The Importance Of Loot

[Black]

What pissed me off in Wiz 8's phat lewt is that some items had random chances of spawning.
Farming ghosts of sailors for the Light Sword? Yeeeaaahh...

 

[Jaesun]

1 potato out of 5.

 

[Lyric Suite]

am i the only one perfectly satisfied by rampaging through cementaries and crypts in Daggerfall just for some gold and a nice book or two to read?

i dont need uberarmor drop every time i kill a goblin and whatnot.

This. I prefer a minimalistic approach to loot myself. I still remember what a momentous event it was to find that +2 sword in BG, or buying my first full plate armor after saving the gold for the better part of the first two chapters. Loot may be important in games like Diablo where there really isn't anything else to look forward to but in real CRPGs is an hindrance more then an advantage.

 

[latexmonkeys]

Quest hooks and character customization are set in stone. Done well, loot provides game-changing randomization which I think pretty much anyone agrees is fun.

That may be true, but I don't think the loot system makes or breaks a game do you?
Well, maybe a pure dungeon crawl, but in a story based game?

I don't think anyone's arguing that loot can be fun if implemented well. The problem is that in the games the op mentioned either:
A) loot is the least important flaw
or
B) loot or lack there of wasn't a problem in the first place

 

[Azrael the cat]

am i the only one perfectly satisfied by rampaging through cementaries and crypts in Daggerfall just for some gold and a nice book or two to read?

i dont need uberarmor drop every time i kill a goblin and whatnot.

This. I prefer a minimalistic approach to loot myself. I still remember what a momentous event it was to find that +2 sword in BG, or buying my first full plate armor after saving the gold for the better part of the first two chapters. Loot may be important in games like Diablo where there really isn't anything else to look forward to but in real CRPGs is an hindrance more then an advantage.

Agreed. Loot works for me when it rewards exceptional exploration, manipulation of NPCs or taking on difficult challenges. I can't stand the Diablo model of just constantly changing weapons from meaningless monster drops - I agree that it seems more of a replacement for fun gaming, whereas a fun game doesn't need that kind of ADHD-oriented activity to make it entertaining.

And no, I do not find the 'randomisation' that loot drops add to games 'fun'. I find it an irritating undermining of the game's exploration and challenge. Encounters should be difficult because of their design, or easy because of my preparation and tactics - not because of the RNG. The only exception I can think of is roguelikes where you're always close enough to permadeath that playing the RNG becomes a tactical part of the game. Roguelikes have you aggressively manipulating the RNG by mitigating risks at times, while taking calculated risks at other times. You don't get that kind of RNG-challenge in the loot randomisation of games that don't involve constant threat of permadeath (i.e. any professional game).

 

[latexmonkeys]

This. I prefer a minimalistic approach to loot myself. I still remember what a momentous event it was to find that +2 sword in BG, or buying my first full plate armor after saving the gold for the better part of the first two chapters.

Moments like that are what gaming memories are made of.
When you're flooded with exceptional loot it quickly loses it's impact obviously.

 

[pero]

Personally, I'd rather stumble across/make/buy/whatever a few worthwhile items over the course of the game and actually be pleased to have found them than deal with the never-ending torrent of crap flying at me in Diablo. It takes all the value out of finding decent equipment when you know you'll likely come across more within the next half an hour.

The Witcher is probably the listed game that offered the least loot of all, yet in some ways I think it did it the best. You weren't constantly carting garbage around to sell to the nearest vendor and you never felt obliged to stumble around combat areas looking for items. Pretty much anything worth a damn was a reward or was bought and while that wouldn't work for every game, it certainly made those rare upgrades feel like a big deal.

 

[JarlFrank]

I love finding unique and powerful items that I can then keep for at least an hour or more because it takes a long time until I find something better. Especially when finding that item involves heavy exploration, or a difficult fight.

If you are swamped with magical items throughout the game, finding one special unique item isn't as special anymore and just becomes "more of the same" instead of a memorable and fun moment.

 

[deuxhero]

I liked Morrowind's loot system. It's either an artifact, made it yourself from the souls of demigods/demons (which cost an insane amount of gold) or (rarely) provided the odd useful for utility but low power spell (amulets of stamina are pretty handy if you carry around 6 or so of them) or the enchantment was worthless. Bandits only had common armor and weapons with a few coin, if you raided their stores you may find some drugs (which should have been harder to sell off) and random trash. The rest of the game fails miserably at keeping that in touch (I can summon and soultrap a few ghosts for all the money I could ever need.)

 

[DraQ]

Loot IMO should be the difference between surviving an encounter or not surviving one. RPG's being about exploration and adventure, you should have to find certain items to be able to do certain things. These games got rid of that.

In Witcher-verse loot was rarely the difference between life and death, at lest from the point of view of individual adventurer, not a soldier involved in major battles - if you were a badass, you could display your badassery even wearing long johns when attacked while you were eating a boiled egg for breakfast. Additionally witchers tended to avoid actual armour as it would seriously hamper their main advantage in form of their inhuman speed and reflexes, plus "ordinary" witcher sword was already an upper-shelf stuff - the game reflected that.

If anything, having to actually think about your expenses was a massive success in TW, especially given that exploration was still rewarded.

The fact that you couldn't just cart heaps of weapons around or easily resale stuff further improved the economics.

With Wizardry 8 the loot was so infrequent the game was pure tedium.

I would understand if you criticized the amount of combat, but loot was about right - you had randomly dropping cool stuff, like bard gear, some awesome items hidden away or having only limited chance to drop, hidden spellbooks, rings, amulets, etc.

Comparing those game with Diablo 2 is a fucking disgrace, as Diablo 2 has it's loot as only redeeming quality (compared to Wizardry's combat, or Witcher's atmosphere and story), and even the frequencies of this loot were far better tuned in its prequel.

Of course, you kind of gimped yourself by going for axes - weapon types are far from balanced in Wizardry 8, and axe users took the absolute shortest end of the stick.

What pissed me off in Wiz 8's phat lewt is that some items had random chances of spawning.
Farming ghosts of sailors for the Light Sword? Yeeeaaahh...

If you inflict this kind of cheese on yourself, you deserve it.

If you don't think you deserve it, but lack the balls to control yourself, you should play in ironman mode. Simple.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Eh.

While low magic is thematically preferable,a steady stream of magical loot can be beneficial to gameplay. Don't think of Diablo, rather think of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Properly implemented, magical loot can provide additional tactical options and depth to gameplay. In any given situation, any class and race combo will have a certain number of tactical options to pick from, without magical items.In some situations, for some classes, these can be quite limited.

Adding in magic items like a scroll of blinking, a wand of haste or even a simple potion of heal wounds provides additional tactical options, albeit ones that are more limited in the number of uses available compared to your innate abilities.

This adds more thought to gameplay; do I use a limited resource to make the situation more safe? Or do I just use my innate abilities and take a bigger risk, thus saving my limited resources for later.

Additionally, if properly balanced, magic items also provide enhanced depth to character customization, beyond the customization provided by character building.

In well balanced game, someone with access to large amounts of magic items would be thinking about which ones to use for the situations they planned to encounter and constantly thinking about the tradeoffs inherent in each setup.

Do I want regeneration to avoid getting whittled down hordes of weak enemies? Or do I want more magic resistance because I expect to face a lot of save or die type spells?

Do I need this fire resistance or should I go for a more broadly applicable ability, like ethereality or luck?

Gameplay wise, there are significant potential advantages of medium magic over low magic, unfortunately.

Fuck Diablo/WOW loot model though,

 

[DraQ]

I'd rather see more attention to non-magical, relatively low level gear. Finding something magical, should be AWSUM!1 in itself, now it feels like cop-out, with developers failing to create mechanics that would make even choice between marginally different mundane weapons and armour meaningful and non-trivial, rather than making weapon skills/specialization mostly limiting factor for which legendary artefacts you'll be able to use when you inevitably find them, choice of armour the matter of which has the most pluses, and sticking some different special abilities to them so that they may appear to differ from each other - needless to say, I'm nonplussed with current approach.

 

[waywardOne]

game economics is the abused stepchild of game mechanics.

if anyone with a knife can afford to live in a palace just by spending a few hours a day slaughtering trash mobs or picking through barrels/crates, why is your character the only one doing it?

why do merchants sell weapons that could topple empires? why don't they have armies of bodyguards? since they don't why aren't they robbed? better yet, why can't you rob them?

why does Endoflevel Boss use equipment that's worse than what i'm going to find in his room after i kill him?

why are there magic items that have no use whatsoever? what mage/alchemist would have wasted time making something that no one would ever have a use for?

 

[StrangeCase]

game economics is the abused stepchild of game mechanics.

if anyone with a knife can afford to live in a palace just by spending a few hours a day slaughtering trash mobs or picking through barrels/crates, why is your character the only one doing it?

why do merchants sell weapons that could topple empires? why don't they have armies of bodyguards? since they don't why aren't they robbed? better yet, why can't you rob them?

why does Endoflevel Boss use equipment that's worse than what i'm going to find in his room after i kill him?

why are there magic items that have no use whatsoever? what mage/alchemist would have wasted time making something that no one would ever have a use for?

Eh... not that you're necessarily wrong, but this stuff is the industry standard. Even good games do it. It's mostly a question of time and budget, I imagine, or you could be a tool and bawl "omg lazy developers" as some people do.

 

[DraQ]

Eh... not that you're necessarily wrong, but this stuff is the industry standard.

So is popamole, rapid health regen and quest compass.

Shall we rejoice instead?

 

[Azrael the cat]

game economics is the abused stepchild of game mechanics.

if anyone with a knife can afford to live in a palace just by spending a few hours a day slaughtering trash mobs or picking through barrels/crates, why is your character the only one doing it?

why do merchants sell weapons that could topple empires? why don't they have armies of bodyguards? since they don't why aren't they robbed? better yet, why can't you rob them?

why does Endoflevel Boss use equipment that's worse than what i'm going to find in his room after i kill him?

why are there magic items that have no use whatsoever? what mage/alchemist would have wasted time making something that no one would ever have a use for?

At least in the infinity engine games, broken as their economies were, you COULD always steal from - or murder - every shopkeeper foolish enough to have more powerful goods in his stock than on his bodyguards. Would blow your reputation to kingdom come in some parts though, unless you were very careful (the 'magic' loss of rep from killing a civillian was annoying but manageable - it's the extra rep loss from aggroing half a district and having to slaughter them that can make it a game over scenario).

 

[DraQ]

At least in the infinity engine games, broken as their economies were, you COULD always steal from

Not always. Some simply didn't have shoplift option.

In Morrowind, on the other hand, you could steal about anything and murder anyone. Same with Wizardry8 or Fallout, except in Wiz8 NPCs were too much of a rare resource to run around murdering them.

 

[JarlFrank]

I'd rather see more attention to non-magical, relatively low level gear. Finding something magical, should be AWSUM!1 in itself, now it feels like cop-out, with developers failing to create mechanics that would make even choice between marginally different mundane weapons and armour meaningful and non-trivial, rather than making weapon skills/specialization mostly limiting factor for which legendary artefacts you'll be able to use when you inevitably find them, choice of armour the matter of which has the most pluses, and sticking some different special abilities to them so that they may appear to differ from each other - needless to say, I'm nonplussed with current approach.

Yeah, I'd really love to see items being different in more than just stats.
Ironically, I think that Venetica, a rather simple action-RPG, did this right in some ways. Every kind of armor was useful, even the leather armor you get in the beginning. The leather armor gives you a small amount of protection against every weapon (sword, hammer, spear), while the plate armor you get later gives increased protection against swords but decreased against spears. The next armor you get in the later half of the game gives high protection but only against hammers - it's useless against swords and spears.

And at the end of the game, enemies will mostly use spears - a weapon that your very first armor protects best against.
And therefore, a relatively simple action RPG managed to do armor and weapons a lot better than most real RPGs by making each armor useful against a certain type of weapon, and each weapon useful against a certain type of armor (and each weapon had its own fighting style, too, making one better against single targets and another better for crowd control).

I'd really love to have something like this in proper RPGs. Plate armor was developed to protect against blades, and maces were developed to hurt people in plate armor, also crossbows were fucking deadly against any kind of armor. What we usually get is just one single armor stat that protects equally well against any type of weapon. If we're lucky, we might get some weapons with the "armor piercing" ability, but that's it.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

At least in the infinity engine games, broken as their economies were, you COULD always steal from - or murder - every shopkeeper foolish enough to have more powerful goods in his stock than on his bodyguards.

Except that you couldn't steal their stock as the "awesome" store system in IE games is completely disconnected from shopkeeper's/store's inventories.
Basically, store is just a separate file with data of prices, available items, possibility of identification/stealing, etc.

 

[mondblut]

Yeah, I'd really love to see items being different in more than just stats.
Ironically, I think that Venetica, a rather simple action-RPG, did this right in some ways. Every kind of armor was useful, even the leather armor you get in the beginning. The leather armor gives you a small amount of protection against every weapon (sword, hammer, spear), while the plate armor you get later gives increased protection against swords but decreased against spears.

That's beyond idiotic.

Yeah, a plate and particularly chain aren't as affective against piercing than they are against slashing, but less effective than fucking leather? Gee, those kniggets were sure stoopid, dressing up in plate mails against all these peasants armed, right, with spears and pikes. Should have worn leather tongs instead.

 

[JarlFrank]

I don't say it's particularly realistic design there, but at least the game tried to give every armor a different use. Giving scale high protection against blunt weapons and no protection at all against swords and spears was particularly idiotic, but at least having different damage types (sword, blunt, spear) was a step in the right direction.

 

[Joe Krow]

Randomized loot is a problem but then again randomized enemies are a problem. It boils down to how much is hand placed versus spawned. If you're going to make it a set piece then make it interesting. The randomized stuff is supposed to be filler and hopefully there's not much of it.

 

[DraQ]

I don't say it's particularly realistic design there, but at least the game tried to give every armor a different use. Giving scale high protection against blunt weapons and no protection at all against swords and spears was particularly idiotic

It ranks up there with "Light Armour Repair" on scale.

Still different weapons and armour being different is a good idea - plate isn't better mail, scimitar or katana isn't a fancy longsword resprite.

Slashing is weakest against armour, but can be devastating for it's potential to sever a lot of potentially important stuff at once, including whole limbs.

Piercing does less damage, but penetrates deep and has good chance of critting something important and of penetrating the armour.

Crushing works in entirely different manner, as it can pass through stuff, inclding armour and flesh without completely destroying what lies in its path, but can be absorbed.

That's the part of the reason I keep talking about physical engines and collision volumes so much - we have retardedly powerful machines, we no longer need to make uneducated guesses at how a system should incorporate those qualities statwise - if we put rough collision volumes representing individual targets within body, plus a collision shells representing armour with some attached parameters, we will no longer have to guess how much will surface area of slashing damage fuck you up compared to depth of spear thrusts.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The thing that should make textile armour useful is the lesser weight, higher maximum dexterity bonus and lesser skills penalty.
Also, you'll probably wear it under mail or plate anyway.

 

[Luzur]

The thing that should make textile armour useful is the lesser weight, higher maximum dexterity bonus and lesser skills penalty.
Also, you'll probably wear it under mail or plate anyway.

thats what padded shirts are for originally, to keep you from chafing.

kinda strange they made it into an armor on its own.