Randomised items and shop inventories.

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Seems you read wrong somewhere Ziad. All this time I've made my stand against randomized items, and FOR fixed items and fixed positions for them.

 

Yes, I definitely did. My bad.

Sorry about that

 

There is no reason to randomise everything, that would be pointless. You always keep weapons armour and quest items fixed, if the items you take from a corpse are gonna be different for any reason whatsoeva, is that you are a higher level character, and the monster you defeated no longer has a simple bastard sword and composite long bow, but some +2 weapons, or slightly magical, but this is debatable. As for treasures such as gold and jewels etc. they can be randomised if needs be (not that it matters much).

Shops could be randomised, not in the way that they always have different goods, (that would be irratating) but each day of the week, the goods are circualted around so that in order to buy that certain long sword you've been saving up for, you have to be in a certain shop on a certain day of the week, this would create a feeling of shopping at a franchise and being slightly paranoid your being ripped off, but more interesting for those of you who really can't stand fixed items.

 

And then you'd have to run around each and every shop trying to find where that damned sword meant. A bit too frustrating and pointless for my taste. Not to mention it doesn't make much sense for the items to circle around (a franchise in the middle ages? don't think so)

Gold, jewels and minor treasures are already random in BG2. I really doubt any of us ever notices though.

 

I think I must still be expressing this idea wrongly or something because it seems some of you do not quite get what I am trying to get across.

Essential/historical/named items/artifacts (Corsymer, Hand of Vecna etc.) would NOT be randomised. You could play through the entire game exactly as you do BG1 & 2. If you do not care for random items, their inclusion would have NO real effect on the game.

What I am getting at is that NON-scripted encounters wherein a specific NPC is NOT to drop a specific treasure, the items the monster/npc DOES drop would maintain a certain fixed "value" based upon how tough an opponent the creature is, but the exact nature of the item in question would be variable. Say there is a dragon cave in location X, Y of area XXXX. This cave adn this encounter(with the dragon) can be totally ignored by the player. It is not part of the overall plot(a side quest maybe).
For players who(for whatever reason) DO want to seek out such encounters and manage to defeat said dragon, instead of always dropping a '+4 vorpal sword of cucumber slicing' or whatever the dragon MAY drop a '+3 Warhammer of Tomato-crushing' or a '+2 suit of Plate mail that protects against watermelon splatter'(These are just off the cuff examples. I have no fixation with Gallagher.) or whatever.

Such randomization would have NO detrimental effect on the game and WOULD add to replay value. For those who don't care to step outside the main plot and fixed items, you could replay the same game the same way to your heart's content!
For those of us who are less inclined to such, we might try replaying games with all sorts of differtent strategies adn tactics making use of the randomized features(e.g. "I started a new game and decided to head right for the bugbear cave instead of doing the celery quest first and managed to beat the bugbear chieftain(was an incredibly hard fight that I had to reload a few times) who dropped a +1 dagger...".

This is really hard to illustrate because I think most here have only played a few games like Diablo that had less atractive item randomization and the best games to really make use of the feature I am describing featured 2D top-down oldschool graphics(circa Ultima 5/6) and so will not likely entice anyone here.

As far as shops go, again this would not in any way affect 'fixed' items. If 'Bo Bo's magic emporeum ' is supposed to have the Claw of Kazgaroth after you defeat the brigands in chapter 2 then it will have said item! In the meantime it may have other random items within a fixed value/price range(not +1 sword in chapter 5 and a +6 vorpal in chapter 1 ). If the shop is readily accessible to first level characters in chapter one then the shop will not have items that will unbalance the game which the players can easily purchase/steal.

There would also be none of the "Search every shop for the item you need to beat chapter 3" crap.

 

I consider that items should not be COMPLETELY random, but where for example an Orc chieftain would normally drop a +1 spear, this could be randomized so it might be a normal spear or a javelin (if they put such things in) or a +2 spear. But it would be silly if you killed someone who had a katana and they dropped a mace, or a slime had armour on.

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And I don't think randomization makes the game any more replayable. I've played BG2 several times, and it has zero randomization. I struggled to complete Diablo 2 just one time, and wouldn't even think of replaying it, even though everything is random.
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Me too, but in BG2 people can just go to the places where they know there is a certain weapon and get it. When ( as above) people spend proficiencies on weapons they anticipate getting, then thats not a good thing at all.
However, WELL hidden eastereggs for experienced players would be OK IMHO.

[ September 16, 2004, 04:22: Message edited by: Yirimyah ]

 

Heh. RuneQuester, what you describe is very little different from what BG already is. As some people said here, it already randomizes items gained from normal battles. And check BG2 to see how many dragons there are that aren't tied to the plot. Perhaps Firkraag and that Shadow Dragon aren't exactly *tied* to the plot but they're an important part of it nevertheless. Firkraag is a part of the paladin stronghold quest and holds some little extra about Gorion, and carries one of the most powerful items in the game. While Shadow Dragon must be at least passed if not confronted for you to be able to raise your love-interest in Chapter 7.

But yes I do agree with that if the bandits and such sometimes actually drop something useful instead of the mundane +1 swords and a few unknown albeit worthless gems all the time, it would add to the game. But I have to say that just about all of the more powerful items must be fixed, and must be attainable from the same source every game. If I played to that dragon that had nothing to do with the plot and ran into the problem of getting a new kind of weapon, although a powerful one that I couldn't use, then what's the point?

Randomization as long as it doesn't interfere with the gameplay is good, no doubt about it. But it's a thin line. As randomization that does NOT interfere with the gameplay would have to be virtually nonexistant. Especially in the case of games such as BG where your party composition fully determines what you can and cannot use. The planning that non-first time players go through has to pay off.

 

The inherent problem with any sort of randomisation is that it's either pointless (ring of prot +1 or short sword +2 in Chapter 6, yay!) or it can create severe problems with game balance.

I'd say that one has to take another approach.

The big question is, how to ensure that *any* party gets at least *some* decent items they can use, in order to be able to have the means to tackle the increasing difficulty. A party full of fighters won't do much with Robe of Vecna, no matter how powerful this artefact is. Neither does a party without a Paladin do anything with the Holy Avenger.

So.. why not create some sort of a rating system for the party itself? Like, how many fighters, how many clerics, how many mages and so forth. Where has the party's fighters put their proficiency points in? Has the party's thief (if any) put any points into hide & stealth or just lockpicking?

Stuff that drops would then be adjusted by these ratings. A warrior-heavy party would find more plate mails and two-handed swords, whereas a mage-heavy party would see many robes, cloacks and daggers. *Not* exclusively, of course!

Killing the equivalent of Firkraag should *guarantee* a super-powerful drop. But it doesn't need to be set in stone that this drop has to be for the party's Paladin. It might as well be the ultimate find for the party's mage. Just as long as there's some sort of a bookkeeping system that ensures that killing the Shadow Dragon doesn't give something super-powerful to the *same* character!

How does this approach sound like?

 

Jukka, what you describe in your post sounds very much like the way items were randomly generated in Dungeon Hack, except that game was single-player. Using a similar algorithm for party items would work really well, IMO. I really liked in Dungeon Hack how (unlike Diablo 2, and even BG2) every single item I found was usable by the character I was running. Whether it was useful or not depended entirely on how I was playing the character, and that could be adjusted to the items I was finding, so it works both ways. Balancing such an approach in a party-based game sounds like a real challenge though.