Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General The Random Loot system - A honest feedback

I'm not sure comparing the game to other that have supposedly failed is such a great idea.

The main issue I think is the lack of diversity in the items found.
It's not the power balance between craft and loot, i'm not sure it's that relevant...

That may be true, but what about an alternative way to try and go for balance? How about this:

Some modifiers can only be found on looted/bought weapons... other modifiers are exclusive to crafted items. The player then has to decide which modifiers are more important for their particular playstyle.

...

Oh wait, that's kind-of already in place with the Legendary-specific modifiers. Hmmm... it could be tweaked, but finding the balance would be difficult.




It's always a safe assumption for one to make to assume that not everyone completely shares one's own opinions.

One very good reason is if the game's skill system differentiates between, say, swords, axes and maces and the best weapons are only of a certain type. Ultima Underworld for example has the Sword of Justice (unbreakable) and the Black Sword (lethal). Such a thrill to find them if you've chosen to train Axes, no?

But if you are playing properly blind first time through you can't decide that because you don't know what the unique item modifiers are and you don't know exactly what the crafting system will do for you either. It's just blind luck unless you look it up in advance.

I haven't played NNWN2 in a long while but IIRC the guy in the monastery in your castle had an unlimited supply on rogue stones for sale ... but yes, in general I get the idea. You will only find a limited number of gemstones in the game. So you know that you will have to save them for "special items". How many of these you can finally craft is a bit random, true. But in D:OS you can't count on anything.

In my last playthrough which I finished yesterday I managed to stay away from savescumming and took what I found first. It was an interesting experience.

As far as weapons and armor go, it was fairly easy as I could craft acceptable ones myself. Two party members had level 5 rings and belts at the end of the game, because I didn't manage to find any better. Haven't found any self-supporting sarongs for my non-int guys either, so they had their starting ones equipped. However, I had a disgusting amount of totally useless random crap in my Homestead chests (didn't even bother to sell them as there was nothing interesting to buy apart from the skillbooks every level and the odd sinew, sextant or tormented soul).

In my first playthrough I did take the time to reload for better loot countless times. (Granted, in that game I only needed to equip two characters.) Believe me, wearing the best of the best or some mediocre stuff really makes a difference in stats. (Thankfully the end game is not that hard, so you can get by with crap items as long as you know what you're doing. And as long as you can craft.)

But this is not OK in my book. Random loot should not mean the difference between life and death.

EDIT: or if it does, it should be compensated. E.g. by crafting. Then you can decide whether to invest into it or try your luck with random stuff.

Have the same loot on the same places is removes aspect of searching and looking for something. I am sure that soon we would see a list of items with their location on the internet. Blah. Dont realy want it.

Place few top items on the specific place is good. It seems to me it is done already. That-slime-who-guard-the-lighthouse has a club, for example. I would appreciate a semi - random system. Lets say The melee boss drops a top melee weapon of a type which some your characters used in the battle. Also craft who can extract components would be nice.

The reload and retry for better loot is plague. There is a cure already. A hash file and the semi random function. Such a funtion generates still the same result based on the random number generated in the file before. So, you can have a simple 1kB file consist one thousand numbers. One number will be used whenever the loot generation is requested. File is generated at the game start. You can add another kilobbyte on the fly if needed. :-] So, every game is diferent, but reload doesnt help at all. Reloading sounds fun, but in fact id destroys game streamlining, move the player from THE game and focus him on the spoiled game mechanic. More over, it is difficult to set dificulty. Player who harvest 30 legendaryes defeat the ods much easyier then regular player who has 3.

Sure, some items are hand-placed. Like Clobbering Time, as you mentioned. Or the Stone Sword at the church. (Or the Cyseal Pie in one of the graves in the cemetery ) The problem is, we were talking about quality loot. Which they are not.

And it was never about saving and reloading having an effect on the game or not. It was about too much randomness and too many stupid items being generated by it.

Why wouldnt you want the best weapon? of its type, especially if you have a choice? I am pretty picky about weapons ( comes from my military background) and I would resent a game that gave you lousy, restricting and unexciting weapons, its supposed to be fun and over the top. The weapon I use doesnt have to be the best weapon in the game just one I like the best, and since loot is random its almost guaranteed to be a Legendary of some type and it will never be the same twice, I do think random loot in respect to its variance is good, I dont think that we get enough great loot on drops, especially from bosses, and that loot doesnt stay good til end of game.

I believe Sleepybadger is correct in that the combat and spell systems are the best in any game ever, thats why the loot system seems to be so glaringly unfulfilling- something so well done and good, makes any other fault no matter how small seem more obvious.

I dont remember much crafting in BG and BG2 or IWD at all. That was not really a game focus,....oh wait I do remember some partial items that if found could be combined or added to other existing items, that really isnt crafting to me that was more like hoping to find pieces of an incomplete set.

I do wish there were item sets in the game, other than Wersheep Armor, which is not terrible, it just seems to be the only one.

" we were talking about quality loot."
What is the quality loot?
Probably a loot which is better then you are wearing. Is that mean that correct loot generator must create better loot after each battle?

I hate systems where you get a magic sword and heap of gold from a dead wolf body.
If you fight with monsters those monsters must own these items right?
So case you will have good loot all the time means, that you need to fight with over powered enemies all the time.

Or you can gather items which your enemies probably should have, then sell them, extract magic esence, and craft to something else. But well, you still have a game with a lot of junk.

I agree that true Legendaryes should be placed manualy. Those items have some story. Have you foound a Peter Lee's sword? :-]
Your heroes, creates a legend in fact. So your items forged thru the craft becomes a legend. The color of item regardles.
Just check the Braxus axe, actualy its a junk. But it is the axe of the legendary Braxus.

true as well gGeo, what it is now isnt perfect, but it could have been or can be much worse. I would rather have it as is than it become worse, and I do regard predictability with very little affection.

So i guess i would say....(my only 2 points of unhappiness), after some more gaming and reading what others have said here about loot...

That SOME items should somehow keep their usefulness and desireability until the end of the game, changing weapons every 2 levels because they are no longer competitive is dissapointing.

Bosses should just drop better loot than they are dropping...not better than anything anywhere else, just no blues, and nothing mundane and not sought after.

Yes Wolves with swords and gold is questionable????, but maybe the wolf just killed someone and was dragging the corpse around like a happy meal for later and the corpse was loaded up with loot....LOL

Exactly. Killing the likes of Mangoth or Cassandra should not grant you a bunch of cheap stuff you don't even need. They could (and should) however, restrict legendary loot to reward chests, especially the ones you get access to after boss fights. At the moment you can go into the mortician's room and get a legendary amulet out of his trophy on the wall, while getting two cheap skillbooks and nothing more from the fabled Braccus chest. That's not right.

The problem being there is not enough "different" loot. It should not actually create better loot, but there should be enough parameters in the randomization so that you could find different (thus at some point interesting) loot. Having found the XXXth ring and amulet with Loremaster +1, I must say i'll just have anything else at this point...

agreed, both good points that could be improved and make loot better.

One thing I also think to make items more varied is to allow them to have a Talent not just skill, stat, or status effects, only on a legendary high level item probably, and not instead of all the other abilities but in addition to them.

The more I play this time through the more I wish my Knight's 2-handed sword from 4 levels ago would also have leveled up or it's powers could have been transferred to a new higher level sword.
Damge from the weapon is much less than a lower quality higher level equivalent item.

Loremaster +1 and any elemental resistance especially earth below 50% is a wasted slot.

It's one of these things where Diablo 3 found a solution (taken from WoW)

Items (White,Blue,Yellow) have tons of suffix, prefix, and modifiers and normal stats based on their iLVL

Uniques/Sets (Orange/Green) have specific ones, that have boosted stats depending on iLVL and unique skills or effects.


The only way such a system works is if itemization is properly implemented though. Meaning that most items that drop for a character he/she can also use. And there is SOME chance they are better than what the char has.

This requires many many many different unique skill effects that items can grant.. D3 has well beyond 200.


In D:OS; Itemization is basically just +1-3 stats +1-3 talents and 5 or 10 unique items afaik ,)

What I am saying is this, random loot doesn't add anything to the game in this case. Because the chance is very high you get mismatching +1-3 talent rolls and weird +1-3 stat rolls (+INT +STR +Loremaster for example... on a bow)

I am not saying D:OS needs random loot alá D3, I am saying that like Linio, to me the game lost a lot of it's draw when I learned that "looting everything" is guaranteed to give me better equipment than killing a single enemy. Because I get more rolls on Items, and thus nearly always better items than what unique dropped from a boss.

The only unique I ever even used in D:OS was that unique legendary bow. And not because it had great rolls, but because it's the only decent bow in the game...

Everything about that sounds nice, except that it is in some way related to Blizzard. Meh!

Also it sounds like implementing it would not be as simple as just making bosses drop at least one worthwhile item. I am hazy on how hard any option anyone is proposing would be to make happen, so I am not standing behind any solution for feasibility.

I would loot everything anyway, scavenger reflex, if it isnt nailed down steal the F*^&)#@ thing!

More unique item abilities is also a function of the rules, what can be bonused or buffed by an item? Remember in D&D ( back when it was new in the late 70's early 80's) when a +3 sword was considered awesome? There just wasnt any kind of powers on weapons, or very few, same for +1 Armor or +1 shield or anything else. Rolemaster the RPG really carried item based buffs and abilities into the range of coolness, heck I remember some items had 20 or so special abilities and could really be powerful or even godlike. I liked those items, and still would for D:OS. Hey I play single player only ever on any game, so I dont care about balance's I upset or being a megalomaniacal show-stealing greedy min-maxing munchkin-showboat. LOL aint hurting nobody but those mindless toons!

Some of the Legendary items we get in D:OS not only suck but are not useful at all, they are not prizes they are a waste of time, to loot, to evaluate, to even sell.