I was wondering about the role of inventory management in RPGs. Is it possible to have an RPG without inventory management? Or is it an integral feature of the RPG genre. Does it add to the experience of the game? Or could RPGs be enjoyable without them? Is the virtual paper doll the greater source of enjoyment in an RPG? Could an MMO such as WOW exist without paper dolling? Or does paper dolling exist as icing on a cake (such as Baldur's Gate)?

Personally, I'm of the opinion IMSs (inventory management systems) often acts as the greatest hindrance to game play. When I'm out plundering the world I don't really want think about whither or not I have enough bag space, or If my character has a high enough strength stat to carry that 3rd rocket launcher, or 15th bastard sword. I often find that a significant portion of RPGs becomes dedicate to travel solely for the purpose of offloading inventory. For me, Final Fantasy acts as the model for inventory management. Just give me a infinitely deep bag. I don't care if its not realistic. Its a friggen video game! If we take one game and alter it from limited IMS to an unlimited IMS, and in turn we have a crap game, then most likely the game was crap to begin with. At the same time I realize that many MMOs are banking off of your wasted time. So the more they can dilute the game play the happier their bank accounts will be. Any thoughts?

For me, the point of IMS is not to make you constantly head back to town to sell (or whatever).
It's a gameplay element where you have to make tough decisions on what to bring in the first place if you can't carry every item you MIGHT need...

The Witcher's inventory system would have been great if there hadn't been so many ingredients to pick up. The Witcher 2 went a step back in this regard and added more superfluous junk to carry, along with the other useful stuff. But the underlying idea was sound: the hero can only carry two swords, a couple of potion flasks and a limited amount of sundry items. Some games have unlimited inventories and bombard you with stuff to take so you always feel like a walking warehouse.

Developers always miss the point. In games like Diablo and Borderlands hardly a minute passes without you getting a new piece of loot that's only 2% better than the one you have. It's a much better satisfaction when you get a new, vastly superior weapon after several hours of gameplay. It makes you feel as you've really had to work for it, hence the satisfaction. Instead of a treasure chest in every corner, let there be only one, at the very end of the dungeon, but with really meaningful loot. Not a rusty dagger worth 2 coins every 10 metres. I hope that others feel like I do, and that game developers will act accordingly.

Agreed with The Witcher's inventory. It's one of the best systems I've ever seen, shame they have changed it in 2 for controllers. Anyway, this '2% more' logic is the typical slot machine logic that keeps casuals playing: It's not fun at all, but it's addictive, giving the 'There will be a better item around the corner!' feel to people.

Inventory management sucks and it's one of the "broken" systems in most RPGs, why we fundamentally accept this is beyond me. There's been a few attempts to address this. such as Torchlight with your pet able to run to town to vendor stuff (meanwhile he's unavailable for combat. TL2 takes another step allowing your pet to buy potions for you (this is ingenious really). Still TL/TL2 still are 95% stuck in this ancient and terrible inventory shell game that many RPGs have.

Part of it is broken economies where they want to give you items to "sell" to buy the equipment you actually want.

I'm not sure what the total answer is but if RPGs could address scaling issues and inventory issues they'd be in a lot better shape as a genre (and more people would be willing to play and enjoy them, to boot!).

I dislike it when it's overblown, like in a Diablo game for example. Dragon Age as well, too much management. Honestly call me an asshole but I loved how Mass Effect 2 did it, different weapons to choose from that are unique but not 1,000 of them. Add in upgrading and it would be perfect, maybe like Deus Ex.

Yes actually, Deus Ex has the perfect RPG inventory.

Personally, I dislike them for the reasons highlighted by the OP. I prefer games like Gothic where you can carry as much of what you want.

The other option is to make useless gear useless, i.e. in the spirit of Diablo II. You pick it up and if you don't need it, you throw it right back down. Vendoring is useless as the value of gold is (almost) arbitrary.

Games that do make you manage your inventory don't necessarily make a lot of sense. You can only put that many rocket launchers into your pocket and not a gram more. If you want to drink that soda, better drop your rocket launcher first, so that you can manage to pick it up.

Also, I hate encumbrance systems. Just makes the game tedious.

I think you have a good point with ME. A couple of base item types with slottable upgrades could provide all the variety you could ever need (you could even allow upgrades to be removed, this encourages use I find, unremovable upgrades I suspect almost never get used, I'd love to see some statistics on this, but I'm 90% certain I'm right). Dues Ex HR, as much as I loved it, had just about every stupid ass inventory trope ever, including have to spent a limited resource to upgrade it.

Yeah, The Witcher 1 addressed this fairly well. You only carry stuff like potions, food and drink, small things like that. Then you have 2 sword slots on your back and 2 'misc' weapon slots on your belt, and an alchemy bag, where you store all your ingredients.

Pretty much this. Deus Ex's own inventory system was perfect and had some resemblance of reality, but part of its success is owed to the game's lack of dependence on selling all your accumulated crap. When you have a game like Diablo with a trader up top willing to take all the useless stuff you find down below for money, there is too much incentive to hoard.

Skyrim's approach was interesting - give the traders only a limited amount of gold to buy stuff with - but it failed ultimately in having the traders' gold reserves restocked a day later.

I loved how Rage did it - anything that you might want to sell was just categorised collectively as "junk" with a little tip in the loading screen to the effect that "The junk in your inventory is just that. Sell it."

Surely you wanted to say Morrowind's approach, with the gold respawning only like a week later or so

I really see no point in the extra two slots in TW. I know a few people use torches and the like but I just never found them useful. I usually carry an Assassin's Dagger in the one because it looks cool.

Don't remember Morrowind doing that, but I haven't played it in a while and I'm probably mistaken.

In any case, Skyrim's traders' gold respawns after a day.

This is a good solution for sorting, but ultimately why not just hand out currency directly? I mean, immersion, blah blah and all, but it just doesn't usually add much to the game. Do you really look at your piles of lint and busted washers before you hit the Vendor All Junk button? So fuck it, hand out cash.

Also, I've noticed a few sync kills where Geralt knocks an armored opponent down, draws a dagger, and starts stabbing him in gaps in armor. Anyway, I've sometimes used the extra slots for carrying two silver swords of similar type with two different enhancements, for instance one against insectoids and one against drowners.