Encumbrance annoyance varies from major to a meh, depending upon what else is in game. If we have a rough item con system that gives us a very general idea of item value, then encumbrance isn't to bad. If we have no way to guage rough approximate value, then encumbrance is an exercise in frustration.
Having to choose which items to dump while adventuring when I need to be in town to access the information is an exercise in frustration. Forced uninformed decisions is not the same thing as making meaningful choices.
The movement speed debuff needs to have a max debuff value that is faster than snail speed. I would really like to see visual signs of encumbrance--imagine if the walking animation got replaced with someone dragging a giant bag.
If encumbrance doesn't impair climbing and swimming, it loses all claim to any feelings of realism. And I don't mean a speed debuff--climbing should be much harder and swimming should drown you if you don’t get out quick.
There should also be a bonus to movement, climbing, and swimming when encumbrance is really low.
One class, probably the wizard, should have a spell that allows them to magically transfer items, including those of groupmates, to specific holding areas. Characters can then go to that specific location and pay to retrieve their items.
I'm geniunely curious why you'd have to be in town to have access to the information of the value of items. Wouldn't your past experience give you an indication of the value? Are spider eyes worth more or less than bronze weapons, for example? If you're refering to items that you've never even seen before then I'm definitely on the side of the fence that you *shouldn't* know it's value, you've never seen it before and you have no info about it. Maybe you could ask your groupmates, or you could choose to drop something else and keep the new item to investigate further. I do understand the argument from a gaming perspective, but I think it's really cool when the game does not answer all your questions for you in ways that don't really make sense.
Maximum encumbrance debuff that is faster than snail speed? I disagree. The maximum should be total inability to move. One shouldn't be able to carry 52 sets of plate armour back to town at a speed somewhere between normal and snail speed. In fact there should also be a maximum encumbrance altogether so that regardless of movement speed you cannot carry more than a set amount.
Renarius. I can think of many reasons I would have no idea what something is worth. I may never have gotten spider eyes before. Prices may vary greatly by area and race and I might not know the local prices yet. I might not know if an item is magical or not and, if it is, whether it is +1. +3 or cursed. I entirely agree with you that this is a good thing not a bad thing.
Ranarius said:I'm geniunely curious why you'd have to be in town to have access to the information of the value of items. Wouldn't your past experience give you an indication of the value? Are spider eyes worth more or less than bronze weapons, for example?
I'm assuming we can't access markets/vendors remotely, so I'd need to be in town to look up prices.
If you're refering to items that you've never even seen before then I'm definitely on the side of the fence that you *shouldn't* know it's value, you've never seen it before and you have no info about it.
I'm not looking for much, but my character presumably would have enough world knowledge to have a rough idea of at least non-rare, non-magic items. Thus, I would like to see an estimated value (which could be a range). This estimated value should slowly become more accurate as your character buys /sells the item.
For example, I loot an Eye of Newt and it has an estimated value of 500 copper to 1000 copper. After I've sold a few, the estimated value is narrowed to 500 to 900 copper.
An estimated value could still be wrong,, but it allows us to make decisions with at least a modicum of information so we feel like we're more than randomly deciding. I especially want something like this because I suck at memorizing and tracking the value of thousands of items. Rote memorization of bulk price data shouldn't be a game 'skill' we need.
This also helps casual / intermittent players since it's hard for them to keep current on memorizing prices. And feeling like they don't know enough to even value loot drops can add to feelings of frustration and disconnection, making them more likely to feel like they don't belong and thus they would be more likely to quit.
High value items shouldn't generate an estime but instead give a message like "estimated value: possibly a great sum".
dorotea said:Maximum encumbrance debuff that is faster than snail speed? I disagree. The maximum should be total inability to move. One shouldn't be able to carry 52 sets of plate armour back to town at a speed somewhere between normal and snail speed. In fact there should also be a maximum encumbrance altogether so that regardless of movement speed you cannot carry more than a set amount.
There are better ways to handle inventory than strictly using encumbrance and strictly limiting that to movementspeed debuff. I agree that 52 sets of plate is too much (about 50 too much, in my opinion, and that's with the one you're wearing counting).
I personally hate high drop rate and low inventory space, but there is room for something smarter and more interesting. Large items (like weapons and armor) could have a limited few, pre-assigned inventory slots available. For instance, characters could have armor storage that fits only two plate armor sets, three chain mail / leather, or four cloth / robes. When presented with loot of this type, your designated space comes up on screen as well, so you know what you have and if you want to replace it.
This limit to large items would also make loot of this type more meaningful and not subject to farming.
If we are to have encumbrance, it should also impact stamina, dexterity, and strenght, along with swimming, climbing, and gliding. Having gliding impacted could make for some funny moments where grossly overloaded characters drop rapidly.
I agree that there are other ways to handle excessive packratism - whether they are as good as encumbrance is another matter entirely. I admit that I am somewhat biased by having played computer games that did have encumbrance or very similar systems since way before EQ was released. To me it is a known system - very well knoiwn - that works. Whereas when you mention an inventory box just for gear it strikes me that we are making something very simple far too complicated, as distinct from simply limiting how encumbered a character can get. Plus your "two plate armor sets" is already more than you had endorsed earlier in your post (one plus what you are wearing) and that ignores anything else in inventory.
I said that a system of different boxes for different types of gear was more complicated and in a sense it is. Compared with just having one inventory system and you can carry whatever you like as long as it doesn't exceed weight and encumbrance limits. Yet in a sense I was very wrong. Having the multiple types of box system is far too oversimplified in a way. It does not factor in weight and volume of what you are carrying at all. It does not factor in how strong you are.
I am very much a fan of choices. Choices that matter. I well remember, as I am sure you do, the need to balance out different attributes back in the days before games like WoW oversimplified everything enormously to appeal to the masses - masses that didn't want to be bothered with choices or actually having to think about anything but looks when creating a character. By having one or maybe two attributes all that mattered for any class and having the impact of starting attributes diminish to meaninglessness by level two. Maybe level three. I would much prefer having strength matter in a significant way to all classes and having to spend an hour in character creation agonizing over whether I want to have maximum "min-max" combat attributes or whether I want to be able to carry more than 10 copper pieces and a dagger after winning a boss fight.
Thus, I would like to see an estimated value (which could be a range). This estimated value should slowly become more accurate as your character buys /sells the item.
You would, as a person, gain that information over time as you play. To me that is part of player knowledge mattering. Finance and economy is an important and fun part of the game and players learning the value of items should matter, in my opinion. If the game does the work for me it takes that opportunity away. I do understand the argument, and I can see why many players would be in favor of something like that. I personally am not.
Counterfleche said:Having to choose which items to dump while adventuring when I need to be in town to access the information is an exercise in frustration. Forced uninformed decisions is not the same thing as making meaningful choices.
There should also be a bonus to movement, climbing, and swimming when encumbrance is really low.
One class, probably the wizard, should have a spell that allows them to magically transfer items, including those of groupmates, to specific holding areas. Characters can then go to that specific location and pay to retrieve their items.
I agree with frustration but disagree its always a bad thing. Everything not done automatically for the player is frustrating to someone, but immersive mechanics are often mildly frustrating. If VR implements an auto loot, auto sort/replace, and auto vendor to streamline the game with universal pricing the game is just less immersive. I would be thrilled if VR implemented more nuanced supply and demand. As in the local outpost vendor is flooded with the local drops they won't pay a premium for the items. The tailor vendor in the city pays more for the harvested spider silk. Let people potentially waste endless time attempting to maximize profit but vastly reducing their hourly income.
I hope you are right on the low encumbrance bonus. To add onto this idea, when you die your bags are left on the body right? Not carrying any bags around would make it easier to do the climbing puzzles and mechanics by simply being super low encumbrance. This makes getting back to the corpses beyond a difficult climb check a good bit easier and does it in a nice logical way. This is ideal QoL.
There is a point where every immersive frustration jumps the shark with quality of life changes and removes any positive aspect of the original design. I think a magic bank is jumping the shark here. At that point why not just go full cheese and summon vendors like countless MMOs? The world should be designed with outposts and vendors and the like in mind. Bring factions to the forefront, outposts, inns, NPC merchants, caravans, trappers willing to buy only the leather they are after. Make it places players frequent and meet up, this should be planned out. Regarding banking, a non universal bank or locker in an outpost would be a cool idea to hold some stuff you plan to take back to the city but you don't want to hit the cities again. Perhaps you store all the leathers for crafting and a few potions for when you die and need to find your corpse.
Tbh I enjoyed going for WR bags. It became something to do when the grp wasnt sure what to do or popular places were too crowded/camped, a collection of dropped/crafted WR bags became sort of a player driven personal quest- all due to encumberance.
However to the OP's point I think it can be tweeked from a QOL perspective, like, linked to tradeskills perhaps? so if you are working on smithing and say, the higher your skill the greater percentage WR for any/all ores in your bags. Likewise for other TS items?
This will also allow for player discovered fun cheese because something like "Giants' throwing boulders" -an item put into game by a new VR employee- might be intentionally coded to have 20lb weight per boulder with like godly throwing damage and thats the thing because no one can haul them as they are too heavy but the giants in that area drop them all the time- but be accidentally coded as an ore. So, you could have a savvy dwarf smithy, who is good at throwing from playing darts in the pub every evening, being able to 1. carry and store the boulders in bags because they are "ores" and the dwarf is a smithy so the WR is in effect, 2. able to throw the boulders because the dwarf has hi STR (from smithing or a build) and has high throwing skill. And where no other person can, this player has discovered how and suddenly everyone is working on smithing and throwing and raid leaders are ensuring shamans give STR buffs for that certain event where people need to throw those boulders that everyone has stored in their bank for just this event.
I dont have ideas for coin weight, but maybe it could be a worn effect