Review Icewind Dale II Review at The Wargamer

[Flarnet]

I remember that they had some rudimentary form of dynamic prising in "Betrayal in Antara", but I can't remember much of it since I've been trying to delete the sections of my memory that holds those horribly wasted hours I spend on the game.

It then makes such an act much more convoluted, and so the stigma becomes, "do it if you're desperate, but don't feel obliged to check every barrel just because that's what the developer intended.

But it's too late for that. Pandoras box has been opened. And I blame every rpg developer for it. The idiot that hid an über-ring under the roots of a pine tree outside of the Friendly Arm's Inn in Baldur's Gate for instance did one thing and one thing only - he sentenced every player to zombie-like scanning of each and every pixel in every rpg they play from there on to eternity.

I remember reading a post mortem on Half-Life where the developers said that all the crates in the game were initially just there as props. They didn't contain anything. But during testing they were struck by the fact that every single person smashed each and every crate in the entire game looking for loot - even though there was NEVER anything in them. So they were left with no other choice than to fill the crates with loot. Pavlov indeed.

I would tackle this the only way it can be tackled. By not having any containers, bookshelfs, drawers, desks, barrels, hollow trees, loose stones etc. Or practically none anyway. The mega-loot should be in hidden areas which your thief should detect (automatically thank you very much - why the hell do I have to tell my thief to "keep your eyes open" after every fight in IE games? Are thiefs inherently daft?).

 

[Section8]

I would tackle this the only way it can be tackled. By not having any containers, bookshelfs, drawers, desks, barrels, hollow trees, loose stones etc.

This was one thing that Fallout Tactics held over it's RPG predecessors. We had a limited set of container sprites, and they were never empty. It may be more realistic to have to search here and there, but if you're checking out an open container, you should be able to glance and see if there's anything worthwhile there (read: not have to click on it to find it's empty) and any closed containers should be closed because they are containing something. Digging through empty, closed containers is like unwrapping empty boxes at Christmas.

Or practically none anyway. The mega-loot should be in hidden areas which your thief should detect

If detecting secrets is part of the skill set of a certain character class, or a valid skill choice in a classless system, then this is definitely true. You've forsaken strengths in other areas in favour of being compensated with better commodities, and you'd better hope there's no way for other non-skilled characters to find the same secrets courtesy of walkthroughs.

However, what object placement comes down to, is location based rewards. To clarify, items that have no ties to any other entity, they are just there for the player to find.

As mentioned above, secrets are kind of pointless if you can find them via a walkthrough, even moreso if there's a multiplayer component to your game. If they aren't secrets, then you are basically giving the player a scooby snack for being/getting somewhere, and as such the reward should really be proportional to the difficulty of reaching that particular location.

Looking in a barrel and finding some grain, and then looking in the next barrel down the line and finding a diamond is bad, because you've just set a precedent for looking in every barrel, in case this one has something better than that one. Fuck that. It's no harder to get to one barrel than the other, so they should have an equivalent (not exactly equal) reward.

If you progress further through the game and find a container behind a locked door in a dungeon, it shouldn't be a barrel. The player has already been conditioned into thinking that barrels are fairly mundane, and they can avoid them if they want, so don't confuse them. If you must put in a barrel deep in a dungeon, fill it with fetid grain. Like Tim said, it's basic psychology.

To take the example of the ring in Baldur's Gate, as was said before, it's just an outright bad idea, because it encourages one of two things. Either trawling the screen for a mouseover, or reading a guide/walkthrough. A more appropriate way to present a similar circumstance would be to have an NPC (or two) that know about the ring, and it's only through interaction with that NPC (persuasion, intimidation, beating them and stealing a map) that the player gets access to the location. For one, they've surmounted a challenge and earned their reward, and two, you've reinforced the fact that the pursuit of information in a logical manner is a better method than mindless searching.

 

[Vault Dweller]

remember on my first playthrough of Fallout 1, when I found that Scout's Handbook on the bookshelf in Shady Sands, right at the beginning of the game. After that, I compulsively searched every container in the game hoping for a little loot. Must... search... container!

Searching every container in Fallout is not the same as checking every barrel in IWD.

In post-apocaliptic environment all goods are extremely valuable. Anything that was kept under a lock deserves your attention. You either found it in a pre-war vault or a storage or you found somebody else who found it there but failed to keep

In a typical fantasy environment there is no reason to go and check every crate, barrel, or chest especially the ones kept outside. Arcanum had it done right. You check one - garbage, you check another one - garbage, you are starting to suspect the terrible truth, but still check another one. Doh!

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

In a typical fantasy environment there is no reason to go and check every crate, barrel, or chest especially the ones kept outside. Arcanum had it done right. You check one - garbage, you check another one - garbage, you are starting to suspect the terrible truth, but still check another one. Doh!

Yet, in Arcanum, if you were a techie, you could turn that garbage in to things to sell. That's what made searching trash bins in Arcanum so cool.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Yet, in Arcanum, if you were a techie, you could turn that garbage in to things to sell. That's what made searching trash bins in Arcanum so cool.

It was awesome, makes me want to replay it again..... I hope there will be another game in this setting. Anyway...

The point that I was trying to make is that barrel searching is not necessary a bad thing if it fits into a setting. Although it does not make sense to arrive into a town and start methodically searching for every barrel, chest, and box looking for loot, it makes sense in Fallout due to a scarcity of items after the war, and it makes sense in Arcanum due to some characters ability to make use of items other people consider useless. But there were no "mad loot" in those containers (unless you count boots )

Hmm, Fallout, Arcanum...there is a pattern here. I wander how He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken In Vain would handle barrel hunting in ToEE

 

[Spazmo]

Vault Dweller, when I say searching every container, I don't mean searching all the lockers and chests that were behind large men with guns. I mean going into empty houses on the Blades area of the Boneyard and searching small clay pots that have never, ever had anything in them.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Well, may be that's the way you choose to play. By the time you made it to the Boneyard, you hardly needed every bullet or stimpack or even a book. While there is always a chance to find something awesome in a place you least suspect, it's up to you whether you want to be thorough in your search. If it bothers you, don't do it. Even if you miss something, it won't ruin your overall game experience.

I don't think that a bunch of containers is a problem. The problem is when you find unappropriate loot in them. If I recall correctly, the Blade area looked very poor, so the odds of finding something of value were minimal, and the chance of finding something of value _to you_ was even smaller.

 

[Rosh]

As it has been said, but to sum it up and add my own bit in, it's all about the world construction.

If it's cheesy like a +6 Sword of Instant Death in a barrel right outside of a starving peasant's house, then that's absurd. So would a barrel full of stuff in a dungeon, as for one, they aren't too practical to store things in, and another thing, that gets repetitious. That was a thing from DarkStone I got annoyed with.

Now, to make the setting more immersive, more believable, then you can do what Gothic and other games did. Make a skill for the player to take the claws, skins, teeth, whatever from the monster and sell them to others. One thing I don't like is "random anatomy drops" like in Asheron's Call 1/2, where the monster would sometimes drop a part of their body, which is used in crafting or whatever. There should be a skill or something to provide for it and take away a bit of the "cartoonish" platform game and make it seem more like a world.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

If it's cheesy like a +6 Sword of Instant Death in a barrel right outside of a starving peasant's house, then that's absurd. So would a barrel full of stuff in a dungeon, as for one, they aren't too practical to store things in, and another thing, that gets repetitious. That was a thing from DarkStone I got annoyed with.

I agree. That's my big problem with it. It's a total immersion break right there. If the peasant is starving, why does he have such an expensive and powerful weapon? And why does this poor guy keep his 100k gold valued item in a barrel outside his house when the village is so poor?

Why doesn't he just pick up that sword and fight the problems around his town himself? With such an uber weapon, he should be able to wipe out hordes of enemies.