eeee7c No.16286409
>RPG
>Enter room full of boxes
>Spend 20 minutes searching them all
>Absolutely nothing of worth
>You know you have found good shit in areas like that previously so you will do it again no matter how annoying it is
How do you deal with this as a dev and as a player?
As a dev I have a couple ideas
>Tie searching containers to a skill, instead of manually checking every box you trigger a roll against the skill and then give all the loot the character finds at once
>Only have loot in like large chests/crates and shit so you never have to search for them
b913a0 No.16286412
Could have it like musou games where you just break all the boxes and at the end see everything you got.
13225d No.16286413
But you don't understand OP, it's good role playing game design that you're encouraged to waste all your time for nothing.
a8e865 No.16286436
>>16286409
Bethesda games do this. While items in the open and equipment worn by enemies are what-you-see-is-what-you-get, items and money in containers will change depending on your stats.
552613 No.16286447
>>16286409
The only real way to do it is to establish hints at what may be important. Then instead of pure guesswork you reward logical deduction.
ee6a14 No.16286451
>>16286409
random loot based on level. lol. give a 1% of a magic item and 10% that it doesn't suck. make players obsess over every fucking box. fill dungeons with boxes.
go.
d3bf1e No.16286484
A skill that lets you fuck the box
08ac4e No.16286490
Borderlands has a system where it supposedly grabs all the stuff from several containers at once, but it has shit range. I would recommend either container-breaking if you are looking to make something not very realistic. Otherwise, if you want something more realistic, an autoloot system where your character can grab everything in sight (this is important to avoid people spamming the key to find hidden treasures), or toggling a Detective Vision mode where they can look around without moving to automatically select all boxes they look at (think Asura's Wrath type targeting). After confirming, a short fade to black, maybe advance the ingame timer a bit if there is one, and your character has everything in the containers in front of him, and he is running over the worthy stuff. This is where you open the inventory menu and let the player do the rest. All discarded stuff is dumped to the nearest container, and the adventure can continue.
f600e9 No.16286492
I don't get it, why would a roleplaying video game be about looting boxes? Perhaps you're talking about hack'n'slash games?
6d06d0 No.16286522
>>16286490
It's actually all items currently on screen.
7a01a5 No.16286536
>RPG
>find 16 boxes just sitting at a place
>open them all
>nothing of worth
>find out much later that opening all but two specific chests will net you a super-powerful weapon eventually
318270 No.16286537
>>16286409
Don't make games with a million fucking boxes you can search, that's all. The treasure chest from old RPGs was not just a chest- it was a symbolic way of putting the good shit in easy sight instead of making the player check every piece of the dungeon trash a million times.
6d06d0 No.16286538
>>16286536
>Game with only unique equipment
>missables
faec33 No.16286545
>>16286409
>How do you deal with this as a dev and as a player?
Pet that finds shit, robot you can upgrade to find better shit etc. Scanner items, alert to treasure. It's not hard and can make going back to older areas worthwhile and can tie into a side quest that backtracks later on in the game.
d8b92f No.16286548
>>16286409
If it's a storage room then scatter random items like potions or crafting materials into the containers, it's a fucking storage room for items so it makes sense for none of the containers to have anything. In fact it'll make you ecstatic to find a storage room if you know it'll have a bunch of stuff in it, it's like a treasure room.
If it's just random barrels scattered everywhere in the map then ask yourself why random barrels need to be scattered everywhere in the map. They're not important, make them breakable so players can just mow them down as they go by.
You could also change "box" object into a "pile of boxes" object, so visually it looks like there's many but it's actually just 1 game object.
Optionally add a "quick loot" function that lets you grab everything from a container in 1 click.
3d517b No.16286549
>>16286409
I hate how RPGs will have shitloads of equipment that turns out to be useless junk even before you find it. At least with Souls games every weapon can achieve relative parity with other weapons (though, obviously, some weapons are better than others) and have different movesets.
I wish equipment progression in more games was less linear and that magical weapons were not only rare, but truly magical and unique, and not just Sword of Fire +1 followed by Sword of Fire +2, etc.
6d06d0 No.16286600
>>16286549
The thing you are looking for, are rares, and uniques.
3d517b No.16286607
>>16286600
My point is that I hate getting drowned in fucking garbage you feel compelled to take with you and sell for pennies down the line. And yes, I know you can just leave that shit behind, but who does that?
Every piece of loot should be useful in some way, not be the equivalent of scrap metal and you the gypsy that goes around stealing it. One thing, and likely the only thing, I liked about FO4 is how you could reduce items down to their base components and then use those to build better stuff.
6d06d0 No.16286621
>>16286607
Well, maybe this isn't worth mentioning, but, you do know you can use magic items in the horadric cube to make better ones, right?
365909 No.16286690
>>16286607
>My point is that I hate getting drowned in fucking garbage you feel compelled to take with you and sell for pennies down the line. And yes, I know you can just leave that shit behind, but who does that?
You should play Nioh, sounds like it's right down your alley :^)
b93ce6 No.16286750
I would like to see what it would feel like if you actually had to search for the shit in containers / people instead of getting a screen.
I kinda liked it in metro that you actually had to go over the guy and click on the magazines and ammo attached on hist vest or other parts to get them instead of just clicking one button and emptying him like he was your bank account or something.
3d517b No.16286765
>>16286750
>if you actually had to search for the shit in containers / people instead of getting a screen
Ultima VII had that shit and let me tell you, it was tedious then as it would be tedious now.
Metro was equally annoying in that regard since it really didn't add anything to the game. You just stared at the corpse and clicked like a tard for a few extra seconds.
365909 No.16286773
>>16286750
Would limit the variation of containers a bit but it's not an entirely crazy idea.
Instead of getting an inventory UI pop-up when you open a chest, it just opens and you have to pick up the items individually.
The problems I see with it though is that the loot needs to feel worth the effort and it will be hard to do with small items, maybe forcing you to make them "a bag of x" or "x in a bag".
You'd also probably have to limit the total amount of lootable chests/boxes etc. around the world simply to not make it suck up huge amounts of time.
Also Metro isn't exactly a huge looter game, if the system was put in an actual RPG with tons of interactive shit to steal it might turn from 'muh immersion' to a tedium in just a few hours.
Maybe combine it with the succ technique mentioned earlier in the thread. But I'd probably make it some magic spell (or tech) so it better fits into the world than just being an unexplained game mechanic.
b93ce6 No.16286775
>>16286765
Well I didn't find the metro one annoying but it could be implemented a lot better.
The real trouble would be to make the searching intuitive and not clunky. I feel like those vr controllers could make it intuitive and interesting in a way that wouldn't feel tedious and would just be a nice little thing to immerse you in the game a bit more.
Doing it with a mouse or a controller would be pretty much impossible and I can easily see while someone wouldn't like any implementation on those like in the case of metro.
2409c4 No.16287607
>RPG
>enter room full of boxes
>one of them is a mimic
8bcd0c No.16287664
>>16287607
>enter room full of boxes
>all but one of them is a mimic
>the real box is trapped and will explode if triggered destroying the rare item inside
d8b92f No.16287669
>>16287664
>if the real box is triggered the door to the room will be locked
>it makes no sound so you will only find out after you try to escape the poison gas that starts filling the room after 30 seconds
5408fd No.16287677
>Sacred 2-like press this button to gather all the items in range.
>Bethesda like time skip system, where you waste a bunch of in-game hours and get a message that says "your character searched this place and found X"
>can still acess everything as usual and take out items manually
0e2c07 No.16287681
>>16286409
Less boxes, and give them unique flavor text. Instead of "There's nothing of interest." make it something like "There's a single dead spider in the bottom corner." and other unique flavor text, even if not very interesting, to make it feel like you're searching a unique box instead of one of a hundred identical ones.
The key aspect to an RPG is to make an immersive world, flavor text plays a huge role in this, something which modern RPG's largely ignore in favor of dumb shit like randomized loot, which makes exploration feel pointless because you know you won't really find anything unique if you go out of your way to explore that you wouldn't find in some other random high level loot container or whatever.
55683a No.16287688
>>16287681
NOTHING INTERESTING HAPPENS
c2d8ce No.16287709
>>16286409
>Tie searching containers to a skill
That sounds like shit. I hate dump stats into otherwise useless skills and it punishes players for experimenting with other builds. That is unless the stat is a flat increase based on players level that all classes get, but then you might as well just ignore the "roll for containers" mechanic all together
95625d No.16287724
>>16286409
zelda had the right idea with breakable pots and grass. make them fun to deal with.
69e2a9 No.16287737
>random storage room in abandoned house
>unique item in the middle
>markings on the ground
>find journal
>wizard/necromancer/alchemist/etc. tried to do something but did happen for some reason
>try to find out what it was and do it yourself
>do it
>nothing happens
>you do it right and it just wasn't anything actually programmed there to begin with
95625d No.16287747
>>16287681
>unique flavor text. Instead of "There's nothing of interest." make it something like "There's a single dead spider in the bottom corner." and other unique flavor text, even if not very interesting, to make it feel like you're searching a unique box instead of one of a hundred identical ones.
i like it
3c4177 No.16287758
>>16287724
Does anyone remember Figaro Cave in FF6? It had a gimmick almost as dumb as stuff like >>16287664 or >>16287669
>microdungeon near the start of the game.
>three chests that are all pretty easy to go and open.
>they contain common items.
<but!
>skip the chests until you return to this cave for a later sequence about a third of the way into the game.
>a chest that had an ether now contains a free Thunder Rod, empty if you opened it earlier.
>Skipping it and returning to this dungeon near the end of the game turns it into a Hero's Ring.
>No rhyme or reason, explanation, or hint as to why this happens anywhere.
2662ee No.16287774
>>16286409
Less boxes overall and they should be rationally stored and stocked. For example, you only find boxes in storerooms of buildings.
Loot overall should be lessened. If you're running a classical fantasy rpg, the weapons you start with or buy at the beginning should carry you through most of the game with the biggest difference not being longsword to longsword+1 but different uses for different styles of weapons a la longsword vs spear vs mace, etc
Magical weapons should be handplaced with special effects, rules, names and backgrounds as well as a tough fight or puzzle to get it
a85c36 No.16287787
>8chan
>Enter thread full of posts
>Spend 20 minutes reading them all
>Absolutely nothing of worth
>You know you have found good shit in threads like that previously so you will do it again no matter how annoying it is
How do you deal with this as an dev and an anon?
As a dev I have a couple ideas
>Tie searching threads to a karma system, instead of manually checking every thread you trigger a roll against the internet points and then give all the posts the anon finds at once
>Only have posts in like large threads/bosts and shit so you never have to search for them
c2d8ce No.16287793
>>16287758
>loot chest early get common item
>wait until endgame to lot chest it has a extremely rare treasure.
A bunch of Squaresoft games from the 90's had this mechanic. I believe it was also in Chrono Trigger.
8bcd0c No.16287796
>>16287774
one thing that always ruins my interest is how empty everything is. if you poke around in a granary there should be huge sacks of wheat and flour or other places have barrels filled with stuff. obviously not everything would be full, but its just weird that an entire village has like 5 pieces of pork, 2 pickles, and a pound of flour. technically you should be able to steal that 50 pound sack of flour, but even though there is no need to i like the option to be there.
95625d No.16287838
>>16287758
i can only hope that it was in good fun or inside joke among the developers and not a scandalous plot to sell strategy guides. i remember being called a liar over at least one easter egg.
434db1 No.16287892
>>16287793
To be fair with Trigger, those chests were distinct from the usual ones, and you couldn't open any of them until you powered up the pendant and still asked you if are sure you wanted to open it.
Also, Zodiac fucking spear. Some dev in square/squeenix really had a long running fetish for this kind of crap.
c42b01 No.16288021
General things I would do to improve inventory/looting stuff
>Remove garbage loot, all the items should have some use in the game
>Have items be in logical places i.e, have the alchemist's storeroom be filled with potions and reagents
>Make it a rule that certain containers hold certain item types. Chests have treasure, racks have potions, crates have general supplies
>Have a shipping manifest available if you're somewhere with dozens of boxes like a warehouse
>If you have a crafting system, make it tight and don't have a million different crafting supplies so people don't have to loot everything on the off chance they need it later
>Have loot be concentrated, not scattered but also have a challenge to get to the good stuff. Too many games just let you waltz into a storeroom and loot everything
>Perhaps make an automated looting mode where the character goes from corpse to corpse or container to container automatically and you only choose what to loot, This could work for isometric games, maybe you could drag to select an area to loot like in an RTS
>Do what Fallout 4 did with its looting system for first person, one of the only positive things about the game.
>Have something like a town portal for when you need to dump your inventory conveniently, maybe a portal that opens into your stash but you're only able to insert items
>Make a "loot all except:<Insert item category here>" button or more customizeable looting settings generally. Same for inventory management, Drop <Item catecgory here> etc.
>Make it so you can't sell the vendors their own stolen wares
>Make a somewhat realistic economy so that items don't start costing 100 000 gold coins at the later levels. Do different levels of currency like copper, silver and gold ála WoW
>Have an option to place an order for items through a trader if they don't have what you need, only available for larger scale orders
>Make the inventory system have better subcategories and a search function if it's a game with a ton of loot. Easily distinguishable thumbnails or icons for the items is a huge plus
>If there are less items, you could implement loot tetris like Diablo II or RE4 instead of a carry weight.
2662ee No.16288029
>>16288021
>Do different levels of currency
>mfw playing Gold Box games
>different currencies
>they have weight values
>later on you should go full barter hobo and switch out coins for gems and shit due to how much coins weight
c42b01 No.16288052
>>16288029
If you added weight to currency you could also do a whole lot with bank notes depending on the setting. Maybe even a quest about greedy (((bank owners))) using the money in their care to invest in shit and make themselves wealthier
43cca0 No.16288067
>Enter room full of boxes
>You can't break any of them
>Items are tied to essential encounters
Problemes weren't.
87f60e No.16288092
>>16286409
This isn't exactly a problem. It depends on the focus of the game. Bethesda games are about mundane details and this is an essential trait of them. If it appeared in a game whose design otherwise didn't consider details in the most simple of circumstances then it would be an issue.
768252 No.16288340
>>16286409
I think pathfinder solved this.
When you leave the area you can see every shit you leaving behind or didnt picked up. It's petty good, because when you come back to loot the place you arent forced to walkthrough the whole map. Just enter and leave while pick up everything from the pop-up window.
adf873 No.16288404
>>16286490
That sounds retardedly long and clunky when you could just look through the boxes in under a minute.
adf873 No.16288425
>>16287737
What a dumb wizard
552613 No.16288440
>>16287787
So just using custom scripts you assign a unique identifier to every IP address (this works even if you don't know the IP addresses of anyone), then you yourself just upboat whatever you want to categorize, and finally using a separate search function to track them everywhere they go. Wouldn't work because the site isn't large enough.
What will end up happening is you'll be stuck with large yet old threads and practically all of them archived at some point. All active large threads are the usual suspects so nothing you read will be any different since not everyone is going to shit gold every day. The cataloged posts will be exactly like what Mods see, which is a huge column of posts so you'll end up in the same situation only now you've disillusioned yourself that the guy you were talking to is smart instead of just a normal person.
Overall not worth the effort, you'd be better served actually reading all those books from /pdfs/.
cd0755 No.16288446
>>16286490
Borderlands autoloot system is good. You automatically pull in all items that don't require further inspection (ammo, medkits, grenades) within a certain range and all items that require inspection require you to walk up and look at them (weapons, grenade mods, key items).
8ebf41 No.16288892
>>16286409
The contents of each container should be obvious from looking at it with specific exceptions, like every time you see a fridge you know it's only going to have food in it so don't search it if you don't need food, but the "loot chest" is guaranteed to have something useful in it whenever you find one (though I would prefer just leave whatevers in it lying around).
99785d No.16288943
>>16286409
>How do you deal with this as a dev and as a player?
I don't. Those areas are explicitly designed to be like that to promote the idea of exploration, because you'll find a lot of crap in most of them but there's also a good chance that you find really, really good shit in them (or at least items that are temporarily useful). It's like low-level gacha, which is why it works and why devs continue to do this shit.
f27c5f No.16290394
Golden Sun was probably the worst I've experienced with this. So many boxes/crates/barrels in that game are so useless. Fuck that game.
a2aa66 No.16290518
>Enter room
>no boxes, nothing in it
>but now you can't get out
10aa5d No.16290546
>RPG
>It's done by a Japanese dev
>Still give it a chance
<It sucks fucking dick
If you insist on railroading me and barely giving me any roleplaying options at the very least give me something unique like the original Tales games or Summon Night instead of Wizardry clone number 3000000 you fucking slant eyed cuck loving yellow skin island dwellers.
I'd rather play those instead of your own shittier version, stick yoir barebones but polished SRPGs at the very least and stop making this low effort turn based adventure game trash, they will never be an RPGs, they're adventure grindathons, no a fucking VN side game gimmick doesn't change anything and I've seen actual VNs, many of which pornographic that are less popular and have better gameplay.
Seriously, who can put up with something as low quality as modern JRPGs?
They don't even try to have unique mechanics/gameplay anymore, just the same grindy turn based shittiness every fucking game.
c987af No.16290899
>>16290394
Who's that pokemon girl?
Is she the same girl as in this classy wallpaper?
7c2e85 No.16290921
It certainly was an awful, tedious mechanic for developers to just hide shit in fucking everything if you happen to examine them. I'm glad we've moved past it now. Golden Sun: The Lost Age is the last game I can think that does it, but it at least keeps the pot count low.
7c2e85 No.16290923
The absolute worst thing was when games like Dragon Quest and Pokemon would hide things on fucking floor tiles. So if you ever wanted to be sure you found all the stuff in the game, you had to go around searching every fucking tile in the game.
f9dca6 No.16290926
>>16290923
I don't know about the rest of the franchise but Tales of Vesperia does this shit too and it turned me off to the game almost immediately to know what kind of useful items you'll miss out on if you don't spam A/X up against every wall, table, object in the entire fucking world.
7c2e85 No.16290928
>>16290926
Wow they actually brought it back in a modern Tales of game? Symphonia didn't have that crap at least.
7c2e85 No.16290938
>>16290923
Although Pokemon isn't quite as bad because it eventually gives you a sort of radar device to make it easier to find this junk.
33aff9 No.16290984
>>16286409
What is there to deal with? It's working as intended. Players who are interested can go through everything for whatever they may or may not gain, those who aren't can ignore the boxes and move on.
Or you could check one, dump your inventory into it, then quickly take all on the other boxes and use the inventory to determine if there what is and isn't storage filler.
d3bf1e No.16291033
>>16290518
>have to make a giant staircase out of the boxes to get out
>physics engine is horeshit and if 3 or more boxes are on top of eachother they clip into eachother and fly everywhere once you stand on them
000000 No.16292846
>>16286409
Even worse is if it's a Modern RPG and they decided they needed to show off how superior current-age videogames are by adding an unskippable 5 second cutting-edge box-opening animation. And then you spend fucking 100 extra seconds on all those box animations, being bored to fucking hell.
6d06d0 No.16293350
>>16287758
Was it a hard to find place? Maybe it was meant so the treasure inside would be useful regardless of when you found it.
2662ee No.16293363
>>16293350
no, it's a path you have to take multiple times and it's pretty early in the game when you go through it the first time
f0d9f7 No.16293384
I think if it's more focused on location rather than pure chance or by copy/paste it'd work better.
>You're in a soldier encampment and you search boxes
<Standard issue equipment, rations, bandages, things you'd expect there.
>You're in a warehouse
<Depending on contextual clues like a box showing it's contents where you entered you'd expect textiles, or food, or stuff like that
Just give people what they should expect from where they are. You're not going to find the Holy Sword of Oni Dance in a random barrel on a dock, more likely salted fish or fresh water.
Put good loot/coins exclusively to chests, displays, lockboxes, etc. so that people can just grab what they need if they need it rather than waste hours expecting something that clearly shouldn't be there.
1820b2 No.16293414
>RPG
>need a special item to finish the armor that required several levels, a tough exploration and two previous crafted items to even have an attempt at knowing the recipe of
>enter room full of boxes
>feverishly begin to search boxes for the final item you require
>the item is actually pretty much pointless as it is only used for this very recipe
>you fucking find it
Players must give their own worth to the items they find.
You do that by making items being valuable beside their actual value in currency or their high stats.
A machined plate mail starts as a piece of leather armor.
21e811 No.16293452
>>16290394
Reveal, the spell Ivan learns to deal with the desert, shows which box doohickeys have shit in them. Also areas were small and were easily grid searched ya nig.
0dda50 No.16293481
>>16287681
This feature alone would make games an order of magnitude more enjoyable (and immersive)
>generic RPG room full of boxes/crates
>search one
<this box contains a couple empty vials of Potion of Vigor
>search box next to it
<as you open the box, the smell of ink and parchment wafts out. it seems this container used to hold some sort of document
>inspect box next to that
<before you are two boxes: one is still sealed and someone seems to have left a blanket on it. the adjacent box has had its lid pried off and left on the floor. at first, it appears empty, but on closer inspection, you spot a puddle of dried semen in the box
bonus points for making an enemy in the area randomly drop "smutty drawing on parchment" or something similar (only for the hero to discard it since it is "too soiled")
there, in the time it would likely take to implement a couple trash objects into the game, we've added a unique and ridiculous extra narrative using just text. now I'm disappointed knowing how little effort it would take to make most RPG games less shit yet they still have forgettable gameplay.
228461 No.16293482
Fallout 4's loot system is pretty smooth.
Maybe something like Enter the Gungeon where you can receive a chest upon clearing a room. It's a bit on the "gamey" side but I guess it depends on the tone of the game.
>Only have loot in like large chests/crates and shit so you never have to search for them
This works pretty well, especially in Borderlands. There are a thousand small objects you can loot if you feel like it but 99% of the time worthwhile loot comes from distinct chests.
>>16288021
Good ideas.
>If you have a crafting system, make it tight and don't have a million different crafting supplies so people don't have to loot everything on the off chance they need it later
Breaking down items into a few essential stackable parts is arguably a good way to deal with this.
000000 No.16295114
>>16286409
Another brilliant idea is trash loot. Items that are absolutely unusable or ludicrously bad and serve no purpose other than to be vendored for cash. This way you can waste time picking up items and then selling them one by one. It's one thing if it's you picking up valuables here and there like gemstones and shit, but another if it's crap like "You pick up a [broken sword] or [generic piece of paper] or [technically usable sword with stats so bad it's obviously only meant to be sold]" Crap like this is a colossal waste of time and an unnecessary chore to loot and sell. Whoever thought more tedium would improve the gameplay experience is an idiot.
1ac251 No.16295158
>see 2 paths
>one looks like it leads to nothing and the other llooks like you go down there to progress
>walk down the one that looks empty
>get locked inside some room and can never go back to check the other path
>accidentally went into the one that progresses
everytime
cc9719 No.16295161
>>16290899
Learn to reverse image search.
>>16290926
Vesperia and Abyss both have a problem with missables and inane sidequest cutoffs. The games afterward tend to be a bit better on both fronts, making places an item can be found shine, and keeping more of a tab on the map for places and people of interest.
b948c7 No.16295164
>>16286413
It's just like reality!
d86c5e No.16295172
>>16290899
It says where it comes from in the filename. Can't read filenames, can't reverse search, doesn't even know who Cirno is. Are you for real?
097a87 No.16296312
>>16295114
It's a crappier version of what D&D did, where loot was mainly items and valuable gems in order to force players to raise their appraisal skill.
I'm guessing those trash items are part of the pseudo-gacha of random item drops?
4aab7b No.16303667
>>16286409
Some form of skill for looting.
2b050e No.16305325
>>16295158
Design like this has lead to the practice of quicksaving before doing anything. About to talk to a shopkeeper? Quicksave. About to use an item? Quicksave. About to save the game? Quicksave.
502bb3 No.16305563
>>16286409
>Kill Wolf
>Drops sword