Friday, December 7, 2012

Inventories and Trash Mechanics

Check out my new 20 slot bag!
Inventory systems have been around almost as long as video games themselves. It's pretty much given that if your game has items or equipment that you'll need some way for the player to manage them, and there have been several minor mechanics that were created to either improve the inventory concept or to allow for more varied or interesting ways for the player to interact with their inventory. Unfortunately not all of them have been positive. With that in mind let's take a look at one of the worst offenders - trash items.

Trash items are items whose primary or sole purpose in game is to be sold to a vendor for money. This can come in the form of lower quality equipment or items that technically can be used but are simply inferior to your normal gear or even items that have literally no use other than to be sold. Almost every modern game with a robust inventory system (RPGs, MMOs, dungeon crawlers - even some action games) has trash items in some form. In some games they are more hidden than others - MMOs like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 make no attempt to hide it and have an item quality dedicated to trash items (with Guild Wars 2 going so far as to having a "Sell Junk" option at vendors that will instantly sell all of your trash) while games like Skyrim will have most enemies drop low quality equipment that could in theory be used if it weren't for the fact that they become obsolete as of about 30 minutes into the game.

On a very basic level there is almost no difference between giving the player trash items rather than giving them money. Usually you can't spend your money without going to a vendor anyway, so having some of your money in the form of trash in areas where you can't use it anyway doesn't really matter. It does mean the player is forced to go through and sell all of the trash, but this usually amounts to more of a minor inconvenience rather than a major issue. The big problems arise when you consider the implications of trash items on another inventory staple: limited space.

A cookie takes up the same space as a greatsword?
Limited inventories have the potential to add a lot of depth to an otherwise simple game by forcing the player to think about what items they really need for how they want to play. If you look at games like Dungeon Master or Legend of Grimrock literally every item in the game had a use, and the finite inventory meant you had to pick and choose what items you thought you were most likely to use. Do you keep 10 extra torches in case you hit long stretch where you don't find any, or would you rather carry some extra arrows for your bow? Do you keep this bag to increase your inventory slots, or do you drop it because it's too heavy? Do you hold onto all of this heavy food and drop the bombs you were carrying, or do you keep the bombs and hope you'll find more food later before you run out?

Trash items turns this concept on it's head. Instead of having a choice between varying useful items, now almost everything is broken down into a single currency. You never question if you should keep the broken longsword instead of the scrap of fur because you just take whichever one is worth more money. At that point you have effectively removed all depth and engagement from the limited inventory mechanic while retaining all of the time and effort required to manage it - you still have to do all the work but instead of it being a meaningful player choice in how to play the game it's just busywork.

Worse still is when a developer tries to use trash items alongside useful items. Initially it seems like a good idea - you make the player choose between how versatile their character is in terms of items and equipment and how much reward they're able to take back. Unfortunately it instead turns into a question of annoyance vs convenience - you almost always have the option to run back to town at any time, however this will take you away from the actually engaging portion of the game. This means you aren't trading versatility for reward but versatility for enjoyment.

Running back to town to exchange trash for money isn't fun or engaging, plain and simple. It breaks the flow of the game, artificially lengthens gameplay, and is mind-numbingly boring to do. This means that when making the choice of how much inventory space to leave for collecting trash that every piece of useful gear you bring directly equates to less time spent actually playing the game and more time spent running marathons back to the shop.

This is a choice that should never be thrust on the player.

All this treasure could be yours for the low price of wasting your time!
The only real argument I have heard in favor of trash items is that it offers the chance for immersion items - items scattered around to lend more backstory, detail, humor, etc. into the game. One example of this is "The Stoppable Force" in World of Warcraft (a trash item parody of the epic item "The Unstoppable Force"). However, this argument fails to fully justify the necessity of the entire system. There is no reason that these items have to be useless trash or even items that you can take with you as opposed to making it something you can inspect but not take.

Not every developer is getting it wrong though, and Bethesda made some huge steps in the right direction with Dishonored. There are still trash items of sorts littered through the world that have names and descriptions to allow for the immersion aspect, but these items instantly get converted into money when looted allowing the player to continue playing instead of having to stop and manage his inventory trash or run back to town.

So why do developers keep doing this? I think it stems from the misguided idea that more content in a game is always better regardless of where that content is added or how it interacts with the rest of your game. Got an inventory system? Well then obviously you need to make that inventory system as large as people are used to. Then suddenly you've got a 50+ slot inventory and only have a handful of equipment slots, so now you either need to start making a hell of a lot of alternate gear options and consumables or you need to make enemies drop plenty of trash items that don't stack.

Eventually I think developers will learn that this isn't the best option and take a path similar to Dishonored. At least I hope they will. I mean, they can't possibly think these mechanics are actually good, right?

...right?

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