encumbrance reduction

[Catastrophology]

Hello

New to the game, I find some containers around the map with the mention "encumbrance reduction". But what does it mean? What does it do? I don't understand, please help.

Thanks

[Quill]

Originally posted by Catastrophology:

Hello

New to the game, I find some containers around the map with the mention "encumbrance reduction". But what does it mean? What does it do? I don't understand, please help.

Thanks

When equipped to your character (either on your back or held in a hand) it'll reduce the weight of an item by the state number

For example a reduction of 80 means an item that weights 10 will be reduced to 2 when put into the container

[Kaldrak]

The game devs decided that the word 'weight' was insufficient to describe how heavy things are for your character, and so went with the much clunkier word 'encumbrance.' Just pretend it means weight. Bags when equipped have weight reduction for the things inside of them.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Kaldrak:

The game devs decided that the word 'weight' was insufficient to describe how heavy things are for your character, and so went with the much clunkier word 'encumbrance.' Just pretend it means weight. Bags when equipped have weight reduction for the things inside of them.

Except it doesn't mean weight, specifically. It's an amalgam of weight, size, how awkward of a shape it is, and how unwieldy it is.

So, since 'Weight' wasn't enough to adequately describe what was being taken into consideration when choosing values, They renamed it to encumbrance to give the proper impression, which stopped all the
"Um, aktually" posts arguing over the ingame 'weight' of items that had large numbers despite actually not weighing that much. For example, Watermelon came up a lot- It doesn't weigh that much, but it's size, and unwieldy awkward shape make it difficult to move around, so it has a 3 encumbrance compared to most other food items 0.8 or less.

[Kaldrak]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Except it doesn't mean weight, specifically. It's an amalgam of weight, size, how awkward of a shape it is, and how unwieldy it is.

So, since 'Weight' wasn't enough to adequately describe what was being taken into consideration when choosing values, They renamed it to encumbrance to give the proper impression, which stopped all the
"Um, aktually" posts arguing over the ingame 'weight' of items that had large numbers despite actually not weighing that much. For example, Watermelon came up a lot- It doesn't weigh that much, but it's size, and unwieldy awkward shape make it difficult to move around, so it has a 3 encumbrance compared to most other food items 0.8 or less.

Oh, I understand that it is more precise language and understand what it means, but the word choice is clunkier and causes confusion in other ways. Most games just classify it as weight and then tell you if you are over encumbered when you pick it up.

Since the overall weight of furniture in this game is all over the place, I kind of feel it's a pointless, semantics driven argument and don't bother with it too much anymore, especially after I made a thread complaining that full sized deluxe bathtubs had the same 'encumbrance' (this word honestly just sounds clunky in this context) as a water dispenser.

So yeah, I don't like the word choice. And it's not something anyone uses in day to day conversation in real life.

For example:

"Hey Jon, how much does that couch weigh?"

"Um aktually" pushes glasses up bridge of nose and pats pocket protector full of pens, "We're going to refer to it as 'encumbrance, Bob. The 'encumbrance of the couch is-"

Stop being ridiculous. It's a silly word choice and it sounds bad. Full stop.

[PonchoSDM]

I was trying to figure out this one and had to try couple of things
with 5 pots full of water 3x5 a total of 15 kg was my base, I used 3 different bags to check the total weights, and from the formula (100-encumbrance)/100 * Weight, we can get the total Weight of a full bag


Duffle bag

• Weight: 18
  
• Encumbrance: 65
  
• Test weight went from 15 ->5.25
  
• Weight on full capacity: 6.3/18

Hiking bag

• Weight: 20
  
• Encumbrance: 70
  
• Test weight went from 15 ->4.5
  
• Weight on full capacity: 6/20

Large Backpack

• Weight: 27
  
• Encumbrance: 85
  
• Test weight went from 15 ->2.25
  
• Weight on full capacity: 4.05/27

Notes, the bigger the Encumbrance the more weight reduction you get and easier to move without getting over your limit

[xKilroyx]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Originally posted by Kaldrak:

The game devs decided that the word 'weight' was insufficient to describe how heavy things are for your character, and so went with the much clunkier word 'encumbrance.' Just pretend it means weight. Bags when equipped have weight reduction for the things inside of them.

Except it doesn't mean weight, specifically. It's an amalgam of weight, size, how awkward of a shape it is, and how unwieldy it is.

So, since 'Weight' wasn't enough to adequately describe what was being taken into consideration when choosing values, They renamed it to encumbrance to give the proper impression, which stopped all the
"Um, aktually" posts arguing over the ingame 'weight' of items that had large numbers despite actually not weighing that much. For example, Watermelon came up a lot- It doesn't weigh that much, but it's size, and unwieldy awkward shape make it difficult to move around, so it has a 3 encumbrance compared to most other food items 0.8 or less.

This makes at least a bit more sense as to why some light items would have such a high encumbrance number lol.

[philaletheist]

Originally posted by Kaldrak:

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Except it doesn't mean weight, specifically. It's an amalgam of weight, size, how awkward of a shape it is, and how unwieldy it is.

So, since 'Weight' wasn't enough to adequately describe what was being taken into consideration when choosing values, They renamed it to encumbrance to give the proper impression, which stopped all the
"Um, aktually" posts arguing over the ingame 'weight' of items that had large numbers despite actually not weighing that much. For example, Watermelon came up a lot- It doesn't weigh that much, but it's size, and unwieldy awkward shape make it difficult to move around, so it has a 3 encumbrance compared to most other food items 0.8 or less.

Oh, I understand that it is more precise language and understand what it means, but the word choice is clunkier and causes confusion in other ways. Most games just classify it as weight and then tell you if you are over encumbered when you pick it up.

Since the overall weight of furniture in this game is all over the place, I kind of feel it's a pointless, semantics driven argument and don't bother with it too much anymore, especially after I made a thread complaining that full sized deluxe bathtubs had the same 'encumbrance' (this word honestly just sounds clunky in this context) as a water dispenser.

So yeah, I don't like the word choice. And it's not something anyone uses in day to day conversation in real life.

For example:

"Hey Jon, how much does that couch weigh?"

"Um aktually" pushes glasses up bridge of nose and pats pocket protector full of pens, "We're going to refer to it as 'encumbrance, Bob. The 'encumbrance of the couch is-"

Stop being ridiculous. It's a silly word choice and it sounds bad. Full stop.

dude, i think you’re the only one who’s getting confused by encumbrance, the word’s been used to refer to “weight” since like… AD&D (and probably earlier).

[philaletheist]

Originally posted by Kaldrak:

For example:

"Hey Jon, how much does that couch weigh?"

"Um aktually" pushes glasses up bridge of nose and pats pocket protector full of pens, "We're going to refer to it as 'encumbrance, Bob. The 'encumbrance of the couch is-"

Stop being ridiculous. It's a silly word choice and it sounds bad. Full stop.

also, THIS point makes no sense at all. yeah, people generally don’t use the word encumbrance in that way, just like how people don’t talk about having a “debuff” when they get a cancer diagnosis or that they “lost some hp” when they get a papercut. it’s silly to equate gamespeak to real life talking.

[Kaldrak]

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:

Originally posted by Kaldrak:

"Hey Jon, how much does that couch weigh?"

"Um aktually" pushes glasses up bridge of nose and pats pocket protector full of pens, "We're going to refer to it as 'encumbrance, Bob. The 'encumbrance of the couch is-"

Stop being ridiculous. It's a silly word choice and it sounds bad. Full stop.

I’ll take having this anti-big-word conv once over the constant ones around weight. At least encumbrance is literally what the number is instead of gamer jargon.

A number indicating of how difficult it is to do something vs a number indicating only the mass of an object? Seems like an easy choice to me. Chances are the only reason weight ever subbed in for encumbrance in gaming is because of the extra 6 characters.

Yeah, yeah. I'm over it. My posts were from back in January, people. Check the timestamps.