Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Looting is no fun

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Good point well made. I really don’t know why it would work that way.

Maybe it has to do with multiplayer? It might ensure concurrent looters never stand in the same spot. But even then your solution would still resolve that. Shrug emoji.

Not sure, but it does stick out as weird to me as well. Seems like it's a function of necessity, not intended design. Something to do with object facing, or idk, but I just can't imagine Larian leaving it as it is, unless they didn't have a choice. I'm assuming time constraints were a factor.

Yes, the loot is boring, far too little variety, it should be like in Diablo

+ on the UI and cam stuff.

- on the containers and crates.


And this is a BIG ONE. You know, prior to when everything was solely being put into a game world and playtested to keep you addicted, several developers tried to build a world first and foremost -- not a playground for you to have fun and be the centre piece of it.

E.g. Ultima. Thus crates are... crates. Usually, you also find corresponding stuff in it, if at all (e.g. rotten food in a house deserted, fresh food in a kitchen still served, useful scrolls on the shelves in magic library, less so on the shelves of a random hermit's rotten house). If you didn't get that message by now and STILL check every crate, that one's on you. In particular since excessive looting is in no way required to finish the game just fine. You'll find plenty stuff else too.

Outside of games such as Kingdom Come Deliverance, barely anybody runs with this anymore. EVERY single piece of shit is solely put into game worlds to entertain you, like an amusment ride rather than a coherent world. If there's a hut in the forest -- there's gonna be something in there for you. That hut isn't there just because it may exist (which has the side effect of making things more predictable as well). And for sure games like KCD are getting flamed for resisting that by anybody exposed to the usual fad. You can also witness this in the request of every even "more traditional" RPG to have at least 20 levels too or else... when prior this kind of thing was primarily a schtick of loot&level ADHD addiction spirals such a Diablo, gaming's equivalent of a cheap addictive coin slot machine.

Wizardry 8 does loot the best. As in so many things.

Major items are always there, other stuff is by % and randomly from a list of usually around 20 items (picked by the devs appropriate for the area). So for example Shuriken as a 5% drop rate, Arrows 20%, Potion 15%, magic neckless 1% etc...
You don't "open" that much stuff. Usually just chests, coffins...(for traps sake) The main way to get loot apart form combat is by "approaching" certain areas; and searching (press the SEARCH button , you can't run anymore). Its dynamic, you can move around while searching. If your close enough the loot appears. This is influenced also by your party attributes (the distance stuff appears and quickness) , or if you have a ranger you do not need to "search" its auto search all the time.
This pushes you to explore the map without have to click on everything. And since the loot auto appears as you move, you can just glance at it quickly and ignore it if you want.
Simple and elegant.

For example in WIZ8:

You enter a room, ranger in the party so auto SEARCH is on. Nothing yet as you move towards a bookcase a book and potion appears on the ground, character says "look here". Grab those, approach a table on the other side of the room, a ring appears...but I see skeletons around the table so it must be cursed. Not touching it.

In BG3 :
Approach the bookcase. Click the bookcase...loot or no loot. Click again next to the bookcase loot or no loot, move to the table, click the table loot or no loot...etc....
It feels...archaic and LAZY in comparison (game system wise).

I think I only disagree with your phrasing. "Archaic," yes, but "lazy" - I don't think so. I think looting is an undercooked feature in BG3, one of those things that definitely needed more polish, but they couldn't afford the time to circle back around to before launch. The good news is, they haven't just been sitting on their revenue from this game, and they actually seem to be using a not insignificant amount of it to service this game post launch. They aren't just using it to build new revenue streams. I fully expect that looting will be overhauled in a future patch, after they finish taking care of what they consider to be more pressing issues with more core features.

I found a great ring in early game on some unmarked skeleton. The message I took from this event is that great stuff can be hidden anywhere. It took a few playthroughs to figure out that there is NO great item in any of the barrels or crates. Most players will do just one run. It's not reasonable to expect them to learn the logic behind loot placement within the first few hours, especially considering the large number of container types.
To be fair, I wouldn't put it past Larian to place a Sword of Infinite Power in some random barrel somewhere, just for the lulz.

Adding a billion crates and barrels is not great worldbuilding. There is nothing fantastical nor realistic about crates and barrels being placed everywhere. A crate is the least imaginative item ever. It has only two functions: waste space and time. We are so used to them in games that we no longer question the underlying logic behind their abundance.

Huh?

It's plenty realistic. Given that the invention of cardboard is not agiven in such settings, people need cheap, mass produced vessels to store things in.

Hence, crates and barrels.

In modern day life, we have cardboard boxes replace crates and barrels. But we have cardboard boxes literally everywhere. Anywhere there's products being sold, there's cardboard boxes as well as pallets (Along with some way of fastening things to said pallets like plastic ties or film wraps). The only thing stopping them from piling up everywhere is their ease of disposal.

Replace cardboard boxes with crates and barrels and you have what you find in games. Crates and barrels everywhere. With increased numbers around marketplaces, storerooms and docks.

The most common type of artifact we have from antiquity is their storage vessels. This is in part because fired clay can last a very long time, but also because of the ubiquity and cultural relevance of these items.

There was a not at all an unreasonable abundance of these in BG3. I’m in bed right now, and every major object I can see aside from my bed is some sort of storage container (closet, dresser, clothing hamper, shoe rack, beside table, bookshelf). If the game didn’t have them, it would feel barren.

I could tell by the end of act 1 that there wasn’t much to be gained by checking anything besides bookshelves, bodies, unusual / unique containers, and chests. Larian could have just made all of these other containers cosmetic and non-functional, and there is an argument that this was the better design decision. However, taking not just one full playthrough but multiple playthroughs to catch on is kind of on you.

The logic of loot in the game is that you find it on bodies. That is strongly reinforced to the point where most players reflexively loot every body they find without consideration or hesitation. A skeleton is a body, not a box.

Speaking of Larian hiding a sword of infinite power in a random barrel just for lolz, did you know they kinda did that with a stool at the top of the Arcane Tower? You break the stool and get a club that automatically increases your strength to 19. (Club of Hill Giant Strength.) Seriously, pretty crazy. So you really DO have to check every nook and cranny for the good stuff!

I would think this an example of how we want video game studios to place cool secrets in the game.

The name is a hint that the stool is special, so it rewards exploration and experimentation.

Searching the environment is what should be encouraged, and that’s very different from looking in every crate and barrel even though it’s obvious nothing will be in those aside from the trash that is always in those.

I was referring to crates specifically. When was the last time you saw one of those large wooden crates in real life? Games on the other hand are full of them. This is clearly not just a BG3 issue. Nothing makes a game more sci-fi, than having a bunch of metallic crates around, despite these making even less sense.

Everything can work as a container in a game. Desks, dressers, even skeletons. There is no need to rely on crates. Weird how none of the desks in BG3 contain anything more than a bottle of ink and a quill even though one could reasonably expect to find something of value in a few of them.


That's some wild contradiction there. How is it obvious that none of the crates contain anything of value if you haven't checked a majority of them? In the case of skeletons, 3 or 4 contain anything else than a bone or like 3 gold, and there are well over a hundred placed throughout the game. If you check the first 3 and find only a skull in each, it would be unwise to conclude that it is not worth looking out for them. Also, there is some decent stuff in some crates, especially for the early game. A crate is the most generic type of container there is, thus it could potentially hold anything.
If you don't want to miss anything, you have to check everything. It takes seconds each time, but it adds up slowly. This is a trick to extend gameplay times so they can boast that "our game takes up to 200 hours to finish!"

I don’t see crates often because our society has cardboard boxes, which I see all the time. In a society without cardboard, crates would be more common.

It was obvious to me well before I finished act one that the most interesting thing I’d find in crates were lock picks and disarm trap kits. Hence why I stopped checking them. I didn’t need to go through the game multiple times to reach that conclusion. If you found a ring on a skeleton (a type of body) and thought from there that you needed to check every crate and barrel that isn’t Larian teaching you the wrong lesson. You drew the wrong inference. Thats on you.