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

[Lephys]

Eh.. In games terms he is harder than any other creature you may encounter.

 

Too many attacks which hit all the time for too much damage paired with insane magic resistance, superb saving throws and Armor Class your fighter would beg to have.

 

 

 

He can kill a full party within a few rounds.

I'm sure if you do it right, he's easy, though. Because CHALLENGE!

[Kjaamor]

"If memory serves" using the console to summon Drizzt it takes two summoning to defeat Saverok,

 

Although the difference, of course, is that you can run from Saverok.

[Quadrone]

 

 

Weird, that's actually stuff I love, especially for a re-run.

Knowing to which shop to go to equip my party with some crutial items, optimizing your character early with that great class-specific item you only get from that one monster, knowing secret places to give yourself a little headstart, stuff like that...

 

So I guess I'll have to disagree with you there.

 

 

 

Ohhhhhh c'mon guys !!! You kill Dritzz for the scimitars ..? He should be able to insta-kill the party, as in truth NO BG1 party is able to kill him without exploiting the battle. Anyway, ok, powergamers duuuuuuh, no respect for the least itsy-bitsy part of RP. Not your fault you exist, but it's the game's fault that allows you to act in such manner.

 

 

*edit*: hopefully PoE will have what it takes not to allow such exploits

 

 

Yeah, thanks for putting words in my mouth jackass.

Please do show me the sentence where I say that I love exploiting game mechanics to get my hands on unobtainable loot!

Work on your reading comprehension instead of making stuff up.

[rjshae]

It might be interesting to include random broken loot that you need to get repaired for full value. There had to be a reason some of the random loot wasn't being used.

[J.E. Sawyer]

 

Additionally, our crafting/enchantment system does allow you to modify weapons -- even unique ones.  So if you have a specific group of bonuses you'd really like to have, you will probably be able to make that happen.

 

This is really interesting. Does this apply to armor as well?

 

 

Yes.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Interesting and very nice indeed! This gives me a Mystic vibe with her reasonably flexible crafting options (and money sinks) from the lastest D3 instalment: RoS.

[JFSOCC]

I like being able to modify my gear, so I'm happy.

 

I wonder if it is possible to "salvage" enchantments/modifiers from existing gear, in order to craft it onto different gear?

[Messier-31]

 

"Ohhhhhh c'mon guys !!! You kill Drizzt for the scimitars ..? He should be able to insta-kill the party, as in truth NO BG1 party is able to kill him without exploiting the battle"

 

Eh.. In game terms he's not exactly super tough. The books, on the other, lol.

Of course he is not tough. Thats why you need to exploit pathfinding bug to stand a chance at defeating him.

 

 

Never used the pathfinding bug the lake grants.

 

Monster summoning wands and a lot of arrows; is this considered as an exploit too?

Edited April 25, 2014 by Messier-31

[Kjaamor]

I always favoured the single animated skeleton vs Drizzt off the screen trick.

[J.E. Sawyer]

I like being able to modify my gear, so I'm happy.

 

I wonder if it is possible to "salvage" enchantments/modifiers from existing gear, in order to craft it onto different gear?

 

No, you can't break down existing enchantments.  All enchanting is done using three ingredients: a critter part, a plant/herb, and a gem.  The counts of each ingredient may vary, but there are always three ingredients.  Additionally, there may be a copper cost that's subtracted directly from your total wealth.

[IndiraLightfoot]

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.

[Lephys]

No, you can't break down existing enchantments.  All enchanting is done using three ingredients: a critter part, a plant/herb, and a gem.  The counts of each ingredient may vary, but there are always three ingredients.  Additionally, there may be a copper cost that's subtracted directly from your total wealth.

What would be splendid is if the material of the money was actually the catalyst for the enchantment. "No, I didn't pay some mysterious force to enchant this, and he's going to go buy bubblegum with it next week. I literally spent those coins in the enchantment process, just like the rest of the materials I used."

[Sheikh]

I dunno...I think defeating particularly powerful enemies should result in you getting particularly powerful weapons, and it makes sense that the weapons they drop are the ones they used on you. After all, if you decide to kill Drizzt, who is known to carry two legendary swords, you'd expect to be able to take his swords when he dies.

 

I don't mind there being some randomisation in loot, but it still needs to make sense, and be right for the context. If I kill a hundred giant rats, I don't expect the last one to vomit up a +2 dagger just before it dies. Similarly, if I kill a big guy with a nasty looking halberd, I'd expect his corpse to contain a nasty looking halberd, and not suddenly have a mauler instead.

 

On a related note, however, I'd like there to be fewer armour drops - particularly with plate armour. I never liked the idea that you can kill a dwarf, take his +2 Harness of Dwarvishness, and put it on your elf (because it'll fit him perfectly of course!! :D ). At the very least, a harness worn by a dwarf should only fit dwarves.

You can still have randomization in the context of this. The magical attributes of the sword Drizzt carries are different on every playthrough. So can be the attributes of the nasty looking halberd, etc. Up to this point I dont see any good argument not to have randomized loot atm.

[JFSOCC]

 

I like being able to modify my gear, so I'm happy.

 

I wonder if it is possible to "salvage" enchantments/modifiers from existing gear, in order to craft it onto different gear?

 

No, you can't break down existing enchantments.  All enchanting is done using three ingredients: a critter part, a plant/herb, and a gem.  The counts of each ingredient may vary, but there are always three ingredients.  Additionally, there may be a copper cost that's subtracted directly from your total wealth.

 

that's a shame, but thanks for your answer all the same. I do like enjoy gems as part of enchanting. That's something I can easily believe.

[Valorian]

A few places (chests, quest rewards) where 2 items could be randomly interchanged is fine, but I dislike when item randomization is applied to enemies.

 

 

I like being able to modify my gear, so I'm happy.

 

I wonder if it is possible to "salvage" enchantments/modifiers from existing gear, in order to craft it onto different gear?

 

No, you can't break down existing enchantments.  All enchanting is done using three ingredients: a critter part, a plant/herb, and a gem.  The counts of each ingredient may vary, but there are always three ingredients.  Additionally, there may be a copper cost that's subtracted directly from your total wealth.

 

 

As long as these ingredients are a limited resource (i.e. they don't constantly respawn and regrow), I'm looking forward to it.

[Linkamus]

I love IWD, but I hate the random loot mechanic. I much prefer Baldur's Gate's approach. After I've beaten the game a few times, I like to make my own party, and tailor them exactly how I want, knowing exactly what loot I will find where, and pump up the difficulty as high as possible.

[Lephys]

A few places (chests, quest rewards) where 2 items could be randomly interchanged is fine, but I dislike when item randomization is applied to enemies.

I agree about how it's usually applied to enemies. I think I'd be fine with it, though, if it was sort of applied to a whole playthrough/instance at once, rather than on-the-fly rolls when you happen to encounter the enemy.

 

As in, "There's always this one super nice axe, and this one super nice sword, but in THIS playthrough, Steve the Orc Commander is notorious for his axe, so Phil the Xaurip Lord has the sword this time. From the get-go."

 

Of course, I dunno if it's feasible to implement it that way, or if it's even worth it to do so. But, the sheer change-up would be nice. Instead of "Oh, I'm not using axes this time, so I'm not really worried about Steve the Orc Commander, because all he ever wields is that one axe."

[Valorian]

I don't think there's any particular value in randomly changing the weapon that a specific enemy is notorious for. 

Lines such as "I'll crush you to GOO (with my sword)" would have to be rewritten too.   

I prefer when creatures have a set personality, which yes, includes the choice of weaponry and armor.

[rjshae]

I can't say I've wanted to replay a game again because of random loot drops. But it can provide a certain sense of sponteneity.

 

What might be interesting is an armor/shield/weapon slot upgrade system that can come with random upgrades. The weapon drops for different encounters can be mostly fixed, but they have a chance of having a randomly generated minor upgrade in one of the slots.

[Valorian]

I believe they're not going for randomly generated/upgraded items, which is a good thing. Instead, like Josh explained, two similar weapons could be randomly interchanged in specific places.

[Lephys]

I don't think there's any particular value in randomly changing the weapon that a specific enemy is notorious for.

I wouldn't say there isn't any, but I do believe it's quite possible that it isn't really very valuable.

 

Lines such as "I'll crush you to GOO (with my sword)" would have to be rewritten too.   

They would, but the game wouldn't be particularly lacking if no enemies ever called out their specific weapon. i.e. "I shall decorate my halls with your entrails!"

 

I don't know if there's really a best way to do it, off the top of my head, but it would be kinda nice if some combat encounter with a specific person (someone's body guard or something) wasn't just always the same static thing. Especially with all the stuff that changes with your character and party in different playthroughs, it'd be nice if you didn't just fight "that guy who uses that exact same equipment and weapon and AI and I already know exactly how to anticipate and beat him." Again, when it's value is hardly at all story integral and is mostly just combat-challenge value.

 

I think dynamics in the combat challenge aspect are a lot more important than some slight dynamic to loot, though. Although, I think almost any general system (especially anything repetitious) could use a pinch of "randomness," for seasoning.

[Valorian]

 

They would, but the game wouldn't be particularly lacking if no enemies ever called out their specific weapon. i.e. "I shall decorate my halls with your entrails!"

 

I don't know if there's really a best way to do it, off the top of my head, but it would be kinda nice if some combat encounter with a specific person (someone's body guard or something) wasn't just always the same static thing. Especially with all the stuff that changes with your character and party in different playthroughs, it'd be nice if you didn't just fight "that guy who uses that exact same equipment and weapon and AI and I already know exactly how to anticipate and beat him." Again, when it's value is hardly at all story integral and is mostly just combat-challenge value.

 

I think dynamics in the combat challenge aspect are a lot more important than some slight dynamic to loot, though. Although, I think almost any general system (especially anything repetitious) could use a pinch of "randomness," for seasoning.

 

 

Sure, they don't need to mention their specific weapon, but it would be a pity to have a Talent that boosts prowess with swords and then randomly receive a mace.

 

The AI won't always use the same tactics because there's a bit of randomness involved, so you don't have to worry that a static AI will ruin your subsequent playthroughs.

[Hassat Hunter]

Then you give them talents for swords AND axes, so whatever they receive they are proficient.

 

I personally think it would really add to the game not knowing for certain what you get, and have to roll with the punches.

[Valorian]

There's this wild possibility that one can pick only a limited number of Talents. Shocking, I know. So assigning redundant Talents to creatures just to satiate your hunger for omnipresent item randomization might not be such a good idea.

[Hassat Hunter]

And enemies would have those limitations why?

(FYI KOTOR has a "proficiency all" that pretty much all enemies have just to prevent designers from manually assigning that for all of them and have the full array of item options, most of which aren't even weapons the PC can use)

Edited May 8, 2014 by Hassat Hunter