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Debate : Magic Backpack or Analogous Backpack?


Anaximander

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The very concept is pretty straight forward.


A Magic Backpack, is used in most traditional MMOS, like WoW. It's the kind of backpack you can carry twenty set of armors, three metric tons of food, five hundred gallons worth of potions and so many weapons that make the average medieval weapons hoarder have an inferiority complex. You don't feel the weight, or the size of the items you carry in your backpack.


An Analogous Backpack, is the one Diablo uses. A weapon, takes certain boxes, both horizontally and vertically. The Backpack itself has a certain amount of boxes, therefore creating a sense of managing your inventroy necessary and always travelling light to avoid having no space for all the important Loot you may find in the game. Note, equipment is not counting as inventory space as the wepaons and armor are not IN the backpack.



The subject doesn't cover gathering mechanics, as mining can be done on a rover with a larger tank on the back instead of on the foot.



My suggestion comes out of the perspective of a ground combat aficionado.


The problem with Magic Backpacks, is that it creates a situation were a person may have so much ammo on them and doesn't relate much to their weight for an MMO. In games ike WoW, you can run with a mountain worth of minerals on your back you would be fiiiiiine. That to me, is a problem, especially when weapons are involved. If a person has a minigun, two spare armors and a kitchen sink in their backpack, that makes the game very very silly, not to mention, if Jet Packs are involved, how many people will be legit C4 fairies, dropping explosives on hovertanks and laughing at how easy it is, or the need for any form of logistics and ammo conservation or tactics.


An Analogous Backpack though, opens the possibility to some very intersting gameplay mechanics.  A Power Armor now becomes relevant, it can have a large backpack on its back that can support much more weight than the average bloke, giving the soldiers the specialised in it an advantage over the rest who are not specialised in it. It makes a stealth armor having to rely on a modified wetsuit that carry little in the way of ammunition, making the player's gameplay feeling rewarding and tactical, as they don't got enough ammo to keep fighting and they need to travel light, like flippin' ninjas. If melee weapons are added, the same stleath suit that has not really much in the way of inventory space to even support a two-row weapon, makes an excellent combo with a melee weapon, like a sword, as equipment is not stored in the inventory, leaving the limited backpack for things like, a medical injector or EMP bombs.



Let me know if you want some challenge in your inventory management and to have to consider the weight of whatever you are carrying, or are carebears who want to carry ten missile launchers in ther backpacks and seventy tons worth of missiles.




Peace.

 

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I would like this type of inventory system, OR, I would like the inventory system that the original Darkfall Online used, although that system took a while to get used to and it probably wouldn't fit into the type of game that DU is.

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In a sandbox game where you build stuff its a pain to manage a complex invetory.

Well, turns out the devs may have a very well thought out mechanic with Kads that contain materials and get a slot in your inventory in the backpack, that can contain materials of one type only and in quantities. If it's so, then we may get the Analogous Backpack and Kads that take up parts of it. Same Kads can be used from engineers to repair ships, via using the Kads as "ammo packs" for their repair tools. :D

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The real difference between the 2 is not the amount of space, but the different weights of different pieces. An "analogous" backpack could be reasonable if materials/items have weight, and that would even influence ship thrust. Of course is better. While if i have to choose between a giant backpack or a small one, I prefer a small one, supposing that the game will not require me to carry 131824 items to do anything. 

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Well, turns out the devs may have a very well thought out mechanic with Kads that contain materials and get a slot in your inventory in the backpack, that can contain materials of one type only and in quantities. If it's so, then we may get the Analogous Backpack and Kads that take up parts of it. Same Kads can be used from engineers to repair ships, via using the Kads as "ammo packs" for their repair tools. :D

I like the idea of the analogous pack, but the kads should be on your belt or not take up pack slots, they are the size and weight of a matchbox. The pack should be for constructs you are currently carrying., like weapons, ammo, food, etc...

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I like the idea of the analogous pack, but the kads should be on your belt or not take up pack slots, they are the size and weight of a matchbox. The pack should be for constructs you are currently carrying., like weapons, ammo, food, etc...

Well, the way I see it, is this.

 

 

Certain gear, like a backpack, takes certain amounts worh of boxes in sizes. Kads, come in different sizes, but work only for raw material. If you in the proximity of your Claim, you got full access to all your Kads at the same time. If you are away from your claimed construct, you only have access to the Kads on your perso.

 

A bigger backpack, the more boxes it has fileld up, the "Heavier" it gets, making the Player move slowerl. 

 

 

This way, a size 1 sidepack, with 3x3 slots, can't takea a 6x2 Kad, but it can take a much smaller, 3x2 Kad and leave some spare room for a magazine or two, incase things get hairy.

 

If you are mining with a ship in space though, you got a huge ass 30x30 container, filled to the brim with Kads of maximum size, rigged up with your laser drill thingie and when you mine, the matteial is soaked up to those Kads, which are asorted for all the materials YOU want to mine for. Since yo uare mining and you are in your claimed construct, the materials go into the container on your ship.

 

A soldier would have no need for Kads in combat. They can't build inside the enemy territory anyway, since they doen't have the authorisation to from the Territory Claim Unit. But what they do have the need of, are medical kits or extra magazines or power cells.

 

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Somewhere between in effect being "infinite" and NMS.  ;)

 

I'm good with a weight/volume or by slots but I just want it to be balanced.  Balanced in a way where it isn't like NMS but it also is something you do not need to think about or plan around.  Expanding it must be something tied to player built items to help the market grow, and I would say tied to skill tree .... higher the skill the more capacity items the player can produce ... maybe even tied to rarer resources for the higher capacity items.

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Would this be different from the nanopack? In the short story the capacity of the nanopack is described like this

 

I’ve got the equivalent of four sequoias and six tons of rock in cartridges housed in my belt! The worst part is that I don’t even feel their weight thanks to anti-gravity technology!

So if you do have lots of stuff, why wouldn't you just put it in the nanopack?

 

It would be nice to see some balance in player capabilities, but I don't think it should be balanced against inventory. Each piece of equipment could have stats for weight and stealth instead. This way, to be stealthy, you have to wear stealthy clothes and use stealthy equipment. To move fast, you have to wear lightweight things.

 

Slow movement: Equipping big, heavy guns and armor make you slow. Normal clothes and lightweight equipment lets you be quick.

Stealth: Equipment with high stealth rating has a smaller distance at which others can detect you. Low stealth rating has a farther distance at which others detect you.

 

As far as the large ammunition possibility mentioned in OP, I see three very, very important issues which would become apparent before you tried any of that:

 

1. You actually have to make all that ammunition first (or buy it). Making ammunition shouldn't be easy or cheap. It would take an immense amount of time, energy, and materials to build the infrastructure to make ammunition. Then, you have to spend yet more time, energy, and materials to make the ammunition. In terms of money, selling that much materiel should net a massive fortune, or cost one to buy.

 

2. You have all that ammo on your person. If you die, you lose it all. You would lose a fortune in ammo, explosives, guns, equipment, etc. You would seriously need to think twice before bringing a literal fortune with you where you might very well die and lose everything. Any sane person would take only what he needs and no more.

 

3. So you have a huge stockpile of munitions. You either have a large infrastructure which made it, or lots of money. In either case, you are not by yourself but rather with an organization. If hostilities broke out between your org and another, you would use these munitions. But not just you. Most of your org will probably engage in the hostilities, too. That stockpile of munitions will get divvied up between everyone involved. You won't have one person do bombing runs. Instead, you form a whole squadron to do it. Now, the huge stockpile of munitions is no longer large, once everyone gets his small share.

 

In any case, I would rather see a Space Engineers system than a DIablo system. You get the same effect (limited space) without all the grief inducing inventory management.

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Would this be different from the nanopack? In the short story the capacity of the nanopack is described like this

So if you do have lots of stuff, why wouldn't you just put it in the nanopack?

 

It would be nice to see some balance in player capabilities, but I don't think it should be balanced against inventory. Each piece of equipment could have stats for weight and stealth instead. This way, to be stealthy, you have to wear stealthy clothes and use stealthy equipment. To move fast, you have to wear lightweight things.

 

Slow movement: Equipping big, heavy guns and armor make you slow. Normal clothes and lightweight equipment lets you be quick.

Stealth: Equipment with high stealth rating has a smaller distance at which others can detect you. Low stealth rating has a farther distance at which others detect you.

 

As far as the large ammunition possibility mentioned in OP, I see three very, very important issues which would become apparent before you tried any of that:

 

1. You actually have to make all that ammunition first (or buy it). Making ammunition shouldn't be easy or cheap. It would take an immense amount of time, energy, and materials to build the infrastructure to make ammunition. Then, you have to spend yet more time, energy, and materials to make the ammunition. In terms of money, selling that much materiel should net a massive fortune, or cost one to buy.

 

2. You have all that ammo on your person. If you die, you lose it all. You would lose a fortune in ammo, explosives, guns, equipment, etc. You would seriously need to think twice before bringing a literal fortune with you where you might very well die and lose everything. Any sane person would take only what he needs and no more.

 

3. So you have a huge stockpile of munitions. You either have a large infrastructure which made it, or lots of money. In either case, you are not by yourself but rather with an organization. If hostilities broke out between your org and another, you would use these munitions. But not just you. Most of your org will probably engage in the hostilities, too. That stockpile of munitions will get divvied up between everyone involved. You won't have one person do bombing runs. Instead, you form a whole squadron to do it. Now, the huge stockpile of munitions is no longer large, once everyone gets his small share.

 

In any case, I would rather see a Space Engineers system than a DIablo system. You get the same effect (limited space) without all the grief inducing inventory management.

The problem arises from Power Armor. A Power Armor would make you carry a laser gatling gun and enough power cells to drill through walls. 

 

A power armor should be a kind of thing people unlock and feel special, forfeiting many other things, like crafting skills, to become a murder-machine.

 

 

The inventory system in the Lore, doesn't have to be the sameas the inventory system in-game. Lore can be retconned.

 

 

Also, the cartridges are those Kad-Packs, so they do take space and store materials, but not complex items. 

 

 

You wouldn't be able to store 10,000 bullets in them :V

 

So yeah, in that sense, the Lore is good.

 

 

 

Also, yes, the 3D printers can create magazines of bullets on the fly and en masse.

 

 

The point is, the belt described, is an okay example, as the each part of the gear you wearr may provide bonus to inventory, like utility pants or storage pants, having more pockets on them.

 

 

Having 10,000 ammo on you, defuses the point of having trading ships mate. Everyy trader would have a man-purse and simply deliver 10,000,000,000,000 tons worth of minerals in a wallet sized F.U. to logic and reason. Also, it would make thins like THIS, irrelevant.

 

 

But, if my assessment, or more accurately, ShadowLordAlpha's assessment is correct, the Kads (the cartridges) are able to store one material tpe at a time and have a maximum capacity. You know, because black holes and stuff. So a Kad can take up to 10,000 voxels worth of a material, sure, the number can be different, but you get the idea. So, when you go to the market, you sell a Kad worth of 10,000 voxels of iron, which another person can take and apply it to a foundry unit, to make whatever items they want.

 

 

Again, bullets are complex structures, raw iron is not. Compressing raw iron would be a simple process, compressing a gun would not be.

 

 

So the starting gear can have a belt with 5 to 10 slots, or a 1x5 inventory. But if you were to build yourself a backpack, going to the "Back" slot of your equipment, you get more backpack storage, with the belt acting as a sort of quick access inventory.

 

 

 

The Kadpack thing and the Analogous Inventory can work. There's no need for one to exist without the other, just make the Kads only work for RAW MATERIALS.

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this makes it sound like our backpack is entirely a bunch of small kad packs all liked together,

 

with the kadpak on my back. A technological marvel that uses Calabi-Yau manifolds, notably K3 spaces, to compress matter at ultra-high degrees of density. Once sucked inside, that matter can be taken out with whatever geometrical form one wishes. All with a mere kyrium tube somehow wrapped around my forearm, a mere canon, which can even serve as a rudimentary weapon in case of attack: the morpher.

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this makes it sound like our backpack is entirely a bunch of small kad packs all liked together,

 

with the kadpak on my back. A technological marvel that uses Calabi-Yau manifolds, notably K3 spaces, to compress matter at ultra-high degrees of density. Once sucked inside, that matter can be taken out with whatever geometrical form one wishes. All with a mere kyrium tube somehow wrapped around my forearm, a mere canon, which can even serve as a rudimentary weapon in case of attack: the morpher.

these Well, that's not a thing really, since the devs have containers in the game for storage of items. If the exaggerated lore is taken seriously, there's no need for pretty much, any large freighter ship. Containers like these . 

 

 

The way I see it, Kads come to different sizes and can take up different spaces in an analogous backpack, and the morpher can be a detachable piece of equipment on the player, like a gun of sorts. 

 

 

it would be sad if were left with the No Man's Sky excuse of a weapon in DUAL for the whole game.

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The problem arises from Power Armor. A Power Armor would make you carry a laser gatling gun and enough power cells to drill through walls. 

 

A power armor should be a kind of thing people unlock and feel special, forfeiting many other things, like crafting skills, to become a murder-machine.

 

I agree, but this has more to do with skills than with the inventory system.

 

 

 

The inventory system in the Lore, doesn't have to be the sameas the inventory system in-game. Lore can be retconned.

 

 

Also, the cartridges are those Kad-Packs, so they do take space and store materials, but not complex items. 

 

 

You wouldn't be able to store 10,000 bullets in them :V

 

So yeah, in that sense, the Lore is good.

 

So I reviewed what the short story actually says. It seems to me that the kadpack and the kads work exactly the same way. The only difference is that kads are little matchboxes on your belt and not a backpack.

 

Also, yes, the 3D printers can create magazines of bullets on the fly and en masse.

No. Absolutely not. This is not how it should be.

 

 

Having 10,000 ammo on you, defuses the point of having trading ships mate. Everyy trader would have a man-purse and simply deliver 10,000,000,000,000 tons worth of minerals in a wallet sized F.U. to logic and reason. Also, it would make thins like THIS, irrelevant.

If your little matchbox sized kad can hold 10k ammo, then think about what a ship sized cargo container could hold. WAY more space. That's why you would use trading ships.

 

 

But, if my assessment, or more accurately, ShadowLordAlpha's assessment is correct, the Kads (the cartridges) are able to store one material tpe at a time and have a maximum capacity. You know, because black holes and stuff. So a Kad can take up to 10,000 voxels worth of a material, sure, the number can be different, but you get the idea. So, when you go to the market, you sell a Kad worth of 10,000 voxels of iron, which another person can take and apply it to a foundry unit, to make whatever items they want.

 

 

Again, bullets are complex structures, raw iron is not. Compressing raw iron would be a simple process, compressing a gun would not be.

 

 

 

The Kadpack thing and the Analogous Inventory can work. There's no need for one to exist without the other, just make the Kads only work for RAW MATERIALS.

I do like this idea. I would only change one thing: that you should be able to hold more than one raw material in the kads, unless they are easy to find/get/make and don't take up lots of valuable belt space.

 

It makes a bunch of what's been mentioned before less relevant. And I mention again that I would rather do Space Engineers volume limit than a Diablo style. You get the same effect and no headaches.

 

I would still insist than making guns and munitions not be easy AT ALL. This whole thread is based on "what about having thousands of bullets." I would prefer to see the devs prevent any potential problems, than to go around inventing work-arounds to imagined issues.

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I agree, but this has more to do with skills than with the inventory system.

 

So I reviewed what the short story actually says. It seems to me that the kadpack and the kads work exactly the same way. The only difference is that kads are little matchboxes on your belt and not a backpack.

 

No. Absolutely not. This is not how it should be.

 

If your little matchbox sized kad can hold 10k ammo, then think about what a ship sized cargo container could hold. WAY more space. That's why you would use trading ships.

 

I do like this idea. I would only change one thing: that you should be able to hold more than one raw material in the kads, unless they are easy to find/get/make and don't take up lots of valuable belt space.

 

It makes a bunch of what's been mentioned before less relevant. And I mention again that I would rather do Space Engineers volume limit than a Diablo style. You get the same effect and no headaches.

 

I would still insist than making guns and munitions not be easy AT ALL. This whole thread is based on "what about having thousands of bullets." I would prefer to see the devs prevent any potential problems, than to go around inventing work-arounds to imagined issues.

Sure, you can have an item have a volumemetric value and not do the puzzle-quiz that the Diablo-style analogous backpack is. You get indeed the same results.  The point is to limit how many weapons a player has on them and how much equipment can be carried. Kadpacks or kads ,can be made to hold a volumentric value on them, although, the match-box thing is way too ridiculous, even for made up science :P

 

 

As for the difficulty of making weapons... the Devs have a 3D printer Element made already. It's not that hard to make iteems apparently :P

 

 

 

The point is, without small tweaks in balancing the inventory, the devs risk throwing off ground based combat and any balance involved in it.

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