Rare Items and Weapons?

[EternalShadow]

Do you think it is a good idea for games to have an assortment of rare items, weapons and armour, as long as the base equipment will allow you to proceed with the game? (The rare stuff will only make it slightly easier or allow you to perform certain skills, etc)

To expand on that, the rare items could even allow you to obtain passage to otherwise impossible-to-get-to locations. The rare items could also simply have slightly better stats than the originals, thereby making the game a little bit easier if you use them.

In making items rare, they could be unique quest rewards and/or from chests/loot only (the chests would likely have to respawn and offer some loot since the player will just save/reload before opening them if they don't get what they want) 

You could even take rare items to the extreme route by creating superbosses that you'll only have a chance of being able to take on and/or defeat if you have a (full set?) of these rare equipment(s).

Is it a good idea to offer this sort of thing in games, or is it too mobile-RPG like? (Since some mobile RPGs require monetary investment if you wish to get these items easily, but in some of them you can simply get them by playing for a long time which is a non-issue if you like the game(play) in the first place anyway.) Obviously, RPG Maker games would be unable to monetize them (these items), so the issue of IAP is also out of the window, but the feeling of it feeling IAP-like/grindy could still be there...

Personally, I like the idea, as long as one can still make it though the base game with the base equipment. And also only if mandatory items are not rare, like a sword to defeat a boss.

 

[Matseb2611]

Yes, it adds spice to the game and gives the player more incentive to explore and do sidequests. But like you said, not to the point where they're mandatory to complete the game. In my opinion even superbosses should be possible to beat via ways other than simply having a super rare overpowered weapon or item. If finding a rare item is all takes to beat this boss, then it's not testing the player's combat skill really.

 

[bgillisp]

In my game, each weapon and armor has a rare item that there is only one of them, and you have to either do a quest, find a hard to find dungeon, or defeat a boss to find them. They are not required, but having them can make the game easier.

Though, to make sure the game is balanced first, I don't plan to add the rare items to the game until the entire game is made. That way I *know* it can be beaten without them. Once I am sure of that, then I will find places to add the rare items.

 

[EternalShadow]

Yes, it adds spice to the game and gives the player more incentive to explore and do sidequests. But like you said, not to the point where they're mandatory to complete the game. In my opinion even superbosses should be possible to beat via ways other than simply having a super rare overpowered weapon or item. If finding a rare item is all takes to beat this boss, then it's not testing the player's combat skill really.

True! What if the rare item gave the user a special skill, such as the ability to 'sap' (when the opponent is a vampire or something) but at the cost of lowered attack for the battle? It'd be a tactical thing as to who to equip the item to. In that instance, it'd probably be a tank. Or you could equip it to the main attacking guy, lowering their ATK but making it so they don't die so quick? The choices...

@Bgillisp: Yeah, it's best not to add the better stuff until the game is complete, as you could offer some 'lategame' stuff which is better than some earlygame stuff, but is outclassed by endgame stuff anyway. Therefore, it would have a limited usage time, in terms of item stats. So it wouldn't make the whole game easier - just the bit it is useful to, up until you can buy/obtain the better thing(s).

 

[TheRiotInside]

Do you think it is a good idea for games to have an assortment of rare items, weapons and armour, as long as the base equipment will allow you to proceed with the game? (The rare stuff will only make it slightly easier or allow you to perform certain skills, etc)

It's a great idea, as long as the part in bold remains true! If you can still complete the game without these rare items, then all that you are really doing is adding more options for the player, and different ways that they can play your game, which is a very good thing. If these luck-based, rare items become necessary to complete a game's main story line, it will probably be interpreted by most as a sneaky, game length-padding mechanic, which can take a lot of the fun out of your game.

As long as they remain ultimately optional (or maybe necessary for some end-game side quests, that's different since side-quests themselves are optional) then I can't see any real harm in putting them in.

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah, trade offs make the game pretty interesting and can even help to change the entire battle strategy. So long as both ways are viable to beat the boss, I'm all for it.

 

[??????]

Ages ago I wrote a system to essentially break all equipment into tries.. Each equip item's tiers had a percentage change of having an additional stat bonus (for example) and obviously, the highest tier equipment would be considerably better than lower tier equipment of the same type.

I thought it worked pretty well, was just a huge pain to setup ^_^

 

[EternalShadow]

I was thinking something much simpler: Do all the items for the game normally, then go back and create new, extra items that are worthy of later-game stats, and offer them a bit earlier in (respawning) chests/enemy drops with a 1 in X chance of appearing.

 

[??????]

In final fantasy games, there are special ways of obtaining equipment earlier than normal.

For example, Final fantasy 7, you can steal a very powerful sword for cloud from the shinra soldiers in shinra building after genova, doing this gets the weapon about 2 hours of gameplay earlier than normal (on a normal game run, not a speed run).

Also, final fantasy 12, there was a cavern that you could steal a deathbringer sword (randomly attacks with death state) from a mimic much much earlier than normal. This blade had a 95 attack and other weapons available at that time in the game are around 40-50 attack, so obviously, this is a dramatic enhancement.

That mostly relies on a system that allows you to steal items from enemies with percentage based chances on the item stolen and how difficult it is, taking the luck stat into account for the calculation (that determines successful steal)

Perhaps something like that is more suitable a suggestion?

Edit:

also in ff12, there was a selection of chests on a beach in game, and if you opened certain ones it stopped you from being able to obtain the most powerful weapon in game. There was also a few more chests, one of which was very close to the start of the game and you couldn't open any or the weapon would become locked forever

 

[captainproton]

I have some rare equipment in my game, but they're achievable through alchemy, mostly. Combine your battleaxe with thundrite ore and dragon scales and you get the stormsplitter axe.

You absolutely can go through the game with the equipment from shops and chests, but I think the treasure hunting and alchemy crafting is fun.

 

[Wavelength]

Players LOVE finding/stealing/earning rare items and love creating rare items even more!  Absolutely go ahead and do this, and make it really obvious to the player when they've got something special.  Put it in a different color on the inventory list, actually write "RARE!" in the item description, or something similar.

 

[wildhalcyon]

It really depends on how you want players to enjoy your game. There's a whole spectrum of choices here. Generally the more exploration focused the game is the more rare weapons will be present. Skyrim is heavily exploration focused so there are over a hundred unique weapons. Final Fantasy X is more linear, so there really aren't any super special weapons (celestial weapons not withstanding). There's a complete spectrum of options, but as long as you make it possible to complete the game with an average amount of work and exploration you should be fine. The important thing I'd that people enjoy you experience you give them and you enjoy the experience of creating it.

 

[EternalShadow]

In a lot of mobile games like Inotia, there are a lot of rare items/weapons that can be obtained even though the games are very very linear. They act as a grinding incentive, much like 'gambling' in a sense.

 

[captainproton]

I do use a bit of that, myself. A lot of the alchemy ingredients are monster drops, like stingers, fangs and ghost rags.

 

[Raths Rants]

You're on the right path. I found one of the main things is to make sure it feels rewarding to obtain special items. While it is nice to get a special item via a random drop. It is much more rewarding to quest/craft items from quests etc. Just don't make it too daunting or the player may become frustrated.

One of the tricks I have used in the past is dropping hints about a truly special item. Really depends on how much effort you want to put behind it. As they say, "The more, the merrier".

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I like rare-items because sometimes I like to hunt for them. So as long as it's not needed to finish the game. Though if the rare item is needed to activate some extra stuff, I'm a bit undecided on that. Sometimes I like it, most of the times I don't.

 

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

In my teams project the only way in getting a rare special drop is to hopefully look for the rare monster that lives in the dungeon area, once you find it and defeat it the item is a 100% drop. Only downside to it is trying to encounter the monster since the chances are kinda low.

 

[EternalShadow]

In my teams project the only way in getting a rare special drop is to hopefully look for the rare monster that lives in the dungeon area, once you find it and defeat it the item is a 100% drop. Only downside to it is trying to encounter the monster since the chances are kinda low.

I was thinking of Rare Game, but people would just keep leaving and re-entering the map... Perhaps a 100% show up chance after a certain plot event would fare better, encouraging backtracking of maps? (Provided the monsters are on half the maps at least, it wouldn't be fun to have 10 maps and 1 Rare Game, for example)

 

[Wavelength]

I was thinking of Rare Game, but people would just keep leaving and re-entering the map... Perhaps a 100% show up chance after a certain plot event would fare better, encouraging backtracking of maps? (Provided the monsters are on half the maps at least, it wouldn't be fun to have 10 maps and 1 Rare Game, for example)

You could do it this way ("Hey, Hero!  Welcome back.  Rumor has it a Golden Slime was spotted in the woods north of town!").  This would be a neat gameplay mechanic that basically amounts to a sidequest, but I see it as distinct from the rare item that surprises the player and makes them feel fortunate.  I think both ways lend a bit of depth to the game.

 

[EternalShadow]

You could do it this way ("Hey, Hero!  Welcome back.  Rumor has it a Golden Slime was spotted in the woods north of town!").  This would be a neat gameplay mechanic that basically amounts to a sidequest, but I see it as distinct from the rare item that surprises the player and makes them feel fortunate.  I think both ways lend a bit of depth to the game.

Yeah, if the rare game was a sidequesty thing, it could offer another route to getting rare items only available from certain chests in a dungeon, for example.