% of the monsters.  Now say your party has just cleared out a huge dungeon, and has picked up the best magical items etc, but has left behind all the candlesticks, unenchanted stuff, and "trash loot" that has minimal value.  By all rights, that extra junk you left behind is yours for the taking, but you just don't have the time to haul it all out ('cause you got to save the world and all).

 

Back in town you head over to the scavengers' guild.  Here is an excellent opportunity to utilize a character with a high haggling skill, because you will basically be negotiating a contract for them to pick over that dungeon.  So you're hiring them to clear the place out, and then depending on your barter or haggling or charisma, you will be entitled to a greater percentage of the value of each item. 

 

So you could put a timer on this or not, maybe an ingame day up to a week depending on distance to the dungeon and the size of dungeon.  After the right amount of time you head back to the scavengers' guild and they show you what they've collected.  THIS is the bottomless inventory screen, where the scavengers are showing you everything they've collected.  So say you've negotiated an 80% cut.  At this point, you can just have them sell everything off and you'd get a payout of 80% of the value (which would be a nice lump sum of cash), and additionally you can look through and if you see something you want to keep, you can pay the scavs 20% of what you haggle that particular item to be worth (since your cut is 80% in this example).  Obviously a party with an expert merchant character would lose very little using this method of dungeon-clearing.

 

The fine print:

 

"Locked and/or trapped chests and any undiscovered hidden treasures will not be considered as part of the take of the contractee."

 

That is, you can't use the scavs to replace lockpicking/disarming skill.  As for "hidden caches", that would include things like loot hidden behind paintings or in other objects or places the player might not "search".  In other words, you can't use the scavs to "scout" a dungeon for hidden loot that you would then load your game to go search for on your own.  This also maintains the importance of player discovery, and of lockpicking and disarming everything in sight.  Things like barrels, bookshelves, and other unlocked or obvious containers would be fair game, as would anything the player unlocked/disarmed/found in his initial exploration.

 

So obviously some people would still be tempted to just do the old back and forth...  If spending an extra hour trotting back and forth is worth it for someone to gain an extra 20% or so, then by all means let them.  With this system, you have a very solid alternative with a very solid justification in game that is minimally invasive on the player's time.  Hell, even less of a time waster than the bottomless inventory, because with my solution the player doesn't actually take things out of barrels and manually sell them.  Functionally, the idea here is that everything you leave in the dungeon IS your "junk stash".  You would still want to pick up the most valuable and important things on your own run through the dungeon.  Optimally, you would still want to fill your (limited) packs with the best stuff, since you get 100% of the value of what you carry out yourself (obviously).

 

Finally, this mechanic opens up awesome possibilities.  The player will have a house and/or stronghold in Project:Eternity.  How about the scavs can pick up furniture and other adornments that you can then use to decorate your stronghold?  Slain and beheaded a dragon in the last dungeon?  Have the scavs carry it back so you can mount the head of the dragon above the glorious hearth in your stronghold!  Maybe even have special quests triggered by the scav saying things like, "hey, we found this key" or "When we rolled up this fancy rug we found a trapdoor underneath, but we didn't dare go in."  These little extras would ensure that people who were completionists would want to use the scavs for every dungeon.

The idea of thieves' guilds and assassins' guilds are ludicrous enough. You might as well propose a stableboys' guild and a gaoler's guild. That said, the idea of hiring men to carry out the stuff isn't, at its root, bad.

 

Assuming there are enough free men shiftlessly lazing about the game's cities, it would be more believable to simply go and hire people to carry things for you. Better yet, they should be untrustworthy and selfish, liable to conceal the best stuff so they can sell it for their own profit.

 

Well, it could be workers of any description, I'm definitely not married to the idea of a special guild for it.  Maybe it's a special arrangement you make with the foreman of a dwarven work-crew?  They could be construction workers looking for a little part time work (and don't we all know dwarves are industrious and trustworthy?)  The concept of whether or not they will steal things for their own would be handled a bit like the assurance that your housecleaners won't steal from you...  The continued success of the arrangement depends on trust (since both parties are benefitting), and you also have a good idea of what all you left in the cave of value.  Of course, that doesn't mean someone won't occasionally grab something that they think you might overlook. 

 

It's one of those things that always nagged at me.  You enter this ancient tomb that everyone has been afraid of for a hundred years, because legends of awful creatures etc.  You walk in and mow down all sorts of shambling corpses and then strike down the vampire running the show.  You take your pick of the loot, and then you just leave it.  Seems to me like a pretty wasteful thing, I mean once word gets out that the ancient tomb is no longer dangerous you'd have treasure seekers swarm the place and pick it clean.  Knowing this, it would be quite the valuable bit of information that you'd definitely exploit.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Stun: I would be all for a list-based stash of this kind.

 

AGX-17: From a robot to a snyde Manga dude, I like your new avatar!

 

JonVanCaneghem: Great idea! Your scavengers/workers as part of deep stash and working as jawas/Sherpa. They can help you do big hauls from dungeons, but you also bring to the table that their operations sometimes can blow up in your face: turning them into looters/robbers/plunderers stealing much of your precious loot. The outcome of the hauling should depend on some charisma and reputation modifiers.

 

I'm gonna ad your idea to my "Ideas not to be forgotten"-topic over at General Discussions. And hey guys, you know that you can support any of the ideas there just be copying the list at the bottom there and adding an "l" for like to it and copying the list?

Edited February 2, 2013 by IndiraLightfoot

[Xienzi]

The only gripe I have with the new system is how it would even work, story-wise. Would it function similarly to portable holes/bags of holding and just have it on you at all times? Gameplay and story segregation always bugs the hell out of me.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Xienzi

[Alexjh]

 

...

The idea of thieves' guilds and assassins' guilds are ludicrous enough. You might as well propose a stableboys' guild and a gaoler's guild. That said, the idea of hiring men to carry out the stuff isn't, at its root, bad.

 

Assuming there are enough free men shiftlessly lazing about the game's cities, it would be more believable to simply go and hire people to carry things for you. Better yet, they should be untrustworthy and selfish, liable to conceal the best stuff so they can sell it for their own profit.

 

Not really, the most ludicrous thing about them is the idea they'd be separate or call themselves the Thieves/Assassins or some such.  I think the key here is to move a little more towards the idea of organized crime as in the real world, where fairly little actual robbing goes on and the actual moneys come in through protection rackets, smuggling and bribing officials etc.  Still plenty of room for an upcoming warrior to be an enforcer but a bit more realistic in tone and a bit darker and subtler in nature compared to "muahahah you must go steal Old Man Wilsons Diamonds!"

[TRX850]

 

 

...

The idea of thieves' guilds and assassins' guilds are ludicrous enough. You might as well propose a stableboys' guild and a gaoler's guild. That said, the idea of hiring men to carry out the stuff isn't, at its root, bad.

 

Assuming there are enough free men shiftlessly lazing about the game's cities, it would be more believable to simply go and hire people to carry things for you. Better yet, they should be untrustworthy and selfish, liable to conceal the best stuff so they can sell it for their own profit.

 

Not really, the most ludicrous thing about them is the idea they'd be separate or call themselves the Thieves/Assassins or some such.  I think the key here is to move a little more towards the idea of organized crime as in the real world, where fairly little actual robbing goes on and the actual moneys come in through protection rackets, smuggling and bribing officials etc.  Still plenty of room for an upcoming warrior to be an enforcer but a bit more realistic in tone and a bit darker and subtler in nature compared to "muahahah you must go steal Old Man Wilsons Diamonds!"

 

Thieves' Guild.

[JOG]

The idea of thieves' guilds and assassins' guilds are ludicrous enough. You might as well propose a stableboys' guild and a gaoler's guild. That said, the idea of hiring men to carry out the stuff isn't, at its root, bad.

 

Actually a thieves guild works exactly like any medieval age craftsman guild: control market and competition and maintain a reputation. It's not a simple social club and also not primarly about getting jobs or education, it's about control: If you wanted to do business in your craft you joined the guild and obeyed their rules or were beaten out of the city.

 

The Thieves' Guild is about the only form of guild that is still existing today. We call it mafia, or on a smaller scale gang, and they may call themselves by other names, but in their core they do the same any guild did. The word "mafia" is an invention of the italian media in the 19th century, the organisations call themselves "cosa nostra" (our cause) or "Bratwa" (brotherhood) or "Ya-Ku-Za" (8-9-3 - worst hand in a card game => the worst of society)

 

So yes, IMO a thieves guild makes a lot of sense, as long as they don't neccessary call themselves the "Thieves Guild" and as long as the main benefit for joining is staying alive.

[PrimeJunta]

Nitpick: cosa means "thing" (also matter, affair, business), not "cause." So Cosa Nostra is more like "Our Thing" or "Our Business." It's not like it has much of a "cause" as such anyway. Mafia-like groupings with causes are usually called "terrorist organizations" or "resistance movements," depending on which one we're talking about and who's asking...

 

Edit: also mad props to JonVanCaneghem on the scavs' guild idea. Brilliant in-game way to solve the problem, without needing unexplained mechancis. Later you could even acquire a magic crystal ball that would let you phone them right from the dungeon, without even needing to drop by. "Yo. Another one clear. Here are the coordinates, come have a party..."

Edited February 3, 2013 by PrimeJunta

[moridin84]

I personally like this top-pack/unlimited stash system. It's a bit unrealistic but the inventory system in these type of games is unrealistic anyway, they have to it for the rest of the game to work as it those. It's a game, you can't have everything realistic or it wouldn't be fun and this is just one of those things. 

 

There are other systems that would work fine as well but one thing I am definitely against is mixing 'weight-limited' and 'space-limited' system. The top-pack/unlimited stash system is 'space-limited' (at least for the top-pack), whereas Infinity Engine games where 'weight-limited' (you had a grid based inventory but you had so much space it was never an issue). Mixing the two complicates things while adding nothing. 

 

And another thing, I agree with the stash being a list instead of a grid. Since it's unlimited, inventory tetris makes no sense so there's no point in it being a grid. Ideally this should be a categorized. All, Weapons, Armour, etc. 

Edited February 3, 2013 by moridin84

[Stun]

The IE games used a slot based inventory system, not a grid based one.

 

And the need for item categories goes away the moment you scrap the convoluted list + pages + unlimited space nonsense

Edited February 3, 2013 by Stun

[moridin84]

The IE games used a slot based inventory system, not a grid based one.

 

And the need for item categories goes away the moment you scrap the convoluted list + pages + unlimited space nonsense

 

What do you mean by 'slot based'?

 

And yes, if you limited the number of items a player can have there is no need to have categories. 

Edited February 3, 2013 by moridin84