Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 both weigh the player down with encumbrance. Love it or hate it, it seems like it’s here to stay.

  • Thelgor
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    11 year ago

    If you give me inventory space enough to carry 18 metric tons but then make it so I can’t move, that’s not reasonable. Reasonable would be to limit the number of items I can carry and/or limit inventory item stack sizes.

    • @qarbone
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      61 year ago

      …they are limiting the number of items you can carry…with encumbrance. Am I missing something or is this just a ‘you’ hang-up?

      • Thelgor
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        -11 year ago

        The question revolves around reasonableness. You’ve designed a storage mechanism (inventory) so you have a mechanism in place to limit what players carry. Sure. You’ve created a stack mechanism to keep like items together in your storage mechanism because people will bitch about having 10 bobby pins taking up all your inventory space. Okay. Now you introduce weight as another limiting factor and slow them down when they already have to make multiple trips…unreasonable.

        • @qarbone
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          1 year ago

          I do not understand how you are conceiving of encumbrance as another layer on top of inventory slots instead of an alternative to it.

          If encumbrance and inventory slots were layered atop each other, there should be a state where you have used up all available slots while still having remaining capacity in encumbrance: a thing that never happens. I have never seen a game with encumbrance reach this state except maybe Soulsbournes and that’s more about stat-gating equipment you can use than preventing players from carrying more things.