Poll of the Day > What kind of drop characteristics do you like in games?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Let's say, which style of drop system and drop rate do you like?

Personally I like the style of borderlands where the items have a rare chance of dropping everywhere but an increased spot from a specific source. However I like rarer drop rates. I wouldn't say Diablo 2 drop rates, but pretty close to it.

I really like mindlessly grinding one boss or elite for a specific item, but I don't like how common it is on most games. I remember the best times I ever had in video games were when I got my first high rune on Diablo2, when I completed the IK set, and a few others. All those events had were special because of how rare those items are and I actually can still remember which map I was on and where I was when most of those things dropped. Now games just give you everything so much its no nearly as fun or exciting

Diablo II

Whatever isn't wasting my time.

No drop rates below 1%.

High drop rates. Fucking Ni No Kuni.

World drops make for a more organic gameplay experience, but in games where specific drops can be build-enabling, not being able to target farm those creates an annoying sense of FOMO unless you get lucky enough to have those builds become available (and being locked out of part of a game you've paid for because you haven't been lucky enough to access it kind of sucks). Targeted farming also has the benefit of mixing up the farming process because you need to farm specific targets for each item you want, whereas with world drops, you basically just end up identifying which runs are the most efficient in terms of total number of drops and farming those ad infinitum.

I liked Grim Dawn's approach to it, where there are a lot of world drops that are incremental upgrades, but a lot of the more build-defining/enabling drops can be target farmed. That was made even better by the fact that a lot of useful target farmable items came from more generic enemies instead of bosses (though bosses also had some), so they could be farmed by running entire areas instead of just rushing to the boss. That kept things pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the resist system means that finding incremental upgrades is actually pretty hard, since replacing any one piece of gear pretty frequently drops you below the resist caps and means you need to shuffle a bunch of other items/enchants around to fix that, so it's not as flexible as it might otherwise have been.

rare drops and few pieces of in game equipment but each piece changes stats significantly or has a specific effect. i dont like tonnes of generic drops that only affect stats incrementally and you have to hoard of bunch of dupes and inferior pieces just to sell at the next town.

I really don't like Looter-Type games but Diablo always seems to do it best, I like the gameplay of borderlands but constantly getting showered in worthless rarity lvl 1-2 guns is annoying since it just wastes my time. Basically if I see an item drop it better be worth atleast looking at.

Also games that drop class exclusive items for a class you're not playing can burn in hell.

Cruddy_horse posted...

Also games that drop class exclusive items for a class you're not playing can burn in hell.

I actually like off-class drops. I very rarely have a "main" character so getting items for my others are always nice.

Granted not sticking to one character made Maplestory rough for me back in highschool.

hypnox posted...

I actually like off-class drops. I very rarely have a "main" character so getting items for my others are always nice.

Particularly when one of the major draws of the game is trying out different classes. I did kind of like how Diablo 3 ended up handling that with the Loot 2.0 overhaul, with something like an 80/20 split between on-class and off-class drops. D3 had plenty of other issues with its loot system (most notably how badly classes were pigeonholed into specific builds by their itemization), but that was generally a good balance between on-class progression and jump-starting alts so you dive right in to complete-ish builds when you tried them out.

I'm not a fan of random drops at all - I'm generally as annoyed by farming in games as much as I am by grinding. If I want a specific item, I want that item now. I don't want to spend hours and hours having to constantly kill the same stuff over and over again on the off-chance that it will drop.

It's fine if enemies only drop mostly vendor trash, which can then be carted back to town and sold, with the money you make off it used to buy the actual worthwhile gear you wanted in the first place. But I don't want extremely valuable, useful, unique, or even cool cosmetic items dropping from bosses with minuscule drop rates. That's something that grew out of the deliberately addictive MMO model, and it's one of the many reasons I loathe MMOs in general.

My ideal game is generally either going to have all the good gear in static locations or storefronts, or will have fairly high drop rates so I can generally get what I want within a fairly quick amount of time after I want it.

Mass Effect's a pretty good example of what I like in a game - since I'm mostly just selling off all enemy drops for credits to buy the things I actually want anyway. As is something like Stardew Valley, where individual items drop extremely commonly, and it's the constant interplay of resources that's more important than any single drop (and all the really good stuff is always in the same place, for the same price).



adjl posted...

World drops make for a more organic gameplay experience

I'd argue that organic doesn't really matter unless you're going for a full-on realism experience, at which point you're running into an entirely different sort of problem:

https://youtu.be/RZl9KcSywos?t=8

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd argue that organic doesn't really matter unless you're going for a full-on realism experience

I'd disagree, in many cases. For ARPG's in particular, when I say "organic," I'm meaning that you don't have to think about loot or farming to have that loot enhance your gameplay experience. A lot of people liked Borderlands 1 better than 2 for that reason: You will encounter random drops as you play through normally that amount to meaningful upgrades and change the way you play. In that sense, the random loot is dictating how a given playthrough pans out and makes for a different experience each time. If the interesting loot has to be target farmed, though, you don't end up getting interesting upgrades unless you deliberately go out of your way to get them, so you do have to think about it.

Of course, that stops being relevant when you start getting into more deliberate min-maxing for endgame content (or just because that's how you like to play). Then, you're going to be deliberately farming and thinking about loot regardless of what system is in place, so how organic the loot system is stops mattering. It can be a tricky balance to strike, especially with so many ARPG's promoting long-term endgame content over replay value.

I like roguelike drops

where you dont know wtf youre gonna get and everything combines in cool ways

In a way, Roguelikes are an answer to the challenge of balancing endgame-min-maxing with the fluid experience of adapting to what you get as you level: They never have an endgame, so the "levelling" experience is all you have to worry about and the entire game just revolves around making the best of what you get.