121 réponses à ce sujet

[Fast Jimmy]

That is dumb. It smells like the result of a procedural broad stroke to me, only way I can think of that would happen. Especially since DA2 was a closed economy where, as Laidlaw said, you can "Sterilize The world".

Agreed. Like so much of DA2, it smacked of a vision of a game that just never materialized, while the details got lost in the shuffle.

[Sylvius the Mad]

It depends on how much nonsense you're personally willing to put up with for sake of gratification, and that threshold is surely individual. Some people are fine having suits of armor and fully formed weapons spray out from animal corpses, other people are adamant about only NPC's with the equipment on, dropping the equipment, while animals and monsters only drop crafting components related to their species.

I personally am somewhere in the middle. I'm okay with Boss/Elite level animals and monsters dropping fully formed weapons, but not so much your standard fodder enemies, except of course NPCs which would have a chance to drop equipment that makes sense.

There are better options available. Rather than having a boss drop nonsensical loot, why not instead put that loot in a chest guarded by that boss? Depending on the boss, there may now be no need to explain the juxtaposition.

Personally, I favour the TES approach, where the loot that drops is the stuff that enemy bad equipped.

Who remembers the hobgoblins beside the Friendly Arm Inn in BG? They dropped full sets of weapons and armour that were, all together, too heavy to carry. I'd like basically all encounters with humanoids to do that.

I don't think we should need, or be able, to take every single piece of loot that drops.

[Fast Jimmy]

There are bettet options available. Rather than having a boss drop nonsensical loot, why not instead put that loot in a chest guarded by that boss? Depending on the boss, there may now be no need to explain the juxtaposition.
Personally, I favour the TES approach, where the loot that drops is the stuff that enemy bad equipped.
Who remembers the hobgoblins beside the Friendly Arm Inn in BG? They dropped full sets of weapons and armour that were, all together, too heavy to carry. I'd like basically all encounters with humanoids to do that.
I don't think we should need, or be able, to take every single piece of loot that drops.

Agreed. Ideally, each humanoid enemy would HAVE all of their "loot" equipped or available to use. It makes little sense that an enemy would drop a healing potion that would have saved their life unless the player took them down too quickly for them to use it. Similarly, it makes no sense that an enemy would have an epic level weapon that they aren't even using that is mint condition when the player finds it. Or that they randomly only drop a helmet, when they look to be equipped with a full suit of armor (or that the helmet they drop is leather, when they appear to be dressed in full plate armor).

I can understand the level of pain with going into that level of detail with every encounter, but it does make it more believable. Everything that could be found on the corpse to loot should be what can be found on the NPC while they are alive.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I can understand the level of pain with going into that level of detail with every encounter, but it does make it more believable. Everything that could be found on the corpse to loot should be what can be found on the NPC while they are alive.

And all of that loot, with the possible exception of clothing and armour, should be pickpocketable.

[Fast Jimmy]

And all of that loot, with the possible exception of clothing and armour, should be pickpocketable.

If your game allows pick pocketing, yes. I've found pick pocketing to be a highly costly feature in terms of encounter setup for the (in my opinion) small payoff it gives. Or, at least, where sneaking makes the character practically able to walk up to evert enemy in broad daylight, pick pocket their weapons and then kill them with backstabbing or fighting them without the enemy having any weapons.

It's very difficult to make such mechanics worth putting points into without making them absolutely ridiculous when maxed out.

[Deflagratio]

There are bettet options available. Rather than having a boss drop nonsensical loot, why not instead put that loot in a chest guarded by that boss? Depending on the boss, there may now be no need to explain the juxtaposition.

Personally, I favour the TES approach, where the loot that drops is the stuff that enemy bad equipped.

Who remembers the hobgoblins beside the Friendly Arm Inn in BG? They dropped full sets of weapons and armour that were, all together, too heavy to carry. I'd like basically all encounters with humanoids to do that.

I don't think we should need, or be able, to take every single piece of loot that drops.

 

Well, even TES had nonsense drops occasionally. Legendary Dragons in Skyrim can drop Enchanted Daedric equipment along with their assorted dragon bits. But Skyrim is kind of the exception and not the rule. TES3 in particular basically put Players and NPCs on equal ground, so instead of that "Drop" moment when you loot the corpse and find random great loot, you have a wonderful sense of dread and glee when you see a guy charging you in full ebony plate. And assuming you can cheat out the pathfinding and pelt the guy with arrows, it can be yours!

 

I will point out that since DA:I isn't scaled, I do think a TES3 approach would work much better than your standard Diablo/Borderlands "Make it rain" loot spray.

[Allan Schumacher]

Side note... would any of your applications have upstream applicability to the Frostbite engine, or would it be focused solely to Inquisition as a project?

 

If someone wanted to use the plugins, they could.  But they are created for the needs of Inquisition so they'd likely need to be modified for a different game.

[Fast Jimmy]

Well, even TES had nonsense drops occasionally. Legendary Dragons in Skyrim can drop Enchanted Daedric equipment along with their assorted dragon bits. But Skyrim is kind of the exception and not the rule. TES3 in particular basically put Players and NPCs on equal ground, so instead of that "Drop" moment when you loot the corpse and find random great loot, you have a wonderful sense of dread and glee when you see a guy charging you in full ebony plate. And assuming you can cheat out the pathfinding and pelt the guy with arrows, it can be yours!
 
I will point out that since DA:I isn't scaled, I do think a TES3 approach would work much better than your standard Diablo/Borderlands "Make it rain" loot spray.

To be fair, a dragon having a suit of armor COULD be believable. I mean, I'd you are ripping out the dragon's skeleton, there would be little in stopping you from checking the contents of the beast's stomach. And it could have quite easily eaten an adventurer wearing high level armor...? I guess?

Still, such armor would be in terrible condition. One would assume eating an entire humanoid whole would keep the dragon pretty full for a while, so I doubt it would have a reason to seek out conflict on a full belly. But that might be looking at things with a little too much scrutiny.

[Fast Jimmy]

If someone wanted to use the plugins, they could.  But they are created for the needs of Inquisition so they'd likely need to be modified for a different game.

What kind of project artifact documentation or reporting does the team do back to the Frostbite team? While I know all of the assets and much of the rigging for what pulls where is very game-specific, it sounds like any game that allows different equipment to be applied that results in a different art asset (which is a lot of games these days) could find value in such a QA tool if it was packaged in a method easy to hook up to different assets and underlying architecture.

Sorry, just project management spitballing.

[Sylvius the Mad]

If your game allows pick pocketing, yes. I've found pick pocketing to be a highly costly feature in terms of encounter setup for the (in my opinion) small payoff it gives. Or, at least, where sneaking makes the character practically able to walk up to evert enemy in broad daylight, pick pocket their weapons and then kill them with backstabbing or fighting them without the enemy having any weapons.

It's very difficult to make such mechanics worth putting points into without making them absolutely ridiculous when maxed out.

I don't think what you just described is ridiculous. We've talked about having non-combat solutions to problems; if pickpocketing can trivialize encounters, doesn't that basically count?

The pickpocketing doesn't necessarily overcome the obstacle, but it does make that obstacle smaller.

[Fast Jimmy]

I don't think what you just described is ridiculous. We've talked about having non-combat solutions to problems; if pickpocketing can trivialize encounters, doesn't that basically count?
The pickpocketing doesn't necessarily overcome the obstacle, but it does make that obstacle smaller.

I'd say the more logical method is to have the rogue sneak past, cause a distraction, and then have the rest of the party move forward. Or, in the case of pickpocketing, maybe placing a stun bomb on one of the enemies and knocking them all out without ever initiating combat.

Stealing all of the weapons from a group of enemies seems a little too... Looney-Tunes-esque, to me.

[Wulfram]

Dropping all the items an enemy has on them just creates a chore, as after the very initial stages they'll be 99% vendor trash.  I'd rather just get the cash value and move on.

Making sure that significant loot is actually used by the enemy is good, though.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Stealing all of the weapons from someone seems a little too... Looney-Tunes-esque, to me.

I would hope that stealing someone's currently equipped weapon would be extremely difficult. You should fail most times you try it.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Dropping all the items an enemy has on them just creates a chore, as after the very initial stages they'll be 99% vendor trash. I'd rather just get the cash value and move on.

You shouldn't get the cash value unless you have the means to collect it all.

I want inventory limits that prevent us from taking all the loot.

[Wulfram]

If you've got the ability to return to the area, you have the means to collect it all.

[Fast Jimmy]

I would hope that stealing someone's currently equipped weapon would be extremely difficult. You should fail most times you try it.

Would you consider a sheathed weapon still equipped?

And I'm just visualizing this... would pulling a sword out of a city guard's backpack (or wherever NPCs store items) be done any more easily than stealing it out of their sheath?

I've often disliked pickpocketing in games, where it turns an NPC into a mobile chest. I always thought there should be two separate skills - appraisal (whereby you watch and evaluate a target, using a skill roll to determine what, if anything, of value they might be carrying) and pickpocketing (where you basically reach into someone's pocket and pull out something - random in nature in most cases or, if you are looking for something particular, a much harder "called" skill roll that would need to be used with the appraisal skill beforehand to target what you want).

Of course, such a system would be unwieldy for a party based game, or a game where combat is easy, which would make all the sneaking and avoidance merely tedious for the majority of players.

[Fast Jimmy]

If you've got the ability to return to the area, you have the means to collect it all.

Which is why enemy loot should suffer the chance of being picked clean by someone/something else if the player leaves the map, as well as the likelihood that other enemies would move in during the the meantime.

The fact that the PC is often a scourging fire of destruction, letting no other living thing return to an area in their wake was always an exceptionally silly feature. If you kill all the bandits, don't they have allies/suppliers/partners/etc. who might come by and check on them if they drop off the face of the earth? Or what about other monsters that move in to take over the space (not to mention eat all the new free food you've just made)? Games should behave a little more like ecosystems rather than mazes with things to stab.

[Enigmatick]

If you've got the ability to return to the area, you have the means to collect it all.

Shouldn't the World master system account for that and have a chance of thieves?

[Wulfram]

Games should behave more like stories and not allow irrelevant details to bog down the important bits.

[AlanC9]

I can understand the level of pain with going into that level of detail with every encounter, but it does make it more believable. Everything that could be found on the corpse to loot should be what can be found on the NPC while they are alive.

 

I'm not sure it's actually more detail for the builder. Don't the NPCs have to be equipped anyway? It's actually more work to flag some items as droppable but others not.

[Fast Jimmy]

I'm not sure it's actually more detail for the builder. Don't the NPCs have to be equipped anyway? It's actually more work to flag some items as droppable but others not.

No, I think "random Guard enemy" just has set armor and attack stats, like a wild nug would. They told natural armor (like a dragon's scales) under the same concept as "this guard would typically have X armor equipped."


What could be cool is an armor damage system, whereby it would be quite likely that he course of fighting (and especially the "killing" blow) would do huge harm to the armor or weapons. In fact, you could take this one step further and have it also apply to PC and companions, whereby falling in combat could do seriously, irreparable damage to their equipment. That way, you'd likely have mostly salvageable bits of broken armor/weapons, with very few truly intact pieces left to loot. That would be a better abstraction than it randomly being flagged.

I'll go one step further and say this would be a great way to incentivize thieving or non-lethal takedowns outside of combat, as it would be infinitely better in preserving both your and your enemy's equipment.

[In Exile]

My biggest complaint with DA2's loot system was its complete disconnect of value.

A gold bar was considered Junk and would be sold for a silver piece. A GOLD BAR. FOR A SILVER PIECE.

Not to mention quest rewards like Maerthi's "priceless tome" being a junk item worth only a few coppers was a real WTF moment for me. What kind of backward, depressed economy does Kirkwall have that solid gold and priceless books aren't worth much more than what you tip the bartender to hear about local rumors?

 

That's just Hawke being terrible at negotiating.  

[In Exile]

And all of that loot, with the possible exception of clothing and armour, should be pickpocketable.

I think armour and clothing has to be excepted, as well as weapons. It stretches credulity you could strip pants off someone without them noticing.

 

That said, my preferred solution was always to add a "sabotage" option to such situations. Unclasping armour straps, putting some sort of binding on a scabbard so that a sword can't be drawn, etc.

 

These are the ways to make stealth combat viable and unique (and wouldn't even require extra animations). 

[In Exile]

No, I think "random Guard enemy" just has set armor and attack stats, like a wild nug would. They told natural armor (like a dragon's scales) under the same concept as "this guard would typically have X armor equipped."


What could be cool is an armor damage system, whereby it would be quite likely that he course of fighting (and especially the "killing" blow) would do huge harm to the armor or weapons. In fact, you could take this one step further and have it also apply to PC and companions, whereby falling in combat could do seriously, irreparable damage to their equipment. That way, you'd likely have mostly salvageable bits of broken armor/weapons, with very few truly intact pieces left to loot. That would be a better abstraction than it randomly being flagged.

I'll go one step further and say this would be a great way to incentivize thieving or non-lethal takedowns outside of combat, as it would be infinitely better in preserving both your and your enemy's equipment.

 

The system you propose would also be a perfectly logical way to create penalities for losing companions without resorting to generally useless systems like perma-death. Although I would say that "irreperable" damage is a bad idea, and that there should be crafting related options to repair the armour. The better the armour, the more rare the components required. If you're wearing a legendary armour set, perhaps it is very hard to repair and you have to be very careful with it.

 

I'm sure it would lead to complaints, but perhaps that could either scale with difficulty or have a toggle (like hardcore more in FO:NV).  

[AlanC9]

No, I think "random Guard enemy" just has set armor and attack stats, like a wild nug would. They told natural armor (like a dragon's scales) under the same concept as "this guard would typically have X armor equipped."
 

 

This is a big change from how DA:O (and NWN)  handled NPC equipment, isn't it? Is this a Frostbite thing?