Slime Squisher
Posts: 377
Joined: Thursday, 12th June 2014, 06:56
Proposal: Limit items by category, instead of overall
Moreover, the current inventory system doesn't really punish bad decisions that well. The results of bad inventory choices are never immediate, and moreover, it is rare for them to directly result in death (which is the best teacher in any roguelike). Most players would probably agree that Crawl would be perfectly winnable with 40 or 45 inventory slots instead of 52 - a lot of good players might not even notice the difference. So if someone's wasting 12 inventory slots on useless items, if they're otherwise a good player it may not actually impede them that much.
The Proposal: Fairly simple, really. Players still carry up to 52 items, but instead of an overall cap there are individual caps on each item type. Some types might need to be combined (e.g. manuals are rare enough that they could probably be lumped in with spellbooks). A good place to start with the distribution of items generated on the floor (although if that doesn't give six slots for armor, that would obviously need to be adjusted).
Benefits:
- Easier Decisions: Capping items by category reduces the space over which you have to make inventory decisions. Instead of asking "Do I want this wand of iceblast instead of one of my other 52 items?", the decision becomes "Do I want this wand of iceblast instead of one of my other 12 wands?" Not only are there fewer items to compare, but they're also easier to compare, since the items you're considering dropping are all in the same category as the one you're considering picking up.
- More Meaningful Decisions: Bad inventory decisions could effectively cut you off from an entire class of items, e.g. if you waste all your wand slots on random effects, or waste all your weapon slots on glowing daggers. This is better than the current system, where the effects of bad inventory management are spread across all classes of items, and thus usually less noticeable.
- Finer Developer Control: It would allow the developers a way to balance item classes. Are elemental evokers too powerful? Limit the player to carrying two at a time. Want to encourage players to carry more wands? Increase the number they're allowed to carry.
- Interface: This system could be easily and transparently communicated to the player. Instead of displaying "47/52 items" at the top of the inventory, each heading would instead display the number carried and number possible, e.g. "Weapons (9/10)". Item classes which the player is carrying none of could be not displayed by default, with a toggle to show them.
- Flavour: Always a minor concern, of course, but the "Let me drop one of my 52 plate mails so I can pick up this ring" aspect has always bugged me. This system might feel a little more intuitive to some players.
- For this message the author ion_frigate has received thanks:
- Sar