From the streams and generally being modeling after EQ1 the PROTF inventory system appears to be a fall back to slot based inventory system rather than a Skyrim style mass based system. From an immersion standpoint 8 backpacks filling the primary spots of your inventory has always seemed silly and as an avid backpacker I understand the impossibility of doing so in reality.
What if instead you were restricted to one backpack, a belt pouch, a coin purse and a few in-hand items. The backpack and the belt pouch would have both a maximum weight limit and a maximum volume size. The belt pouch would be accessible in combat but the backpack would not be. The coin purse would initially just hold a limited number of coins and gems but as it is upgraded you can put jewelry in it as well. All three items would have upgrade paths to be weight reducing and volume increasing until you get to extra dimensional spaces that have no character weight other than the bag and a storage space the size of a shed.
If items have realistic weights and volumes, for example a cubic foot of steel weights 489 lbs., then you will be able to fill your backpack to the gills while still not breaking the immersion. Additionally I would add a hard limit to what your character can carry weight wise and a combat and speed penalty when you cross half that value.
Where this will really come into play is farming crafting materials. If ore is bulky and heavy a player can only pack out a small amount of that before they hit their mass limits. The same would be true for harvested wood and hides. Even if you have the biggest 100% weight reduction backpack you will still be fairly limited on what you can farm at one time before needing to go back to town.
This weight and volume limitation brings up two new types of game play. The first is some form of pack animal/ wagon /wheelbarrow that you lead/drive/push to a location with heavy and bulky materials to load up and drag back to town. These mass transportation tools will be slow and vulnerable in some way or another but will allow for a dedicated harvester to move large amount of raw materials. These materials can be brought back to town and either processed or stored at a warehouse/bank.
Eventually you will want to move large amounts of farmed material from on city to a central city, most likely with a market. In order to move large amounts of material from one city to another you would need to seal it into packing crates and schedule a caravan shipment. The player can let their goods go with the standard caravan or if there are enough scheduled crates the player can kick off a caravan then and there. If a player initiates the trade caravan then they are responsible in some way for traveling with caravan, perhaps simply it will travel faster if players escort. A player could focus on going to a city and buying up the local crafting materials, packing it all up and starting a caravan to take it back to a central market city, perhaps directly to a market stall.
I know this is a little bit of a two part wall of text so I'll throw out a TLDR:
One backpack only that is both weight and volume limited but not item count limited and locked during combat.
A belt pouch for consumables.
You cannot pick up more weight than your total encumbrance.
Use a pack mule / wheelbarrow / cart to help collect heavy and bulky materials and bring them back to town, very slow traveling time.
Caravans are used to move heavy bulky materials from one city to another or a market stall.
Thank you for your time reading on this slow posting Monday,
Trasak
If I remember correctly the old joke was, “I can run from Freeport to Qeynos with 8 full backpacks without stopping but if I jump up and down 10 times I need to sit down for a rest.” This was in part making fun of the inventory system and the vestigial stamina system that never really did anything in the early EQ days.
Changing the weight and volume on objects to be more realistic will have a significant effect on trade skills and would need to be figured into Ceythos’s work. For example in pre industrial eras iron primarily came from either hematite deposits with 50-70% iron yield and bog iron, which is actually a chemical precipitate from a bacteria in bogs under peat moss, and is nearly pure iron but only found in small quantities. There are a couple of other sources of preindustrial iron such as iron nickel meteorites and very rare xenoliths of the earth’s mantle forced up during volcanic activity both of which are relatively pure metal but with special alloys.
Now when you compare these values to real medium sized weapons where a Roman gladius only weight a pound and a half and a claymore topped out at 5.5 lbs the reward for a wagon load of hematite seems a lot more reasonable, the 110 lbs full plate armor is a bit more daunting. You can collect enough bog iron for 10 claymores, 55lbs at .11ft^3, or 92 lbs of hematite which is 0.28 ft^3 but the hematite is likely going to be more than you can carry but neither will fill the volume of your backpack. For reference a trekking backpack has about 2.5 cubic feet of volume.
It will likely be more efficient to salvage dropped weapons and armor onsite than hunting down ore deposits. For skinning it will likely be better to turn a raw hide into a prepared hide and trimmed down to a usable square of material units. That way you are only taking back the least weight and volume to usable material. Carpenters will likely benefit from cutting trees down to planks rather than dragging trunks back though this one gets a little odd. Collecting staves for barrel making and bow making is fairly easy but felling trees and dragging logs back to the mill to be sawn and dried is a bit cumbersome for a game trade skill. Like mining 10-15% yield ore and quarrying stone, getting lumber is more of a team/npc job especially when you are talking about building housing and guild halls.
Changing to the volume/mass inventory system also increases the value and sense of the local Commodities Exchange vendor I suggested in the Player driven content thread. This way a harvester with just a backpack and tools could slowly make money just by working with the exchange vendor rather than doing any of the supply chain work. Likewise it will give the trader a clear target to go to for materials to ship. Reposting the exchange idea below for reference.
Not real sure where Ceythos is at with his crafting system work, though I really enjoyed the interview with Baz, so he may already have these details figured out. I fully understand needing to keep things close to the chest in the design phase so as not to over promise.
Thanks for reading,
Trasak
Trasak said:Tool: Terminus Commodities Exchange
Purpose: Localized commodity vendor who’s prices reflect actual supply and demand and operate at a net negative economy cash flow.
Game Mechanics: Commodities are defined as base raw materials that have not been processed in any way other than the initial harvesting process and are used in the crafting system. This would include iron ore, coal, spider silk, deer hides, clover leaves, cod fish, pork bellies, cats eye agate, and yellow clay. This would not include odd ball ingredients like unicorn horns, Uncle Bob’s Peg Leg, or a dragons tooth, these items would typically be no drop or individually valuable enough to be on a merchant or sold player to player.
Each local commodity exchange would have a list of all the commodities traded and a target amount of inventory and a maximum inventory for each commodity. The base amount offered by the exchange for the commodities is the base indifferent, average charisma vendor sale price. Each exchange will have its own target inventory. This target inventory will be based on how often a commodity was purchased in the last week and a function of how far away the commodity is produced (the further away the commodity is produced the higher the target inventory). The maximum inventory for each commodity will be twice the target inventory.
Now the economics/math heavy bit. Every 12 hours the average inventory levels are checked vs the target inventory levels. The vender purchase price will increase or decrease at a percentage of the base vendor price inversely proportional to the average percentage of the target inventory. Every day that the average inventory remained below 25% of target inventory vendor offered price will go up an additional base cost times the number of consecutive days that the average inventory has remained below 25% of the target inventory. This will force the vendor price up rapidly until it matches the player market value in that local area. If the current inventory is above the target inventory then the 12 hour value of each sale is decreased by the current percentage the inventory is over the target inventory.
The commodity sell price will be one of two prices. If the current inventory is less than the target inventory then the current sale price is 10% more than the price last paid by the commodity market for that commodity. If the inventory is currently over the target inventory then the sale price is the average of the price the commodity exchange paid for the commodities currently in inventory, alternating removing the highest and lowest value from the history to maintain the average while removing the outliers.
The commodity market will only do business in full stacks of commodities not in partials. The target inventory will be 1/14th of the total number of purchases over the previous week with a minimum set by the initial inventory targets for that local exchange.
Possible incentives: This will open an entire play style based on moving commodities from one local exchange to another local exchange as well as offer a ready market to both buy and sell harvested materials for crafting or harvesting focused players. The system is guaranteed to reduce the net amount of cash in the game economy though an individual can move money from lazy people to themselves. The exchanges will also make low level crafting cheaper as it will increase the availability of low level materials but will likely increase the costs of high level materials as they are easier to liquidate.
This is really well done. I'd like to see this, but I would throw in my vote for slightly bigger than realistic weight limits on characters. In hardcore DnD I had a friend who played a wizard. He had no strength, and thus no carry weight. He had to give all of his extra stuff to allies to carry. In Pantheon, friends to carry all of your stuff probably won't be quite so readily available, and having to drop everything you don't strictly need because you have heavy armor or no strength would get annoying, fast.
For the caravan thing, we already have player caravans in planning, would it work for the transportation of goods in the way mentioned by op if we put in a system where unstealable goods are put on a wagon or in a special pack? Or would we run into too many issues with players deciding to park their caravan somewhere that isn't their original city-based destination?
BeaverBiscuit said:This is really well done. I'd like to see this, but I would throw in my vote for slightly bigger than realistic weight limits on characters. In hardcore DnD I had a friend who played a wizard. He had no strength, and thus no carry weight. He had to give all of his extra stuff to allies to carry. In Pantheon, friends to carry all of your stuff probably won't be quite so readily available, and having to drop everything you don't strictly need because you have heavy armor or no strength would get annoying, fast.
For the caravan thing, we already have player caravans in planning, would it work for the transportation of goods in the way mentioned by op if we put in a system where unstealable goods are put on a wagon or in a special pack? Or would we run into too many issues with players deciding to park their caravan somewhere that isn't their original city-based destination?
As far as the weight issue goes I would push for weight reduction backpacks but with lowish in backpack weight limits fairly early for the low strength characters. The way I see that working would be a normal sack with 0 wr can hold on cubic foot of material up to a total of 30 lbs of items. A high quality trekking backpack would have a natural 25% weight reduction, 2.5 cubic feet of space and a maximum weight of 100 lbs. A gravity defying satchel will have a weight reduction of 100% but would only hold 0.75 cubic feet of material and caps out at 40 lbs, this could be the earliest available 100% weight reduction backpacks but at the sacrifice of max weight and volume.
The mechanics of the caravan system is much more dependant on a lot of undetermined systems so I am not sure how it could be tweaked.
Trasak
I have seen many good ideas relating to the management of inventory, food, arrows/bolts and the like in these forum, this one included.
While I hope some of them get accepted, I think the overall constraint needs to be that this will be a game where the main focus is killing and crafting rather than strategic use of resources. At least it will be if it is modeled on the EQ/Vanguard approach even half as much as most of us expect.
It certainly makes sense that a low strength mage cannot carry nearly as much as a high strength warrior, though if the warrior uses heavy armor and weapons that may make up the difference. But from a gaming enjoyment perspective do we want classes that benefit from e.g. intelligence inherently unable to loot nearly as much as classes that benefit from e.g. strength. A bit unfair for the finger wigglers to sit there weeping in despair because they cannot carry the choice set of plus 1 leggings back to sell.
I suppose they can be given marketable skills to sell to other players in lieu of killing and looting (any EQ player can think of a few) but other than dedicated crafters most players create a character with the idea of murdering and robbing, not being a merchant selling services.
Realistically a full suit of cloth equipment will at most weight 10 lbs and a staff and wand another 5 LbS. Compare that to a full suit of Plate at 110 lbs and a 2.5 lbs sword and 8 Lbs Shield and you will likely have a similar loot carry capacity assuming that gear does not more than double class adjusted starting stats.
So long as items keep reasonable weights this should be easy to predict the needed strength per class to have a similar loot capacity.
This idea makes sense, and would make the WR bags/items still sought after and desired. I like the idea of having a seperate coin purse and beltpouch.
I think it should be affected by STR and STA, the more STR, the more you can carry but the faster you use STA.
I do like being bogged down with too much stuff where you can hardly move- its like a built in morality lesson to not be greedy. Do I drop some precious steel loot? or do I slog it past the camps and hope I dont get killed? Your money or your life! kind of lesson. Or an old Jack Benny joke (whose shtick was being overly-frugal) when a mugger, held a gun to Jack Benny and demanded "You're money or your life!" , Jack Benny paused for a while and replied "I'm thinking!".
If a mule or caravan is available I think one of the requirements or involuntary side-quests would be to protect the mule back to town until its unloaded in town. But I'm not sure how it would work. So you could go in the dungeon yourself and manage weight accordingly, or if you hire a mule, the mule would come with responsibility to care for the mule inclusing renting saddlebags, and food/carrots. Heh, if you run out of carrots the mule stops in its tracks whereever it is and you would have to run to town and tun back or get someone to bring t you carrots to get the mule moving again. Or get the carrot on a stick upgrade- that will keep the mule moving but the mule has a timelimit of like 2 or 3 game hours before it passes out if not fed or brought back to town.
Trasak said:Realistically a full suit of cloth equipment will at most weight 10 lbs and a staff and wand another 5 LbS. Compare that to a full suit of Plate at 110 lbs and a 2.5 lbs sword and 8 Lbs Shield and you will likely have a similar loot carry capacity assuming that gear does not more than double class adjusted starting stats.
So long as items keep reasonable weights this should be easy to predict the needed strength per class to have a similar loot capacity.
Only specialized jousting armor ever weighed near that much. A full suit of plate armor weighed around 50 lbs.
That said, the idea could hold merit but personally I'd rather not have too much added tedium when it comes to managing inventory/weight, especially when it extends to crafting/gathering. Things like harvesting ore/lumber would be much much more painful than gathering, fishing, and possibly skinning.
An interesting idea. Lots of good suggestions as to how to make the inventory system more realistic. My only concern is investment vs. game impact. I don't feel like designing a system like this would be terribly difficult, but I wonder if the time investment is worth the added realism, and whether it enhances gameplay. Overall I say very cool if the dev's wanted to take the time, but I also feel like the probably have 100 other things to do as well lol.
Manouk said:This idea makes sense, and would make the WR bags/items still sought after and desired. I like the idea of having a seperate coin purse and beltpouch.
I think it should be affected by STR and STA, the more STR, the more you can carry but the faster you use STA.
I do like being bogged down with too much stuff where you can hardly move- its like a built in morality lesson to not be greedy. Do I drop some precious steel loot? or do I slog it past the camps and hope I dont get killed? Your money or your life! kind of lesson. Or an old Jack Benny joke (whose shtick was being overly-frugal) when a mugger, held a gun to Jack Benny and demanded "You're money or your life!" , Jack Benny paused for a while and replied "I'm thinking!".
If a mule or caravan is available I think one of the requirements or involuntary side-quests would be to protect the mule back to town until its unloaded in town. But I'm not sure how it would work. So you could go in the dungeon yourself and manage weight accordingly, or if you hire a mule, the mule would come with responsibility to care for the mule inclusing renting saddlebags, and food/carrots. Heh, if you run out of carrots the mule stops in its tracks whereever it is and you would have to run to town and tun back or get someone to bring t you carrots to get the mule moving again. Or get the carrot on a stick upgrade- that will keep the mule moving but the mule has a timelimit of like 2 or 3 game hours before it passes out if not fed or brought back to town.
I thought about moving while over the encumbrance would have a negative stamina regeneration effect, if you have enough stamina you can operate over your 50% max encumbrance without penalty. But frankly I’m not sure if stamina in that form is even in the game. The large scale movement of items is something I think would take a lot more time and effort to generate and could be put off till after launch but it will still be important.
Iksar said:Only specialized jousting armor ever weighed near that much. A full suit of plate armor weighed around 50 lbs.
That said, the idea could hold merit but personally I'd rather not have too much added tedium when it comes to managing inventory/weight, especially when it extends to crafting/gathering. Things like harvesting ore/lumber would be much much more painful than gathering, fishing, and possibly skinning.
Quite true on the armor, really threw the number to show the top end on the scale. Any foot knight would be limited to a combination of plate, mail and leather and even those guys would ride to combat then dismount or armor on the field, and it’s why they had squires.
On the second point weight and volume would need to play into how Ceythos is building the crafting system quantities and subdivision. Its early enough that I doubt there is any redesign need and would just be fed forward into the design iterations. For simplicity though I think it would make sense that you just subtract both the volume and the mass from the space available in the backpack that way you avoid the jigsaw puzzle effect of diablo style inventory and the “now which bag did that go into” of EQ.
Xbachs said:An interesting idea. Lots of good suggestions as to how to make the inventory system more realistic. My only concern is investment vs. game impact. I don't feel like designing a system like this would be terribly difficult, but I wonder if the time investment is worth the added realism, and whether it enhances gameplay. Overall I say very cool if the dev's wanted to take the time, but I also feel like the probably have 100 other things to do as well lol.
Most of the work done for this system will be a portion of the itemizing process and that basically has barely begun. The largest amount of rework would come from the UI change that would have to happen. It’s possible that this method of list inventory UI would also work better as names only and would eliminate the need to generate item specific 2d inventory art for all items.
Trasak
P.S. If Kilson sees this could you edit the thread title to add the y at the end of inventor its driving me crazy.
Another thing to consider is this would cut into the bag market. Instead of hunting down eight different unique bags (+ whatever wanted for the bank) from mobs around the world or the different markets you'd just have the one (two with the belt pouch I guess) to worry about. I actually kind of liked hunting down all the weight reduction bags in EQ :P
I guess it could instead be used as a money sink though if it is a single bag attached to the player that they can upgrade aspects of for increasing price. /shrug
Trasak said:Realistically a full suit of cloth equipment will at most weight 10 lbs and a staff and wand another 5 LbS. Compare that to a full suit of Plate at 110 lbs and a 2.5 lbs sword and 8 Lbs Shield and you will likely have a similar loot carry capacity assuming that gear does not more than double class adjusted starting stats.
So long as items keep reasonable weights this should be easy to predict the needed strength per class to have a similar loot capacity.
Maybe I missed something, but don't you still have the problem where the wizard can't afford to loot valuable fine steel weapon drops because he doesn't have the STR/STA of the warrior? I'm not concerned about how much of my own gear that I can carry, just whether the casters get the short end of the loot stick like they did in EQ.
Iksar said:Another thing to consider is this would cut into the bag market. Instead of hunting down eight different unique bags (+ whatever wanted for the bank) from mobs around the world or the different markets you'd just have the one (two with the belt pouch I guess) to worry about. I actually kind of liked hunting down all the weight reduction bags in EQ :P
I guess it could instead be used as a money sink though if it is a single bag attached to the player that they can upgrade aspects of for increasing price. /shrug
You could also go after different backpacks for different purposes. If you are hunting for big bulky items but low weight you would take a bag with a very large extra dimensional space but a low max weight. Conversely you could have one with no extra dimensional space but 100% weight reduction up to 200lbs to carry very dense items, or one a balance of the two. Additionally I would also include the coin purse, scabbards, quivers and bandoliers as bag like items an outfitter can make.
Celandor said:Maybe I missed something, but don't you still have the problem where the wizard can't afford to loot valuable fine steel weapon drops because he doesn't have the STR/STA of the warrior? I'm not concerned about how much of my own gear that I can carry, just whether the casters get the short end of the loot stick like they did in EQ.
The basics math on it would the following:
A Human fighter has 110 strength and 65 intelligence. After gear he ends up with 165 strength and 81 intelligence. His gear weights a total of 120.5 lbs. His over 100 stamina allows him to go to max encumbrance without suffering a penalty, leaving 45 lbs for gear.
A Human wizard starts with 65 strength and 110 intelligence. After gear the wizard is at 165 and 81 strength. Her gear only weights a total of 15 lbs but she can only go to 40.5 lbs before suffering penalties. This still leaves her with 25 lbs of carry space. This will prioritize a 100% weight reduction backpack over one of maximum volume for a wizard. If the wizard is specifically trying to move around a lot of items she could also swap out strength jewelry to push her capacity out of combat higher. Also its unlikely that a high value item would need to be left behind in any case, one would dump the 5pp item in order to pick up the 5000pp item and not really even noticing dropping the first.
To some degree I can also see the ability to carry out high weight loot as being an advantage to playing a tank class whose strength and stamina are naturally high. Note that high weight or high volume does not mean high value.
It would be nice to have them get rid of backpackception. I would much prefer if the inventory screen was just one big array of cubes with some tools for sorting. Things like "looted crafting materials" go into this area and "junk quality items" go into this other area. I'm on board.
I'm not following the math here at all. I don't see what the INT of the player has to do with their ability to carry. Essentially the player needs to be able to carry his own equipment, plus have room to pick up some amount of random loot. Invariably in these games, there's a steady flow of junk drops which add up to reasonable cash, especially when you are first starting out. EQ without those first levels of bronze and fine steel drops would have been a nightmare for casters who wouldn't have a revenue stream to be able to purchase their spells. Dropping a cheap item to loot an expensive item is a given, but let's address why it seems to a given that casters are disadvantaged when it comes to looting.
When you strip it right down, you have a big beefy warrior who needs significant strength to wield his weapon and wear his plate armour. The weight of his core gear should offset his ability to carry additional items. As he levels up, he's going to need additional STR to be able to handle high-end armour and weapons which potentially weigh more, but given that he needs situational gear, he is going to need all his STR to carry the gear he swaps out. I don't see why he should have an advantage when it comes to picking up loot from corpses.
Then you have a wizard who is comparatively weaker, but his gear is light. As he levels up, his gear isn't likely to weigh much more and his additional items are mostly cloth, so he doesn't need to constantly focus on increasing his STR. Given that his gear isn't heavy, why wouldn't he be able to carry the same 45 additional pounds of random mob loot.
Best not look too closely at the realistic weights of equipment or you're going to have tanks who can't carry their situational gear. I can't imagine a realistic scenario where a fighter has his full plate equipped with another set in a backpack that he carries into combat.
Celandor said:I'm not following the math here at all. I don't see what the INT of the player has to do with their ability to carry. Essentially the player needs to be able to carry his own equipment, plus have room to pick up some amount of random loot. Invariably in these games, there's a steady flow of junk drops which add up to reasonable cash, especially when you are first starting out. EQ without those first levels of bronze and fine steel drops would have been a nightmare for casters who wouldn't have a revenue stream to be able to purchase their spells. Dropping a cheap item to loot an expensive item is a given, but let's address why it seems to a given that casters are disadvantaged when it comes to looting.
When you strip it right down, you have a big beefy warrior who needs significant strength to wield his weapon and wear his plate armour. The weight of his core gear should offset his ability to carry additional items. As he levels up, he's going to need additional STR to be able to handle high-end armour and weapons which potentially weigh more, but given that he needs situational gear, he is going to need all his STR to carry the gear he swaps out. I don't see why he should have an advantage when it comes to picking up loot from corpses.
Then you have a wizard who is comparatively weaker, but his gear is light. As he levels up, his gear isn't likely to weigh much more and his additional items are mostly cloth, so he doesn't need to constantly focus on increasing his STR. Given that his gear isn't heavy, why wouldn't he be able to carry the same 45 additional pounds of random mob loot.
Best not look too closely at the realistic weights of equipment or you're going to have tanks who can't carry their situational gear. I can't imagine a realistic scenario where a fighter has his full plate equipped with another set in a backpack that he carries into combat.
The intelligence was just included to show that a warrior has strength as a primary stat but may gain a little intelligence from gear while the wizard has intelligence as a primary stat but gains a little strength from gear. Otherwise though I think your concern will be the same if not more profound with a slot based inventory as you will also need to eat the weight of 8 different 3 lbs backpacks rather than a single one. By using the mass/volume system you gain 21 lbs of carry capacity as a low level wizard by only needing one bag rather than 8 and at high levels you will have your 100% WR bag.
Additionally Fine steel weapons are ridiculously over weighted in EQ. If the rapier had been the 1.2lbs they actually are rather than the 6lbs in game EQ casters could have packed out quite a bit more even with base race strength only. A major part of this suggestion is centered around having fairly accurate item weight and volume.
I think your volume/weight idea is great. I just believe that a lot of assumptions are being carried over from previous games which don't have to be true.
The EQ concept that you're carrying 8 or 10 backpacks is admittedly silly. However, the slots could be thought of as light cloth "organizers". Any experienced backpacker or traveller uses smaller bags to sort gear. The bags don't add appreciably to the load, but they keep your dirty socks separate from your shaving gear. You don't just dump everything into the bottom of your pack. The invalid assumption is that these are actually separate backpacks and each has significant weight. This doesn't have to be all old school EQ versus something entirely new.
If there aren't going to be sub-divisions or multiple "bags" like we had in EQ, then the market for alternative backpacks is greatly reduced. In EQ you might purchase 8 player-made WR bags, where you'll only want one in Pantheon.
Casters or smaller races don't need to be disadvantaged in the loot department. Give casters enough STR to carry their gear plus the same 45lbs of additional loot that you allocated to the warrior. We don't have to make casters weaker than children. Something equitable can be figured out which isn't lore or immersion breaking.
The reason I mentioned intelligence was the assumption that if you pick a melee class you are likely to have high strength (although for some classes it might be dexterity instead) but if you pick a caster class you are likely to have high intelligence or wisdom. So by definition some classes will be able to carry a lot more, which means loot a lot more. Especially if the strength class can switch to light weight armor when the enemies aren't too tough and he or she wants to be able to loot a lot. Or when harvesting is intended and no fighting is expected. Whereas the poor low strength classes can't do a thing to improve their ability to harvest or loot, absent magical means of reducing weight or encumbrance.
Granted this may be perfectly fair if high intelligence or wisdom lets them find loot/harvestables that others cannot notice. Thus the Mensa level wimp may not be able to carry the +1 leggings from a corpse but might notice the valuable hidden money or scroll that the warrior might miss.
Celandor said:
Casters or smaller races don't need to be disadvantaged in the loot department. Give casters enough STR to carry their gear plus the same 45lbs of additional loot that you allocated to the warrior. We don't have to make casters weaker than children. Something equitable can be figured out which isn't lore or immersion breaking.
Would give str spells(and the stat on gear) more meaning, or heck, meaning at all, for non melee classes.
Krixus said:I think it would be cool, but the game would need to really be designed around that.
Agreed. Size and weight on items would need to have intentional values. A 50 lbs block of metal would be fairly small and when turned into items would go a long way unless you were making a stove or something.
I'll prefer fun over realism in my games nearly ever single time. The moment the spells start flying around, we've abandoned high levels of realism not to mention the orcs, elves, dwarves etc. If I buy into the immersion at that point, I'll be quite lenient on the capacity/carry/incumberance system.
About my only preference is that the system does not get in the way of playing the game. Right now, I play The Division quite a bit. The inventory management system in this game is really poorly thought out. It would be an example of how NOT to do inventory.
While this thread seems more about the carrying ability (and the lack of mass considerations in previously comparable titles) of our characters, my concern remains. Do not let it get in the way of exploring, crafting, fighting etc. If this game turns into a resource management game it'll turn me off and I'd guess at many, many others.
If we're going to have to deal with super heavy crafting materials and equipment like in EQ smithing early on; give us a way to deal with that beyond stacking full STR gear and STR buffs. The previoulsy mentioned wheelbarrel is a great idea but again, don't let it get in the way of the process of doing a skill up/crafting run. Make it organic to that process. Otherwise, handwavium a spell/item to enable us to lift/transport/workwith our heavy materials while not in combat etc.
Or, you know... just don't make it heavy.
diableri said:*snip*
Or, you know... just don't make it heavy.
This is really the key to what I was saying Ceythos should keeping in mind. A ton of stuff in EQ was 5-10 times heavier in game than in real life. Carpentry is really the only tradeskill that needs to have heigh weight materials as all the smithing could be broken down into much smaller chunks that can be moved around easier. The only reason carpentry will need to be high weight is if/when crafter built player housing comes in.
It probably wouldn't be super complicated to have every item have a weight value and a volume value and to have bags with varying capacities for weight and volume, then going with a 'list' style inventory rather than a grid of boxes, but I'm guessing it would mean all the current work on the inventory UI would have to be scrapped. That doesn't really seem feasible at this stage of development. I guess my biggest concern for using weight and volume calculations for inventory is that it would unbalance the crafting professions vis a vis material collections, with Woodworkers and Outfitters being disproportionally affected compared to Blacksmiths and Stonemasons, who already have weight as a larger concern.
Weight is enough of a concern, I don't see volume being particularly important in this case, though admittedly I do rather like the concept of having the magic bags specialize into having more volume or more weight reduction, that's a really interesting idea. It would be an excellent plan... in some other game. I believe it's a little late in development to change the inventory system so thoroughly.