Or perhaps it depends on person, and maybe it's more important for some then for others. If FO3 came without any carry limit, one of the first mods I would download would be a one adding it. I am also one of those people noticing the thing about raiders and never using fast travel, because it horribly breaks immersion. Loading screens those I can live with, but the first plugins I have downloaded for Skyrim was one that tracks base needs and other that tracks surrounding temperature and simulates how your body reacts to it. When I'm exploring a world, I want as few things detracting me from world's 'reality' as possible. Those mutants you mentioned are quite simply part of Fallout's 'reality.' Limitless capacity is not. You just want to go and have fun, and that's perfectly fine. But I want to go and not only have fun, I also want to live in a different world for an hour or so when I get the time. And the more realistic or at least semi-realistic things this world manages to simulate, the happier I am. Of course, this also depends on the game - I won't complain about lack of iron sights and carrying 10 weapons in unreal tournament.

Actually Fallout is not an alternative future but a parallel universe. This has been covered in detail at a lot of the Fallout sites around the net. Suffice it to say it's not just an alternative future for the 1950s world, the whole universe is different even with some different physics. The Fallout timeline doesn't work in out for our universe.

Anyway, just a nitpick, but it's about one of my favorite games SO IT'S IMPORTANT OKAY?
The "realism" regarding the extreme rate of beneficial mutation from radiation doesn't bother anyone in Fallout but the lack of an inventory weight limit does... I just don't get people...

FWIW, you're right, and I don't just mean in the opinion sort of way. People with issues about this kind of thing just feel more comfortable with the tropes they're used to and I curse AD&D for ever creating this one (it probably had prior art as well, I'm just not aware of where they might have stolen their encumbrance rules from).

I'm guessing most of you will disagree with me, but it's such an issue with me that I had to put my 2 cents in here, even if it is unpopular.

I just HATE any limitations on inventory. Yes, it's a blow against "realism" but some things just aren't FUN if they're realistic. I end up spending more time going back and forth unloading inventory items than I do enjoying the game often, and that's just not fun. Fallout 3 was horrible. I spent most of that game unable to fast travel AND run because I would reach my limit with 5 minutes after starting fresh, then spend the next 55 minutes over encumbered.

I know it's not realistic, but it's also not FUN when you spend 55 minutes out of every hour playing a game over encumbered. I wish they would at least make it an option that players could choose. I think this is one of the reasons that Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 were my all time favorite games. I mean back to Fallout, so what if you're carrying 20 different weapons, you can only use one at a time. I do "get" that this is sort of a cheat for the player though, because s/he can pick the best weapon for the situation every time. I could see a fix for this easily though. Have a weight limit for USE, and then an unlimited amount of loot that you are forbidden from using until you've unloaded it at some pre-designated areas, either selling it or storing it. If you store it, then, before you return to adventuring, you could pick it up and put it in your "USE" backpack.

Don't know if that last made sense, but to me that would be a good compromise between the unfun (lol, is that a word??) routine of spending more time travelling back and forth managing inventory than playing AND the totally unrealistic no limits whatsoever.

As always, YMMV.

ADDED IN EDIT: I could even see how such a system would be "realistic" because you could say whenever you find new weapons or armor, before you can use them you need to return to some pre-designated area and check them out, perform maintenance on them, etc. Then the players choice would be whether or not to make a back and forth trip to be able to use an awesome weapon s/he just found or not. And I think this choice would occur a LOT less than the trips back and forth to unload to avoid being overencumbered.

I like the idea behind inventory limits and inventory management, I just haven't seen any games that really got it right. I wonder if younger gamers that didn't start out in adventure games have similar compulsions about keeping strange things in their inventory in case they become necessary out of a sort of conditioned fear that the game may become impossible.

Realism is nice, but I wish people would understand that these are games and if the designers have to choose between realistic and fun that there is only one correct answer.

Personally, I would much rather not be carting all the crap around, I just find that when I cant' sell it, I either have to keep it on my character or in a bottomless storage locker. Which doesn't seem to attract the same sort of negative attention that carrying does.

Encumbrance in AD&D makes sense to some degree.

I like encumbrance that is applied to armor and weapons, because it adds another dimension to the strength stat (beyond simple to hit and damage bonuses), but that's mostly because weapons and armors are such vital and physical pieces of gear (not to mention apparent).

For weight restriction on other gear, I think it was mostly to prevent abuse and enforce game balance, especially in pen and paper games.

For example, in one of my game, a novice player who was very strong was murdering guards in their beds and then wanted to cover his tracks so he tried to leave with all the guards he murdered and their mattresses...

Similarly, a filthy rich player could be overpowered if he is allowed to carry like 100000 gcs on his person all the time, but if you introduce logistic problems to carrying so much cash on his person, then you balance the game somewhat.

And of course, there is the well established wealthy mage that could carry an arsenal of potions and wands (3rd edition balanced it somewhat by requiring an XP cost to manufacture those items... in the 2nd edition, all you needed was money, time and ingredients and sometimes, years could pass in game time between campaigns...).

A computer RPG is much more restrictive in how abusable things get (you might find a RL way to abuse an absurd mechanic, but if it wasn't programmed into the game, you won't be able to) and furthermore, it is a lot more constrained in how realistic it can be so inventory management makes a lot less sense there.

I think they should mostly skip it (except maybe for the armor & shield the character is wearing plus whatever weapon he has readied), except perhaps in very extreme cases if it really caused a problem.

If you really want to use inventory management as a way to force the player to make a difficult decision with his gear, then make most of the missions in the game more time critical (put some sort of deadline), make towns very hard to access or create a more realistic economy ("sorry pal, can't buy that full plate from you until I sell some stuff, I'm out of cash and credit doesn't exist yet") so that the player doesn't can't just go back and forth between towns and the mission with impunity (because if they can, they will, but they won't find it enjoyable... I think most people just can't help themselves).

The weapon limit sounds a bit like the way that FPS games have been going back to at least Wolf 3D, except perhaps with slots rather than specific weapons. It's not a bad idea. I personally, just wish developers would spend more time trying to find a better system or at least have them fail in new and innovative ways as the whole system seems to be pretty stagnant at the moment.

Having weighted and unweighted items and quest and non-quest items seems to me to be neither realistic nor particularly fun. But, that's my view.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the obvious.

I don't even get the "realism"argument anyway. I've never played an RPG yet that wasn't completely unrealistic in terms of combat, arguably the most important aspect of the game. If it's ok to have that completely unrealistic, why not the inventory management system??

Using Fallout 3 as an example (but the same is true for melee weapons in fantasy settings as well), it's completely unrealistic to get shot in the head multiple times and not die. In fact, almost always one shot would at least incapacitate a real person to the point of the battle being over. Same with swordplay. A real person get's a sword in the gut just once, and that's pretty much it for that person.

Obviously such a combat system would be far too challenging and unfun (there's that word/non-word again lol), so why couldn't inventory management be just as unrealistic?

What makes you think I'm not getting sucked in to being my character? And really caring about the various outcomes?

I like those sorts of games, and despite being completely unrealistic, I loved playing Infamous and getting sucked into the story, feeling really bad whenever I screwed up and killed somebody.

Sort of the same thing with FO:NV in particular, I hated that I couldn't be liked by all the good buys and hated by all the bad guys, I did it anyways because it made the game compelling, but I only did it because the game forced me to in order to progress.

If you need that aspect of hyper realism to have fun, more power to you, but I think those aspects tend to distract from the plot and the drama that's involved with playing the game.

But, then again, I can appreciate movies for their aesthetic, their writing, their effects and how they deal with realism without breaking immersion, so there you go.

The ultimate check on pen and paper bullshit is, as always, the DM/GM. If a DM needs an official "mechanic" to say someone can't move 20 dead bodies and their mattresses all at once he/she has a group of rules lawyers or something equally unpleasant.

Still, not all mechanics are bad, even if they add realism, but realism should be the side effect, not the goal, in general.

Nope. I would take that amount of chiops to survive for a few days, not every fucking bag of chips and can of soda that is avaible in the supermarket.

By the way, if you say that games suppose to be only fun but not CHALLENGING (even in inventory management / encumbrance) , then again Casuals go home!

by the way, i find inventory management, weight limit etc extremely FUN. It requires planning, thought and tactics and all of that is fun to me.

and I will turn back your "magnificent" argument "if you want realism, go play outside!"

if you don't want realism and you just want fun, play bejeweled

We'd love to go home and play, but we have jobs.

I don't personally like limited inventories, but since it's the main thing which made me buy a Silver status for $10 in Everquest II Extended I guess it's financially astute to limit it at times. :)

I am not impressed. As a gamer, I enjoy some of column A and column B, so I find your stance on casual gaming rather petulant at best. Have you ever played Plants VS Zombies? If not, then know that game involves managing your resources to overcome the undead horde. DOOM? You still have to manage your weapons, ammunition, and time your item pickups while evading enemies. These games involve managing resources, and despite being relatively simple compared to RPGs that require sorting the inventory and dropping items, they are still far more effective at pressing the player's ability to stay stocked up and alive.

Fact of the matter, is that some of the best games challenge their players by making things simple to do and understand, then compensates by designing the levels to challenge the player. This doesn't make the game "dumber" by any means, because it is cutting out the make-work that prevents the player from actually doing things.

That isn't to say that detailed games don't have their merits, it is just that labeling other gamers as "casual" and then dismissing them as inferior is not the mark of someone who can champion complex games. If you can't understand the merits of both simple and complex video games, then how in the world can you convince people about your position?

I never said anything about casual games. I said about casual gamers, but this requires some reading skills you obviously don't have, Sabin_stargem.

And I see people who say "I don't want games to be hard and challenging, I just want them to be fun!" as casuals.

eot.

See, it's not completely unrealistic. In FO3 you get your limbs damaged and you die when people shoot at you, which is some ammount of realism. As well as limited capacity bears some ammount of realism, even if it's not completely realistic - there aren't only 2 states of realism, realistic and not, there's a lot of smaller steps in between.

I'm not saying you're not, we just clearly have different priorities. Not to say I'm not able to enjoy a game revolving around story like Planescape or such, it's just when the open-world game already contains slight survival elements, it might as well go all the way.

This sort of elitist attitude is why people hate hardcore gamers.

The inventory system is badly broken. All you have to do is fast travel back to Megaton or wherever you're holed up in FO:NV and dump your gear into the unlimited capacity locker. And usually it's a ton as you can typically carry nearly 200lbs., of crap at any given time.

You might have the option at some point of selling some of it, but probably not all even if you aren't stealing everything that's nailed down.

That's not challenging and it's not realistic either. It's a restriction that was put in place because somebody else thought it was a good idea without any consideration for why they were doing it. All it does is ensure that the infinite capacity locker gets full of stuff that you'll promptly forget about when it's mixed in with hundreds of other items.

You shouldn't put quotes around magnificent because it literally is a magnificent argument. People play games as an escape. I don't recall anybody getting upset by the lack of realism in doom and hooking up a revolver to shoot them in the face when the first trooper got on screen.

You can keep arguing about it all you like, but this sort of inventory management is neither realistic nor fun. It's an arbitrary game design decision that is mostly there to give the appearance of choice without actually doing so.