I was playing duke nukem forever the other day and couldn’t help noticing and being surprised that I could only carry 2 weapons at a time. Now this is pretty common place in games these days but is it a good thing?

Back in the duke 3d days there were 10 weapons and you could carry them all switching quickly between them depending on the situation. By letting the player carry every weapon they became power ups and unlockables it gave the designer the freedom to hide weapons in levels letting players get early access to power ups and bonuses. For instance in duke 3d you could get a rocket launcher 5 minutes into level 1 by accessing a hidden room using a jetpack, this rocket launcher in turn allowed you to access another secret room on that level.

By converse in modern fps limiting the number of weapons forces the player to just stick to their 2 favourites and rely on the designer to ensure that the appropriate weapons will be conveniently placed around any combat scene. It also means that less practical but fun weapons don’t really get used outside of a few set pieces where they are meant to be used like the shrink ray in duke nukem.

So what do other people think? Does limiting the number of weapon that the player can carry add anything to a game other then sense of “realism”? Or does just force the level designer to work harder by making sure the player never gets stuck because they don’t have the right weapon instead of rewarding them for finding weapons earlier on then needed.

It would seem, from your main argument, that you have a problem with laziness of level designers rather then the limiting of weapons.

As long as its done right and it makes sense in the game there is nothing wrong with limiting weapons, just like there is nothing wrong with allowing a character to carry as many weapons as there are in the game.

Limiting weapons tends to be a easy way to add "depth" to a game by giving the player a shallow choice randomly threw out the game that either have a really obvious correct answer ("I know I'm about to fight a giant alien super tank, but should I drop my peashooter for this rocket launcher?") or change the games play rather then the games flow (it doesn't matter whether your shooting, burning, stabbing or blowing a minion up, your still just killing it).


Not limiting a characters weapon carrying capacities leads to problems with hording ammo for hard fights (which is a valid way to kill a boss, but standing around a corner and throwing those 50 grenades you saved up to kill that boss that is rooted in place is obviously not what the designers had in mind when they designed that fight), also, as you said before, it doesn't make sense in the context of most games ("sure you may be able to bench 600 pounds, but can you carry it well running at a brisk pace, firing from the hip with a double barrel shotgun and punching zombies in the face?").

As I said earlier no single system is the best, it all comes down to whether or not it is implemented correctly. It also doesn't hurt if the game doesn't suck as well.