helios969
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Post by helios969 on Jun 22, 2018 16:27:51 GMT
I have always found Bioware's loot systems across their games pretty awful...finding them almost entirely filled with useless junk that clutters the inventory...with the "good stuff" locked behind DLC purchases. With micro-transactions limited to cosmetic skins will we finally find good, or at the very least useful, loot in the world? What kind of system do you anticipate seeing? What would you like to see? For that matter what are the elements that make a loot system good...and how do you balance it in a coop game? Could a system that analyzes and gives items based on your play style and existing inventory be implemented to make the rewards more satisfying to individual players rather than relying on randomness? Please discuss, I'm curious how others view such.
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Post by SofaJockey on Jun 22, 2018 16:32:55 GMT
Awesome thread, OP. MEMP was fun. MEAMP was considerably less fun to me. Destiny seems to be about collecting these ball things. Haven't got my head around what would be good for Anthem.
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helios969
N4
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Post by helios969 on Jun 22, 2018 16:55:19 GMT
Awesome thread, OP. MEMP was fun. MEAMP was considerably less fun to me. Destiny seems to be about collecting these ball things. Haven't got my head around what would be good for Anthem. Ugh, I hated the randomness of the RNG store in both MEMP games...though ME3 was by far less annoying (I have 115 respec packs for MEAMP! - W. T. F.) Didn't play Destiny so I'm unfamiliar with how it worked. What I hope it is not...is mindless grinding to eventually obtain the items most useful for my play style. If I'm to be honest I'm not really sure the best way to do that given many players' desires conflict with one another.
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Kedan
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Post by Kedan on Jun 22, 2018 20:20:07 GMT
I expect most random open world stuff to be garbage, with a couple of decent bits thrown in. Similarly, most quest reward gear will likely be forgettable until you get close to the end, with the end of story reward probably being worthwhile. The real endgame gear that actually matters when it comes to progressing your character’s power beyond mediocre will mostly be locked away inside strongholds and whatever other fireteam mandatory activities they introduce. Want those jets that give you max flight time and maneuverability? Strongholds. Want that max dps rocket launcher? Strongholds. Want that high armor shield with cool unique ability? Three guesses.
I’d like to see multiple paths to all gear, but that’s never going to happen. The ‘raiders’ will scream bloody murder if people who don’t raid have a path to get similar gear, regardless of how long it takes, and they will be catered to.
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Post by SofaJockey on Jun 22, 2018 22:13:11 GMT
I’d like to see multiple paths to all gear, but that’s never going to happen. The ‘raiders’ will scream bloody murder if people who don’t raid have a path to get similar gear, regardless of how long it takes, and they will be catered to. I'm sure I read somewhere that there won't be Stronghold-only loot. Sounds good to me. Not sure who these 'raiders' are. Seems like they will have to deal with it...
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Wulfram
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Post by Wulfram on Jun 22, 2018 22:15:32 GMT
I thought Mass Effect 3 single player's system worked pretty decently. New weapons found were generally a side grade or a small step up, adding to options and you chose a weapon based on its characteristics rather than just going for the one with big numbers. If you need to add endgame grind, then maybe make us find components to upgrade our stuff (like in Dark Souls), so that we can keep some control over what weapon we use?
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Post by Kroitz on Jun 23, 2018 8:07:00 GMT
Since they made a point about your gear beeing hand-crafted, I can see something like Fortnite's blueprints working for Anthem.
You get high-level blueprints for high-level content and then gather materials in low-level areas or gaining them as mission rewards for playing with the low to mid-game progressed player pool to craft them.
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Jun 23, 2018 17:05:58 GMT
I have always found Bioware's loot systems across their games pretty awful...finding them almost entirely filled with useless junk that clutters the inventory...with the "good stuff" locked behind DLC purchases. Huh? Did you not play DAI SP campaign? Tons of great loot/gear without DLC. And I don't mean just OP stuff like the Bosun's Blade. I mean storied weapons and armor with meaty lore behind them. Like the Bane of Red Crossing, Tyrdda's Staff, Rebuke of the Sunderland, and who could forget the Wedge of Destiny? Okay, the armor of the main game wasn't so great, got better with DLCs, but still.
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Jun 23, 2018 17:12:56 GMT
Anthem loot needs to be functional if it's not storied. And I think it's okay if there are multiple variations with identical stats that vary only by their look and feel (which includes sound and shooting effects). Granted, that's filler, but I'd rather have a lot of options for look & feel than 0.5% slight differences in stats just so they aren't identical. For min/maxing, I'd rather have fewer tiers of significant changes, than a zillion tiers of negligible changes. Say 60%-75% of gear can be this generic stuff.
Then the rest needs to be storied. And storied doesn't necessarily need to correspond to rarity. Maybe a whole army of soldiers were taken out and any weapon looted from that army would have the same story.
Color codex is a minimum for storied gear, but even better would be if a sequence of gear told an actual story, maybe some history about the early days of the Freelancers or the Dominion or maybe something mystical about the Shaperate, er, I mean the Shapers or the Anthem of Creation. As you find/earn each upgraded tier of this weapon sequence, the Codex for it gives you the next chapter of the story behind it.
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Post by Pearl on Jun 23, 2018 23:55:05 GMT
I'm sure I read somewhere that there won't be Stronghold-only loot. Sounds good to me. Not sure who these 'raiders' are. Seems like they will have to deal with it... This is a big part of what killed Destiny 2. If Bioware repeats the same mistake then they're going to have just as rough a time. If you want your dedicated players to keep playing, they need proverbial carrots at the end of the stick for them to chase, and rare raid/Stronghold-specific loot is one of the easiest ways to provide that. This is a looter-shooter. If the loot isn't worth chasing, or the chase is too easy, then very few people will want to do the shoot.
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Post by SofaJockey on Jun 24, 2018 7:17:35 GMT
I'm sure I read somewhere that there won't be Stronghold-only loot. Sounds good to me. Not sure who these 'raiders' are. Seems like they will have to deal with it... This is a big part of what killed Destiny 2. If Bioware repeats the same mistake then they're going to have just as rough a time. If you want your dedicated players to keep playing, they need proverbial carrots at the end of the stick for them to chase, and rare raid/Stronghold-specific loot is one of the easiest ways to provide that. This is a looter-shooter. If the loot isn't worth chasing, or the chase is too easy, then very few people will want to do the shoot. I guess the parallel is DAI's Dragons: a tough fight. But the difference is that a solo player can't do a Stronghold, so BioWare want all the weapons to be in the world, even if the drop rate is significantly less than in a Stronghold.
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helios969
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Post by helios969 on Jun 24, 2018 9:30:37 GMT
I have always found Bioware's loot systems across their games pretty awful...finding them almost entirely filled with useless junk that clutters the inventory...with the "good stuff" locked behind DLC purchases. Huh? Did you not play DAI SP campaign? Tons of great loot/gear without DLC. And I don't mean just OP stuff like the Bosun's Blade. I mean storied weapons and armor with meaty lore behind them. Like the Bane of Red Crossing, Tyrdda's Staff, Rebuke of the Sunderland, and who could forget the Wedge of Destiny? Okay, the armor of the main game wasn't so great, got better with DLCs, but still. I guess it was okay, but by the time I got around to unlocking/finding those items I'd already crafted something better...and you still ended up constantly having to sell off useless junk. And yes the armors were horrid. I thought TW3 was better (though still plenty of crap) but you seemed to constantly find progressively better gear...and it looked good too.
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Post by PillarBiter on Jun 25, 2018 6:54:34 GMT
How I would deal with it:
The thing I hate about loot is having to grind until you can actually use the gun/skill/armor/whatever.
Instead, I would go for a 2-pronged approach: 1) I would make the item available pretty easily, but since they're going the cosmetics way: the item has a lot of different skins. If you just want the item, you can get it easily enough so gameplay wise you're not missing out, however, if you want a particluar skin, you're going to have to grind/pay for it. 2) You can upgrade the item once you've foudn the vanilla item, by finding multiple times the same weapon which now drops with other atatchments, but not make it significantly more powerful. What I mean is give it different stock, magazine, barrel, reticle, attachments like grenade launches or stocks, lasers, ... options which cater to your preferred playstyle, but don't necessarily make the gun more significantly powerful. This way you can keep the balance for uber-players and normies in terms of DPS, but still allow players their own playstyle.
For example, take Jarra's wrath. I find this rifle and like playing with it vanilla. However, another player might also like this rifle, but wants to match it with his pink outfit. Well, he's going to have to look for it. Also, he is a more vanguard style and likes more close-up battles, so instead of the long-range barrel which is accurate but less powerful and has a more stable stock, he uses the short-range barrel which has more power but more spread as well. And he chooses a grenade launcher attachment for close up crowd control instead of a laser for easier long-range aiming.
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Post by Pounce de León on Jun 25, 2018 14:34:08 GMT
Putting gameplay behind a grindwall is terrible. If you (devs) don't want me playing the game, just go ahead and gate off gameplay behind mountains of grind. Though I don't advocate for instant access to everything. There is a fine balance between when the tag "grind" vs "progression" is applied to mechanisms in games.
Chance is another thing. I gave up on MEA when they opened the floodgates and I faced unlocking some pointless varieties of shitty guns rather than complete my rare gun collection. I played exactly two days after that patch then gave up on it. Dilute my chances like that and I go play something else - most likely a SP game.
XP progress - here's another - ties into the grind thing. XP gain in MEA was atrociously slow. Levelling characters just took too long. But characters are juice´. It's variety that is essential for the enjoyment of games. Make me repeatedly bash pixel heads with the ever same melee, because the character is shit because of their level, broken abilities or their shitty peashooter gun and I'll press alt-f4 eventually. If you don't have enough content - don't stretch what you have with stupid grind just to extend the time players need to unlock stuff.
I'm not unlocking to "collect" something. (Maybe in part?). I'm unlocking to have variety. So I can equip a Krogan after going with a Justicar today. Variety is the spice of a game and don't expect it comes from seeing different pug via matchmaker - it has to be gameplay.
After all: Gameplay is its own reward.
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Post by Kedan on Jun 25, 2018 15:24:02 GMT
I'm sure I read somewhere that there won't be Stronghold-only loot. Sounds good to me. Not sure who these 'raiders' are. Seems like they will have to deal with it... This is a big part of what killed Destiny 2. If Bioware repeats the same mistake then they're going to have just as rough a time. If you want your dedicated players to keep playing, they need proverbial carrots at the end of the stick for them to chase, and rare raid/Stronghold-specific loot is one of the easiest ways to provide that. This is a looter-shooter. If the loot isn't worth chasing, or the chase is too easy, then very few people will want to do the shoot. I don’t disagree, but I think this could have been mitigated if the Leviathan hadn’t been a tedious chore, and the appearance of the raid/prestige specific loot hadn’t been garbage. If we look back at D1, the armor from the raids wasn’t necessarily more powerful, but it looked cool (for the most part) and had perks that specifically applied to making you stronger in the raid, without really having any effect in the open world. If think BioWare would be wise to emulate that sort of progression for Stronghold gear. It satisfies both the carrot for chasing and the oft repeated question of “if you don’t raid, why do you need raid gear”, without skewing the open world play as badly into haves/have nots. The weapons were a bit of a different story (hello, Mythoclast) but if BioWare balanced properly from the outset, I think it could work.
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