This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I’m more baffled why game devs continue to implement inventory limitations at all. I have yet to see a game that wouldn’t be significantly improved by just giving the player infinite inventory space.
If you have infinite inventory space, then you need a way to navigate through infinite items. Towards the end of the game, a player could easily have nearly every item in the game. For some games, that would be fine, but for many, that would make the list of items prohibitively long. Filtering and searching would help, but if you’re looking for an item that you forgot the name of, a search doesn’t necessarily do much.
Then there’s balance reasons. Some games use their inventory system to limit the player, making sure they don’t start a level with enough health potions and grenades to cheese every fight.
In survival games, a finite inventory sets the gameplay loop: you go exploring/mining and then return to base, drop off your stuff and head out again. It makes your base valuable, if only because that’s where you keep most of your resources and moving would be hard. It also gives the player a break from one task. I played a Minecraft mod that gave me an effectively infinite inventory. I went mining for so long that it started to feel like an awful slog. Because my mine shafts went on too long, getting back was itself a hassle. When I reverted back to a more typical inventory size, I could feel how a full inventory breaks up the grind and prevents mining from getting out of hand.
Filtering and searching would help, but if you’re looking for an item that you forgot the name of, a search doesn’t necessarily do much.
Keywords are the answer. If the player forgets whether the healing item is called “medkit”, “first aid”, or “bandage”, just let them search for “heal”.
Some games use their inventory system to limit the player, making sure they don’t start a level with enough health potions and grenades to cheese every fight.
That’s better solved by just not giving the player that many to begin with. Some games adjust their item drops based on what you already have, so if you’re running low on pistol ammo, they’ll give you some. If you already have five grenades, you won’t find any more until you use some. That achieves the same goal without limiting your ability to pick up different types of items.
In survival games, a finite inventory sets the gameplay loop: you go exploring/mining and then return to base, drop off your stuff and head out again. It makes your base valuable, if only because that’s where you keep most of your resources and moving would be hard.
That’s exactly one of the things that I hate about limited inventory space. It’s effectively the same as hauling vendor trash, and that’s something that I view as an unnecessary interruption of gameplay. “You’ve had fun killing mobs for five whole minutes, time to do a chore!” Yeah, no, that can fuck right off. All the way off.
I played a Minecraft mod that gave me an effectively infinite inventory. I went mining for so long that it started to feel like an awful slog.
Plus you can put the items into categories. Fallout/Skyrim games still have a weight limitation but even in the middlegame most players are carrying hundreds of items. The devs helped alleviate frustration by categorizing everything. Need health? Go to the “aid” tab. Need new armor? Click the “armor tab.” Etc
I’m a game developer and honestly, you are kind of right. It makes the game more fun to be able to haul around things infinitely. A lot of game developers put in cheats specifically so they can either just spawn what they need or carry everything or both. That said, it also ruins the game incredibly well after 2 minutes of you dicking around and having fun with every item without issue.
Overall the basic issue is twofold. One, if you let the player carry everything, then some players are going to look and dig through levels to find everything. Two, Some players won’t do this so you need to stock your levels with enough obvious items to keep the players who don’t explore stocked enough to keep playing. If you do that then the items the exploration players are looking for are just either overpowering them or not giving them any benefits like collectibles. There is a middle ground to this and make exploration reward items different playstyles. Like in Deus Ex, a lot of exploration bonus items are stealth based. Meaning if you want to do a stealth playthrough you’ll be exploring a lot and thus you’ll find less ammo which is on guards or in the middle of guarded areas and you’ll find more hack tools and lockpicks.
So problem solved right? But wait… Deus Ex’s inventory is… exactly like REs. Why? Because the issue above was the basic issue of why to even include inventory. Now we bring in what it adds to the game. Player choice and agency. As the player, you get to pick your own path. In any game with an inventory, you are going to get to pick which things you keep and which you don’t. This means you have to actively make choices according to your playstyle. In Deus Ex the question boils down to, do you take the big fuck off GEP gun or do you keep your inventory lean for lockpicks, pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles so you can use whatever ammo you come across. In the first Deus Ex, ammo is very scarce. Thus having room for ammo and the tools to use it is very important. a GEP gun only really works on 4-6 enemies and the ammo is huge as well as the gun. Taking up around a third of the inventory, maybe more, depending on if you get inventory upgrades. This is an active playstyle choice.
Some games are simply built around inventory management, likewise, some games are built around unlimited inventory. The latest Hitman (2016-2021) series allows unlimited inventory and you can certainly build around it. The issue with Hitman is that you lose all of your inventory every time the mission ends then you can only bring select things into a mission to keep your inventory slim. It still rewards the player for exploration because now you know another path through the mission which potentially gets you another item or in a place you didn’t know you could get without the right outfit. Because the missions are replayable the information you gain in one playthrough helps the next. Knowledge of that item existing in that location is enough of a reward.
@Pseu mentioned that survival games need inventory management. I pose they don’t. Crashlands is a survival game without inventory management and doesn’t even have an inventory screen for better or worse. Inventory management, as far as I am aware, isn’t a requirement of any genre. If it is then someone out there is going to try to make a game to remove it. There are also games that are solely inventory management like Save Room - Organization Puzzle. There are types of people who like inventory management and those who don’t.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk! I hope this was helpful and interesting.
Now we bring in what it adds to the game. Player choice and agency. As the player, you get to pick your own path. In any game with an inventory, you are going to get to pick which things you keep and which you don’t. This means you have to actively make choices according to your playstyle. In Deus Ex the question boils down to, do you take the big fuck off GEP gun or do you keep your inventory lean for lockpicks, pistols, SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles so you can use whatever ammo you come across. In the first Deus Ex, ammo is very scarce. Thus having room for ammo and the tools to use it is very important. a GEP gun only really works on 4-6 enemies and the ammo is huge as well as the gun. Taking up around a third of the inventory, maybe more, depending on if you get inventory upgrades. This is an active playstyle choice.
Yeah, this is the usual justification for limited inventory space, but I’m not buying it. I don’t think it adds choice at all, quite the opposite. You could just as easily make the choice to not take the GEP gun even if you had infinite inventory space, so contrary to what you said, the limitation doesn’t actually add any choice. What it does do is remove the choice of taking the gun anyway “just in case” even if you’re on a stealthy playthrough, and that has the knock-on effect of removing a whole bunch of other choices later down the line. You can’t pull a “surprise, motherfucker” moment on some hapless enemy. You can’t change your playstyle later if you discover that stealth really isn’t as much fun as you thought it would be. And perhaps most importantly, you can’t choose to keep playing stealthily despite having a big fuckoff gun. Choice only exists when alternatives exist. By taking those alternatives away and locking the player into one playstyle, you’re not adding choice, you’re diminishing it.
This is basically the same discussion that occurred around Skyrim, where Bethesda made the controversial design decision of getting rid of character classes in favor of completely free-form character leveling. Some people argued that this meant that you couldn’t choose your playstyle anymore, and I always found that logic to be completely backwards. Of course you can still choose your playstyle, but now you make that choice by actually playing the game in a particular way rather than by clicking stuff in a menu at the beginning. Surely it’s self-evident that this is better…?
Inventory limitations (and character classes) are therefore just one aspect of the larger question of whether or not to lock the player into their choices or allow them to play a jack-of-all-trades or change their playstyle later. Having played a lot of games from either side of that spectrum, I’m very firmly in favor of the latter. It’s easy to point to Deus Ex, regarded by many as the best game ever made, as an example of how to do it right. But the reality is that most games aren’t that good and don’t offer multiple equally well fleshed out playstyles to choose from. What if the game is badly balanced and your chosen playstyle ceases to be viable halfway through? What if it turns out that the playstyle simply isn’t as fun as it initially seemed? If the game falls into the former category of locking you into your choices, you’re screwed and have to start over. That’s just frustrating and disrespectful of the player’s time. Game devs would be wise to eat their humble pie and allow a lot of leeway to the player not just because the player may have made some bad choices when playing the game but also because the devs themselves may have made some bad choices when making it. Only a perfect game is justified in being unforgiving, and precious few are.
Now you might say, “But Sordid, if you allow the players to have everything, they’re going to optimize the fun out of the game and play an OP jack-of-all-trades!” And my response to that is, “So what?” It’s their choice, let them. If adding choice were the goal as you claim, it should be a no-brainer. Yeah, the temptation to optimize is strong, and sticking to your chosen playstyle can be difficult at times, but nothing worthwhile is easy. And some people genuinely enjoy being an OP jack-of-all-trades. Why take that choice away from them when it doesn’t add any choice to anyone else?
I don’t agree wholeheartedly but I see your point and agree that some games benefit from unlimited inventory. How do you feel about inventory systems that are half-unlimited? E.g. You can pick up everything but it limits you on the max amount of ammo and items. Like Doom.
Realistically, if you have unlimited inventory is there any reason you wouldn’t take an item if it had no drawbacks? I mean without the choice being forced, it’s not really a choice. The player is just going to collect the thing 99% of the time. That’s just human nature. The limited inventory systems are supposed to make you question why you are picking up something. It works for the majority of players out there which is why a lot of games implement limited inventory systems. Games like Doom, and Half-Life. They don’t have a limited inventory system because the player should collect everything they can and it’s only limited by max values so they can make encounters that force you to collect things as you fight. This also forces a player choice on if they should switch weapons or run in for ammo. It gives player motivation in the moment and Doom 2016 used this brilliantly by remembering why ammo limitations exist in the first place.
I do feel like Deus Ex’s limited inventory system benefits it directly as while you get to choose a playstyle, you aren’t ever locked in by it. You can just drop your stealth stuff and start collecting weapons. The thing that locks you into a playstyle in Deus Ex is actually the skill system in which you can’t shoot a weapon accurately if you didn’t put points into it. The augmentation system does this as well. In many games with limited inventory, they are accompanied by a skill system that locks you into your previous choices. Even the Fallout series never went away from the whole giving you skill points and having you guess which playstyle you want. I’d say it’s less the inventory system limiting you from choices rather than your skills.
Skyrim is a tricky one because if you want to switch playstyles you need to then have a 90s-style montage where you learn a bunch of archery or spells, except there are no cuts in real life. The montage takes hours as you just do something over and over again to level up a skill that potentially should have just been raised up as you went. It trades time investment for switching playstyles. Skyrim also though, has a limited inventory system. Do you feel like Skyrim’s inventory system actually limits you? For me, I feel like Skyrim’s inventory is big enough to hold everything I could possibly want to take into an encounter and still have room for loot. The only limit is how much loot can I bring back.
Lastly, if the player is going to optimize the fun out of the game and play an OP playstyle the response should be “So what?” the argument against this is simple. They are going to play your game for 5 minutes, say it’s boring and easy, leave a negative Steam review, your game will fall into the mostly negative category, you’ll not make enough to pay back your publisher, you’ll have to close down your studio and live in a box on the side of the road. Like, realistically if the majority of players are going to optimize the fun out of a game then the game isn’t fun or entertaining for the majority of those who will play it. Alternatively though, just put in some cheats that give you unlimited inventory and let the rare players that absolutely hate limited inventory just cheat. That method works for a lot of games.
That said I also agree a lot of games just do what their inspirations do without questioning why they were put there or what they add to the game. I could see a lot of games that could potentially play differently without a limited inventory system. I know I played a lot of Fallout and Skyrim just cheating myself a bigger inventory. I honestly don’t love inventory management at all. A lot of the early to mid-90s games didn’t have limited inventory and in some regards, it made them better. I see a strong reason for it but I also see how limited inventory systems simply make a game more engaging. Heat Signature is an interesting one that is limited on the number of inventory slots. It really makes the player choose how they will approach a mission with the information provided which tells you almost everything you’ll encounter. A limited inventory in that game also keeps you looking around for new items that you can teleport right into your hand. So you are constantly able to adjust on the fly and improvise.
You’re right about some of the effects that limited inventory space has, like forcing the player to prioritize what they take or to vary their approach instead of just using one gun throughout the entire game, but that’s kinda my point. I was responding to your statement that limited inventory adds player choice, which is not true. These effects are the opposite, they’re restrictions on the player’s choice, specifically on the player’s ability to choose something that might be considered boring or overpowered. I don’t think such restrictions are necessary, but more to the point, I think players deserve to know the true nature and purpose of them. Don’t go around saying that limited inventory space adds choice. Tell your players the truth, that it’s a leash that restricts their choice and that you’re keeping them on because you don’t trust them not to ruin the game for themselves. And that you’re withholding that choice from those who would actually enjoy that playstyle.
You’re also correct that skill systems are another significant factor in locking the player into their choices. That’s what I meant when I mentioned character classes and praised Skyrim’s lack of them. You’re right that switching playstyles in Skyrim requires some effort, but not nearly as much as leveling up in the first place. A high-level character has all kinds of equipment, abilities, and resources they can use to speed up the process (e.g. just using their wealth to pay for skill training), and I really think Bethesda is onto something with this system. It doesn’t let you be great at everything right from the start (too OP), nor does it rigidly lock you into a single playstyle (too restrictive). Other games have also implemented skill systems that achieve a similar effect (Kenshi, Dark Souls 2).
As for the question of how to handle inventory itself, here’s the thing. The issue I have with limited inventory space is that most games slavishly implement it without giving a lot of thought to what happens when you run out. Because that’s the whole point, right? Your inventory capacity is limited so that you can run out, either of inventory capacity itself or of the resources that you carry in your inventory. At which point you need to stop doing what you’re doing and replenish, and the usual ways of handling that are just uninspired and annoying: If you run out of inventory space, you need to make a trip to town and sell your vendor trash before you get back to killing mobs. If you run out of ammo, you need to stop fighting and go pick up some more. Both of those feel like a chore, they’re a needless, boring interruption of gameplay.
And it’s not an easy problem to solve, very few games even make an attempt. Some adjust resource drops to suit your needs, dropping you ammo/resources that you’re short on and not dropping stuff that you have plenty of. That works, but it cheapens the experience, because the entire resource economy is fake. The new Dooms have the right idea of making the player engage enemies even more aggressively instead of backing off to replenish ammo, but even there the glory kills are basically short first-person cutscenes that interrupt the gameplay (which is the reason I haven’t played those games, I find the idea of having to frequently do finishers with canned animations off-putting). The best solution I’ve seen, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to be very popular, is Mass Effect 1’s overheat meter, which is basically equivalent to regenerating ammo. It prevents you from just holding the button down as you might if you had an enormous/infinite ammo reserve, but it also doesn’t force you to stop fighting when you run out and have to wait for your gun to cool down, since you can use that time to reposition, throw grenades, use abilities, etc. It’s a shame this system hasn’t caught on.
Similar issues exist around vendor trash hauling. Some games manage to do away with it completely. For example, The Saboteur and The Bard’s Tale both show you what loot you found and then immediately convert it into money as if you’d sold it to a vendor, only you didn’t actually have to make the trip. It’s basically just a currency drop with some flavor text, and the games are in no way worse off for not forcing the player to periodically visit a vendor. But that only works in these games because actual usable items and weapons are very few and very simplistic, it’s a much tougher nut to crack in games with more complex itemization. Path of Exile actually uses inventory management issues as part of its monetization model, where buying stash tabs is technically optional, but inventory management is hell without them. The Nioh series, which is a soulslike with ARPG-esque itemization, is a prime example of devs not giving any thought to what happens when you run out. They almost give you an unlimited inventory but not quite. You can carry 600 items on you and store 4000 more in your stash, which is a lot. You won’t have to worry about inventory limitations for a long, long time, quite possibly all the way to endgame. But what happens when you do finally run out of space? You probably just give up on the game outright, because now it expects you to manually sort through almost five thousand items one by one, and fuck that, right? Unlike the ammo problem, which IMO is solved quite well by ME1, I can’t recall a game that has a really good solution to the vendor trash problem.
Oh, and as for players finding your game too easy and boring due to unlimited inventory and leaving bad reviews after playing for five minutes, I don’t think that’s a realistic concern. You can make games challenging and interesting just fine without rigidly locking players into their choices. Skyrim’s unlimited leveling doesn’t seem to have made a dent in its success, and Nioh also isn’t regarded as easy despite having an inventory limit that you’re unlikely to reach for a few hundred hours.
In some ways, yes, limited inventories are to prevent the player from making the wrong choice but it is also a point to ask the player do you take X or Y, and having a choice between those two options makes the player choose a playstyle. Of course, you can absolutely still do this without a limited inventory. Deus Ex does it right at the start of the game where Paul runs up to you and gives you 3 weapon options and straight up asks how are you going to play this game. That said it’s supposed to be a reminder, a constant active choice, on what the player is picking for their playstyle. That said…
Honestly, you’ve kind of swayed me more into wanting unlimited inventories. You are right, limited inventories seem to be a design crutch used by a lot of games that don’t think of their whole ramification and more important the actions needed during other gameplay to justify a limited inventory. I will say I do think certain games make a lot of sense to have limited inventories but I would really like to see designers move away from limited inventories to allow more player freedom. I could see taking Doom 2016’s style of driving players toward getting more resources while keeping inventories unlimited (and not putting you in a gameplay-breaking cutscene).
Unlimited inventories certainly work really well for the latest Hitman series which kind of shows that it could have worked for Deus Ex. In fact, in the first half of the Deus Ex, you work for UNATCO and could just let players collect a bunch of crap and then have them turn it into the evidence locker or whatnot. The design choice to simply limit your inventory can be seen as almost lazy nowadays because it means no one is thinking of what happens if you don’t have a limited inventory. It’s certainly given me a lot to think about on how I’d build or design a game without the inventory limitations.
I’m glad I was able to give you some food for thought. For my part, I can see how some games might benefit from inventory limitations. Certainly if you’re making any kind of realistic simulation, infinite inventory space would be inappropriate. Allowing the player to amass huge stockpiles of consumables is probably also not a good idea (though this issue can also be attacked from the other direction, by simply not giving the player too many consumables in the first place). After further consideration, it seems clear to me a distinction should be drawn between inventories used to hold items the player uses, such as weapons and consumables, and inventories used to hold vendor trash. I still firmly believe that the latter should be unlimited and the player should not be forced to interrupt the fun they’re having slaying monsters just to make room for more loot. It doesn’t help that most games don’t in fact make such a distinction and just have one inventory for everything (Kingdoms of Amalur being the only exception I can think of at the moment).
I love how modded minecraft has infinite different options for inventory management. Enderchest in a pouch, automatic pickup and sorting, intelligent sorting buttons, autopopulating hotbars, auto delete, entire mods like AE2 just to organize your chest system with a searchbar. It’s a nice commentary on how difficult balancing a game around collecting limited resources and accessing them can be. The fact that certain people like certain inventory mods is telling.
God, seeing screencaps of Minecraft with terrible hotbars, or anyone else's Destiny inventory (seriously, delete shit, it's only your fault that your postmaster is full by the end of a strike)
Destiny players are the worst... "We need more vault space!" No, you need to learn to let go. Why do you "need" 14 different kinetic Scout Rifles. Pro-tip - YOU DON'T. I'll make an exception for elemental weapons, it makes sense to have one for each element. But other than that? Nope!
Exotics too, if it's not an Exotic you use often, you can make due with a collections roll. It's cheap to MW if you're at the point where you have multiple builds, and weapons are just weapons, if there's no high kill tracker, you don't need to worry about pulling (Hawkmoon, DMT, and the craftables non-withstanding).
Shit purples drop like candy too, so infusion fodder's not an issue.
Probs cause they randomly buff/nerf stuff, so they keep them incase. Bungies own fault for having no idea what to do with the game changing systems constantly, so there's no easy way to get an exact item back once its dropped.
Inventory management wasn’t really much of a concern for me in the ones where the key items/puzzle solution items aren’t held in the same container. I could have sworn 4 had that tho. Maybe it’s just the remake that changed it? 🤔 I’m currently playing the remake and it’s been putting key items in their own inventory space.
