Small inventory doesn’t make the game harder—it makes choosing what to carry and keep or leave behind harder.
Tough choices that have consequences that you have to live with are what make survival games more interesting to me.
Larger inventories, perks and skills that can be sold back for xp, save files to revert the game to undo bad results, etc. are all ways that make choices not really matter and I’m against that kind of design.
Players should agonize over choices and then deal with the consequences. If those consequences mean survival becomes harder then so be it.
Small inventories mean you either do without or only loot some OR if you just have to have it all you make several trips. I, too, think several trips to get it all is tedious so I prioritize and only take the most important stuff and leave the rest and scrap a ton (even things I later regret having scrapped but...oh well).
I recently did a playthrough where I filled every slot of my backpack with fiber gloves and so played with only my tool belt. I scrapped a glove every time I leveled up thus increasing my inventory size progressively. It was a lot of fun and resulted in stashes becoming a necessary component of survival. I used cars, tree trunks, and cupboards everywhere to stash extra stuff I used to carry. It required a lot more planning and meant I would often have to go empty my hands before doing something else.
When I got to a whole row of slots I felt like a king.
