Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 Revive Age-Old RPG Debate About Encumbrance - IGN
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Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 both weigh the player down with encumbrance. Love it or hate it, it seems like it's here to stay.

Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 both weigh the player down with encumbrance. Love it or hate it, it seems like it’s here to stay.

  • Schlock@beehaw.org
    0·
    1 year ago

    In BG3 it is a balance mechanic. Heavy objects tend to be completely OP and are used to cheese combat. encumberance limits this and even allows building your character specifically for this playstyle.

    In Bethesda games encumberance is in part there to protect players from themselves. If every object can be picked up (and that is a design principle in those games) and every object has a Value, then the optimal strategy is always to grab every single object you can find and then sell everything at once. If that does not sound like fun to you that is because it is not, but still i know multiple people who play those games this way even with encumberance in place. Players will always find a way to ruin their own fun, the only hing you can do is to put systems in place that disincentivise these behaviors.

    • RickRussell_CA@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      A “stash” that is only accessible outside combat mostly preserves that balance, IMO.

      Most games come up with a range of ways to get around the problem, even when they do have a strictly limited inventory with encumbrance:

      • Zero weight quest items

      • Ability to run or fast travel while encumbered (FO4 selectable perk)

      • A pet or NPC capable of carrying your less valuable stuff back to the vendor for sale (Torchlight had this, did Diablo? I haven’t played in decades.)

      • Pack animals/robots

      • Portable vendors (Skyrim had a demon vendor you could summon once a day)

      • Bags of holding (or similar)

      • Warp chests (many chests with same contents/inventory around map)

      etc. ad infinitum. The fact that most games implement a variety of ways to deal with absence of an infinite inventory is kind of a tipoff that it’s more of a burden than a desirable aspect of gameplay. Most of these games are holding up a carrot (or several) to get you to pursue certain achievements just to reduce the monotony of inventory management.