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Varied loot and balanced random loot tables = even more replayability?


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Ten similar enemies can be equipped, by hand, with ten different weapons and suits of armor and then placed where they fit. I love that.

:lol: Thank you for completely missing the point.

 

The fact is they weren't equipped by hand. Why? Too much effort.

 

It would be great if every single item in the game was placed by hand, even with some serious thought put into the placement and the backstory. And then every item could be given ten different alternate locations and a number of alternative variations. But that's not gonna happen. Too much effort. The fact is that the vast majority of the loot is just standard loot for the enemy type, and the enemies themselves were just copied and pasted all over the place. That's "equipping by hand" for you.

 

A random loot system can take care of all that.

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Ten similar enemies can be equipped, by hand, with ten different weapons and suits of armor and then placed where they fit. I love that.

:lol: Thank you for completely missing the point.

 

The fact is they weren't equipped by hand. Why? Too much effort.

 

 

 

Good things regularly require effort. You have discovered reality, congratulations Caerdon!

Placing items by hand requires effort.

 

Randomness shouldn't design enemies, especially not in a game like PoE.

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But that is not what we're discussing.

 

I know what we're discussing. You said "randomly generated loot is aRPG territory". I retorted - and included random placement into the discussion from the start. You haven't made a single solid argument how that leads to ARPG territory beyond some vague references to "further implications of such a system".

 

Why not finally show us your hand?

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Ten similar enemies can be equipped, by hand, with ten different weapons and suits of armor and then placed where they fit. I love that.

:lol: Thank you for completely missing the point.

 

The fact is they weren't equipped by hand. Why? Too much effort.

 

 

 

Good things regularly require effort. You have discovered reality, congratulations Caerdon!

Placing items by hand requires effort.

 

Randomness shouldn't design enemies, especially not in a game like PoE.

 

 

Well, I'm not wasting any more effort on you, that's for sure.

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But that is not what we're discussing.

 

I know what we're discussing. You said "randomly generated loot is aRPG territory". I retorted - and included random placement into the discussion from the start. You haven't made a single solid argument how that leads to ARPG territory beyond some vague references to "further implications of such a system".

 

Why not finally show us your hand?

 

You don't get to decide the parameters of my argument. And i, as well as others in this thread, have already explained what those further implications are. Loot hoarding, loot fatigue, leveling-by-loot, etc.

"You're a fool if you believe I would trust your benevolence. Step aside and you and your lackeys will be unhurt."


 


 


Baldur's Gate portraits for Pillars of Eternity   IXI   Icewind Dale portraits for Pillars of Eternity   IXI   Icewind Dale 2 portraits for Pillars of Eternity


 


[slap Aloth]

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Finally, we get to have great use of all those lovely gems! :)

 

In IWD2 alone, I'm literally drowning in them. I hope there will be gem bags, potion coffers, scroll cases and the like in PE too.

the nwn2 system is sounding familiar to josh's teases 'bout enchanting weapons/armour. recipes called for a combination of essences and a gem. essences were, for all intents and purposes, critter parts. sadly for indira, the gems required for nwn2 crafting were not the kinda l007 that filled up gem bags. anything you would bother to craft were requiring the most valuable gems.

 

the plant/herb stuff is new, and am not sure we see it as a good idea either. any kinda scavenger-hunt gameplay always feels like bloat to Gromnir. kill a dragon or jabberwocky to get scales is going to be involving combat. whether you like it or not, combat is gameplay. mindless uncover far corners of maps in search of special babba yagga witch hazel? *groan* am hoping there is more to the plant/herbs collection than... collection.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

The NWN2 crafting system was pretty well broken IMO.

Near the end of the game my Dwarven Defender had like 30 resist all , 8-DR, 8 regen, immunity to literally every effect, and so forth and so on. (there was immunity to crit stuff too...crazy)

 

Not to mention +5 keen mithril axes of win the game.

Edited by GreyFox
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But that is not what we're discussing.

 

I know what we're discussing. You said "randomly generated loot is aRPG territory". I retorted - and included random placement into the discussion from the start. You haven't made a single solid argument how that leads to ARPG territory beyond some vague references to "further implications of such a system".

 

Why not finally show us your hand?

 

You don't get to decide the parameters of my argument. And i, as well as others in this thread, have already explained what those further implications are. Loot hoarding, loot fatigue, leveling-by-loot, etc.

 

 

Yet you haven't explained why a random loot system would necessarily lead to those things, and I have already explained that it wouldn't. So far you haven't presented any counterarguments, instead you just keep claiming I'm not addressing the issues you are raising, which isn't true.

 

Loot hoarding, loot fatigue and leveling-by-loot are all symptoms of a random loot system done wrong, nothing more.

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Finally, we get to have great use of all those lovely gems! :)

 

In IWD2 alone, I'm literally drowning in them. I hope there will be gem bags, potion coffers, scroll cases and the like in PE too.

the nwn2 system is sounding familiar to josh's teases 'bout enchanting weapons/armour. recipes called for a combination of essences and a gem. essences were, for all intents and purposes, critter parts. sadly for indira, the gems required for nwn2 crafting were not the kinda l007 that filled up gem bags. anything you would bother to craft were requiring the most valuable gems.

 

the plant/herb stuff is new, and am not sure we see it as a good idea either. any kinda scavenger-hunt gameplay always feels like bloat to Gromnir. kill a dragon or jabberwocky to get scales is going to be involving combat. whether you like it or not, combat is gameplay. mindless uncover far corners of maps in search of special babba yagga witch hazel? *groan* am hoping there is more to the plant/herbs collection than... collection.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

The NWN2 crafting system was pretty well broken IMO.

Near the end of the game my Dwarven Defender had like 30 resist all , 8-DR, 8 regen, immunity to literally every effect, and so forth and so on. (there was immunity to crit stuff too...crazy)

 

Not to mention +5 keen mithril axes of win the game.

 

 

HOTU crafting system was even worse.. :w00t:

From George Ziets @ http://new.spring.me/#!/user/GZiets/timeline/responses

Didn’t like the fact that I don’t get XP for combat. While this does put more emphasis on solving quests, the lack of rewards for killing creatures makes me want to avoid combat (the core activity of the game) as much as I can.

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Sometimes I love debates like this.

 

So the TL;DR version is:

Random loot is bad, and loot placed manually is bad.

 

lol

 

Maybe we can use bad words at them. :biggrin:

 

What a lovely attitude. I assume that expressing one's ideas and opinions on a discussion forum is also very bad?

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HOTU crafting system was even worse.. :w00t:

HotU was bad, but that's because they added in a system over a vanilla game that didn't have any crafting whatsoever.

 

Also, as I recall HotU, it started pretty high-level, and went nearly epic level (if not epic level).

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The best solution seems to me that they could have a mode option which introduced more random variables into the game, loot, enemies, perhaps even the goal for certain quest locations within a "dungeon" (rather than knowing exactly where to go in a dungeon, its placed at 1 of X locations), as a more replayable mode.

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HOTU crafting system was even worse.. :w00t:

HotU was bad, but that's because they added in a system over a vanilla game that didn't have any crafting whatsoever.

 

Also, as I recall HotU, it started pretty high-level, and went nearly epic level (if not epic level).

 

 

I just mean.. some of the things you could put on items even at "EPIC" levels were extremely broken.. mainly thinking about the immunity to damage types and the stacking of said attributes.. it was nasty.

From George Ziets @ http://new.spring.me/#!/user/GZiets/timeline/responses

Didn’t like the fact that I don’t get XP for combat. While this does put more emphasis on solving quests, the lack of rewards for killing creatures makes me want to avoid combat (the core activity of the game) as much as I can.

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Randomly-generated stuff is SO horrible when not well-tailored. Borderlands 2 is a great example.

 

You can find a shotgun that only holds 2 rounds, uses 4 rounds per shot, and "fires as fast as you can pull the trigger" (basically, infinite fire rate). That item shouldn't even exist. Its attributes are at conflict. Of course it fires as fast as you pull the trigger... You can only fire it once!

 

Anywho, I agree that if you do it right, it can be very awesome, conceptually at least. But, I'm really not sure if the amount of effort required to do it right is a feasible amount or not. I'm not expressing high doubt with that, I just honestly have no idea one way or the other.

Should we not start with some Ipelagos, or at least some Greater Ipelagos, before tackling a named Arch Ipelago? 6_u

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