Diluting the value of items because the same effects are spread over more items in more slots could be a good thing: item quality can have low variance and power level increases can be much more gradual than with few, possibly overpowered items.

For example, suppose the character party is stuck at a certain combat encounter that regularly ends in retreat because the enemies can kill our heroes faster than the party can kill the enemies.
They have low attack bonus, i.e. they collectively lack items that provide good attack bonuses, relative to their progress in the game; let's assume the traditional D&D scale in which +1 to hit means hitting x+1 times rather than x times out of 20.
At this point if they find their first enchanted sword and it is +4 (at least 25% more hits; the sword would be very valuable and possibly famous) the fighter equipped by it would be overpowered and the encounter would become easy, while if they find a +1 or +2 sword it would become winnable but remain challenging. And later they could find enchanted rings, bracers, underwear, etc. with small bonuses (usually +1, with +2 progressively less rare to provide an upgrade after saturating all slots with +1 items).

To my opinion, there's no point in doing many items just to have many items. Make them specifics: like some caracteristics or abilities exclusive to on type of item. Don't make it just according to ropleplay but gameplay. Do it as simple as you can, then when you have a way good idea you can match it to an item.

PS: square boxes of the same size would make your game looking great

Hi Suliman, I haven't read the other posts, but I'd like to answer your question from my point of view.

The first RPG I ever played is still one of my favorites of all times: Baldur's Gate. Your controlled a group of up to six characters an the rules were based on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (version 2?). Each character had a race which affected some stats, modifiers, items you could equip and the classes you could have. In addition, all characters had one or more (!) classes that affected their abilities, skills and stuff they could use. Then, there was the inventory: head and body armor, weapons, belt, potions, staffs, etc. And the game was fun all the time.

We are living in an era where many people want to have everything as simple as possible. I would recommend to add as much stuff to your inventory as you want and add an additional optional Auto-Equip function. When activated, the character always uses the best stuff. This way, you can make players have who like micro-management (like me) and the spoiled kids. ?

Oooh the optional auto-equip feature is a good suggestion IMO

You're welcome ?

I think the notion of "best stuff" means there's no option. 

Easy ≠ Simple

If you have a "auto-equip" system, to me that's synonym of failure. Failure to learn the player how to make a choice by himself. 

If you can always choose the best without sacrifices, it's actually not a choice at all. 

A good choice would be to sustain a characteristic rather than another one. 

Then you have summit simple but not easy. That would be interesting and enhance the gameplay 

I must partly agree with Doci here. If it can be automated it means it can also be skipped. 

But i middle ground is to highlight all items at same or higher "objective value" (it may be level, rarity or sell value). So the player still needs to make a decision but it is somewhat aided. You have a certain spec or build im mind? The highest sell value item isnt always the best for example.

So you look through 2-3 items that are flagged as "possible upgrades" instead of ALL items in your inventory/trader inventory. Seems a good middle ground.

In a party-based game, the choice can be "who gets this obviously superior sword" as opposed to "which of these two swords, which are about equally good but different, do I keep".  It's an interesting choice, but it's a choice based on scarcity (one good sword, multiple characters that want swords) as opposed to a choice based on surplus (multiple swords, one character that wants swords).  Scarcity increases the perceived value of equipment, and surplus decreases it.

Taken to the extreme, scarcity means that you never "retire" old equipment.  The total amount of equipment of type A you find during your adventure should never exceed the number of empty slots you have among your party for equipment of type A.

Not every player wants to spend time on a certain feature. A prime example is Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's not be best RPG I played, but I enjoyed the story. However, after playing countless RPGs in the past 20 years, I get easily bored by the standard combat systems. Dragon Age: Inquisition had a great feature that simplified combat system. All my characters choose their skills by themselves and I just had to press one or two buttons in combat while enjoying the game's most important features: atmosphere, storyline, character development, relationships, etc.

By making things optional, you do show that things don't need to be there in the first place, but you may attract different type of players.

47 minutes ago, GalacticCrew said:

Not every player wants to spend time on a certain feature. A prime example is Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's not be best RPG I played, but I enjoyed the story. However, after playing countless RPGs in the past 20 years, I get easily bored by the standard combat systems. Dragon Age: Inquisition had a great feature that simplified combat system. All my characters choose their skills by themselves and I just had to press one or two buttons in combat while enjoying the game's most important features: atmosphere, storyline, character development, relationships, etc.

By making things optional, you do show that things don't need to be there in the first place, but you may attract different type of players.

I also seem to recall Mass Effect having an auto-level up feature, but it was also optional and you could undo the allocations. Seems similar to an auto-equip option and it seemed to have worked out well.

¯\_(0.o)_/¯