What is your opinion on junk loot?

[rusty_shackleford]

Not a fan of gold weighing anything other than in hyper realistic sims. Its not like you're ever going to drop it, and I'm too much of a jew to do anything but hoard it.

gold weighing money incentivizes spending it
or leaving it with the, ahem, dwarves and massacring them when they steal it

[SacreBlyat]

SWTOR has junk loot. I don't really mind it, it serves a purpose I guess.

[Oyster Sauce]

Btw to amend my previous statement junk loot in MMOs fucking suck dick and are retarded.

Hard disagree.
The thrill of finding your first shitty bag - the peaceful downtime of making it back to town to offload goods and restock on supplies - the sense of accomplishment when you craft a full set of the best bags in the game.
Oh baby, there's nothing like it.

[Torus]

It varies from nicely atmospheric to really really bad depending on how much time and attention you have to give it. How limited the inventory is vs how much and how often you need to loot. After playing Underrail recently it feels like I spent more time on inventory management than anything else. It just detracts from the experience. There are dedicated games for people who like this now, no need to mix it into regular games. Kind of like putting chess segments into DOOM.

[rusty_shackleford]

Underrail has some of the worst inventory management in any RPG I've played, but I enjoy volume-based inventory('tetris') when done properly.

no need to mix it into regular games. Kind of like putting chess segments into DOOM.

RPGs are like pickles, they go great with everything.

[rusty_shackleford]

mmm, pickle and marshmallow sandwich

[Anon]

pickles go great with everything

I forgive you, you're american

[Nammu Archag]

Not a fan of gold weighing anything other than in hyper realistic sims. Its not like you're ever going to drop it, and I'm too much of a jew to do anything but hoard it.

Junk loot that's just meant to take up space and sell for pennies is silly too, unless it's stuff that stacks. Orc ears, furs, bear asses etc.
Junk loot that is contextual is the best. Stuff that you'd expect to find, or gives more explanation or context to the game world or area.

This is where stuff like player homes, hideouts, or banks are actually useful and can be incorporated into gameplay

[maidenhaver]

Not a fan of gold weighing anything other than in hyper realistic sims. Its not like you're ever going to drop it, and I'm too much of a jew to do anything but hoard it.

Junk loot that's just meant to take up space and sell for pennies is silly too, unless it's stuff that stacks. Orc ears, furs, bear asses etc.
Junk loot that is contextual is the best. Stuff that you'd expect to find, or gives more explanation or context to the game world or area.

This is where stuff like player homes, hideouts, or banks are actually useful and can be incorporated into gameplay

No, you're gonna have to carry that weight.

[Element]

I liked that Dungeon Siege allowed you to buy pack mules to haul all of the useless stuff. Would have liked to see that mechanic incorporated into more rpgs.

[WhiteShark]

I liked that Dungeon Siege allowed you to buy pack mules to haul all of the useless stuff. Would have liked to see that mechanic incorporated into more rpgs.

Another forgotten mechanic straight out of classic D&D.

[aweigh]

i'm usually pro lots of junk but Larian games have changed my mind. Realized pretty much 50% of my playtime in DOS2 and BG3 was spent managing my party member inventories. I'm fine with 25% of the playtime spent managing inventory but 50% was just too much. Also the itemization itself matters, of course, goes without saying.

All that said my preferred inventory system is Wizardry and Elminage style where characters and classes have a set amount of inventory slots and the majority of items do not stack, so if you have 9 slots you have to choose whether you want 9 healing biscuits or 3 biscuits and 6 swords, etc. Slow upgrade of amount of slots is welcome, or as character or class features. This way, by design, the game designers have to limit the amount of junk you come across, or the amount of items you HAVE to carry. Makes inventory management more strategic as well instead of just tedious busywork.

[Irenaeus]

I was going to answer prior to reading the thread, just the title: "When the junk loot is low, sometimes hand placed, sometimes random, that's fine. When it's a shitton of useless/low value loot and the like, hate it." Someone has already articulated it better in this thread before.

[herkzter]

all junk loot must have a purpose - either as an item that adds to the world-building of a game, but otherwise serves as a means to get money via selling, or it must serve as some kind of resource

Two Worlds 2 has the best interpretation of salvaging junk or loot i've seen - pretty much all of it can be recycled and used to improve your equipment

[rusty_shackleford]

There's a bunch of junk loot in INSOMNIA but most of it breaks down into parts and I think it fits the tone of the game. The junk itself is just flavor, it really represents crafting materials, but imo it improves the overall atmosphere. The setting is very dilapidated.

I think I hate any loot system that has junk weapons/armor tho.

[rusty_shackleford]

Guess the next question is obviously, what non-apocalyptic/post-apoc games do junk loot well?

[Anon]

fallout 2 is an egregious example imo, lots of its junk loot have descriptions that enriches the world

[Norfleet]

Btw to amend my previous statement junk loot in MMOs fucking suck dick and are retarded.

99% of everything in an MMO is junk, really. And much of it isn't even loot, so the devs functionally wasted their time making it unless it was all procgen garbage.

[WaterMage]

Enemies sohuld drop what they wear.

If you kill someone with a M1911 and that person drops a freaking AK-47, why? How?

[Xenich]

Enemies sohuld drop what they wear.

If you kill someone with a M1911 and that person drops a freaking AK-47, why? How?

Good idea, more work though and I have noticed that a lot of them do not put time to such things even though it would greatly enrich the game play. It would require some careful balancing of economy, but I admit that some games like EQ that tended to do this made it more enjoyable when you came upon an encounter and the mob was hitting with a weapon doing some interesting things. It was kind of exciting to consider what it would be as opposed to some completely different unrelated item dropping off it, or... the worst "insert RNG junk drop".

[Norfleet]

It would require some careful balancing of economy

I think the core problem here tends to be economies that revolve around murdering enormously large numbers of enemies. In a typical vidya game tutorial, you might kill like a hundred dudes. I've killed a fair number of dudes in my life, but a vidya game character kills more dudes than I've ever killed in my entire career of dude-killing in just the fucking tutorial. Clearly, the willingness of dudes to die at the player's hands is simply grossly excessive. Do they somehow think battles are just not impressive and intense enough if the player doesn't get to kill a hundred dudes? Cuz I can tell you, I've never fought a battle in which I thought, "Gee, if only I killed more dudes." If the game doesn't want to have to resort to hokey means of not handing out tons of killed dudes worth of wargear to players, maybe stop having them actually kill hundreds of dudes.

The thing with real fights is that the victory conditions for winning the fight are pretty much never "kill all the enemy's dudes" and enemies will give up the fight well before nearly all of their dudes are killed and the situation has become unwinnable. In fact, in real fights, the losing side would likely have easily won the fight if only all of their dudes were more willing to die for the cause. The thing is, they aren't. Thus, video game balance has fights all wrong: Most fights should be pretty much unwinnable from a "kill all dudes" position. But the enemy will give up the fight well before all dudes are killed because they don't want to become killed dudes in the process, and if you attempt to pursue the fight as "kill all dudes" exercise, you would get killed. And if you are killed, you have lost a very important part of your life.

[Nammu Archag]

It would require some careful balancing of economy

I think the core problem here tends to be economies that revolve around murdering enormously large numbers of enemies. In a typical vidya game tutorial, you might kill like a hundred dudes. I've killed a fair number of dudes in my life, but a vidya game character kills more dudes than I've ever killed in my entire career of dude-killing in just the fucking tutorial. Clearly, the willingness of dudes to die at the player's hands is simply grossly excessive. Do they somehow think battles are just not impressive and intense enough if the player doesn't get to kill a hundred dudes? Cuz I can tell you, I've never fought a battle in which I thought, "Gee, if only I killed more dudes." If the game doesn't want to have to resort to hokey means of not handing out tons of killed dudes worth of wargear to players, maybe stop having them actually kill hundreds of dudes.

The thing with real fights is that the victory conditions for winning the fight are pretty much never "kill all the enemy's dudes" and enemies will give up the fight well before nearly all of their dudes are killed and the situation has become unwinnable. In fact, in real fights, the losing side would likely have easily won the fight if only all of their dudes were more willing to die for the cause. The thing is, they aren't. Thus, video game balance has fights all wrong: Most fights should be pretty much unwinnable from a "kill all dudes" position. But the enemy will give up the fight well before all dudes are killed because they don't want to become killed dudes in the process, and if you attempt to pursue the fight as "kill all dudes" exercise, you would get killed. And if you are killed, you have lost a very important part of your life.

I like that in mount and blade most enemies are wounded or flee depending on the playout of a battle, and much of the equipment they are wearing becomes broken etc. I think the New Vegas style of gear conditioning works well too (for the most part). If you shoot an enemy a ton, you'll probably need to repair his equipment if you intend on using it, and it won't be valuable to traders unless it's in a usable state.

Although I'll say that if you force an enemy to rout, that is the main case irl in which you can just slaughter tons of people assuming you have the means (cavalry, artillery etc)

[Norfleet]

Although I'll say that if you force an enemy to rout, that is the main case irl in which you can just slaughter tons of people assuming you have the means (cavalry, artillery etc)

That's the part of the battle where most people die at all, and the kill rate is still nothing like we see in a vidya game. You see, there's a catch: If you keep chasing them, they keep running and the loot gets left behind and you get nothing (because less bloodthirsty people who stopped or came to loot get it instead). If you stop to collect your loot, everyone else gets away, and you don't get to loot them.

[Adeptus]

I loot everything I can thinking "OK, maybe there will be some moment in the game when exactly this item will help me".

[Norfleet]

That's a traditional response dating back to the time when there was far less cluttertrash to pick up and so any weird thing you were allowed to pick up at all HAD to be used for SOMETHING, and you'd softlock yourself out of the game if you hadn't picked it up, because you DEFINITELY NEED IT.

[asf]

grab everything not nailed to the floor, then procure a hammer to grab the rest

[TKVNC]

grab everything not nailed to the floor, then procure a hammer to grab the rest

Loot Goblin is the only way to play.

It's a problem.

[Adeptus]

That's a traditional response dating back to the time when there was far less cluttertrash to pick up and so any weird thing you were allowed to pick up at all HAD to be used for SOMETHING, and you'd softlock yourself out of the game if you hadn't picked it up, because you DEFINITELY NEED IT.

Well, I recently played Divine Divinity (first one), quite old game and there were many useful-looking items around (like shovels and other tools). At no point any of them was really useful.

[Norfleet]

DD was moving into the new tendency to populate the world with junk items, yes. It's not like the old days of games like Advent or Zork, or the Sierra Quest games, where everything you could somehow pick up, no matter how seemingly odd or useless, was probably relevant to the game.

[Xenich]

That's a traditional response dating back to the time when there was far less cluttertrash to pick up and so any weird thing you were allowed to pick up at all HAD to be used for SOMETHING, and you'd softlock yourself out of the game if you hadn't picked it up, because you DEFINITELY NEED IT.

Well, I recently played Divine Divinity (first one), quite old game and there were many useful-looking items around (like shovels and other tools). At no point any of them was really useful.

They are still technically weapons, not great ones, but still useable items.

I don't mind it much to be honest, and really.. if it imbalances the game for people who have OCD and have to collect every single item to sell and then complain it gives them too much of an edge in play, well... that is likely one of the easier mods for a game to implement (deleting all junk items).

On the flip side, junk items can provide a means for a player who is a tad short to be able to shore up their money a little bit to buy an item.

It is all a matter of playstyle and expectations I guess.