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Should how you kill determine loot?
FrostWyrm
Member Posts: 1,036
Its just been an idea I've been playing around with, but I think it would add another layer of depth to item farming if the type of weapon/spell you use to kill a monster changed the drop rate of the items you may receive from it.
Using a wolf as an example...
Blunt weapons: Using a blunt weapon to kill a beast would cause heavy damage to bone. Killing a wolf with a club or warhammer would result in fewer bone drops, but increase the drop rate of skin and fur.
Bladed weapons: Stabbing and slicing into a wolf with a sword or spear rips flesh, muscle, and internal organs, causing fewer intact skin/fur/organ drops, while increasing the drop rate of bones.
Fire magic: Scorching the skin and fur means fewer skin and fur drops. Bones, and the organs they protect, would remain relatively intact, but meat would be charred, resulting in fewer fur and meat drops, but more bones and organs.
Mental attacks: These might cause trauma to the brain and internal organs, while leaving the creature's flesh, fur, and bones completely undamaged. High drop rate of bones, fur, and meat. Low drop rate of organs.
Etc. etc.
You think this might be an interesting way of affecting creatrue loot?
Comments
This reminds me of some older console RPGs, where the damage dealt to a creature was affected by which type of elemental spells/weapons/attacks you used.
I'm guessing a feature like this would play off a resistance cycle, adding an increased percentage to a "versus <type of attack>" algorithm or something, then tallying up the results upon death.
Could be a little too nitpicky, but with the increased function of AI and physics being implemented into some games these days, it's not something I would scoff at if done correctly, AND if it added to the enjoyment and fun factor of a game.
I was thinking something along those lines. Say, a creature has a set default loot table, each time a creature is damaged by a certain type of attack, certain items' drop rates are reduced. The amount of reduction could vary depending on the percentage of the creature's HP that is taken by that type of attack.
I always liked more realistic drops. It annoys me that a wild animal has money or a pair of pants I could use. Or an enemy npc could randomly have a weapon that is rare and powerful. Why didnt they use it themselves? The worst are badge/token/rep vendors. They are sitting on a stockpile of gear that could easily win the war for their cause, but you cant have any of it until you actually defeat their enemies with lesser gear.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
I used to ponder this when I was out "farming" skins and hides for crafting: "If I filled my target full of arrows, how am I able to obtain a high quality hide from it?"
It was one of those suspensions of disbelief that I grudgingly gave into, and it's something a lot of people take for granted now.
Personally, I like the idea. With several other topics about aspects of "realism" floating around the forums, I'm glad that some people take the time to create thought provoking threads, and others take time to give articulate answers. I can only hope that someone is taking notes and doing something useful with the information.
Thats kind of what got me thinking about it, too.
And thanks...would be nice if someone would give me a design job.
Thats kind of what I went to school for after all.
If they're going to spend more time coding drops than they already do, I'm kind of more with DannyGlover on this. I would rather see more realistic drops in the way of animals not dropping weapons and gear, for example. I've always felt it was a bit against immersion when a pig dropped a sword. I mean....where was he keeping this sword? And if he dropped cloth armor, that was one thing, but wouldn't it be ratty and torn and mutilated? I don't know.
The bones, skin, fur, organs thing is nice, but like I said....extra time spent on coding and stuff for drops, I'd rather them spend it a different way. I don't think that's a BAD idea though, just not my first priority (my opinion only).
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
This is actually something I'd already considered thanks to games like Valkyrie Profile 2 and Monster Hunter, and I'd love to see this in a game. Adds another layer of depth to gathering/crafting and also creates incentive for people to approach battle in different ways, rather than wading in and just stabbing things
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Good idea for a sandbox style virtual world, that puts emphasis on crafted goods over drops.
Won't work in a standard style theme park title, to paraphrase a semi-famous line, most players aren't looking to be Uncle Owen.
I would like to see more titles where the choice of weapon makes a difference in not only the loot outcome, but the difficulty of the fight as well.
Back in early DAOC it made a difference whether you had a slash, pierce or bashing weapon as various NPC's were resistant to different types of damage (same for spell lines too) and one had to chose their mobs carefully, especially when soloing.
It could acutally make the difference between struggling to kill a yellow mob (same level) vs being able to take down an orange, red or even an occasional purple.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I wondered the same thing in WoW when some nasty creature I fought in a swamp dropped an Ice Cold Glass of Milk... Eeeeeeew!
I dunno, when I look back at all the MMOs I really enjoyed, it seems to have been as a result of all the little things that the game did well or more creatively than everyone else. When games try to focus on a single big feature, it tends to come across as gimmicky. Once the gimmick wears off, the game has to fall back on it's base features. If those are the same as every other game out there, you get a game that doesn't hold up for very long.
I would dare say SWTOR suffers from this. They put so much into voice acting, and single-player story, that once that new game smell is over and done with, there was just a generic MMORPG underneath it all (sorry SWTOR fans, not trying to pick on your game or anything).
Yeah, like I'm REALLY going to drink that milk after it's been floating around in that swamp creature's belly juice for god only knows how long. Eeeeeeeew is right.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Yeah, I'd really like to see more of this come back to MMOs. Not necessarily in a full blown FFA PvP game, but from a nice PvE title.
And why is it still ice cold? Did the beast swallow a battery-powered mini fridge too?
I also agree with drops that make sense. Animals should drop body parts that can be crafted into useful goods, not directly drop useful goods. A humanoid enemy that actually wears armor or carries a weapon/money is another story.
I am in very much in favour of your orginal OP aswell this second post.
And since you brought up the wolf I would like to add that I like to see more predator behaviour amongst creature's and/or NPC's hunting them or being hunted
I don't have pets, when I was in High School I had fish. But I do know that animals will collect and hoard stuff humans leave lying around. Leave change on a table, your dog may eat it. One dog ate $22 in change. Leave your tool box open while working on the car. Your dog may take your tools. A wild hog in Texas was filmed with a shovel in it's mouth. It would put the shovel down and forage for food, then pick the shovel back up again. Hang out laundry on a clothes line. Your dog will thank you for all his new toys to run around the yard with. Most animals collect the junk humans leave behind, either it is shiny, smells like food, or is fun to play with.
How did you loot a High Quality HIde from this beast you just beat. The damage was localized to the head, one side, or a small area leaving a large area virtually intact.
Have you ever noticed that every task in your favorite MMO is handled by the same functions, quests, vendors, trainers, crafting, and item repair. All handled by the same block of code. Why? Because every time you write a new block of code you increase your chance of getting it wrong. And it keep you base code small and tight, more room for variable like mobs, npcs, and players. What you are proposing is adding more variables and taking up memory space. Complicating code base, that could make the server run slower. To optimize the code you try and minimize the time spent updating data, so your time spent rendering runs smoothly. The time added may be +Xms, and X may seem small. But you add round trip to the server, several mobs, and other players then you are looking at single digit frame rates. Well maybe not for some of us, their frame rate never dips below 60 fps. But in game design every additional calculation is looked at, as the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
It certainly has potential. It's not a big stretch either, we already have bosses with "Breakoffs", where you either hit a specific point, or use a specific kind of damage to create an extra item drop. So I can't see there being a big issue with acceptance.
It would also add an extra aspect of strategy, if a character's primary damage means threaten to destroy a valuable drop. And of course, the inevitable class discrimination extending to whether or not the class might destroy a valuable drop.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Its natural for games to evolve. A game of online poker has far less code and uses far easier on a server than an MMORPG. That doesn't mean we only make online poker games. We dont stop trying new things because its another thing that ~could~ function wrong. Or at least we shouldn't. Stagnant content is a far worse detriment than 1 or 2 frames per second lost on lower-end machines.