Inventory management

[Inertia]

How will unlimited stash space affect the game's economy? won't the fact that u can stash every short sword and black opal gem you find affect it?

[Nonek]

Individual characters contribute space to the Pack (not the Stash, which is effectively unlimited in size).  I.e., two characters will have less Pack space than six characters.  However we wind up displaying the Pack, each character's section will be marked as "theirs" even though it's effectively a common pool of items.  The main thing we want to avoid with the Pack is forcing the player to flip between six screens.

 

BTW, you can carry overflow items without assigning them Pack slots or throwing them in the Stash, but it encumbers the entire party until you handle it.  Encumbrance inflicts combat penalties, not movement penalties, so you can move at full speed while encumbered, but you're fighting at a significant disadvantage with no real upside because you can't access the Pack in combat.

 

Now this I like, clear demarcation, ease of use and also a choice over what we hold dear enough to keep with us at all times, utility versus sentiment. That's personally what I was looking for, I may not be a fan of the stash, but this description of the shared pack sits very well with my personal sensibilities.

[J.E. Sawyer]

How will unlimited stash space affect the game's economy? won't the fact that u can stash every short sword and black opal gem you find affect it?

 

A patient player can do this in any IE game as well (barring areas you can't return to).  I don't think our economy should be balanced around the expectation that players are impatient.

[SunBroSolaire]

Individual characters contribute space to the Pack (not the Stash, which is effectively unlimited in size).  I.e., two characters will have less Pack space than six characters.  However we wind up displaying the Pack, each character's section will be marked as "theirs" even though it's effectively a common pool of items.  The main thing we want to avoid with the Pack is forcing the player to flip between six screens.

 

BTW, you can carry overflow items without assigning them Pack slots or throwing them in the Stash, but it encumbers the entire party until you handle it.  Encumbrance inflicts combat penalties, not movement penalties, so you can move at full speed while encumbered, but you're fighting at a significant disadvantage with no real upside because you can't access the Pack in combat.

I understand your reasoning here, but I do worry you might lose something by not having individual inventories. So much of RPGs comes from creating identities for your characters, which comes from the items and skills you assign them. I'll be interested to see how it turns out though, hopefully you prove my fears wrong. 

 

 

How will unlimited stash space affect the game's economy? won't the fact that u can stash every short sword and black opal gem you find affect it?

 

A patient player can do this in any IE game as well (barring areas you can't return to).  I don't think our economy should be balanced around the expectation that players are impatient.

 

In Icewind Dale items decreased in value every time you sold them, no? I remember having the idea that I could farm Yeti pelts, and then finding the shopkeeper just stopped paying for them. Pretty elegant solution there. I hope there are limitations on hoarding in PE. I don't like hoarding, and I generally don't do it even given the chance, but in games where it's possible I always get the nagging feeling that I'm playing 'wrong' by not looting and selling every piece of armor and rusty short sword. Games should encourage good, interesting play, not tedious play. 

[Lephys]

One thought I had regarding inventory management is, What if items were divided into two categories:

 

1) Items that effectively take up space, and

2) Items that effectively do not take up space?

 

What I mean is, it seems a bit strange that, if you have a standard grid-style inventory with 16 slots (4x4 square), you can have 1 pebble, 1 herb leaf, 1 string, etc. (until you have 16 individual items) and your inventory is "full" as far as trying to put something else in there goes, when, really, all that, together should take up a ludicrously small amount of space. Yet, you can have 99 strings, and they only take up 1/16th the effective space of 16 individual items the same size as strings.

 

So, what if strings and small gemstones and herbs didn't actually take up space slots and were merely limited by quantity (as, obviously, you couldn't carry 7,000 strings... eventually, it's just not feasible to carry any more), and things beyond a given size (starting with, perhaps, about the size of a hand/palm, like a grenade or orb or bread roll) actually took up inventory space slots?

 

Just a thought.

[TrashMan]

Volume. VOLUME.

No grids necessary.

 

Just two numbers - weight and volume.

 

Weight:  30/50 kg

Volume: 73,5/100

 

No messing around with grids, just two numbers to balance. And best part - every item has volume and weight. Volume IS basicly grid space mechanicly. Think of it as 1 grid space = 1 unit of volume.

 

A character that in a IE game would have 20 grid slots and a carry capacity of 150, has a carry capacity of 150 and 20 volume.

The armor that would take 4 grid slots take 4 volume units.

 

 

It's simple, logical, efficient.

 

Or you cna have grids.

Either works for me, as long as there are individual inventories.

Edited May 29, 2013 by TrashMan

[Lephys]

I wasn't implying that a grid was necessary. It's obviously a visually intuitive abstraction of volume management.

 

So, yes, simply having those two properties for all things would handle things quite well, too. Just, if there is a grid, then rather than having RIDICULOUSLY tiny grid-squares to fix the "my inventory is full from 16 individual tiny items" problem I pointed out, I just figured those could not even register on the grid, and simply be limited by stack or something.

 

But, yeah, with volume, you could even have things in different containers, which would be nice. Instead of an item simply called "berries," you'd have a certain AMOUNT of berries. 'Cause, what the hell is 2 berrieses? I had 1 berries, and the icon is a pile of berries. But now I have 2 berrieses. WHAT'S BERRIESES, PRECIOUS?!

 

You could have a jar of berries, or a pouch of berries, or a thimble of berries. The jar and pouch and thimble are always only going to contain a certain amount of something, no matter what it is. They only have so much volume inside them.

 

Of course, when you get down to it, the problem with volume is the shape of things. Maybe your volume limit is 6 ft³ or something, but that doesn't mean you can fit 6 shortswords in there if they each have a volume of 1 ft³. If you melted all the short swords down, and poured the molten sword liquid into the bag, and it didn't burn the bag, magically, THEN you could use all the volume. That's the only thing a grid handles that a sheer-numbers volume limiter doesn't. You can have an axe that takes up 6 squares (2X3), but if you can only free up a 1X6 space in your inventory, or a 4-square bar atop a 2-square bar, you can't fit that axe. Even though the axe's sheer volume would fit, the axe, because of its specific shape, is not going to efficiently utilize the free space in your pack.

[crackwise]

Here is a screenshot from Ultima Online inventory. It is an inventory without any grids, thus not treating the sword and a pebble the same way. But the volume is not considered and the only thing considered was the weight. It was quite tedious though, trying to arrange your items in the backpack.

 

 

I strongly agree that both the volume and weight of items should be taken into account when designing an inventory system. Again, for an inventory system which already does this thing successfully, see my previous post in this thread about Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 mod.

 

 

 

[Sensuki]

GRID PLZ

[TrashMan]

I wasn't implying that a grid was necessary. It's obviously a visually intuitive abstraction of volume management.

 

So, yes, simply having those two properties for all things would handle things quite well, too. Just, if there is a grid, then rather than having RIDICULOUSLY tiny grid-squares to fix the "my inventory is full from 16 individual tiny items" problem I pointed out, I just figured those could not even register on the grid, and simply be limited by stack or something.

 

But, yeah, with volume, you could even have things in different containers, which would be nice. Instead of an item simply called "berries," you'd have a certain AMOUNT of berries. 'Cause, what the hell is 2 berrieses? I had 1 berries, and the icon is a pile of berries. But now I have 2 berrieses. WHAT'S BERRIESES, PRECIOUS?!

 

You could have a jar of berries, or a pouch of berries, or a thimble of berries. The jar and pouch and thimble are always only going to contain a certain amount of something, no matter what it is. They only have so much volume inside them.

 

Of course, when you get down to it, the problem with volume is the shape of things. Maybe your volume limit is 6 ft³ or something, but that doesn't mean you can fit 6 shortswords in there if they each have a volume of 1 ft³. If you melted all the short swords down, and poured the molten sword liquid into the bag, and it didn't burn the bag, magically, THEN you could use all the volume. That's the only thing a grid handles that a sheer-numbers volume limiter doesn't. You can have an axe that takes up 6 squares (2X3), but if you can only free up a 1X6 space in your inventory, or a 4-square bar atop a 2-square bar, you can't fit that axe. Even though the axe's sheer volume would fit, the axe, because of its specific shape, is not going to efficiently utilize the free space in your pack.

 

I'd say "pack" is more of a technical term rather than LITERALY meaning in the backpack.

 

You can carry the swords sticking out of the pack, or attached to your back

[Lephys]

I'd say "pack" is more of a technical term rather than LITERALY meaning in the backpack.

 

You can carry the swords sticking out of the pack, or attached to your back

That's beside the point. At some point, you're going to have free space in your pack that cannot be occupied by a sword, sticking out or not. And you're going to have free space on the outside of your pack that you can't properly lash a sword to, etc, even though you could lash SOMETHING there.

 

It's the old "Fill a jar with rocks. Is it full? No. Now pour in pebbles. Is it full now? No. Now fill it with sand..." notion. Or, you know, like Tetris. Just because you have 4 blocks of space doesn't mean something that isn't shaped to fit in that space won't fit. Obviously, as I said, the grid is an abstraction of this.

 

All I'm saying is that it's good to represent the fact that not everything fits into all spaces.

[Eiphel]

I am pretty much in favour of the idea Josh has described, although flavourfully I can't think of a good justification for being able to send things to the stash and that bugs me. (But not as much as a poor mechanical implementation would.)

[Lephys]

^ Maybe you have a magical device that sends objects back to your last camp area (town, if it's closest), but can only teleport non-living mass. Boom. You get stuff straight to your stash, but you can't access it until you actually get to where it is.

[rjshae]

 

How will unlimited stash space affect the game's economy? won't the fact that u can stash every short sword and black opal gem you find affect it?

 

A patient player can do this in any IE game as well (barring areas you can't return to).  I don't think our economy should be balanced around the expectation that players are impatient.

 

It might be interesting if the weight of your stash effected your overland movement rate, which in turn modified the likelihood of an encounter with bandits, robbers, or hungry beasts. Large loads might also attract the interest of tax collectors, who would want a cut of the loot, or the toll gates of lords who are looking to equip their own militia.

[Gfted1]

 

 

How will unlimited stash space affect the game's economy? won't the fact that u can stash every short sword and black opal gem you find affect it?

 

A patient player can do this in any IE game as well (barring areas you can't return to).  I don't think our economy should be balanced around the expectation that players are impatient.

 

It might be interesting if the weight of your stash effected your overland movement rate, which in turn modified the likelihood of an encounter with bandits, robbers, or hungry beasts. Large loads might also attract the interest of tax collectors, who would want a cut of the loot, or the toll gates of lords who are looking to equip their own militia.

 

 

 

Hold up. Unlimited inventory sprang forth to stomp out the scourge of degeneratively walking back and forth to collect loot. Now we have to add more penalties to the mechanic because people will be carrying everything not nailed down?

[Nonek]

Is it possible that we could have collapsible portions of the pack for each member? I think the original Dungeon Siege did this, but basically you click the inventory button and all the pack pops up, however with the pack being split into individual sections for characters we get the option to collapse sections according to our wishes. Delineates a little more clearly that each members personal possessions and carrying capacity are his alone. Thought it might be a nice little touch for added verisimilitude.

[Eiphel]

^ Maybe you have a magical device that sends objects back to your last camp area (town, if it's closest), but can only teleport non-living mass. Boom. You get stuff straight to your stash, but you can't access it until you actually get to where it is.

Actually that gives me the idea that the stash itself - Like the physical object that stores it - Could have magical properties. Like it's a big chest or something which functions like a bag of holding and is magically present wherever you make camp. (Hahah, now I'm imagining a backstory for this mysteriously helpful chest and everything.) Or, y'know, the Luggage.

[rjshae]

 

 

 

How will unlimited stash space affect the game's economy? won't the fact that u can stash every short sword and black opal gem you find affect it?

 

A patient player can do this in any IE game as well (barring areas you can't return to).  I don't think our economy should be balanced around the expectation that players are impatient.

 

It might be interesting if the weight of your stash effected your overland movement rate, which in turn modified the likelihood of an encounter with bandits, robbers, or hungry beasts. Large loads might also attract the interest of tax collectors, who would want a cut of the loot, or the toll gates of lords who are looking to equip their own militia.

 

 

Hold up. Unlimited inventory sprang forth to stomp out the scourge of degeneratively walking back and forth to collect loot. Now we have to add more penalties to the mechanic because people will be carrying everything not nailed down?

 

The difference is that in the first instance you were traveling back and forth through already cleared terrain. Ergo, the activity was pointless. Traveling overland is not the same thing, and the increased risk factor would be a counterbalance to an unlimited carrying capacity. But this risk could be tempered by spending part of your money on improved portage: a bigger wagon, a team of horses, a flying vehicle, a teleporter pad, use of a merchant service, &c. That provides another economic element.

[Gfted1]

The difference is that in the first instance you were traveling back and forth through already cleared terrain. Ergo, the activity was pointless. Traveling overland is not the same thing, and the increased risk factor would be a counterbalance to an unlimited carrying capacity. But this risk could be tempered by spending part of your money on improved portage: a bigger wagon, a team of horses, a flying vehicle, a teleporter pad, use of a merchant service, &c. That provides another economic element.

Not to worry, of course there's already a built in penalty. Im not sure how/what "overflow" works in a two bag system but:

 

BTW, you can carry overflow items without assigning them Pack slots or throwing them in the Stash, but it encumbers the entire party until you handle it. Encumbrance inflicts combat penalties, not movement penalties, so you can move at full speed while encumbered, but you're fighting at a significant disadvantage with no real upside because you can't access the Pack in combat.

[Lephys]

I wonder several things about that:

 

A) Is the overflow space limited? Maybe it's only limited by encumbrance... i.e. you can technically carry infinite overflow stuff, but when you get to battle and it takes you 3,000 seconds to cast a spell, you'll wish you hadn't tried to grab so much (I'm sure the encumbrance penalty value would be shown to you, so you wouldn't have to be surprised when you discover just how slow you cast after waiting to test it out first-hand.)

 

B) What kind of penalties, exactly? I would have to assume they'd be along the same lines as equipment penalties, simply slowing your combat actions (as Josh stressed the "not your movement speed" thing with armor/equipment penalties in the exact same manner).

 

C) ... I forgot what C was... o_o

[Gfted1]

B) What kind of penalties, exactly? I would have to assume they'd be along the same lines as equipment penalties, simply slowing your combat actions (as Josh stressed the "not your movement speed" thing with armor/equipment penalties in the exact same manner).

That's a good question. I also wonder how it will affect diplomacy based characters. I guess not at all since it specifically states "combat penalties". Maybe just some flat negative modifier to their Diplomacy skill?

[cleric Nemir]

 

B) What kind of penalties, exactly? I would have to assume they'd be along the same lines as equipment penalties, simply slowing your combat actions (as Josh stressed the "not your movement speed" thing with armor/equipment penalties in the exact same manner).

That's a good question. I also wonder how it will affect diplomacy based characters. I guess not at all since it specifically states "combat penalties". Maybe just some flat negative modifier to their Diplomacy skill?

 

 

Evil detected.  

"Your heavily encumbered packrat character is in holding one of the swords between his teeth: -10 Diplomacy modifier" 

[Lephys]

That's a good question. I also wonder how it will affect diplomacy based characters. I guess not at all since it specifically states "combat penalties". Maybe just some flat negative modifier to their Diplomacy skill?

I guess your word attacks would be slower to work, and/or would deal less damage in Opposition Points. And if you don't do enough damage, the target remains Opposed to your Diplomatic Solution, and the battle is lost. Diplomacy is the most civilized form of warfare, after all.

 

Or maybe you just get a big "I'll totally give you all this stuff I'm carrying if you succumb to my will" option.

[Nonek]

To be, or not to be. That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler, in the merchants to suffer the slings and arrows of outrages prices. Or to take arms against them, and by obsessive hoarding end them.

[Amberion]

 

^ Maybe you have a magical device that sends objects back to your last camp area (town, if it's closest), but can only teleport non-living mass. Boom. You get stuff straight to your stash, but you can't access it until you actually get to where it is.

Actually that gives me the idea that the stash itself - Like the physical object that stores it - Could have magical properties. Like it's a big chest or something which functions like a bag of holding and is magically present wherever you make camp. (Hahah, now I'm imagining a backstory for this mysteriously helpful chest and everything.) Or, y'know, the Luggage.

 

I was thinking about the stash the other day. I was thinking about the difficulties inherent in an infinite 'loot dump' and the tendency for pack ratting. I was also thinking about what the stash would actually 'be' in roleplay terms in the game world. And my vision of it was a pack mule. The stash is either a mule laden with packs, or a mule pulling a cart or wagon. And that got me thinking about the costs involved in moving large quantities of items from place to place. You have to feed the mule, pay the muleteer, buy/maintain the tack and gear, the wagon, etc. So how would  this be represented in the game? Well, I was thinking that you would have certain capacity thresholds, past which you will need to buy another mule and wagon(this would be handled automatically, so you don't have to micromanage pack mules). For every threshold you pass, you have to pay more in gold every time you travel. It could start out trivial, and increase at a linear rate. Exactly how much it would be would be subject to balancing, but by design I would think that as long as a person manages their stash responsibly and sells after each major adventure, that the cost of using the stash would remain trivial(as in less than what you lose by leaving 100 leather armors to rot on the highway). This would provide a motivation to keep lean, but not outright prevent people from packratting, if they so choose.

 

Edit: and now i'm totally brainstorming. What if your stash gets so ridiculously large, that you've become a complete caravan? What if you get proposals from merchants to join your caravan to the next city in your itinerary? they could offer a gold fee to join(for protection from brigands), and have some adventure opportunities with dealing with a merchant caravan. Maybe even make it a regular thing!

Edited June 3, 2013 by Amberion