Feedback:Loot System

Good news everyone.,

i made some updates to Anphillia Ascension today, one of which brings the comeback of an item generator that some of you may know (in part) from Anphillia v4. I took another stab at this system and recoded it to not only work without NWNX, but also to be way more flexible and configurable. I firmly believe that the Item Generator is a great addition to Anphillia and that it's implementation and configuration on v4 is to blame for it's shortcomings and problems at that time, so i am asking you to be open-minded about it's addition.

This thread is for feedback regarding said Item Generator, which - as soon as InflictSuicide activates the new version - will be responsible for (most) loot you will be able to find. Both loot quantity and loot quality are set up to be pretty conservative at the moment, but can be changed at (almost) any time.

I hope you will continue to have fun with Anphillia Ascension and we are looking forward to your feedback.

eyesolated

An' impressive system,  Its nice to have some "Freshness" Added.

However,  due to people who already invested a lot of skills into OpenLock Is waste if ALL chests are removed.    Now Gunner has already stated that chests will be added that will actually spawn stuff.  


I know why and understand why it was added,  the #1 being that people without OL skill couldn't obtain loot.  


Within reason,  there *needs* to still be chests in different ares, maybe everywhere else besides the two forts Goblin, crypts , kobolds , iron mines etc.  


But I really hope that part gets fixed soon!


Thus far, the system seems to be working fairly well,   it could use some tweaking but that's expected and probably always going to be;  within reason. As was stated its low ATM but can be adjusted easy as eyesolated mentioned.

On the discussion of locked loot containers, i could see creating loot specifically interesting to classes that are able to skill in lockpicking and trap-disabling. IMO it would be a bad idea to put "generic" loot in lockable containers, at least not in the same quantities as loot interesting to those able to pick locks.

That said, being able to pick locks has advantages beyond accessing loot. At the moment these advantages are restricted to picking the fort gates, but i could see creating "shortcuts" of some sorts that would require Lockpicking. It's a cool thing for those able to pick locks, but nothing that ruins the day for those that can't.

And regarding the loot system. As the loot it produces is directly linked to monster CR (Challenge Rating) and monster CR in anphillia is kind of low in many areas, the resulting loot drops are of low quality. Still, there's quite a few magical properties in there that noone would ever want (eg: Armor Bonus vs. Speicific Race or Specific Alignment). While these items/properties may add some flair to the game, in the long run they probably are counterproductive because all they really do is produce flavoured junk.

[quote="eyesolated"]On the discussion of locked loot containers, i could see creating loot specifically interesting to classes that are able to skill in lockpicking and trap-disabling. IMO it would be a bad idea to put "generic" loot in lockable containers, at least not in the same quantities as loot interesting to those able to pick locks.

That said, being able to pick locks has advantages beyond accessing loot. At the moment these advantages are restricted to picking the fort gates, but i could see creating "shortcuts" of some sorts that would require Lockpicking. It's a cool thing for those able to pick locks, but nothing that ruins the day for those that can't.




Okay, I get that but gunner said hes going to still have chests for those who invested into Openlock & disable trap skill. I agree with what you said, but your system already is giving more so benefits to those who didn't invest anything into those skills. So please keep in mind areas still are going to need chests mate.

I like how this will maybe change the meta a little bit. With the previous loot system taking rogue levels was almost mandatory to get open lock and UMD. Now that stuff isn't locked and scrolls / wands might not drop as often, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

One thing I noticed is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of cleanup for the spawned loot, so areas that have a lot of traffic like around the forts are covered in loot bags.

My concern is that certain loot drops are almost mandatory to attain in this module, especially at low player levels.

Running into a goblin cave with 8 goblin shamans casting ray of frost and magic missile pretty much requires you to have a rod of the ghost - which now seems absent from the loot table (or at the very least very rare)

Or a ring of elemental resistance 5 - also not present.

These were things you could get in the goblin cave, the crypts, and the gnolls.

We need these drops in the low level loot tables to make some of the higher level areas possible.

And gold is still very rare on low CR creatures. Given the cost of healing equipment, this has made a tough server even tougher.

I agree that gold is probably too rare. If half of the garbage that drops at low levels was converted to gold that would help I think. There's a lot of mobs that drop 2 slings and a chain mail. If instead they dropped 10-15 gold and a chain mail that'd be much better.

Adding some of the previous critical loot pieces to vendors (or some approximation of them) would help the difficulty of the module. Instead of having a rod of the ghost as a super rare loot drop, why not have the fort vendors sell something that has one use of ghostly visage, and add potions of elemental resistance and maybe clarity potions.

Yeah... I have to agree. That's a nice middle ground if the loot table is changed permanently.

Mundane items probably shouldn't drop at all. You start with 5K gold and pretty much have everything of a mundane sense that you could ever want prior to even leaving your gates.

So why spawn a mundane brestplate? It sells for a wopping 1 gold - thus not worth the weight to carry it home. The end result: the server makes a bunch of items that it just doesn't need and I waste time mousing over them looking for green items.

That or make the sell back prices worthwhile.

Non-magical loot has been removed in the latest update.

Idea here to add something to the non green/blue chests to warn players not to put green/blue items in them as they remove the enchantment.

The old chests will be removed in the next update. =D

Just to make the feed back official... gold drops are a bit too high at the moment.

I'm not sure that gold is too high, maybe, maybe not. Beetle Bellies are kind of irrelevant due to the increased gold drops - true, but at least you're able to stock up on medkits on a regular basis now.

on the other hand, magical loot is still on the low end of things i'd say. probably still needs to drop more and increase the chance of dropped loot having more than one property as well i'd say. clearing a whole area and not getting a single item for your group sux, and if you get one and it's a bad one, sux even more.

I made one trip through loriette forest with two people, through kahalala enterance, across the desert to the oasis.

I made almost 5000 gold.

I would have expected to get maybe 1200 gold between the two of us for that trip?

The gold has been turned down a bit.

It feels a little better for solo play. Just need to divide it by the number of players now, and nullify gains for trivial kills.

We decided against dividing by players to prevent creating incentive of killing stuff alone (where possible). There's no harm done in creating benefits for partying beyond being able to take on harder monsters. We even talked about dividing by player number, as the number is already there in the script that distributes gold, but we decided against it.

Nullifying gains for trivial kills is nothing i really like. i feel that if you gained enough power, you have the right to go enact revenge on those mobs that gave you trouble early on and still be rewarded for it. Same with XP, even if you clearly outlevel content, you still get XP (not as much as for challenging content, but you do get something).

I agree that it feels pretty well tuned.

Would you please double-check to see if Dwarven Waraxe is somewhere in the loot table?

It is, but getting a specific item (even more so a specific weapon) is highly unlikely.

If the system decided that a melee weapon is to drop, and the Creature Size is medium or bigger (Dwarven Waraxe = medium size), then the Dwarven Waraxe shares it's chance to be selected with more than 20 other Melee Weapon types. If the dropping creature is Large or even bigger, then that's even more. You do the math

It's not out of question that there might be a bug somewhere preventing certain items from dropping, but that should affect more than just the Dwarven Waraxe. If several weapons would really never drop, then that's worth investigation, but - RNG is RNG (less so in NWN, but still )

* edit * i just tried ingame (we have various item generator scripts) and got a dwarven waraxe after creating a few "Random Melee Weapon" items.

Cool. Just didn't want to find out one was not attainable after taking weapon specialization.

It's not craftable, and I can't purchase one. Just need a little RNG luck.

Okay, after reading this topic I understand that there's not so many chests...But.
Those few chests, that there are, you unlock them and it's empty. I thought itwas bad luck, but 4 times in a row? C'mon.

Another thing - keeper of the grove...Finally beaten that bastard and he doesn't give xp, gold or item. Just annoying.

Encounters like the Keeper of the Grove will eventually be transitioned to eE, with all new combat mechanics and epic loot!

A few really minor things:

- All cloaks that I've seen dropped have been poop colored. If the color could be randomized on cloaks that would be swell.

- Gems that drop sell for 0gp and don't seem to have any other function that I can tell.

- Sometimes you get a prefix and suffix that do the same thing. Like you'll get  a Shielding belt of Protection that gives +1 AC.

- I haven't seen a wand that was worth picking up. They all only have one use. Small sample size is probably playing into this though, I've only seen 3 wands drop.

Again, really minor stuff.