[quote=Zozma]
Well, the mold is WoW when it comes to what I am talking about as eventually all games seem to be crushed by its ridiculous design focus, though EQ suffered the same problem even before WoW was released.
As I said, I am not saying loot should be non-existent, but it isn't the driving point of an RPG. Sure, Diablo, it is the focus, but then Diablo really isn't an RPG as much as it is Gauntlet with some stats. Diablo is almost entirely about the loot. While the Divinity games use random loot generation as a tool, it was the entire focus of design for a game like Diablo. You ground the dungeons over and over to see all the different loot you could get.
D:OS isn't about the loot, it is about the mechanics of play, the story, the interaction.
I agree, but the way the game is set up makes loot more important. Your capacity to function at every level of gameplay, be it dialogue or combat, is influenced by loot to varying degrees. Loot increases charisma, crafting, damage output, damage intake, spell functionality, health, mobility, and so on. The game was designed to be challenging, and because your characters' combat functionality is heavily influenced by equipment, the game expects you to put more focus on loot than you might otherwise like to.
What I'm advocating for is a system that minimizes the amount of time you spend focusing on loot and thereby increases the time you spend on core aspects of the game. This can be done in a variety of ways, including hybrid systems that simultaneously appeal to gamers who want more dice in their rolls while addressing the game's demand to have good, up-to-level equipment.
There is no middle ground on some issues. Either loot is tailored to the party, or it is not. That is the main argument here. Drop rates, etc.. are arguments used to generate support for their position, but it is not their suggestions, tailored loot is.
There absolutely is a middle ground. Tailored loot can coexist with a degree of randomness. In fact, it already does; enemies tend to drop items in their level category. The game also has a hybrid of static loot and random drops, albeit with a strong lean to the latter. Absolutist thinking only leads to dogmatism. These are spectrums, and in some cases it only takes a slight lean in order to appease a player base.
That is an example outside of the scope of the games play and design. I am not saying it is wrong, but using an outlier as a means to establish a trend isn't a very sound argument.
The trend in table tops, as far as I've observed, is to use game play and design as a template rather than hard and fast rules. But given that both of us only have our own experience with GMs and there's hardly a census or a study on how they typically handle loot systems, I agree that this isn't a productive area of discussion and may as well be dropped.
