There are few things that bug me more in games that a bunch of useless items. For some reason RPGs in particular have always filled their game with so much useless junk, maybe to make the game world feel less empty, I don't know. It gets much worse when you combine useless crap with limited inventory, cause nothing is more fun than having loads of loot in a cave you can't carry out. Why the he'll do they do this, who uses half this crap they make us collect.
The latest game to piss me off was witcher 2, here is a game with loads of items around but at least here you can quickly scan the room an see where all the items are. At first I was gathering everything, I figured all this crap would help me craft some super sword or something. About 15 hours in I noticed I rarely if ever used any of my crafting items, I had been wasting all this toime searching every corner just cause maybe iget so ethnic useful. Almost all the best stuff in the game you get from quests so what is the point of all this crap. By the end if the game I had enough crap to create a near infinite amount of potions. Speaking of potions about 3 where useful the other 20 are pointless, why have them. I know you could say I can just ignore it all but what happens if I so happen to miss something important in this sea of uselessness. Of course all junk you can sell which becomes your main cash cow but now you have to carry all this crap back and forth to a trader.
Remember in LOTR where Gandalf opened his magical cloak of caring capacity and took 15 Orc swords and 25 bone fragments to sell for money. NO cause that is STUPID. Where the he'll did this item idea come from. Just give me a few weapons, armor and ONE healing item, DONE. That is all I need. Spells or recharchable skills are the way to go, items that get used up suck cause you either use them up too quickly or always save them cause maybe you need it later, of course you never do so you end up with 100 potions at the end of the game. My character should have skills, he shouldn't need to carry an alchemy shop with him.
When a game removes all the crap and only focuses on useful items now every object in the game world is more important, more exciting. Now I am focused more on my actions and not managing some boring inventory screen. All the stuff items do can be done without them and be done better. It is a Terrible arcaic system. Mass Effect ditched all that crap and it was so much better for it. Zelda games have always only had a few useful items, which is why finding everything in the game world is fun and meaningful. Enough with gathering 500 pieces of cloth, WTF.
The latest game to piss me off was witcher 2, here is a game with loads of items around but at least here you can quickly scan the room an see where all the items are. At first I was gathering everything, I figured all this crap would help me craft some super sword or something. About 15 hours in I noticed I rarely if ever used any of my crafting items, I had been wasting all this toime searching every corner just cause maybe iget so ethnic useful. Almost all the best stuff in the game you get from quests so what is the point of all this crap. By the end if the game I had enough crap to create a near infinite amount of potions. Speaking of potions about 3 where useful the other 20 are pointless, why have them. I know you could say I can just ignore it all but what happens if I so happen to miss something important in this sea of uselessness. Of course all junk you can sell which becomes your main cash cow but now you have to carry all this crap back and forth to a trader.
Remember in LOTR where Gandalf opened his magical cloak of caring capacity and took 15 Orc swords and 25 bone fragments to sell for money. NO cause that is STUPID. Where the he'll did this item idea come from. Just give me a few weapons, armor and ONE healing item, DONE. That is all I need. Spells or recharchable skills are the way to go, items that get used up suck cause you either use them up too quickly or always save them cause maybe you need it later, of course you never do so you end up with 100 potions at the end of the game. My character should have skills, he shouldn't need to carry an alchemy shop with him.
When a game removes all the crap and only focuses on useful items now every object in the game world is more important, more exciting. Now I am focused more on my actions and not managing some boring inventory screen. All the stuff items do can be done without them and be done better. It is a Terrible arcaic system. Mass Effect ditched all that crap and it was so much better for it. Zelda games have always only had a few useful items, which is why finding everything in the game world is fun and meaningful. Enough with gathering 500 pieces of cloth, WTF.
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*crickets*
No you dont. Are you people this brainwashed??? How does not having items stop a game from being an RPG. Spells and skills can do EVERYTHING items do. There can be far better ways of making money that carrying tons of useless junk and selling it. There does not need to be 5 million versions of the same sword.
Well permanent stat raising items are basically leveling up tools that is not what I am talking about. And I have always said potions for healing is useful. Its when there are 30 varieties of buffs, debuffs, status changing potions that go unused in a game cause I have one spell that does all that. Those are great examples though, but from old times when yeah games used items better. JRPGS definetly handle them better. WRPGs, oh god those are a mess. Who decided that every thing in the entire world should be collectable.
Fixed.
I think I have to side with Vader. At least for a lot of games. I played about 5 hours of Torchlight. Seriously, your inventory and that of your dog fills up every 10 minutes, before you even get to the latter stages of a mission which i presume is when you get the better stuff. Everything is unique or rare supposedly and boost this or that stat when you shove this or that in its sockets ... So. Much. Random. Stuff. I soon stopped caring and I just send the dog to sell everything as soon as it fills up without even caring to identify most things or what's rare or not. Seriously, do you guys like this sort of clutter? It detracts from my enjoyment of the game. Vader is right
Woo! High Five!
Serious question guys do you really and RPGs with most your potions and an items that aid used up, or do you end up with a ridiculous amount of them. Cause most of the time by the end I have so many items that went unused. There are always 2 or 3 really useful items and that is about all I use, so why not just focus on those 3 items.
Vader, just because there are hundreds of swords/potions/whatever in a gameworld that you can collect doesn't mean you should collect them all. That only bothers people
with OCD tendencies that want to check everything out compulsively. You're not bound to carry every single trinket you find, you either pick shit up or you leave it where it is. JUST LIKE IN THE REAL WORLD.I'm now picturing you checking every single thing out when you visit a relative's house.
I'm the opposite of you. MORE items is always welcome. More stuff to check out in loot chests, the more inconsequential shit you find, the better because that will make the actually rare items all the more awesome. If you take away that and only are left with 3 "REALLY USEFUL" items, then some of the sense of discovery is lost.
I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong, BTW. All systems are perfectible.
Yeah everyone can see it differently. My thing is sometimes it takes a while to figure out what is useful and what is not. For instance Witcher (TES is another fine example) I know there is crafting and alchemy but I am new to the game so I dont know the depth of what can be made. So I see timber, cloth, and a million other things around the world and think, well maybe at some point I will need all this to make something awesome. So I hoard and hoard and save waiting for the time where all this will be useful. It never comes, the best items are either made with rare items, earned, or bought. And then I am left wondering why the hell is all this junk left in if its really nothing but junk to sell.
And I know I dont need to check everything but tell me this, dont you check almost everything. Aren't you afraid you will miss out on some awesome item cause you didnt check the third drawer of that cabinet, I'm looking at you TES. After you kill every single enemy you have to check their dead body cause maybe the have a better weapon or at least a good valuable one to sell. Its so excessive. In moderation its fine but the game is flooded with this stuff.
As for that sense of discovery, I dont know, i think less items would make finding one feel more important. Yeah finding that rare treasure in a sea of crap is a great feeling but even then I wonder if I will simply find something better in like 10 minutes. Take a game like Zelda (I know it is not an RPG but follow me here) every item has a purpose, because there are so few each one you find feels like a big moment, a big achievement. Finding all the hearts in a Zelda game gives me a huge sense of discovery, now if the game has 500 tiny hearts scattered in the world like some open world game it wouldn't feel that way. BTW I am starting to get pissed off at the useless crap they are adding to Zelda games,
I want to make clear that I understand stuff like crafting and achlemy when done right is fun. Collecting cool items is great. Sadly most games just over do it. My solution is very extreme I know but it is a simple fix, at least for my complaints.
Sounds like RuneScape is your perfect game then. Random, easily attainable crap like cloth, wood, and fleece are actually used for crafting and the like and are important to collect unless you're making a PvP only character.
Zelda is a bad comparison. Finding items in that is satisfying not because the items are good, but they're basically rewards for completing a certain challenge. The equivelent would be rewards from completing quests in an RPG which are generally obviously good and I don't see you complaining about that so RPGs already do that. And none of it is as satisfying as finding a rare drop with a 1 in 10,000 chance of dropping. Sure it's luck that you got it, but winning the lottery is pretty awesome, right?