Is encumbrance going to be a percentage of strength or mass?
Is it tied to a value associated with bags?
Will it slow us down or root us or fatigue us?
Can I hide things?
If I climbed to a little used location and dropped a few item behind an ugly bush. Will those items stay there for a set time before disappearing?
Assuming that another play doesn't find it and take it, which would be fine and accepted as a mechanic. Finders keepers and all that...
We don't know much of anything about it yet. I imagine it will be a threshold based on character strength, when past that point movement speed and endurance reductions increasing until a character barely moves. Possibly higher fall damage too.
Counterfleche said: ...Make encumbrance actually mean something and not just be an annoyance.
But all you listed before this makes it an annoyance, and disproportionately so for melee characters.
Counterfleche said: I forgot to add that (ground) mounts would be part of how I think a fully fleshed-out encumbrance system could work. Mounts would be persistent, have large storage capacity, and be killable. They could be "parked" in an area as a kind of base camp. This would create a kind of caravan style of gameplay (for those who wanted) and allow for offloading weight before climbing. My preference is no encumbrance system at all, but if we do it, make it interesting.
That idea was the Pack Mule discussed back in 2013. A moble, secure, large storage for characters so they didn't need to waddle back to town every evening but could stay out in the wilds for many consecutive days. Too bad that was dropped.
Yes, encumbrance is an annoyance, but it can help to increase immersion and make you more strategic about how you manage your inventory.
I think a good example (and probably controversial) is the weight restriction on monks in EQ. When I first started maining a monk in P99 blue, it was annoying as ****. I hated that I couldn't even fill my inventory with bags, let alone fill those bags with anything. Eventually though, I grew to kind of love it. I was a poor and agile monk and having barely anything on me except a sack of food, drink, and shuriken made my class feel much more immersive. Eventually when you get a magic bag that makes things weigh nothing, that is both still immersive and also very rewarding... finally I can carry some extra weapons on me, thanks to this magical and rare bag I found. I also enjoyed learning how to do more with less. I learned that I didn’t need to loot every item and be a pack rat in order to be prepared or make money.
Counterfleche said: @Iksar Encumbrance is an annoyance. But if it's a whole system (and not just a run speed debuff that punishes you for not spending your time frequently clearing your inventory), then it becomes something to strategize over and part of our characters builds. We can plan for a lightly equipped "go anywhere quickly" build or a more rugged but limited "long expedition" build. If you want to go to the Spider's Den half-way up a cliff, you need to switch to lighter armor and smaller backpacks, for example. I'm not trying to punish melee so much as be logically consistent with the realities of how encumbrance would actually work. Also. The melee classes typically have high strength so this would mean they are more evenly impacted.
No more "annoying" than running out of bag space, running out of mana/resources/consumables, running out of ammo/reagents.
Not every system has to be tediously complicated.
To be honest I would rather they just had unlimited inventory/encumberance and a good way to organise.
Needless system in every game I have encounterd (SP and Online) and only usfull for selling extra bag space in FTP. May have served a purpose back in the Day of EQ whwn hardware performance restricted things, but the biggest decision it ever made me have is to delete some vendor trash.
Would much rather have VR concentrating on other aspects.
Counterfleche said:I'm not trying to punish melee so much as be logically consistent with the realities of how encumbrance would actually work. Also. The melee classes typically have high strength so this would mean they are more evenly impacted.
Yeah we've had the argument elsewhere. Melee classes are typically and historically the ones that don't have to worry about encumbrance at all because they max their STR as part of their class.
As soon as you start talking about how much their armor and weapons *should actually* effect them, they tend to get upset.
They're happy with casters barely being able to carry any loot, though.
And of course monks have to avoid picking up more than a few coins, because they then somehow can't 'move nimbly enough to dodge'.
But warriors can somehow still dodge, fight and run around effectively while wearing full plate in every slot and carrying a six foot sword and a shield and 8 backpacks stuffed full with the armor and weapons of enemies and a few thousand coins and that is fine and normal.
Personally, I quite like having to manage backpack space, but encumbrance I can do without as it is never done properly.
As Counterfleche has said, though, if it's done to actually have some tactical meaning? To everyone? Cool, let's see.
I do have some hope of innovation in this area, given VR have gone for the "coins having weight" thing. Without a decent/fair encumbrance system, weighty coins are a terribly biased punishment for all but the STR based classes and surely VR wouldn't do that?
I have to be honest, I read this as 'Has anyone seen a mention of cucumber design?' and I thought to myself, 'Oh no, first fronds and rocks, now they're designing the minutiae of cucumbers...'.
Janus said:I have to be honest, I read this as 'Has anyone seen a mention of cucumber design?' and I thought to myself, 'Oh no, first fronds and rocks, now they're designing the minutiae of cucumbers...'.
Hahahahaha.
Thanks for sharing, hahahahaha.
/" I as a minor supporter of the development of this game, have grown gravely concerned about the cavalier and lax attention given to the detail of veggies. From broccoli to turnip, I feel that the mighty brussel sprouts grandiose presence can not be understated and you as callous creators risk a mass revolt unless you give in to our demands to place great effort into the lore of the radish. "
Iksar said:Counterfleche said: @Iksar Encumbrance is an annoyance. But if it's a whole system (and not just a run speed debuff that punishes you for not spending your time frequently clearing your inventory), then it becomes something to strategize over and part of our characters builds. We can plan for a lightly equipped "go anywhere quickly" build or a more rugged but limited "long expedition" build. If you want to go to the Spider's Den half-way up a cliff, you need to switch to lighter armor and smaller backpacks, for example. I'm not trying to punish melee so much as be logically consistent with the realities of how encumbrance would actually work. Also. The melee classes typically have high strength so this would mean they are more evenly impacted.No more "annoying" than running out of bag space, running out of mana/resources/consumables, running out of ammo/reagents.
Not every system has to be tediously complicated.
If it's an attempt to be realistic or a full system, it needs to be somewhat elaborate (i.e. complicated). Just slapping a run speed debuff on overweight characters is annoying without any of the benefits of a well-designed game mechanic. I'm not strategizing around it or challenged by it--just inconvienced periodically. Like @Galden mentioned, it feels more like an annoyance used to sell buffs / extra space in a cash shop. An annoying feature that is part of a deliberate design desision that is logically consistant, robustly implemented, and offers actual strategic/tactical desision-making is still annoying, but it feels less frustrating because it's less arbitrary.
Personally, I hate inventory management with a passion. I have ADHD and my brain has absolutely zero interest in mundane maintenance-type activities, like bag management. I don't know the value of every item, so when it gets close to full or I get encumbered, it's hard for me to know which items I should drop because the will fetch the lowest price. And most games seem to love having high drop rates with limited storage, so it fills up fast and is frequently full.
I'm a little torn on the encumberance arguement as on the one hand I didn't actively *miss* it in subsequent MMOs after they stopped having it in modern games, but on the other hand while it was not like an OMG this is fun mechanic, it did make you think and strategize your inventory and looting practices. I feel like the burden (hehe) of having to intelligently manage the items you are carrying around is out-weighed (hehe ok I'll stop), by the added feeling of being more connected to the loot and looting process.
It is difficult to describe these feelings about a game mechanic that is sort of bland but let me try. It's adding an entire level of depth to the idea of inventory management. Instead of only looking at available slots you are also considering weight. This is causing you to inspect the item stats more closely. I feel like having a penalty for being encumbered adds a lot more planning and consideration to where/when you are going back to town, or whether you will sell to a lower faction merchant etc.
There are several threads on this too if you want to look back at a lot of opinions.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4102/coin-weight
@StoneFish
/cough As an equally minor financial supporter, I vehemently disagree with your cleary misguided support of the Radish. Obviously you root fanbois just want things to be hard for the masses to eat and waste dev time. We have to have some veggies that appeal to a modern generation. I suggest the Goddess of Kale should be foremost in lore, or perhaps french fries, hmm wait.
I actually like radishes, they have a nice kick.
Galden said:To be honest I would rather they just had unlimited inventory/encumberance and a good way to organise.
Needless system in every game I have encounterd (SP and Online) and only usfull for selling extra bag space in FTP. May have served a purpose back in the Day of EQ whwn hardware performance restricted things, but the biggest decision it ever made me have is to delete some vendor trash.
Would much rather have VR concentrating on other aspects.
In a game where decisions matter, allowing players to carry their entire bank with them doesn't make sense. It's not a performance issue either because a database is a database, regardless of where the item actually is.
The fact that you’re here means the other games that don’t have limited inventory are not working for you. Every small design decision to make this game ‘not’ like most other games adds up to make a substantial difference and gives us a reason to want to be here and not there.
StoneFish said:Is encumbrance going to be a percentage of strength or mass?
Is it tied to a value associated with bags?
Will it slow us down or root us or fatigue us?
Can I hide things?
If I climbed to a little used location and dropped a few item behind an ugly bush. Will those items stay there for a set time before disappearing?
Assuming that another play doesn't find it and take it, which would be fine and accepted as a mechanic. Finders keepers and all that...
Not much an encoumberance at this point. Just pages and pages of debate on coin weight :P