The rendered environments and load times...

[redneckdevil]

Mmmm I always thought it had something to do with the merchant inventory system keeping track of every single item u sold to different vendors. I wonder if they make it to were the stock would refresh and delete the items over a certain amount of time, if that would help loading times.

[nipsen]

Maybe? ...might be the stock-keeping lists are probably read from and into lists, and the resources are pilfered after the level-load completes.

 

But if each of the level placeables are read, stuff is computed and so on, before another is read - then you get a process-diagram that looks like a half-finished arkanoid level. Lots of dead-time.

[Zwiebelchen]

Sold items don't go into the mobileobjects file. They are stored elsewhere, so this is not related to the file bloat.

 

Other than that, I still can't understand why all the backers wanted WYSIWYG loot. It brings nothing but imbalance and annoyance to the game.

Edited May 13, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[redneckdevil]

WYSIWYG?

[perilisk]

WYSIWYG?

 

I think that means in this context that you can loot all of the items that each enemy carries, rather than just some designated "loot" items.

[roller12]

WYSIWYG loot, cool name. I like the concept too tbh. if felt good to slaugher talk to a bunch of spear xvarts xaurips and get a bunch of spears as loot

Edited May 13, 2015 by roller12

[petrivanzyl]

I like WYSIWYG loot

[Varana]

Sold items don't go into the mobileobjects file. They are stored elsewhere, so this is not related to the file bloat.

 

Other than that, I still can't understand why all the backers wanted WYSIWYG loot. It brings nothing but imbalance and annoyance to the game.

 

 I take exception to "all the backers". I didn't say anything on that issue.   (Or most others, to be honest.)

 

OTOH, special loot (anyone has a similarly cool name for that?) always feels like the game master / developers cheating. "In lieu of doing AI to make things harder, we just give our Xaurips spears+3. No, you can't loot them." Or: "We made this very cool bad guy who wears really nice armour. No, we didn't make it wearable, and its armour class travels at the speed of plot. Also, it won't turn up as loot, of course."

 

It's annoying both ways.

Edited May 13, 2015 by Varana

[perilisk]

 

Sold items don't go into the mobileobjects file. They are stored elsewhere, so this is not related to the file bloat.

 

Other than that, I still can't understand why all the backers wanted WYSIWYG loot. It brings nothing but imbalance and annoyance to the game.

 

 I take exception to "all the backers". I didn't say anything on that issue.   (Or most others, to be honest.)

 

OTOH, special loot (anyone has a similarly cool name for that?) always feels like the game master / developers cheating. "In lieu of doing AI to make things harder, we just give our Xaurips spears+3. No, you can't loot them." Or: "We made this very cool bad guy who wears really nice armour. No, we didn't make it wearable, and its armour class travels at the speed of plot. Also, it won't turn up as loot, of course."

 

It's annoying both ways.

 

 

Special loot is annoying, sure, but it could be justified -- e.g. the item is powered by the user's soul rather than an intrinsic enchantment, so in the hands of anyone unworthy or untrained, it's just a normal or uselessly magical item. I sort of feel like that would even be a good approach for having some class abilities that are tied to an item (say, a set of paladin abilities based in the use of a particular relic venerated by the Paladin's order, like a Holy Avenger).

[Psychevore]

 

Sold items don't go into the mobileobjects file. They are stored elsewhere, so this is not related to the file bloat.

 

Other than that, I still can't understand why all the backers wanted WYSIWYG loot. It brings nothing but imbalance and annoyance to the game.

 

 I take exception to "all the backers". I didn't say anything on that issue.   (Or most others, to be honest.)

 

OTOH, special loot (anyone has a similarly cool name for that?) always feels like the game master / developers cheating. "In lieu of doing AI to make things harder, we just give our Xaurips spears+3. No, you can't loot them." Or: "We made this very cool bad guy who wears really nice armour. No, we didn't make it wearable, and its armour class travels at the speed of plot. Also, it won't turn up as loot, of course."

 

It's annoying both ways.

 

If you're going to make a big deal out of this... why not not make a big deal about, I dunno, all armors being available to all species? Aumaua armors should be too big for everyone, Dwarf and Orlan too small for everyone and probably not even interchangeable between the species, and so on and so forth.

 

In the end we're playing a game and too much 'realism' will destroy it.

[Zwiebelchen]

WYSIWYG?

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=WYSIWYG

[wanderon]

 

WYSIWYG?

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=WYSIWYG

 

 

Yes why on earth would you want to actually converse with other humans about things that are posted on a forum when you can just avoid conversation all together and type into google - because you know interaction with others of your species is just so outdated today when we have the internet at our disposal - smh   

[Zwiebelchen]

 

 

WYSIWYG?

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=WYSIWYG

 

 

Yes why on earth would you want to actually converse with other humans about things that are posted on a forum when you can just avoid conversation all together and type into google - because you know interaction with others of your species is just so outdated today when we have the internet at our disposal - smh   

 

 

Yeah, because looking up an acronym you don't know is an absolutely terrible lifechoice...

[wanderon]

 

 

 

WYSIWYG?

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=WYSIWYG

 

 

Yes why on earth would you want to actually converse with other humans about things that are posted on a forum when you can just avoid conversation all together and type into google - because you know interaction with others of your species is just so outdated today when we have the internet at our disposal - smh   

 

 

Yeah, because looking up an acronym you don't know is an absolutely terrible lifechoice...

 

Yeah but the point is it IS a choice and not one you should be demeaned for if you choose to ask the real people who may have used it instead. 

[Zwiebelchen]

 

 

 

 

WYSIWYG?

 

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=WYSIWYG

 

 

Yes why on earth would you want to actually converse with other humans about things that are posted on a forum when you can just avoid conversation all together and type into google - because you know interaction with others of your species is just so outdated today when we have the internet at our disposal - smh   

 

 

Yeah, because looking up an acronym you don't know is an absolutely terrible lifechoice...

 

Yeah but the point is it IS a choice and not one you should be demeaned for if you choose to ask the real people who may have used it instead. 

 

 

Sorry, but I don't see any value in a discussion about acronyms when the topic is clearly about something else. Googling an acronym takes 3 seconds. Waiting for a response takes a day.

[nipsen]

...are we absolutely sure the problem wasn't that the acronym loot concept doesn't make much sense?

 

Great that someone thought about tying the mob equipment to the loot tables. Or let the mobs equip things from the loot-table. Bioware didn't think of adding that for NWN and... up to DA:O at least. Bethesda seems to not like the idea either. Most games has one random drop-table for each type of class of monster, etc.

 

But you don't get to loot everything you see. You get some coherency between what you see and what you get. ...so, pretty much the opposite of wysiwyg...?

[Varana]

Bethesda seems to not like the idea either.

 

Maybe I don't understand your idea of "tying the mob equipment to the loot tables", but that is quite exactly what Bethesda does. (I have no idea about ESO, but the traditional games.) TES loot is WYSIWYG in pure form: You can loot the complete inventory of an NPC after killing him, and there is nothing to loot but what he had in his inventory. Inventory and equipment (and appearance and level and so on) may be governed by sometimes quite elaborate random lists (more so in the newer games), so it's also not only one drop table.

 

At least for NPCs. Animals are different, as they usually don't carry much stuff with them, and teeth and eyeballs aren't exactly "inventory". :D They're more along the line of one loot table per monster, but that's to be expected.

[nipsen]

Right.. Morrowind had that. And when I finally managed to get rid of some boss of a quadruple-wielding sword wraith down in the dungeon dimensions -- and they drop a cloudberry. Woohoo.

 

I'm guessing that it's a combination of not wanting to model all the weapons that can be used, and not being able to justify the weapons in the ruleset, etc. Which, as we might recall, PoE solved in the design initially... Having enemies and player characters actually work on the same rules.. 

[Varana]

"a quadruple-wielding sword wraith down in the dungeon dimensions" - err, what's that?

 

I referred to NPCs. They didn't do that completely with creatures - Dremora or Golden Saints didn't have armour, but they did have their weapons assigned and lootable, for instance.

Edited May 18, 2015 by Varana

[Zwiebelchen]

I don't get why most people feel that on the sliding scale of "What you see is what you get" and "What you see is totally unrelated to what you get" there is no halfway-through that could be the perfect solution for an RPG.

 

For some weird reason, RPG producers tend to think that the choice of loot systems is binary. It's not.

 

 

What I actually regard as the perfect solution for a game like PoE is what I call "filtered loot". It's practically inbetween both extremes:

You get exactly what the mob is using, minus filtered-out trash loot that nobody cares about.

 

In reality, this would work like this:

When fighting a group of 6 Xaurips and a Xaurip Chieftain, you will always get the unique loot of the Chieftain, but you will only get one non-magical Xaurip Spear and Xaurip Shield on top (compared to 6 spears and shields with the current loot system).

In the grand scheme of things, a system like that would work on the principle of "no duplicates". Which means that every item will only drop once per encounter.

This would still generate enough trash loot to sell for those that enjoy selling loot to vendors, but will also significantly reduce the spam of pointless items aswell. Plus, it wouldn't be frustrating for guys that enjoy WYSIWYG loot, as you will always get that cool blade from the boss you killed, no questions asked.

Edited May 20, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[nipsen]

Good point that. And I always imagine that the adventurers in video-games have these tour-guide guilds they rely on, that keep the quest-givers occupied until the party arrives, gather more mobs each time the party travels on, that carry all their stuff on a cart behind them, just out of view. And who quickly come in and gut Troll-carcasses and Xaurips to get the innards and tongues, so the adventurers can be photographed with their trophies.

 

Had a wizard in a pnp game once have to choose between picking up a sword, and filling his backpack with scrolls (or else not being able to run). And he couldn't do it. Couldn't choose. So he stood there, angry, with red eyes, in this burning tower, and cursed the gods for not letting him carry more loot. It was just too much for him to bear.

 

But I mean, there's nothing inherently problematic about having endless amounts of junk-loot lying around, or letting the enemies be reasonably equipped, for example, and that if you defeat the war-chief, you'll possibly get access to all their loot, not just the unique sword. If you get hold of and capture the cultist, you might get hold of their rings and insignia, and so on. That could open up new quest-paths, and a game could maybe highlight gear sets, or let you continue the quest once you have significant enough parts of the sets for the quests, that sort of thing.

 

But you have to account for the adventure gear economy. That huge cart the adventure guild has. I.e., ideally, you would let weapons have value in the field, but be difficult to pick up and carry around to sell, etc. So that you might want to keep a common sword you find, because it's available. But you might not want to purchase one, because it's not significantly better than what you have. While equipping armies with common gear is reasonable, possible, and explained well, but that there's still a cost involved in outfitting everything standing upright with crossbows and chainmail.

 

..and stuff like that often makes it easier to justify difficult choices at the top of a burning tower, because then the game assigns value to picking one type of item over another, for example. Before, you just had stupid rules that lost you money, that the game forces you to get elsewhere anyway. Afterwards, you're making a choice between what might be most useful to you right now. And because that element exists, you make better choices as a "designer" as well, because you're not just randomly throwing things around in the encounters.

[Galaen]

Somethig that would factor into loot that I rarely see mentioned is the fact that you engaged and killed these enemies in combat. Equipment breaks. How much usable gear can you reasonably expect to recover when you just burned your foes to death with a fireball or disolved them with a cloud of acid? Even just tanking and spanking would reduce the amount of recoverable gear.

Edited May 20, 2015 by Galaen

[FlintlockJazz]

Somethig that would factor into loot that I rarely see mentioned is the fact that you engaged and killed these enemies in combat. Equipment breaks. How much usable gear can you reasonably expect to recover when you just burned your foes to death with a fireball or disolved them with a cloud of acid? Even just tanking and spanking would reduce the amount of recoverable gear.

Yep, and the wear and tear of armour as it gets used and smashed up, not counting the fact that even if it survives in decent condition it was made to fit someone else and would probably require refitting (if possible) to get it to fit someone else without penalty (unless they were munitions-type armour in which case it's inferior quality anyway).

[Gizmo]

 I would gladly trade 3d for these 2d environments if it meant better load times.

I'm pretty sure they are 3d environments; just geometrically simple ones.

 

(Also: 3D implies 2D [assets] first.  The biggest slowdowns in Fallout, for instance, are because of the 2D assets it has to load.)

Edited May 20, 2015 by Gizmo