it's nice, but only if it is trully random and the list consists of thousands of items. like in diablo 2. where there was always a tiny chance of dropping a rare rune or weapon from any monster.
in WoW and the like, with smaller loot tables, it becomes much more clear what you have to kill for what and it becomes less "what will it drop next!" and more "wrong drop, lets do it again." The latter will make it dissapoiting if the item doesn't drop, where the former makes it a nice surprise if the item DOES drop
so yeah it's good but you need to take it far enough to make sure it will remain a surprise.
I don't mind randomized loot, provided it makes sense for the enemies I'm fighting. I don't mind if a bandit drops an extra dagger or suit of armor when I loot his corpse, but obtaining a "Blazing Nether Axe" from a rat or wild boar is going to make me raise an incredulous eyebrow.
Basically random drop tables are fine with me as long as they keep things believable.
I probably should have specified that this was more about weapons with randomly generated stats then just random loot but this is fine. Seems the popular opinion is that it's alright so long as there's still some fixed Infinity-Plus-One weapons scattered about the game.
I think its good to a certain merit. Too much items, bad idea. Too little "randomly picked"-names, bad idea too.
Torchlight nearly had it right. It's just that armor sets were increadibly hard to find, but all the new items really kept the game going. It had too little names too, though. It could've used some more and just lost the idenitfy spell as a whole.
Its good and bad.
I'll start with the bad, because its easier to understand the good after going through the bad.
It is bad, because you have to sift through hundreds of mobs, hundreds of instances of loot, in order to find something worth a damn. This gives you lots of trash loot, stuff you sell because it is not good. While this tends to give you spending money, it also gets irritating in games like Oblivion where you have to go in and out of Oblivion gates several times, in order to bloody sell all that loot.
It is good, because when you eventually DO get good loot, you appreciate it so much more. I would have spent a fraction of the time I spent raiding in WoW, if the loot drops were not as random as they were.
And in games like Diablo 2, the loot drops are so frustratingly random that you literally farm the same boss for hours, just to get one of the several hundred things you want from that boss.
I love it, the promise that almost everything I kill will drop either a cool new weapon or something I can sell for pretty much 100% profit is half the reason I still play Oblivion (Or would if my Xbox didn't hate me). I don't even care if it's leveled right or not, an anorexic sewer rat drops a +8 flaming halberd? I say cool, an immortal orc shaman only drops a rusty butter knife and tattered cloth armor? That's 15 coins I didn't have before hand.
Put me down as in favor of it. Psychologically random generated rewards work well to keep you playing because you don't know when the positive reinforcement is going to happen. And in the real world you wouldn't know what you were going to get either.
I dont mind it, but it can be a bit game breaking.
Like the borderlands example, one game i ended up with a machine gun that did 100 damage and set people on fire almost every shot, that time it became a walk in the park as its large clip size and rapid fire rate meant nothing except the final boss could take a whole clip and live.
Another time, didnt find a single decent gun and so ended up taking on the final stages with weapons that really didnt have the firepower to do it easily.
Its not a bad idea, but there has to be a way to prevent you struggling due to bad luck.
As long as it isn't used as an operant conditioning tool to keep you playing. Something like a 1/50 chance of getting something really awesome makes it a good game, but aren't there items in WOW that have a 1/10,000 chance of being dropped? Not my idea of fun...so it can be done right and wrong.
Honestly, it depends on the loot. Like, if it's a game where you can loot armour, why can't I loot the armour the mook I killed is obviously wearing. I can see his boots, why can't I take them? (I'm looking at you, Dragon Age).
To another extent, yes I do like randomly generated loot when it's all sorts of other stuff. Like the specific stats of the weapons they carry, or the the value of rings or crafting items in their inventory.
In that respect, I do like the way the Elder Scrolls do this. When an enemy carries or wields an item that has certain qualities, those qualities are obvious when you're fighting them. It helps build immersion when you see an enemy cloaked in chameleon because they're carrying a chameleon ring. In effect, it's creating variety in your enemies as much as in your loot, which is great.
Also, I don't know what a Final Fantasy game or MMO would be without some degree of randomly generated loot. That's just a huge part of what I'm used to from them. I wouldn't want to lose that, even though it makes absolutely no sense why a wolf monster was carrying a giant sword with the ability to inflict silence.
Otherwise I feel like I have to go to this chest/locker/dead body/whatever to get this certain item and all surprise it lost- sometimes, there are exceptions obviously. With randomly generated loot I get all excited when I see something I can loot and find out what it actually is and if I can use it or not.
It got shut down because a lot of people just didn't like the idea of an iron dagger ever outperforming a glass claymore, which sucks because when I play Elder Scrolls games I like to use daggers but after a certain level you're all but forced to carry around a giant broadsword everywhere.
The look will be randomized though to a degree in Skyrim. The types of weapons and armour most people are carrying can and probably will be randomized. Certain people like guards will obviously have set items that they carry but your random thugs and bandits wont. It will most likely be done the same way they did it in Oblivion.
On one hand, you have games that use random-generation as a "License to Grind".
On the other, you have games that incorporate the random-generation into the difficulty.
I will use examples of Diablo 2 and Nethack.
Diablo 2, while a very solid game on its own, uses random generation and quality-weighting to turn its item system into a massive time-sink grind system. So rarely was I concerned about how to overcome the next challenge; but rather, I kept hoping that a good Set or Unique was going to drop soon so I could move on from my current difficulty (going to the point where people would do "rush games" online to skip to about level 80. When most of your players are deliberately SKIPPING the vast majority of your game, it's time to rethink things a bit).
In Diablo 2, my setup didn't matter nearly as much as my stats did. Even a level 99 Barbarian isn't going to do shit to an enemy in Hell Mode with a regular Broadsword or Axe. In short: The difference in power between a twinked and an untwinked character is, literally, exponential.
In Nethack, knowing what you have is at least half the challenge. See, Nethack has well over 200 different items in it, and they're not all just scaling copies of weapons and armor (there is SOME of that, but there is a lot more variety in item-functionality than Diablo 2).
And each time you start a new character, EVERYTHING reshuffles. That "Swirled Potion" that was a Potion of Gain Level last game is most likely something completely different now; like a Potion of Haste, or a Sickness Potion.
But add to that that literally EVERY BLOODY ITEM can also be 'Blessed', 'Uncursed' or Cursed (and this can wildly change the effectiveness or even functionality of an item outright) and you can start to see how Random Loot generation can add depth.
So rather than just what stats an item grants to a player mattering, an item's value increases because of its possible secondary utility. A Wand of Lightning has a very specific, obvious use to most players, but it can also be used to quickly BURN Elbereth into the ground to save your bacon.
It's a name you write into the ground, either in the dust with your fingers or with some other object/tool.
MOST monsters/enemies will flee when they approach a square with Elbereth wrote/inscribed/burnt on the ground. It's an in-joke reference, but as one might imagine, it's IMMENSELY useful). However the inscription is only effective if the writing isn't smudged or otherwise broken.
By default, you can write it in the dust on the ground with your finger, but ANY movement near that square will break the protection because dust drawings/writings are too easily ruined.
You can make a more permanent inscription by carving it into the ground with a metal object; dulling/breaking that weapon in the process, but even that takes a long time, so you can't really use it in an emergency.
However, by using a Wand of Fire or Lightning as the tool of inscription, you gain the speed of writing with your finger AND the resilience of a Hard Inscription. Of course, it's best to use a Wand of Fire instead of Lightning, as using the Wand of Lightning will work, but the sparks will blind you temporarily).
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
