this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
67 points (92.4% liked)

Games

16665 readers
782 users here now

Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)

Posts.

  1. News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
  2. Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
  3. No humor/memes etc..
  4. No affiliate links
  5. No advertising.
  6. No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
  7. No self promotion.
  8. No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
  9. No politics.

Comments.

  1. No personal attacks.
  2. Obey instance rules.
  3. No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
  4. Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.

My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.

Other communities:

Beehaw.org gaming

Lemmy.ml gaming

lemmy.ca pcgaming

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
67
Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 Revive Age-Old RPG Debate About Encumbrance - IGN (www.ign.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

It’s a debate as old as role-playing games themselves: should players have to deal with encumbrance?

The recent release of Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 and Bethesda’s Starfield have thrust the encumbrance debate back into the headlines, with both games employing a system that restricts how much stuff you can carry.

While each game employs systems and mechanics that let you carry more and more, it is inevitable that as a player, you’re going to have to spend a decent chunk of your time fussing with managing your character or characters’ carry weight limit.

In Starfield’s case, encumbrance is a big enough issue for some that they are willing to lose access to gaining achievements in order to increase the carry limit via console commands on PC. This in turn has made a mod designed to prevent the achievements from being disabled one of the most popular on NexusMods.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd guess less because they think it's any kind of better to allow unlimited inventory than it is because manually tracking it on paper is tedious.

It's not the same issue with a computer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Absolutely, but video game designers actually amplify the issue by making so much useless shit able to be picked up and adding so many mechanics into a game, where as TTRPGs are often more focused. Starfield (or any bethesda game really) has hundreds of useless items that people can sell, random loot drops, and resources for multiple forms of crafting. It's a fantasy future where we could just let folks "teleport" to a private satellite storage facility or something similar to a bag of holding. Instead we just make gamers focus on inventory management which I doubt anyone finds "fun".

I think there's a delicate balance and I don't think we've hit it. I would love to see some data about how much time people spend doing inventory maintenance in the course of common RPGs. It's one of those modern things like making expansive worlds without fast travel that just feels unnecessary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's really not any different from the mechanic as it's been used in previous Bethesda titles. The soft limit of depleting my oxygen meter rather than hobbling my speed is a little more forgiving, particularly if I'm still picking through a free fire zone.

And once I learned that I could sell to stores directly from my ship hold, my problems kinda dried up. It's mostly learning what things in the field are worth hauling back to town when it's not the apocalypse and duct tape just isn't that special.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Absolutely, but you still have to learn that and it's still work. Early on I had no idea how many credits "a lot". Their defense/damage system is arguably unnecessarily complex in a way that adds to this. Do I need more corrosion protection, radiation, airborne, or thermal? Does it even matter?

Even with some of the advances, it still like an artificial problem that doesn't actually make the game any better. It doesn't really add any difficulty or challenge, and it's certainly not "fun". There's still a lot of streamlining they could do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You have no idea how long I kept rope in my inventory in BG3 thinking it'd actually be of use one day.