Paradachshund

Have you succeeded in making things less crappy? I've been debating the upgrade for a while and I'm basically hoping this is possible by the time I do it. I already use shutup10 on win10, but I wasn't if win11 kneecaps it somehow or not.

One example I like is Dredge. If you took away inventory management from that game, you would basically destroy its whole economy and progression system. It would also get rid of the interesting way they make having tons of equipment mean you can't carry as much at once, creating a tradeoff.

I think one thing people get mixed up is the limitation side of a limited inventory -- which is often a good thing for creating choices, tension, and pacing -- and the physical action of sorting and arranging an inventory. This second one is a perfect place to streamline in my opinion because while the limitations on inventory create meaningful choices, having to spend a while rearranging your stuff to fit something in is very rarely good gameplay. You might already be making this distinction, but I wanted to clarify that just in case.

Inventory size/weight capacity is essentially a resource to manage, and I'm a big proponent of resource management in games (and this is coming from a designer who tried to get rid of and streamline resources for years -- it has some major downsides).

To be fair to obsidian the distribution choices have nothing to do with the people who make the game part. You can have great devs with a greedy publisher.

It definitely works for some games to do it that way!

That's interesting about the stamina. I agree that having to constantly start and stop sprinting isn't a great solution and it's never felt quite right to me either. The only games where it feels like it adds anything are ones where running out is dangerous. For general exploration it's kind of a chore.

Great points! I think you're spot on that a streamlined RPG would benefit from easy inventory management. I'll have to learn more about the armor and weapon system you talk about cause I'm curious to hear how it works.

They are, you're correct. I don't think it would work in every game either. Inventory management can be a powerful tension and choice device and getting rid of that isn't always a good thing.

Extreme inventory QOL often just turbo charges hoarding behavior and makes individual items feel meaningless. Just pop it in the bag, who cares, it's all weightless anyway!

Don't get me wrong, sometimes easy inventory is great, but I think inventory management gets a worse response than it deserves a lot these days.

/rant

Thanks!

That's good to know, though I wouldn't know how to do the initial setup either. 😅

Good to know!

To be honest that was very over my head, but maybe I'll do some research on it sometime. I don't do self hosting so I would be looking for things that don't need that to work.

Thanks!