Encumbrance: Gaming's Weight Problem - The Point

WASTED!! hahaha

This problem goes WAY back all the way to Pen & Paper days.

DM: You slew the mighty naughty person, congratulations! He had 75,000 gold pieces!

Player: Gnarly!! Put it in the sacks!

DM: What sacks?

Player: The sacks on the donkey.

DM: You tied up the donkey way back outside the castle so the guards wouldn't hear it. I wonder if the wolves ate it? (DM rolls dice.) You hear a satiated howl in the distance.

This is what the bag of holding and portal hole were for. But have you ever tried organizing one of those things?

P.S. Just because the bottle label says "rum" doesn't mean that's what's in the bottle!

There's a good encumbrance mechanic in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. If you can get past the ASCII-era console graphics (I recommend using a tileset) then you have to contend with items that have both a weight and a volume measurement, plus tracking the capacity of containers (which have their own weight and volume!), all of which affects your movement and combat capabilities. Also there's winter and zombies and cthuloid horrors and hunger and thirst and burning down the mini-mall that you had turned into your safehouse/fortress.

Who knew linoleum was so flammable? Knew I should have found room in my pack for that fire extinguisher...

On DA inquisition I used to carry a ton of junks with special description and the finally i sold them all, asking myself why i kept them in the first place. Thinking they could be worth on some missions. Tetris inventory makes me nostalgic and thinking of early games like res even jagged edge. I like the tetris more then a stupid number telling me you reached the max, like 189 items, who the hell carries 189 items around?!

Best gaming show ever! And with rum, it just gets better!

The last place where I don't have to stand for movie stuff on this site. I'm wondering how long will it last.

I like TW3s concept of health stuff and ingredients not costing any weight

Yeah the Fallout encumberance just ruined the immersion for me. I just kept picking up garbage cause im addicted! And after every location I kept going back to my home and unloading the junk. :/

Nice vid #RumDrunkDanny. I took you more for the whiskey connoisseur though!

Fallout 4 does indeed have issues with encumbrance, I spend half of the time managing my inventory.

What it needs is a separate weight limit on junk, just for starters.

Food shouldn't weigh anything, or at least have its weight much reduced.

Nothing like perpetuating the myth of the drunk Irishman.

Nothing in this video prompted me to scream at my monitor in disgust. So, great job Danny! Keep up the good work.

TLDR: Fallout 4 sucks.

Another ace episode Danny and company. I have to know though, are you guys going to post a bloopers video for this one? I have to know how much fun you guys had filming this one, because Danny you looked like you were having a ball :)

And I'm not sure who edits these anymore, if its still Mary or not - but whoever edited this one deserves some praise to. Kuddos video editor person!

I see that Danny truly is Irish...just in case anyone had doubts

I wanna go camping with Danny, I'll bring the booze top ramen and duct tape.

@dannyodwyer I'm such a huge fan of your work. It is definitely the highlight of Gamespot stretching back to Escape from Mount Stupid. I recently started my own youtube channel and your work has been a huge inspiration. My channel, RPG Cooking, has me making in-game food and drink (e.g. Radstag Stew, Cat Potion) in the style of the games they are from. I won't link to it directly, but i'd be flattered if you gave one of my videos a look. Keep up the great work. I loved your thoughts on encumbrance, and you're right, the Witcher did it better.

Far Cry 3 & 4 did a pretty good job with this: two large weapons, two small weapons, and different ammo bags for different types of ammunition that you can craft. My personal suggestion would be a combination of RE 4 and Far Cry 3/4 space management: if there is a space available on the model for a weapon or item (including pouches, backpacks and holsters), then the player can carry it. As for encumbrance, it should definitely be gradual and maybe include some sort of penalty to total stamina, stamina regeneration, dexterity etc.

Anyone remember Dungeon Siege? It solved this problem by having the player's party be accompanied by a mule, which carried all your extra gear and loot. It would be great if RPGs had an elegantly simple solution like that, so your character didn't carry a preposterous amount of gear and loot, or have to schlep it back to stores to sell.

My suggestion is the addition of both a squire and a cart. Your character would acquire a companion, the Squire, early in the game and would accompany the hero on their adventure. The Squire would have limited combat capabilities; their primary function would be to carry the hero's extra gear and loot, so the hero would be completely unencumbered. The hero could purchase a cart, which could carry even more gear and loot, and would be pulled by the squire. The hero could upgrade the cart to a mule, then a mule cart, up to a horse cart, which the squire would drive while the hero rode a horse.

Obviously, you wouldn't take a cart into a dungeon or fortress-type area; it would be left outside, guarded by the squire, while the hero went inside. To make things more interesting, it's possible that the hero's cart will come under attack -- but it would be like a dice roll event triggered when the hero exits a dungeon area, so they'd always arrive just in time to stop bandits from stealing their shit. Whereas if the hero didn't leave their squire to guard the cart, they'd return to find the cart either looted or stolen -- but the thieves would always be in the area, so the hero could track them down and recover their belongings.

That's the way I'd design the "encumbrance" system if I created a RPG.

First thing I did in Fallout 4 was remove weight limit in the console.

I love weight limits, but I generally like complex inventories like in Deus Ex, Resident Evil 5 or New Vegas. If anything I would like to see games where it's really severe. Like a knight can perhaps carry the armor he is wearing, his primary weapon and perhaps a shield plus maybe a dagger for backup, and a small purse for some cash, roots and leaves and a couple of keys.Meaning he can't carry 10000 coins or 200 keys at once but a sensible amount. And that is when he is in peak physical condition. Ofc some other character could opt to wear less armor and perhaps invest in a rugsack or backpack. Or he could buy a house, or just store items in some hole and hope they won't disappear.

I absolutely hate that when I play games like in Elder Scrolls or Dark Souls I always try to make a believable inventory but in the end I end up carrying 100 weapons because of bad case of hoarding items I never use. I think it would also boost replay value if each character could only use certain amount of weapons instead of trying everything.

It's strange how can i carry all the world in my back in some games. Pause the game and have time to think. Just swap things that ain't exist in my backpack or holsters. Thinking about our first civilization, one of the greatest ideas are the Ox cart and complex agriculture systems like working culture. Other thing i feel strange is so many HUD element telling me that i ain't need to think and only move the controller. That's why i agree with this video. Other thing that we need to feel the weight, is the weight of the number of enemies we can make doing the wrong things, is honor, compassion, harmony and kindness profitable?

Why is this video player so bad... I'd like to watch this but have no options to change quality and anything...

I think the best realism to annoying ratio is the bag space puzzle. I find it satisfying when all my favorite items are nicely organised on a grid system.

My favorite however is Dark Souls where you can carry as many items as you like but equiped items can effect your encumberance. But high encumberence in Dark Souls wasn't always a bad thing. I had a fantastic character that was fully encumbered but had huge attack and defence, which would drive online opponents crazy. Good times.

I think the worst is the skyrim/oblivion/fallout system because you can happily collect crap until you become encumbered then you have the terrible task of deciding what you want to keep and throw away. The bad menu systems always make this a pain. Also dumping loads of stuff on the ground always increased the loading times in game.

Seeing Danny with the bag reminded me of a guy from school years ago who (in real life) decided to go for the skyrim encumbrance model over the much smarter Dark Souls model i.e. instead of paying 10 beans for a locker, he decided to carry all his books around. Not a good idea. Everytime I see him he still has a terribly curved spine.

I was never really bothered at all by this weight thing till recently with fallout 4. Just felt like after every building I had to warp back to a settlement to drop all my junk off. Add in long loading times and it finally dawned on me - "this kinda sucks"
Luckily there are perks for that and of course your companions to limit that shite.

What I hate about tedious encumbrance systems in combination with fast travel is that it often breaks immersion and flow in story.

When you are alone in the wilderness exploring some far away location, and you realize you have to fast travel back home to just unload your backpack, it really destroys the immersion. Imagine a movie were they did this. A bit off topic, but in my opinion fast travel back to mother base is also what destroyed MGS5.

And you can't just blame it on the players and tell them to play differently. It's the developer's job to encourage a play style that gives the best immersion.

I don't mind weight or inventory limits. What I can't stand is games that don't provide some sort of long term storage, or limit it severely by either size or accessibility. I can understand not having a long term storage solution in games that specifically revolve around small inventories such as survival games. However, games like WoW, where there is a near endless supply of things you may want to keep, and extremely limited space to do so, really tick me off.

Granted in Legion they are adding a Wardrobe system similar to that in Guild Wars 2 which should free up like 75% of my inventory and storage, considering a good chunk of it is gear collected over the years that I want to save for transmog. Still though, I am certain they will fins something else to fill all those empty slots.

I like encumbrance in most games like Elder Scrolls and so on, adds a nice bit of depth so you have to think about what you're crrying but unlike the old Resident Evil classics, I don't like that sort of inventory cap at all. A shotgun or bazooka taking up as much space as an ink ribbon or a little jewel haha cheese =P

I think the threshold thing is best, slows you down first and stops you from doing certain things like swimming or fast travelling and then stops you dead more or less.

I'll take this opportunity to complain about games like Halo. Want that sniper rifle or rocket launcher? Then drop that nifty rifle you've been using, you can't stash it away.

Ah another video, luckily Firefox on my Mac don't play them and your forced advertisements are not missed.

Bethesda has always been balanced on how much you can carry. If you want to be a pack mule it allows that too with strength perks and the carry perks and you can also pass some onto your companion. Fallout 4 pretty much forces you to continually grab stuff because all that junk turns into weapon and armor mods and settlement building too. Then there is the fact I like to armor and weapon up my settlers too. I do feel like a nurse maid to these settlements at times and Bethesda still needs to fix some bugs too.