I?ll confess that I show several of these symptoms. And yeah I?m gonna talk about Fallout 3 (sur-fuckin?-prise.)
I feel like I?m doing something wrong if I don?t collect everything from a particular battle. I need to grab every suit of Talon Company armour, every piece of raider armour and then sell it. Yeah I can sell the armour. And I can sell the crap as well. Maybe I have ?scavenger? disorder or something as I devoted large parts of the game to ?hauls? (as I called them) where I?d go back and forth between an area collecting all the useless crap (bent cans, milk bottles, tire irons, burnt books, etc) and then just sell them. And then I?d do nothing with all the caps! And pre-war money literally covers the floor in whatever house I?m in at the time.
But I can?t get rid of the weapons. There?s a small desk next to my bed in the Megaton house which, if you could go into it, would essentially be that scene from The Matrix where Trinity and Neo load up. I think to myself ?I can use the parts later when the gun I?m using wears down? or ?if I get enough of them I can sell them safely? even though I never do. This is legit if we?re talking about sniper rifles or those sexy scoped magnums but hoarding about 100 hunting rifles and pistols can?t be defended. Leaving a weapons behind after a fight is just... wrong! I admit that the desk next to it was where I kept many clothing items but it wasn?t as bad as the weapons. How many bloody missile launchers does one man need when he never takes them with him on his ?hauls? because it might take up to much space and you might find another blood missile launcher that you?ll still never use!
A few folk have been talking about the ?I might need it later? syndrome. As someone else pointed out, Yahtzee spoke about this in his Mercenaries 2 review and I for one empathize with it. For my first two play-throughs in fallout 3 I never used a mini-nuke! Not even once to try it! Eventually on my third play-through I went a bit mad, went to DC, and used all 30+ of my bombs killing all the super mutants. They?d respawn before I needed to back there for mission I forgot or something, but it felt great!
I made a mod to address some of my problems. Items yield less than half the price when sold and cost more than twice as much to buy thus making my lengthy grinds more productive, and I?d wind up forcing myself to buy excessive amounts of ammo since ammo can?t be given a weight (easily) and caps were starting to make me over-encumbered since they now had a weight. I made weapons deteriorate faster as well and giving weight to other weightless items (drugs/meds etc) to force myself to make a decision of what to keep and what to leave and what to ?stash? to come back for later.