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Eurogamer: Why I'm tired of Fallout 4 encumbrance

Neff

Neff

Member
weighing up pros and cons and making decisions based on that is part of what makes videogames so unique and satisfying.

I'm aware that people don't want games to punish them, and to make them feel like the can-do anything hero even if they can't, and reward them as such with pretty graphics, even paying extra with real money for the privilege if necessary, but that's not a direction videogames should go in imo.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
AndrewDean84xX said:
How can a dev legitimately handle something like this?

I get it. It doesn't bother me.

Am I wrong in thinking this complaint sounds like: Why have radiation or health and not infinite ammo?
Click to expand...
As has been pointed out, those sorts of statistics affect challenge. If your health is lower, you have to play safer in a fight. If your ammo is lower, you have to use bullets more carefully.

With the weight limit, it just means I spend pointless trips through the wasteland to dump materials somewhere, after killing all enemies. It's like adding a non-challenging, time-consuming chore to a game. That said, I'm glad the option exists so people who do enjoy the chore can still do it. I like options.
 
-MD-

-MD-

Member
Am I the only one that had the foresight to put some points into strength/+carry perk so I wouldn't have to take trips back to town?

I've done that once in 20 hours.
 
S

SunBroDave

Member
People always make the argument that encumbrance is there to be "realistic" or "immersive." You know what's not immersive? Stopping what I'm doing in the game to sort through a fucking menu.
 
H

hipbabboom

Huh? What did I say? Did I screw up again? :(
I'm like encumbrance. I like that it makes me make difficult choices within the context of the game. I think the slow moving happy median between no movement at all and slowing you down dynamically depending on how much you're carrying is good design. It's not about realism as much as it is a balance mechanic and if you want too then break the experience with a mode or hack. *shrugs*
 
C

Coffee Dog

Banned
Wask said:
People always make the argument that encumbrance is there to be "realistic" or "immersive." You know what's not immersive? Stopping what I'm doing in the game to sort through a fucking menu.
Click to expand...

I don't think you know what immersive means, considering that the decisions that you make in those menus have a direct impact on your character and the objects in the game world.

If by "immersive" you mean "I WANT TO DO NOTHING BUT WALK AND SHOOT" then I understand. In that case, carry weight has no relevance to you as a player, because you aren't interested in those sorts of decisions while you're playing a video game.

Blizzard said:
As has been pointed out, those sorts of statistics affect challenge. If your health is lower, you have to play safer in a fight. If your ammo is lower, you have to use bullets more carefully.

With the weight limit, it just means I spend pointless trips through the wasteland to dump materials somewhere, after killing all enemies. It's like adding a non-challenging, time-consuming chore to a game. That said, I'm glad the option exists so people who do enjoy the chore can still do it. I like options.
Click to expand...

How does choosing your weapons and armor not affect challenge?
 
K

Karspankey

Banned
devilsadvocat said:
Why not just dump all your equipment to your partner in the wastelands???? Damn I hate when people who write articles don't even know the mechanics of the game they are playing

Granted fallout4 can be more vague than a from software title at times but your companion is a walking chest for you to dump weighty objects into
Click to expand...

devilsadvocat said:
Nah, the guy just doesn't know how to use companions to carry your shit

They are basically glorified caddies
Click to expand...

Companions have a weight limit too, which he just so happens to mention. "Into the Pip-boy I went, poring through my inventory, looking for something to dump on Piper, my then companion. But she didn't have any of it. "I'm full, mate. No more room for more of your rubbish."


Nice job reading twice ;)
 
kavanf1

kavanf1

Member
AndrewDean84xX said:
How can a dev legitimately handle something like this?

I get it. It doesn't bother me.

Am I wrong in thinking this complaint sounds like: Why have radiation or health and not infinite ammo?
Click to expand...

Yes. IMO you're wrong because "pack rats" who love to collect stuff enjoy all the other aspects of the game and don't want to be god-like - they just don't want to be penalised for playing the game a certain way. Encumbrance is a result of an arbitrary number being assigned to stuff. I'm amazed that nobody at BethSoft thought "hey guys, people are going to be picking up waaaay more useless shit in this game than the other games, because we're allowing them to make useful shit with it...maybe we should factor for that by making the Junk weight = 0 or upping the base carry weight?". But they didn't, so I lasted maybe ten hours playing before I tweaked my carry weight.

Blizzard said:
As has been pointed out, those sorts of statistics affect challenge. If your health is lower, you have to play safer in a fight. If your ammo is lower, you have to use bullets more carefully.

With the weight limit, it just means I spend pointless trips through the wasteland to dump materials somewhere, after killing all enemies. It's like adding a non-challenging, time-consuming chore to a game. That said, I'm glad the option exists so people who do enjoy the chore can still do it. I like options.
Click to expand...

Exactly, you put it much better than I did.
 
M

Mesoian

Member
AndrewDean84xX said:
How can a dev legitimately handle something like this?

I get it. It doesn't bother me.

Am I wrong in thinking this complaint sounds like: Why have radiation or health and not infinite ammo?
Click to expand...

Add more options for carry weight in the form of craftables and expand the limit on what little craftables what are already in teh system. Modded skyrim fixed this problem without resorting to cheats years ago.

Karspankey said:
Companions have a weight limit too, which he just so happens to mention. "Into the Pip-boy I went, poring through my inventory, looking for something to dump on Piper, my then companion. But she didn't have any of it. "I'm full, mate. No more room for more of your rubbish."


Nice job reading twice ;)
Click to expand...

That and my companion loves picking garbage up off the floor. Cait is a god damn packrat for someone who chastises you about picking up things off the ground
 
L

Lunar15

Member
AndrewDean84xX said:
How can a dev legitimately handle something like this?

I get it. It doesn't bother me.

Am I wrong in thinking this complaint sounds like: Why have radiation or health and not infinite ammo?
Click to expand...

If someone wants to mod in either of those things to help with their enjoyment, I've got no issues with it.

Personally though, I'm fine with the limitations there but not as fine with the limitation on what you can carry. I mod it out because I don't really want challenge there, especially not in these games where you're often thick into the middle of a dungeon and you hit your encumbrance limit long before you've even found the main stash of loot. It's an anxiety that i'm fine with removing while I'm fine with the combat being tough.

I want combat to be challenging, but I don't want item collection to be. It's as simple as that.

Now, am I yelling for them to remove encumbrance? No, but I'll always get these games on PC so I can mod them out for my own personal enjoyment.
 
E

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
I do find it poorly balanced. Either don't make it an issue or make it a core component like DayZ where carry limits are always a concern and major mechanic in how the game and the internal economy of the world operates.

Giving us super human carrying capabilities from the start even with 1 STR with the kind of game they have setup requires you to be a hoarder. There's never a good reason to leave stuff behind, so either you make several trips or you cheat to eliminate the hassle.

I would love it if they rebalanced the game so that we had set limits on equipped weapons and hard limits on what we could carry so it really was a core struggle to decide what to take and what not to, but it's just not the game they are looking to make. So being able to carry 250 pounds or 2500 pounds is kind of a pointless difference. The former just results in you wasting more of your own time as few people will just let valuable and useful items left to rot forever.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Ruruja said:
The guy's stripping every Raider he finds down to their undies, I'd say this isn't a Fallout problem, it's a Wesley Yin-Poole problem. You don't even need multiples of any weapon or apparel because there's no repairing in Fallout 4.
Click to expand...

Stripping corpses down to the bone is usually just something I do at the start when I'm strapped for cash in these types of games. At a certain point I deduce that the time spent hauling off every little thing back to the nearest trader so often just isn't worth it from a time/money perspective any longer and just stop bothering unless I find something unusually valuable. It's all part of the meta game, and in a way part of the sense of character progression.
 
Z

ZombieSupaStar

Member
Once I have a settlement should have had an option to have them come and take whatever gear u tag. Still have to deal with carry weight but are able to tag everything u wanna sift through and use back home
 
F

Fantastapotamus

Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
EatinOlives said:
Does it really, though?

I used a non encumbrance mod for Oblivion and the tedium didn't go away, you just kick the can down the road for when you inevitably spend tons of time browsing through and attempting to organize your gigantic inventory.

It should be overhauled but not removed. Then again, it's Bethesda. They always dumb down mechanics to avoid having to put any work into rebalancing them.
Click to expand...

Yes. But as long as this is not the case, cheating is the better option.
 
C

chrominance

Member
I feel like this problem has already been solved, and actually it would work really well in Fallout's context. The answer is in Torchlight: you have a pet that you can dump a bunch of stuff on and then send them back to a town to sell your crap. In Fallout this makes even more sense because you can already load up a companion with crap and send them home; all you'd need is the ability to tell that companion to either sell or (much more likely) dump your junk into a workshop.

The best part is it relieves the pain of encumbrance but in a way that can be tuned so as not to completely break the game. First, you have to send your companion away, which means you have to pay a price for continuing to loot things without returning to a settlement. The amount of time your companion takes to get to a settlement and dump stuff can be tweaked to make this cost higher or lower. Second, you can restrict the types of goods the companion will take to a settlement, i.e. junk is okay but you're going to have to decide if you want that sweet missile launcher or not.

I don't know if implementing a Torchlight-like system is the best answer, but I think it would help with the issue of encumbrance forcing you to stop for ten minutes deciding what to keep/drop, but doesn't allow you to just pick up whatever you want without penalty.
 
S

shandy706

Member
For those on console that want to increase your carrying capacity.

1. Drop the "I'm SPECIAL" book

2. Command Dogmeat to get the book

3. When Dogmeat stops, and he is standing upright, grab the book before he bends over to get it.

4. Pick up the new one he drops. Then drop the new and original book.


When you pick them both up you'll get a point to put into strength.
 
S

Stasis

Member
I modded that out asap. I also give myself ammo because its always low as fuck and that's just an annoying mechanic to me. I wanna explore, discover, shoot, build, mod, and play through a story. I don't wanna micro manage loot in a tedious inventory system and always search for ammo or not be able to use a decent weapon because of it. I removed the tedium. Might make the game too easy for you hardcore players, but it makes it so much more fun for me.

I love mods so much. The black and white pipboy with white text is also awesome.
 
H

Hellshingu

Member
-MD- said:
Am I the only one that had the foresight to put some points into strength/+carry perk so I wouldn't have to take trips back to town?

I've done that once in 20 hours.
Click to expand...

It would go against my crit/agility build and just be wasted points. I am used to playing with weight limit in these games so while it does suck I just offload crap I know I'll never use as I have a problem with picking up so much worthless stuff in games. It would be nice if junk was weightless or had very, very small weight value though since the game encourages you to pick it up.
 
K

Keasar

Member
I don't agree they should remove encumbrance, however, they should change the system since from what I understand they have just added a ton more stuff that you feel like that you should loot from dungeons.

Unless that is part of the idea, you choose to either bring the weapons/armor/usefull stuff or the junk to build out your home.

Watering down Fallout even more however is not the solution if you ask me. A friend of mine recently told me that she considered Fallout being about shooting, a sentence that saddened me deeply to hear. :(

Also calls herself a Fallout fan, prefers 3 over New Vegas etc.
 
coughlanio

coughlanio

Member
I'd be open to anything over the weight limit automatically going to your companion, then once they're at capacity, you can send them back to your settlement to dump everything.
 
C

cartman414

Member
AndrewDean84xX said:
How can a dev legitimately handle something like this?

I get it. It doesn't bother me.

Am I wrong in thinking this complaint sounds like: Why have radiation or health and not infinite ammo?
Click to expand...

Apples to oranges. The issue is carrying around modding junk, not survival tools.

I think the omission of dialogue trees is a little more offensive from what I hear. Guess they don't feel the mainstream and press throngs won't appreciate that stuff. (Alas, poor Pillars.)
 
O

Ogimachi

Member
I'm as much a CRPG purist as the next person, but in some games encumbrance might work, in others it doesn't. Sometimes it should be removed for technical reasons alone, such as long loading times (Fallout 4 is one of them). The fact the Ui is fucking awful doesn't help either.
And honestly, in a game where items stay where you put them and even bodies can remain in the same spot, why bother having the mechanic in the first place? All it does is force people to endure more loading screens to get the stuff they want, and in some places that means fighting the same enemies all over again.

I liked PoE's fix for that. You get a limited inventory and a small number of slots for items/equipment you can use in combat, but there's also an infinite storage you can use out of combat.
TronLight said:
I find it funny that of all the RPG mechanics Bethesda removed from Fallout 4, encumbrance wasn't one of them.

People like skills, perks managing, deep dialogue system? Fuck that! They hate encumbrance? Keep it in!
Click to expand...
Very true.
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
antitrop said:
Death is an archaic mechanic, too. Having to reload saves is annoying, you should just be invincible all the time.
Click to expand...
It's all about subjectively balancing what you want the game to be.

These games are so big and expansive in what they offer to different people, yet at the same time it's one of Bethesda's greatest strengths that they're leaving their games to be so flexible and moddable.

I'm sure there are people out there who don't think you're really playing Fallout until you have to manage tightly balanced hunger and thirst systems, fighting for true survival out there in the wasteland. Others don't want to bother with inventory management and the encumbrance limit. Yet others enable godmode and noclip and just fly through the wasteland, taking the content tourist route, poking in to see the sights here and there - the beautiful thing is that all are valid approaches to experiencing that game and it's all down to personal taste.

Bethesda aren't good enough to properly balance their game for everyone out there, so the best they can do (and they found this out years ago) is to leave these things up to their players. I strongly believe that this kind of player-chosen flexibility is a large part of their popularity post Oblivion.

Berrigal said:
Never really played Fallout that much myself, but that reminds me exactly of Demon's Souls. yes, I'm sure these upgrade materials WOULD way a fuckton because they're rocks, but every time it happens you just get annoyed and end up leaving the materials there. Thankfully they got rid of it for the later games, but I can definitely see how it would be an issue. Is there any way to upgrade your weight load in Fallout? Or rather, how much of an issue is it?
Click to expand...
Demon's Souls is an interesting example, because while they had a pretty annoying inventory management weight limit, they then let you use all your upgrade materials straight from Stockpile Thomas, even though you were miles away upgrading your weapons in the Blacksmith's place.

Obviously the devs thought while it was ok to have the player adhere to their "realistic" rules of inventory management, it would be too bothersome and frustrating to force the player to carry the upgrade materials with them while visiting the blacksmith. That, apparently, crossed the line for them in terms of keeping a sense of realism vs reducing user friendliness. So again, it's all a matter of balancing. It makes sense that they took that mechanic out of the series completely for the sequels yet kept the (important, meaningful) equipment weight mechanic.

devilsadvocat said:
Why not just dump all your equipment to your partner in the wastelands???? Damn I hate when people who write articles don't even know the mechanics of the game they are playing

Granted fallout4 can be more vague than a from software title at times but your companion is a walking chest for you to dump weighty objects into
Click to expand...
If it doesn't really matter from an in-world standpoint and your companions are magical walking chests anyway, I'd rather cut down on one or two additional screens of inventory management with a console command.
 
P

Primethius

Banned
I like the mechanic but hate that you are limited in ways to increase your capacity depending on the build path.

I had to spec into Lone Survivor (worth it on Survival anyways as the companions are useless) to alleviate some of my encumbrance issues.
 
U

ultron87

Member
Encumbrance in a game without fast travel is cool. You actually have to make interesting decisions how much stuff from your base you'll bring along on your long journey, what things you'll pick up along the way to bring back, and what you leave behind. You can come back to get stuff, but it requires significant investment of time and resources.

In a game where you can just bounce around the map for free it removes the interesting choices and just becomes "ugh, I'm full again, I guess I'll spend a minute traveling home and unloading".
 
X

xir

Likely to be eaten by a grue
Demon's Souls to Dark Souls comparison:

Get read of carry weight limit, keep equip weight limit.

edit: When i was little and we played DnD our DM always gave us bags of holding right away, cause who wants to deal with that?
 
B

Balphon

Member
I've always taken encumbrance as a not-so-subtle design hint that I really shouldn't pick up everything I see.

If anything I think the real solution to this problem is to make fast travel more restrictive.
 
Hendrick's

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
shandy706 said:
For those on console that want to increase your carrying capacity.

1. Drop the "I'm SPECIAL" book

2. Command Dogmeat to get the book

3. When Dogmeat stops, and he is standing upright, grab the book before he bends over to get it.

4. Pick up the new one he drops. Then drop the new and original book.


When you pick them both up you'll get a point to put into strength.
Click to expand...

That's dupe son.
 
S

Snkfanatic

Banned
mindsale said:
It's easily the least fun part of the game.

Not using a strength build? Then prepare to leave a dungeon 3 times to offload mats.
Click to expand...

Ya normally I would say that's what the developers wanted but with the settlement building it seems like a silly thing to have in place.
 
P

pantsmith

Member
To this game's credit, part of the *game* is managing your inventory because you are wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland and have to make difficult decisions like "What do I pack?" and "Is this tin can really worth space in my bag?".

You have a relationship with loot, the choice of which loot to take carries actual weight, which in turn sells the fiction of the universe. Its key to the whole ethos of exploring and surviving. Removing the requirement changes the game in profound ways.

PLUS, if its really such a big deal, you gather up all the loot from a location and leave it in a container by a fast travel location. It takes a couple minutes of your time and then you are all set.
 
kavanf1

kavanf1

Member
chrominance said:
I feel like this problem has already been solved, and actually it would work really well in Fallout's context. The answer is in Torchlight: you have a pet that you can dump a bunch of stuff on and then send them back to a town to sell your crap. In Fallout this makes even more sense because you can already load up a companion with crap and send them home; all you'd need is the ability to tell that companion to either sell or (much more likely) dump your junk into a workshop.

The best part is it relieves the pain of encumbrance but in a way that can be tuned so as not to completely break the game. First, you have to send your companion away, which means you have to pay a price for continuing to loot things without returning to a settlement. The amount of time your companion takes to get to a settlement and dump stuff can be tweaked to make this cost higher or lower. Second, you can restrict the types of goods the companion will take to a settlement, i.e. junk is okay but you're going to have to decide if you want that sweet missile launcher or not.

I don't know if implementing a Torchlight-like system is the best answer, but I think it would help with the issue of encumbrance forcing you to stop for ten minutes deciding what to keep/drop, but doesn't allow you to just pick up whatever you want without penalty.
Click to expand...

That is a really great idea. I could live with encumbrance if the companions could do that.
 
C

Coffee Dog

Banned
BruceLeeRoy said:
It is a bullshit, hampering gameplay mechanic that I have put up with 20+ years and it needs to die
Click to expand...

And what does it hamper you from doing? Being able to equip all the armor and weapons? Is that necessary?

I just find it amusing that the only element that carry weight adds is decision making, and you're claiming that not only does it deserve to go extinct, but that the discussed level of fine tuning is something that belongs in the past.
 
M

MrDaravon

Member
dimb said:
RE4 tightly controls resource drops and attempts to starve the player of resources, making inventory management an interesting aspect of the game where players are pushed into a situation where judgement comes into play on what items will be truly useful, or fit the player's style.

Fallout 4 encourages and pushes for players to pick up massive amounts of what the game itself even refers to as "junk". Ammo is massively plentiful, and carry weights can be overridden by hocking stuff off on a companion. The resource collection calls for the player to absorb everything, but then punishes them for exceeding a mostly arbitrary limit. Ultimately mechanics like fast travel and an unlimited space bank mean that players can easily work around the weight limits, but only by engaging in tedious menu management that sends them back and forth across the landscape. There is no real challenge posed by the weight limits in Fallout 4. Just unnecessary restrictions that up the time in inventory management to somewhat absurd levels.
Click to expand...

This. So much this. Encumbrance was an issue in Fallout 3/NV, but the majority of that was caused by being a hoarder a lot of the time. The problem with Fallout 4 is that they made literally 99.9% of the items in the entire world useful, which is good! But they didn't do anything within the game system to deal with handling all of that junk (which was useless 95%+ of the time in previous games). It's especially bad early on because the player has no idea what's going to be useful or not down the line for settlement building and crafting. I assume it's partially memory/menu limitations that prevent you from holding all junk items at one time. I'm about 60 hours in, and on the junk tab alone at my main workshop bench it takes 27 seconds just to scroll from the top of the list to the bottom. I imagine on consoles that probably becomes a technical issue if that was all in your inventory all of the time.

At the same time you need some sort of balance because with no weight limit at all people will just carry all of the crazy heavy guns all of the time even though hilariously all ammo in the game weighs nothing. That's a good thing, but in respect to this discussion it highlights how insane it is that I can carry over ten thousand rounds of ammunition, but this single tin can weighs more than all of that.

I'd say a good solution would be to keep the weight system as-is, but allow the ability to send your companion back to whatever town you choose to dump anything you give them, similar to Torchlight 2. You trade losing your companion for 5-10 minutes or whatever but in return only have to spend a few seconds dumping your junk (or whatever) tab on them and telling them to go. Would seem fair to me and make some amount of sense in the world at least.
 
L

lukeskymac

Member
This is a consequence of Bethesda games being really loot-centered. NV+Hardcore+Jsawyer's 50-pounds-base-plus-10-per-Strength-point extra limitations make decisions much easier because you'll only grab what you absolutely have to plus stuff with REALLY good value/weight ratio. It's also easier to manage when you do get overencumbered and it's healthier to the game economy.
 
A

Afrodium

Banned
Putting points in the perk that increases carry weight doesn't feel like I'm improving my character so much as its reducing tedium. It's a perk that makes you see less loading screens. That's s problem.
 
bryanee

bryanee

Member
I don't mind a weight mechanic but I do mind being slowed to a fecking crawl. They can have the weight mechanic so when you are maxed out you cant carry anything else until you have dropped/sold/whatever you want to get rid of but it shouldn't slow you down if its at max.
 
B

booxohan

Neo Member
Here is what I would do If I cared enough to revert my carryweight back to default. Scavenging runs with minimal equipment and a companion packmule. Revisit any area previously cleared out of enemies with the sole goal to just loot everything for crafting and base building. Hell, don't even loot anything the first time you clear any location because that's one of the most annoying habits of my gameplay. Oh look a couple of raiders 2 feet next to me? Let me interrupt my gameplay and pick up his dead friends loot first. There is probably more supplies out there than necessary and you don't need it all.
 
S

Stallion Dan

Member
It's always sucked, but it sucks in Fallout 4 especially because now all that shit you ignored in the past games you need to pick up and take back to settlements for resources.

Plus I think generally players will have less strength/carry weight due to the new perk system, and the fact that non-charisma builds suffer with settlements so that is hogging quite a few SPECIAL points.
 
R

RealityPales

Member
"You seem to spend more time in the menu than in the game"

THIS. A thousand times, this.

I spend at least 20% of my time in the menu tossing shit around.

The least they could do is have junk take up no weight when in your inventory. I mean, c'mon.
 
D

dity

Member
Snkfanatic said:
Ya normally I would say that's what the developers wanted but with the settlement building it seems like a silly thing to have in place.
Click to expand...

I just go back to a place and loot it afterwards if I want resources for settlement building. I'm not one of those "I WILL GO TO THIS LOCATION ONCE, AND I MEAN ONLY ONCE!" players.
 
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