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[Octavia]

Games often have limits in place for certain items. For example, you can only carry so many healing items, restoration items, or ammo amounts at a certain time in various games. As a specific example, I'm playing Metro Last Light on the hardest difficulty and I've reached the limit on many of the items I'm carrying. I find this incredibly annoying. If I want to take that extra medkit with me, let me. I earned it by not using any so far.

What are your thoughts on these restrictions? Don't they seem pretty arbitrary? "You can only carry 3 medkits even if the rest of your inventory is entirely empty!" How does that make any sense?

If the game designers want to impose a limit on the amount of items I can carry for the sake of 'realism' give me a global weight amount I can carry and let me choose what I want to take with me, like the Elder Scrolls games. If it's for balance reasons, maybe balance the game around having more than whatever arbitrary limit was imposed if the player has earned them.

Are these a good idea or do you find them annoying too?

 

[SerTapTap]

It can be important for balance. Tales would probably require much shittier healing items if they didn't limit you to 15 gels.

Speaking of Tales, I like when item limits are thought out by-item instead of a global limit. Terraria's initial 99 item stack limit was asinine for things like dirt/wood. Glad they changed that.

Not every game is geared for a TES style weight system, and those can be very broken. Suddenly you're carrying around 500 full heal options instead of armor because they're more effective and armor is heavy. Plus TES's inventory system is a HUGE amount of cognitive load. Making every item a life or death decision is hugely different from "okay I'll stock up on items *fill inventory* great."

 

[boltz]

Dead Rising 2 does something similar to what you've mentioned - you have a limited amount of inventories slots that can be used to carry anything, so you can choose to carry all health-replenishing items or weapons or whatever mix you want. I liked that system as it adds another layer of strategy to the game.

Another way of balancing the use of health items and preventing them from being spammed all the time is to make them an item that has to be equipped and takes time to use, as in Far Cry 3 and Dead Rising. So if you need to use a health item, you are risking life and limb as you cannot defend yourself for the time being.

 

[fredrancour]

Weight systems drive me crazy. If a developer feels a game needs item limits for balance, I think I prefer by-item caps.

 

[Kazerei]

Monster Hunter is a prime example. It doesn't bother me though because it's balanced.

 

[badboy78660]

The Last of Us has this as well. Though annoying, yes, I feel that it actually adds to the game-play rather than detracting from it.

 

[Dr Dogg]

For me this is inventory limits and management done right

And who doesn't love the old Inventory TETRIS sub-game too.

 

[SerTapTap]

For me this is inventory limits and management done right


And who doesn't love the old Inventory TETRIS sub-game too.

It was fun, but much like Dead Space 3's crafting system, I feel it really wrecks the tension. Not that RE4 had as much as prior games to start with.

 

[Dee Dee]

This thread should name the worst offender: Animal Crossing.

For a game about hoarding, I have to say the inventory management is disgusting. I hate shuffeling fruit around to make room for another fruit that I then manually stack on top of another fruit to make room for the next. Urgh!!

 

[Flandy]

For me this is inventory limits and management done right


And who doesn't love the old Inventory TETRIS sub-game too.

Where does Leon even keep that briefcase? He just stuff it down his pocket?

 

[SerTapTap]

This thread should name the worst offender: Animal Crossing.

For a game about hoarding, I have to say the inventory management is disgusting. I hate shuffeling fruit around to make room for another fruit that I then manually stack on top of another fruit to make room for the next. Urgh!!

AC's problems are awkward management,non-automatic stacking for fruit and low number of slots, not inventory limits per item. Can't believe they finally let us stack fruit...but make us manually open the menu to do it each time.

 

[TheYanger]

Per item restrictions are for game balance. I don't mind them. If you didn't use medkits on part A, that's great, you still have more than someone that blew through their limit, at some point it becomes "Hey you did the first part of the game really well, now you're invincible' if they don't do that, cause they're not going to make impossible for people that didn't do that.

I can do inventory tetris on a PC, like Diablo 2 never bugged me at all. On a console? F that noise.

 

[Deadbeat]

For me this is inventory limits and management done right


And who doesn't love the old Inventory TETRIS sub-game too.

That and/or weight. Either works in my eyes. It lets you customize your loadout to your exact choices.

 

[Freedom = $1.05]

the Witcher games drive me insane with this shit.

 

[ClaptoVaughn]

There needs to be some sort of limit, especially if it's health related.

A weight/grid system is good because it doesn't set limits on individual items. While it lets you carry as many health items as your maximum carry capacity, it comes with the cost of not being able to carry other potentially useful items. It also lets you focus your playstyle a bit; if you want to fire nothing but rockets, go ahead and stock up on rockets and nothing else.

I often impose limits on myself that are lower than what the game sets, as I gradually get a feel for the game's difficulty. Or sometimes I simply won't craft the next pouch that allows me to carry more stuff if I feel I already have an adaquate capacity.

I don't recall an inventory limit system ever annoying me. There were probably individual times that I wished I had more space but I made do with it.

 

[SixMachine]

Somehow having something not fit in a carrying case like RE4 or Diablo does not piss me off as much as being over encumbered in the TES games. It's because in one I usually know that something doesn't fit and I can't take it, and the other usually I get over the weight limit on accident (even though the number is in the corner somewhere) and walk slowly, then I have to go back in my menu and find something to throw out. I guess I just prefer saving room instead of managing weight ahead of time, because you can save say a 3x6 space for more loot, but you can't always plan for 50 lbs to carry all the loot you get in a dungeon plus some dragon bones and what not