If the game can automatically pack your stuff well, does that remove the strategy and interest of having such a system?

[quote name='sunandshadow' timestamp='1324203031' post='4894969']
If the game can automatically pack your stuff well, does that remove the strategy and interest of having such a system?

I personally don't think so, shifting around gear for just the right amount of space was ever the intention of that kind of inventory system.
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To be honest, when using a sorting button your inventory system gets pretty pointless. Inventory management is an important mini-game in RPGs, diablo I/II use size as additional limitation in a visual way. Deus Ex Human Revoluation has a similar system (with auto sorting ?). You could add several limitation to represent a more realistic approach or to make it more complex (weight, size etc.), but as always, more complex or more realistic ways to represent something doesn't make it any funnier at all, often people tend to moan over such features.

In my opinion, WoW has one of the best inventory systems:
1. simple setup
2. stack system
3. multiple bags to expand your resources
4. no automatically sorting

The reason I prefer the WoW system over Diablo system is, that in WoW I choose to sort the items in a way I liked (poitions in bag A, weapons in bag B etc.), in Diablo1/2 I was forced to manage the inventory to pick up more items.

This is all you need to have some fun while manageing your inventory. Always keep in mind, that this is some kind of addtional mini-game and not the core-game, so be careful with too complex handling.

I'm in the 'Inventory Tetris is Evil And Wrong' camp, myself.

I see no positive aspects to it whatsoever. It makes items difficult to find, difficult to add, forces you to periodically shuffle the whole thing around in order to try and make space/sense of the whole thing, and offers no actual gameplay benefit.

Adding buttons to help rearrange it will not help, and will merely waste dev time. If you want to model bulk, give items a bulk value and use that in addition to weight to determine carrying capacity. Display the inventory itself as a sortable list.

I personally don't think so, shifting around gear for just the right amount of space was ever the intention of that kind of inventory system.

IMHO, forcing players to play the "tetris minigame" was likely a deliberate intention, otherwise they would've used a different inventory mechanic, like simply assigning a weight value to each item, and a weight limit to the inventory. In such well designed games, I don't think such a meticulous game mechanic would've arisen simply by chance -- or if it did, they surely would have noted during development the emergence of such a mechanic and chosen to keep it.

If you like the visual design of the grid, but want to use a simpler-to-manage mechanic like a weight counter, then just add a scroll-bar or a next-page/prev-page button.

I see no positive aspects to it whatsoever. It makes items difficult to find, difficult to add, forces you to periodically shuffle the whole thing around in order to try and make space/sense of the whole thing, and offers no actual gameplay benefit.

Challenge (difficult to...) is play. It adds a skill-based difficulty curve to carry weight -- carrying a few items is easy, but as you near your maximum capacity, it becomes harder and harder to succeed at a mini-game to reach that potential. It also affects the pacing of the game, giving the player a reason to stop hacking and slashing for a moment and shift their attention elsewhere.
You don't have to agree that things are positive gameplay aspects, but it's obvious that they are gameplay aspects nonetheless.

Challenge (difficult to...) is play. It adds a skill-based difficulty curve to carry weight -- carrying a few items is easy, but as you near your maximum capacity, it becomes harder and harder to succeed at a mini-game to reach that potential. It also affects the pacing of the game, giving the player a reason to stop hacking and slashing for a moment and shift their attention elsewhere.
You don't have to agree that things are positive gameplay aspects, but it's obvious that they are gameplay aspects nonetheless.

s/difficult/tedious/g

I tend to see inventory screens as part of the user interface, not gameplay features in their own right, and are therefore subject to usability requirements. They should work to help the player, not impede him. Give me tools to find what I am looking for, and present key information in the most informative way possible.

Of course, it might be interesting to try and challenge that and make some real gameplay out of inventory management. Maybe make it literally tetris: items drop down into your pack, you can rotate them to slot them in better. Tie it into the hotkeys, so the keys 0-9 reference the first item in each column of your backpack - whatever that is, and prevent the user from accessing his inventory any other way in combat. If you overflow, your pack splits and everything falls on the floor, and you must buy a new pack in order to carry anything. Could make some entertaining scenarios as you frantically yank out piles of junk before you eventually get down to the item you want in the middle of a boss fight. Or perhaps you have to think more carefully: do I pick up that awesome new suit of armour, and run the risk of my pack exploding?

I'm not convinced, myself, but YMMV.

Yeah, although myself and a few others like the setup it seems to be largely unpopular ... personally I hate scrolling through a list of items myself, I enjoy seeing a my 'loot' in one big picture I guess. So, I'm thinking maybe I need to sacrifice my choice but still look for a good example of a well implemented inventory system.

I do't really mind the Table Of Icons approach, although in systems with a fixed size pack it seems kind of dumb that a suit of full plate armour takes as much space as a single gemstone. Still, I'd rather put up with that silliness than the endless item shuffling of inventory tetris. At least it can be partially alleviated with item stacking.