Proposal: Limit items by category, instead of overall

[ion_frigate]

Motivation: Decision fatigue is a real problem in roguelikes. You encounter hundreds or thousands of items in a given game, only 52 of which you can carry. Now probably the majority of these items are worthless to your character, but enough fall in the "maybe" category that you are frequently making the decision "Would I rather have this item than one of my 52 current items?" This type of decision isn't particularly fun to make repeatedly.

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.

[kroki]

id say just let misc evocables stack and allow recharging wands with wands of the same type (results scaling with evo. 100% efficent charge transfer with 27 skill)

[Bart]

This proposal brings even more limitations than current solution. For strategical items it would mean more backtracking, because you would NEVER have enough space to carry them around. Half of tactical items would never see a use past midgame, because they would not fit anymore in a backpack. Also, pity on characters that require a lot of items of particular type (throwers, pakellas worshippers, octopodes as quick examples).

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Making inventory slots have a "type" (e.g. 'only wands go here') can be very good. Especially when backtracking is limited and items are of interchangeable utility. But that does not hold in Crawl where characters want to carry very different types of inventories, and you'd mostly just stress players more, especially the poorer players who are not intimately familiar with items. But this would be very good for a game like doomrl. Shooters tend to limit you to something like 100 bullets, 50 shells, 15 rockets, 5 medkits, and 1 modifiable "upgrade slot", or they make you carry only 3 weapons at a time, and there, it does what you say it does.

each heading would instead display the number carried and number possible, e.g. "Weapons (9/10)"

The number possible is tricky to fix. Too large, and you encourage people to fill it with eyesore garbage. Too small, and people will start juggling on the floor. And which is which depends on loot and the build, which a flexible inventory ameliorates.

[Hurkyl]

As an example, in practice I tend to only have a 35-45 item inventory, and the remaining slots are used to collect items to be stashed; e.g. books, rarely used potions/scrolls, ammunition types/brands, items I can't or don't want to identify immediately, body armors I don't want to wear now but may later (e.g. it's too heavy now, or I may want it's resist in the future).

(admittedly some of those I only stash because the convenience of having a few more slots free for collection outweigh the perceived benefit of carrying them)