LET'S TALK: Encumbrance

[Ganolyn]

d) a hagglebot.

Or a mule. I have mule with 18 STR that is over burdened because of all the quivers full of arrows I have loaded him up with. Even with Bull's Strength he can't get over the high weight (5000+ lbs I think). I manage by leaving most of them in the bank and swapping back and forth, but it sure makes off-loading more arrows a chore.

[Avidus]

Encumbrance: what value does it really bring to DDO?

Annoyance and Frustration.

How many of you would mind if this just sort of 'went away'?

I would be just fine with it going away.

Inventory management is not fun. If it was a Wal-Mart MMO with classes like Inventory Checker and Warehouse Manager would be a billion dollar idea.

People play games like DDO to adventure in a fanatasy world. Not to stack collectables from 32 different systems being oh so careful so their stacks don't topple onto their stacks of crafting ingredients, spell components, 1/2 a dozen two handed weapons, a dozen one handed weapons, and other assorted quest items, plus potions, scrolls, clickies... the list goes on.

Encumberence is the wrong place to be looking for realism, while you are fighting off devil hordes in a time traveling raid. Or traveling to hell to fight the lord of a separate plane of exsistance. Especially when you look at your inventory and say 'oh ****, I am encumbered because that 7th suit of full plate I just picked up put me over 9,000 lbs!'

The limited inventory / bank / shared bank slots are enough to still make gathering up everything a pain.
(While I am briefly on the subject, can we make the TR cache / shared bank have the same UI that the standard bank has instead of the 'bag' view please?)

[MrWizard]

unneeded mechanic, do away with it.
Pretend that we all have horses or donkeys that help carry this stuff to the dungeons...just like we did when playing DnD.

if we are gonna get fancy about encumberance...then we should also be able to use ropes and help each other up surfaces by standing on shoulders.

and it would be cool if attacks and spells affected everyone...

[rfachini]

Take encumbrance away. Even in P&P, it's an optional rule.
In a video game, where we don't have housing, beasts of burden, or hirelings to carry things; so you have to keep your belonging either in your bank or inventory, it's really not needed. (Also the game mechanics require several different weapons to effectively fight the various types of monsters we encounter.)

Encumbrance only serves to slow down casters and clerics who are trying desperately to keep up with the zerging barbarians and monks. Time to lose it already.

[SickCat]

Hmmmm...the "6 STR challenge" wouldn't be much of a challenge anymore. There are a couple of spells that would be rendered useless, I think...not that it would bother me much, I just won't have to chug resto pots anymore when I get enfeebled...

I think it's an aspect of the game that adds flavor and complexity...getting rid of it wouldn't tick me off, but it wouldn't ADD anything to the game...that's for sure.

[Flavilandile]

Encumbrance: what value does it really bring to DDO?

How many of you would mind if this just sort of 'went away'?

Player talk : I wouldn't mind at all.

GM Talk : I would definitely mind, it's the way to make sure the characters are not hauling a whole armory with them.

Now it's so much an intrinsic part of the game, STR damage either by poison, spells or weapons can cripple a low STR character that has lots of things in his bag that I'm biased towards the side that want to keep it.

Removing encumbrence would make several spells useless, as well as all the weakening weapons.
( yes mob has encumbreance too )

Now as I'm sure that question is not innocent, would it be possible to elaborate on the reason why it might be removed ?

Answering that question may change my position which is to keep them.

( For example : I never used the encumbrance rules from Rolemaster in PnP because they were a pain to use, as it involved a modifier for every moving and startic maneuvers, including spellcasting and combat... So if you tell me that it's a major source of lag, sure I'll agree to get rid of it. )

[Cyr]

great... Threadjacking.

Mad posted about madstone boots change in the thread. It's not threadjacking if you are following up on a theme brought up by the OP in the thread despite your dislike of asking hard questions to the developers.

[Failedlegend]

Get rid of it...its pointless and only succeeds in forcing characters that don't need Str to waste points in it.

[Tinco]

Simply get rid of it.

slow down casters and clerics who are trying desperately to keep up with the zerging barbarians and monks.

I want to live in your world.

[LeLoric]

Wait isn't getting rid of encumbrance another way to just nerf melee?

I kid yes get rid of it.

[knightgf]

I say encumberance plays a important role in the game that shouldn't simply be 'thrown out'. While characters can definately face issues with it, mostly at low to medium levels, at high levels, the amount of strength that can be gained is so ridiculus it might as well not exist. That's not to say that no issues are faced with encumbrance at high levels, but...it can get really easy to manage.

If anything, I say try and adjust the encumbrance rating so that its reasonable at all levels(I.E.: Nerf how much players can carry). Maybe increase the penalties as well for having medium and heavy encumbrance, but not too much. How much you carry should play a important role in the game not just inventory-space wise, but also weight wise.

If you were to ask me what a rough idea of the weight mechanics would be, I would base it as:

300 lbs base + 50 per strength modifier.

Of course, mind you, its a bit rough and maybe way out of wack given that I don't quite know the weight values for everything, but I figured something like this should be enough to hopefully matter a bit.

[Primalhowl]

I think encumbrance from the miscellaneous junk that goes into bags is totally worthless. Collectables, gems, crafting ingredients, etc. I also think that holds true for spell components (which should also have a bag...hint hint).

But as far as encumbrance effects to movement, I like them. Sure, most of them are easily removable (like enfeeblement), but they add dimension to game play... so long as they are equally applied to both PC and monster (see Missing_Minds post for that critique...)

[dynahawk]

I like all the little things like this that add to the experience, I don't like being weighed down by "TONS" of ingredients and collectables.

[Monkey_Archer]

Encumbrance itself doesn't add any value to the game at all IMO. However, the mechanics of strength damaging effects having an influence on movement speed/ac/etc.. does.
I'd say get rid of the weight/encumbrance system, but modify the strength damage system to keep the penalties associated with a low strength character being hit by a ray of enfeeblement or other strength damaging effect.

Something like:
6+ strength = no encumbrance regardless of weight
3-5 strength = weakened, small movement penalty, max dex penalty, monks become uncentered, etc..
1-2 strength = burdened, same as above but with larger penalties
0 strength = helpless

[blkcat1028]

Get rid of it...its pointless and only succeeds in forcing characters that don't need Str to waste points in it.

This post actually sums it up nicely. If you remove encumbrance, the influx of str dumped builds will be amazing. You could release a new pack and call it "The Ascendancy of the Min/Maxers".

You're going to make this a caster only game.

[Havok.cry]

In every game my GMs got rid of encumberace in I bought a boat and carried it in my backpack. Seeing as how the airships dont take up inventory I can't think of how to break it if you removed encumbrance, so please do!

[Thalmor]

I say keep it in the game. it part of the copnsequence for having a low strenght. If we take out encumberance, then we might as well takeout HP being tied to Constution. At character creation you have choices to make with requards to where you put your stat points, if you gimp on strenght then you should have consequences.

If you character has a starting strenght of 8 there is no way he/she can carry as much as a character that has a starting strenght of 16.

They need to adjust the bags so that no matter whats in them they have a certain weight, 1 LB period. After all they are really a varation on a bag of holding, either that or give us a true bag of holding.

They alread have it that coins do not add to a characters weight, so then can make it so that the bags have a set weight no matter that is in them.

Plus that have already made it easier to find Tomes, and htey are planning on making it so that when you TR you maintain your eaten Tomes. So pretty soon it going to be a lot easier you caster types, haggle Bots and what not to improve your strenght.

If you take encumberance out, than make it so that my Ranger can cast all his spells with a 8 Wis. ( See that sounds silly just as silly as a character with an 8 Str have unlimited carrying capacity.)

[Zenthalas]

1.) Bag of Holding argument for ingredients is spot on, the only weight SHOULD be the weight of the bag itself, not the contents since items in the bag are in extra-dimensional space and not on the material plane.

2.) Scroll cases and Spell component bags when are we getting them if ever should be considered as bags/cases of holding as well.

3.) If your carrying around 5 greatswords, 2 great axes, 5000 arrows, a 40 lb shield, wearing a 70 lb suit of armor (and all the accrutriments; bracers, gloves, swordbelt, helm etc.) ohhh dont forget that Maul and Warhammers for the skeles, 300 cure serious pots, 100 of each silver flame pots, enough Enchanted Ghallanda Rations to feed a small impovrished nation, blindness removal potions, blah blah blah you get the picture. Well with all that stuff you might find it difficult to dance the macarena whilst fity-eleven hobgoblins are swinging at you. Hell it's difficult for me to carry 4 bags of groceries and unlock my front door w/o putting something down. Besides is it that hard to hit up a vendor/bank while your running to the next raid/quest? It takes less time to dump your junk items than it takes most melee's to beat the training dummy down.

4.) Any caster divine or arcane who dosen't put 2 points into str and have a +6 str item is foolish IMHO, you deserved to be encumbered, obviously your primary stat wasn't being used enough cause you didn't have the foresight to think about it.

[dkyle]

Eschew Materials Meta

Sounds great.

then free feat swap for all casters)

All casters? Why? Why not just the two that actually took that terrible feat?

Inscription Materials

Why not? These are less of a pain, though, since you don't need to keep stocked up with them, and they don't waste inventory space.

Inscription Skill

Unlike spell components, inscribing high level spells is not trivial, and thus serves something of an actual gameplay purpose.

While I do think it's still kind of silly, it's less egregious than the spell components.

Mess with Vendors
Mess with Classes

I'm not sure what your point is here. That it would be hard to remove the spell components from vendors, and remove the material component check from the spellcasting code?

[dodger72]

it was in rare instances in PnP that I used encumbrance. In other words, the melee all the sudden have a golf bag with all kinds of weapons that they pull out at the drop of a hat. No....I don't think so.

I ran my games to say, ok...you have limited space to carry your items...tell me where (on your character sheet) you are holding those items. I didn't care how much it weighed...but that you could actually carry it on your person or horse (or other type of mount) or backpack...weight was inconsequential considering some of the str these characters could attain.

The limited space is supplied and applied in this game through the backpack (start with 60, get up to 100 unless you buy more in the DDO store) and 60 in the personal bank (again...unless more is bought) and then...another 20 in the shared bank. Attainable for free through favor total without spending TP's? 180 slots not counting what is equipped. plenty of room.

Throw encumbrance in the mix and a lot of toons are crippled.

You wouldn't hurt my feelings if this went the way of the Dodo.