Pathological hoarding is a hoarding disorder in which there is persistent difficulty throwing away or parting with things, regardless of their actual value.

This definition gives us DSM-5-TR – nosological system of mental disorders of the American Psychiatric Association, which is most often used when making diagnoses related to mental disorders.

You may have noticed a small nuance in my definition. I wrote about DISEASE! Today we will primarily discuss “hoarding” not in the context of a disease, but in the context of variant behavior, and exactly in games. We will return to the disorder from time to time to better understand the causes of “hoarding.”.

That is, I mean this behavior in games in which resources accumulate in the character’s inventory/chests for fear of spending “now”, since in the future there is a potential situation for their use.

For our case it is necessary:

1. A game that allows you to accumulate something in your inventory. It could even be one specific item, but different in rarity, for example.

2. Appropriate Player Behavior. Often associated with the fear of using an item that is quantitatively limited incorrectly or at the wrong time. And also with a mental battle against a “fictional stuffed animal”, namely a fictitious supposed situation when this item might be useful.

I’m going to use a great English word – hoarding, which just means “pathological hoarding”.

-First, we will look at the reasons for hoarding from different angles. -Then we’ll move on to scripts that correct this situation.

What are the reasons?

I have divided the reasons into two large groups:

1. Developers’ influence on the game. How they promote hoarding behavior.

2. Secrets of the player’s soul.

1. Let’s start with the developers

“The more difficult it is to replenish the supply of resources, the stronger the desire to preserve the item” or “Fear of losing a rare and limited resource”

All large RPG/Action RPGs with the ability to “save” items from “Dungeon Master” in 1987 to the third Witcher suffer from this sore. It may not be so noticeable at first, but then the ulcer opens.

As you progress, a picture of the world and its logic are built, the player understands WHAT is valuable, and begins to save. Mercilessly.

If the game world presents garbage as a valuable and rare component, we will walk around with pockets filled with all kinds of dirt. In this case, Fallout 4 bivalent, because, like a big Action RPG, it includes all aspects of pathological hoarding. But at the same time, there is rubbish in the game that will have to carry it in your pockets (it is necessary for crafting), but junk weighs practically nothing, it can be thrown away at the base, and components that are extracted from trash are automatically added to the settlement’s “warehouse”. And no hoarding for you. even rare materials.

When playing through Elysium, Baldur’s Gate or Minecraft, we go crazy thinking WHAT TO LEAVE SOMETHING? There are a lot of resources, and you need to deal with each one. And as updates to the same main come out, the problem will only get worse.

Playing Gothic, games series TES, The Witcher, we inevitably face a choice: use the item or wait? Most often, such a choice appears precisely in battle, but, for example, in Skyrim we can eat an unknown ingredient and understand its properties (or immediately use it in potions), or we can sell some Daedra heart, to get more zlotys than from a regular item. And for a player immersed in the world (especially for a beginner), this is not such an easy choice, because the game clearly makes him understand the rarity and value of this resource.

You can brew potions from this millipotion. Hearts are also needed for quests

They are also used to forge the most powerful and juicy armor in the game

So why not save it until better times, until I decide on my purpose??

I also remember various arthouse and more hardcore projects. Of course I’m talking about Mor . In such small but well-developed games, in addition to severely limited resources, there are survival elements, and what is the cost of the death system, when in fact you cannot die as a user, you cannot load, but after each actor the characteristics drop and the game becomes more difficult. Such projects are not going to spare you, so collecting, it would seem, is completely justified. On the other hand, an unprepared player (in fact, not only him, but most often and most clearly among beginners), focusing on the complexity of the project, may think that it is worth leaving everything, but this is a mistake. Here management is important and the ability to sift the wheat from the chaff. Subsequently, the player will most likely become confused or misjudge the situation, and then an important (either in the context of the game or personally for the player) character will die. It’s always sad (.

Although the worst thing is to break the game and get stuck. I remember when I started playing Mora Utopia (I immediately started playing on classic difficulty), it was definitely hard, but I succeeded, and then. I didn’t calculate the time while I was collecting and understanding the mechanics, my character began to die (seemingly due to lack of food). I had a few tens of meters left to the bed. I was loading up, my health was falling, but by some miracle I managed – so, almost at the beginning of the game I lost 1/3 of my HP. Having received a blow to the temple and immediately a blow to the balls, I continued to play. Of course, I still had to die, but I beat the game.

A true pestilence player

I don’t know if it’s the game design that’s to blame here or if it’s purely me, or maybe it’s all together. I’m just saying that there are such games. I think developers need explain the rules to the players in a little more detail or dive deeper into the context (if the complexity of the game rests only on the unknown, I don’t think it should be called difficult), and It’s better for players to initially understand what they’re playing.

Yes, in the case of pestilence, you can sum everything up as “part of the gaming experience,” but I don’t like doing that, because it turns into a primitive excuse.

// I don’t regret playing Pestilence at all. She has become one of my favorites. True, not because of this moment, but it left its mark on my psyche.

Inventory restrictions

1. Junction system from FF 8 – connection system. This is a very interesting system that is not found in our time.

The player can "connect" (junction) magical reserves/spells with their own attributes (characteristics). The more we accumulate these spells in the inventory (remember that this is also a consumable material that is used in battles), the more the character’s characteristics increase.

As you understand, the main problem is precisely in the accumulation of spells, because I want the characteristic as strong as possible! At the same time, magic scrolls are finite, and they are also rare and. And. NIGHTMARE.

For a better understanding, I advise you to watch the video

Perhaps if there were no "connection" mechanics, then the idea of ​​consumable resources (even magic!) not that bad. I think in many cases the game’s instigation in this form would force the use of all resources despite their limitations. If you are a magician, you simply have nowhere to go. Humble yourself and act.

But if you think about it, this is suitable for turn-based games, not for Action RPG. Imagine how much fun it would be to use JUST scrolls in Skyrim or The Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, each time pressing pause and frantically searching for the right one.

2. Mario Sticker Star – the player has limited number of stickers, which are used as certain actions.

To pass some bosses or solve puzzles we need SPECIFIC stickers, but any stickers we can use in any situation. Do you understand where this is going?? The player can waste stickers and will have to return to the initial levels to get the necessary sticker again.

That is, for a specific boss, the developers planned to use a specific sticker, otherwise:

Poor Japanese children. Game designers from the land of the rising sun love to break children’s psyches, for example, developing paranoia in them.

Breaking the pace

Game blogger Design Doc cited the example of Dishonored, where mana is spent quite quickly when actively using spells, but is restored if the hero rests for a few seconds. Thus, this encourages players who are prone to hoarding to act more carefully. In case c Dishonored one might say – more secretly. That is, in the game from Arkane the mana reserve is the source of accumulation. But what if I don’t like stealth or decided to try a new style?

If you remember TES or Fallout, then all the huge amount of consumable resources must be viewed and selected in your inventory. But here’s the catch: when you go into your inventory, the game pauses. All enemies freeze – they are on a cigarette break, and the player begins to scour through all the rubbish that he has been collecting for 50 hours!

For players with hoarding habits, this turns into absolute absurdity: they have so many things that it can take minutes to find them. Of course you can put things in the so-called, "quick access", but this does not solve the problem with the pause (and, as a consequence, disruption of the tempo) and the amount of junk that Dovahkiin has collected over dozens of hours.

Not understanding how far to the end

The final boss, mission, or entire chapter feels like the last and most difficult push. Nothing will happen next. Next is the end. And in the end I have to give it my all. This is where all resources can be used – that’s how we think. Something like an exam and subsequent holidays. And, you must agree, how crazy and offensive it would be if after the session they told us that they forgot or deliberately kept silent about the last exam.

It was a real surprise for me when I saw the continuation of the game for John Marston. I know that in the game itself they write about the presence of an epilogue, but they don’t say how big it is! All things from Arthur are transferred to John, but until the moment of transfer of control from Arthur to John I don’t know about it, I don’t suspect at all that we will continue to play! What if before the last missions I wanted to spend everything? True, Rockstar “filigree” solved the problem by making the last chapter almost a plot-oriented shooter. Oh yes, they also scattered quite a lot of gold bars in the game world, which completely break the game’s economy. They probably hoped that after collecting a few, players would stop doing it, and later, after seeing the epilogue, they would want to continue exploring.

Okay, let’s move on. We find ourselves in the epilogue, we see a large layer of content that can be explored. We continue to collect things in the hope that there will be unique expensive things here, but. No.

Let’s take another situation: you play, the plot begins to develop, and suddenly the game ends, the game world collapses, leaving no chance to try out the accumulated equipment. Perhaps this happened unexpectedly, or perhaps the boss was too easy, etc.d.

I remember the sad situation with Deus Ex Mankind Divided, which was obviously cut down with the groundwork for a sequel. The plot turned out to be quite vague, and the game itself was short.

A significant portion of items are simply useless

Sometimes you look at an item and cannot understand: but for what does he need? Why do developers add such items?? I think there is several reasons:

1. Feeling of scale and ability to interact with the world (Bethesda games).

2. For use in very specific situations (moss that removes poisoning in swamps from the Souls games).

3. For beginners. How to control the most difficult moments for them.

But no matter what reason we choose as the most acceptable justification, it does not save us from hoarding. In the search for understanding whether a given item is important or not, we get confused, fear surrounds us, and in the future our hand does not turn to throw away the item.

2. Let’s move on to the players

We are humans and our main ability is to predict the future

In games we cannot help but encounter the part inherent in every person. We are aware that the game has bosses, difficult situations, riddles. How, with this information, a person is able to resist the accumulation of objects? Many games encourage this, either out of good intentions or due to poor game design.

Ammo, arrows, craft items that are not often found – all of them we are connected with one thought: I’ll definitely need this, and in the future: well, it wasn’t the right situation, the enemies didn’t seem that strong, I’ll leave it for later, and then. again: yes, I’m already pumped up enough, why do I need them?? But we don’t throw them away, because suddenly a situation will arise when only they will remain in the inventory or only this arrow will be able to kill that bastard.

I think this is due, among other things, to the huge number of situations that can occur in the game, and we screw ourselves up like that, let’s invent absurd and difficult circumstances, that we don’t notice at what point our inventory contains all the things from the Exclusion Zone, and why am I dragging this poor stalker stuffed to the brim with other rubbish??

There is an interesting paragraph in the DSM-5 called “Risk and Prognostic Factors». Let’s dwell on it a little, because it is important for understanding not only the etiology of the disease, but also variant normal behavior.

– Temperament

"Indecisiveness is a characteristic feature of people with hoarding disorder and their first-degree relatives".

– Environment

Often the manifestation of the disease is preceded by stressful event.

This can also be https://playstarcasino.co.uk/bonus/ considered in the context of games. When in childhood we encountered something impassable and forever recorded it in our psyche.

Watch your parents (or other close relatives) play. Unfortunately, this component is difficult to test, and for some it is simply impossible.

// Here you go interesting fact: Approximately 80-90% of people with hoarding disorder exhibit excessive acquisitiveness. The most common form of acquisition is overbuying, followed by the acquisition of free items (eg, flyers, items discarded by others). Theft is less common. Do you have permission to use this in the context of video games??

We see harmony

Reading Thi Nguyen’s book (C. THI NGUYEN) «Games: Agency as Art"I noticed a fragment that I believe can complement the situation when we collect but do not use resources. I think, first of all, this applies to soulsam.

No one will argue that everything in life is more complicated and boring than in video games. But sometimes we get lucky and we we notice the harmony between our abilities and the tasks we perform, although usually there is no correspondence between them, or the tasks themselves are boring.

Through games we crystallize life experience, we set up obstacles ourselves using artificially created mechanics in order to overcome them. In games, we can say that we ourselves create and crystallize that very harmony (both developers and players).

IN soulsah Most players unconsciously do not use additional funds, because they only want to go through "on your own", that is, to see and prove to myself, that their abilities (precisely as a player, as if without additional. lotions) correspond to the assigned tasks, which is why we get such a boost of endorphins and other reward hormones after passing the boss “one at a time”.

It’s kind of aesthetics, which we feel through gameplay – blow on the last breath, successful evasion.

But often, there is no such harmony. Our abilities fall far short of the tasks; or, the tasks are horribly dull. But we can design games for the sake of this harmony of practical fit. In our games, the obstacles are designed to be solved by the human mind and the human body — unlike, say, the tasks of curing cancer or grading.

C. THI NGUYEN

I remember Babazaki and his statement about the Souls series and approach to creating video games. "I’m a masochist!" – he exclaimed. Games are his way to share his experience (apparently how he was beaten somewhere in the swamp), his desires with the world, to share what he gets pleasure from. This is his crystallization of experience.

How can I fix it??

It’s time to talk about ways to overcome hoarding. I’ll be using examples of mechanics from both "hoarding games" and games that aren’t hoarding but where I think the mechanics are great for solving the problem.

Inventory limit

In this case, the player is forced to make a choice – throw away or use the item.

1. Grid inventory from the series Resident Evil or Minecraft, where each item occupies a certain number of cells. It simply becomes impossible to take everything with you.

You have to build an action algorithm in your head on how to do it more profitably. And if in the case of the mine everything is simple – the world is completely open, and we are free to return for the item at any time (the main thing is not to forget where it is), then in the case of the rezik things are a little more complicated.

IN survival-horror-we need think through our adventure a few steps ahead. With an item in front of you that can be taken and an inventory that is full, you will have to think carefully: “use something now?", "come back to this place later?", and also "will I be able to return here?". Plus, objects of different sizes occupy different numbers of cells.

In Resident Evil 5 let’s go the other way: limited the number of slots in the inventory to 9 pieces, but “equalized” the sizes of all items to one slot.

The developers have removed an important feature of the series – a mini-game with management.

IN immersive sim-ah, characteristics are added that can be pumped up. By increasing the “strength” skill in System Shock 2, you can increase the number of cells, and in Prey 2017, the search for neuromodules is added to everything else.

What about larger-scale projects??

2. Weight limit in some way is a solution to the situation. But in this case, it is worth thinking through the weight categories much more carefully so that the player does not manage to accumulate items in a sufficiently large quantity.

This is a working option. It is actively used by the developers of many big games: Bethesda, CD Project RED etc.d. Weight restrictions look like a rudiment, but the developers can be understood – first of all, they need to create an interesting core gameplay, and the inventory looks like something secondary. Although, remembering Cyberpunk 2077 at the beginning with its disgusting rubbish categorization system, inventory no longer looks like such an insignificant element.

I think for large-scale games there should be large-scale changes! Combining both of the above systems looks something hardcore and intimidating for the average player.

But if we add to them a well-developed and convenient system of categories of objects, which would divide them by properties. Perhaps someday we will see this in practice.

A little realism

What? Simple enough – deterioration in the quality of items over time. The simplest one is food. Food spoils, which means it is impossible to accumulate it. This is not only useless, but also unsafe.

Let’s remember Don’t Starve, where you had to not only look at the quality of food, but also stock up on it in advance; Project Zomboid or the relatively recent Abiotic Factor .

Where are the big games?? Yes please – Kingdom Come Deliverance, Dragon’s Dogma 2 . Mechanics fit perfectly into the idea of ​​these projects. First of all, this is dangerous adventure, and in order to survive, it is necessary to constantly keep various aspects in mind.

The blue stripe above the lamb includes various icons, including a heart icon, which indicates the condition of the item, including food

There is an interesting point in the dogma – cooked rotten meat tastes better than fresh cooked meat

Food is the simplest example of resource depreciation (time limit). Nobody forces you to limit yourself to it, there is only one problem – you need to think through a lot: manually select items that can deteriorate, or create an entire mechanic? If manually, then what kind of items; if mechanically, then, for example, what will determine their deterioration and how this can be prevented.

A more complex and interesting system is weapon breakdown, after all, your favorite barrel can be repaired and all the original effects returned.

Creating situations that force the use of resources

Creating unique bosses or puzzles that require you to use items in your inventory.

As an example – a flying island in Morrowind . We can use a flight potion to get to him. I don’t take into account spells as a non-consumable item (but you still have to learn the spell). Most likely we will find this island at the beginning of our adventure, and curiosity will be so great that we won’t mind using the only potion we found.

Of course there’s more a conditional example of a possible spatial (not at all difficult) riddles. I think it’s worth saying about optionality such situations. We cannot implement them in plot points (remember Mario Sticker Star from the last chapter), because this will either break the game or break the pace, if in our game these resources are replenished, for example, in previous locations. Although if we assume the presence of fast movements to the necessary locations or, for example, a central hub, then the problem becomes solvable. To some extent, we give the player complete freedom to use resources for his UNIQUE passage, but everyone’s favorite grind is replacing.

There is another suggestion:

Increasing difficulty, that’s what

For me, a great example is Alien Isolation . The difficulty increases not due to increased damage to the heroine or absorption of damage by enemies. Difficulty increases thanks to AI "perfect killer" – it tracks your patterns and breaks out of habitual behavior, which means it can be taken by surprise, and you will have to use limited materials. But the whole situation is framed by the genre of the game. This is horror. This means that sometimes, due to fear, we will act recklessly and use something at the sight of the opening mouth of a xenomorph – let’s make a mistake.

Resource recovery or infinity

1. IN soulsah – This estus, which is being restored after resting by the fire, but in the space “from fire to fire” the resource is not restored. We can use, for example, special greenery as an additional “first aid kit”, but we won’t be able to restore it at the fire.

2. use of the killing system "Glory Kill" in Doom 2016 to restore health and ammo.

3. I want to remember the best sandbox of all time – Minecraft.

When we find a rare resource, we put in bins, somewhere in a chest so that no one, including us, gets to it.

But as soon as we understand the mechanics, study the world better and level up, we realize that it is possible to craft this item more often, or to mine it more efficiently.

We only need one awareness, a small crack of opportunity, so that we do not hesitate to use a rare thing.

In fact, the same grind fits perfectly here souls games. It’s just that he’s perceived completely differently. This is not an adventure of exploring new caves, this is not a deepening of mechanics and a better understanding of the world, this is grind in crystallized form.

Cycles

Naturally, I don’t take, for example, games like The Stanley Parable, where there simply are no resources. We don’t need to prepare, think through what things will be needed in the next raid.

There is no hoarding in them – you are right, but the point is different. Using loops (as in the examples above) will allow create stalemates, of which the player will have to get out at any cost, because otherwise he will lose all the loot.

The most striking example is Tarkov, where in the “menu” there is both a raid/cycle system and the accumulation of all kinds of rubbish.

I also want to include limiting saves in cycles (for me personally, the ideal example is Resident Evil 2 in hardcore mode). Starting over again and finding ourselves in a critical situation, we don’t think about how to arrange everything more neatly, really? We want to survive and move on, and the main factors here are time saved and pride from skillful passage.

Indicating item drop chance – mostly in crafting games. The veil of uncertainty is falling?

Such a system exists, for example, in Monster Hunter World .

Does this solve the problem – yes and no. In games where loot is the main goal, this will certainly simplify the player’s life. Such systems are more aimed at mechanical interaction with the game. Literally, the gameplay implies that you know all the drop percentages, and you will try to increase this chance with the help of various trinkets and items. Or he wants the player to think through a scheme for extracting some resource (it also happens that players take advantage of the game’s rough edges and ill-conceived game design). That’s why I called this “mechanical interaction”, if you like – “mathematical”.

But what to do, for example, in large RPGs: will this contribute to the concept of gazebo games – explore? Or let’s take Minecraft – we know that this item drops from this or that mob. How interesting or accurate is knowing loot drop rates?? Receiving the treasured hellish record after so many attempts and losing hope of success gives a surge of emotions that are comparable to defeating a difficult boss or winning the lottery.

Let’s consider another situation. Knowing the chance of a certain biome (for example, mushroom) or mob spawning (for example, a zombie villager on a chicken) does not detract from its value. That is, look, we have two components:

– Knowledge of the existence of “something”

– Knowing the chance of “something” appearing

As a result, we fully realize the value of the world we have created, even its uniqueness in some way. After all, in other worlds of other players this event might not have happened. This thought alone gives us pleasure.

How to prevent “breaking tempo”?

Back to Dark Souls. I think it’s a good solution to create two inventory systems. This is not just a dumb list of items, as in Skyrim, and mini-inventory with the simultaneous presence of an illustration of the item.

During one action (for example, dodging), you are free to switch items in your mini-inventory without breaking the pace.

I would like to add a little and even make a reservation.

I remembered amazing in many ways Baldur’s Gate 3, as an example of a hoarding game, but let’s look at the other side.

Baldur is, without exaggeration, a game phenomenon. By accumulating items in it, there is a small chance that one of the thousands of available items will actually end up in the right place and at the right time. Why does this happen??

Baldur provides many ways of player-object interaction: Throw at the enemy, use as a step to climb up; and the most amazing thing – use it for its intended purpose.

This great, thoughtful and painstaking work, which takes into account the consequences of the player’s actions. But you also need to properly limit actions, navigate the attraction so that the player does not break anything.

Of course she’s not perfect. No matter how I tried to carefully kill Dror Ragzlin in the destroyed sanctuary in the first act, nothing worked for me. In the corner of the location there was a small unstable platform made of boards. I cast an illusion in that place so that the red horseradish would come there, and then the carousel would begin: I threw things there, threw weapons at the boards, and jumped off, and then revived the character. Ragzlin fell and died, BUT the game constantly counted his death as if I had killed him, and everyone aggroed, although in some other situations the “character fall” for killing due to “indirect” actions was not counted.

It turns out that Baldur’s Gate turn hoarding to your advantage, make it their thing and actively use it.

This got me thinking – this is it, solution for all RPGs and other large-scale games! After a while I grew cold, because only a limited number of developers are capable of meticulously designing items and providing such freedom to players. Larian Studios could afford such luxury. But don’t forget – this is a unique game, and I’m absolutely sure that it’s impossible to create a “scheme of work”/philosophy (like the gazebo) out of this. We’d have to design every game from scratch.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed reading it, learned something new, and perhaps even thought about or firmly decided to change your strategy in games and eliminate hoarding from your playthrough. How do you like the challenge??

This topic is my personal problem. It has always irritated me that myriads of feces accumulate in my inventory, and I don’t use it in any way: sometimes I forget, sometimes it’s too easy, sometimes something else, so it was important for me to think about it and figure it out. For me, games are, first and foremost, an experience. An experience that can simply entertain, or can help in the future: for some in its passage, for others in development, for others in real life situations.

I did not go deeper into the medical field, although I could talk about impulsiveness and analyze in more detail the “Plyushkin” syndrome, which is literally synonymous with “pathological hoarding”. But we have games here, and it is not necessary to fully describe the disease in the article, given the analysis of BEHAVIOR. Read it for yourself if you’re interested.

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Special thanks

I was advised on some points by a great LOL e-sportsman – Kirill “Walker” Aleinikov.

Edited and made a juicy cover – Daniel "el Jabo".

Sources

I advise you to look for yourself. Great video where I got some examples and thoughts from.

2. DSM-5-TR (DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS).

3. Thi Nguyen’s book (C. THI NGUYEN) "Games: Agency as Art".

Best comments

I have a simple policy: if I can solve a problem without using an item/consumable/resource, etc., in 99% of cases I will do it. I guess I just grew up playing games where you can softlock yourself without saving resources, so much so that you don’t have to replay the whole game. Now I’m much more relaxed about wasting resources, but habits are already second nature, and often some scroll of “total Armageddon” will remain unused until the final credits. In the same Baldur’s Gate 3, I once used a hasta potion in a battle with the Apostle Myrkul and killed him in one move, despite the fact that a shooter with twin crossbows dealt with the murder itself in a solo, and the rest freed the captive and destroyed the suckers.

I had a problem. I played Residen Evil 4, the game seems to involve saving resources. Therefore, I had a habit: if I spent an extra cartridge, missed with a grenade or received damage, then I had to die and replay better. Because I may need these resources later, what if because of this I ruin my passage??!

Now I have changed and going through the same Remake of 4, I adhered to the rule, even if I spend all my resources, I will get out of this shit alive. It’s so much more fun, never give up.

As for me, everything can be boiled down to one offensive word: Greed.
It’s not for nothing that we call it one of the sins. I believe it is due to our nature and evolution.
Games are simply a convenient product where it can be deployed on an exaggerated scale. Brilliant examples of the game genre "Factory" aka Factorio.

I note that pathological hoarding can be completely confused with banal laziness. An interesting example, I have a couple of almost dead Full HD monitors behind me – of course the thought comes to me: “I need to sell them or repair them”, which is what I choose? That’s right, screw it 🙂
What I mean by all this is that it’s commonplace for a player to be lazy about inventory management.

Likewise, by the way. But for me it was some kind of meditative process. The brain switches off, you rest, you spread the probes 🙂

I just do vacuuming and don’t think about saving items, since there are always plenty of them. So now give me a text about vacuuming

Baldur provides a variety of player-item interactions: throw at an enemy, use as a step to climb up; and the most amazing thing – use it for its intended purpose

The game does have a lot of ways to use items, but it doesn’t encourage you to use them. The way to use consumables (even for their intended purpose) is everywhere. That’s why these are consumables, but the player still accumulates items, because.To. later it may be more necessary.

It turns out that Baldur’s Gate turns hoarding to its advantage, makes it its feature and actively uses

Yes, but they don’t solve the problem. The player’s inventory remains filled with items that the player does not use until the end credits. There are no differences from other games here.

Even worse. Just like it was in BG3, I have never had my inventory filled with potentially useful items in any game. I was uncomfortable with the constant need to transfer items between party members in order to balance the weight. Everything is according to the classics: it’s a pity to sell, because there’s already enough gold, but anything can be useful. And a huge mountain of this “whatever” accumulated.

So BG3 doesn’t solve this problem, it just gives additional ways to use items, but not an incentive to do so.

Good material, well written, but the author himself confuses the accumulation of things “I don’t need it, but I’ll take it” and “it will be useful to me in the future”.

The first option is certainly a quirk that needs to be dealt with, but the second is absolutely natural behavior, knowing how games work.

Why would I dump a powerful grenade in the resident on just 2 homeless people who can fly off just fine from a pistol?. With all this, not only is it a grenade, it’s also POWERFUL. From the name alone, the idea comes to mind to store it until the plot of a crowd of zombies or one Brute. Flash drives, which are useless at first, at the end of the game will one-shot the second form of mutants when they have a gut instead of a head. Why not save just 1 flash drive, save a bunch of ammo, or convert it into a more valuable resource – the TIME spent killing one such ammo sponge

Special grind in survival games is always carried out for a specific purpose. To craft a sword you need 10 units of steel, which is melted from 100 ore. Go dig. I want a sword. My goal is the sword, not grind as the goal itself. Grinding is just a way to achieve a goal, and if there was another legitimate way to get the desired sword, for example, guaranteed to be obtained from the bass, obtained through the plot, or simply simply bought, I would use them rather than chiseling stones for 10 hours.

Moreover, the statement about grind in souls is fundamentally incorrect. We grind souls not just so that they lie in our pocket, but to pour them into a character and pump up the build or, again, to buy gear. After achieving your goal, souls generally depreciate in value and you don’t even come back for them and often use a mark instead of a bone.

In large games with open worlds, loot of all kinds of shit IN THE FIRST PASSAGE, it is rightly said, is due only to not knowing what you will need. Looting specific things, for example, is associated with pervectionism. “I have already collected 3/5 parts of the set, so why not collect 2 more and just admire it for 2 seconds in a full build on a character, then remove it and forget forever”. In this case, I’m trying to absorb as much content as possible from the game for which I actually paid money, this is one thing, two – I just like it and I want more and more. Here we are pursuing the goal of getting pleasure from a closed checkbox, and not just scratching the armor of “it was wrong”.

Inventory in a cage and even with a weight limit, it seems to me, is shown in the best and at the same time worst way in Tarkov. By killing one Ful type, you can collect so much gear that it will be enough for several raids without dying, but after killing several, there is already a shortage of space. The handles are removed from the guns, the magazines are snapped out, their own equipment is thrown away and captured equipment is taken in its place. In addition to the impossibility of carrying everything on a character, debuffs are also applied to the entire movement. It turns out that I am being punished for winning and not being given a reward for outplaying the crowd. I’m better than all of them! I want them guns! COME HERE! Meanwhile, collecting bolts from garbage dumps, on the contrary, is rewarded with more compact loot of only 1 cell, jewelry of 2. You can take out the coffin of shit and get more money than by outplaying the crowd. Oh and also money takes up space in the stash and I am again punished for being rich. That is, in order not to experience discomfort, it’s easier not to play at all.

Kingdom Come is trying a little bit for realism and you can’t get on a horse with an advantage, because your filly is already carrying 300 kilograms of nettles, and from you, who carried all over Rattay, her back will break. But still, these are just half-hearted attempts at realism, because no matter how much junk you collect, you can still walk to the bottomless chest. Slow, but possible. But when games resort to complete immobilization due to an extremely strong advantage, this already makes you think about throwing it away, so as not to cosplay the stone (although the players of the same Tarkov do this deliberately, ahem. )

My friend and I love playing all sorts of terraria, minecraft and the like. My inventory always gets clogged up there, I’ve already fed up my friend with this) And I just collect all the items. The game gives, I collect. Of course, cluttering helps to defeat (almost) a bunch of chests and a convenient system for quickly stacking chests.

This is how we “cured” Valheim with mods, t.To. the weight limit there is incredibly stupid. To craft an ax (I don’t remember from what) you need 30 ingots of 10 weights, for a total of 300. T.e. default inventory limit. You drag those ingots from your chest to your workbench, hunched over and sweating. And then you make an ax and all that weight evaporates

Terraria developers understand what kind of game they have and allow players not to worry about the gameplay features.

Reading the entire text of the post, I remembered a recent discussion with a friend while playing Sekiro. I thought so, that during my entire previous playthrough I had never used the Divine Herb (well, a very rare item that heals the player completely). The utility to rarity ratio is so crazy that I can’t imagine a situation where I would use it. Happens once every few hours, maybe. If I die I’ll try again and that’s it. Although the only thing I can imagine is if I almost killed a very difficult boss, he and I are at the end of our health, and then the divine herb comes into the picture, yes. It’s absolutely perfect here.

In my opinion, in such games it would be really useful to introduce a measurement of the ratio of the drop of an item and the frequency of its use (or rather, situations where the use of this item is appropriate). If a player doesn’t use it, then the developer did something wrong: it’s too rare, too useless, or maybe didn’t convey the essence of the item.

Probably with the accumulation of experience I have become more attuned to this. In the same GTA IV, I remember I really didn’t like the point in the statistics: the number of deaths. There I also loaded a save after every death.

But when it comes to survival games with a shortage of resources, I simply accepted the rules of the games. I think that it is much more interesting when a person makes mistakes, but tries his best to still overcome difficulties, than when he knows in advance the location of each enemy and does not experience difficulties.

Only a limited number of developers are capable of meticulously designing items and providing such freedom to players.

Rather, everyone is capable, but only a few want to do this. So, any creativity with objects was still in the old StoneKeep, and simply due to the ability to throw. But to do this, you need to think, code, and not just copy ideas and designs from others. Statistics and marketing, again, unpopular features and/or the fact that the game is poorly advertised, or even the banal misunderstanding of one individual PR person how to play up the moment in advertising, all this also destroys the gaming capabilities in the bud.

Well, I decided that it was an RPG.There are never enough resources.Who knows what else interesting things can be collected as the game progresses?.))))

Maybe not entirely on topic, but when I played Mass Effect 2 I foolishly sucked all the planets to zero.But it turned out to be so much unnecessary.Even that “zero element”))))

It’s good that you said something about habit. In the article I wrote about “stressful situations” from the past. But I think the habit is some variation of them.

When you wanted to show off, but didn’t take into account the nuances and shot yourself in the foot.

No need to separate headers with spaces. We adjusted all the styles so that everything would look good at any resolution, but with such jokes on mobile phones everything “creeps” ugly.

(And I won’t say anything about the blog, but since you got a mower, it means it’s good, keep up the good work)

While I was reading, I thought, where did I get this habit from?? And there was a feeling that it started at some point when I came across some kind of soft lock. I thought and thought and remembered. Gothic 3! When I came across an orc camp in the forest, I collected these damn bundles of weapons and sold them because I didn’t have enough money. And then SUDDENLY it turned out that these bundles of quests must be handed in and there is a strictly defined number of them in the world, they do not resolve and you can’t do anything with them. And what the hell with it, well, there are side effects and side effects, but these side effects are needed for pumping up turnips in settlements and in some side effects there are more than necessary, and in others – exactly as much as needed and such a hang-up = not enough reputation. In short, it’s good that I haven’t come across something like this for a long time (still, now most often potential quest items are either not sold at all, or you can get more of them in the future), but the sediment, as they say, remains.

Happy ending. And then did you notice such a change?? Or somehow the realization gradually occurred that it was more fun this way?

I’m a "hamster" in life. In games, I usually store all sorts of notes (although in BG1 I carried a skull in my inventory and it really came in handy for one quest), and I sell most of the artifacts.

Both in reality and in games everything is simple.

I know people who even save magazines and newspapers until the last moment. Every time they have to throw away such waste paper, it’s torment for them. Why? Because they once experienced loneliness, powerlessness and helplessness, and found a way out, an answer and a solution in magazines and newspapers. Since then, all this bullshit seems to them to be the only clue to salvation, because people and various kinds of services can cheat or simply refuse something, and with magazines and newspapers it seems to them that they can cope with this or that situation.

With the accumulation of junk also. Anyone who once at least temporarily lived in poverty or on the edge, and then began to live a little better, but not much, began to accumulate various things, because… And where to buy what later, where to run, how much money must be given in order to get this or that necessary thing? What if I already have it?? And it doesn’t matter that the apartment is littered with junk, it’s important that the person is in permanent despair. And again loneliness, powerlessness and helplessness.

In games it’s a little different, since there’s a lot of loot around, or not a lot, but it’s there and it’s relatively free. It is this “for nothing” that makes you save! Because how not to hoard something you didn’t have to pay for?? And there are endless “what if?»