More immersive Backpack system.

[OreEnthusiast]

Found it weird that the inventory system is just a bunch of individual bags thrown onto the character. Even more weird once you get to the backpack stage and you're carrying around 4 entire backpacks which leaves me with the mental image of someone trying to bring all the grocery bags in on a single trip, or that trope of a boyfriend following his girlfriend shopping and holding a billion clothing bags. 

Thought of a neat idea: singular modular backpack with slots for customizations.

The first slot in your bag menu is a primary backpack slot. So a large reed basket, a linen sack, mining bag, leather backpack, and sturdy leather backpack. 
Second slot fits something onto the top end of your backpack, the third slot in the bottom left, and the fourth slot in the bottom right. 

Customizations can include a torch holder/lantern, a sleeping bag, pouches for additional inventory, ect. Each customization visually changes the backpack, and is tied to the backpack so placing it down keeps the customizations with it. 

The total size of the main backpack could be most of the inventory space currently granted by a full row of the same tier of bags, with the rest being filled out by 1-2 pouch additions. So by equipping a backpack and a couple pouches you retain the same inventory space you'd get now plus 1 additional slot for customization. Or you could ignore pouches all together and still retain about 70-80% of your normal capacity while getting several slots to add things. 

Could even further this idea by limiting the customizations and the amount of them to the backpack tier. So Reed Baskets get nothing, Linen Sacks get 1 slot, Leather 2, and Sturdy Leather unlocks all 3 slots. 


 

[LadyWYT]

I'd rather stick with the current system, really. It works, and being limited to only one bag sounds like it would be even more of a hassle for inventory management than the current system. At the very least, the slots per bag would probably have to be increased by quite a bit by default, otherwise the early game is going to feel rather tedious with little handbaskets that can't be modified.

5 minutes ago, OreEnthusiast said:

Found it weird that the inventory system is just a bunch of individual bags thrown onto the character.

In fairness, videogame inventory isn't going to be very realistic in general. The player carries a LOT of things around that have absolutely no business being in a backpack--solid chunks of stone, piles of smaller stones or ore chunks, ladders, a pantry's worth of groceries, etc. Even an item weight system ends up breaking some rules, since at the end of the day most players don't enjoy a lot of back-and-forth running to accomplish even the most basic tasks.

 

9 minutes ago, OreEnthusiast said:

Customizations can include a torch holder/lantern, a sleeping bag, pouches for additional inventory, ect. Each customization visually changes the backpack, and is tied to the backpack so placing it down keeps the customizations with it. 

What I would do is cut this idea out from the rest, and perhaps add a couple of other slots in the character menu that appear when a proper backpack is equipped. While the player has at least one backpack equipped, they can store tools, weapons, bedrolls, or lanterns in these slots, at the cost of needing to open the character menu and retrieve the item from that slot when the player wants to use it. Basically, it's the elk storage system, but for the player instead.

[williams_482]

I really like this idea.

The current system does benefit from it's simplicity: it's well balanced, progresses smoothly and incrementally as resources are acquired, and easy to understand. As you say, though, it does seem a little silly on the face of it, and the fact that our character model is obviously only wearing at most one backpack highlights that problem.

6 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

being limited to only one bag sounds like it would be even more of a hassle for inventory management than the current system.

I believe the recommendation is that the single primary backpack would have a volume close to the current four backpacks put together, with the three additional slots filling out the missing inventory slots. I'm going to suggest a slight tweak where we have one backpack slot by default, and our primary backpack unlocks additional slots for smaller secondary bags. For example:

- Reed baskets: Primary backpack costs 30 reeds (3x current hand basket) and opens up 10 inventory slots plus one additional secondary slots. Secondary bag costs 10 reeds (same as current hand basket) and opens up two more inventory slots. Max capacity configuration is 12 inventory slots for 40 reeds, same as now. 

- Hunter: Primary backpack costs 45 reeds plus 12 small hide equivalent (4 medium, two large, etc). Opens up 10 inventory slots and two backpack slots. Secondary bags cost 15 reeds and three small hide equivalent to open three inventory slots each

- Linen: Primary backpack costs 10 twine (or equivalent, e.g. two twine and eight linen) and opens up 12 inventory and two additional bag slots. Secondary bags cost 5 twine and unlock four inventory slots each

I stop here because balancing the progression of adding inventory slots and bag slots to the primary bag while also improving the secondary bag gets a little more difficult with leather and heavy leather while keeping their current total capacity. I think that's a solvable problem, but I don't have a solution now. 

What I really like about OP's proposed system (with my slight tweak) is the following: 

1. It makes more intuitive sense, and 

2. (more importantly) It allows for much more interesting tradeoffs with your backpack slots. Now upgrading from hand baskets to hunter backpacks or linen sacks won't just give you more inventory, but also make it easier for you to pick up multiple reed chest traps or full skeps. I also love OP's idea of allowing a light to be placed in a bag slot, finally allowing you to both see, use a shield, and wear a helmet at the cost of losing some inventory slots. 

The presence of mining bags make clear that the game is trying to give you interesting choices for how to use these bag slots, it just doesn't actually give a lot of options. This proposal would be a significant improvement in that respect. 

[OreEnthusiast]

6 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

I believe the recommendation is that the single primary backpack would have a volume close to the current four backpacks put together, with the three additional slots filling out the missing inventory slots.

Correct. Like I stated in the post the singular backpack would ideally fill out about 70-80% of the currents slots granted by a total set of the same tier of bags, and the rest would be filled by a number of pouches deemed sensible for balance. Probably about 1-2 secondary bags so the third slot can be left for customization or to spend extra resources for a few extra slots. 

[LadyWYT]

Ah, I missed that before. In that case, the idea sounds a lot better.

[williams_482]

10 hours ago, williams_482 said:

I stop here because balancing the progression of adding inventory slots and bag slots to the primary bag while also improving the secondary bag gets a little more difficult with leather and heavy leather while keeping their current total capacity. I think that's a solvable problem, but I don't have a solution now. 

Having thought about this, I think it's okay to increase the total carrying capacity of the more advanced backpacks somewhat. We do want the player to value these upgrades, and we are giving additional use to backpack slots so we don't want the tradeoff of giving away storage to feel too harsh. 

- Leather: primary backpack costs 16 leather to open 13 inventory and three additional bag slots. Secondary bags cost 8 leather and open five inventory each. Total capacity jumps from 24 to 26 inventory, total cost from 32 to 40 leather. Pretty close to current balance.

- Sturdy leather: primary backpack costs 20 leather to open 14 inventory and four additional bag slots. Secondary bags cost 8 sturdy leather and open six inventory each. Total capacity jumps from 32 to 38, cost from 40 to 52. This is a large increase over current balance, but sturdy leather is one of the most fiddly and expensive products in the game to produce (requiring both chromium and sulphur, locked behind steel, complicated multi-step cooking process) and many players don't currently bother with it, so I'm okay with making it even stronger. If the player opts to use three secondary bags plus a light, they will wind up with the same carrying capacity as four sturdy leather backpacks now. I would expect that to be the standard caving configuration but I don't think it will be the choice every time. 

Mining bags will go in the bag slots, and be somewhat reduced in capacity, 8 slots for standard and 10 for sturdy. Still a considerable increase over comparable type-agnostic bags. 

Additionally, here are some other things the player might be able to use bag slots for:

- A shield gives 50%(?) passive block chance to projectiles and melee attacks coming from a 90 degree cone centered directly behind the player

- A barrel or other container which keeps it's contents, but it's inventory cannot be accessed unless put down. Similar in concept to the Carry On mod, but using a bag slot instead of occupying your hands. This also comes with a meaningful reduction in walk speed (-30%?) and an increase in hunger rate (+20%?). Multiple inventory blocks can be picked up as long as you have the bag slots to hold them, but the walk speed and hunger penalties will stack, capping at 10%(?) of unencumbered walk speed. This should ensure that interesting choices still need to be made about when to use this ability and when not to. 

Finally, if the player wants to use an unenclosed light source (torch, candle, oil lamp) in a bag slot, they will have to build some sort of crude housing for it. This won't be especially expensive (probably made with sticks, rope, and maybe a pottery component) but will add an extra step. A lantern more or less can be just strapped to the top of a full bag, but a torch is going to need to be secured somehow or you'll light your hair on fire. 

[ifoz]

I actually had an idea a while back of being able to use a linen sack and a stick to make a bindle - this would allow for a couple extra storage slots, but would need to be held in the offhand. Helpful for exploring in the daytime or moving base, but risky at night or underground due to the fact you'd need to put it down on the ground first to hold a light source in your offhand.