Original Sin - Enhanced Edition at E3

[JDR13]

Of course the loot that's dropped from combat is going to be random, but I think it's pretty obvious that's not what CelticFrost is talking about. He's talking about the loot in the game world. i.e. chests, closets, barrels, etc.

Loot dropped from enemies in a game where enemies sometime respawn has to be random for obvious reasons.

 

[rune_74]

Of course the loot that's dropped from combat is going to be random, but I think it's pretty obvious that's not what CelticFrost is talking about. He's talking about the loot in the game world. i.e. chests, closets, barrels, etc.

Loot dropped from enemies in a game where enemies sometime respawn has to be random for obvious reasons.

Actually, I'm willing to bet aside from the main items(special locations etc....) chests and crates etc....have random loot from a table just like the creatures.

 

[CelticFrost]

Actually, I'm willing to bet aside from the main items(special locations etc….) chests and crates etc….have random loot from a table just like the creatures.

They don't....

 

[Roq]

I enjoyed placed loots in games back in the days before the internet was around, but now random is the far better choice. If I designed games these days, I'd make sure some detailed web-written cheatsheet wouldn't permit every scrub that owns the game to acquire easy loot. I guess that's just the best way now to do it, random wins.

It should be possible to mix things up a bit, by having items that randomly spawn in a number of possible different places (Guild Wars 1 does that, for instance). And not too tricky to implement. I don't think modern games take as much care with itemisation and loot as many older games did and also there is always too much duplicated junk.

 

[rune_74]

They don't….

Ok, this is getting silly....you think they went through every crate in the game and hand placed all the items in there?

 

[CelticFrost]

Ok, this is getting silly….you think they went through every crate in the game and hand placed all the items in there?

Well I have been spending the last few days with my son while he is playing and it would seem to be that way. Also the few times that I died before saving and went back and looted items they were. Why don't you loot an area, die and do it over again and find out for yourself.

But in the grand scheme of things I don't really care!!!!!! It was more about how in D:OS it was completely random. If your perception was high enough to notice area's where things were hidden it was never the same thing.

 

[Thrasher]

More likely it's fixed, but was procedurally (i.e. randomly) filled at design time. Too many junk boxes to be done manually, I think. Also explains why some nearby boxes all have the same thing, as if the process was glitched.

 

[azarhal]

Containers are probably made like in Morrowind CS. You create a container and put stuff into it and each copies have the exact same thing in it unless you put a loot list in it (except that there is no loot list here).

 

[Thrasher]

Copy paste would explain the duplicate contents well...

 

[CelticFrost]

Loot no loot personally I think most games now of days have way to much of it including TW3. So much of it to the point in some games I stop even opening things.

I don't know how many times I have so much stuff I can't walk any more and have to find a place quickly sell it or stash it. Then when I have the cash to buy something kewl the vendors never have anything close to what I found 20 times over.

Maybe I am just old, but I miss having to work hard to get that great bow or save up for ever to buy that magic fire sword. It would seem most of the loot in games now is just to keep the OCD world feed and keep their interest in the game for more than 5 minutes.

Could be I just believe in that hard work should be rewarded both in games and life.

 

[rune_74]

I agree.

To me though, the best loot system I have played is actually on the elder scrolls games, due to the fact that if you kill a guy who is wearing all the stuff you see you can actually loot that stuff. It never made sense to me that you kill something so well armed and walk away with junk.

Now, that doesn't mean that system is right for every game...for instance I enjoy games that give minimal loot if it keeps the challenge level there. Original sins loot system was a bit to random, to the point I think I even loaded saves to get better loot.

 

[CelticFrost]

I would have to say the one of best loot system was 30 years ago with Ulitma 3 and 4. Not sure why there has to be 700 different weapons that are the best for a millisecond in a game.

I guess it is like Christmas at some peoples houses where there is 1000 gifts under the tree for 3 people and each one of them is special until the next one is opened.

 

[JDR13]

I would say TES actually has one of the worst loot systems of all the RPGs I've played. You get the double whammy of it being both random and level scaled.

 

[crpgnut]

I liked the loot and crafting of Two Worlds Two. You find lots of similar weapons and armor, but they can all be broken down into components and then used to improve whatever weapon and armor that you wanted to use. If you were a light armor specialist, then you could break all the heavy armor down and use it to improve your light armors. Same with weapons. Also, as you increase a weapon's proficiency, it would cost you more and more raw materials to improve the weapon further. Maybe not the most realistic, but it was a great way to get rid of extra loot without running back to town to sell it. It also required you to invest skill points into several crafting skills, so you had to choose how much ability you had to craft. Not a perfect system, but a pretty good one.

 

[Roq]

I would say TES actually has one of the worst loot systems of all the RPGs I've played. You get the double whammy of it being both random and level scaled.

The difficulty with single character RPGs is that you have so few slots to fill up. And for some reason, known only to themselves, modern RPGs often leave out pauldrons, leggings, bracers, ..., making even less slots. So, unless you have almost zero loot in the game, you are almost always going to be finding junk.

I use Morrowloot and Scarcity mods in Skyrim, but the problem with unscaled loot is that once you find the sword of almighty godliness, you don't need a new sword ever again.