Lootless RPGs

[Infinitron]

I love RPGs that have only a limited set of weapons, armor and other equipment, instead of endless permutations of +1's and status effects. They let you focus on playing the game and finding the best stuff in the world that was created for you, instead of grinding the random number generator and roleplaying as the wholesale supplier for the ingame shops.

This is another element of the decline, one that isn't spoken about often enough. I blame Diablo.

Ironically, the otherwise dubious influence of first person shooters on the RPG genre actually helps curb this tendency, since FPSs don't have EPIC LOOT DROPS. DX:HR is a great contemporary example of a lootless (pseudo-)RPG.

 

[someone else]

Why do you like streamlined games without loot? Do you like health regen? Cover-based shooters? Radar? Cut-scene takedowns? It is because of people like you that popamole console games exist and people like me can't play gems like Arcanum, Fallout and PST.


lololololz

 

[Infinitron]

Why do you like streamlined games without loot? Do you like health regen? Cover-based shooters? Radar? Cut-scene takedowns? It is because of people like you that popamole console games exist and people like me can't play gems like Arcanum, Fallout and PST.


lololololz

Well, Fallout also has a pretty restricted set of equipment. Contrast with Fallout 2's bazaar of redundant TACTICOOL REAL LIFE GUNS!!1

 

[hoopy]

Yeah, I prefer a limited set of unique equipment, with each item having its own purpose. Baldur's Gate II was pretty good in that regard. Shit, even its potions were more interesting than the generic garbage you get in Skyrim.

 

[laclongquan]

The problem of Fallout 2 is pacing and enemies' placement.

Prior to New Reno and Broken Hill access, all you got is junks: assault rifle? shotgun? etc... The combat shotgun in VC's shop is a pipe dream, what with your flat purse. Rusted metal armor is all you can afford.

Once you can join caravans you can visit many places with good shops, much better than Vault City. And the combat is easier, since you now can visit the earlier areas to do their quests in the comfort and certainty of a pancor jackhammer. This is about the biggest complaint I got.

Even then, the combat is not too easy, mind, since a visit of Remnant of Master's Army is no joke, what with the mutant's favourite arms: rocket launchers. Your companion will get slaughtered. And a bad luck encounter with fire gecko is hair raising if you dont plan to run away screaming like little girl.

 

[Bluebottle]

It is a typical lack of understanding of what it is that provides satisfaction from games, that causes most titles simply opt to bomard the player with items. Presumably this comes from a sense that getting new loot is cool, so getting new loot all the time must be even cooler. Of couse, this is misguided. The satisfaction gained from an aquiring an item is linked to the players sense of its usefullness to them. If the new item is simply the next in a long line of soon to be discarded items then its percieved worth is diminshed, and the satisfaction of acquisition is gone. It all too quickly becomes a treadmill.

 

[Infinitron]

It is a typical lack of understanding of what it is that provides satisfaction from games, that causes most titles simply opt to bomard the player with items. Presumably this comes from a sense that getting new loot is cool, so getting new loot all the time must be even cooler. Of couse, this is misguided. The satisfaction gained from an aquiring an item is linked to the players sense of its usefullness to them. If the new item is simply the next in a long line of soon to be discarded items then its percieved worth is diminshed, and the satisfaction of acquisition is gone. It all too quickly becomes a treadmill.

Bingo! This kind of ties in with that Raph Koster post about mechanic and feedback. In a sense, loot is also a form of feedback, and you mustn't go overboard with it.

 

[OSK]

I love RPGs that have only a limited set of weapons, armor and other equipment, instead of endless permutations of +1's and status effects. They let you focus on playing the game and finding the best stuff in the world that was created for you, instead of grinding the random number generator and roleplaying as the wholesale supplier for the ingame shops.

There's nothing wrong lots of loot in RPGs. The problem is with kleptomaniac OCD power-gamers who absolutely must pick up every 1-gold stone dagger and sell it to the nearest merchant. And then, of course, bitch about money not being worth anything. If lots of loot makes an otherwise good game a burden, it's your own damn fault.

I don't think the problem is the loot, but the inventory management. No one should be able to become a walking warehouse.

I love the changes Sawyer has made to New Vegas with his mod. The drastically reduced carry weight really changes the game for the better. Before the mod, I wasn't the type to head to the nearest merchant to pawn off a large cache of weapons, but the mod made me realize that I do tend to horde food items and ingredients. Now before heading out on any quest, I'm always thinking about my loadout. Should I don some lighter, but less protective armor to carry an additional firearm? Do I really need a dozen fucking gecko steaks?

 

[sea]

It is a typical lack of understanding of what it is that provides satisfaction from games, that causes most titles simply opt to bomard the player with items. Presumably this comes from a sense that getting new loot is cool, so getting new loot all the time must be even cooler. Of couse, this is misguided. The satisfaction gained from an aquiring an item is linked to the players sense of its usefullness to them. If the new item is simply the next in a long line of soon to be discarded items then its percieved worth is diminshed, and the satisfaction of acquisition is gone. It all too quickly becomes a treadmill.

Yeah, that's basically it. Players want to feel like they're making progress in a game, and the three ways RPGs do that is experience, loot and story. There's nothing wrong with any of those, of course, but typically giving out smaller upgrades in shorter increments is a lot more inspiring and gives more feedback than slower, but bigger upgrades.

There are a few things to keep in mind when considering loot and its acquisition rate:

1. The more loot the players get, the less attached they will be to it. This necessitates more generic classes of weapons and/or random modifiers, i.e. Diablo II or Borderlands. All assault rifles or longswords might "feel" the same but their effects are different, hence "I'm an assault rifle user" and not "I have this really cool weapon I found and built my strategy around." You could try making 12,000 unique weapons, sure, but... good luck with that.
2. The more loot, the more choices. Typically in games with lots of loot, I find it much harder to make a decision - do I want the sword that does +5 frost damage for when I fight salamanders, or +3 fire damage, which is more useful against everything? Equipment can be a big deal in RPGs, and the more loot you have, the bigger a deal it becomes.
3. More loot takes emphasis away from the character system. Not only does this mean that often the biggest improvements come from equipment, it also means that unless you have interesting new abilities and skills unlocking at a similar rate to those new items, the character system is going to be drab and boring in comparison. Many games (like Diablo II) compensate by making levels fast and frequent, and by making skill upgrades incremental (i.e. +4% effectiveness each level) but this only increases the expected feedback from the player, and wouldn't be necessary if the loot system was slower-paced.

Unfortunately, most players expect frequent loot drops when playing RPGs these days (picking up loot gives you something to do and scratches that "I'm getting better!" itch), so I think most developers are kind of locked into that these days. If your player base wants new items every 10 minutes, then there's little arguging with them why one system might be better than another. Even Fallout 3/New Vegas are comparatively loot-whory games compared to the original two, where a single piece of equipment would often require the player to risk his or her life over, but would provide incredible benefits.

 

[deuxhero]

Morrowind actually.

While you can play the traditional kleptomaniac, the average dood you kill will have dirt cheep bog standard armor and weapons, as will most stores. Dedicated "enchanter" merchants have magic items, but most are useless trinkets (a few of the trinkets can be used intelligently, my favorite being hoarding a few amulets with otherwise minor stamina recovery and draining them all when I run into an enemy while exhausted) Getting better loot is generally 1: Make it yourself 2: Get it as a quest reward 3: Find it during a quest or obscure dungeon. The odd out of the way merchant will have some better than normal gear (I can think of a guy selling glass armor at ghost gate, but that's all that comes to mind)

The expansions hurt the curve a lot though. Short blade users can get away with store bought items a lot more, as there are frequently some gems found at random enchanters (Dwemer Jinksword is obtainable in the Balmora fighter guild and has an enchantment useful for something other than hurting magic creatures and a decent base item. A few store have glass daggers for sale, mostly in bad condition, but repairs are cheep).

Dark Souls also comes to mind.


You will generally have one, perhaps 2 weapons you found as mundane items and have worked to enhance the entire game. You can find lots of generic items, but ultimately, you are going to improve just one that you like the handling of. You will find a few unique weapons along the way from cutting off boss tails, but most of them have limited upgrade options and don't scale with higher stats. While new armor is constant, few pieces are upgrades in every way to an older one (It may have noticeably lower defense in one area, or it could weigh more, which unlike TES is actually a major burden)

Megaman Battle Network series is also an example as far as jRPGs go.

The battle system has a folder of 30 chips (cards) that are randomly drawn in hands of 5+ (upgrades can increase the number, as can discarding some cards and going without any cards for a turn in 1-3). You can play up to 5 chips a turn, but they all have to be of a matching code (Codes are a-z letters, though some much more common than others, x has like 3 chips, with a * wildcard). Most chips have unique methods of handling, and the vast majority are surprisingly useful utility things, rather than attack. Additionally, a few sets of chips can be played in order to create a special attack known as a "program advance", which outpreforms most individual chips. The most common is "lifesword", which combines sword (hit directly in front of the player), widesword (hit in front of the player, plus the slots above and under it) and longsword (hit the two spaces in front of the player) to make a sword that doe 400 damage (vs the 80 on the 3 basic ones) that hits the two squares in front of the player, plus the ones under and above it.

While the player is showered with chips, most will not work in his folder, and only clog it up with non-matching codes or useless effects.

 

[racofer]

ME2 is lootless...

 

[Infinitron]

Morrowind actually.

Dear god, no.

ME2 is lootless...

ME2 went a bit too far - it has almost no role for an inventory of items at all.

I'm thinking of something like Ultima, that has a handful of magical weapons out in the world, and the usual set of standard equipment (leather, chain, plate), all available from stores at the beginning of the game and not part of any sort of contrived scaled tier system.
Baldur's Gate conforms to this model too, especially the first game.

 

[deuxhero]

Oh god no what? Morrowind has lots of loot, but it is almost all worthless and can only be traded for gold, which is generally equally worthless. The few piece of uniquely named loot aren't that useful.

Oh! The Shin Megami Tensei games!

Many don't have a lot of equipment (Persona series is the exception). The main series has 2 weapons (melee and gun, plus ammo in the first two games), an armor and an accessory for each member in it 1 or 2 party members, while Nocturne and Devil Survivor ignore loot entirely (In Nocturne you can equip one demonic parasite at a time to alter your resistances and learn set, but that is it) and Raidou games restrict you to altering just a sword, and even these upgrades are a balancing act (do you increase your fire resistance at the cost of weakness to ice? Note that weaknesses in Megaten are a huge deal). The main advancement comes from getting new demons to assist you with better resistances, and in the case of Nocturne/DeSu, new skills for the "human" doods.

 

[Infinitron]

Either I don't understand what you're trying to say or you've misunderstood what this post is complaining about.

Morrowind has lots of loot, but it is almost all worthless and can only be traded for gold, which is generally equally worthless. The few piece of uniquely named loot aren't that useful.

The fact that its loot is useless doesn't make Morrowind a "lootless RPG". Yes, it's nice that you're not on a constant loot treadmill in a battle against the level scaling, but the very fact that all these randomly generated items are out there is bad in itself.

 

[SCO]

Ultima 7 pt 2 has a one of the better ideas for loot around.

1-3 spell scrolls of every level around in the world and a "transcribe" spell.
Powerful, spread-out, unique but always useful

Now, if only they had the ballz to disable spell sellers. (Btw, anyone that wants to mod this into ultima 7 pt 1 via exult; please be my guest - disable spell sellers while you're at it - the plot even justifies it)

Baldur's gate failed at this in a few ways: spell scrolls were concentrated on sellers again, they were random drops (so not limited to 1-3 spread out on the world), and there was a scribe scrolls ability.

 

[Satan]

Gothic fits well I think. There wasn't many magical weapons and you encountered them only late in the game. Apart from that armors weren't lootable and you get armor because of your status in the camp. You may purchase an armor but the choice is very limited and purchasable armors depend on your status as well.

 

[Infinitron]

I guess we can classify games into four tiers:

A) Games that have minimal inventory and by extension, minimal loot (Mass Effect 2, Jade Empire)
B) Games that have inventory, but not much loot to find - mostly standard stuff plus a few goodies to find (Ultima, Baldur's Gate)
C) Games that have tons of loot in the world, but most of it isn't useful once you've settled on a stable character build (Morrowind)
D) Games that have tons of loot in the world, and you need to examine every bit of it and constantly change your equipment loadout, because of scaling (Mass Effect 1, Dragon Age 2)

 

[Raghar]

I love RPGs that have only a limited set of weapons, armor and other equipment,

You just described Sudeki.

 

[RPGMaster]

Jade Empire.

 

[Revenant]

Baldur's gate failed at this in a few ways: spell scrolls were concentrated on sellers again, they were random drops (so not limited to 1-3 spread out on the world), and there was a scribe scrolls ability.

Scribe scrolls in Baldur's Gate? How exactly? I don't remember any means of crafting in BG save for a few character-specific cases (Eldoth's make poisoned arrows, for instance).

 

[Infinitron]

Baldur's gate failed at this in a few ways: spell scrolls were concentrated on sellers again, they were random drops (so not limited to 1-3 spread out on the world), and there was a scribe scrolls ability.

Scribe scrolls in Baldur's Gate? How exactly? I don't remember any means of crafting in BG save for a few character-specific cases (Eldoth's make poisoned arrows, for instance).

By scribing, I think he means that you can learn a spell from scrolls. Not write a scroll.

There's also an epic level scribing ability in ToB: http://www.playithardcore.com/pihwi...r's_Gate:_Epic_Level_Abilities#Scribe_Scrolls

 

[Infinitron]

Jade Empire.

That's also more Type A than Type B, like ME2.

 

[SCO]

There's also an epic level scribing ability in ToB: http://www.playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur's_Gate:_Epic_Level_Abilities#Scribe_Scrolls

This was it, though i seem to recall a mod that gave that ability much earlier too (from spells you already have).

 

[Murk]

Witcher comes to mind easily, as does early-game Gothic 1/2 where every piece of cloth counts.

Do you guys subscribe to improvement over replacement? The first version would be that there are a few archetypal weapons (slash, stab, bash, ranged, etc.) and instead of getting a sword +1 you simply improve your current sword through tiers by learning skills, doing quests, finding items, etc.. The easiest example I can think of this is probably final fantasy 8, and while yes it is a terrible game (overall), it's equipment system was pretty unique and different.

To be honest this is just another version of "minor improvement" but with no ability to back-track. I think the most offensive listing of weapons I've encountered so far was Skyrim's, weapon type just didn't matter at all.

Thinking back to a past idea of realistic armor/weapons, I think I'd enjoy seeing a game that actually requires you to be clever about what weapons you bring/use in combat and forces you to think about armor type for reasons other than carry weight. I liked the witcher's approach where you just couldn't hoard weapons for money. It fell somewhat flat when you realize that the witcher sword is always better than the axe/mace/dagger but the potential for it was still there.

 

[Metro]

The system in Gothic was far superior to Witcher which was just plain lazy. You start off with one armor, can buy one medium tier one at some random middling point in the game with enough gold, and get a third one in the final act. In Gothic (and 2 and Risen to some extent) there was a steadier progression and it tied into the story/differed on faction. Weapons also progressed with your strength, agility, etc. but, then again, Witcher 1 didn't have any meaningful stats. You got sword upgrades every other act or so and while you could craft some there wasn't much of a point in doing so.

There is a distinction to be made between number of items available and meaningful itemization. A game isn't better simply because it has less loot/gear. That said, I agree that games like Diablo and Torchlight are overkill but... those games don't pretend to be anything other loot-centric grind fests.

I prefer variety but it needs to be meaningful variety that compliments the ability to play with different builds (although usually this devolves into caster/ranger/fighter). Additionally if you're going to have a game with limit loot you need to put more emphasis on how it is acquired/crafted/its role in the storyline.