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Loot Game Mechanic Ideas - What are your thoughts? (Forums : General Banter : Loot Game Mechanic Ideas - What are your thoughts?) Locked
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Sep 25 2016 Anchor

I don't normally like loot games, but I recently played a few loot games back to back (Borderlands 2, Torchlight 2, and Destiny) along side the occasional game now and again (Vermintide, Hellgate London, Phantasy Star Online, Dead Island) and have been thinking about what I liked, and what I didn't. This post is a summery of my thoughts on how I think I'd do a loot game, and I'd like you're opinions on it. Note, I have no immediate plans to make this game, though it is possible, don't count on it. This is mostly for fun and my own interest. Get ready because this is going to be a long one.

First, the ground rules. I'm going to assume this is a single player or co-op FPS game. Also, this is not a MMO and won't have micro-transactions, so no need to artificially drip feed content or push players into buying crates/keys. Finally, I'm not going to talk about the gameplay proper, as it's not really important. This is just about loot mechanics. With all that sorted, onto the ideas.

-No character or gear levels
I think this is by far the biggest change, while also not really changing anything at all. From a story point of view, it never made sense how a guy would become practically immune to being shot in the face after a few in game days because the number on the gun isn't big enough.
From a gameplay standpoint, I don't like having to throw away a weapon I like because it's obsolete. A process made redundant if a vender sells a higher level variant on what you're using, and frustrating if you can't find a fun weapon that matches your playstyle.

Another aspect of this could be removing major DPS/armour changes from gear. When I get new gear, and one number is bigger than the other, the choice is obvious. As a friend said, it's not a choice, it's a calculation. Having DPS be standard across the board (as in, typical FPS balance) will mean you have to weigh pros and cons between gear, instead of choosing the one with the biggest number. So why would you ever replace a peice of gear? Well, weapons can vary based on accuracy, magazine size, recoil, reload speed, different sights, attachments, maybe even different perks. Rare weapons will be better, but early weapons are at least usable. As a dev, this would also make balancing the game easier as they don't have to worry about how damage scaling and the like will effect balance. An example of this system would be Call of Duty, where a player having all the perks, weapons, and custom classes would have an advantage, but a low level player using stock classes and early game equipment can still contribute to the team. That's the kind of situation I'd like to see.

This also effects classes, as there won't be any. Anything that would usually be handled by level ups, skill points, and classes can easily be handled by gear. I think this would help the game, as shouldn't a loot game be about loot, not character building?

While this seems like a huge, sweeping change, it also isn't, because of the often repeated MMO mantra of "the game doesn't start until you hit the level cap.". This way, players are playing content that actually matters from the start. Hardcore players can jump into harder content sooner and make a lot of progress very quickly without power levelling or boosting, while casual players can still grind out low end missions or play for the story.

Gear Level

-Cosmetics
When I play loot games, I almost always end up with, say, a knight wearing a leather vest, plate mail trousers, and sandals, simply because that's the gear with the best stats. There are various ways to fix that, such as cosmetic slots, limiting visible gear to accessories only, or a single armour slot plus accessories.

-Loot check after mission
Loot colour and slot can be seen as you picked it up, but can't be used or stats compared until back at base. eg. You can see you got green boots, maybe even that they are "Rubber Wellies", but only back at base can you see that they are Rubber Wellies +3, and equip them. The reason for this is that having to stop every other minute because a teammate wants to examine and try the new thing he picked up gets tedious. This system will (hopefully) will keep the game moving.

-Brand names
I liked this in Borderlands and Destiny. Each brand name/manufacturer has a different look and thing they do well, to the point where some people develop preferences towards specific brands. A small detail, but fun.

-Fixed/Guaranteed Boss Loot
Bosses, tough missions, or other feats of skill have fixed loot, or at least pull from a table weighted to give you good loot that you haven't got yet. If you can beat a boss once, might have been lucky, but 3 times? You can clearly beat the boss. Given that I have no reason to artificially keep the player grinding, boss loot will either be fixed, or heavily weighted so that you get the gear you worked for but haven't got yet. Kind of like quest rewards, but for high end gear.

-Pre-made uniques
Destiny had great uniques (yellows). They look crazy and have some kind of unique (but useful) effect. Even if it's just a custom skin and elemental damage, it's way more satisfying to get those and try them out than if it were just regular drop with a bigger number.

-Currency and crafting
Let's assume the game has shops. it might not, but you have to have some way of turning crap loot into some useful resource. Money should have worth. You should be able to afford what you need, and even some of what you want, but it should still have value. Currency will be simply money as opposed to numerous vendor specific currencies some games have. Shops wont have the best gear, but I want them to have stuff you might actually want. Worst case scenario, I could have them sell item chests (at high prices). The reason for this is that, in most loot games, money is plentiful, but all the shops sell crap that isn't as good as the stuff you get from low level mobs.
As with shopping, crafting is something I'm not sure I'd have in the game, but again, I'd want a system to turn loot you don't want into a resource, so crafting could work as well as or instead of a shop. I don't want the game to turn into, as one Youtuber put it, scraping pennies off the floor to put into a fruit machine. Personally, I'd have no random elements from crafting (it is a custom built by you after all) but would have to balance that out in some way. Cost of materials is an obvious one.

-No trading
More of a preference thing. Trading adds a tedious extra step to the loot process, and seems to be used for boosting as much as actual trade. It's also completely unnecessary. I never understood why loot games allow items to drop that your class can't use, when the game could just as easy re-roll those drops. Plus this game wouldn't have classes anyway. I also think that players (or characters) should earn their gear. What's cooler, getting a +15 Vorpal Sword of Ages from a battle with Drugar The Black, or getting it via swaps?

-Streak Breaker
And finally, I want to talk about streak breaking. This is not something that would really effect this hypothetical game as we removed character and gear levels, as well as have guaranteed drops from bosses, but most, if not all loot games have an element of randomness to them. Randomness makes sense in these kinds of games and from what I understand it's part of the fun. A "Will the next chest have something cool in it?" kind of thing. The point I'm getting at though is that getting a bad run of luck can screw you over. Sometimes it's minor, but sometimes it can halt your progress until you grind or find something usable. These games often have items or skills that increase drop rates for rare gear. So I don't think it's unreasonable to have a number, perhaps invisible to the player, that increases the odds of rare loot the more crap you find, and resets when the player finds something rare. This could apply to types of loot as well, so you don't get stuck finding nothing but armour when you really need a weapon. This system likely won't stop bad streaks entirely, but I hope it would be enough to stop players getting screwed over.

Phew, this was a long one, and thanks if you read through it. As I said at the start, while I've played a bunch of these games, they rarely get their hooks into me the way they do for other people so I don't have as much experience with them as others. I'd like to know what you think, if I missed the mark completely, if this might be workable, or anything else you think, let me know.

Sep 30 2016 Anchor

Loving any kind of loot games, just hating some of the loot mechanics. (Especially when they nerf loot rewards to force players to rely more on store, pay-to-win or DLC items.)

Hmmm let's sum it up, basically you would like to see or develop a game that has:
- no character levels
- no gear levels
- no classes (they have been replaced by the type of gear you wear)
- no micro-transactions
- cosmetic items that change appearance of one weapon/armor to another (nothing out of the ordinary actually, but depends on the game in question, some games have this feature totally missing)
- loot check after mission
- brand names
- fixed/guaranteed loot
- pre-made unique (epic?) items
- currency and crafting
- no trading*
- streak breaker
- and it is not a MMO game.

* The game has no classes, if trading is gone as well, how will you obtain items that you need? This kind of does not make any sense. ;-) Either classes and loot rerolls so you get items you need for your class, or loot and trading. You got some heavy armour loot but you need medium one (for your "non-class") and you cannot recraft it, what then? Loot and no trading seems like a cesspool of problems. The only replacement is full crafting (dismantling items to get other items to get yet another items that you need, which sounds way more problematic than simply selling and buying needed components or items). NPC trading can be also done in a smart way.

Sadly, for the most part, it sounds pretty dull. Quite easy and quite unexciting. Grinding for no reason is also bad, never understood why make your stats 999 when everyone else has 999 stats too. What is the point, really? The same about +15 weapons or crap. What is the point if everyone has it, and it is not so hard to get if you put your mind to it? Grindfest should serve only the one elitist purpose: to reach and obtain something only few can possess. Unfortunately. If you mean MMO games. In regular RPG/FPS etc games grind seems to be completely pointless, liked the classics better where you just needed to go to the X location to find your dream gear piece, and then visit another place, and another rather than rely on your luck when obtaining random loot.

Edited by: feillyne

Oct 1 2016 Anchor

Thanks for reading. I thought no one was going to reply. ^_^;;

I'm going to go out of order a bit for the sake of clarity.

I think you might be comparing it to a MMO to often. I don't think this would really work as a MMO, and to be honest, outside of town, most MMOs are instanced off anyway. I think the Torchlight 2/Borderlands method of listen servers, perhaps with a pre-game lobby that acts as a hub (Vermintide) would work better.

I think my concept of gear level is different from yours. When I say gear level, I'm mainly talking about where gear is given a number based on how "good" it is, usually based on on-paper stats. In some games, you can't do certain content unless you have a certain gear level. The video in the original post explains some of the issues with this. In short, you want high level gear that matters, but you can't try for that unless you grind low level content until you get some good drops. Gear level is also innacurate, as I might kick arse with gear level 58 items, but be bad with my gear level 61 items, but if the content is needs gear level 60... you can see the problem.

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As for it being easy and dull. It might be. It's definately going to be a much shorter game simply by virtue of cutting most of the grind out completely.

That said, the "elitism" will come from gear rarity (best pony) and game difficulty. This is why I proposed a FPS over a tradition RPG or MMO. FPS games as far back as Doom can scale in difficulty pretty well without resorting to simply larger numbers. Let's say you have 4 difficulties, and there's 5 loot rarities iirc. (White, green, blue, purple, yellow?) It's easy to say beating a level/boss on hardest will drop a yellow, while mobs will drop purples. This is where the fixed loot tables come in. You couldn't get everything by farming one level/boss. To get all the yellows, you'd have to beat each level/boss. These would also be where the unique yellows would come in.
"Oh, where'd you get the Feillyne's hammer?"
"I got it from running Dark Carnival on Expert. Took us 3 hours of dying repeatedly, but we did it!"
Left 4 Dead 2 has been out years, and only 2% of players have completed a single campaign on Realism Expert, and only 1.9% have completed the game on regular expert, I think that's rare enough for a loot game. (Though free weekend players might be throwing off that number? As only 32% have completed the first campaign on any difficulty)

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As for getting the gear that you need. That's not something I've considered. Late game that's not really an issue, but early game that is a problem. I guess on character creation I'd have the player choose a package of starting gear? I'll have to think about that.

Late game though, that's where the streak breaker will come in. Making sure that the player doesn't keep getting gear they don't want. I assume the player will have either money or crafting materials by that point as well, so even if that fails them, the shop can be the fallback. I also want the ability to swap parts in and out. Obviously I'll have restrictions to stop people from breaking the game, but I want the ability to swap out like for like. Going back to Destiny (I know you've not played it but this is a great example), it's a bummer getting a great armour drop, only to find it's for scout rifles instead of auto rifles, especially what that can roll auto rifles. Finally, I think that will be part of the excitement. Will this drop be one that you use or not? Only in this case, it'll be based on personal play style, instead of if the number on the end is bigger.

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Classes I find to be pointless for the most part. Sure, some games do well with the tank, dps, healer trinity, but it can cause problems. If you're missing one of those classes from your party, you're screwed. If you've messed up your build, or just want to try a different tactic, you're screwed. Classes might work for a MMO because they want you to keep restarting with alts, to spend more time grinding to get back up to level. I think you could, say, have a pair of gloves that shoots fire, and another pair of gloves that allows you to taunt. A bit silly, but the same end result. Skyrim did this by having mages wearing robes for extra mana, while theives used light armours that buffed sneaking. It's simple, but it works.

Finally, I didn't know MMOs had streak breakers. I always assumed it was a low chance by default and you just had to grind.

Oct 1 2016 Anchor

Ah, sorry, yes, you mentioned that it is not supposed to be a MMO game, my bad, assumed the exact opposite. That original post has been corrected.

Depends on what you mean by classes. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing for example has slighly more unique, less boring classes. Some games have two classes or dual classes. Others have roles/occupations. Some have non-class skill-based systems that turn out to be quite like classes, for example Fallout New Vegas (depending on the build you are going with, you would come up with some kind of melee warrior, ranged shooter or heavy trooper or smooth-talking nerdy scientist).

Fixed loot could be a pain in the back too. Also, you would have to slave away for a few hours or more just for that specific loot and still not get it, if you failed it constantly (and consequently rage-quit and abandoned the game). Why bother with difficulties? They seem just like grinding, and not everyone may overcome the difficulty you impose. (The difference is grinding is time-wasting but easy.) Perhaps it would be possible to ditch difficulty levels and instead persuade players to fulfill certain conditions (for example an overhit on the boss) to get the specific loot they want?

Hmmm, but how about no gear at all? Just a starting upgradeable loadout. Liked ET Quake Wars better with rewards and loadouts, and no loot. You would obtain upgrades after making progress in the story/campaign/battle mode.

They do not have any streak breakers actually, was only talking about one's own idea of it.

Oct 4 2016 Anchor

Ah, sorry, yes, you mentioned that it is not supposed to be a MMO game, my bad, assumed the exact opposite. That original post has been corrected.

There was no need to do that. :(


As for classes. Yeah, those all work. I think my main objection with classes is that either it's the most important decision of the game, and you have to make it blind. It also means you're locked into certain playstyles if you do. Other games allow you to change classes so frequently and easily that it might as well be equipment.

I'm not sure what you mean by overhit. As far as forfilling certain conditions, that could work, though it wouldn't be a loot game at that point? Games like Goldeneye and Urban Chaos spring to mind which had cheats and ability upgrades respectfully unlock for meeting certain conditions. They work really well for giving the game replay value. It's likely a better system, honestly. I considered ripping off- I mean, "taking inspiration from", Urban Chaos for a game I'd like to make.

As for the difficulty levels. Well, I find balanced difficulty level (eg. Doom, Halo) more interesting than scaling the health and damage of enemies, like in loot games. It would also give a reason to replay the game, and something to get loot for. Kind of like the way end content in MMOs has you grind for raid gear, and then do the raid. Ideally it would also be possible for a skilled player to complete higher difficulties for better loot early on. While casual players can grind low difficulties for gear to help with high difficulties (while also learning the game). That's an ideal scenario, and would be really hard to balance in reality, but that would be the goal, even if we don't reach it.

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