I know it's probably been brought up in the past, but I felt like it needs to be stated again. The way loot and stat generation of the items currently works, is just awful. The fact that they are random, combined with no respawns is the big issue. Really, you should be finding your much needed upgrades through adventuring, and not some random store.

This was one of the weak points of the first game, and it currently appears to persist across the second. Short of hand-crafting every piece of loot, and having a form of smart detection that draws upon your skill allocation to determine drops, I had another idea that could help out.

Mainly, making crafting a skill that can be raised without spending points, but rather by finding books. In addition to that, rather than have an aspect of crafting be something that tries to outright replace the gear in the game, instead have it be something that enhances and supports it.

1. Changing the appearance of the armor/weapon within its type (for example, if there are multiple leather class appearances, you can change a piece to a different appearance as long as it matches type)
2. Dying armor/weapons, including individual parts
3. Enhancing their magical/physical defenses and durability
4. Exchanging stats. For example, say you find a weapon with +1 single handed, well with some investment, it could be possible to change it to dual wield

This would also, I imagine help a lot in dealing with the issue of random itemization. The problem I had with the crafting in the first DOS in my opinion was that it supplanted gear you found, rather than adding to or enhancing it. It pretty much made every piece of equipment in the game obsolete with the only downside to it being how unbearably tedious and unfun the process was.

So your sollution to bad loot is mainly to make it *look* different. Eeeehm... I can point out a few flaws with that.

Durability is useless. +stats could work, but I would bind it to another item (say, the repair items as I stated in another topic, removing durability and making it do that).

[quote=Hassat Hunter]So your sollution to bad loot is mainly to make it *look* different. Eeeehm... I can point out a few flaws with that.

Durability is useless. +stats could work, but I would bind it to another item (say, the repair items as I stated in another topic, removing durability and making it do that). [/quote]

No, I'm suggesting that after getting the base item, it should be possible to tailor most or all of its attributes to your uses, if the randomized nature does not fit. Similar to how we get alterations for clothing in real life. The rest is mostly fluff I added in as an aside to go with the basic idea of using crafting to modify our gear.

Ideally however, I would rather they outright fix the system entirely, as it is right now it is essentially worse than the random loot systems of Diablo like games. But if they won't do that, we could at least have an in-game method to "fix" it ourselves as we desire.

The only way I could get good loot in D:OS 1 was by buying thousands of empty potion bottles and going to a poison barrel and spending hours filling them all up one by one and selling them, then leaving my game on literally all day long so that I could check stores every hour and buy the equipment that was actually good. And that's obviously not how the game is intended to be played.

I have found no good loot in D:OS 2 so far. Also, I have no money, since you're almost guaranteed to get caught if you steal...

There was no point in OS1 where you ever needed BiS gear. The gear you found may not have been the best but it was more than enough.
In OS2 you get not enough loot. It feels like OS1 gave like double or triple the amount -> better chance of something good or atleast usable.
What we need is just a bit more loot and not the ability to choose the stats ourselves.
But i would like to see some changes in how the stats are rolled on the items.
First remove durability and by this indestructible ( its worthless ).
DO not roll Strength or Finesse if there is a Intelligence roll ( same for the other too. If there is Finesse i dont need Intelligence ). Nobody needs Strength/Intelligence Hybrid items. If i want to play Hybrid i take 1 Strength item and 1 Intelligence item. For pure characters + Endurance or + Memory would be way better -> less trash equipment.

Yep, D:OS 2 so far not only has very little loot, it's also pretty much impossible to find any money and almost nothing you sell gets you more than 5 gold a piece. I'm level 4 and I've only just managed to replace my "Twig with a string" bow and "shabby wand" pieces.

My Red Prince warrior was specced for 1-handed and Strength, but he's been using 2-handed Finesse spears because that's the best stuff he's been able to find.

I also found a pre-placed Level 2 sword in a hidden area. The problem was that it needed two characters using teleport to get there, and you're pretty much guaranteed to be level 3 before you can possibly find it, thus making the find worthless.

I agree with your point that OS1 never needed BiS gear, but I disagree that you don't get enough loot in OS2. You're in a weird prison camp on an island, being dominated by the magisters. It makes sense that you wouldn't get good equipment there. However, once you escape the prison, and as you go traipsing through various explorable locations, the loot you get magnifies. I ended chapter 1 just now, I spent 90% of my gold on buying skills for my characters, and the other 10% on gear to fill out gaps I still had or get gear that was a massive upgrade. Overall, the gear you get once you leave is really good. I had very little instances of getting gear that wasn't suited to ANY of my party members. And if it wasn't I sold it for something that was, the volume of loot you get overall is more than enough to buy stuff you need (I didn't steal anything). You don't need to keep up with gear EVERY time you level. Every couple of levels getting an upgrade is more than enough.

I'm personally fine with loot being scarcer... having to swap out every 5 minutes and having to go through 15 potential new weapons gets tiresome. So far D:OS2 does fine. Especially seeing the magic/physical armor needs balance I would hate to switch equipment more often.

The real issue is with the ability calculation currently anyway.

I'm liking the scarcity of loot so far as well. The economy aspect of this game so far is very good. You have to watch every penny as they say.

I would rather see a way to upgrade gear - if I do find a piece of gear I like, (especially a unique or +skills), it would be nice to be able to enhance it, or level it up to your current level.

I like the scarcity as well, but the early loot could stand to be a bit more interesting.

I don't mind the scarcity myself, so much as the possibility of winning a hard won fight, or making it to an ornate chest and getting stuff that is worthless to your entire party, and then having to just sell it for peanuts. I'm talking for example, getting two handed axes/swords when your party has nobody who uses them, or finding 1 handed weapons with bonus to 1 handed, when your only melee character dual wields, but doesn't use daggers.

Random loot is a big issue for a game without respawns, and as I noted earlier, having to sulk away and find an upgrade off a merchant, or going through the tedious process of crafting equipment for every level kind of kills the sense of adventure and accomplishment from either fighting a tough boss, or solving the puzzles of a tomb.

Well I'm no great fan of random loot, but I think you're overstating the negative effects here.

For example if you find a really great Finesse item but you're a strength weapon user, more often than not at low levels you can use the really great finesse weapon and not have many negative effects. Unless you absolutely just must have the proper weapon for some reason.

Overcoming a loot shortage or scarcity is a rewarding challenge of its own.

And that level of scarcity will become less of an issue once the economy plateaus, it always does.

I see a lot of complaints about a lack of loot, but in each one of my four playthroughs so far, I was able to get an abundance simply by checking the merchants after leveling up each time. Not sure what the problem is - are people looking for OP items? You just need decent gear, and if an occasional really good item shows up, that just makes it an extra special day. It wouldn't be good to be inundated in items.

Yeah, I think this is the biggest problem. I've found a lot of loot which was not useful for my current party, which also sells for pretty much nothing. If I could get better value for it in trade, then the scarcity of loot would matter much less.




I CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY THAT **** BECAUSE THE GEAR I DO FIND SELLS FOR ****.

Well, you can always use Lucky Charm.
You bash it, yet it seems you can kinda use it.

With lucky charm, I find pearls...which sell for 1 gold. Seems like they nerfed sell prices into the ground for some reason. It really wouldn't be so bad if the stuff I scavenge would sell for more than 1-2 gold.

Paintings are 70-90 gold (reputation 0)... there's about... 8 or so paintings inside the fort.

[quote]I see a lot of complaints about a lack of loot, but in each one of my four playthroughs so far, I was able to get an abundance simply by checking the merchants after leveling up each time. Not sure what the problem is - are people looking for OP items? You just need decent gear, and if an occasional really good item shows up, that just makes it an extra special day. It wouldn't be good to be inundated in items.[/quote]

I CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY THAT **** BECAUSE THE GEAR I DO FIND SELLS FOR ****.
[/quote]

Eh, if you put up a couple points on barter on at least one of your characters, and collect everything you come across, you end up with plenty of gold to buy anything you want.

Things are less expensive too compared to D:OS, but there is a larger gap between sell prices and buy prices.

I've found the loot drops to be reasonable across the chapter as a whole. The prison camp is scarce (as you'd expect), but the quality and quantity both dramatically improve as you move on to other parts of the island.

I'd be 100% in favor of dropping durability and related traits though. It's one of those RPG mechanics that seems to persist out of inertia rather than because it does anything meaningful and it's rendered moot the moment you pick up a repair hammer.

Yeah durability is pure tedium when all it means is "have blacksmithing, bother to click extra buttons between some battles." It's not even something that contributes to reasource management, it's just meaningless

If you have no money you need to learn how to steal better, and you need to know the secrets of the "curse bag"

Elaborate

Perhaps, just perhaps, since this is a role-playing game, we might want to occasionally roleplay people who do not steal from those prisoners who are "innocent" and who have pretty much no possessions anyway, or murder merchants for their items.

Not sure I agree with all your points, but if you want to complain about the loot in D:OS as far as I'm concerned you are preaching to the choir.
I argued this topic to exhaustion over the previous game and I'd count it a lost battle at this point, but since you started it, I'll jump in.

The first D:OS was hands down my game of the year in 2014, I liked the EE even more... And I still think that itemization was arguably the greatest weakness of the game. Which makes even more jarring to see that very little has improved in the sequel (hell, I'd say things are looking even worse here, but to be fair it is an early alpha).

This inexplicable obsession Larian has in sticking with randomized itemization (so making your equipment largely the result of RNG) in a game where everything else is reasonably predictable and encounters are finite in numbers is blatant mismatch.

Anyway, my issue with it goes beyond scarcity (I actually like scarce loot in principle, WHEN every major finding feels rewarding) or overall difficulty.
My main gripe is that "randomized items" to me don't feel "always different and interesting" as some love to claim. Quite the opposite: they always feel generic and unexciting (yes, even when powerful).

Do people actually react like "Wow, how exciting! Another Sword of the [Random Animal] with the same exact stats of the previous one but 10 more damage points!". Does it actually offer the"thrill of unpredictability" to anyone?
Honestly I'd take the Baldur's Gate II approach of having common equipment, magic items and rare powerful artifacts carefully designed and hand-placed across the entire game over the the Diablo-like model of "Enemies constantly drop random shit and sometimes it could even good!"

First because items with unique aesthetic and powers (and maybe even a lore) are more interesting, second because I simply don't like to loot "random stuff in random places".
I like to find my treasures where it makes sense.

If I loot crates in a poor area of the town I don't want to find gems, if I kill animals I don't want them to drop weapons (unless there's a very good explanation for it), if I find a well hidden (or heavily guarded) chest I don't want the quality of its content to be up to a strike of luck, if I kill a major antagonist using a powerful sword I don't want equal chances to loot from him a bow or a wand, etc, etc.

So you want to roleplay a noble and honest character but you do not want there to be an economic downside to your choice? If you don't want your characters moral decisions to have any consequences, why do you care about them?

(Also, even if you want to be a "good guy" you can still just rob the keep. The magisters make themselves scumbags enough for your roleplaying sensibilities to not haveto worry about their feelings. There are a good couple of thousands worth of paintings in the keep.)

Well, apperently you want to indiscriminately loot everything in sight without any serious consequences. So...

This is the best suggestion here.
A decent crafting system will make up for or eliminate all these problems.
And NO crafting does not have to be tedious.
Simply putting two slightly uncommon items together for a level appropriate weapon with the possibility of adding a third for a magical stat bonus is far more elegant and less time consuming solution for that 'missing weapon your rogue needs because he hasn't upgraded in a few levels' than rechecking merchants every level. It's also less hamfisted and code intensive than [party check] - [stat check] - [ability check] then loot generation for four characters that can have literally ANY COMBINATION of attributes and skills. Crap like that works in diablo because you're a wizard who needs +int and the rest can be whatever and all the game needs to check for is [wizard?]

This is good too. But handcrafted loot might be too much to ask - still, I hope they stick the unique items where they belong (I loved bracus' axe in D:OS) and have more of them.

What gave you that idea? I'm way more happy when its difficult to rob people. I want guards to be allert and pissed off at thieves. Thats when I need elaborate plans to get what I want.

I'm making the argument that a sociopath on this prison island will have an easier time getting rich, but its is totally doable without going viking on the merchants.

Anything beyond that is just you trying to build a strawman of how I like to play Divinity.

The point is that normal loot is crap, and it seems the punishment for stealing is inadequate.

Yes it is, I kind of like the scarcity of loot in the beginning. If gear progression scales up anything in power like the previous game you will be swimming in gear relatively soon in the game anyway so I like having to work for it in the start. It just enhances the feeling of fort Joy being a crappy place you want to get away from.

With that said I would not mind at all having more punishment for stealing and more "intellient" AI behavior regarding stealing.

Still no idea why for gods sake they insist on having RNG-made items in their game, when this was already criticised in DD back then.

Because it's easy. Instead of handcrafting and balancing each loot drop, they can set up some algorithms, and just let the algorithms do the hard work. It also makes the game potentially more replayable.

I'm fine with that. They need to be efficient, but it needs more work.

I would not be opposed to a stat reroll mechanic a la Diablo 3. Would be nice for those 2 handers with +1 handed etc...

RNG wasn't the problem for me in D:OS, the problem as I can pinpoint it was :

Yeah, most of the loot was lame. It was mostly linked to the fact that there's "only" 20 levels in the game, so basically, if you find 1000 items in the game, you have 50 items at the same level, so for a sword for example, basically at the same level you're bound to find 50 times the same sword. The problem was mostly the stats given by items on top of the base. A lot of those stuff were just pretty useless, you got a +1 in an attribute that could interest you, and the rest was mostly meh. Some magic resistances here and there and that was it.

There was also the fact that, for example for sword, every crafted sword was better than what you could find, and when I say better, i have a sword with 60-100 damage, and i'm still finding 35-60 damage swords... So yeah, everything I find is junk. Even the uniques I'm finding are useless.

I don't know that RNG is bad, I do know this though for D:OS EE :
Too few difference in certain items (there could be +1 in every skill in the game, that's not the case).
Items that give a competence are lame (if it's not a skill from a school you master, they are useless, so the item itself is useless).

The problem with RNG will always be the fact that there are so few level. If there was as more levels for a character, the loot would be less dramatic I think. (I'm not suggesting the leveling system should be changed though)

I dont have early access yet, so i can only comment what i read here.

Larian, please make sure that the loot system in the final game will be above all rewarding. I played numerous RPGs in past 20 years and i can say that bad loot system can be extremely frustrating even if the rest of the game is very good.

Few specific points i would like to mention:
1) Make sure that all sources of loot can provide quality upgrades throughout the whole game. Drops, crafting and vendors should all be viable till the end. I think the best template is that the final sets of BIS gear for various classes are composed from:
a)very powerful items from bosses, which should be hardest to obtain but also very rare and cover only some slots per each class spec.
b) random drops, which are abundant, but not too many. Its important that the random stat generation is made so as little as possible of trash items are created. For example make part of the stats on each item fixed, so there are at least some useful stats on each item. There are ways to do this. Try to get inspired by other games with randomly generated items and learn from their strengths and mistakes.
c) Crafted items should be good but not too good to overshadow drops (especially unique items and boss drops). Its fine that a crafted item is BIS, but this cannot occur for all the slots.
d) And vendor system should be made so you wont be abusing vendor stock refresh to try to get the best gear from them (this was the case of the previous game).
2) Randomly generated loot should be limited somehow as i mentioned above. You dont want 10 items to drop and only 1 of them being semi useful. Higher the % of useful loot is, the better.
3) Crafting system should allow some kind of upgrading, at least for some items. It would be good to have very rare unique items, which drop from bosses which can be upgraded throughout the game and perhaps some other items.

These are my thoughts. I suggest the developers to take a close look to WoW loot system and how its balanced. I know its different type of game, but i cant recall any other game who had more time to perfect and improve its loot system.

I really have to disagree with the direction of this conversation. If I pick up a nice two hander that had +1 magic skill/+other random mostly useless stat. I don't care. It's and individual item. It wasn't 'custom made' for your character. It should not be perfect. It's also bull that everyone claims that a single poorly rolled stat makes your gear useless. Useless gear, or an upgrade which isn't perfectly suited to you is charming and fun in a SP RPG game. Seriously is your confidence so low in your abilities that you'll fail the game if your little computer character has to use substandard items for 10 hours? In D:OS and so far in this game there are ways to work around it if you want to go each level with maximized loot. But if you're min maxing your character at each stage to complete this game you really need to step out of the WoW mindset. This isn't a competitive multiplayer game, the concept of BiS should not exist for your characters. There should be no guide inline that tells you the steps to go through to get a piece of gear that beats all others. Just the fact that people are mentioning BiS is disgusting, BiS is a multiplayer concept! Give it up for your single player campaign. My favorite memories of rpg games involve items my character wasn't made to use, at levels my character was not supposed to be optimized. WoW shamans wearing a turtle shield because it worked at the time. A dual wielder using a two hander for a few levels because its a sick two hander. The point where games get boring is when you have the same loot for the same set up as the next guy.

I give my vote for a mixed system:

1) General loot is randomized, even powerful items. So there isn't a big change for the current system.

2) But unique items are placed at special locations or are used for quest rewards.

3) There are unique items for every class or at least overall builds (two-handed, one-handed, dagger, shield, bow, crossbow, wands, staff; heavy armor, light armor, mage clothes).
4) Unique items are really powerful (at least one level above randomized loot). Upgraded normal items can get better than standard unique items, but never better than upgraded unique items.

5) Unique items can be improved by crafting with very rare ingredients to become even more powerful items. Sometimes the very same ingredient can only be used to improve one unique weapon or armor. To get these ingredients you have to look out for special locations or even solve quests and riddles in the "correct" way.

6) Unique items always have a special look and history behind them, making them interesting and enhancing the roleplaying.

I'd only add unique crafted items to that list and place normal crafted items in the same vain as normal loot items in terms of max and min power.

Sounds good to me, Normal crafted items should be used to make money or fill loot gaps. D:OS did a great job of allowing you to upgrade items you had found with specific gems or items so if that normal loot can be made better with a little elbow grease than we're good.

Well, alot of people seemingly had the issue with the fact that 5 crafting/blacksmithing meant that it was exceedingly rare to have random loot meet the same standards of crafted gear. As in, crafting gave a definite expected high value item for your skill level, but random loot generally fell on the median value for their level and thus making them worse.

^ Not that I see anything wrong with that given the RNG involved in relying on loot vs using a leveled skill to get specific gear. Some people seem to think that loot and crafted gear should have no differences or that loot should be better overall....which doesn't make any sense for random stuffs.

If we do go with the proposed mixed system, I hope that in order to upgrade/craft those unique items and otherwise get the best gear possible in game, maxed crafting/blacksmithing is still needed and desirable. If the differences in having it vs not having are negligible or small than what's the point of leveling the skill? We can already steal all the needed money.

Yeah, it's a tough spot to balance

- randomized looted items
- crafted items
- unique items

in a way that everybody is happy.

Personally, I'd like a system in which the follwing order more or less applies for items of the same level, in order of item stats and power (with possible blacksmithing and crafting abilities always maxed out):

uniquely upgraded unique items (with a unique ingredient like in BG2)
> upgraded unique items
> upgraded epic/rare randomized items
> unique items
> upgraded crafted items
> epic/rare randomized items
> upgraded normal randomized items
> crafted items
> normal randomized items

(upgraded here means crafting better items by using normal ingredients (like essences in DOS1) to increase an item's stats.)

Hmmm, this scale looks good, except add uniquely crafted items, upgraded uniquely crafted items, and uniquely upgraded uniquely crafted items.

Where the rare ingredients is used to make an item, upgrade an item, and/or used to both make the item and than upgrade it.....I'd imagine this would then make the final mentioned items the strongest in game as it'd involved maxing the skills, finding all the items, and then waiting till you had everything and spending it all to craft a small number (1-2/3) objects vs using the rare ingredients to upgrade the best found unique items in larger quantity for the party and other such concerns when dealing with a super rare/limited resource of crafting materials or story related crafting materials (ie buffalo sword from D:OS)

....Or I guess unique in this case could refer to both those found and made. Which works :P but uniquely upgraded still needs to be worked in.

All in all, even if say an epic/rare loot is better than a crafted item....I'd say that the fact that you can directly have more control over what you craft is an advantage on it's own so there's some balance. In fact, while say the best crafted item and the best epic loot might have the same damage (as in D:OS) the epic gear would have bonus that require unique ingredients to make or add onto an item (knockdown chance or set burning)...

There's more than just numbers in order to differentiate the various types of items.

- Damage
- Reach
- Elemental Bonuses (added fire damage)
- Inherent Buffs/debuffs (set burning)
- Ability bonuses (added warfare skill points)
- Skills the item can give (vampirism on rings)
- Durability

I think I got them all?

This looks perfect! The advantage of crafted normal over epic/rare randomized items comes from specificity not raw numbers. (I want a spear = I make a spear). Where a randomized spear has better base damage (say 100-110 on crafted vs 105-117 randomized) and comes with bonuses the crafted won't. You'd still need to have gotten a level appropriate rare/epic spear drop with bonuses you like for the comparison to hold.

The tweaking is all that is left for Larian to do. but to take a shot at it with completely made up values.
For damage: Crafted is a base (100%) - found white items would be 90%. Epic/rare would be 107/105%. Uniques would be 112-115%.
For stats: white = 0. Crafted =1 relevant. Rare is 2 random. Epic is 1 relevant 2 random. Unique is 3, picked.
Stats would be more variable, because 1 relevant might be str on a 1 h sword, you'd still have level appropriate ranges (3-5) and that 1 pt could be split between two lesser stats such as resistances/civil skills or half stats (like 50% of 3-5 str and 50% of 3-5 finesse).
Not that any of that needs to be implemented, it's just fun to theory craft.

You should see some changes coming that make the order of loot look very much like your list (which we liked a lot btw - we never wrote it down like that but it's a good way of thinking of it). On another note - we have a few new abilities planned in the crafting department that should make crafting more interesting. Skill crafting obviously is one of them.

Sounds great, can't wait for it.

Pretty much how I feel. The itemization was really the only bad thing in D:OS (and it was very bad), yet here it is again in an almost unchanged form despite all the criticism it got. Even I can still remember how I criticized it on these very forums... Very disappointing to see this in the alpha.


Never forget. <3

Nice list BTW.


Cool. It will be interesting to see what you come up with.

I'm good with a low loot, low quality item availability... as long as that doesn't give an advantage to spell casters.

I haven't made it into the Guard Keep with the paintings yet, but from what I've read, it does sound cheezy to be able to sell those paintings to people who probably don't have much money, and shouldn't care about paintings. Plus you'd think those would be hard to fence.

I love scarcity and low quality items. It fits the intro area very well. I wish there were more recipes/books to craft makeshift items early on. However, it would be nice to loot bodies for items worn and carried (armor, pelts, skins, weapons, etc.). If an archer is wearing leather and using a bow then those items should drop. Most drops could be damaged after the fight, worth very little, or scrapped/crafted to something better.

Having crap items makes finding your first decent weapon a real treat. Having few magic weapons makes the ones you get more memorable. Being unpredictable is part of the excitement.

The current loot and economic system isn't perfect, but I'm happy with it.

I'd be absolutely fine with most of this.
On a side note I have to point that I would vastly prefer if the scaling in power of the loot could be in general far less pronounced.

For all the shit it constantly gets for being "an obsolete ruleset system" it's almost funny how much D&D/D20 got this better than most of the "more modern" rulesets specifically designed for videogames.

The difference between a +1 item (barely magic) and a +5 (divine artifact) was massive in term of potential (there were creatures vulnerable just to weapons of a certain "rank" and so on) and special abilities made a hell of a difference... and YET the scaling was just marginal in term of ramping up with with numbers. Just a more or less significant bonus to hit chance and damage starting from the same default numbers.
No dull idiocies like a end-game weapon doing TWENTY TIMES the damage of a starting one (or more).

EDIT: for anyone ready to jump in and say: "Well, but that's just a matter of flavor, in some games weapons scale a lot and in other they don't" I'd like to point that the second system tends also to marry A LOT better with non-linear design.

You know, when your players are allegedly allowed to approach content with a certain degree of freedom, it's probably a good idea to have in place a system where items DON'T keep to ramp up almost exponentially.

So very true.

One thing about upgrading items.
Please do not make the mistake that you need an epic item to upgrade things and to get this item you must have done the only thing the update is good for.
example: There is only one dragon in the game and if you kill him you get an item that allows you to craft equipment that gives large bonusses against dragons.
example from PoE: The adra dragon is the hardest enemy in the game (without expansions). If you kill him, you get the only item that allows you to upgrade an armor to the highest level. But since you have already beaten the hardest enemy in the game (and the dragon is much more powerful than anything else), you do not really need to upgrade your normal armor to epic.

good example:
- several unique items from BG2 (though some of them were very overpowered)
- the way how you upgrade soulbound weapons in PoE (more like a quest than normal crafting)

I doubt we'd have to worry about this since it makes little sense to make the player work towards something only to make the prize generally worthless.

Speaking of strong, unqiue mobs dropping special stuff: it'd be nice to see optional quests/battles that are horribly horribly balanced in the enemies favor splattered through out the world.

IE I want to challenge a level 15 dragon and it's spawn while it's chillin in the forest of Fort Joy as a level 1-3. There's no main story related reason to do it, just a side quest (if that) and the fact that it's optional and I may or may not lose the opportunity to try again later.

It allows optional unique content and challenges to drive up difficulty without having to necessarily balance anything such that players have reason to come back to the game for more. Some players love masochism in there games (cough Dark Souls cough) and this lets you put it there without making a new difficulty and lets you reward players that truly master the system and tactics so they can overcome such challenges.

Hi Lar, glad to hear you are willing to iterate on itemization (basically the only system I didn't like in the first game).
To be fair, I DID detect some improvements in the early access, especially in the drop rate, which was really obnoxious in D:OS for my taste. Exactly like Tuco, though, I think that randomized loot doesn't do any good to the game, no matter what improvements you are planning (sorry, I know it sounds a bit drastic, but it's like having the wrong feature for the right game).
I also noticed that you're not addressing another loot-related issue of the first game: the lack of real, impactful differences between weapons/armors of the same category (why picking a mace instead of a sword or an axe, for instance?).

Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying that random loot is necessary evil and I'm not talking about a game-breaking issue, but you have this (wonderful) game where everything is carefully designed, thoughtfully handcrafted and hand-placed... And you have the random loot, which simply doesn't fit the context.

I'd REALLY love to hear your thoughts on this matter and on some other points I made on an old topic.
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads...mp;Words=Loot&Search=true#Post583290

I like it that way. Picking a specific kind of melee weapon is just a visual choice and that's how I want it. Too often in RPGs I end up with a weapon that has awesome stats but looks kind of bad or unfitting.

And breaking up melee weapons would make melee chars even less balanced compared to mages and rangers.


I respectfully disagree. Imo a mixed system serves the games best, randomized items included. DOS 2 offers multiple character, origin stories, party combinations, quest outcomes. Everything is made to offer multiple playthroughs. That's why randomized items are actually a good choice because 100% manually placed items would be really boring if you play the game for a 2nd or 3rd time. Having randomized items means that you can still be surprised. But I agree that the system shouldn't be 100% randomized. It should offer both the element of surprise and a range of manually placed items for the collectors.

And I definitely don't like this way. If you ask me, merely cosmetic choices are ALWAYS bad. I'd say the same if were talking about spells: Having 2 of them barely distinguishable in the effect but completely different in the aesthetic would be bad design no matter what. Also, your objections are not real objections: If a game has - let's say - really good axes but shitty swords, it's a game with poorly designed equip. Period. Put some thought into the weapon design and everyone will be happy. Also, D:OS skill system perfectly supports a REAL variety of weapon types. You spend points in one-handed, two-handed and ranged weapons, broad categories that encompass different kind of weapons. It only makes sense to have different weapon types with different pros and cons inside each of these categories...


This is the most common objection against the hand placed loot and, frankly, I've always found it extremely week. Maybe in theory it's a strong argument, but in practice it is not. First, because some players like to plan their build accordingly to the loot they know they are going to find (Dark Souls enthusiasts for instance). But even not counting this kind of players, there's no way that a random tab could generate interesting items like the ones you find, for instance, in Baldur's Gate 2. And I don't even like BG2 that much. But it's blatantly self-evident that that game has better itemization that any single player RPG with random (or semi-random) loot out there!!
To me, the only item categories that could benefit for a random loot system are consumables, reagents, gold and gems alike.

DnD has a random loot system.
It also encourages DM's to hand place loot.

DnD is the greatest example of an RPG that is smashingly successful (even if things like D20's are not the best mechanical decision)

Therefore, I think a mix is better. It's fine that we disagree, I however, am at least trying to offer/push for more hand crafted items and more player control over loot.

If you wanted 'less' random. You could do class specific enemies pull from class specific loot tables.. That would be cool. But yeah, 100% handcrafted is not something I want and not something I want the devs to focus on when they could be, for instance, meddling with my skills/abilities (far more important to me for a good game than loot) and making leveling up and distributing points feel more rewarding (again, far more important for me). I am however, the guy who would choose a vow of poverty in DnD because I found it excellent for RP and fun for my character.

EDIT: Also, Thanks Lar for coming in and giving your two cents and reassurances. Those small posts mean a tonne to us posting on these forums.

That's quite the vague statement. You should be more specific about what D&D game you are exactly talking about.

For the record no one gives a damn if some generic trash item is randomized or not; where itemization matters is when it's time to get some serious reward.

And in all the best D&D-based videogames the loot so far has been hand-placed for a reason.



I don't.
I wouldn't mind a mix where the low tier crap is random and the "goodies" are hand-placed since it would still be a massive improvement over the current system, but then again it's not really a matter of liking it, it's just a more tolerable compromise.

There were plenty of games with a hybrid system that I liked (i.e. Dark Souls) and I STILL think each one of them would be even better if the randomized part was removed entirely from the game.


It's always the same when this topic comes up. People mostly recognizes that the current system works poorly and that randomized loot is rarely good in general, and YET they feel this urge to put in a series of "IFs and BUTs" explaining in what ways randomization "could sort-of-work" under some very complex specific conditions.

A textbook case of "a solution in search of a problem", when all this subset of complex rules and right conditions (that would eventually make the system bearable) could be sidestepped entirely by, you know, NOT HAVING RANDOMIZED LOOT in the first place.

@Tuco
I actually like having both....I like finding secrets and delving into a game to acquire hand placed loot...but unless a game goes out of it's way to make it exceedingly hard to grab all the loot and grab high level loot early and make it so that you can only grab some of the items per playthrough (ie like dark souls boss soul weapons) while also making it so one can't just save and reload to see which piece they prefer (ie save scum between three choices and try them all before finalizing a pick).....it brings less replay value to the game. Fact of the matter is: for gamers like myself that will go through every nook and cranny at a snail pace and even double back through entire areas when given a trial that splits just to cover the whole map (ie I 100% every level in DOOM on first try -> even spent three hours in one level to find all secrets) having a randomized system gives replay value by allowing us to be surprised and creating a new experience with each game.

I like not always knowing what's behind the door in a game. Heck, the random weapon box and wall weapons, semi-random zombies and known mob, ect... are a large part of what makes Black Ops Zombies so replayable on end...it combines a mixture of random and directed known elements to create a unique experience every game while still making decision making powerful.

Only need 1 person with teleport if it's the ancient sword.

Its easy to get rich in fort joy. No special build required. I made a thread about it, search for "how to steal fort joy".
Money enough to equip a full party at lv 1, with no needed killing involved.

Also if you have the teleport gloves ALL the characters in your party has teleport because you can send items between characters (half way across the map too).

I never get some people.

The only time loot is an issue is if the RNG completely cripples a character.

Being suboptimal is not an issue... Roll with the punches.

The point: --->










Your head: o

It's still a LEVEL TWO Sword which you can't reasonably reach without already being LEVEL 3. By the time you get it is already outdated junk.

***

Skallewag continues to not at all understand that an Alpha, Version 1, might not actually be 100% balanced and can in fact still need economy tweaking.

It's always the same to you is it? Because I have, and will continue to tell you, I prefer the current loot system to your suggestions. Maybe by post 9 or 10 you'll see it.

And I'm not sure why I should care, on the other hand, since I definitely don't.

I like min maxing :P I like seeing how much I can theory craft and push a given game system. How much i can stretch the boundaries of what's allowed and how I can munchkin my character to Godhood with the difficulty maxed and trying to stop me every step of the way.

It's a large part of the appeal of RPGs to me. You should how much I can break the D&D or Pathfinder system ;P I would have to ask DMs if they'd even allow the character's I'd theory craft. I once made a lolz sorcerer in 3.5 who's whole thing was summing critters. People though it was stupidly sub optimal....I pushed the limits of creativity so my mini endless army of badgers where letting me solo monsters 2-3 levels above me (meanin they were intended for parties of that level to face). Completely negated all the traps and a small army of hidden monsters by sending a badger in the room to set off any hidden booby traps once too.

You say just roll with the punches....I say save scum that chest till you get what you want or spend several hours in town to buy and sell materials via crafting till you find what you want. Fun is subjective remember