Tailored loot and other clever handholding methods

[Clord]

This is probably something games should not use but here goes.


Let's say player is out of the potions and party's only healer is almost out of mana. Game would make sure that next looting opportunity the player would get items to heal the party at least partly. I wonder how many would be actually fine with this and my guess is that when person knows that such mechanism exist in a game, it feels like too much handholding to make difficulty rather fake.


To make it even more extreme, when game things that party's equipment is lackluster overall, it would give some good equipment when there is something to loot.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

I think it is up to us, the developer, to ensure that the player doesn't get put into that position. You can add subtle warnings that this will be the last shop/healing point/save point etc for a while, without going to the extreme of 'Oh, so you're about to die? Here, let me heal you.'

Such a system is massively exploitable, and once you know it's there, would ruin the experience for me. It's like VATS in fallout. 

Just my opinion

 

[Kondibon]

I dunno about equipment drops since they're not something I really consider for off line games, but for healing items I think it'd be fine. It kind of reminds me of what the metroid games do. If individual battles are difficult enough to warrant item use then I don't think it would make the game too easy, you'd just have to make sure normal enemies don't exist solely to whittle your resources down and can actually be a threat even WITH the items. If anything this opens some doors since you can be looser about the resource management side of things.

 

[Gigglemoo]

Stuff like this is actually pretty common in games. That's part of a good designer's job, to keep the "fun" flowing and triggering. The key is to not be obvious about it.

 

[Andar]

The main question behind this is if you want the player to have the ability to loose the game or not.

Stuff like this is actually pretty common in games. That's part of a good designer's job, to keep the "fun" flowing and triggering. The key is to not be obvious about it.

Yes, that had become the norm a few years back - but currently a lot of games are going back to high difficulty and providing the player a real challenge instead of railroading to the ending.

Simply because some players are beginning to catch on to that and wanting a challenge they can boast about after finishing the game. OK, that isn't every player (there are still enough who want to simply follow a story), but that's part of your decision as a developer to select your target audience.

If someone wanted a game I cannot loose because the game gives bonus items, then he might as well go to visual novels and spare himself the work of clicking through useless battles...

 

[Espon]

Seems like a lot of work to set up and program to work properly.  Most games just leave you swimming in potions or ways to restore mana these days.  If they want to up the challenge they might impose a cap on the number you can carry to force you to ration them and be careful.

 

[Kondibon]

The main question behind this is if you want the player to have the ability to loose the game or not.

Yes, that had become the norm a few years back - but currently a lot of games are going back to high difficulty and providing the player a real challenge instead of railroading to the ending.

Simply because some players are beginning to catch on to that and wanting a challenge they can boast about after finishing the game. OK, that isn't every player (there are still enough who want to simply follow a story), but that's part of your decision as a developer to select your target audience.

If someone wanted a game I cannot loose because the game gives bonus items, then he might as well go to visual novels and spare himself the work of clicking through useless battles...

Getting bonus items doesn't necessarily mean you can't lose, just that the game has to be more about mid battle tactics than long-term resource management. That's why I suggested making normal encounters harder to compensate. Getting a constant stream of healing items when low at health won't always help you if enemies can take you out in 1 or 2 turns when you make a mistake.I agree with Espon on having some sort of item limit though getting 99 potions by skirting death against low level enemies would be silly.

 

[Milennin]

I agree with Espon on having some sort of item limit though getting 99 potions by skirting death against low level enemies would be silly.

It wouldn't work like that. If I understand correctly, it only guarantees a healing item drop when your party does not carry any sort of healing items and the healer is low on/out of mana. I'd be fine with this if it's just enough to get by.


And since when is it possible to lose an RPG anyway? In most games if you die you have to reload your last save and lose a minute or two, I'd hardly call that losing the game, really. Maybe if your game has some sort of permanent death system, sure you can lose in that. I don't remember ever playing an RPG for the challenge anyway, since any sort of challenge can easily be grinded away or comes down to simply knowing the encounter and then exploiting its weakness.

 

[hiromu656]

I don't think I've ever seen a system like this in an RPG, but it is common in Action games like Darksiders or Devil May Cry, where when you're low on HP, enemies seem to drop more "health orbs".

About the loot thing, that can easily be exploited by going into tougher zones with bad gear intentionally to get better gear and just repeating the process. But honestly both of these sound unappealing for an RPG.

 

[Sailerius]

Since when did "good game design" get called "handholding?"


Your primary job as a game designer is to make sure your players are having fun. If they get stuck in the middle of a dungeon with low health and no way to heal, that's not fun; that's just annoying. You should approach game design the same way you approach DMing a tabletop RPG. Any reasonable DM would give the players some healing items at that point, not twirl his mustache and go "mweh heh heh heh, let's see you get out of this one, shall we???"


Also, yeah, it's common knowledge that most AAA RPGs do that nowadays. Dragon Age is an specially noteworthy example; it is less likely to give you items you have an abundance of and more likely to give you items you desperately need.

 

[Fafnir]

They should have planned their dungeon delve better. Assuming the challenge was level-appropriate, I would NEVER give them anything to get them out of their own mess. Failing resource management is their own fault.

Same goes for any RPG where resource managemente is a significant game component. It's fine in action games, but you ran out of ethers and potions in the middle of the Cave of No Return?

That's too damn bad. Maybe you'll be more careful next time.

 

[Kondibon]

They should have planned their dungeon delve better. Assuming the challenge was level-appropriate, I would NEVER give them anything to get them out of their own mess. Failing resource management is their own fault.

Same goes for any RPG where resource managemente is a significant game component. It's fine in action games, but you ran out of ethers and potions in the middle of the Cave of No Return?

That's too damn bad. Maybe you'll be more careful next time.

Since when did "good game design" get called "handholding?"

Your primary job as a game designer is to make sure your players are having fun. If they get stuck in the middle of a dungeon with low health and no way to heal, that's not fun; that's just annoying. You should approach game design the same way you approach DMing a tabletop RPG. Any reasonable DM would give the players some healing items at that point, not twirl his mustache and go "mweh heh heh heh, let's see you get out of this one, shall we???"

Also, yeah, it's common knowledge that most AAA RPGs do that nowadays. Dragon Age is an specially noteworthy example; it is less likely to give you items you have an abundance of and more likely to give you items you desperately need.

I'm going to just reply to both of these at once since I have the same response. I don't think either of you are wrong but it really comes down to which audience and game style you're aiming for.

If your game is going to have individual complex battles that cost the player a lot of resources and have a good chance of destroying them then giving them stuff when when they're running out is a good idea. Or at the very least giving them a way to hop out, buy more stuff. Personally I'd just add healing save points or something.

On the other hand, if the game is focused primarily on attrition battles that whittle down the party's health and require long term planning to get through the dungeons, then something like this would be too forgiving since they'd be loosing health too slow to really be at risk even with low resources.

Of course, you could do both with complex difficult battles, and very specifically limited resources. If you do though, it's VERY important to spell it out to the player or make it obvious from the outset what they're going to need to plan for, as well as give them a way to. Try to avoid sending the player into a situation they can't plan for with limited resources and expecting them to "be prepared".

 

[Fafnir]

I'm going to just reply to both of these at once since I have the same response. I don't think either of you are wrong but it really comes down to which audience and game style you're aiming for.

If your game is going to have individual complex battles that cost the player a lot of resources and have a good chance of destroying them then giving them stuff when when they're running out is a good idea. Or at the very least giving them a way to hop out, buy more stuff. Personally I'd just add healing save points or something.

On the other hand, if the game is focused primarily on attrition battles that whittle down the party's health and require long term planning to get through the dungeons, then something like this would be too forgiving since they'd be loosing health too slow to really be at risk even with low resources.

Of course, you could do both with complex difficult battles, and very specifically limited resources. If you do though, it's VERY important to spell it out to the player or make it obvious from the outset what they're going to need to plan for, as well as give them a way to. Try to avoid sending the player into a situation they can't plan for with limited resources and expecting them to "be prepared".

I agree. I was assuming a classical jRPG structure, or a D&D delve, i.e. a situation where the party has to manage resources from start to finish. In other words, the dungeon is a single challenge and the battles are components within that challenge. If the challenge is the fight itself, then everything changes. For example, I just finished playing The Grumpy Knight. You can save anywhere, fights are player initiated, party is fully healed post-battle. Each fight is its own challenge.

However, Clord's OP implied a certain amount of resource management during the dungeon. Tailored loot seems like a half-hearted way to do it. It's resource management, except not because if you are going to fail it you get a freebie... so why not drop the resource management entirely? Battles of attrition are already annoying enough, better make each fight significant and allow some measure of automatic healing between fight. If on the other hand there's a limited resource, it should be limited for real, otherwise it's pointless.

 

[Tai_MT]

This is probably something games should not use but here goes.

Let's say player is out of the potions and party's only healer is almost out of mana. Game would make sure that next looting opportunity the player would get items to heal the party at least partly. I wonder how many would be actually fine with this and my guess is that when person knows that such mechanism exist in a game, it feels like too much handholding to make difficulty rather fake.

To make it even more extreme, when game things that party's equipment is lackluster overall, it would give some good equipment when there is something to loot.

You're talking about an "AI Director"?  That thing that Left 4 Dead uses?  If you're struggling, it drops more random goodies for you in out-of-the-way places to help you along, but if you're doing really really well, goodies are tricky to find?  It works in a game like Left 4 Dead, I doubt it would work in an RPG where strategic planning should ALWAYS be done before adventuring.  The purchase of these life-saving items is up to the player and they absolutely should be punished for not thinking ahead.  That tends to be the point of the combat system in general, to whittle away resources and make you manage them as you move forward so that you are still prepared by the time you get where you're going.  Too many enemies in an RPG tend to drop healing items and make visiting an item shop rather pointless.  It's like in Final Fantasy 6, once you get Locke.  Steal Potions from every single random enemy you run across and you'll never even need healing items until the second half of the game when monsters suddenly get a buff to damage dealing capabilities and difficulty.  I ended up visiting item shops in that game just to purchase tents for the save points or overworld healing.  At 1200 gold a piece, before you got 2 hours into the game, it was relatively cheap considering all the loot you were carrying and the amount of gold enemies dropped.

Basically, if you want to have item shops at all (not equipment shops), then you need to limit the amount of healing items you give the players.  Otherwise, these places are massive wastes.  Just look at any modern RPG that suffers that problem.  It's why I like to make sure very few (if any!) monsters will ever drop a healing item.  I want my shops to be used, and I want my players to spend their cash on junk other than just the shiniest armor and weapons they can find.

 

[Clord]

Yeah it is something similar to AI director kind of. Expect way simpler.


Abusing the system would be rather limited unless there is refilling chests or something like that.

 

[Tai_MT]

What about going and fighting weaker monsters who can't hurt you while in a "very damaged" state in order to promote their best drops of healing items and stuff?  I've seen teams in Left 4 Dead do similar things...  Hurt each other into yellow zone right off the bat and then go looking for supplies and finding a ton of healthkits in the first few areas so that it's pretty difficult to put the teams down as infected.  Sometimes that strategy has even spawned some of the stronger weapons earlier.