by
Grimmblut
» 21 Feb 2017, 18:34
Asimov, you are absolutely right. There is no weight difference if you're carrying something in a bag compared to holding it in your hands. A coke bottle weights e.g. 500 g no matter whether you hold it in your hands or keep it in a bag that you hold in your hand.
Now that this is out of the way, please let me try another time to explain what I mean.
Let's assume a person can lift 50 kg. This assumption is a simplification of reality. The person may be able to lift a barbell that weights 50 kg. However, he certainly isn't able to lift, meaning pick up and carry at the same time, 100 bottles of coke that weight 500 g each. There's no way he can get a hold of all 100 bottles without some tools, like a bag to put them in and then lift the bag. Regarding said bottles, his maximum carrying capacity may drop down to 15 kg, simply because he can hold only so many at the same time.
In computer games, a lot of simplifications or abstractions of reality have to be made. In LIF, that means e.g. that the amount of items is considered to be absolutely irrelevant. Only the total weight counts. That's why a player can carry something like 80 kg of sand at the same time without using bags or any other kind of containers. In reality that would be absolutely impossible. Ask yourself how much sand you could carry without any kind of containers. I guess if you use your arms like some kind of scoop and press the arms with the sand against your chest, then maybe you can carry 8 to 10 kg.
On the other hand this abstraction, where the amount of items is neglected, may be not that important in regard to certain items that have a very high individual weight, like logs. I can see how in reality someone is able to grab two logs and reach his weight limit without the use of containers, and containers wouldn't help him here.
Fortunately, each LIF item has a certain size that comes into consideration whether an item can be put into a certain container, e.g. you can't store a log in a pouch or the like. That way carriable containers become useful but not a must-have item.
What I'm basically talking about is to not perceive the weight attribute of items in this game as an absolute value, but as a relative one. If you put things that fit into a carriable container into such a container, it becomes easier to carry them. They don't weight less, but it becomes easier to carry them. Their relative weight drops by a certain amount. Your character digs some sand and can carry more of said sand when he uses a sack to carry it instead of trying to carry it in his arms. That makes sense to me and that's the reason I ask whether it is planned to implement that feature.