Player Hoarding

[@aNerdNamedJames]

"Many people feel like they need to design *against* a behaviour, such as 'People are hoarding, how can I stop them?' -- the real question is, 'Why aren't they using?'; You want to design to *encourage* a behaviour. If you want players to use abilities, give them a reason they want to use it." This quote should be carved into the wall of every university's game dev department.

[@lrinfi]

And, please, don't encourage player creativity, then call every creative solution to a dilemma an "exploit," whether it is or not, and patch it out of the game. Some developers are doing just that and shooting themselves in the foot in the process.

[@desertdude540]

A better idea would be to burn down every university game dev department since games have generally gotten worse since their inception.

[@bsherman8236]

Also no invisible walls

[@Sev017]

this isnt really true, there is just a large volume of games today, many of which are lackluster or worse, but the overall ratio of good - bad is the same.@@desertdude540

[@donaldthompson7766]

​@@desertdude540So about half a century?

[@xmacleodx]

The issue I had with BOTW was I never wanted to use my awesome weapons because they broke too often, so I ended up using weak ones more often.

[@TecnoTyler]

Yeah the Champion’s arms were great…mounted on the wall of my house. That what everyone wanted right, the Zelda equivalent to $100 wall hanger katanas?

[@Chiefofbricks]

Exactly my issue. Honestly the weapon durability system of BOTW ruined the game for me and is the only reason I can't finish it.

[@gilgamecha]

Well they copied it from Tim. 😂

[@stuartmorley6894]

​@@Chiefofbrickscan I ask why? Is owning a particular weapon that important? It seems like a really good way to make players engage with the world by constantly having to find new weapons. I appreciate it's not for everyone, I'm just interested in why it was a problem enough to make you give up on the game? It's not a criticism, just a genuine query.

[@snegglepuss6669]

Yeah, the Champion weapons in particular, which you can replace if you have a lower tier weapon from that region and some other resources including a diamond, are just too high effort to get again that I'd never use them and fall back into hoarding them. This especially happened when I started mapping the best places to get high modifier Lizalfos Tri-boomerangs in Master .ode Worth noting that TotK iterated on the idea, weapons on the surface are corroded and crappy, basically only as good as what minster parts you glue to them, but the pristine weapons from the fallen soldiers depend on you breaking similar weapons from the surface or otherwise. So you get a benefit from breaking stuff, though this isn't very clear if you don't watch KZbin vids about it Oh, and if you really hate the system, you can repair weapons with Rock Octorok polishing in both games. With enough Korok seeds you can amass a collection large enough to survive from Blood Moon to Blood Moon

[@earthbound9999]

I always thought the first 2 Thief games handled this really well. In those games, your items don't carry over between missions, and the amount of money you have to spend on items for your next mission is based solely on how much money/treasure you found in the previous mission. I knew that my money was going to waste if I didn't spend it all between missions, so I bought and used as many items as I could in those games.

[@lvsoad22]

Seeing someone mention thief again making me want to replay them for the 20th time.

[@bsherman8236]

Mgsv has a system like that, every weapon has a resource cost so you don't wanna bring stuff you don't need until you develop a base

[@zUJ7EjVD]

Ultimately, and what I suggested after playing BOTW, is that you need to regularly take away people's items. For example, taking away their weapons when they die. You need to get people used to losing weapons.

[@Mirokuofnite]

I just wish junk items always got flagged as junk. Otherwise I end up holding 10 brooms because I fear I might run into the Broom Dungeon and be short some brooms.

[@MrMpakobec]

There should never ever be a junk items. Every item should have at least one use - for example as a substitution in craft recipe or at least it's possible to get resources out of item disassembly. Player first time playing don't know the real value of the item so they hoard in hope that it will be useful down the line. Game should recognise when player hoarded specific item especially if it's not 100% clear what this item is good for at the start of the game and generate a easier path in one of the next quests if your use all of your stock. This way you don't feel bad for hoarding "just in case" and opportunity never come.

[@Mirokuofnite]

@MrMpakobec well if the game generates an easier path by using your Horde of trinkets, then all it does is reinforce the idea of holding onto stuff because the game has already shown to have a need for it. Crafting, quest, and consumesbles should be flagged and separate. No use trinkets should also be flagged and given little value. Eventually, the player will learn there is little value in holding 30 calipers

[@lorangemagnifique3001]

Honestly, the biggest reason I hoard things in games is because games (generally) have a bad interface for using items. I don't even remember I have consumables in a lot of games just because it's annoying to open the inventory, find the item, etc. Some games are more complicated, and have so many consumables, that I have to do the above and then read through each item to make sure they have the effect I need. The other problem is that so many games aren't difficult enough to really warrant the use of a consumable, which in turns makes me feel lazy and not want to go through the hassle I mentioned above. I do remember using items much more in games like Baldur's Gate (1&2) because they had an inventory system that was limited by both grid size and weight. Many games today use lists for their inventory (everything Bethesda), or the only limiting factor is weight (Baldur's Gate 3) which leads to inventory bloat and further discourage me from looking for that perfect item to use in the right moment.

[@Duchess_Van_Hoof]

Baldur's Gate also have quick item slots, to let you prepare wands, scrolls and potions beforehand. Makes things a lot simpler.

[@randomdude2546]

@@Duchess_Van_Hoof most games have quick item slots

[@liaminwales]

John Carmack did a cool video on the same subject, called it something like the big red button problem. People have the cool guns but save them so much they never use them, I think Doom 2016 was a big move to solve the problem. It forces you in to combat and gives amo from fighting when you want it.

[@homborgor]

Ever since being a kid, any game I’ve played with an inventory system, I’ve always kept my starting gear. Idk what it is, I guess it’s the fact I like looking back at end game to where it all started.

[@proydoha8730]

I often indulge in my bad hoarding behaviors in video games. So far my favorite inventory implementation that helps to overcome massive piles of hoarded garbage was in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. In this game there is a handy filter feature that allows you to write very simple queries to filter out only items that you want. "m:wood" - gives you everything made of wood, "q: hammering" will return all items in inventory that have hammering quality. And obviously its possible to search by items name, by item category, combine those queries, etc. And best of all - this filter can be applied to any container, to crafting recipe list or even to any visible tile around the player. Wish more game had this kind of conveniences for hoarders like me

[@noodledoodle9408]

Another nice thing is that looking around gives a sense of how mutch you have, both in your 'dragon piles' and the bulk weighing you down, so it is easier to not take what you do not need, especially since most items are craftable and can also be broken down.

[@destroyerrunemo]

Yes, keyword filters are the best. I am ultimate hoarder and I like it a lot. Wish more games would use it.

[@CrAzYpotpie]

Is there any mods for FNV that do this yet? That mixed with the quick loot mod would really fix up things.

[@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968]

Dragon Age: Origins sometimes had Lyrium veins for mages to use at boss battles. It meant you didn't have to drink as many potions. Also, I like the systems in DA:O. Skills/Abilities reset on a timer, so you don't have to rest to reset them. It means you cannot spam spells and abilities but also means you don't have to wait long to re-use abilities.

[@cloud_and_proud]

DA:O had really lovely combat, I wish more games were inspired by it, but I think few are cause it's kind of a weird fusion of modern and traditional combat

[@SadderCatLin]

I like the idea of a bag used for potions (heath, mana, buff, poison) and thats the only place they can be stored due to the potion vial breaking if you throw them in your 300lb bag full of iron swords and other junk. Then the bag could limit like 20 total potions of any and all types, so if you find more then you can hold it gives you a reason to use them

[@catpurrito5586]

or they would switch to potion flask made from leather or metal instead

[@silentdrew7636]

The wotcher 3 and elden ring solved this very well just by sharply limiting the number of consumables the player can have at any one time.

[@NEKASABA]

I thought Witcher 3 had pretty neat solution for hoarding, at least for potions: You only need to gather ingredients for making the potions, after you craft them you can use their limited charges freely and only need alcohol to refill them during meditation.

[@_TristanGray]

I agree, TW3’s system is great, it reminds me more of “researching” mechanics from other games rather than “crafting”

[@S....]

Playong on harder difficulties also made me use all those potions. It was exactly like in the books - I used particular ones, up to my abilities, coat my sword for a specific monster etc. It worked great!

[@matheusorth5365]

I've always preferred Witcher 2's potion system, which gave you a long lasting effect rather than a 30 second boost. The problem was that you needed to be out of combat to use them, which made it horrible for boss fights.

[@kotor610]

​@@matheusorth5365that's the reason I hate outer worlds food. Save for a few food items, most only last 15 seconds. I typically only delved into items that had a base effect of 2 minutes.

[@vast634]

Yes that was a good solution for the alchemy. Often alchemy is left aside because the effort to find the ingrediencies is not yielding the payout in usefulness compared to other activities. In the Witcher it was more rewarding to unlock a potion, because it was not a constant grind to use the potion type.

[@SPECTER0459]

I personally love hoarding, I love encumbrance too, it makes you optimize your loadout and cut out the stuff you personally aren't going to actually use. As long as I have trunks I can fill with my 500 bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla, I'm happy. I'll never forget how in Morrowind if you have a very light weight you can jump across half a town easily, across the world with spells

[@BAGG8BAGG]

Morrowind is cursed, the only way I can play now is by using INT alchemy to feather everything and find some poor souls corpse to stash my loot in. Poor thing must be looking like those people trying for the most t-shirts worn world record.

[@OpenGL4ever]

I don't like encumbrance. It forces me to run back and forth between the level where the items are and my house several times. Fallout 3 cost me a lot of time because of this. One solution would be a pick-up service that would bring all the items from the level to my house after I've cleared it.

[@JavierBonnemaison]

Fantastic insight that illustrates how good of a designer you are. If you want to encourage a behavior you must make it desirable/valuable AND remove friction in its way. The constraint approach (such as encumbrance) can often have unexpected side effects (now you can't make as much money by selling things or have to make multiple trips.) The stash is a clever solution, but it adds complexity and cognitive load (another thing to learn in order to play) so you can't keep reaching for this approach.

[@Eldrick_]

I hoard one over every item and usually of there's different skins of that item too. Like cyberpunk, where I have evert weapon in every color, or fallout 4 where I had every armor piece in every material I really love having a way to display things, or show off a collection and I always hope a fame will include weapon displays or mannequins

[@valdenn3073]

I love the healing fountain idea. It has enough limitations to still make combat challenging by locking you out of restocking, fixes the hoarding issue, and could also have a cost associated with it. Like if these fountains were a temple service which had a per refill or smaller per charge cost. And if you played a thief/stealth character, you could roll to refill without having the cost.

[@tylernilson7021]

yeah, it was fun in dark souls

[@natsume-hime2473]

This method was actually one of the core mechanics in Dark Souls. When you rest at a bonfire you get a maximum 5 Estus Flask charges for an unkindled bonfire. Now you could kindle up to three times on every bonfire. But there are 3 restrictions: For the first level you have to be human, restoring humanity costs a humanity, AND you have to spend a humanity to do it. That gives you a maximum 10 charges on your Estus Flask. To go past that you have to be in the fairly late game and beat the Catacombs boss Pin Wheel. At which point you can kindle each bonfire two more levels, giving a maximum of 15 and 20 Estus Flask charges respectively. Each level you kindle a bonfire requires another humanity and you can only do it when human. So if you die, thus respawning as an undead hollow, you have to spend a humanity before you can kindle a bonfire. Also humanity isn't a common thing. You get a humanity directly for killing enemies in an area, before you defeat the area boss. After the boss is defeated, that area will no long yield humanity directly to you. This direct active humanity is something shown on your HUD next to health and stamina. It's a trade off to spend this active humanity. You can only restore to human at a bonfire. Being human gives you a damage boost and it boosts item discovery, meaning better drop rates for items. Along with that when you die, you respawn as a hollow, so the humanity you spent to be human again is lost, PLUS any active humanity you had is dropped with your souls upon death. Which you can recover by getting to your bloodstain and recovering it before dying again. Still that means active humanity, which you need to kindle bonfires too, is hard to get and hard to keep. There's item humanity too, a pair of consumables provide it. Humanity an Twin Humanities, they both do a ton of healing when you use them too, but both are rare as both static items and enemy drops. All of this means you have to be strategic with which bonfires you choose to kindle. Since you spend a rare and highly beneficial resource to do it. Also as the game goes on, enemies get much tougher. Meaning acquiring and keeping active humanity becomes more difficult over time. It's honestly a very elegantly simple mechanic, that's also punishing if you mess up. Edit: I forgot to mention that not only does being human boost item discovery, but so does having active humanity. The more active humanity you have, the better drop rates are for items. Though it does have diminishing returns, based on the more active humanity you have. So you can't get a 100% item drop rate. Also drop rate doesn't effect the items you get exclusively from cutting pieces off bosses strategically. Such as the Gargoyle Axe you get from cutting off the tail of the Belfry Gargoyle that has a tail. Or if you want monumentally difficult, the Obsidian Great Sword which you get from cutting off the tail of Black Dragon Kalameet. An easily missed and extremely difficult boss from the DLC, so getting that tail cut is really hard, but the reward is more than worth it.

[@natsume-hime2473]

I also forgot to mention the other thing with bonfires that's a gamble. Whenever you rest at a bonfire all of the default area enemies respawn, same as if you die. This doesn't apply to all enemies though, like bosses and special enemies such as all of the Black Knights outside the Kiln of the First Flame and Havel in the Undead Burg. Edit: Keep in mind that default enemies are fully capable of kicking your butt, even when you're over leveled for an area. You need to approach them with a degree of skill. Dark Souls is a game series where tanking really isn't an option. Even when you have a high HP build with Havel's Armor. There are things you can just not tank. You need to know how to roll, block, and ideally parry.

[@michaelridgaway4488]

Zeboyd Games, makers of Cthulhu Saves the World and Cosmic Star Heroine, has a really elegant solution to item hoarding that I love. They tend to make top-down RPGs with turn-based battles, but the catch is that enemies are strong enough to consistently be a challenge AND they get slightly stronger after each round of combat. To offset this the player's party has their health and skill uses reset between each battle and, instead of conventional inventory, you have items that have a set number of uses per battle that can be upgraded over time. I guess another way to think of it is that each party member has individual skills that they bring to each battle and items are treated as a group pool of skills that everyone can use. Anyway, this really encourages you to go all out every battle and experiment with new strategies and combos without fear of running out of juice, and the combat ends up being challenging enough that you need to do so to win.

[@gamedev_zombie]

I really like Another Eden's approach to healing items. It's a jRPG with focus on dungeons and the player's party has 1 lunchbox. The lunchbox can be filled with food in every town for free, but when you use it, you have to refill it. It restores all HP/MP for all your characters (including the ones not currrently in your party) and you can't use it in combat. It makes you want to use it before a boss fight at the end of the dungeon and makes you strategize so you can go through the dungeon without using it. Also, for worldbuilding reasons, it's cool that in each town you get the local specialty to put in your lunchbox.

[@dohvahkiin1177]

Anyone else get their focus consistently broken watching this by the rotating lamp in the background? 🙋🏻‍♂️🤣🇦🇺

[@johnreeves5152]

I don't remember the stash in PoE having any limits. Maybe it's just the second one.

[@zekun4741]

Another problem is merchants and shopkeepers not having enough money for you to sell everything you want to sell.

[@einholzstuhl252]

Ah yes the Classic I have 1000 Gold worth of items from a Dungeon but all the Merchants combined in the City only have 300 Gold to give. Very fun

[@OniBoy02]

@@einholzstuhl252 Being an alchemist in skyrim is a bit of a nightmare because of this. I will end up collecting so many ingredients from regular travel that I can create hundreds of potions and each potion can sell for a hefty price anywhere from 50-100+ gold, and shop keeps just never have enough gold for me to sell my entire stock anywhere. At one point I realized I should just keep a handful of potions on me so I constantly save my gold and instead just barter for items with my potions being basically my new source of currency.

[@diodamke1007]

Something I've seen some games do is have a limit on the number of a specific item you can carry. Not encumbrance, it's not like "you can only carry 100 units of stuff and every item weighs a different number of units." It's "you can carry 50 Medicines, 10 Soma Drops, 5 Bead Chains, and so on." (These are all healing items). One advantage of this is that if you already have 5 Bead Chains or whatever and come across another, you can't pick it up until you use up or sell one of your existing Bead Chains. Unlike an encumbrance system, you can't clear space for it by getting rid of something else; you have to lose one of the Bead Chains one way or the other, either by consuming or selling it.

[@mrawesome5211]

Thank you for your answer. Very helpful insight regarding designing around and rewarding certain player behaviours rather than punishing players.

[@veditoid]

If you can hoard stuff it generally means either the game is very generous with that particular resource or the game difficulty is a bit too easy that you can survive without those resources. Doom Eternal is a very good example of this kind of difficulty/resource balancing, pushing you to use every last ammo of every weapon before you swing your chainsaw.

[@Galanthos]

Some games with cool resource designs: Avadon: An indie 2d turn based RPG. There are magic items called Scarabs that are basically a once-per-encounter Spell Scroll. All the versatility of giving the fighter a Fireball scroll, but he can do that once per fight instead of once per whenever you find a scroll. Gothic 2: Night of the Raven. All spell scrolls cost 5 mana to use. You start with 10 mana. Your beefcake warrior can still use a scroll as a sort of "Get out of jail free card." You mage can cast a spell that might normally cost 100 mana for a fraction of the cost, and maybe before he is able to even learn the spell. Scrolls are pretty plentiful as treasure, and many of them will just straight up finish a quest for you. Wild Arms 3: Your characters have a pool of points called Force. To cast a spell, you need to have at least as much Force as the spell costs, but casting the spell does not deplete Force. So, if heal costs 12 force, and you have 20, you can cast heal until the cows come home. Force increases when you hit an enemy, when you're attacked, etc. You have special skills that DO deplete Force. Each character has a unique Force ability (like making a healing item effect the whole party, or going first in the round no matter what) a force ability that lets them do a big attack against 1 enemy, and a force ability that lets them do a special attack against all enemies. Most boss fights are about managing your Force Gauge so that you can do big attacks without losing access to spells for long.

[@felipebisi4145]

I can give a few other examples: Warframe and argon crystals they expire over time so yeah not a good ideia to hoard them but this would mostly work for a online game Modified Dragon Age Origins: You get fully healed after every battle but the uses of skills and spells have long cooldowns or reduced uses per battle like a 9 spell sloth you can only use 1 or 2 times per battle And third my favorite for items Shin Megami Tensei V: You simply reduce the total items a group can hoard like this item fully heals your team you can carry 2 and if you have more than that you cant bring it with you

[@smokedbeefandcheese4144]

I really like how in the old fallout if you wanted to upgrade your weapon you had to have a friendly NPC to do it. I feel like in a modern RPG this could be continued with each NPC that repairs or vends staff being able to give you a legendary version or a better version of that weapon. And that would solve a lot of the weapon related issues with people not being able to find bullets for their unique weapon but I also feel like games with durability and stuff like that should almost treat weapons as disposable like breath of the wild. because having any kind of weapon that is “legendary“ and then it breaks is kind of ridiculous

[@nijamase]

I have a tendency to "hoard" unused skill points and I only use them when I hit a part of the game that I cant get passed. And I would love to play a game where unused skill point somehow give the player a bonus, perhaps more XP? That way you would be able to decide if you want to level up a skill or keep the "unused skill points" bonus.

[@Chedring]

Thief had a good system where they dump your items between missions so that you only buy what you need. Some points that help stem hoarding that I mod into fallout. +item weight -sell value +shop item costs +rarity/use of shop items -currency value -player carry weight . Shops should be where players get 98% of their items. You should feel like the shop owners are exploiting you like they did to miners during the gold rush.

[@zafelrede4884]

I think it also resets all your money before a mission, so you have to spend your budget either way.

[@Duchess_Van_Hoof]

Darkest Dungeon does the same, the items you bring with you are turned into money, at a net negative. So you actively try to use it. Resources also use the same slots as treasure, so you are forced to balance greed and careful hoarding.

[@nutherefurlong]

End of game slide show should include what the player character winds up doing with all their potions Game mechanic where weird things start happening if your stacks get too high or your items of the same type are in your inventory too long. Opens up a portal, mixes potions together, ammunition has a greater chance to ignite, magic effects start blending together Might and Magic did a similar thing to the flask idea where instead of potions you had fountains you just drank from to give stat increases that lasted for a set period of time (I want to say after resting they wore off). This was decent, but it also meant you were under pressure do a fountain run before a big confrontation and it wound up feeling like busywork (so I often didn't bother). The flask lets you control the doses like a resource and isn't limited by location

[@lathrael7152]

Whoever designed the warehouse quest in Tarant is a hero of mine. That's all i will say.

[@rpvarela]

Hey Tim! Would you do a video on the Mysterious Stranger? Like who came up with the idea, were there previous iterations that didn't work and had to be changed before the final design? Was there acceptance for the idea immediately, or did people need to be convinced it'd be good? Would you change anything looking back? Love the videos, btw :)

[@exodus3461]

That is a great question. I would love to see a video about that topic!

[@katamarankatamaranovich9986]

That's a really good question

[@kyoujinko]

I can't remember was he in the original Fallout?

[@cykeok3525]

@@kyoujinkoYep!

[@benrositas8068]

Here's an idea I wish were implemented, be it at all or in more games: If you're naked -- no bags, backpacks, belts/straps, etc -- you cannot carry more than your hands/arms allow. If you have clothes and armor, then you gain some capacity to carry more, due to pockets, having places to tuck things away, etc. Of course, various items (belt, bags, etc), magic and special items can also increase carrying capacity. And, finally, some items could be carried regardless (provided the carrying weight is available), owing to the design of the item (can be flagged, in other words) being such that has some way of being carried without the aid of something else (like belts, bags, etc). For example, a sword scabbard can be picked up regardless of all other factors because it is assumed that it can be tied around the waist or carried on the back. Anyway, facilitating this system would be an "unlockable" inventory space, that grew as you gained carrying capacity. Theoretically, there would be no upper limit BUT it wouldn't be likely (except magic users) that most players would ever acquire a ludicrous amount of space. For example plate mail armor would give some carrying space (see above) but since it takes up carrying weight, the player isn't going to be able to carry 100 suits, each loaded with potions, piles of gold, and so forth! Players will certainly have to make decisions, allowances, and sacrifices in coming up with the balance of capacity vs encumbrance that suits them.

[@lrinfi]

7 Days to Die does this to an extent. Pockets of various sizes (single, double, triple) can be crafted for individual items of clothing and armor to increase the number of inventory slots available. The recipes could probably use a little more thought. One shouldn't need 100 pieces of cloth to make a pocket for their jeans. You're making a *pocket*, not a quilt, for heaven's sake.

[@benrositas8068]

@@lrinfi How many to make a quilt? 🤣

[@lrinfi]

@@benrositas8068 I'd shudder to think. lol I get the feeling they wanted to slow down upgrade progress early game and got a little rushed w/alpha 21, raising the amount needed of only the primary resource required for a few items because some of them and a few prices have been set to (what I think are) ridiculous amounts. Hopefully, they'll have a chance to balance them out a bit before alpha 22 comes out.

[@vast634]

I like how Zomboid solves this in a very logic manner. Items can be put into bags (backpack, handheld plastic bags etc) Holding a bag in the hand will block you from using two handed weapons, holding bags in both hands bad will not allow you to use any weapon. But you can drop the bags at any time, and carry them later. So basically games could offer inventory that can be dropped quickly to get more agile, and picked up later.

[@MaxRedRanger]

I believe Neo Scavenger does this exactly in the way you've described. The player has several body parts / "slots" which can equip a piece of clothing. If the player puts on some pants, they'll be able to store objects in their pockets. If they carry a bag in their hand, they can fill it with items.

[@mina7572]

I think one funny aspect of hoarding is that certain games have unique single use items that are so rare, or that the aesthetics of aquiring are so pleasing, that the usable item becomes a collectors item in the eyes of the player and they would this never use it

[@mattparker9726]

resident evil inventory was good because it didn't place silly restrictions like encumbrance, but instead made you have to PHYSICALLY fit the items into your inventory. I have the same problem with stamina bars that aren't in 1st person hyper realistic military shooters.

[@saraphys5555]

I actually love Pillar's system of cooldown, per encounter, and per rest; because it means I dont need to micromanage as much, and I can just switch over to a character when I do need them to hit with a big attack. That design was great!

[@Mech4]

I horde a lot of items in RPGs, for me it's about giving myself a lot of options during combat. It also comes down to how readily available are some of the items I've got. If it's a magic scroll for a high level spell, if I can't immediately learn the spell, I'm most likely going to hold onto the scroll until I can learn it, even if later on I can purchase another because it's cheaper. I will use potions and scrolls if push comes to shove or if I know I can get more of them soon. Weapons and armour I'll horde also, but only if they've got useful "On use" abilities. Like a sword that can cast paralyze or armour that provides better protection against a specific enemy type that I know I'm going to encounter more of in the future. One thing I horde without any gameplay purpose behind it is unique items. I don't like selling items that are unique or artifacts because they kind of tell a story about my characters exploits during the game. Selling trash and junk items I do find a bit difficult because you're trusting the game developers to be absolutely sure those items are never used for anything. Even notes, books and the like that might have been related to a quest that is finished because a family member might want that ring to remember the person later on.

[@jakepeattie]

I’m playing Starfield now and encumbrance is driving me nuts. Resources are ok because there’s shortcuts for storing them on your ship, but a huge portion of my storage is taken up by small Aid items. It’s fair enough if the game wants me to make choices about what weapons and suits to keep, but it’s not reasonable to expect me to sort through hundreds of random food and health items. Dropping any one item has negligible impact on the problem, which makes it even more annoying. “Choose two of the four weapons you’re holding” is one thing, but “choose 225 of the 250 items you’re carrying” is ridiculous. The other problem is the Misc category, which is just junk, but lock picks are inexplicably kept there, so you can’t sell them en masse. Vendor credit limits also make this annoying. If a game wants to force me to make hard choices about my inventory with encumbrance it needs to make that as quick and easy as possible through the UI, and pace item drops so that I don’t have to do it too often. I’ve never played a game that did this well.

[@sonikkuffffff]

just treat the random food you find like a free health buffer and eat it all instead of using a med pack

[@Arkanthrall]

I've played Nioh 2 recently and I think it's handled well. You can get skills in magic and you have a limited number of slots to use. Same with ninjutsu skills (a defined number of shurikens scrolls of silent running, etc). Even for regular inventory items or range weapon ammunition, you can only have a limited amount per category, the rest is sent to your storage. With this system you have a finite number of items and abilities to use until you recharge them at the next checkpoint. I was using them as much as I can, especially since I was never running out of what I needed because you can purchase items or ammo at the checkpoint.

[@t3hsourcey]

I think hoarding is simply invevitable in blind playthroughs, you simply don't know what an item does, or if it has an obvious effect, you don't know when to use it, you don't know the scenarios and situations that you're walking into. So, you hoard every special item effect. Pots are self-explanatory, sure. But Pillars, I finished by using only 1-2 sets of camp supplies, but I was thorough to have a dozen of them. On replay, yes, I will use a legendary Absolute Zero scroll to nuke the Fire Dragon, because I know the final boss isn't vulnerable to cold. Doom Eternal even softlocks weapon use per enemy, giving enemy weaknesses to only certain weapons, but keeping them mortal to all weapons. Sometimes, you do indeed need to railroad a player to encourage certain behaviors to further layer their play. A recent example I play: some attacks have a hard interrupt property which breaks the hard armor of some enemies. While the attacks are costly in terms of both stamina and animation window, this is the only guaranteed way to break their shell rather than reacting to the enemy to come out of it. The point being, that this encourages decision making in real time, layering the combat further.

[@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968]

Yeah. In Dragon Age: Origins I was selling the gems and then didn't realise later I needed some of them after you finish Orzammar and get the dwarves on your side. Although to be fair, they're easy to come across and you can rebuy them if you know which vendors you sold them to.

[@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968]

I also kept every Tossball card in The Outer Worlds. I didn't know whether I needed a whole set for anything.

[@DirePulpGaming]

I completely understand my hoarding issue is on me. Object permeance is a major thing with ADHD. If it's not easily within sight, I forget about it. Baldur's Gate 3 had a chest at camp to off load items. I threw all the excess gear in there but never sorted it or took anything out unless I was looking for a quest item. I specialized a companion to have high strength and doubled carry weight just to be a pack mule. Only thing I needed to remember then was to check party inventory if I needed something or swap out gear. Elden Ring on the other hand let's you hoard everything but you have to worry about equipped weight. Only actively equipped items factored into encumbrance. Your carry weight is extremely low at first so you can only have a light armor set and 1 ranged and 1 melee. Of course you can increase it with endurance stat at level ups but you have to balance that against other stats to either be more effective in combat or just more health to survive more difficult fights. Then there's none RPG inventory systems like Resident Evil. If an item doesn't fit within the briefcase (RE 4 and 8 specifically), I will spend 30 minutes to an hour just organizing and weighing pros and cons on which items I need more than others. There's more than 1 way to skin a cat. Sometimes though, just leave the poor cat alone.

[@silverjohn6037]

In fairness one man's "hoarding" is another man's being "prosperous". In an rpg you start out "poor" in terms gear and resources and it sucks. You can't take on all the fights you might want to or solve every quest for the "best" finish. Then, over time, you save up those resources, be they potions or coins, and it feels good because you can blow through fights without having to worry about health and feel like you've accomplished something. I'd personally say there's nothing wrong with this but if a game designer is worried they can encourage behavior that still feels good for the player rather than a punishment for being thrifty. The classic example for too much gold is having fancy houses that players can or some games (Fallout New Vegas for example) can let you donate healing items to charities. But enforced "poverty", like the level where you get stripped of all your gear because the designer really truly wants you to use the game's stealth system at least once, just feels annoying.

[@lrinfi]

"In a rpg you start out 'poor' in terms of gear and resources and it sucks." -- I'm personally happy to see RPGs moving away from the "rags to riches" formula somewhat, allowing players to start with a home or a means to get around or what have you rather than always spawning your character in like a babe in the woods with absolutely nothing but, possibly, diapers. That kind of formula works for survival games to an extent (though it's actually become rather stale there as well), but not so much RPGs. It's as overused as the amnesia trope and, perhaps needless to say, badly reflects the pyramidic structure of modern society, which makes people believe they have to "climb" some imaginary ladder to "get to the top". I love mods that allow you to pick a profession, background, etc. (or not) *before* you head out in a RPG ala Mass Effect. Butcher, baker, candle stick maker. Doesn't matter. It's just so much more condusive to actual roleplay than just "decide what combat build you want to pursue." From what I gather, such options don't have a huge, if any, impact in Starfield, for example, whereas it might have if "1000 [same or similar, procedurally generated] planets to 'explore'" hadn't been its primary focus. It's nonetheless a step in the right direction for modern RPGs, but is ultimately meaningless if the game world itself and its "reactions" don't change in some dramatic way due to the decisions you've made from the start. When it comes to "resources," e.g weapons or armor or what have you, it makes sense for the player to have find them or learn to craft them or buy them, and a preview is always nice. You might find a stun baton in an air drop or electronics crate in 7DTD, for example. It's a pleasant surprise and a good use of RNG. You also might not be specced into Electrocutioner when you do, but can still experiment, using the weapon less effectively until and unless you do decide to spec or respec your avatar into Electrocutioner. (And that stun baton is just too much fun not to at least experiment with whether you're specced for sledgehammers or not.) The player experimentation factor is so often overlooked in modern games, it's bordering on tragedy. That's half the fun.

[@silverjohn6037]

@@lrinfi It's always best to remember that having to spend hours to get an amazing weapon or ability is one person's boring time sink but another person's reward for hard work that the "casuals" can't be bothered with;). A glass half full, half empty kind of situation. That's we have games instead of "the game". So people that like Dark Souls can have Dark Souls, people who like Animal Crossing can have Animal Crossing and people who like Fallout can have... well we always have New Vegas;).

[@lrinfi]

@@silverjohn6037 I thought the second half more or less covered that. You can't just pick up a stun baton and expect it to do you any good if you're not specced to weild it effectively and mod it with a repulsor, for which time and effort is required both to learn how to make one and gather the materials to craft. As for spending hours on attaining on that amazing weapon or ability, I think modern games are going too far. Hours are one thing. Months and years are quite another and it would literally take months and years to attain some items, especially in MMOs, by design. Anything done to that kind of excess is never a good thing.

[@Darkshadows9776]

Dark Souls literally did the restoring fountains and healing flask with the bonfires and estrus flasks. It also has a more straightforward inventory system which doesn’t feel like it has the same problem so much, due to individual item inventory limits, the checkpoint system of bonfires, and the high difficulty. All three of those combined make me feel like I can use the super powerful limited healing items and buffs, even if only exclusively on bosses.

[@KowlDoogle]

I feel like there's a conflict between "every type of build should have a way to solve this issue" and using the scroll of fireballdoom. You can't predict that a warrior character is guaranteed to have this fire scroll to kill these things that are weak to fire, so you have to either have to make sure the warrior has access to a fire spell or make them weak to neutral damage anyway. For health it always seems that if you're like me and just go with the loot you collect and never buy anything from stores you'll drink up all your health potions and end up having to gobble down every food item that heals, once those are burned through only then do i even consider using something I normally would just shove in a chest back home, it's the lack of choice rather than a billion choice that I find more engaging, and it can't be elevated into endgame because chances are by then a player is going to have something that just ignores preparation. i found a good incentive in a game called dandy dungeon, it relies heavily on RNG but you can control situations by the use of 5 items which decay after 6 uses, afterwards them become broken spells that in turn become crafting ingredients, the scrolls are useful and some levels hint that you needing a certain type of scroll for bonuses, but it's up to you to remember that if you're going to the bath house to remember to freeze the water. Later stages also bank on you having a certain scroll like healing or a speed boost and enemies will retaliate with their own buff, which is sometimes frustrating but it's intended to be so you branch out and experiment with other items.

[@dextrodemon]

i like survival horror for this, limited inventory slots, and not too many items in the world. means you think about, and use your items carefully. but you're still going to use everything because you simply don't have enough to be hording all the time, and you know if you don't use something you might have to chuck it when you get something better anyway. idk how well that'd work for rpgs tho, might be alright.

[@Duchess_Van_Hoof]

That's a thing, in Thief on PS3 I kept my supplies at 60-70% when I went out into the world and stored the rest. I knew I could find items, so I wanted to be able to pick them up, and feel free to use them.

[@SilverionX]

Hoarding is encoded into our genes. You can see this in a lot of animals too like squirrels. Some people have stronger tendencies than others but saving for a rainy day (that may never come) is just very natural for humans. On another note Old School RuneScape has a fairly restricted inventory system by design, managing your inventory is a vital part of gameplay. It alleviates many inventory issues by having storage containers that store an entire inventory's worth of items or sometimes several hundred items, but only of a specific subset such as fish or herbs. Further, you can put things in anytime you want but you can only take them out at a bank or deposit box. It also has tool boxes for specific activities such as hunting that lets you store every piece of gear you use for hunting. This creates an interesting dynamic where you decide what activity you want to engage in, and then you take the gear for that activity with you, but only that. Since you only have 28 inventory spaces and there's nothing that stores food or potions you can make activities such as fishing or woodcutting much more bearable, but boss fights are still dependent on careful inventory management, skills and tactics.

[@brianviktor8212]

I am not a fan of consumables that are in inventories. The fact that you can only use them a limited times, and in combat in addition to everything else makes them like cheating. Often in games they are also just cluttering up inventories (be it slots or weigh). How I would solve it is to have players have ~2 slots dedicated for such items, which they can use in combat. They are either actually consumable, with charges, or with infinite uses, but have some cost, downtime or requirement. They cannot use anything else in their inventory in combat. For certain classes/specializations/professions I'd add something to give them more slots, like an alchemist or tinker, so that their crafting has even more combat value. So an alchemist happens to be able to craft a potion with ~+25% combat power, while also having the regular healing potion and maybe some scroll in the 3rd slot. This would allow the player to make a choice that is narrowed down to specific encounters, allowing him to prepare for encounters. This way consumables aren't just 0 to infinity powerups like in Skyrim, and can be well balanced. So far for *how* to implement consumables in an interesting way. Witcher 3 alchemy is an alternate way I like. But how to make players actually use them? Well, first of all make them optional. Do not let them drop all the time, have the player craft or buy them consciously. Second, they should not be too focused on one particular niche thing like "fire damage resistance", as in almost all situations it would be useless and just clutter the inventory, and for the situations it is meant for it would have to be overpowered. Third, don't just make them obsolete by the player leveling up, add some scaling to its effects, or allow them to be crafted into the next higher tier. Fourth, and this is an overall gameplay thing - make difficult encounters in which the player is forced to surpass his limits. Fifth, if the game is not quicksave-quickload type, make death punishing in a way all consumables are lost on death/defeat - so why not just use them to avoid death? Sixth, make them grant longer lasting effects aside from their short-term effects - a healing potion may heal you quickly here and now, but it might also just increase your life for half an hour or so - and an alchemist may have additional bonuses too. If you run out of consumables for your slots, you'd know you actually ran out of those. This is a dynamic I personally find very interesting - you start with a certain amount of stuff (consumables, ammo) and after 'n' combat encounters you run out of them. So either you continue without them or go home to restock (but then the encounter ends incomplete). I will implement ammo and mechanics for it into my game as well, rewarding proper preparation and skill - or even having proper equipment setups with larger ammo storage.

[@MagnetismR]

I enjoyed the inventory limit system for Streets of Rogue. Because it had permadeath, the stakes were higher, so you couldn't afford to be conservative with resources in an emergency moment-no point in holding on to them if you're going to die. That and there are always ample opportunities to use them. If you don't use them, your inventory will quickly fill up, so you won't be able to get more goodies until you use them, sell them, or discard them. And you don't want to discard the limited valuable loot, so you maximize its use. The limit thing in Half-Life 2 tended to be to my detriment, I think. In Half-Life 1, I had no problem using valuable resources like SMG grenades, because I could hold on to a lot, so I didn't feel I would be wasteful using the valuable resource. The max limit signals "Yeah, alright, you have enough ammo. We're not allowing you to grab any more, so you might as well use what you've got because there's no longer an advantage in hoarding it." But in Half-Life 2, the 10 SMG grenades were limited to 3. It's more of a setpiece game, makes sense, but because of dynamic item resupplies, I would not receive more greandes as being maxed out I didn't need them, and even when I did get more, I STILL felt like having 3 was too few to use because I didn't know when I'd find more (it's not telegraphed you'll get more when in need, it feels random unless the programming is spelled out) so I held on to them for dear life and rarely used them. Playing through Deus Ex for the first time right now. The combination ammo limit and limited inventory space grid is interesting. Not perfect, but it gets its ideas across and I like being forced to pick my tools with the freedom to hold on to several important ones.

[@roserainier5917]

I feel like my hoarding problem in games is always I think I might need something later - like potions for late game boss fights - and then by the time I finish the game I realize I’ve just kept all these useful items and never used them.

[@Thorenic]

My personal favorite mechanic to mitigate player hoarding is the Potion system in Witcher 3. You need to find the recipe to learn to craft a potion, rewarding exploration. you then need to craft the potion to be able to use it, rewarding combat and looting. Once you have the potion crafted though, you no longer need to craft it again. Instead your potion stores will automatically renew upon meditation, and the limiting factor to prevent you from always spamming all your potions is that there's an upper limit on how many potions you can drink at one time (Toxicity), mandating moderation.

[@VieneLea]

Witcher 2: the Assassin of Kings was my favourite game that IMO did exhaustible items right. They did it by making potions non-unique (you could always make more, all you had to do was spend time gathering resources) and limiting their use (you couldn't spam them; you had to meditate out of combat to use them, and you could only use a limited amount each time). This made it so that I never regretted using potions (I could always make more if I felt like I didn't have enough) and always enjoyed preparing for future encounters. That said I did see some reviews complaining that it's still an issue, so I might be unique in the fact that it appealed so much to me.

[@Shannovian]

I hoard with indifference. My brain tends to create standard modes of operation and optimise the hell out of them. So, potions of fire resistance or flasks of acid or scrolls or rods just don't have the permeance to be adapted. I really did like the system in Pillars for spells and the stash. The new Cyberpunk patch gives heals and grenades a cool down and now... I am using both a hell of a lot more in my new playthrough. I guess I don't really have a lot to say on this subject.

[@Mayhzon]

What I find with buff items and potions to be the problem is that they often have too limiting timers. And in games like Dark Souls this extends to spell buffs. 15 seconds feels way too short, why should I bother doing something for that? That feeling is what overwhelms me with this sort of thing. I find it to be less an issue in MMOs like WoW, where your buff potion lasts 5 minutes, big buff potions for raids 2 hours and spell buffs also 15-30 minutes.

[@silvernode]

My idea to sort of solve hoarding is to let players combine excess items in their bag to create new single items that achieve a certain goal. Think like combining HP potions together in order to make a mega HP potion, or an attack potion combined with an hp potion to make buff potion of some kind. That way nothing ever makes the player feel like they have to discard something to make space because everything can be used in some new way.

[@jaredgunkle1562]

death stranding fixed this for me because every item is a package that physically weighs you down i looked for opportunities to use them and was happy to use equipment because it gives you more mobility and forces you to take only what you think youll need before you leave

[@MrBenjarming]

From Software nailed it I think. Healing and magic refill at bonfires for free. Status ailments can be mitigated before the bar fills, and buffs can be initiated in combat, with both the buffing and restoring items being purchasable with a renewable resource.

[@Rexxie44]

I really liked the sleep period concept for things like in FNV, with Implant GRX. It's basically a turbo that slows down time without addiction, you can stack it and there's two levels of perks for it. The caveat is, the max is 12 for I think 12-24 hours. It let me feel less impulse to hold onto them as they have a fixed stack that always gets replenished. Otherwise, finite, rare, one time use items become a thing I never convince myself I will need to use "until the time is right", which is a pointless endeavor as I worm my way out of most situations anyway. A good dynamic however, is Super Stimpaks in Fallout. Stimpaks are good for healing when the battle is usually done or if the battle is slow paced enough for you to heal on the go. What was good about Stimpaks is that they are fast applying and gave more health but with their own caveats. I find more often than not, I'd apply them when I'm close to death in early game, at least, over the usage of mass stimpaks. As they give immediate healing factor when I am in a pinch that is time sensitive.

[@NamelessVoice]

I feel that you kind of skipped over what I thought was the main part of the question, which is how to design so that players don't end up keeping their really powerful consumables because they never know if they will need them later. Items which end up "too good to use" because you don't know if/when you'll get another one and don't know if you'll need it for some particularly difficult battle further into the game.

[@Anubis1101]

I've always been a fan of limited standardized healing items, that recover a fixed percentage instead of a number of HP. Phantasy Star has done this well in most of its games. It resolves that one issue of hoarding, but causes others like buffing HP tanks. As for other kinds of hoarding, I have yet to find a unilateral solution. Every type of player hoards differently, and what might address one would just frustrate another. I do think the player should always have access to an infinite storage solution of some kind, so when they don't feel like dealing with inventory, they can dump it. The one exception to that would be specifically-balanced survival games like Space Engineers, where storage for personal items is way larger than you will ever need, but storage for materials is just limited enough to encourage building more.

[@DaedrinMolkre]

i knew i was a gaming hoarder when I realized that every time I played Fallout 3, I would actively keep 1 copy of every gear piece i came across, and it always begins immediately in Vault 111 and goes until I stop my playthrough. To this day, I always keep 1 of any outfit or weapon i find, and store them in my megaton house, whether I ever intend to use them or not. For some reason I enjoy the feeling of filling out an arsenal like that. Because of this, I used to love player house mods that would add mannequins and such to show off gear sets I kept. This only applies to 3, and NV, I dont do it in any other Fallout or Bethesda game, for some reason I'm obsessed with it in those two specific games.

[@singami465]

It's funny that you mention the Estus system from Souls games, because while this is absolutely a good solution, Souls games ALSO have a huge problem of "items you keep for that one precious moment" - and since there's no manual saving and you usually lose the effects when you die, it really makes it so that new players almost never use these items.

[@renaigh]

in the case of Bloodborne, those special items can only be used at specific places for a particular purpose.

[@Esure101]

This is really getting to be in BG3. You get scrolls and potions, specifically designed to be 1 off consumptions for hard fights. But how do I know what the next hard fight is? Combat can occur on such a whim I fear if I use my blue scroll now, suddenly I'll hit a major enemy 20 minutes later I can't now beat because I "wasted" my reserves. Honestly just don't bother. Have stuff on cooldown or just let the player farm at their pace.

[@LionUnchained]

There are exactly 2 types of people who played Morrowind. Those who looted the Scrolls of Icarian Flight, and those who have learned how important it is to manually save.

[@RiverbrookTsodmi]

I personally have fixed this problem by having NPCs to pester the PCs. Something like a town sheriff would know that the player buys a lot of stuff from a town vendor and ask if they would like to donate their hefty sum for the people. If they refuse to help the interaction could lead into a higher prices at town until they confront this sheriff again and deal with their petty request. There could be other civilian type NPCs just asking for free stuff from them. Carrying valuable loot could also make more inventory checks at bigger towns. Like a watchmen could ask for player to stop and let them check their inventory. If they carry an army full of weapons they would just ask them to leave. Or comment how rich they are and beg fo daily taxable money not to say a word to anybody to other NPCs like smiths, merchants and etc.

[@SknCommonLisper]

Tale's of Maj'Eyal solved this by NOT having consumable items, but rather have "abilities" you can switch out that uses a cooldown system, so you can continue to use them indefinitely, but only within x-turns (so no spam-healing, for example). You also have 'utility items', which are basically items with a magical effect, which works on the same principal, cooldowns (you can have multiple and swap-between, but swapping carries a 2-3 turn cooldown as well, so not incentivised to run around with too many items to swap-between).

[@snegglepuss6669]

One thing I find helps with hoarding instincts is just being able to get more in a renewable way. If I only have five potions of doom and they were placed objects in non-respawning chests, I'm not using them. I'd lose the lore in their descriptions! But if I can get more, even if it's hard, even if it's a 1% drop from a high level monster, I'll keep one and use the rest as convenient Also, burning a resource is a lot different to me than crafting with it. I'll still keep one/ten/fifty if I can, but if I'm getting a permanent item from it I'm far less reluctant. After all, I still have it. Monster Hunter is great for this, basically every truly rare resource is for making gear you keep. Well, except for Pale Extract to make top tier attack and defence potions, and I grind and hoard that like a madman Another option is to make the game short enough to replay or roguelike/lite. You'll lose the thing when you restart and get another in the next run, so just send it. Though this is basically a spicier version of having it recharge or replenish Also, save slots. Let me save my game, try it out and reload if it's rare so I know I won't waste it when I do use it

[@fonkoncl]

I was talking with someone about this very thing, I think Dark Souls as a series allowed me to escape hoarding, renewable items allows you to use them that bit more.

[@ObscureDraws]

I first noticed the hoarding problem when I watched it gut the release of a adult game. Actually ended up building a flask system because of it.

[@Glimmlampe1982]

another point is, at least to me, the convenience on how easy it is to use the stuff. for example: I currently play RDR2 again and I, again, noticed that I hoard cigarets. not because I dont want to use them (its perfectly in character) or I dont need them. Its just to much to bother, open the item wheel, switch to the second tab, scroll through the food items and then have a 2 s animation and a mini effect on dead eye. so I downloaded a mod that a) added a shortcut and b) extended the use time. so now I kind of chain smoke :D because its way more convenient and also is way better included. now you light your cigarette and use it over time, not just inhale once and throw it away. similar was the meditation option in witcher 2, where you dont gulp random potions at some time in the dungeon, just to have them loose the effect when you need them (or do it to late and have to use action slots instead of attacking)

[@VitriolicVermillion]

I think lot of hoarding behavior is encouraged by determinism and the player having too much information. For instance, when you know what level a bandit in the road is, you take him on not because you're confident in your own character skill development or player ability to manage combat even if things get a little tricky, but because you know bandits don't do magic, you see his level over his head and know what the skill differences are and who will win in a pure character stat math sense, etc. If you know that you're overwhelmingly likely to win, you fight, and you don't worry about getting hit, because it won't be a threat, so you don't use your health potions. Now, if the bandit's level were not known, you have to judge by past experience telling you about how tough bandits are, make a bet on how much the character has improved since the last time and how your own timing and game knowledge have advanced. Then, once you do decide to fight, the first hit you take tells you what the next will look like, and so you again hoard your heals, because you know the encounter will be over before you hit 0. You can't have total chaos, but some unpredictability, even a small chance that the player may take extreme damage, makes "I could actually die in this fight" cause them to consider that they might want to use every buff and keep their health topped up. In short, I think we need carrot and stick both, and to give the player the choice to be reckless or cautious. But then again, I don't think my tastes are all that common in most respects.

[@Jaqinta]

Hello Mr Tim Cain , in some games have some kind of trading system in it i really love to stack some materials and wait the best time to sell it , when i played wow once then i sometimes bought cheaper coppers which those selling on auction house and try to sell it more expensive :D In some games i get more fun rather than playing the game itself and i also getting the pure experience of the capitalism :D . And also i would like to mentioned that if anyone else thinking the same as me but nowadays most of the games because of the sucession of the minecraft , video game companies tries to use crafting and also building features much more than usual and in some point of game the game expects you to build something or craft something in order to progress into this game and i really wouldn't like to do these kinds of things . Thanks again Mr Tim Cain for everything , have a great life to you and to your loved ones . Sincerly your one of the most beloved fan Jaqinta :)

[@vast634]

The inventory system will have a huge impact, with the "worst" offender being inventories with unlimited storage. There are games that only allow you to carry a max amount of a specific item type, and this item type is an important consumable/weapon/spell regularity. (in The Forest for example) So you often have to leave pickups on the floor anyhow if you are full. In this type of inventory system you basically never hoard things, and are encouraged to consume them.

[@ze_rubenator]

I've always hated encumberance systems and it's always the first thing I mod out. Infinite pockets all the way, even if it means you can cheese some fights. I liked Pillars of Eternity's compromise very well, and it's the first time I've enjoyed limited inventory in any game where inventory management wasn't an integral part (like playing backpack tetris to try to fit all your guns, ammo, meds and food for example). After playing Factorio, which has possibly the best inventory system I've ever come across, Minecraft's inventory system gives me aneurysms. In Factorio everything is always sorted (though you can reserve slots for specific items if you wish), and once you gets robots up and running you can have them automatically resupply you and remove any trash. It's incredible.

[@gilgamecha]

Here's a subject for a whole video: designing a game economy. There have been some classic failures, eg EVE, but even for single player games it's a challenge. I would love to hear your thoughts Tim.

[@stuartmorley6894]

I think there is a video on it already. I'm 's pretty sure it's from the point of view of money sinks.

[@zakatalmosen5984]

I thing Sogg Mead Mug still resents me for having him carry a literal cartload of ore, metal sheets and pipes around the world during my pure mage playthrough on the off chance I'd find someone willing to throw a couple coins my way for them. Meanwhile Virgil's job was carrying notes. Half-Ogres really do live hard lives.

[@vagabundorkchaosmagick-use2898]

I don't like junk items that only serve as money (if you sell). A good way to make players use their items is making then decompose. Some potions or food would only last a few minutes or a couuple days (if you have day/night systems) before the get spoiled. Or maybe you can fight five or ten times before a flask breaks.

[@Kyrmana]

I started hoarding in Neopets, because you got an achievement/avatar for having like 1000 different items in your safe. And just never stopped since

[@jabberw0k812]

I think it would be a fun experiment to just assume that if players are hoarding, it's because they don't actually _need_ the item. So make the game more difficult, or just remove the item from the game ;D

[@vast634]

But that can lead on the other hand to players complaining that the game has not much variety in items to use, being very boring in that regard.

[@chiefsean16]

Mfw when I forgot to use the alien blaster at the end of Fallout. RIP Ian, Tycho, Dogmeat and Katja who died in the unnecessary slaughter.

[@mattparker9726]

3:53 yeah but look at Borderlands 2, for an example of badly designed "gates" in boss areas. There are SO MANY ways to cheese that type of design. And honestly, I feel you're solving a problem that no one asked for at all. Also, if you must "limit" a player, you can also do it by making the item monetarily worthless, and therefore not worth bothering to pick up. Kenshi does a great job of this.

[@wizywig]

A few I really liked : Witcher 3 just gave you rechargeable potions. I actually didn't realize they recharged till later and the game became so much more enjoyable once I started drinking all day. Another was pillars with their uses per combat. It was great. During prolonged encounters you started to feel that limit, but during all encounters I never felt I needed to hoard skills. Felt very freeing and I loved it. And in resident evil (4) the ammo limits meant that when shit got tough I'd use up my magnum ammo because it wasn't worth wasting all my rifle or handgun ammo when one mag bullet would do perfectly. Because everything was scarce I used everything. Though one thing I love hoarding is gold. In bg3 I ended up the game with 80k gold and still felt bad for being forced to donate money to those damn starving refugees.

[@Chorkly]

Hi Tim, interesting video as always. I have a question regarding if you have any ideas regarding "preset characters" in your games, such as Albert, Rock and Natalia in Fallout 1. In some games, they're used to show the different playstyles the game is based around, or provide further bits of lore regarding the setting. Or, in examples like Arcanum, they can be used as prefabs to inspire the players own creativity in the world, letting you know what archetypes or roleplaying options will be supported. Or, taken to the extreme, Devs like Larian essentially making fully customised "narrative prefabs" in their Origin characters within Divinity Original Sin 2. In the past you've mentioned preferring custom characters, but I would like to know if you have any further thoughts on what prefab characters can be used to explore, or convey to the player. As ever, thank you for making these videos. Always an interesting coffee break filler!

[@vagabundorkchaosmagick-use2898]

As for skills... In Lies of P, you can make a perfect block (a parry), but there is no reward to do it, and a failure means you are heavily damaged. Instead, you simply block, receive little damage but unlikely to be killed. This was very badly designed. In contrast, Sekiro has perfect blocks as well, if you succeed, you stagger your enemy and deal heavy damage, if you fail, you suffer big damage. It's a good risk/reward design. So, in order to use your skills or powers or magic, there must be a reward in doing so. If a spell takes two rounds to cas and causes 150 damage, but my normal attacks cause 100 damage, normall attacks are better, no time cost, no magic points cost, more damage.

[@kirglow4639]

I think what makes encumbrance problem worse than inventory management problem is the lack of flexibility on when you have to get rid of items. If you hoard and periodically reach encumbrance limit, you have to stop all you're doing and drop everything, whereas inventory management problem is better to have because it gives you flexibility to not lose context of what you're doing in the present moment and lets you deal with the inventory being too big at a later point, e.g. during more of a down time in the game

[@fixpontt]

the best way to handle this is item/spell charge per fight i think as you said and many games just did that, similarly in a non fantasy settings ammo should be removed but reload should _"cost"_ something, time or dps loss or something, similar to grenade, xcom2 handles this the best you have 1 grenade slot and you can put different grenades into them but you can use onle 1 in combat and only 1 charge except for grenadier class who can use more instead of items and scrolls and potions and ammos and grenades etc. we need use slots with charges

[@kendalljones5540]

Everything you can touch in a game should have a greater purpose than to be sitting where you found it, and if you cant think of one down the line, then it should bring immediate joy.

[@dasaen]

I liked Dungeon Siege’s pack mules, I’d add the caveat that if the mules die you have a chance of losing a percentage of the items that they are carrying? Could even make them an actual companion.

[@worldhello1234]

@2:18 Project Zomboid works with encumbrance but since the mod support is strong, there is a way to enhance capacity.

[@misterprofessor5038]

IMO, The best way to solve inventory problems is to ask why the player needs an entire list of of items in the first place. If you were to make the adventure game version of your RPG, what items would you have mapped to a specific buttons? Anchoring your ideas and mechanics to something as functional and physical as a game controller can give you a sense of bearing when dealing with huge systems. Not that inventory is bad, but I do see these huge messy systems that are common in RPGs and wonder if the ideas behind the game could be expressed in another way.

[@ffordesoon]

i’m kinda mixed on this one. while things like encumbrance or weapon durability make a certain amount of sense from a game design perspective for the reasons you mentioned, i think they often also come across as exactly the sort of punitive approaches that you inveigh against at the end of the video. your point about inventories getting too bloated to be usable if there’s no encumbrance is well-taken, but i almost feel like that’s more acceptable to players overall because it’s a gradual thing they have full control over. by contrast, both durability and encumbrance often feel arbitrary, like an imposition from without. i’m of two minds about both mechanics myself, because i think they can have positive effects like the ones you describe, and they do have an intuitive logic to them. but i can think of plenty of moments even in games i like quite a bit (breath of the wild, for example) where those systems did annoy the hell out of me and feel like a waste of my time. with regard to BotW’s weapon durability in particular, because you essentially couldn’t repair weapons outside of a few out of the way methods, it made finding really powerful or unique ones kind of suck. if anything, it *encouraged* me to hoard weapons, because i wanted to keep the really cool ones with me just in case. and the ones i did end up using most of the time were often really unexciting and bad ones, because losing those felt better. at a certain point, i was like, “why can’t i use the cool weapons i worked super hard to get without being afraid every hit might shatter them?” anyway, i suppose the point of all this waffle is to ask: where’s the line between encouraging players to act a certain way and punishing them for not acting that way, and how do you toe that line? Thanks for the video - it really got me thinking!

[@BruTalc]

this "fountains" heal system is literally the heal systems in the souls games haha

[@hectamus_]

I think one good way to make items more useful in games is to simply make games harder. I know it’s not the perfect solution but I feel that a lot of games have many difficulties and usually the normal difficulty (which you would assume is the intended experience) is a cakewalk, and therefore it’s not useful nor worth it to engage in the rest of the systems of the game. For example, in the Witcher 3, normal difficulty meant I never used oils often, even though it’s a paramount system that witchers use to hunt monster. But for harder difficulties it was a must to have oils and read the bestiary to figure out what certain monsters were vulnerable to. This was due to an increase in difficulty which forced me to consider what items I had to be successful.

[@thorburnjschwegler]

This is what would be my idea for players to use their unused items Would be bosses or mini bosses periodically send waves of enemies to the town that you have to protect thus you would use your items in that attack wave to thwart them It would give you a reason to use those items

[@voiceofreason1098]

1. "Scroll of Doom" types of items are generally fine with being hoarded. It's not their fault if the player's character is well built and can handle everything. Well built characters are supposed to conquer the game without the scrolls of doom. Still, if the player wants, he can use them too. Or hoard, or sell. Not really an issue, as long as they are rare. If the game is balanced, scrolls of doom are just extras. If the inventory UI can handle them well (the simplest thing - stacks), then I don't see a problem. 2. A functional inventory UI would help immensely indeed. With sort/filter/search for easy navigation and item separation between junk/dismantle/for sale/for use with tagging/color-code/mark as favorite or whatever tools so the player can use them intuitively for own preference. It's all just a few very straightforward components, combined neatly in a functional form. I honestly find it jarring how so many games don't have a solid functional inventory. Especially RPG's where loot is usually plentiful and important part of the game. 3. Balanced item distribution is another thing that many games have problem with. Found in the world/drops from enemies with consideration of money income vs money sinks and vendor prices. Money should be generally enough to buy stuff that is needed with an option to grind if the players wants more. A lot of RPG's don't understand that loot limitation is very important: they have "immersive" places like a library with 50 different books and since the player fears skipping an important one, he forces himself to check all 50 books, which is a chore. Same with semi-valuable items like mugs, plates, figurines etc. - they should be used very carefully, not to pollute player's inventory space, nor be a busy work based on player's fear of skipping important items.

[@TheCackling]

The number one reason i quit RPGs is running out of inventory space. I don't want to drop stuff, and i especially don't want to go through the mental effort of finding the optimal items to discard so i have enough space to pick up more items. I stopped playing Witcher 3, Cyberpunk and Genshin Impact because of this.

[@gargamellenoir8460]

Encumbrance incentivizes players to make unfun trip back and forth to the town to sell the stuff, not to use consumables (who usually don't weight anything anyway) or to leave stuff behind. That's why it's just a chore. Pillars' stash shows that it's not necessary, nobody ever said "oh boy it's too bad Pillars didn't have encumbrance". A great system was Numenera's. The consumables were ciphers, weird objects that you had a certain number of slots for. When you exceeded that number you got progressive debuffs (because of the weird techs mixing poorly in one bagpack), so it felt *good* to spend them in combat to lessen the debuff. It might seem like encumbrance but 1) all ciphers "weight" the same and 2) the debuff was progressive. You weren't unable to move suddenly because you had picked up one too many cog.

[@TheJols]

He just described the Dark Souls/Estus Flask system.

[@PointReflex]

In my case I hoard items mostly for the post-game enviroment. Since I do play with heavy roleplay intent I put more focuss on from where the characters came and where are they directed to, than where they actually are, with the end result that even if I have a super spell or enough potions to maintain an entire network of hospitals, I will carry them through the end of the game because I am thinkin "after this struggle, they will continue with their lives so those items WILL BE NEEDED at some point in the far future." I know this seems to be pathological hoarding but it isn't, giving all my gold to Neeshka (Neverwinter Nights 2) as a token of full trust and knowledge that the currency is more secure in her hands than in any kind of vault since "who's gonna steal from the best thief of Neverwinter?" IS pathological, but that's how I roll (no pun intended). And don't get me started with Icewind Dale 2, the entire path of my party was entirely at the mercy of who was the first one talkin, if the chaoticaly evil drow was approached first she would completly destroy any chance of reward from the quests... or wreck the Versailles Treaty into shreds and even if this was a setback I didn't like, I would roll with it till the very gruesome end.

[@GAMINGAPOSTLEJ]

off topic but when you said arena i was reminded of how awesome the arena was in oblivion lol

[@stuartmorley6894]

One of the games im playing at the moment is Starfield. It has a big issue with inventory management. Its obviously been designed to stop you getting too much money too quickly, a criticism of some other Bethseda titles. There is definitely some people who really hate the constant juggling. Im someone who hoards and collects everything so i totally understand why it winds people up but its kind of liberating to just decide not to collect every gun that drops, every piece of clothing and every object you can pick up to make tiny amounts of money. You don't need to pick up every pen, every wrench, every cup.

[@vast634]

Fallout 4 had a much better balance on when to pick up junk and common loot, and use for crafting than what Starfield implemented. In Starfield the whole loot handling, crafting and selling was just annoying.

[@MannerdDesert7]

I think the problem with hoarding in games is that you have to carry everything on your person, in real life you'd get a horse or cart to carry your stuff, Daggerfall did a really good job of this, you could buy a horse & cart & could store your loot there. New Vegas was going to have a companion called Bessy the Brahmin that would have been used to store your stuff but unfortunately that got cut.