Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Loot continues to be a big issue

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.