INVENTORY HOARDING

When I was younger, I was just as bad about item hording as the comic in the OP, nowadays though, I'm quite liberal with my item use in most situations.

I think the paradigms I've enjoyed the most regarding items have been where;

1) Items that scale with stats or that have effects that are equally effective at every level.
Potions that heal a % of max health, bombs that scale with INT, status inflicting/buffing items, ect.

2) Clearly-defined character roles regarding magic/skills, with items intended to cover the gaps that those innate skills/magic do not
pretty self-explanitory, I think

3) Combining a limited 'stack size' with more frequent refill opportunities
This allows the designer to make items with more powerful effects easier to acquire, while at the same time prevents players from spamming those better items for easy wins. Stack size could even vary from item to item, like so

Potion: stack up to x9, heals a single target for 30% of max hp

Hi-Potion: stack up to x5, heals a single target for 50% of max hp

Elixir: stack up to x3, heals a single target for 100% of max hp

Mega Potion: stack up to x1, heals the entire party for 100% of max hp

4) Items as alt-mp
I've seen this used a few times, such as the party having a first-aid kit with a limited number of charges, which can be spent to heal, revive or remove status effects. Another example would be the Estus Flasks from Dark Souls, which are functionally identical to healing spells except they don't scale with stats (but they can be upgraded, so they DO scale over time).

In my first playthroughs of Mass Effect and Dragon Age, I was constantly hitting the inventory cap. Despite playing a ton of Fallout 1&2 on the computer, I was so used to older games, like Final Fantasy, where you could pretty much pick up everything in the world and not worry about running out of room, that I screamed "bad game design" every time I had to melt down that assault rifle X I wanted to try out, or saw the red text announcing "Inventory Full."

On subsequent trips through those games, I kept only what was useful and sold the rest. I noticed that I never ran into the poverty issues I had my first time through, since I was converting all my useless gear into cold hard currency.

In Dragon Age, I used to hate setting my party members to automatically use a health, stamina, or lyrium potion. I preferred to micro-manage health and stamina/mana myself during big battles, but I still screwed up every now and then and found myself wasting rare injury kits when I wasn't paying attention and had Leliana get felled by a random Carta ambush. I decided enough was enough and set everyone to auto-potion as needed, and then found myself running out of healing items in the late game when I needed them more. To that end, I went back to hoarding potion components, only brewing ten or so of anything at a time to put a limit on how much could be consumed during a normal/elite/boss battle. It happened to work out almost perfectly.

Mass Effect 2 pretty much tanked the whole inventory concept, and aside from desiring more customization options, I got used to the system very quickly.

In Dragon Age 2, I made liberal use of the Junk Item key. Any piece of armor Hawke couldn't use, junked. Any weapon that the team had outgrown? Junked. After almost every mini-quest, I went to a store and sold all of my junk. I routinely found myself with 100+ gold pieces, and invested heartily in Elfroot and Restoration potions (which I ended up using pretty sparingly), as well as the almighty re-spec potion.

Now in Deus Ex games, I am a complete hoarder. I always abused the glitch in the first one that let you stack items over each other. That way I could always have a modified silenced sniper rifle for long shots, a rocket launcher for bots, emp grenades, scrambler grenades, enough lams to scuttle five supertankers, an assault shotgun, a modified Assault Gun with a ton of HE ammo, a stealth pistol, a sawed off shotgun, some zyme, a case full of aug canisters (only auged myself when I ran into a situation I couldn't overcome natrually, which was rarely), and bioelectric cells.

In Human Revolution, I always expand my inventory to the max as soon as possible, even when I end up not using 90% of what I'm carrying based on my play style.

I also tend to hoard experience points/level ups in games that let you control where and when you spend them. In Human Revolution, there were times when I had 13 or more Praxis kits laying around. I always tried to overcome things through reflex and intuition, rather than just modding my legs and leaping over it, or stealthing through a whole level in 30 second increments. (Of course, in later replays, I did a "no Praxis kit left behind" challenge, where I upgraded every time I was awarded one just to see how the game played that way.)

After learning that a lv2 Soldier + lv 18 Jedi was better than the level 7 Scout Level 13 jedi I made the first time, I played Knights of the Old Republic as a scaling low level challenge and went on the do the second game the same way. I'd sit on my level ups until I got to a fight I was having difficulty with, then I'd level my character up one step and see if it was enough to get through (the fact that level ups also restored health might have been a factor here, since I was trying to conserve medkits!) It actually made them more "cinematic", in that boss battles followed the film rule: The good guy was getting his ass handed to him, until he automatically got stronger and fully healed and then handed some of that ass kicking right back.

Of course it made my first fight against Sion on Korriban a wash, since I was trying to bull my way through before I realized I had to erode his will to win. I think I burned through seven levels or something worth of upgrades and healing before I gave up, loaded my last save, and went conversational assassin on him.

author=kentona
and revive items are exceedingly rare.

Fuck that, I know. I hate you with a passion now that I'm playing Hero's Realm; I have to run to the church every now and then, and... blergh.

;_; OKAY

Could always make needed items based on in battle, and out. Like you can't use healing magic inside of battle, but you can't use Potions outside of it.

So then when you're in battle, you're forced to use the potions, and when out, you can use the magic to heal. It might seem a bit illogical, but it could work. That, or outside of battle, you can only use potions so many times before your next few battles. Say you can use 3 or 4 of any type of healing potion outside of battle. Then when that stops, to make it work again, you've got to enter, and win, 5, or 10, or 15 battles in a row before you can use potions outside of battle again.

Maybe the same for healing spells inside of battle. You can only use Healing Spells 5 times during a battle, and after that ends, you have to wait 5,10,15 more battles before that works.

This way you can still heal like normal, but it's limited.

Also making items grow based on level. A potion heals for 20. Say you level to 50. It now heals, for, say 250. Not really a good balancing as it's only an example, but that could help.

Like everyone else I am a big hoarder of items. In almost any game I fill my pockets to the brim with useless crap and in Diablo I get about five meters outside the town gates before I have to return to sell all that valueless loot for five gold that is taking up loads of space in my inventory.

I have to make a conscious effort to leave a rusty blade or a broken bottle lying on the ground and not pick it up and throw it into my inventory. However there are certain games more recently that sort of encourage not having every single piece of thing and pick it up. For example I played New Vegas and in the beginning I obviously raided every cupboard and took every little thing from everywhere. I didn't take me more than five minutes to be overencumbered and that's I realized I just don't need all those pieces of duct tape (though later I would when using those specifically in crafting).

Yeah games can have different ways of encouraging or discouraging massive looting but in the end it is mostly a question of attitude. It's easy to be a hoarder but people can change. Make conscious efforts to change.

Yeah, true, I still rarely gobble down any kind of potion I find anywhere so my inventory is filled with fifteen different potions that have different short effects (hello Terraria) and I guess some games could encourage me to chew down more potions. (Now I don't remember. And I need to play more of. But The Witcher is apparently all about alchemy and making potions and shit so concievably in that game there should be some reason to drink some potions once in a while)

Though in the end I often sell those potions for gold. Because I don't need +5 defense for five minutes when I can get hundreds of gold for it! Often the only time I use buff potions is when I've failed at an encounter, had to reload and then I buff myself up enough so I can beat the encounter on the second try.

I guess this is one of the problems with inventory hoarding. You actually don't know when you need it. I walk down a street and I'm surprise attacked by a bunch of thugs. I don't have time to drink a potion because I'm busy beating up thugs. Now if I knew those thugs were coming for me (like for example after I've died once) then I'm much more likely to drink a potion or two before a fight.

So I guess games should just build up monsters more and have characters say "Hey man, did you drink that potion of awesomeness because I bet you're going to need it in this fight.". Where the main character obviously answers "Fuck no. Am I a man or a mouse. I don't need no stinkin' potions"


This post was much longer rambling than I intended originally. Just read the first two paragraphs, there's everything I had to say about the topic.