No offense taken Ryeltar, this is a fair debate.
But I would caution you against invoking "realism" to justify the size reduction of the license. The argument is biased if you apply it on that one item only and not on all of them. And then if we do so, you stand to lose much more than the 3 cases you hope to gain. Because, you know what? I want realism too.
And realistically you would never be near able to carry that amount of equipment. Fact is, no one would ever dream of adventuring carrying a backpack. Ask any LARPist around and medieval fencing aficionados alike, they will all attest to the impracticality of fighting carrying a bag, let alone 38 or more as in this game allows. In real life, you'd be hard-pressed to carry a single full plate and a shield stored in a bag, not so much for the weight, but because of the space it would take. Nor would it let you jam 3 halberds and lance in it. The same bag would strain under the weight of even 6 leather-bound books, not even leaving you space for more items. You would not even be able to lift off ground a purse with 5000 gold coins. To even carry a fraction of what the games allows you, you'd have to have henchmen, pack mules and carts following you through dungeons. The NWN inventory system may be flawed, but it remains nonetheless the equivalent to adventuring with two mini-vans in tow and you tell me a 2x2 piece of paper is a problem for the sake of realism? REALLY!?!? A single page of inventory reduced to 7x5 and a maximum of 1 bag per character. THAT is my vision of realism, and then I'd fully agree there'd be a need to bring papers and parchments to a 1 case size. Fortunately for all, we do no seek to enforce such realism, D&D is to remain the game allowing you to jam a 10' pole in your pockets.
The point I'm trying to make here is that it's not for the sake of realism that you want the license size cut down. The above glimpse should tell you that realism is not in your interest at all. You ask for it solely because you feel you need more inventory space. I understand that, but I cannot agree. 6 pages of 10 x 6 space, each 2x2 transformable into another 7x5. Clearly among the games allowing the most inventory space ever. If anything it is the spell scrolls we should bring to 2x2 size. Because if I compare a 8.5" x 11" sheet to my torso, the NWN parchment to armor ratio looks realist. Sure you'll tell me a sheet can be folded or stacked that it does not weight much, and it's true. But again, we have so much inventory space at our disposal that it isn't a real issue there.
Like you I craft and collect items. I filled my inventory up to its limit more times than I can count, though never for long, as I chose to use up all the material I gather quickly and to sell or trade whatever I do not need. Sure I keep the exceptional stuff for a rainy day, but even then I hardly ever had use for more than 12 bags. You don't need 40+ bags of equipment, you chose to. It is perfectly your right to do so, and yes there may be a profit to make on the long run by doing so. But no one forces you to hoard so much and it comes with the trade off of having less inventory space available. That's part of the deal with hoarding. For the cumbersome items I suggest that you craft only on commissions. Also if you have never used an item in a year, you'll never use it or you ask too much for it, sell it cheap or give it, it will free you some space. You're in a small minority of players to load up your inventory so much. It is not symptomatic of all the player base, and therefore not a problem which needs to be addressed by the Dev team.
Say... if you guys do want realism, we'd be more than happy to remove bags from the game if there is enough request! (
, ok sorry, that was me being mean. I do not meant to offense anyone. But yeah, if there's enough requests...)
