Sometimes I like it, sometimes I find it tedious. I haven't really tried to do an in-depth evaluation of what I like and don't like, but sometimes I think it depends on whether or not the game is trying to be realistic.

For example, I like inventory management in Jagged Alliance 2 with the 1.13 mod. This game is trying to be realistic and it accomplishes that aspect fairly well. Mercs need to have the right LBE with the right kind of pockets and holsters to carry inventory on them and weight affects stats and action points. I like this.

In games that aren't very realistic, developers should focus on making the inventory less of a headache. I like fun, unrealistic games too but I feel that the game should commit to one or the other. If a game is realistic, fine, develop it that way. If it's unrealistic, fine, develop it that way. Either try to be like Robinson's Requiem or don't.

On the other hand, I know a couple people who could use some inventory management skills in real life. They would have the kind of place you might see on American Pickers. Maybe they could learn something from trying to manage some inventory in a video game. It's similar to picking up dwemer cogs in Morrowind. Somebody has to move those cogs and they have to be stored somewhere. It's going to be a chore to try to sell them. I start out in TES games not picking up anything that has a value less than 10 gold per unit of weight (I guess I'm not really sure what these games use as a measurement of weight.) After a little while I up it to 20, then 30, and then 50.

Realism is one thing and may even be a plus, but if it turns my game play into something about as exciting as reorganizing my music collection or sorting my books by alphabetical order based on author name then I'm going to opt out if I can.

(lol)

Do you not mean to say like A&E's show Hoarders? Personally I agree. I know a few people who are actually hoarders, or borderline the illness. Unfortunetly I do believe (I know this is a bit off-topic) a lot of "gamers" fundamentally have a number of prerequisites to becoming a hoarder. Not saying all, but unfortunetly like the anonymity of the interent allowing one to see how real a person can be without the mask, or facade they wear when in public view of society, I believe video games also allow one to see the inner thoughts, and buildings of whom that person or persons is, and how they really act, and what choices they make. Again I am not saying this "proven", or even that it relates to everyone. However, it is a very entertaining theory, and notion.

Oh, well..

Yeah, there are keyboard shortcuts that I like a lot in Jagged Alliance 2 1.13 to try to make it less mind-numbing. For example, there is a shortcut to unload ammo from guns and then sort all ammunition laying on the ground into one crate for each type of ammo which can then be picked up and loaded onto a vehicle or left in the sector to stock up on ammo. There is another keyboard shortcut modded in that puts all inventory in the sector at the feet of the currently selected merc since mercs have to be close to pick up and exchange stuff with other mercs. It helps some anyway.

Yeah, kind of. I don't have anything against hoarding (I do it on a small scale myself sometimes) but it can become a problem. The reason I had a couple of people in mind in particular was because they actually had the intention to make some money reselling their stuff. It becomes very cumbersome to do that if you have to move four boxes every time you want to get an item to sell.

I can't agree with that at all. Being able to lug around more than your own body weight isn't realistic and yet it's something that happens often enough that it's got to be a trope.

If you actually look at how much things your wanting to pick up weight, I've yet to see a game where the developers took that seriously, quest items sometimes have weight, sometimes they don't. Other times powerful items will be given an arbitrarily heavy weight to balance them out. As I mentioned virtually all of these games will let players carry more than they weigh.

Not to mention my earlier complaint about how you can be literally swimming in money with nothing at all to spend it on.

When all is said and done, if you really think this is in any way shape or form realistic, i'd be very curious to visit where you're from because it seems to defy all manner of reality.
In a real post apocalyptic world you'd always take the chips every damned time. Food and water and ammunition are pretty much the highest priority in such scenarios. The only other thing close to that would be medical gear.

You have Fenixp seem to have a very strange sense of reality.
This is why I'll never be a millionaire. I'd use my money on stupid stuff like reorganizing the computer the RPG.

Oh that's fine, if you're bothered by that, there's a simple console command that will decrease carry capacity to whatever you feel is realistic in FO3 and New Vegas :-P What, am I missing your point? That's fine, you're missing mine.

Edit: I... Should probably elaborate. Nothing is black and white and as hard as they try, they will never be completely realistic. We'll just stay at the New Vegas example. Basically, you're saying that there are only two approaches it can take: It can either be realistic and one bullet will kill you, or it can go the unrealistic way and then you might as well be immortal, because dying is just bothersome. I'm not saying carry capacity is realistic. I'm saying it's more realistic, and it forces you to manage your resources more. As far as I'm concerned, game is much more fun when I have to decide between taking more bullets or stimpacks with the risk of running out of one of them as opposed to me dragging a gun for every situation in tow behind me, along with 1 000 000 grenades and 10 000 000 000 ammo for all those guns.

If I'm missing your point it's because you're point isn't being well made. You're complaining about being able to carry several rather large weapons at once, but you don't seem to think it's odd that you're carrying hundreds of pounds of gear while you run, jump and dodge bullets.

At some point, you kind of have to just relax and realize that it's just a game. The inventory system is horrible in that it's not fun, it's not realistic and tends to break the immersion when you're constantly quick traveling to find some place to sell your goods. FO at least had a few vendors that always had a ton of caps making that less of an issue.

I'd love to see somebody get it right, to date I haven't seen such a game. You have the Diablo Tetris style, the old school slot style and the weight style. They all have their advantages, but placing a limit and encouraging people to collect random crap just makes for a confused system.
Which is fine in theory, but the system they chose to implement does a poor job of that. I find crap loads of stuff accumulating in my unlimited lockers and I'm never able to actually unload most of it. But, by the time I realize that I've been collecting high value stuff for 20 hours and at that point, why not.

The system itself requires a full overhaul in order to actually live up to the goal. Other times it gets really annoying because you've got quest crap mixed in with your miscellaneous goods which makes it really tough to sort out conveniently and some of the quest crap has weight meaning that you lose some of your cap if you don't complete Mr. House's snow globe transactions. I think the same applies to the bobbleheads IIRC.

Well my argument is 'it's more realistic.' It can all be summed up to that one sentence, and it's a fact. It just is more realistic to be only able to carry 4 heavy plasma guns than being able to carry 20 of them, even thou none of these examples are actually completely realistic. And well... The system evolves. Sadly, cosoles stopped that, but we'll get there eventually. In the meantime, I'll be thankful to at least some ammount of realism, it's far better to at least have some resource management then completely throw it out of the window.

OK, but isn't that a far cry from picking up the five daggers, five bucklers, ten boots, five leather cuirasses, five tunics, and probably five pairs of pants in that roomful of skeletons you just cleared out?

Also, very few RPGs actually feature a battlefield. It's often enclosed areas. Again, the going commando in a dungeon thing.

For another game example, once you get a decent set of equipment in Titan Quest, when would you pick up white-coloured items? Ever? Except to drag them back to town to get a few extra gold pieces.

I'm going to have speak up here when I say the whole blame console bit is like the industry trying to milk the whole DRM because, of piracy. Both are more or less a scapegoat. People, and more particularly PC enthusiast seem to blame consoles for just about everything under the sun. The reality is that the blame lays soley with people instead. People want and let me just make sure how heavy this is when used - EASY. They do not want things to be more complicated. Why do you honestly think Call of Duty is so damn successful? It's because, it's simple, streamlined, and easy. Anyone can pick-up and play any Call of Duty title from one to the next with only minor differences between them all in the grand-scheme of things. It has not to do with consoles. The imagination is there, the technology is there. It is just the people in general.

When it comes to wanting complexity? I'm a minority. I except that. The whole blame console bit though just comes off more then not as a childish ploy. I'm not saying you meant for it to be, but really that is what it has become. I know I'm sounding like a jerk, and I apologise. I'm not targeting you I'm making a point is all. It's not a good thing when the few wannabe - PC Elitist/Master Race - ends up marking us all as such.

Well... Actually, console gaming has stopped inventory management evolution because ... Eh, have you ever tried to control a graphically complex inventory system like The Witcher via controller? I have. It's horrible. I don't blame consoles, I'm just stating a fact. Of course they're going to try and make it control smoothly, which then leads to line-inventories, which is something that has already been surpassed on PCs (thanks to mouse)

I wouldn't, I'd just loot purples. Of course, you'll note the baddies in TQ actually use that equipment against you. Once the Minotaur boss spawned with an extremely powerful axe, it took 3/4 of my life on each hit.

In general yes, but controls are a different matter. Console games tend to have crap controls these days. It wasn't too bad back during the days of the NES, SNES and Genesis as they only had a total of like 8 buttons tops, and the games were relatively simple. But, yeah, consolized FPS games are an abhoration what need to be stopped. Dumbing down the controls is definitely something that can be blamed on consoles.

To an extent the same thing goes for the graphics, the consoles are definitely pressuring that. I hope very much that we avoid doing to games what cheap executives did to animation in the '60s or thereabouts.

However, in terms of complexity of gameplay other than graphics and controls, I see no inherent reason for consoles to cause those kinds of problems.
I suppose, but realism makes for crap games. If people really wanted realism, there's an entire world of real out there. I like most gamers play games because they aren't real. Real is fun sometimes, I really went on a tour of a cave last week end, it was fun and completely real down to the impromptu shower in one of the chambers.

As far as I'm concerned if the realism doesn't further the plot, gameplay or make it more compelling then it should be axed. The inventory systems I've seen need to be fixed badly in one way or another. Probably the easiest fix would be to allow you to have as much as you want, and let the choke point be selling. Or let you sell as much as you want, but leave the limits in place.
That's what I generally do in those types of games, I usually only loot the most expensive stuff. In FO games I tend to loot whatever has the best cash to weight ratio and even then I tend to have a crap load of stuff. During FO3 I was always looting ammunition and trading for ammunition because it was the only real way of dealing with the massive amount of loot and relative scarcity of caps.

Yes, when I go outside I get into a postapocalyptic world where I need to scavenge for resources. For me, games are about exploring worlds - Fallout is an alternative future set in our world. Therefore, rules that apply to our would should apply, more or less. Anything that doesn't appy will remind you you're playing a game - the more it gets away from reality, the less you feel like you're actually there, the less immersive the world will be.

For instance, limb damage in Fallout 3 and NV - it's more realistic, and since it's not only your opponents but also you who can get a broken leg, you feel like an actual part of the game world. Gameplay-wise it's tedious, but it helps immersion. The same applies to the need to drink, eat and sleep. And the same applies to the carry capacity. While it's kind of weird to carry all the crap you can carry in New Vegas, it still does add to the realism, and by extension, to the immersion. You need to keep track of the crap you carry on you, you need to be aware of your equipment. That is realistic, and it's immersive. Fact that the way this is achieved is rather unfortunate doesn't take away from the immersion all that much. What would take away from immersion would be if you could carry everything you ran upon - it wouldn't make sence that you can and NPCs can't, so by extension caravans would become pointless, merchant's wouldn't actually need shops etc.

Also, before you claim that realism is not fun, go and play Operation Flashpoint (ArmA: Cold War Crisis). It's the prime example of what I am talking about: You will feel as if you're part of a war, you'll be completely immersed. As opposed to Call of Duty.