RPGs where good loot takes exploration/risk?

[Stabwound]

In the recent DA:O thread we got sort of side-tracked at one point talking about how the levelled loot system is boring as hell and doesn't feel like you're actually getting any more powerful because you're constantly getting equipment with +1 more defense than the last one, etc. It's like a crappy version of the Diablo system.

What I'm wondering is, are there any games where you can go exploring in difficult areas and find loot that matches the danger? Say, an optional challenging dungeon with a nice sword at the end, or a quest to hunt down a wizard where you can find/keep his awesome cloak. I know the Baldur's Gate series (and Icewind Dale, I think) does something like this, where most of the good equipment is picked off of "boss" characters who actually fight with and use the stuff on you. Of course they also do the stupidity with "magic" shops that sell a bunch of magic equipment, but whatever.

Diablo is basically the opposite of what I mean, where every random dog or goblin has a chance of dropping a unique item, but of course scaled to your level.

Any games that handle this well?

 

[racofer]

What I'm wondering is, are there any games where you can go exploring in difficult areas and find loot that matches the danger?

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OBLIVIAN 4: THE SCROLLS OF THE ELDARZ!

 

[SuicideBunny]

Any games that handle this well?

avernum 6 did it rather well, imo.

 

[Malakal]

Morrowind, BG series and IWD (as mentioned), I think that most series/games without random maps.
But most of them limit the player with area accesibility instead. Just like in Torment, where You simply can not go get those extreme items in lower planes from the start...

 

[Darth Roxor]

Gothic series, Betrayal at Krondor.

 

[nomask7]

In the recent DA:O thread we got sort of side-tracked at one point talking about how the levelled loot system is boring as hell and doesn't feel like you're actually getting any more powerful because you're constantly getting equipment with +1 more defense than the last one, etc. It's like a crappy version of the Diablo system.

What I'm wondering is, are there any games where you can go exploring in difficult areas and find loot that matches the danger? Say, an optional challenging dungeon with a nice sword at the end, or a quest to hunt down a wizard where you can find/keep his awesome cloak. I know the Baldur's Gate series (and Icewind Dale, I think) does something like this, where most of the good equipment is picked off of "boss" characters who actually fight with and use the stuff on you. Of course they also do the stupidity with "magic" shops that sell a bunch of magic equipment, but whatever.

Diablo is basically the opposite of what I mean, where every random dog or goblin has a chance of dropping a unique item, but of course scaled to your level.

Any games that handle this well?

It's difficult to think of a game that doesn't limit the ability of the player character to use a great weapon even when the game makes it possible for him to find one early in the game. Night of the Raven has strength requirements, as do other Gothic games, and they're always so high you'll never be able to wield an awesome sword much sooner than "you should". Game developers focus MUCH TOO MUCH on balance, and much too little on immersiveness that's actually relevant, such as BEING ABLE TO USE THAT FUCKING SWORD YOU FOUND. I think Oblivion with the OOO modification might be close to what you're looking for.

Fallout and Fallout 2 are exactly what you're looking for, obviously. Ultima VII has the problem that the monsters are always easy as fuck, although usually the problem in RPGs is that developers focus too much on combat. They wouldn't have to focus on balance so much if they didn't focus on combat so ridiculously much. NotR did the monster, combat & exploration thing right. Lots of exploration, dangerous as hell monsters to make it interesting, little unavoidable combat. The game screwed the thing up a bit with those strength requirements as I mentioned. It was something that really annoyed me the first time I played it.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Gothic 2 would be the OP's favorite game if that was all he looked for in a game.

 

[nomask7]

In the recent DA:O thread we got sort of side-tracked at one point talking about how the levelled loot system is boring as hell and doesn't feel like you're actually getting any more powerful because you're constantly getting equipment with +1 more defense than the last one, etc. It's like a crappy version of the Diablo system.

What I'm wondering is, are there any games where you can go exploring in difficult areas and find loot that matches the danger? Say, an optional challenging dungeon with a nice sword at the end, or a quest to hunt down a wizard where you can find/keep his awesome cloak. I know the Baldur's Gate series (and Icewind Dale, I think) does something like this, where most of the good equipment is picked off of "boss" characters who actually fight with and use the stuff on you. Of course they also do the stupidity with "magic" shops that sell a bunch of magic equipment, but whatever.

Diablo is basically the opposite of what I mean, where every random dog or goblin has a chance of dropping a unique item, but of course scaled to your level.

Any games that handle this well?

It's difficult to think of a game that doesn't limit the ability of the player character to use a great weapon even when the game makes it possible for him to find one early in the game. Night of the Raven has strength requirements, as do other Gothic games, and they're always so high you'll never be able to wield an awesome sword much sooner than "you should". Game developers focus MUCH TOO MUCH on balance, and much too little on immersiveness that's actually relevant, such as BEING ABLE TO USE THAT FUCKING SWORD YOU FOUND. I think Oblivion with the OOO modification might be close to what you're looking for.

Fallout and Fallout 2 are exactly what you're looking for, obviously. Ultima VII has the problem that the monsters are always easy as fuck, although usually the problem in RPGs is that developers focus too much on combat. They wouldn't have to focus on balance so much if they didn't focus on combat so ridiculously much. NotR did the monster, combat & exploration thing right. Lots of exploration, dangerous as hell monsters to make it interesting, little unavoidable combat. The game screwed the thing up a bit with those strength requirements as I mentioned. It was something that really annoyed me the first time I played it.

Fallout and Fallout 2 are not exactly what he's looking for. In Fallout you receive equipment roughly equivalent to the level you're at at the time, unless you go straight to the enclave.

If you kill the Khans in Fallout 1 you get some hot shit equipment that you'll use til you meet the gun-runners, otherwise there's not much "exploring for loot". Oblivion has expploring for loot, perhaps Morrowind.

Oblivion? Not without mods.

Perhaps Morrowind? Does it or does it not?

Fallout and Fallout 2 do. You can play far with a puny pistol if you don't take some risks to acquire a shotgun, etc etc etc. The weapons don't have any fucking levels. They're not on the same level as your character, roughly or otherwise. Each weapon and armor type has a metaphysical place in the game world that corresponds roughly to the place that similar equipment has in the real world, which makes the game more immersive than it would otherwise be, because it makes it feel realistic. The qualities of the weapons and armor aren't dependent on the qualities of the character, nor are the places you can find them in. As for finding & being able to acquire super awesomely powerful weapons and armor in those games with a noob character: you can, although, reasonably, not everywhere. I don't think the guy was looking for a game where you can become an invincible god on lvl one just by exploring the first chest you come across in an off-the-path forest and surviving the trap. I think he meant the game world would be realistic, in that you could, for example, try to sneak into an army base and steal their shit, at least in solid theory, and the shit would be what it would be regardless of the player level. That's Fallout for you, basically.

 

[Zomg]

Mara almost killed me with tha demon whip of speed that I tooked from her

I guess you know something about Crawl. Besides uniques with nice ego weapons all the portal vaults they stuck into 0.7 seem to do that a little bit, they're significant risk/reward plays. And the timed, announced portals that get you to explore levels in possibly risky ways...

...and the retarded wizlabs that kill the first character you try them with guaranteed...

Wish I weren't fucking bored of it. I'm bored of it + it made me preemptively bored of shittier RPGs, I'm painted into a corner now.

 

[nomask7]

Time to get a life, Zomg. It's never too late.

 

[mondblut]

It's difficult to think of a game that doesn't limit the ability of the player character to use a great weapon even when the game makes it possible for him to find one early in the game.

Perhaps you should expand your experience beyond Gothic. Other than it and DAO, RPGs either lack equipment stat requirements altogether, or have them in perfectly sensible average human range easily obtainable straight out of character generator.

 

[Helton]

 

[dermatologist]

yeah, i agree with nomask - you might find a heavily modded oblivion (OOO or FCOM, which includes OOO) satisfying if you can stomach it. there's a certain sword that's quite powerful and guarded by very difficult mobs. there is also a very limited amount of info about where it's located in the game world... you'll know the name of the place, but you won't have a clue where it is, and there won't be a quest marker. so you'll essentially need to stumble upon it.

i would be careful about feeling entitled to the loot once you find it, though. for example, you may metagame/exploit to get the loot because you're frustrated with the difficulty of the guards or you spent so much time searching that you just want the reward without the appropriate effort.

OOO actually adds several totally optional quests without markers that involve some detective work and very good, non-leveled equipment that the enemies use against you. unfortunately for you, there's no real "risk" as you could just save after you kill each enemy.

 

[roll-a-die]

yeah, i agree with nomask - you might find a heavily modded oblivion (OOO or FCOM, which includes OOO) satisfying if you can stomach it. there's a certain sword that's quite powerful and guarded by very difficult mobs. there is also a very limited amount of info about where it's located in the game world... you'll know the name of the place, but you won't have a clue where it is, and there won't be a quest marker. so you'll essentially need to stumble upon it.

i would be careful about feeling entitled to the loot once you find it, though. for example, you may metagame/exploit to get the loot because you're frustrated with the difficulty of the guards or you spent so much time searching that you just want the reward without the appropriate effort.

OOO actually adds several totally optional quests without markers that involve some detective work and very good, non-leveled equipment that the enemies use against you. unfortunately for you, there's no real "risk" as you could just save after you kill each enemy.

I would like to add that Wrye Bash can disable the quest compass and heighten how close you have to be to detect a landmark.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Wasteland did this very well, but the challenge is incredibly difficult to do it. And as someone said, you need prior knowledge for most of it, except for a certain military stash, down a certain radioactive bunker, guarded by a very nasty mutant.

 

[Konjad]

Gothic (especially G2+NotR), Baldur's Gate, Morrowind.

 

[cutterjohn]

None.

You either get fixed loot or randomized loot.

ARPGs tend to have the best randomized, while SOME CRPGs have out-of-place-awesome-loot that the rest of the game NEVER lives up to again(morrowind).

e.g. the Morrowind uber items accessible early which, generally, are never rivalled again... or the random loot chests in MANY game, where i've NEVER found it to be SIGNIFICANTLY advantageous to waste hours saving/re-loading for uber items v. just the fuck on with the game itself...

 

[CrimHead]

Morrowind does this best, I think.

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO LOTS OF OLDER GAMES HAVE THIS DOWN PAT I AGREE WITH FALLOUTS, MORROWIND

BRO YOU STOLE MY THUNDER WITH WASTELAND I HAVENT PLAYED IT SINCE MY C64 DIED BUT THAT ONE UBER COMPOUND UI COULD TAKE DOWN THE GUYS WITH FULL AUTO AND TONS OF CLIPS AND BARELY MAKE IT AND GET SUPERDUPER WEAPONS

 

[Joghurt]

Might and Magic games. Especially VI with it's huge dungeons.

 

[nomask7]

It's difficult to think of a game that doesn't limit the ability of the player character to use a great weapon even when the game makes it possible for him to find one early in the game.

Perhaps you should expand your experience beyond Gothic. Other than it and DAO, RPGs either lack equipment stat requirements altogether, or have them in perfectly sensible average human range easily obtainable straight out of character generator.

I already mentioned Fallout and Fallout 2. Are there other such games? I don't think so.

I guess I didn't make myself entirely clear in that one sentence that you quoted. It's probably why I elaborated later.

Morrowind may have a few awesome killer items you can find whenever you find them, but the main loot-system gives out the same randomized leveled crap that Oblivion and every other RPG does, unless they have very limiting stat requirements like the Gothic games. Two Worlds feels like it has a good loot system, but only because the character levels up so fast it's difficult to keep up with the loot unless you spend a lot of time in the cities and have a lot of gold. It's much like Diablo but without a similar level of loot randomization, which in Diablo doesn't mean much anyway, since, like Two Worlds, it has heavy stat requirements for using equipment.

What RPGs need is loot, a whole system of loot, that doesn't revolve around the player character or party, at all. It's been done, so I shouldn't have to explain how it works, or even what its huge advantages are in terms of immersion and feeling of being rewarded for your choices. It works by constructing a believable world, including details such as elite guards actually having lootable elite equipment. AFTER you've constructed the world, including placed every single piece of equipment in the game, you throw the player character in the game world.

 

[laclongquan]

Might and Magic 8 got it done well. Some dungeons got good quality loots along with those dangerous spawns, and not scaled to your level.

Jagged Alliance 2 also got it done well. Random troops got their weapons scaled according to time passed and city occupied/events so they dont scale to your level. Some certain sectors got special loots determined at the start of the game so if you want them you could wander straight there. And they all are dangerous.

 

[denizsi]

Far Cry 2 have level-scaling. As your reputation increase, so do people's equipment. Right now, everyone has a FAL Paratrooper rifle, everyone except me but they drop half-way broken rifles and I can't buy a brand new one at the weapons dealer just yet.

 

[nomask7]

Maybe everyone just suddenly started liking FAL and got one. Don't ask how they got it.

 

[Varn]

Might & Magic 6 - there were a few very tough dungeons that were completely optional from the story but contained awesome loot. There was also a traveling circus within the game that could only be found at certain towns during certain times of the game-year. If you competed at the games in the circus and won them up to a certain level then you could get some awesome loot that was unavailable during the main game. However you would never know this unless you took the time to play the games all the way through to the end.

The game also, a-la fallout, contained a semi-cheat secret dungeon that could be accessed from the first town and contained loot that was immensely helpful when starting out and made an otherwise difficult grind quite enjoyable. But getting to the dungeon was very hard without using a walkthrough.

It went even further and required you to explore to the ends of the earth to find people to train you so you could use certain spells / skills (eg Light/Dark magic mastery).

I'm currently playing Wizardry 8 and although only up to Arnika, I can see that the game contains similar elements.

 

[Achilles]

Morrowind does this best, I think.

Definitely. Level scaling in Morrowind is either completely absent or very subtle. You can find great loot and hard-as-nails monsters even at level 1. Once I created a new thief character and headed straight for that outpost near the Red Mountain. I managed to get into the shop and steal all kinds of cool high-level stuff like glass armor. This other time I entered a tomb while on level 3 and found an Ancient Vampire that promptly kicked my ass in a couple of seconds. Morrowind is one of the games that does reward exploration as there's no scaling, no compass and....

....

Damn you Bethesda! Why, why did you fuck up Oblivion so much? Gah!