I think Dungeon Siege had some interesting things in regards to inventory management. First they gave you the ability carry a pack mule with you for shear hoarding fun!

Then you had the option to learn a skill that immediately turned items into a fraction of their value in gold. (rather than carry it around until you can find a vendor).

I personally think that its a mixed bag. If you remove it all together, you are taking PART of the heart of the game away. If you don't implement it correctly, you are ruining the game.

For me, the issue is finding something in the middle ground that adds a mini game to inventory management... but doesn't frustrate or dwarf the major game in the process.

I like the stats around carrying weight... however, since I always tend towards stealthy characters, I'm never able to carry more than a pocket knife... Games like Oblivion that let me build up strength without negatively effecting my primary stats, are very welcome to me. Game like Baldur's gate are more frustrating as I would have to "nerf" my character significantly to be able to carry more. Although I do appreciate the attempt at realism.

It's not about it being 'hurtful to my brain'. And what's with the elitist/hardcore attitude? It has nothing to do with whether you're a hardcore or casual gamer. Maybe it's an age thing (in my case, at least). As a gamer of almost 50 years of age, I personally don't like pissing away half my limited playing time making several trips back and forth between dungeons and vendors. It adds nothing to the game, but simply wastes time that could be spent exploring more of the dungeon and moving the story forward.

You bring up an interesting example in NWN though. Games like this are ideal because you can choose to play inventory tetris and spend your time on the IMS if you like, or you can simply bypass it if you want by using the in-game console (spawn in bags of holding for your character in NWN, or just eliminate the encumbrance of items like one can do in The Witcher 2). Win/win.

And this is one of the factors of being casual :P "Don't have time for games" = casual. You might've been hardcore gamer once, but now you are casualised by age :P

I love incentory management because it requires thinking and tactics. Players who pick up everything from the ground (especially worthless or useless items) shouldn't be rewarded.

What is nice, is when you have a storage chest in your base.

btw. somebody said something about inventory management in DA:O ? WTF? :D I realised how much useless shit I was carrying around near to end of the game, and my inventory was NEVER full.

I agree with orcishgamer in one thing - in many games, selling items has no real point (Diablo 2), because shops sell useless shit. On the other hand, it's a good thing to gather money in games like Neverwinter, because you will probably find shops with ubershit in late game that cost fortune.

Inventory management is one of the core features of RPG genre for me, and I enjoy doing it.

But I agree with you on one , most crucial point - it's good when a game has optional inventory management (that can be disabled by cheats or in whatever way) to satisfy everybody.

But NWN has one of the biggest inventories ever made. I can't imagine how anybody could ran out of storage place. If your character is too weak to carry more? Well, it's RPG game, isn't it? And you can always buy things that help your skinny magician carry more :P Even my superskinny wizard had 25 STR in late game :P

Hmm, I can see what you're saying here. I guess we have a different definition of a 'casual' gamer.

See, this is part of the issue. I've played games where some seemingly innocuous piece of shit item is actually important. But there was no way of telling until you reached a point much later in the game and were suddenly blind-sided by the need for that otherwise piece of crap item. Once burned by that, it makes me very reluctant to leave anything behind.

And this is another part of the issue. The ostensibly worthless junk that sells for only a couple gold can really add up. In late game this probably has little to no effect, but early on it can be extremely useful. An example is Icewind Dale 1. I grab the bag of holding in Kuldahar and put everything I find into it (I have it modded so the Bag of Holding has infinite space). If one does the Vale of Shadows and Kresselack's Tomb, hoarding all those regular weapon drops that most people just pass off as worthless will actually net you an extra thousand+ gold. This gives you the opportunity to buy some better gear earlier. Totally worth it IMO, and it saves scads of playing time because I don't have to go back and forth 67 times.

But with a Bag of Holding, he could have been fine with 8 STR. ;)

Except that, even when you aren't stealing everything that isn't nailed down you tend to run into that problem pretty quickly. I know I have in FO3 and FO:NV encountered the situation where I'm very quickly running out of space and having to slog through a huge number of items in my inventory, many of which are quest items that can't be discarded.

Inventory management could be a useful part of the game, but it's arbitrary and leads to a limited number of strategies. I think FO:NV had a better system in some ways than FO3, but it still suffered the same problems.

Personally, I pretty much played through those games in a week or so each, and I found the inventory system to be a real pain in the ass that contributed very little to the story.

Limited inventories make sense when you can go back into town and sell all the goods you've got or when you can potentially acquire a game breakingly large number of stimpacks or whatever. For games like FO3 and FO:NV where that isn't the case, limiting the inventory serves little to no purpose other than pissing people off. Having to quick travel back into town certainly doesn't lead to more immersion than staying out for long periods of time.

OK, you have a point about it happening on the battlefield, but what about going commando through a dungeon? :P

is the worst thing ever invented.

I see that Mount and Blade does this, too, at least until you Tab out back to the main menu for the village or city. Not quite a full-blown RPG, but still...

Gothic has a limited amount, as do some others that slip my mind. I just appreciate the whole side quest thing, and it seems like merchants that rely on outside sources would be a natural source for side quests and even some main story stuff.

I'm not sure what precedence there is for that, how many dungeons go more than 3 levels down?

By the way, I've never had any problems with "useless junk that turned out to be important later"

in most games, it's really easy to tell, for example:

"key" - useless shit
"Morgan's key" - better keep it.

etc etc.

And also ... You know ... Some ammount of realism, even thou it's far from ideal solution. I would hate to be able to carry everything I encounter in such as immersion-based game as FO3 or NV. It often bothers me that I can pick up 4 heavy weapons (and then throw them away because of that,) and I really think that inventory management is quite simply part of the game (... leading to a limited number of strategies, as you said. That is a good thing.) You could argue that they should make it optional, but in games like FO 3 and NV, everything is optional with just a bit of googling.

I agree with Fenixp. ESPECIALLY Fallout game, in post apocalyptic world, when every resource should be valuable, you should think twice before you will take that bag of chips from store shelves.

Mass Effect seemed to solve lots of this... no more looting and no need for ammo! i loved it! then thsy changed things... ugh.

part of me loves inventory management. i find organizing to be fun... but it can get old.

i had a castle in Ultima Online and i hoarded so much crap. that thing could store thousands of items. i spent, realistically, 100+ hours just on oganizing, in that game alone.

As someone who is apt to horde every single bag of potato chips and dirty hat, I prefer an unlimited inventory, weightless, and with something that can sort these things. I personally prefer it when games are more like the Ys series, in that the inventory is small and fixed, so that I don't have to worry about inventory management. The value of the inventory should be the useful items, like how it is in Zelda. Bombs, arrows, rupees, the potions, are about the extent of consumable items, which is nice and simple. Better yet, I am actually encouraged to use them, as in other games I tend towards the hoarding mindset which sets back my combat performance.

Oh, yeah it happens. Where do you think such terms like grave robbing, pillaging, looting, war trophies, spoils-of-war, and the alike came from? Such terms came into exsistence because, while few find it "tabboo" many more feel a primal, or maybe more carnal need to take an expression. It's like a memory in a way. It helps to define a story? In any event it happens in modern times. Also even during the days of the frontier expansion Native American Indians would also loot from the dead of the fallen. Taking clothing (boots especially), weapons, ammo, and whatever they felt would be either useful, or of worth to them. For trade, sell, or maybe as I said even as a story piece.

Yes, but people only take what they want / need: And that is fine, that is RPing. But grabbing anything that's not glued and going as far as not actually being able to carry all that crap is not too realistic.