Excellent post, and you do really do a good job articulating your vision of good game design. I was thinking about what you said about selling items; I've noticed that in many recent RPGs. Of course I collect everything my characters can carry and sell it so I can buy whatever is available at the store. Most games have a weight penalty, such as Pool of Radiance, so even though the game let you collect everything dropped by monsters (such as the proverbial 20 sets of leather armor, 20 short swords, etc.), you'd eventually be so weighed down it wasn't worth running it all back to the store. Then Dungeon Siege added a pack mule to help you carry all that junk. I thought that was funny and brilliant. But, yeah, playing Drakensang has reminded me of how tedious it is, since they added a slow animation that plays every time you reach into every corpse to collect the loot. BOOOOoooring. It would've been much better just to throw up a loot screen and let you do it all in one fell swoop.
IIRC, the later M&M games had a spell you could cast that would transmute all the loot you found into gold (the amount depended on the quality of the item and your proficiency with the spell). Again, brilliant solution, and it made sense in the context. I don't know why more games haven't used a system like that. I could also see having non-combat units (followers) who follow along behind the party (at a very safe distance) and collect items they don't pick up, perhaps offering the player a percentage of the profits when they get back to town.
At any rate, I'd be careful about dismissing collecting stuff. I think that's a big part of what draws many people to the genre. They love (on some level) farming. It's always fun to kill a monster and see all kinds of loot dropping out. I guess it's like a kid with a pinata. Why let slot machines have all the fun? :)
Excellent post, and you do really do a good job articulating your vision of good game design. I was thinking about what you said about selling items; I've noticed that in many recent RPGs. Of course I collect everything my characters can carry and sell it so I can buy whatever is available at the store. Most games have a weight penalty, such as Pool of Radiance, so even though the game let you collect everything dropped by monsters (such as the proverbial 20 sets of leather armor, 20 short swords, etc.), you'd eventually be so weighed down it wasn't worth running it all back to the store. Then Dungeon Siege added a pack mule to help you carry all that junk. I thought that was funny and brilliant. But, yeah, playing Drakensang has reminded me of how tedious it is, since they added a slow animation that plays every time you reach into every corpse to collect the loot. BOOOOoooring. It would've been much better just to throw up a loot screen and let you do it all in one fell swoop.
IIRC, the later M&M games had a spell you could cast that would transmute all the loot you found into gold (the amount depended on the quality of the item and your proficiency with the spell). Again, brilliant solution, and it made sense in the context. I don't know why more games haven't used a system like that. I could also see having non-combat units (followers) who follow along behind the party (at a very safe distance) and collect items they don't pick up, perhaps offering the player a percentage of the profits when they get back to town.
At any rate, I'd be careful about dismissing collecting stuff. I think that's a big part of what draws many people to the genre. They love (on some level) farming. It's always fun to kill a monster and see all kinds of loot dropping out. I guess it's like a kid with a pinata. Why let slot machines have all the fun? :)
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com