This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I’m more baffled why game devs continue to implement inventory limitations at all. I have yet to see a game that wouldn’t be significantly improved by just giving the player infinite inventory space.
I’m a game developer and honestly, you are kind of right. It makes the game more fun to be able to haul around things infinitely. A lot of game developers put in cheats specifically so they can either just spawn what they need or carry everything or both. That said, it also ruins the game incredibly well after 2 minutes of you dicking around and having fun with every item without issue.
Overall the basic issue is twofold. One, if you let the player carry everything, then some players are going to look and dig through levels to find everything. Two, Some players won’t do this so you need to stock your levels with enough obvious items to keep the players who don’t explore stocked enough to keep playing. If you do that then the items the exploration players are looking for are just either overpowering them or not giving them any benefits like collectibles. There is a middle ground to this and make exploration reward items different playstyles. Like in Deus Ex, a lot of exploration bonus items are stealth based. Meaning if you want to do a stealth playthrough you’ll be exploring a lot and thus you’ll find less ammo which is on guards or in the middle of guarded areas and you’ll find more hack tools and lockpicks.
So problem solved right? But wait… Deus Ex’s inventory is… exactly like REs. Why? Because the issue above was the basic issue of why to even include inventory. Now we bring in what it adds to the game. Player choice and agency. As the player, you get to pick your own path. In any game with an inventory, you are going to get to pick which things you keep and which you don’t. This means you have to actively make choices according to your playstyle. In Deus Ex the question boils down to, do you take the big fuck off GEP gun or do you keep your inventory lean for lockpicks, pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles so you can use whatever ammo you come across. In the first Deus Ex, ammo is very scarce. Thus having room for ammo and the tools to use it is very important. a GEP gun only really works on 4-6 enemies and the ammo is huge as well as the gun. Taking up around a third of the inventory, maybe more, depending on if you get inventory upgrades. This is an active playstyle choice.
Some games are simply built around inventory management, likewise, some games are built around unlimited inventory. The latest Hitman (2016-2021) series allows unlimited inventory and you can certainly build around it. The issue with Hitman is that you lose all of your inventory every time the mission ends then you can only bring select things into a mission to keep your inventory slim. It still rewards the player for exploration because now you know another path through the mission which potentially gets you another item or in a place you didn’t know you could get without the right outfit. Because the missions are replayable the information you gain in one playthrough helps the next. Knowledge of that item existing in that location is enough of a reward.
@Pseu@beehaw.org mentioned that survival games need inventory management. I pose they don’t. Crashlands is a survival game without inventory management and doesn’t even have an inventory screen for better or worse. Inventory management, as far as I am aware, isn’t a requirement of any genre. If it is then someone out there is going to try to make a game to remove it. There are also games that are solely inventory management like Save Room - Organization Puzzle. There are types of people who like inventory management and those who don’t.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk! I hope this was helpful and interesting.
Now we bring in what it adds to the game. Player choice and agency. As the player, you get to pick your own path. In any game with an inventory, you are going to get to pick which things you keep and which you don’t. This means you have to actively make choices according to your playstyle. In Deus Ex the question boils down to, do you take the big fuck off GEP gun or do you keep your inventory lean for lockpicks, pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles so you can use whatever ammo you come across. In the first Deus Ex, ammo is very scarce. Thus having room for ammo and the tools to use it is very important. a GEP gun only really works on 4-6 enemies and the ammo is huge as well as the gun. Taking up around a third of the inventory, maybe more, depending on if you get inventory upgrades. This is an active playstyle choice.
Yeah, this is the usual justification for limited inventory space, but I’m not buying it. I don’t think it adds choice at all, quite the opposite. You could just as easily make the choice to not take the GEP gun even if you had infinite inventory space, so contrary to what you said, the limitation doesn’t actually add any choice. What it does do is remove the choice of taking the gun anyway “just in case” even if you’re on a stealthy playthrough, and that has the knock-on effect of removing a whole bunch of other choices later down the line. You can’t pull a “surprise, motherfucker” moment on some hapless enemy. You can’t change your playstyle later if you discover that stealth really isn’t as much fun as you thought it would be. And perhaps most importantly, you can’t choose to keep playing stealthily despite having a big fuckoff gun. Choice only exists when alternatives exist. By taking those alternatives away and locking the player into one playstyle, you’re not adding choice, you’re diminishing it.
This is basically the same discussion that occurred around Skyrim, where Bethesda made the controversial design decision of getting rid of character classes in favor of completely free-form character leveling. Some people argued that this meant that you couldn’t choose your playstyle anymore, and I always found that logic to be completely backwards. Of course you can still choose your playstyle, but now you make that choice by actually playing the game in a particular way rather than by clicking stuff in a menu at the beginning. Surely it’s self-evident that this is better…?
Inventory limitations (and character classes) are therefore just one aspect of the larger question of whether or not to lock the player into their choices or allow them to play a jack-of-all-trades or change their playstyle later. Having played a lot of games from either side of that spectrum, I’m very firmly in favor of the latter. It’s easy to point to Deus Ex, regarded by many as the best game ever made, as an example of how to do it right. But the reality is that most games aren’t that good and don’t offer multiple equally well fleshed out playstyles to choose from. What if the game is badly balanced and your chosen playstyle ceases to be viable halfway through? What if it turns out that the playstyle simply isn’t as fun as it initially seemed? If the game falls into the former category of locking you into your choices, you’re screwed and have to start over. That’s just frustrating and disrespectful of the player’s time. Game devs would be wise to eat their humble pie and allow a lot of leeway to the player not just because the player may have made some bad choices when playing the game but also because the devs themselves may have made some bad choices when making it. Only a perfect game is justified in being unforgiving, and precious few are.
Now you might say, “But Sordid, if you allow the players to have everything, they’re going to optimize the fun out of the game and play an OP jack-of-all-trades!” And my response to that is, “So what?” It’s their choice, let them. If adding choice were the goal as you claim, it should be a no-brainer. Yeah, the temptation to optimize is strong, and sticking to your chosen playstyle can be difficult at times, but nothing worthwhile is easy. And some people genuinely enjoy being an OP jack-of-all-trades. Why take that choice away from them when it doesn’t add any choice to anyone else?
I don’t agree wholeheartedly but I see your point and agree that some games benefit from unlimited inventory. How do you feel about inventory systems that are half-unlimited? E.g. You can pick up everything but it limits you on the max amount of ammo and items. Like Doom.
Realistically, if you have unlimited inventory is there any reason you wouldn’t take an item if it had no drawbacks? I mean without the choice being forced, it’s not really a choice. The player is just going to collect the thing 99% of the time. That’s just human nature. The limited inventory systems are supposed to make you question why you are picking up something. It works for the majority of players out there which is why a lot of games implement limited inventory systems. Games like Doom, and Half-Life. They don’t have a limited inventory system because the player should collect everything they can and it’s only limited by max values so they can make encounters that force you to collect things as you fight. This also forces a player choice on if they should switch weapons or run in for ammo. It gives player motivation in the moment and Doom 2016 used this brilliantly by remembering why ammo limitations exist in the first place.
I do feel like Deus Ex’s limited inventory system benefits it directly as while you get to choose a playstyle, you aren’t ever locked in by it. You can just drop your stealth stuff and start collecting weapons. The thing that locks you into a playstyle in Deus Ex is actually the skill system in which you can’t shoot a weapon accurately if you didn’t put points into it. The augmentation system does this as well. In many games with limited inventory, they are accompanied by a skill system that locks you into your previous choices. Even the Fallout series never went away from the whole giving you skill points and having you guess which playstyle you want. I’d say it’s less the inventory system limiting you from choices rather than your skills.
Skyrim is a tricky one because if you want to switch playstyles you need to then have a 90s-style montage where you learn a bunch of archery or spells, except there are no cuts in real life. The montage takes hours as you just do something over and over again to level up a skill that potentially should have just been raised up as you went. It trades time investment for switching playstyles. Skyrim also though, has a limited inventory system. Do you feel like Skyrim’s inventory system actually limits you? For me, I feel like Skyrim’s inventory is big enough to hold everything I could possibly want to take into an encounter and still have room for loot. The only limit is how much loot can I bring back.
Lastly, if the player is going to optimize the fun out of the game and play an OP playstyle the response should be “So what?” the argument against this is simple. They are going to play your game for 5 minutes, say it’s boring and easy, leave a negative Steam review, your game will fall into the mostly negative category, you’ll not make enough to pay back your publisher, you’ll have to close down your studio and live in a box on the side of the road. Like, realistically if the majority of players are going to optimize the fun out of a game then the game isn’t fun or entertaining for the majority of those who will play it. Alternatively though, just put in some cheats that give you unlimited inventory and let the rare players that absolutely hate limited inventory just cheat. That method works for a lot of games.
That said I also agree a lot of games just do what their inspirations do without questioning why they were put there or what they add to the game. I could see a lot of games that could potentially play differently without a limited inventory system. I know I played a lot of Fallout and Skyrim just cheating myself a bigger inventory. I honestly don’t love inventory management at all. A lot of the early to mid-90s games didn’t have limited inventory and in some regards, it made them better. I see a strong reason for it but I also see how limited inventory systems simply make a game more engaging. Heat Signature is an interesting one that is limited on the number of inventory slots. It really makes the player choose how they will approach a mission with the information provided which tells you almost everything you’ll encounter. A limited inventory in that game also keeps you looking around for new items that you can teleport right into your hand. So you are constantly able to adjust on the fly and improvise.
If you have infinite inventory space, then you need a way to navigate through infinite items. Towards the end of the game, a player could easily have nearly every item in the game. For some games, that would be fine, but for many, that would make the list of items prohibitively long. Filtering and searching would help, but if you’re looking for an item that you forgot the name of, a search doesn’t necessarily do much.
Then there’s balance reasons. Some games use their inventory system to limit the player, making sure they don’t start a level with enough health potions and grenades to cheese every fight.
In survival games, a finite inventory sets the gameplay loop: you go exploring/mining and then return to base, drop off your stuff and head out again. It makes your base valuable, if only because that’s where you keep most of your resources and moving would be hard. It also gives the player a break from one task. I played a Minecraft mod that gave me an effectively infinite inventory. I went mining for so long that it started to feel like an awful slog. Because my mine shafts went on too long, getting back was itself a hassle. When I reverted back to a more typical inventory size, I could feel how a full inventory breaks up the grind and prevents mining from getting out of hand.
Filtering and searching would help, but if you’re looking for an item that you forgot the name of, a search doesn’t necessarily do much.
Keywords are the answer. If the player forgets whether the healing item is called “medkit”, “first aid”, or “bandage”, just let them search for “heal”.
Some games use their inventory system to limit the player, making sure they don’t start a level with enough health potions and grenades to cheese every fight.
That’s better solved by just not giving the player that many to begin with. Some games adjust their item drops based on what you already have, so if you’re running low on pistol ammo, they’ll give you some. If you already have five grenades, you won’t find any more until you use some. That achieves the same goal without limiting your ability to pick up different types of items.
In survival games, a finite inventory sets the gameplay loop: you go exploring/mining and then return to base, drop off your stuff and head out again. It makes your base valuable, if only because that’s where you keep most of your resources and moving would be hard.
That’s exactly one of the things that I hate about limited inventory space. It’s effectively the same as hauling vendor trash, and that’s something that I view as an unnecessary interruption of gameplay. “You’ve had fun killing mobs for five whole minutes, time to do a chore!” Yeah, no, that can fuck right off. All the way off.
I played a Minecraft mod that gave me an effectively infinite inventory. I went mining for so long that it started to feel like an awful slog.
But that was your own choice…?
Plus you can put the items into categories. Fallout/Skyrim games still have a weight limitation but even in the middlegame most players are carrying hundreds of items. The devs helped alleviate frustration by categorizing everything. Need health? Go to the “aid” tab. Need new armor? Click the “armor tab.” Etc
I love how modded minecraft has infinite different options for inventory management. Enderchest in a pouch, automatic pickup and sorting, intelligent sorting buttons, autopopulating hotbars, auto delete, entire mods like AE2 just to organize your chest system with a searchbar. It’s a nice commentary on how difficult balancing a game around collecting limited resources and accessing them can be. The fact that certain people like certain inventory mods is telling.
Pathologic 2
God, seeing screencaps of Minecraft with terrible hotbars, or anyone else’s Destiny inventory (seriously, delete shit, it’s only your fault that your postmaster is full by the end of a strike)
You don’t like it when their 4 and 8 are dirt and gravel respectively while they embark on their megaproject that uses neither dirt nor gravel?
Destiny players are the worst… “We need more vault space!” No, you need to learn to let go. Why do you “need” 14 different kinetic Scout Rifles. Pro-tip - YOU DON’T. I’ll make an exception for elemental weapons, it makes sense to have one for each element. But other than that? Nope!
Probs cause they randomly buff/nerf stuff, so they keep them incase. Bungies own fault for having no idea what to do with the game changing systems constantly, so there’s no easy way to get an exact item back once its dropped.
I would argue that you don’t need any non-exotic scout rifles at all these days, or primaries in general.
I do have about 30 different shotguns that I never use though.
Exotics too, if it’s not an Exotic you use often, you can make due with a collections roll. It’s cheap to MW if you’re at the point where you have multiple builds, and weapons are just weapons, if there’s no high kill tracker, you don’t need to worry about pulling (Hawkmoon, DMT, and the craftables non-withstanding).
Shit purples drop like candy too, so infusion fodder’s not an issue.
Inventory management wasn’t really much of a concern for me in the ones where the key items/puzzle solution items aren’t held in the same container. I could have sworn 4 had that tho. Maybe it’s just the remake that changed it? 🤔 I’m currently playing the remake and it’s been putting key items in their own inventory space.
Both versions of 4 had treasures and key items stored separately, I think.
I spent way too much time coming up with the most efficient and organized system in RE8.
