Lephys

^ Ask her what she thinks about the scale armor concept screenshot,

True, true. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, either the swords are useful, and the gathering of them is a feasible activity, or it isn't. Honestly, even taking a couple of trips to grab them all is no less feasible than, say, hiring yourselves out as caravan guards for a 3-day trip, for like 150gp plus food. Oh, you gathered 30 pieces of equipment that all only sold for 5gp a piece? Well, you spent the same amount of time, and got the same amount of money. Yet, people scoff at collecting perfectly useful items that are freely strewn about the ground, and would consider taking a caravan guarding job somehow completely not-irrational at all. It's just a bit weird. Also, though, I'd very much like to see "junk" items (from a gameplay standpoint... the things that provide only a mere pittance in coin for the player when collected and sold) have more diverse purposes. Maybe there's a town noted for its smiths, and its ample mine nearby, so they really don't have enough demand for cheap arms and armor (or scrap metal from either) to actually take the time to accept such things, much less pay for them. It's not that they wouldn't be useful, but that they'd be the least efficient use of those smiths'/merchants' time. I'd honestly like to see a lot of stuff like that just be situationally beneficial. Especially with something like the stronghold in the game. It's obviously going to start out pretty run-down, so it's going to need all the stuff it can get. Arming your militia with rough, improvised "orc" weaponry you scavenge out in the field will be an improvement over their farming implements and a few swords. Maybe when your stronghold staves off attacks and such, you suffer resource casualties (damaged arms and armor, some of which are beyond repair and/or lost, and new ones need to be made, etc.). So, maybe bringing such "junk" items (again, money-wise), instead of netting you a handful of coins per item, contributes to your stronghold's stores of milita-esque armaments, and/or metal to be re-processed back into ingots and such to be used to craft more legitimate arms and armor. Not to mention all kind of other metal implements and items for daily/economical use (town lamps, gates/portcullises, horseshoes, etc.). It would all be very abstract, and your stronghold people would only be able to process so much at a time (you're not supposed to start out with a ton of people, from what we've heard about that), so you wouldn't really be encouraged to just bring 270 swords and armors to your stronghold every hour or anything. The key is that there shouldn't always (at any given moment, ever) be some definite value or use for some common thing that happens to have dropped from a foe. That's the problem with most games in relation to inventory management. It's this not-quite-realistic game of "get the best weight/space-to-value ratio possible, every time!" It's more like a minigame than just a natural part of the game world. It's pretty much 100% about how taking or not-taking those items affects the player, and nothing else.

^ Or, you know... you could just represent the passage of time with the amount of time-consuming significant effort the player is making. I mean, if you just jog around in a town all day, time would "freeze." It's like reading a book, and stopping on a page to eat a donut. The story doesn't just keep going without you, simply because you're "not doing anything." But, yeah, you travel to a cave and actually deal with something there, time passes everywhere else, and things change accordingly. You arrive at the next town, things are different now in the previous town. Etc. Many games have done this in the past, and it works pretty well. It's an abstraction, sure, but there's almost never anything that's hurt much at all by this system. At the very worst, you spend several days just traipsing through the woods, exploring and whatnot, and the rest of the world doesn't really act like quite that much time has passed, in terms of how things have changed. It's hard to do a game story like this, though, and time passage, because it's a specific story you're telling, but it's dynamically based on the player's choices in many parts. You never want to tell the story of "and then the player took way too long because he's a meticulous explorer, and all the events just came to pass without him, and the world ended without the heroic party being even anywhere CLOSE to influencing anything at any key times, and they had to start all the way over."

One does not simply walk into podcast!

You don't smith scale armor. You construct it from scales. And it actually IS possible to smith boob plate, AND wear it. It's simply impractical for defensive reasons (because the whole armor is rigid, and the boob shapes create weapon-catching forms, rather than weapon-glancing/deflecting forms). At worst, it would take a not-worth-it amount of time and effort to design the scale coat to fit like that. But, you never know. Just because historically, in reality, people only built scale armor in specific ways does not mean that the people of PoE don't have some other means of doing it, and/or some factors that serve as reason to actually fit the armor to females. It's been pointed out in other threads about this, but the US military recently redesigned their standard-issue body armor specifically for female soldiers. Granted, it's a lot more flat, but it's also not scale armor. The point is, it was specifically designed to fit the female torso better, as opposed to the male torso. Females of all different sizes and proportions, even. There's a female armor of varying sizes, now, and a male armor of varying sizes. Stop acting like it's impossible or utterly preposterous that female armor can or would in no way be treated any differently at all, ever, for any reason. And @Gromnir, I'm glad you love good fun and all, but you don't have to be rude. You gave your opinion, and I didn't peg you as some kind of imbecile for holding that opinion. I merely shared my own on the matter. Why is that my expectations are tainted and my opinion is somehow preposterous, but yours is fine and correct? Also, that whole "I bet female gamers don't want to have their characters distinguished from male characters, and that armor design is offensive" line of thinking is awfully double-edged. To avoid gender discrimination in games is not to make sure the female form is never distinguished from the male form. Plenty of females want perfectly female characters. What, should they be offended by their own bodies if they don't go around dressing like men all day? I hardly think so. Scale armor that subtly says "this torso has more frontal mass than this other torso" with like a 15% difference is hardly some kind of sexification of the female form. It's not forcibly accentuating the female form, it's simply not doing the opposite, either. Maybe the character creation will allow for a few body shape options (for both genders and all races). Who knows. Simply having the admittedly more-flexible-than-other-armors armor generally fit the torso form is hardly insanity or derogatory to females.

I'm honestly not even certain it would even matter if someone were proved right, here. Some of these arguments seem more about the journey than the destination. 8P

In Soviet Glanfathan, ARMOR wears YOU! 8D Seriously though, Maybe they use different scales/materials/techniques, and maybe females wear the armor commonly enough that they actually take the time to make "tailored" armor. It's not like it's MMO fantasy sex armor, accentuating the female form, showing a bunch of cleavage and skin and serving as a push-up bra. It's barely shaped like there's more chest mass than a dude's armor. Hey, maybe female plate armor should have codpieces, too, and male armor should have boob shapes in it. Oh wait, they just made armor around what was there. Males have something where females don't? Codpiece. Wow... fitting armor around boobs (ever so slightly) is completely different. Just because it didn't actually happen in history doesn't mean it's the most blatantly ridiculous thing ever. I understand why people desire it to be exactly historically accurate and/or "realistic," but I don't understand why such a subtle thing is generating something close to outrage. As if this is just purely unacceptable, and Obsidian has insulted your entire family lineage and challenged you to a duel.

@ Gromnir, I realize that, if it were fully realistic, you'd hardly ever be able to notice any kind of variance in torso-armor shape, statistically. However, the slight abstraction/exaggeration going on in PoE's armor design has got to be by far one of the most subtle uses of such aesthetic exaggeration in video gaming history. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion (and in no way lessened by it), but I must share my own, being that "distateful" seems a pretty strong word for such a thing. They'd probably all shave their heads, too, because they'd have lice, but I really don't mind that they allow us to choose longer hairs for our character model at character creation.

Thanks for the intelligent, polite response. Yeah, the guards would be different entities, entirely, not scaled versions of the same entities. That was the point I was making. It was an excellent example of what to not scale. You've kinda touched on the point with this. It was a comment I made, basically saying "Someone of the skill level of Aragorn would not be a town guard in a small village," because Hiro had suggested the feasibility of every single civilized settlement, regardless of size or stature, simply having various numbers of the exact same guard clones, with no need for variance in their skill/quality/toughness whatsoever. I don't think it'll be strictly needed, so we're pretty much in agreement. I'm merely making the argument for its potential use (which isn't just Skyrim-or-nothing, as many in this thread have been suggesting.) Honestly, though, the fewer levels there are in the entire range, the larger the impact of each level-up on a given critical path/story encounter. If there were 40 levels in the game, and you could have 1-3 levels of variance before facing a particular situation, it would be a lot less likely to be a big deal. Yet, with only 12 levels. The difference between level 10 and level 11 (times 6, for your whole party) is a pretty big one. Thus, I really don't think it's in any way overboard or crazy to consider making a slight adjustment to just one big baddie (it's not like he gains 6-people worth of level up... he's just one entity.) The thing about scaling is, scaling is scaling: You're either adjusting an encounter based on the player characters' capabilities (because of some potential variance in the order in which you complete content), or you're not. Just because you're scaling based on level does not mean you must scale the enemy's level. That boss doesn't have to gain a level, necessarily, to be adjusted. Between tweaks to his HP/spell "ammo"/Accuracy, etc., and possible "encounter scaling" -- the addition of some minions and such, you can very precisely tweak the challenge for someone who's, say, Level 12 at the end of the game instead of Level 10 (really close to level 11 but didn't quite get there, so it's not really "two whole levels" worth of variance, but it functionally is). That's all I'm observing. I hope that makes sense. I easily see how it can ruin a game. But, I'm absolutely certain it can potentially be used in a precise enough fashion to not ruin anything. Now, not knowing the specifics of the entirety of PoE's design and narrative path, I couldn't tell you whether or not its non-ruining use in PoE is necessary or not. However, I can see how it could be potentially useful in key spots, if not necessary in a very mild capacity. That's up to the devs, though, and I trust them to make good choices with that. That's what brought this up in the first place (there have been prior threads on this since the Kickstarter). The devs have stated several times that there might be a tiny bit of it in the game, if it's appropriate, and this was met with outrage and cries of "there's no such thing as 'just a little' scaling!" and such. I don't quite understand that hysteria, and I've just been trying to point out how scaling can be used in a minimal, intelligent fashion, instead of just dumped onto the canvas via bucket, to actual beneficial effect.

Chesty lasses need damage mitigation, too. Don't be hatin'... To be fair, the armor doesn't have "boobs," really, but just a slightly different general torso shape. It's hardly much different from a Roman-style breastplate with big pecs sculpted into it, worn by a dude with a rather girthsome chest region. Out of all the various degrees/methods of sexualization of armor, I have to say that the merest hint that a woman's bosom dwells beneath a solid layer of metal armor is hardly bringing all the boys to the yard.

I'm still waiting for something that actually contradicts what I said. Didn't say anywhere he wasn't protecting it. I said he wasn't on the payroll. So I wasn't wrong about Aragorn. It's crap like this that makes me wonder how you're NOT doing this intentionally. You're so eager for me to be wrong that you're practically salivating at the chance to throw a "nuh-uh!" at me, before you even mentally process the text that I've typed onto your screen. You want me to be making points that will justify your ability to "NUH-UH!". I don't know if it just makes you feel great about yourself, or what. But it is beyond my comprehension. Again... *checks watch*... are you going to actually disagree with me sometime today, or just keep echoing my point, then insisting that my point is surely the opposite of your point. My point was literally that guards don't need level-scaling. Or, more specifically, that was the example of how plenty of things in the game don't need level-scaling. It's not an everything-or-nothing tool. One of us clearly doesn't know what I'm talking about, . "Mega dungeon doesn't benefit from any level scaling. Therefore, I have just proved that NOTHING ever benefits from level-scaling!" I've never seen such reasoning skill! It's blinding! Clearly, this is never going to get us anywhere. You go on perceiving everything I say as nonsense, and I'll just spare you that perceived nonsense. And I'll go on knowing what I know, and not worrying about whether or not you ever actually process it before judging it as nonsense. The world will spin on, and the game will still rock and be released just fine. Even with its subtle level-scaling. Good day. And to you, Hiro. Enjoy the thread.

I didn't say they needed to be. I said it's perfectly feasible that royal guards be tougher/more skilled/better trained (in abstract RPG terms, higher level) than guards in a semi-rural trading hub. Friggin' Aragorn is not going to be on the payroll to protect Townville. That is also very true. However, I think you've missed the point that a different city simply having better trained guards, purely for world/lore reasons, has absolutely nothing to do with level-scaling. You haven't scaled the guards from the podunk town up to royal palace guards. They're simply two different things. Just like a bandit and an assassin are both just human roguish fellows, yet one is WAY more trained to whoop your arse than the other. Sometimes you'll just run into random "Whoever comes down this road at night, I'm gonna try and jump them" bandits, and sometimes you'll encounter trained assassins. It is then common sense game design that the lesser skilled bandits be in your way more so in the earlier bit of the game, while the assassins would be more likely to get in your way toward the later part of the game. You don't write a game that says "Oh, you're level 1-6? We'll just throw master assassins at you all day long. Oh, you've hit level 7? For the rest of the game, you'll be confronted only by meager bandits just looking to empty travelers' pockets." Hence, why, in D&D based games, you don't fight beholders in Old Man Steve's basement. You fight rats (which is kind of a joke, even though there are some scary effing rats in that bestiary that aren't normal rats). And later on, you fight beholders. Why? Because fighting beholders when you're level 1 is nonsense. That's not a tough scenario. That's game over or skip it if you can. Also bear in mind that I'm not talking about ONLY facing things when you're exactly capable of easily taking them on. Sometimes you'll encounter things that, while you CAN beat them, will be VERRRRRY tough. And, if you come back better equipped and more skilled, you'll have an easi-er time, but still not an easy one. And some things will be moderately tough if you encounter them as early as possible, and only mildly difficult if you tackle them after some further progress. While all of that is true, there are still valid reasons that warrant the consideration of dynamic adjustments being made to specific encounters. Again, the overall general idea is "If you can progress all the way to level 12, you should get to actually put that progression to good use. Thus, the closer you get to level 12, the closer to level 12 foes should generally become." Why? Because the closer you get to level 12, the closer to the end of the game you are. You can't just go out in a field outside of town 1 and grind to level 12. Thus, it's all a bit tied together in this type of game. The underlying structure is a very linear progression. Or, directional, rather. It's "linear," but it's a very wide line (all the various choices you can make that still move the narrative forward but in different ways and with varying results.)

^ You forgot the 6th type: SHIELD ARMOR! The chest plate is a shield, attached to a back-shield. Then, there are small shield pauldrons, with shield boots and leggings to match, and shield vambraces.

I realize there's no mass production, and stuff takes time, but... that's all the more reason for some smith not to be eager to pay you for 17-swords worth of metal, right here and now, when it's going to take him weeks just to make a handful of them, IF he even gets orders for those. Of course, metal doesn't JUST make swords and armor. It also makes barrel straps, horseshoes, lanterns, etc. Regardless, someone isn't just going to eagerly await infinite scrap metal. Maybe they'll take all they can get, but they're surely not going to pay you for it all.

EXTREME DWELLING! FULL-CONTACT FATE-TEMPTING! Xaurips are pretty... shore of themselves? *absorbs all the energy of the ensuing facepalms to bolster his immortality*

@ W.MacKinnon: That's a very good point. That's what I mean by actually employing some sense-filled decision-making when deciding when and where to make any kind of adjustments. Guards guarding a town are pretty static. I mean, sure, sometimes they die, and new ones get trained up, etc. But, when are those guards going to be there? Always. If you spend 2 extra months getting to that city, they're still going to have the same guards. The guards are just there. The only place I'll disagree is that different cities might, understandably, have different "levels" of guards. I mean, that small trading hub you start in on the outskirts of the capital region, for example, is probably not going to have as hardcore of guards as the friggin' palace in the heart of the capital. And this touches on that whole "RPGs' progressions are designed such that the player will 'arbitrarily' face appropriate challenges." It's perfectly feasible that the capital city will have more hardcore guards that are tougher foes. But, why don't you just start there, and face them early on, and lose horribly? Then, later on, have to face guards on the outskirts, who are little more than militia? Because appropriation, amongst other reasons. Anywho, so guards just stay guards. But, what about story events? When is such-and-such in the city to assassinate you? When you arrive there. When is that? Well, it depends, really. He doesn't just live there, and you're traveling to his house. His progression is tied to the story, which is tied to your progression, and back to his, in a triangle. These things are already abstracted in a video game, by the dynamic nature of the story. It's all supposed to be the same story, but each playthrough is a different instance of the same story. If you do things A and B before making it to such-and-such place, then the bad guy arrives later (when you do). If you go straight there, then he arrives sooner (because you do). Why is THAT abstraction perfectly fine, but heaven forbid we actually allow him to be of differing specific levels? It's extremely apparent that just what you adjust and what you don't is of great importance in this whole "what's the result?" assessment. As well as specifically how you adjust it. That's all I've tried to emphasize this whole time, which is why I don't understand the "Nuh-uh" sentiments in response to that. Like it's not true. Is there any reason to adjust guards in a town? Not really. So we probably shouldn't do that. The how doesn't even come into question, then. Should we adjust random encounters while traveling? Maybe. If it's time based or something. How much, then? Always just match the party's level, like in Elder Scrolls games? Maybe not. I even pointed this out before (I think this was on the 360 version of Oblivion, so I dunno if it's on the PC version), but, the scaling actually had a slider adjustment in Oblivion. The default was like 1:1, but you could slide it down to off, or .1:1, .2:1, etc. Granted, there are still plenty of things in any game world that really have absolutely no reason to be adjusted (unless you're making Diablo, and it's more about appropriate combat than it is about a persistent world), so I'm not saying this is the ideal solution to anything. Just... a lot of people don't seem to know that was an option (again, might've only been in the 360 version?). The thing is, once you actually decide that you DO, in fact, have a reason to adjust SOMEthing in the world, you still get to adjust it precisely. Nothing makes you just slap a higher tier of equipment all over it, and/or increase its level by 1. One of the only reasonable arguments I've heard is "I want stuff to actually become weaker compared to me, and not just keep up with me." The thing is, just because you scale SOMEthing in the game world doesn't mean NOTHING will ever become weaker relative to your becoming stronger. In fact, as I pointed out above with the less-than-1:1 ratios, you could actually scale every single thing in the entire game, and it'd still be weaker than you. At that point, the problem would simply be "why was there any reason for this thing to be presented in a more powerful form, relative to what has taken place?" In essence, just because challenge appropriation is a valid consideration does not mean that all combatants/situations are appropriate for its use, much less any specific extent of its use.

It looks like they might be attached, underneath, to the leather "collar" portion? Just for what it's worth. I think your critique is quite fair, overall.

Because it's impossible that the game simply doesn't allow for it to happen. If there is a way to do it, I don't understand why it's "obvious" it won't happen unintentionally. You're fleeing from a final enemy in some encounter, and it happens to take you close enough to another group that you just keep all your current buffs and continue fighting, even though your only intention was to not-get-killed by that foe who was chasing you. Seems just as likely as anything else to me. Or it's just something that could be improved. Have you never eaten a meal that wasn't disgusting, and was quite fine and good, but could've used more seasoning or something? There ya go. Something doesn't have to be horrible just to be not-perfect. Again with the jumps to binary space. You can't ever just say "but a lot of people seem to think this adjustment would work better." It's always gotta go straight to the superlative "but everyone on this forum either thinks like I do: that the old way of doing it is AMAZING, or they think the new way of doing it is amazing and the old way is CRAP!" I gotta say, that's really unproductive. Not that you'll listen to this nonsense-fountain. *spraaayyyyyyyyyyyyy*. Toss in a coin! Make a wish! Another funny observation: Look at how prevalent pre-buffing is in the IE games (cRPGs using the D&D ruleset), versus an actual PnP session of D&D. Sure, you did it sometimes, but if you didn't know what was in a cave, you didn't just stack 7 effects on your whole party, then hope they were all useful. And you sure as hell couldn't reload after dying to some encounter, only to now use your crazy, metaphysical knowledge from the afterlife to "strategically" prepare for a fight your party isn't even supposed to know about. In PnP, you prepare for stuff by making intelligent decisions, in general, and being cautious. Not by just having all the right pre-buffs on at all the right times, and making sure everyone's as enhanced as they can be before every fight. Then, you've got stuff like "What if someone just mass dispels your party at the beginning of the fight?" How do you hard counter that? By literally the opposite of pre-buffing for preparation. Now it's a coin toss. Do I keep 10 buffs on everyone for the start of every fight? Or do I prepare for things that like to instantly dispel all my effects (if they can help it)? *shrug*. I'd just much rather deal with a little intelligent planning (approach, party formation, readied weapons/spells, stealth and trap use, etc.), then deal with combat as it comes, than have 30% of the combat system being what all passive effects you can overlay onto your peeps before anyone even makes a move. But, that's just me.

I'll have to go hunt down the link (EDIT: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63091-josh-sawyer-on-miss-and-hit/), but they initially planned to remove full misses, entirely. There was a HUGE thread about it, with lots of input from Josh, over the course of a week or two, after which time, he said that, after considering all the feedback about it, he went back and worked with putting misses back in in some form. Ultimately, he arrived at the current Attack Resolution system -- with misses (relative to past IE games) being much less prevalent, and being ABLE to have their chance-ranges increased, or even decreased out of existence, under particular circumstances. Also, just because empirical data from testing ultimately finalizes a decision does not mean that that's the only factor that could possibly have led to the decision. It's not like he just spends all day long re-testing every single possibility of a given implementation, and is never guided in those efforts by backer feedback, especially in big threads that are actually discussing it in-depth rather than just a bunch of shout-outs of "I don't like that!" in an update thread or something. Methinks you are jumping to conclusions you need not be.

By your own words, the style of one of today's popular MMOs would inherently be not-the-style of the IE games. Unless they were very much like today's MMOs, in which case, all would be well, wouldn't it? I realize there's a level of ambiguity there, and it broadens the possibilities for the final product outward from "exactly like one or more of the IE games," but to say that that's vague enough to allow for "almost any kind of game" is a bit of a stretch, really. If you want to design a new hammer, and you make an electric hammer... sure, it's different. It's designed for a button to be pressed and for vibrations/very fast repetitive movements to hammer in the nail that you're pressing the head against, instead of for being swung like an old-school hammer. Doesn't mean it's not remarkably similar in the style of tool/function it bears. Anywho, regarding the whole Kickstarter and obligations thing... I think they definitely have an obligation to hear out/consider all the backers' feedback. They shouldn't just immediately dismiss anyone's concerns or feedback. However, deciding that, all things considered, a concern is not enough to justify changing a design... that's something else entirely. There are some people who feel like if a change isn't made, they somehow weren't heard. But, like you said, sometimes where there's smoke, there's fire. If we point out smoke, and they check it out and decide there's no fire, they haven't simply ignored the alarm. A lot of times, even with things they're pretty sure would be fine, they'll tweak things just to further ensure there's no fire. Josh has made it clear on several occasions that his goal is never to implement something just because it appears to be desired, but always to test it and see how it can function in the game. If the results don't really do the desire justice, it doesn't get ultimately changed. I mean, if 30,000 backers all sent in a petition for there to be puppy-rain in the game, I think he probably still wouldn't put that in. There's got to be some rhyme or reason for a change, beyond mere backer wants. Otherwise, anything anyone wanted would make it into the game, and the result would be horrid. So, as much as the team is obligated to hear our feedback, they're just as obligated to make sure the game isn't just some hodge-podge cluster of a bunch of backer desires, too.

No way, man! Maybe for amateur-gramming. These are pros. u_u Okay, seriously though, I think the programming there is feature programming. Finishing the narrative might involve further dialogue implementation and content tweaks/additions, but it doesn't seem like it's really feature additions. I mean, I don't know exactly what they do and do not have done in the narrative, but, it sounds like maybe they've got the whole main skeleton of the narrative set up? ("cutscenes" and all that jazz), so the rest is "just content"? *shrug*. It'd be nice to hear officially, I suppose. I'm gonna call you Pique-a-chu, 'cause you've piqued my curiosity.

It happens. No worries. Good to know, . I mean, it would've been cool if there were one next week. But, it only would've been expected (and disappointing when there wasn't) if we went on believing it was next week. No harm done, ^_^ You aborted that launch sequence before that missile fired, haha.

No. Haha. I think I figured it out. Volourn is "The Nothing" from The Neverending Story. The No-Thing. What kind of thing is he? The "no" kind. The No Thing. Yup. Definitely... u_u

Well... yes and no? The thing is, they told us what they were planning from the get-go, THEN said "hey, if you like this, or even if you just like blindly supporting projects with money and aren't even reading this statement right here, please support us with your money, and if this gets funded to the goal, we're making this bee-yotch!" So, if they only told us "some of our favorite animals are wolves and bears and dogs, so we're going to be making a four-legged animal with a muzzle/snout, in keeping with those animal themes," and everyone was like "YEAH! WE'RE GETTING AN AWESOME WOLF-BEAR-DOG!", and then they end up making an elk... I don't think people can really be like "But wait! I totally gave you money based solely on the assumption that it was SPECIFICALLY going to be the exact animal I thought it was going to be! You now have to do only what I like and had assumed you were going to do!" However, that doesn't mean no one gets any input on stuff. Obviously, even within the realm of perfectly feasible variations on things, there's a lot of room for different implementations and designs, and the backers' feelings on such particulars are probably the most important set of opinions there are. That said, they are still just that: opinions. They play their part and influence things, but they don't just overrule any other design considerations.

It's a bit self-defeating, don't you think, that stuff is always available to pick up for realism's sake, but then is always valuable and sellable at the same time. The real world doesn't give anyone a reason to trudge back to a cave to collect 17gp worth of knick-knacks. The game does. I'm not saying it makes you do it. It provides a reason TO do it, and doesn't even provide any reasons not to do it. The real world gives you reasons not to do something. That's what I'm saying. Off the top of my head, if no merchant would ever buy more than like 2 random weapons or armors from you, ever, then it would suddenly become a lot more realistic. Okay, that sword has value, but it doesn't have always-definite-useful-monetary value. OR, like I've mentioned in many a thread, you could simply have certain blacksmiths and such who will take used/crappy weapons and armor to melt down for their metals. Maybe they'll not even pay you in money for such things, but will improve your relationship with that particular craftsman towards your being able to access his "select" wares, and or maybe earning a discount or free weapon upgrade on down the line, etc. You don't ALWAYS need some free weapon work, and you're not ALWAYS needing to buy whatever that guy might sell to you after an improved rapport. That, and you know that, after you've taken the time to deliver to him some certain amount of scrap metal, you'll have accomplished what you could. You won't be like "wait... I know he has nothing else to give to me for more scrap metal being brought to him, but lemme go back and grab those other 17 armors from where I fought all those kobolds!" If you want realism, then you don't want free money-at-the-cost-of-inventory-space lying around in every single thing that can touch the ground.