I'll never understand why ppl use inventory management as a negative in games...
It's part of the game, it isn't an action only game. Inventory management, having the right equipment/Strats/backup plans/etc ready, is part of the game. Maybe u don't feel like doing it, but that doesn't make it "meaningless".
Also who's forcing you to pick up every drop? The game tells u what weapons are equal stronger or weaker than your current equipment b4 u pick it up
There are some people who definitely hate all types of micromanagement and theres no helping that but I do both agree and disagree with you.
Micromanagement and inventroy management can either be great fun and add to the game (Resident Evil) or detract from it (Fallout).
I feel that in order for inventory management to be good there needs to be a
difficult choice that you decide on what to bring and what to leave behind.
I bolded and underlined difficult choice because it is SO crucial to doing proper and fun inventory management rather than slapping on a weapon durability system and pickups for the sake of the genre.
Lets look at Classic Resident Evil. You only have 6 slots which you can fill with anything. Sure you could fill all your slots so your always prepared but then you are unable to pick up anything else. So now the question is how many slots do you leave empty and what do you bring?
The choice is difficult and it is not set by the game. You as the player must decide this and you can either go with no inventory or (close) to full inventory and still beat the game either way yet what you decide impacts how you play. If I choose not to bring an ink ribbon then I obviously would be more careful around zombies or heal more as it might be awhile before my next save. If I choose not to bring shotgun ammo, I'll be wasting it on a horde of zombies if something even more dangerous lurks in the next room. etc.
In fallout there is rarely a difficult choice. The game wants you to pick up literally every nook and cranny you can find down to a wooden spork but then punishes you for doing it too much. Yet you just go to an inventory to hoard it all anyways. The only things you really want to keep are the weapons you use and your armor you wear. Everything else just goes straight to an inventory box at the soonest possible moment just so you can collect more objects to put in your inventory box. yo dawg I heard you like hoarding.
There is not much of a choice. You'll be hard pressed to keep a toaster or a wooden block. Theres no reason outside of quest items which in many cases don't even have weight. So then inventory becomes management becomes annoying.
Same applies in Ni-Oh. You find another sword as backup so you pick it up because weapons can break yet theres not really the tough choices you have to make. If your inventory is full you just get rid of any duplicates or weak weapons. If a weapon drops you'll pick it up. I'm not really trading anything except inconvenience when my inventory is full and I just have to get rid of the shit.
Sorry for the massive essay lol.
TL;DR for inventory to be done right every item should have a clear purpose and affect how you play the game if you had it vs if you didnt. And the game should present difficult choices in what you should bring and what you should leave behind.
Collecting all the shit that drops until a message says "encumbered" is just annoying and dare I say 'lazy' method of implementing micromanagement. Might as well just give infinite inventory in that case and save us the hassle.
