It is "old man rants at the open sky" time. Games, especially RPGs, should NOT make managing your character's inventory a game in and of itself! It is irritating and detracts from otherwise great games.
This topic came to mind after I read Nerd Girl Thoughts post on Crashlands. She describes how the game has the audacity to have an unlimited inventory:
Did I mention you can carry, well, everything? One of most annoying parts of crafting-focused games is that you never know what you’re going to need later, so you’re spending resources crafting a million chests just in case those early game resources are needed again later on. Not in Crashlands, because your inventory is infinite. If you can pick it up, you can carry it. No inventory management, no chests, no worries.
The "crafting a million chests" hits close to home for me right now playing a lot of Once Human. My house has chests... everywhere. Chests for all the logs that I keep piling up. Chests for overflowing collections of disassembled parts. Chests for that thing I may just need a week from now.
Fortunately Once Human at least lets crafting supplies be sourced from the crates without having to go and get it out of the crate (well at least most of the time; some inconsistency with some of the crafting stations that don't do this). Also Once Human lets players carry a lot of misc items for free in their backpack. Nice but still irritating with so much in the backpack.
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| Ashes of Creation's inventory |
Another big offender in games is various currency tokens. Massively multiplayer games especially LOVE their currency tokens and even more than that they LOVE being inconsistent about the tokens. Some go into a currency bank and others go into inventory or sometimes it goes to some hard to find account wallet you don't even realize you have.
Once Human as a recent example for me is a poster child for inconsistency. Where did that starchrom you just picked up go? Oh it's just tracked as a number on your inventory screen. Picked up some stellar planula? That is in your backpacck. Got a blueprint fragment? That is in the blueprints screen. Oh you got the other thing called blueprint? That is in your inventory. Once Human content creators are making bank on just explaining the inventory management interfaces in this game!
If it's not obvious by now I don't like managing inventory which is why you will see me barking about games like Ashes of Creation planning a "tetris like" inventory management system or why you will see me rolling my eyes at a game like Star Citizen trying to make an entire career path in the game for "loading a ship". Just stop. Let me play the game; not an inventory UI!
