MrIdontKnow
Insider
I like your post, but I have to say about the inventory space, I really like how Fallout 3 did its inventory, all gun ammo was weightless, but other things had weight like grenades and whatnot. I can remember Bare Mettle saying that filling your bag and selling everything won't help you much, simply because the NPC's won't want it. Also, I can imagine any thriving businesses in small towns, so don't expect a diamond shield.Many replies. Thank you.
To give some arguments against certain points:
Realism:
It's a trade off. Realistic features can be really cool, but it also can turn games into tedious work.
Relevance of items:
The funny thing here is, the relevance of every item is influenced by the inventory space that is available. (Of course it is also influenced by other determinants.)
What about that spare equipment you might want to use? Some extra Arrows? Some herbs? Maybe Ore? Some choices are obvious while other choices make you waste a lot of time sorting through all that stuff. Now if you suddenly have twice as much room, more items would be relevant. If you had unlimited room, all of them would be relevant and saves a lot of time.
Immersion:
Did any of you ever play a game of the Gothic series or Risen? They have unlimited inventory. To many people those games are the most immersive RPGs. Personally I never felt any interruption in my immersion in them. Actually thanks to that the gameplay felt so very smooth like nowhere else. Honestly I can't remember any kind of other RPG with a limited inventory space, that didn't turn into a tedious game of "find the most useless stuff and get rid of it".(Baldurs Gate? Yeah annoying. Wizardry? not too many items but still annoying. Diablo or any other ARPG? Don't even start. MMORPGs? Jesus Christ. They even sell you bagspace these days.)
Also... you are raiding the evil Lords dungeon to save the world from being destroyed... every 30 minutes you take a break and run back to some merchant to sell all the stuff you gathered on your way. Some Immersion you got there.
There is always a possibility of compromising. If there is limited inventory space, then there should be other ways to transport more, like a mule.
It also depends on the relations between inventory space and amount and value of items you can find and various other things like the value of items. As I see it, you will always run into some kind of imbalance between the value of money, the value of items, the value of inventory space or game difficulty.
In the end I just hope, that the devs will read this thread and think about those possibilities. I very much like all the plans for this game so far, except for the probably limited inventory space.
I think that's how they'll tackle it, items found in the world are worthless, but priceless if you use them right.
Very rare items will be your money income if you we're to sell, but then you don't have your items.