Une limite d'inventaire dans un MMORPG a-t-elle un sens?

33

Je développe actuellement un simple MMORPG en 2D. Mon objectif actuel est le système d'inventaire.

Je me demande actuellement si je devrais imposer une limite à ce qu'un personnage de joueur peut porter. Soit sous la forme d'un poids maximal, d'un nombre limité d'emplacements d'inventaire ou d'une combinaison des deux. Presque tous les MMORPG que j'ai jamais joués ont limité l'espace d'inventaire. Mais la plausibilité mise à part, est-ce vraiment nécessaire du point de vue du gameplay? Peut-être que cela améliorerait l’expérience de jeu en laissant les joueurs emporter autant de choses qu’ils veulent.

tl; dr: Quelle est la logique de développement du jeu derrière la limitation de la capacité de charge des personnages?

Edit: Merci pour toutes les réponses jusqu'à présent. Ils ont tous été très perspicaces. Après votre contribution, j'ai décidé de faire un inventaire limité pour empêcher les gens de transporter trop d'objets de guérison et d'équipement spécialisé dans les donjons. Pour éviter le problème de surcharge de butin et de devoir retourner en ville tout le temps, je compte donner aux joueurs la possibilité d'envoyer des objets de leur inventaire directement à leur stockage (mais pas la possibilité de les récupérer sur le terrain). J'ai accepté la réponse de Kylotan pour le moment, mais ne laissez pas cela vous décourager de poster des réponses supplémentaires, lorsque vous estimez qu'un aspect intéressant n'était pas encore couvert.

game-design mmo

— Philipp
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7

La réponse la plus simple n’a rien à voir avec le gameplay et tout avec le suivi. En termes simples, plus un joueur peut avoir d’éléments en même temps, plus il a besoin de mémoire. Ce n'est probablement pas une affaire énorme, mais c'est là.

— Raven Dreamer

Cette question ressemble plus à un wiki de communauté.

— Joltmode

4

Je dois dire que… Stalker a une limite d'inventaire de 60 kg (200 avec Exoskeleton) et je la trouve uniquement jouable avec un entraîneur qui désactive cette limitation. Je ne suis peut-être pas un "joueur" classique, mais c'est mon jeu préféré et j'aime seulement y jouer avec un inventaire complet.

— Felix Dombek

35

Une grande partie de la conception de jeux concerne la gestion des ressources, car la meilleure utilisation des ressources limitées est un choix intéressant que les jeux peuvent facilement implémenter. Limiter l'inventaire oblige les joueurs à réfléchir à la valeur de chaque objet et à décider s'il souhaite accumuler ou vendre leur butin et quels objets ils doivent affronter.

— Kylotan
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1

Exactement. Un RPG qui vous permet de transporter des potions de santé illimitées, par exemple, ne serait probablement pas aussi intéressant.

— jdeseno

2

@jdeseno Pas nécessairement. Tant que vous ne pouvez pas tous les utiliser simultanément, la gestion des ressources peut toujours être inhérente au choix du moment de son utilisation.

— Raven Dreamer

2

@jdeseno cela dépend de la mise en œuvre. Dans Diablo 2, vous pouvez utiliser des potions immédiatement après les autres. Dans Diablo 3, vous devez attendre 30 (60?) Secondes entre chaque utilisation. D2 avait un montant très limité que vous pouviez garder (chaque potion prenait une place), alors que dans D3, ils pouvaient en empiler 99 (peut-être plus, jamais vraiment autant). Donc, dans D3, à toutes fins pratiques, vous pouvez avoir des potions "infinies", mais cela ne vous aide pas beaucoup.

— Orin MacGregor

5

Une grande partie de la conception du jeu est sur le point intéressant la gestion des ressources. À l'exception de l'expédition de cargaisons dans Puzzle Pirates et Eve Online, je n'ai jamais trouvé la gestion des stocks à la mode WoW ou à la mode Diablo intéressante. . . surtout frustrant.

— ZorbaTHut

3

C'est une question subjective. Si je pouvais emporter une quantité infinie de choses dans de tels jeux, certaines frustrations auraient certainement disparu, mais certaines situations dans le jeu deviendraient beaucoup moins intéressantes. Les choix peuvent être à la fois frustrants et intéressants, à mon avis.

— Kylotan

18

Limiter les stocks peut avoir un sens.

N'a pas de sens:

limiter juste pour limiter; il n'y a aucun but, et par conséquent, aucun sens.
Limiter pour limiter, encore une fois dans un souci de limitation, sans aucun sens de concurrence; comme Kylotan l'a dit, vous pouvez limiter les joueurs, les obligeant à penser à ce dont ils ont besoin pour se battre; mais que se passe-t-il s’ils peuvent simplement se téléporter à tout moment, comme dans Diablo 2 - la limite n’est que gênante pour le joueur.
réalisme - on vole sur un énorme dragon, qui aurait biologiquement besoin de manger un troupeau de vaches tous les mois, se battre avec une épée flamboyante de 5 mètres sans aucune brûlure au visage, apparaître de nulle part lors de la connexion, mais soudain il faut limiter votre capacité juste pour le réalisme et rien d'autre?

Logique:

économiser de l'espace de stockage (base de données)
vendre plus d'espace, comme des sacs à dos dans WoW, ou mettre à niveau stash dans Diablo 3; la plupart des jeux de RPG se nourrissent de la croissance, votre niveau augmente, votre expérience augmente, votre richesse augmente, alors pourquoi pas votre capacité de stockage?
to involve some additional fun like storing items in Diablo 2 efficiently (as they have different shapes)
to force trading; again Diablo is a good example - at some moment you have so many set items, that you can no longer store them - it's best then to exchange some items from sets you don't need, for items from sets you want to collect.
realism for sake of immersion as Mitchell stated in his answer.

— Markus von Broady
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1

I'd say using Diablo 2 as an example of "limiting to limit" isn't accurate because of items that give an effect in inventory (charms). This is also something for the Makes Sense column; infinite space with items that give passive benefit = infinite power.

— Orin MacGregor

@OrinMacGregor I didn't say Diablo 2 doesn't make sense. I said if you can teleport to base anytime and cheap like in Diablo 2, then limiting your inventory doesn't make sense. Of course it doesn't apply to the Diablo 2, because of the charms you mentioned.

— Markus von Broady

My mistake. I interpreted the whole block as applying to D2.

— Orin MacGregor

2

Limited space for charms but infinite space for others is an idea, except it makes the whole concept of in game gold obsolete. You get to hold an infinite amount of items, which equates to infinite gold (especially when dealing with the items that sell for 35k). Gold is lost on death, but items aren't (ignoring hardcore mode). Sell some items to recoup lost gold and proceed. Might as well make any purchasable commodity free and assign no value to items. And way before patch 1.09 they had talks of implementing a universal stash, but sales had fallen so cost to implement wasn't worth it.

— Orin MacGregor

1

The charms in Diablo were added with one of the later updates to D2. They were not part of the original game design and thus certainly not the reason why they made the inventory so limited. They do, however, build on that mechanic. When carrying charms, the player is trading inventory space for more power.

— Philipp

10

Limiting the inventory serves two reasons:

Immersion

It doesn't make sense to carry every item you can pick up. Limiting your inventory prevents breaking the player's immersion in the game world. This is why most modern shooters have a limited amount of weapon slots.

Challenge

It forces the player to make choices about what equipment to pick up, and what to leave behind, as well as preventing the hoarding of items which would make the game too easy. This is the most common reason for games to limit the inventory.

— Mitchell
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1

Thanks, I'm adding "realism" to my "doesn't make sense".

— Markus von Broady

5

You're missing my point (which is probably my fault). It's not the realism that matters, it's the immersion. Realism is an easy way to immerse the player into the game's world, because they're already familiar with it. The most important thing about immersion is consistency. For example: it's fine to have 200 weapons disappear in a magic bag that makes sense in the game's world, as long as they don't disappear into thin air. I changed the header from "Realism" to "Immersion" in my answer, to better reflect what I intended.

— Mitchell

2

@Philipp Be aware though that explaining everything with "it's magic" might break the game story- and/or lore-wise. Most games that fail (even triple-A) do so because they are inconsistent within themselves.

— Mike

1

@MarkusvonBroady I agree with Mitchell Ensink, you should add challenge, and hints of realism isn't a bad thing, just don't format yourself to it. If something was completely unrealistic, it would eventually reach a point which the end user might not completely comprehend what's going on. Some realistic elements will always exist, and should. If I go by your idea, does that mean I shouldn't use trees in my game because they are real existing things? Realism isn't bad, too much is. Games don't have to be a completely different reality to be enjoyable.

— tsturzl

1

@tsturzl I criticize realism for the sake of realism negatively, and in same time for the sake of immersion positively as I point it in my answer :) Also look at Mr Beast's comment, inventory in 99% of cases isn't realistic anyway.

— Markus von Broady

9

I think an important point has not been covered here. If you let people have unlimited inventory space, they will soon enough (depending on your itemization model) have filled their inventory with a crazy amount of items.

Unless you've designed the most amazing inventory management system ever with search and filter capabilities matching those of Gmail and beyond, you will have players give up your game out of frustration ("Where did I put my Great Axe of Beheading again? Page 58?")

If you want the player to have unlimited space, force her to organize her items by (for example) letting her create labelled chests where she can "archive" items of interest, keeping them away from her inventory.

— Blixt
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I think a player will sell everything he doesn't need for money, and so he would archive all remaining items. I don't like this answer as it's promoting mindless gameplay: we give you a limited inventory space, so you don't get lost in hundreds of items you forgot to sell.

— Markus von Broady

1

@MarkusvonBroady Well, I'm afraid that it will happen. I don't have an actual case study to prove it, but I have watched many players in various games, and analyzed how they use their inventory space. It seems that the amount of junk (this is assuming the common mechanic that players can find junk items to increase number of unique gameplay events without skewing item economy) they keep directly correlates to the amount of total space that they have available. Infinite space would eliminate the reason to remove items from inventory completely and ruin the experience.

— Blixt

This is assuming average players. Depending on the game, you may be directed towards very in-depth players who really care to organize everything. You've got a wide spectrum of potential players, with different behaviors. But I would say that my answer covers 99% of WoW players, for example.

— Blixt

2

There are a few reasons why people don't sell items, and that comes down to design choice. If you want them to sell items, it better be an easyprocess, a good example is in Guild Wars 2 where you can pick up all items from mobs by pressing F. This means the inventory fills up quickly. Had they not have the "Sell Junk" button at all vendors, it becomes very tedious for players to sell items 1 by 1. Couple this with unlimited space, people would just keep things lying around. In either case, having to go to town or a vendor to sell items is a pain... some just avoid it until they really have to.

— Jamornh

4

I'm somewhat surprised nobody's linked to this Penny Arcade strip yet.

— Ilmari Karonen

5

Realism would surely be one rationale. One thing that bugs me in games like Oblivion is that there's a threshold for weight - if you're over it, you just can't move at all. I mean, how plausible is it that you can run and jump at full speed while carrying 187kg of armour and weapons and random potions without any apparent means of them even being attached to your body, and then you pick up a flower that weights 0.1kg, and suddenly you can't move? It's a real jarring point that brings home that you're playing flawed game, and kicks you right out of your escapism trip.

Far more sensible would be to have weight affect speed - once you start carrying a lot, you start to slow down, eventually slow to a crawl. This would still have all the advantages mentioned in other answers - challenge, for instance, but would be far more realistic, and immersive.

Daggerfall also had a system where you could buy a cart, which you could drive around, and fill with crap. You couldn't take it into dungeons and shops, but you could raid a dungeon, and come back and unload into your cart a few times before heading to the shops to sell your loot. That was a very cool system, and it'd be nice to see it in other games.

You could also have a "bulk" system, where after you start carrying too much volume, it starts to affect your agility, so you have to do actions slower. Might get a bit complex though.

— naught101
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2

Skyward Sword had one of my favorite inventory management systems. You had limited "pouches" for ancillary items, and you had to store the ones you didn't need in the item check. You could buy more pouches for items increasing the amount you could carry with you. And you could also buy/find duplicates of items (mainly the ammunition bags and medals) allowing you to play how you want.

The good part is that while you had limited space for items, the main weapons you had enough space for, so you had everything you needed, but you could tailor your inventory to suit your preference. At one point I filled my pouches with just upgraded quivers so I could snipe to my hearts content.

— jumpnett
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2

In Lineage (2 at least) the weight limit seemed pretty much like a requirement as if you could stack an infinite number of potions and soulshots/spiritshots, you'd never need to return to town and could grind in a dungeon forever and ever... ^^

— Oskar Duveborn
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1

Inventory limit makes sense for every item type which isn't used as a trivially stackable currency.

This isn't so much about being realistic, or cost associated with inventory, but all about conditioning the player to keep the inventory tidy enough that they don't carry "dead weight" around with them.

The user is only able to recall a limited number of items from his inventory, everything beyond that is cluttering the UI. The more you allow the inventory to clutter, the more tedious it becomes too the user to actually weed out.

You don't only hit this phenomenon with unlimited inventories, but even already of the inventory is just slightly to big.

20 slots or so are what the user can actively recall. Most games are going way beyond that, and as a result you see bandaids such as "favorites" or "trash filters" introduced which aim to assist the user in discarding their excessive inventory.

But even then you usually end up with too many "favorites", so some games are starting to split of "collectibles" like "rare skins" into separate collections instead, in order to encourage the user to part even with their "favorites".

Usually, item management in a game with a severely limited inventory - hardly more slots than you could utilize in a quick bar - is less tedious than one with unlimited or excessive inventory.

— Ext3h
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