No Carry Weight Limit - Devlog #6
In many RPGs, and specifically Scrolls-like games, carry weight is something that is there to add realism to the game. The items you pick up have a weight, and you have a limited amount of strength and endurance, so the more you carry, the slower you should go. Or, there should be a limit to what can be carried, because it is more realistic that way.
After you have reached your maximum carrying weight, you either can’t move anymore, or you move very slowly. There could be a smooth transition to slowing down, or it could have a staged effect, where you move normally until you reach a threshold and then it changes.
I think these are good hardcore features, and intend to offer them as difficulty options for players who want different sorts of limitations on their play, such as a later survival mode.
But for the default case in All Hail Temos, I don’t want carry weight to impact the player at all. They can carry as many things as they want, and it will not effect them in any way, besides having to deal with a larger inventory, which creates it’s own problems, but is a different design problem.
[h3]No Default Weight Maximum?[/h3]
But why remove this limitation for the default difficulty? It adds immersion, and it creates a sense of consequence for picking things up.
As stated above, I will have difficulty settings to enable or disable different options that can change the way the game is experienced, but I have a specific vision for the default experience that I want to achieve.
Removing the carry weight limit, and any penalties for carrying a lot of weight changes several aspects of the game, but let’s look at them first from what these effects are when a carry weight limit exists:
The player is adventuring, and hits the carry weight limit. They must now change their behavior, in the following ways:
When a player wants a higher level of immersive difficulty, this can be fun, but in other cases this is not fun. This stops or slows down the adventure, because now the player has to go back to sell items, or know they are stopping progression, or know they have to come back later just to mule items around. None of this is fun for people not looking for this kind of extra work as part of their immersion.
So, I will just remove the carry weight as a limitation, and you can carry a nearly unlimited amount of items. I have made the world physics rules work to support this, so this is normal in the game world, due to normal things having magical properties, such as storage for items being a type of portal system putting items into a storage dimension.
Without a carry weight limit, you stop adventuring when you have a new goal you want, such as selling your loot to go buy something better, or returning to talk to NPCs about some quests, or a higher level goal you have, rather than because you ran out of carry weight.
[h3]Carry vs Equipped Weight[/h3]
I think a more interesting weight system is your equipped weight, which are all the items you are actively wearing or wielding.
These items do effect your character, based on your stats and skills, it will make your character move or act faster or slower, and may stop them from being able to wear or wield some items, because they do not meet the minimum stats for doing so.
In this way, for normal difficulty weight of items still matters, but it only matters for the items you are actively equipping.
[h3]Conclusion[/h3]
All Hail Temos’s design is attempting to focus on the fun of playing in an open world, with many adventures to take part in, and not stopping those adventures due to limitations that normally aren’t fun.
If you’d like to learn more about All Hail Temos, Wishlist and Follow the game on Steam.
After you have reached your maximum carrying weight, you either can’t move anymore, or you move very slowly. There could be a smooth transition to slowing down, or it could have a staged effect, where you move normally until you reach a threshold and then it changes.
I think these are good hardcore features, and intend to offer them as difficulty options for players who want different sorts of limitations on their play, such as a later survival mode.
But for the default case in All Hail Temos, I don’t want carry weight to impact the player at all. They can carry as many things as they want, and it will not effect them in any way, besides having to deal with a larger inventory, which creates it’s own problems, but is a different design problem.
[h3]No Default Weight Maximum?[/h3]
But why remove this limitation for the default difficulty? It adds immersion, and it creates a sense of consequence for picking things up.
As stated above, I will have difficulty settings to enable or disable different options that can change the way the game is experienced, but I have a specific vision for the default experience that I want to achieve.
Removing the carry weight limit, and any penalties for carrying a lot of weight changes several aspects of the game, but let’s look at them first from what these effects are when a carry weight limit exists:
The player is adventuring, and hits the carry weight limit. They must now change their behavior, in the following ways:
- Stop searching for and looting items, reducing progression
- Start min-maxing cost to weight pickups, making looting more work
- Eventually run out of min-max cost weight as well for their area, and stop looting
When a player wants a higher level of immersive difficulty, this can be fun, but in other cases this is not fun. This stops or slows down the adventure, because now the player has to go back to sell items, or know they are stopping progression, or know they have to come back later just to mule items around. None of this is fun for people not looking for this kind of extra work as part of their immersion.
So, I will just remove the carry weight as a limitation, and you can carry a nearly unlimited amount of items. I have made the world physics rules work to support this, so this is normal in the game world, due to normal things having magical properties, such as storage for items being a type of portal system putting items into a storage dimension.
Without a carry weight limit, you stop adventuring when you have a new goal you want, such as selling your loot to go buy something better, or returning to talk to NPCs about some quests, or a higher level goal you have, rather than because you ran out of carry weight.
[h3]Carry vs Equipped Weight[/h3]
I think a more interesting weight system is your equipped weight, which are all the items you are actively wearing or wielding.
These items do effect your character, based on your stats and skills, it will make your character move or act faster or slower, and may stop them from being able to wear or wield some items, because they do not meet the minimum stats for doing so.
In this way, for normal difficulty weight of items still matters, but it only matters for the items you are actively equipping.
[h3]Conclusion[/h3]
All Hail Temos’s design is attempting to focus on the fun of playing in an open world, with many adventures to take part in, and not stopping those adventures due to limitations that normally aren’t fun.
If you’d like to learn more about All Hail Temos, Wishlist and Follow the game on Steam.