Carry weight & inventory management

[Sorbitol]

As a fellow packrat I feel your pain. I made a Cheat Engine script for infinite carrying capacity which you can download here: http://forum.cheatengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=581839

It's for version 0.1.14.2 (Latest update on Steam as of this post). Let me know if it works!

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, so what options could we have?
Let's gather a few that would work well together.

• Reduce sell value of all items slightly, so players can't get rich that quickly. +A bit more for any of the below.
• Allow traders to buy a secondary set of items at a fraction of their worth, f.Ex. Lucas could buy additional weapons at 10% their sell value, increased by mercantile.
• Some traders should buy either scraps or rep. kits in larger quantities.
• Increase the amount of money traders have over the course of the game. That's saying, mostly by player level and story progress.
• Slightly stratify weight, f.Ex. Metal plates could be 20%-25% lighter. ?
• Buff the Packrat feat to 75, at least. Alternatively, keep it at 50, but make it reduce the debuff from encumbrance.
• Make items disappear after a while. What you pick up should be a choice unless you spec for everything, but it isn't if you can just come back and get the rest.

I still don't a problem (with the exception of Fenix point), but I wouldn't die if some of those were, in some way or another, implemented.

Edit: And there comes Sorbitol and fixes nearly all of Elhazzareds Problems. Or at least one of them.

[Sorbitol]

Very nice. It works even with older versions and I don't see why it wouldn't with work with future versions as well. This should make compulsive packrats very happy!

The game is indeed tricky to hack, I never got into CE bytecode hacking. I can barely wrap my head around simple microcontroller RISC assembly, complex x86 software is way too much.

Cool, I'm glad that it works for other version too. 

Yeah, I was lucky this time, only took a couple of tries to find the right opcodes.

[Fenix]

Skill points in crafting isnt a waste points.
I need crafting for my build.
And then I have no problem to carry stuff, except rare cases.

Well, so what options could we have?
Let's gather a few that would work well together.

Allow traders to buy a secondary set of items at a fraction of their worth, f.Ex. Lucas could buy additional weapons at 10% their sell value, increased by mercantile.

I suggested this before, it wasn't enough for Elhazzared.

Some traders should buy either scraps or rep. kits in larger quantities.
Increase the amount of money traders have over the course of the game. That's saying, mostly by player level and story progress.

Good suggestion, but ONLY NOT by player level. Instant disgust!
Story progress - yes, but not leveling, it will ruin all impression.

Make items disappear after a while. What you pick up should be a choice unless you spec for everything, but it isn't if you can just come back and get the rest.

50\50

[Elhazzared]

Well, so what options could we have?
Let's gather a few that would work well together.

• Reduce sell value of all items slightly, so players can't get rich that quickly. +A bit more for any of the below.
• Allow traders to buy a secondary set of items at a fraction of their worth, f.Ex. Lucas could buy additional weapons at 10% their sell value, increased by mercantile.
• Some traders should buy either scraps or rep. kits in larger quantities.
• Increase the amount of money traders have over the course of the game. That's saying, mostly by player level and story progress.
• Slightly stratify weight, f.Ex. Metal plates could be 20%-25% lighter. ?
• Buff the Packrat feat to 75, at least. Alternatively, keep it at 50, but make it reduce the debuff from encumbrance.
• Make items disappear after a while. What you pick up should be a choice unless you spec for everything, but it isn't if you can just come back and get the rest.

I still don't a problem (with the exception of Fenix point), but I wouldn't die if some of those were, in some way or another, implemented.

Edit: And there comes Sorbitol and fixes nearly all of Elhazzareds Problems. Or at least one of them.

Reduce items value, yes, probably not just slightly, there is way too much money floating around.

Allow traders to buy everything. They are traders, it doesn't matters what they specialise in, they are buying cheap from you and will be able to sell at a higher price to someone else (as far as background work goes anyway).

Scarps and repair kits already included above.

Not simply increase, just make them have unlimited amounts of money (this would likely require a much welcome change where money no longer is an item but rather have it on a separate box with total value and also allow for physicly enter the exact quantity of money you want to put).

No weight at all would be the better option, but if you really want to give players pointless chores like in all other games where immersion is broken to go sell stuff mid mission or just dump the inventory somewhere, then at least make all items much lighter, especially the ones which are way heavier than they should be for a game.

Nothing to say about packrat really, in my opinion it shouldn't even be needed but meh.

Make items disapear after a while... Yes, so long as they are not inside a container that is also not a garbage bin.

Sorbitol, I may give that a go once i am less busy, carry weight is one of my major problem with the game though the merchants are definitly the worse. Do you think you can also find a way to disable the buy limits and the type limitations of the merchants? If you could it would be great. definitly would fix the game for me and make me enjoy it once again.

[Fenix]

They are traders, it doesn't matters what they specialise in, they are buying cheap from you and will be able to sell at a higher price to someone else (as far as background work goes anyway).

It does matter. Try to sell tele-set someone who trading a car, he does not buy it from you, maybe for 1\10, and if he is your big friend.

Scarps and repair kits already included above.

Not simply increase, just make them have unlimited amounts of money (this would likely require a much welcome change where money no longer is an item but rather have it on a separate box with total value and also allow for physicly enter the exact quantity of money you want to put).

No weight at all would be the better option, but if you really want to give players pointless chores like in all other games where immersion is broken to go sell stuff mid mission or just dump the inventory somewhere, then at least make all items much lighter, especially the ones which are way heavier than they should be for a game.

Nothing to say about packrat really, in my opinion it shouldn't even be needed but meh.

Make items disapear after a while... Yes, so long as they are not inside a container that is also not a garbage bin.

Sorbitol, I may give that a go once i am less busy, carry weight is one of my major problem with the game though the merchants are definitly the worse. Do you think you can also find a way to disable the buy limits and the type limitations of the merchants? If you could it would be great. definitly would fix the game for me and make me enjoy it once again.

Totally disagree. I don't need diablo-style here.

[Elhazzared]

You are talking about real world sense which does not applies to a game. You can simply think that all merchants have a deal between themselves that anything they get they trae between themselves at shop value. Thus you sell a gun to an electronics guy and later on he'll go to the gunstore and see if anyone sold electronics there for him to trade at fair prices. The merchants end up winning like this and it removes the chore of running around.

As for your diablo reference. If this was a diablo game I wouldn't mind leaving loot behind if it was worthless anyway. This isn't an ARPG however and there lies the problem. Getting all items and selling all items in the same trader does not makes it diablo, however as with any turn based RPG, loot is one of the big things of the game, if you are going to make it pointless to chase loot then you are throwing away one of the strong mechanics and many people are bound to dislike it.

[UnLimiTeD]

No, loot is not a big thing in an RPG just by virtue of it being an RPG.
There were RPGs where that was the case, but the opposite is also true.
By the same token, I could say that Inventory management is a staple of RPGs, and in addition to limited weight there should also be limited slots.
Loot is a staple of ARPGs.

[Sorbitol]

Sorbitol, I may give that a go once i am less busy, carry weight is one of my major problem with the game though the merchants are definitly the worse. Do you think you can also find a way to disable the buy limits and the type limitations of the merchants? If you could it would be great. definitly would fix the game for me and make me enjoy it once again.

Sorry, I gave it a try but I think it's beyond my abilities at the moment. 

[Elhazzared]

No, loot is not a big thing in an RPG just by virtue of it being an RPG.
There were RPGs where that was the case, but the opposite is also true.
By the same token, I could say that Inventory management is a staple of RPGs, and in addition to limited weight there should also be limited slots.
Loot is a staple of ARPGs.

About the only decent RPG I've played without a great loot system was probably shadowrun returns (also dragonfall, got it today cause 70% off seems about right in my books). Other than that I have yet to see a good RPG that doesn't has a big emphasys on loot. Fallout series, Arcanum: of steamworks and magika obscura, Pillars of eternity, Divinity original sin, wastelands 2. That's what i can remember at the moment. After reset also looks good but I can't atest to that yet. All of these games have an emphasis on loot.

More to the point, any game which is supposed to have exploration and is expected to have a good loot system. People will not explore if there is no incentive. Even if you do it once for the heck of it, people will not do it every single time when there is no point to it. Same could be said about sidequests.

Now inventory management is a part of most RPGs too. It tends to be the one of the worst parts of it, but it's there. That is why good RPGs give you an ignorable inventory management. That is. You have limits, but with companions acting as pack mules you never leave anything behind.

Sorbitol - Thanks anyway, I knew that was going to be a lot harder, it's nothing as simple as change character sheet carry weight value to infinite after all. It's making the trader accept all items in unlimited quantities so I imagine it would require quite a bit more messing with the games files to get it working, but I really appreciate you taking the time of your day to see if you could help me out there, especially since it's still early access and each patch that is rolled could at any point render all your work useless... Well until you tweek it again anyway.

[Fenix]

You are talking about real world sense which does not applies to a game.

Then we need infinite ammo, because all thise hassle with reloading..
You know what I mean...

[Elhazzared]

Because that's not actually a hassle, that is part of combat. Running out of ammo can kill you so you have to plan acordingly. it's not so much a case of whether or not it is like that in the real world but actually something that is part of the actual combat dificulty.

Don't try to use ridiculous examples on me. You do know that realism in a game is always secondary to balance.

[Fenix]

Thanks epeli, you wrote all I thought about.

[Elhazzared]

Now inventory management is a part of most RPGs too. It tends to be the one of the worst parts of it, but it's there. That is why good RPGs give you an ignorable inventory management.

Wait, what? You assume inventory management is always going to be shit in RPGs? And thus a system so meaningless that it can be literally ignored is a good thing? And when one game breaks the status quo of bad design, you outright refuse to play it? Goddamnit Elhazzared, I will never understand you

You would probably like Dungeon Siege. You can transmute items to money in it. Torchlight too, you get a pet that sells your junk loot at town automatically. Generally speaking, ARPGs that streamline the whole itemization/looting aspect might be your thing - the polar opposite of what Underrail does.

Because that's not actually a hassle, that is part of combat. Running out of ammo can kill you so you have to plan acordingly. it's not so much a case of whether or not it is like that in the real world but actually something that is part of the actual combat dificulty.

Don't try to use ridiculous examples on me. You do know that realism in a game is always secondary to balance.

You mean *exactly* just like carry weight is part of combat? Getting crippled and encumbered can kill you so you have to plan accordingly. The only difference is that you WILL get crippled and it WILL have a major impact on combat. Running out of ammo WON'T happen unless you are very, very careless.

I shouldn't need to point this out, but it's not any more ridiculous than your viewpoint.

Inventory management makes sense in a rogue like. Let's take sword of the stars: the pit as an example. There are no shops or ways to buy and sell items. In this case, chosing what you keep and what you throw away is a good mechanic since there will never be money involved. So you have to decide, do I keep this extra weapon when I already have one of teh same? Just in case it breaks? Do I keep this component to try and build something with it later or do i throw it away rather than throw food away or some other component?

In an RPG where money takes place and there are vendors you do not need an inventory management system. All it does is breaking game immersion. It makes people stop doing their quest to go and dump stuff or sell stuff to then go back to do the mission. This does not beneficts the game in any way possible. I don't have a problem with things being done different, I have a problem with thing being done worse. When I first played this game and saw there was no limit to what I could carry I thought. Well this is different but Styg gets it right. There shouldn't be a need for a player to stop what he's doing just to go and dump/sell stuff, it is counter producive. Of course, the game was just far too early in development and only proved to have a much worse system instead.

I think I played one of the dungeon siege games, not much but can't remember much about it anyway. Torchlight was meh, all abillities were pretty meh, got bored very quickly. Sacred 2 had a huge inventory space and you could sell directly from the inventory at a minimal loss which was fine to sell the cheap items. Still, ARPGs are not the same so I won't be drawing comparisons to underrail.

Getting crippled already has it's penalties which need having nothing to do with getting encumbered. You only get encumbered if you want, just go back and dump items before that happens. There is no comparison at all. When i say run out of ammo, I don't mean, really having no more bullets, i mean running out of bullets in the chamber. If you need to shot but have to reload that round it can get you killed. Planning ahead as to when you'll have your reloads is part of the strategy and part of the difficulty. Yes, getting crippled is part of the difficulty too, but that has nothing to do with carry weights, getting crippled already has penalties of it's own and if for some reason getting crippled ties in with losing max carry weight so as to supposedly get you encumbered and get you further penalties, then all you have to do is increase the penalties for getting crippled and get rid of the weight system all the same.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, Underrail isn't actually too far off then.
The problem seems to be that traders buy too much.
If every trader only bought like 2 or three items that they currently have an interested customer for, it's essentially a roguelike with gathering quests.
They could even reward you with specific items. No more pesky money to worry about.
It's quite interesting, actually;  If there was a roguelike that had selling and money, but the money was just a number that did absolutely nothing, would you pick things up?