Come on. I don’t expect the average person to be an expert at this, but a professional animator should understand that the human face is a bit more complex than Mr. Potato Head. You don’t just slap a grin on there and call it a day. It’s not like this is some groundbreaking experiment, and nobody has ever tried to animate a face before.
I don’t mind encumbrance in Baldur’s Gate. I think people are only thinking of I got all this cool stuff why should I have to choose between it all. I see it as limiting cheese mechanics. It could limit infinite money by not letting people pick up every single item to sell. Or if there was no encumbrance why would I use tactics when I can just use barrelmancy? I have to fight these powerful opponents? Nah I’m just gonna hit em with x amount of exploding barrels till they die since I can carry every barrel ever.
I don’t like encumbrance, but I’ve never felt it negatively impact my enjoyment of a game. I didn’t even know encumbrance was this much of an issue honestly. It just makes sense in certain games, imo.
Edit: Could also be made a toggle-able feature or unlock?
“Would I like this game more if I didnt have my cool item right now?”
Hard to say yes… But in practice the answer might very well be yes. Challenge in games is rarely something you directly ask for, you want the reward after all, but often the fun is in exactly overcoming those obstacles, and not actually the reward. In that sense encumbrance might feel bad… but being able to grab every single item always could very well ruin part of the fun.
In the end games are sets of challenges presented in certain ways, and its just whether those challenges work well from a game design perspective.
Has anyone here ever thought “I would like this game more if it had encumbrance in it”?
Yes, I totally have. In fact even in starfield, I found pretty quickly that I was wishing the game would arbitrarily restrict my ammunition and medpack supplies, because the combat was more fun when I could run out of shots and healing in the early game. It’s not even the kind of thing I can easily do as a challenge myself because it’s so easy to pick them up and go “over”. I legit think starfield’s encumbrance system would be much better if it was more restrictive, so that I had to carefully choose my equipment and things, than the current “I can carry so much that gameplay is not meaningfully restricted, but not nearly enough to collect and sell all the loot I find”.
I posted upstream about the problem with encumbrance in this style of game. It’s not that encumbrance is inherently bad, but that most of the time in crpgs, it just seems to be ‘there’, it’s not in the service of any part of the gameplay.
I think encumbrance adds something really important to the game but it’s really delicate. Namely, I think the pacing of games is better when encumbrance exists compared to not.
What encumbrance does is force you to make some decisions about loot right now as opposed to later at the merchant. I have to decide to pick something up intentionally because I don’t want to have to deal with all this junk later. When I later go to a merchant, I only now have stuff in my inventory that either (a) I want to have on hand to use or (b) I think will be valuable to sell.
A game with no encumbrance does not enforce this part of the decision making on you. You no longer are required at pick-up time to make any part of that decision. As a result, players are less likely to interact with loot at all until they get to the merchant. At which point they now need to spend much more time sorting through their stuff to figure out what to sell or keep. In other words, the optimal way to play becomes simply clicking the take all button on every container you find and dealing with it later. I personally would find this interact worse as the chore of dealing with it becomes bigger and bigger and harder to manage with no in game penalty for doing this to yourself. Basically, players have to choose to play the game in a way that’s fun rather than being forced to play the game in a way that’s fun.
There’s also a second important thing that encumbrance adds to games like this: scarcity of resources. Not scarcity in a sense that resources of any kind are hard to come by, but in the sense that the player has to purposefully make decisions in order to amass things like gold or camp supplies. With encumbrance, I could still just take all every container until I fill up, but then I would have an inventory filled with worthless junk which might sell for much less. Or I might have less room for camp supplies. What I think most players will end up doing, though, is being more selective about what they pick up, enabling them to be more efficient with their sold goods and inventory space to prioritize things that help them succeed. Without encumbrance, this entire aspect of gameplay is removed.
Sure, it might feel bad in the moment to have to make a decision between two items for the sake of encumbrance, but I think the value it adds to the game is generally more than it takes away.
AAA title Published by Epic Games, doesn’t use unreal engine, mega-chad move.
I can see them in the future publishing it on steam as it has no integration into epic in any technical way. Epic will want to recoup their costs though by optimizing the release window for steam so expect it (if at all) to have a steam release when control 2 lands.
There is no reason to get a PS5. There are hardly any exclusives worth playing. The games it does have are either on Xbox, which is generally cheaper to invest in, (especially if it’s on gamepass) with the series s. Most games are locked at 30 fps anyway. And now you HAVE to see ads?
Just get a PC or if you really want to stay with consoles, the series s or x on sale are the only options that make some bit of sense. But still, a PC is worth saving for.
Agreed. At least SOME of the games are coming to PC… Oh but they need all your personal information so you’re basically integrated into their ecosystem whether you like it or not.
I guess in a sense it does lead to competitors trying their best to compete and create better games than their contemporaries. In an ideal world, all games would be playable on all platforms, of course, but that’s just not realistic - either because of contracts or hardware limitations.
I guess in a sense it does lead to competitors trying their best to compete
No, it stifles competition because they can say “we don’t need to worry about competing with that game at all because you can’t buy it on this platform”.
but that’s just not realistic
It’s completely realistic. We just pass a law that bans yet another anti-competitive anti-consumer behavior.
A PC is something different and not really comparable to a console if all you’re interested in is a hassle-free, straightforward gaming experience. Economies of scale make it so that a PS5 is just plain better than any PC you could cook up for that price.
Plus, exclusives are a factor for console choice, sure, but I’d argue that the performance boost relative to PS4 models is worth the price. I can only speak for myself, obviously, but I’ve been really happy with my PS4 for these last four years.
Same, still playing my ps4, probably won’t buy a ps5 though. I’ll just wait for ps6 or whatever to happen. As of now ps4 plays elden ring and bloodborne(two of my favorite games) so I’m content with it.
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