Why do you hoard? What do you hoard?

Hoarding in RPGs is a lot more common than in other games. And there's several reasons for this.

Firstly, we are intelligent creatures and we like to be taught how to play the game by the game as we play it. We are used to the start of the game being somewhat easy, almost tutorial in nature, escalating to a peak of difficulty towards the end. RPGs always start you off poor. You can't afford anything until you've killed a few things or achieved a quest or two.

This process therefore teaches the player to be thrifty right from the get-go. All items are useful and gold is a struggle to come by. Once this mentality has been set in the player, the gradual escalation nature of the gameplay offers no specified point at which we are then taught to shake off this mind-set and relax, happy in the knowledge that the next bag of loot is just round the corner so no stress spending the current bag.

Other game formats don't have this problem. Driving games (and any other farmville-like games which encourage you to buy upgrades) reverse this training process by denying access to higher levels unless you've spent all your cash on a new turbo unit. Spending money makes bigger money. In RPGs the majority of players will not feel rich enough to spend 1,000 gp until they have a cushion of at least 10,000 for example - but in a driving game you buy the turbo the second you get the 1,000.

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Secondly, most RPGs have a system whereby, once an item is sold, it's gone from the game forever. You are effectively destroying the item. This is not true of all RPGs and some destroy some things but not others. In Icewind Dale nothing gets destroyed - if you go back to the vendor to whom you sold an item, it will be available for sale and you can buy it back (for a financial penalty, of course). In King's Bounty however only the spells get maintained by the vendors, all the equipment items get destroyed.

So, in Icewind Dale, people tend to hoard disposable immediate use items, like potions, scrolls, spell-wands etc, even if they know they'll never use them where as in King's Bounty people tend to hoard equipment items, even if they know they'll never use them.

Some games get round this by having unlimited stash chests. Icewind Dale has them. But the problem with this system is that, should your player zoom to a different location, one where one cannot return, the player has lost everything. So then the unlimited chests are then also transported to new zones. But, alas, now the chests are so packed with junk that the player can never find anything again without spending too much game-time looking for items. So then we move to a system where the game just tells you what's useful and what's junk, automatically separating the items as you pick them up and storing them in an unlimited back-pack (Dragon Age 2).

To which we then hark back to the good ol' days when we had actual inventory choices to make because too much auto-processing is well-boring. With Path of Exile, which tries to be classical in its approach, we have the freedom to choose what is or isn't junk and have limited stash space and an auto-vender-destroy system. People would hoard less in this game if the vendor maintained their stock, including anything you've sold them. But, as PoE's an online game, the data storage required for this is impossible. Hence it's going to be a hoarding game.

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Thirdly, venders in RPGs never offer the player anything like what the player perceives as the correct value of any particular item.

100gp for my Flaming Sword of Vengeance +2? Eff you vendor, I'm keeping it for that price, and anyway, I might meet a monster that can only be killed by fire in the next 30 levels. Obviously, 30 levels later you're using Searing Apocalypse Swords +5 and then, and only then, decide to sell your sword +2 simply because you're neatening your stash for the final boss fight.

It's just a natural response. Make the player feel like they are being ripped off and they'll refuse to partake in the designated activity, even if they have no direct use for the item.

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Fourth, RPGs do indeed have a habit of suddenly putting you up against opponents who have very specific weak spots to xyz equipment item. RPGs do indeed suddenly drop you into fights where, oh my, you did need 375 healing potions after all.

Sometimes the game will be impassable unless you kept that item which you unwittingly sold 5 levels ago because it looked pants but was selling for a high price. If this kind of scenario happens even once in a game, the player is then pretty much forced into a game-long hoard-fest.

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Fifth, some items are virtual mimics of real-life items that creatures of all kinds just like hoarding - The shinies. Find an in-game diamond? First instinct is to hoard that mother. Why? Because that's what people do with diamonds. It mine. No you can't have it. It's my shiney. My trophy. It's ma bling, innit.

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There are other factors in PoE which exacerbate this, such as potential trading, currency fluctuations, new character creation, the expectation of new recipes to name but a few. But whenever I feel like I'm getting to stashed-up, I always remember a great quote from a long-time RPG pro:

"If I'm not wearing it, I sell it".

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