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What is Good Itemization?

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Interestin crap, either gameplay wise wi status effects an that kinda shit changing how you play, or well described stuff that you wanna keep cos its personal or narratively important, an its always gotta be useful. Varscona from BG, great example o both, got that an you'd achieved someat an noticed that extra attack an damage (as well as bonus cold damage) right away. A keeper.

Scarcity is also a factor, finding a better sword in Witcher than your vanilla Witchers sword is an achievement, as is getting that first silver un an investigating its origins. Getting Aerondight is fuckin perfect example o makin an item impactful, but then sequels came out an shit all over itemisation.

Damn right! That is the perfect example that less is actually more.
There are a few equipment upgrades over the course of the first Witcher (like, 4 total armors, a bit more swords), but each is meaningful, in some cases you have to work hard for it (like the third armor upgrade, which is difficult to afford or the Moonblade which requires completing a long monster hunting quest chain that spans over the whole game and parts of it are easily missable). You feel you've really earned the new shiny toy - and using it also really makes a difference.
And yes... Aerondinght... well, they just don't make such atmospheric, meaningful rewards anymore, do they?

Another interesting example are books in The Witcher 1. They actually have meaningful impact on gameplay, being necessary to learn about alchemical reagents and monster weaknesses. Actually they are the main expense trough the first half of the game.

Like you wrote, too bad itemization is shit in TW2 and especially TW3 with the MMO-style stat bloat.

I am big fan of this less is more mentality in itemization though, and am admittedly biased as a player towards it. I felt Pillars of Eternity's itemization absolutely atrocious, because the upgrades weren't either easy to understand or too significant, and there's just too many junk items. Wasteland 2's was better, because the upgrades were less common, but the amount of "flavor" items screwed up my inventory (which would be easy to fix by adding a flag to them so I knew I could throw them away).

Even though I also sign to the "less is more" philosophy, I still strongly disagree with this statement. Conversely, I've found PoE itemization very good and nicely balanced. I loved that highly enchanted weapons were only 50% more damaging then the vanilla versions (plus major to-hit bonuses). Also loot was hand-placed there, which for me is the superior choice, by far. I really like that aspect of Dark Souls also. Every weapon has it's use and a weapon you find near end-game doesn't necessarily have to be more powerful for you then the one you have started with.
Personally I hate the MMO stat bloat, new weapons suddenly becoming 10 times or more effective then their very similar base rusty versions. And so I've very much hated the random and bloated itemization in Wasteland 2.

Drakensang had good itemizing for what little I played of it.

So there are two opposing philosophies of itemization,
(A) Item fever: Tons of random items (classic roguelikes, Diablo, Divinity, Borderlands, everything these days)
(B) Standard items: every item of a given kind is identical (Pillars of Eternity, JA2, lots of old rpgs)

I hate item fever, it's 99% boring minor variations, but standard items are 100% boring once you acquire the best available. I think a game needs a sprinkling random awesome shit for balance. You should be able to loot it from enemies - if you can defeat them while they're using it in combat. Sometimes you'll get lucky if they don't have the stats to use it effectively. I've only seen that in a few games (maybe Spiderweb games?). Adds a nice twist to combat.. "damn, I'm getting my ass kicked, but I'm not gonna flee or reload 'cause I want that badass sword!!!"

I also hate item fever. But for me its handcrafted, hand placed loot all the way! Especially in story and/or exploration games.
I guess I can live with some randomness in my crawlers.
 

cvv

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Less is more. People always go overboard with quantity. If you are a game designer simply think people can not use more than one item at a time, so just give them one that is memorable instead of hundreds that are crap.

This. Scarcity, pretty much the first rule of good itemization. Also, items must be interesting and finding them must be interesting (that's why crafting is the worst thing that happened to RPGs ever and craftfags should be purged with fire).

That's why Witcher 3 has by far the worst itemization of all RPGs I've ever played (metric tons of stupid crap that looks the same, behaves the same and is about as interesting as an Excel sheet) and Wizardry 7, to this day, the best one.
 

laclongquan

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If you dont want bloated inventory, making consumption outpace supply.

UFO Afterlight hardest difficulty make a good case for this. At hardest difficulty in production, you simply cant produce enough human supply for battles and have to use looted alien weapons and the cheapest, easiest weapon you can make: TNT. That make a good experience of fighting for your guerrilla life on MARS.
If you want to fight as a human force, reduce its production rate to merely second hardest and maybe you will produce enough~

Silent Storm engine games actually rely on Russian attention to details to both balance the game, and prevent cheating. At S2, you rely on critical items get resupply at handcrafted moment in campaign. You can have thousands of bullets, but without the limited engineer items your engineer can not skill up. At Hammer Sickle, it's more like a limit on the best weapon: The best gun has very limited ammo, accessible only at last battle, so you can not train on best weapon for previous battle thus make them easy, but only train for the last battle so make it bearable. The last battle can be a beast.

Fallout New Vegas, the bloatness are limited on three factors level/perk, location/shops, and DLC/extra. If you have the perk that allow you to use other junks to repair your gun, your bloating inventory get reduce right away. If you have the shops that sell you approriate guns at cuthroat price your inventory also get reduced right away. And at end of DLC you get some extra that allow you to sell off your junks for good resources, like cigarrettes cartons and shits~
 
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Norfleet

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In real world you also wouldn't be able to carry ten suits of plate mail in your pockets
True, but in the real world, there's always donkeys for carrying your luggage on. What adventuring party would be without a literal packmule? If you're planning to loot anything more than you can stick in your pockets, you need a donkey.

and there would be a high probability that a random enemy's armor just doesn't fit you.
Let's be honest: Looted armor is not being looted to wear. No player is looting 10 suits of plate armor because they're going to actually wear it. They're going to arrange to sell it off.


Not to mention shopkeepers having unlimited funds and buying random junk from a random stranger.
Various games have limited funds on shopkeepers before...this in no way prevents looting. You just end up running a warehouse of the stuff where you unload it slowly.
 

V_K

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True, but in the real world, there's always donkeys for carrying your luggage on. What adventuring party would be without a literal packmule? If you're planning to loot anything more than you can stick in your pockets, you need a donkey.
I would love for more games to have actual pack animals that could run off or die to some hazard. The only one I can think about, though, is Curious Expeditions.
Anyway, even a donkey could realistically carry a couple of suits at most, and his carrying capacity would be better used to haul treasure chests. Which brings us to another pet peeve of mine - gold having no weight.

I liked the way RoA games handeled looting: you get all the enemies' equipment, but you have limited inventory, encumbrance affects AP, and everything you don't loot right away is lost forever. Of course, the game's economy still went to shit because of herbs.
 

gaussgunner

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True, but in the real world, there's always donkeys for carrying your luggage on. What adventuring party would be without a literal packmule? If you're planning to loot anything more than you can stick in your pockets, you need a donkey.

You would need to have a wagon train to carry the massive amount of shit you collect in these rpgs. Some rpgs imply that you do, but most break the illusion by having you crawl through caves or scale a cliff or something.

People can carry 50-100 pounds in a pack. You'd drop the pack during fights. If enemies flee, you'd get their packs; everything but their weapons & armor.

Let's be honest: Looted armor is not being looted to wear. No player is looting 10 suits of plate armor because they're going to actually wear it. They're going to arrange to sell it off.

That's a job for the cleanup crew or scavengers. Not warriors or adventurers.
 

DragoFireheart

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The exact opposite of Diablo series:

- Unique items with fixed, interesting/useful properties.
- Fixed location.
- Designed in such a way so they scale with game content. (ex: that Magical Fire Sword you found, while not as powerful as the Infinity+1 sword, is still useful for situations that demand a sword that has it's on light source and you need fire damage, etc)
- Obtaining them is reward and isn't just 'kill the green rainbow slime on B3 300 times in hopes that the 0.01% drop rate kicks in.
- Always quality over quantity.
- Avoid reusing spites for unique items when possible.
 

Lhynn

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The exact opposite of Diablo series:

- Unique items with fixed, interesting/useful properties.
- Fixed location.
- Designed in such a way so they scale with game content. (ex: that Magical Fire Sword you found, while not as powerful as the Infinity+1 sword, is still useful for situations that demand a sword that has it's on light source and you need fire damage, etc)
- Obtaining them is reward and isn't just 'kill the green rainbow slime on B3 300 times in hopes that the 0.01% drop rate kicks in.
- Always quality over quantity.
- Avoid reusing spites for unique items when possible.
You say the exact opposite of the diablo series, then proceed to describe exactly what diablo 1 did.
 

DragoFireheart

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The exact opposite of Diablo series:

- Unique items with fixed, interesting/useful properties.
- Fixed location.
- Designed in such a way so they scale with game content. (ex: that Magical Fire Sword you found, while not as powerful as the Infinity+1 sword, is still useful for situations that demand a sword that has it's on light source and you need fire damage, etc)
- Obtaining them is reward and isn't just 'kill the green rainbow slime on B3 300 times in hopes that the 0.01% drop rate kicks in.
- Always quality over quantity.
- Avoid reusing spites for unique items when possible.
You say the exact opposite of the diablo series, then proceed to describe exactly what diablo 1 did.

And what's your point?
 

Norfleet

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That's a job for the cleanup crew or scavengers. Not warriors or adventurers.
I wouldn't mind having a simple "cleanup crew" mechanic in which after you clear the dungeon, everything in there is simply in a list to be loaded onto your mules, much like how in JA2, after the battle is over, you can just shovel all the loot into your car from the world map.
 

Burning Bridges

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Yes, that worked really well in JA2. Otherwise the game would have gotten totally bogged down by collecting stuff after each battle.
 

anvi

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Imo the best itemization ever done in a game was EverQuest. It is an MMORPG but an older one, back when they were still good. I can remember many of the loots from that game, even though I looted it 16 years ago... Yet I can't remember a single item from the many RPG's I've played in the last year.

The way EQ worked is that you started naked and all items were rare. So there were no quests to gear you up and there were no easy ways to kill stuff and get items. You just had to get playing and get killing stuff regularly, and eventually a "Cloth Cap" would drop, so you now had 1 item. But it would be 1 AC and no other stats. Eventually you would have almost a full set of cloth which as a spell caster was fine, but as a tank type character was pretty crappy. There was leather armor you could buy from NPC's but it was too expensive. If you levelled up a bit more and travelled further, you could eventually reach areas that had some leather items that would drop, but the big deal that everyone wanted was Bronze armor which you could only get in a couple of places at level 20 ish. Each piece would be several AC, and no other stats. Still nothing great but the AC all added up and you felt a little bit more tanky because of it, and you also looked much better.

But what made the game so special is that there were special items that dropped from named mobs that were rare spawns but also the items were rare drops. But these items had real stats on them and real effects like haste on a belt, or a sword that randomly used a spell that would stun the enemy, or snare them, or give you damage immunity for a few seconds, etc. These items became legendary amongst the players, everyone knew the names of them even though they maybe had never even seen one. But in time everyone eventually got most of what they wanted. I remember the first named item I got was a Minotaur Axe which was crappy really, but it was better than the rusty sword everyone started with, so it was exciting. In the higher levels, everyone wanted the Flowing Black Silk Sash which gave attack speed haste to the wearer, also the Short Sword of the Ykesha (or Yak) which was a really good sword that also cast a little nuke randomly. There were other items and I can remember all their names and where they dropped. Again, this is in a game that I played 16 years ago. Admittedly I did return to the game many times since, but I've done that with lots of other games too and I don't remember any items from anything else. The items in EQ are burned into my brain forever, because it was just done so well.

The only offline RPG I can remember any items from was Baldurs Gate 2, and that was only really because I had to craft the items myself. Still nothing like EQ though.
 

Alkarl

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Diablo did pretty good, but every other entry was absolute garbage. Looters. I don't really get it.

To add to that thought, any game with rng like that should just be discounted. Asking a player to spend 90% of their time on <10% of the total programming is just.. I mean, congrats, you've developed the Powerball? Idk how else to say it. It makes sense in F2P and other MMOs that have a playerbase to exploit, but in regular, single player games, making me grind harvest points, or the same enemy for a 1/256 drop is just, gtfo. Go back to pachinko, Japan, you're drunk.

On that note, Dark Souls (despite a bit of rng bs) has great itemization. Items are placed in interesting locations, have self-apparent value, and can be upgraded to perpetuate their usefulness. Not only, but you're choice of gear often changed the way you played the game. Of course, from an economic standpoint, who really knows? That would take a whole separate analysis of the economic value of a soul. Since most people seem more interested in obtaining souls vs giving them out for items, I'd say the economy works, and makes sense, at least from the players point of view.

Another example is Ultima Underworld, where everything had a barter value. Of course, spells could typically circumvent some items usefulness.

Or Darklands, where you start out fairly poor and somewhat ill-equipped. But eventually, once you're taking out Raubritters, you're stocking up on good armor and weapons and eventually trading the low quality stuff off for better stuff. Using the left over change to invest in skill training and learning Saints/acquiring alchemical recipes. That's good itemization. Few games have come close.

A lot of the criticism seems to be centered on how players don't wanna have to "clean-up" a bunch of loot after combat to sell etc. I think that is a perfectly respectable criticism. There are several things that could be done to handle that, give the player packmules, restrict what players can carry (weight has little bearing here, how many suits of mail can you realistically carry despite their weight?), give players other avenues of acquiring goods or give them something to do with them. Stock a shop, break down items to components, etc. Balance item discovery, economy, and gameplay.

For some great examples of how to do extremely poor itemization, see: Dragon Age: Inquisition (or, as I like to call it: Demon Slayer: Strip Miner); BethesdaScrolls (Any will do).

I guess it really depends on how 'sim' you like your rpgs. Personally, I like mine as deep as possible, I find that more enjoyable, but its also pretty rare. The rareness stems from what actually makes good itemization. It's everything, not just the items. It's at the core of the games balance. Gameplay, economy, exploration, everything plays into itemization.
 

Serus

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Or Darklands, where you start out fairly poor and somewhat ill-equipped. But eventually, once you're taking out Raubritters, you're stocking up on good armor and weapons and eventually trading the low quality stuff off for better stuff. Using the left over change to invest in skill training and learning Saints/acquiring alchemical recipes. That's good itemization. Few games have come close
I wouldn't say Darklands had good itemization. It had a good item system - not the same thing. For exemple: how Quality on weapons vs armor interacted with the whole combat system and the strength/endurance damage. It was imo brilliant stuff, hard to find a game mechanic as well designed in the crpg genre since then. But as for items themselves, it lacked some variety. Almost all items were standard and boring. Itemization to be actually good needs some variety. Not powerful "magic" stuff of curse (would destroy Darklands, both theme and balance), not tons of useless stuff (a la arpg) but maybe something similar to Battle Brothers, something, anything to add some uniqueness and variety to items. If you do it - voila, you have a good itemization.
 

Alkarl

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But as for items themselves, it lacked some variety. Almost all items were standard and boring. Itemization to be actually good needs some variety. Not powerful "magic" stuff of curse (would destroy Darklands, both theme and balance), not tons of useless stuff (a la arpg)

Agreed. The items themselves were fairly mundane, but as a system I think it was amazing. I want to disagree that you need to have magic (or cursed items) to make a good system, but as you stated, some differentiation would have been great, some items worth tracking down and using like a blessed sword or whatever would have really diversified the inventory. Or even have items made of different materials, materials that had different effects on certain "non-humanoid" enemies.


but maybe something similar to Battle Brothers,

Looks interesting, I may need to check this out.
 
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There's at least 2 very different types of 'good itemisation strategy' in crpgs, originally designed for very different types of game, and the cardinal sin - and the current ongoing pitfall - is to mix the two.

Style 1. BG1 and 2 had incredible itemisation, and I'd say they're the pinnacle of that type of itemisation strategy (other examples of games using this strategy are Witcher 1 and Deus Ex). Some classes have their power determined as much, if not more, by items than by level. Standard item progression (non-magical gear in BG1, basic +1,2,3 progression in BG2) is found in any shop, but expensive, and putting together your BG1 fighter's set of full plate + martial weapon + all the extras is a long and rewarding task. Some stuff you'll buy, other bits you'll find, and it's part of your goal when adventuring. Then you've got your non-standard items - anything magical in BG1, and anything with a status effect, or a protection from a status effect, in BG2. These are not just incremental improvements to existing stats. They change the gameplay, allowing tactics that were previously impossible.

Eg, a flaming sword changes the way you fight trolls, allowing a different approach to a major BG2 dungeon. Normally, the troll dungeon requires a particular strategy - that you've got casters loaded with flame/acid spells, and that you need to save those spells to finish off unconscious trolls, instead of using their damage. You could buy a fuckload of fire potions, to free up your casters or allow a party of non-casters to progress. But that firesword - that opens up an entirely different strategy, where you've got one guy on 'finish off unconscious trolls' duty, while the rest of the party fights normally. The difference is qualitative, not quantitative.

Common-but-expensive-and-necessary standard items + rare-as-fuck and qualitatively special non-standards. Getting that piece of full plate, or that hammer with a stun-on-hit effect, provides an extremely noticeable and long-term difference in power and tactical options, and it's a fist-pumping moment.


Style 2. Diablo 2 and mmorpg itemisation. These games have never been my thing, and so I'm not in a good position to talk about what's good or bad about it. But it's edgelord-dickery to not recognise that Diablo 2 and WoW blew away their competition for reasons that weren't just 'sheeple, huh?'. There are people who like those games, and it seems to revolve around the exact opposite of good BG-style itemisation. Semi-regular (like a casino - 'unpredictable yet frequent' rewards are much better than 'regular and frequent' at messing with our dopamine/opiate receptors and getting us addicted), incremental improvements in stats so that you can design a build and feel the satisfaction of slowly advancing towards it. You don't want itemisation to create qualitative differences in gameplay, because that ruins the ability to build your character to a particular design.

Players in those games seem to love spreadsheet-adventuring, and I mean that in a good way. Comparing different combinations of skill tree, 'what if I pump this stat to here, that one to there', mixing different stat builds like an alchemist trying to come up with the perfect build. That's only possible if the itemisation is fairly predictable. Sure, you might get an item that boosts X instead of Y, and decide to pursue a different build because of it. But even that is part of the 'choose a spec and build to it' style - players learn the % drop chances, and part of their spreadsheet-adventuring is to factor in how much of their build requires grinding low-drop-% items, and whether they're willing to do that.

Again, not my style of game, but I can see the appeal. Done well, it isn't the 'click click click' 'one more item' robotic feel that most game journos (and quite a few developers) assume - it's the satisfaction of designing a set of blueprints and then seeing them slowly develop into full constructs.

(rant about the evils of real money auction houses and similar in the spoiler)
I only have a problem with that when they combine it with real-money in-game purchases (real money auction house, item/gold DLC etc). That's morally repugnant, because the developers are knowingly drawing upon casino poker-machine design, which itself is the product of incredibly thorough research, where everything from the payout ratio, the brightness/timing of the flashing lights, the size of the font even, is precisely crafted to manipulate the brain's dopamine/opiate reward system. We're going way beyond 'what machine has the most takings' here, modern poker machines are designed through serious neuroscientific research. Games that replicate that feeling without causing social harm are doing a noble thing. They're taking away the poker machine's monopoly and using it for one of the noblest products you can make - simple, innocent entertainment. Games that do that, and then add the real money and financial/social harm back in, while side-stepping all the age, tax and location restrictions that society's have placed on poker machines because we've realised that they're fucking evil .

Normally I'm massively anti-paternalism, and think that the law has no place banning a person from doing something 'for their own good', even when that thing is unambiguously dangerous, so long as it doesn't directly harm others (eg, ban amphetamines because the users tend to rage and attack other people during speed psychosis - but don't criminalise heroin, it's only killing the person taking it, and jailing the guy isn't going to make him 'better'). Replace the poker machine with a poker table and croupier and I've got no problem with having them in the middle of the shopping mall. It's that the poker machine doesn't even pretend to be a better product than the poker table - it doesn't dominate because it's more fun for the user, but because it's designed to bypass our reasoning and trigger us like robots. Even that would be fine, if users were adequately informed, but I'm guessing that placing a big 'THIS MACHINE IS DESIGNED TO MANIPULATE YOUR BRAIN CHEMISTRY BY TRIGGERING THE SAME RECEPTORS AS HEROIN' warning sign would cause people to ignore the machines and walk over to the tables-and-croupiers section, where they can still lose all their money, but might at least have fun doing it.

And so we've got this product which is heavily regulated just about everywhere on earth, and outright banned in other places, even when they don't ban gambling. Where I'm from, poker machines are only allowed in two buildings in the state - the biggest casino, and the biggest horse-racing facility, and we're not that strict on gambling. You need a licence to run a casino, but there's no law against playing a high-stakes poker game with pals in your basement every Friday. Yet we've allowed this subset of games to sidestep that completely - don't ban the games, ban the real money for ingame money transactions. If that ruins the game in any way, then it's not a game, it's a poker machine.

To be honest, I'm not actually concerned about it being a backdoor for spreading poker machines - that's already happening through online gambling. What bothers me is the effect on the gaming industry, and that an industry devoted to the morally purest of products, i.e. simple entertainment, risks being corrupted and transformed into another wing of the gambling industry


But these are totally different strategies, for very different games. Style 2 is systematic because perfect class balance is important in a game that's all about spreadsheet-adventuring. In games like BG or PoE, classes don't need to be perfectly balanced, so long as they're all useful and interesting.
e.g. Thieves are a waste in BG1/2 combat, almost a penalty class that you need to bring along for disarm-trap busywork...but that's fine, because they're the most interesting and fun class to have around when you're in the big cities, with lots of places to break into, secrets to find and NPCs to pickpocket.
Combining them results in an aimless drudgefest, as does using style 2 in the type of games from which style 1 arose. It's always such a sinking feeling when you get a game like PoE, that should be using style 1, and you suddenly see large elements of style 2 for no good reason.
 
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adddeed

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I liked how it is in Gothic / Risen series. Few items, no junk loot, every upgrade you get feels like it has big impact and was hard earned. The opposite of this was playing Torchlight, which basically threw equipment at you at a high rate, most of it useless and offering little improvement over what you have already.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
It's always such a sinking feeling when you get a game like PoE, that should be using style 1, and you suddenly see large elements of style 2 for no good reason.

I really enjoyed reading your post, though it was well written and have agreed with pretty much everything.... maybe except the notion that the gear is character-defining in old games such as BG... IMO builds in these games fortunately matter more then in MMOs and games with MMO-inspired itemization and tiers, with end-game stuff being 10 times more powerful then the early items. They can open new tactics, sure, but I think you're slightly overstating the role of items in a good cRPG.

Then came that last sentence. In my opionion, PoE is a fine example of Style 1. Limited, hand placed loot, which feels very rewarding when you find an upgrade. Also, as opposed to Style 2., the items should not be suddenly 10x as powerfull in Style 1. - and that is very true for PoE.
Are you sure you haven't mistaken PoE with W2?
 

gaussgunner

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Normally I'm massively anti-paternalism, and think that the law has no place banning a person from doing something 'for their own good'....

Yeah, real-money 'gaming' is different, it leads addicts to run up massive credit card debt, then they resort to fraud and theft to support their habit.

It's been a while since I saw a blog about "perfecting the mechanics of addictions" or some such shit, but it was basically your Style 2 itemization. I know it feels more fun to most people, but that's only because developers have made a science out of getting them hooked.

Mixing the two styles, I dunno, could be the devs choosing #1 then adding some #2 to make the suits happy.

Then came that last sentence. In my opionion, PoE is a fine example of Style 1. Limited, hand placed loot, which feels very rewarding when you find an upgrade.

Heh, there's plenty wrong with that game but I haven't seen what he's talking about either. Maybe when I get to Twin Elms.

The best thing about PoE is, it's not addictive. I don't hate it but I can't usually play for more than an hour. Maybe the Sawyerites are onto something there.
 

typical user

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Let me then pose two very basic questions:
  1. What exactly is itemization?
  2. What constitutes good itemization?
I would prefer answers that go beyond merely listing examples, as there are many threads which already list examples. Also, if there are any resources discussing the topic in detail, posting links would be appreciated.

1. It's the element of games with equipment management, precisely it is feature which allows players to choose different playstyles by choosing different items. It can range from as simple thing as choosing if you want to use bow or sword to entire sets of items in games like League of Legends which allows to pick up different combinations of items in 6 seperate slots all bolstering strenghts of your character and nullifying his biggest weaknesses.
2. The easier would be to say what makes bad itemization, and that is indifferences in character builds (as what end result you get with every item equipped) or having very efficient items which always should be picked. Think of The Division, it has all kinds of different atributes which are useless but are in same random pool when you find new item, which can be either godlike or plain useless even when both of them have same level. The good itemization allows for at least 2 entirely different playstyles and doesn't require absurd amount of grind. In Diablo you can play as melee focused character or ranged character who focuses on either physical or elemental damage. A good itemization is when you mix and match and you are drawn into playing the game to just test different builds. The best example is Dark Souls series as you can play as knight, mage, usele... ekhm archer and generally test different spells, weapons, shields and armor and all of them are viable in some form or use.

You don't want examples but I gave them anyway because what can better explain my thought process than pure examples. We are discussing games not theoretical math here.
 
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You don't want examples but I gave them anyway because what can better explain my thought process than pure examples. We are discussing games not theoretical math here.
Examples are fine, so long as those examples are explained. What I didn't want is another thread that degenerates into two or three posters arguing over whose list of games is the best, because that doesn't really answer my question.
 
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