"Abandoned ships full of loot"

[Callan S.]

Abandoned ships full of loot.

I'm gunna go on a bit of a rant.

I dislike how in a ton of games it's always miraculously you finding these thing, which fortunately for you a whole TON of other people in the game universe have lost, but they apparently have absolutely no capacity to find all these abandoned ships themselves (which would have emptyed them all before you arrive, were it not so contrived that nobody else can). Very conveniently, only you do!

It just reminds me of D&D games where the game world revolved around the players. Not that you can't play that way, but I really dislike when that sort of set up seems to be treated as if going up against the roughness of a world. When really the whole game world is warped so as to bend over backwards to hand the players treasure! Sycophancy treated as roughness!

Alot of RPG games are like that - your always taking, somehow from a limitless pile that you never contribute to, but apparently everyone else did and yet that massive discrepancy never seems to jar people at all. They always seem to think "Oh of course I would find the treasure...and again...and again...and again..."

Just railing against a 'feature' (listed in notch's new game project, linked to here in 'off topic' and also in a boat load of other games) which seems more like a massive bug to me.

[hallsofvallhalla]

Hear hear!

When running D&D games I always tried to make the loot feasable. I loved making the characters find the loot of their last dead characters. In video games it is a bit tougher as with a million players running around killing 10 million rats and wolfs there is bound to be plenty of booty.

[Cayle]

Now Now. I’ll put my cynical old bastard hat on and say the following: players may be playing an online game, but they want to be special. Said another way, it’s no accident that it’s a lot easier to be a Jedi in TOR than in the original SWG. Players want loot and lots of it. The purpose of the environment is to provide it. Games where players serve as the mobs - EVE springs to mind – are not so massively popular. Yes, they are popular among the connoisseurs, like a fine wine; but not for the mass market.

I once had an experience on an NWN server where I actually thought about what the world would look like where some of the population rezzes and the rest die permanently. Then I thought about how to modify the lore to accommodate this.

http://dancingelephants.wordpress.com/2 ... sh-part-i/

http://dancingelephants.wordpress.com/2 ... 3-part-ii/

[Jackolantern]

I understand where you are coming from to a point, but I also think about the fact that it is in a fantasy setting. In my D&D games, usually the "treasure rooms" and the like we would find would be from sub-human creatures. They are human enough to want to steal, find and hoard all of these valuables, but they are not human enough to go through a banking system to actually use an infrastructure of security. They pile them up in their burrows or in the abandoned castles they live in, because...well...where else would they keep it? Even in real life, there have been a few people on Pacific islands to come across huge caches of stolen, shiny objects hoarded by the Coconut Crab. For some reason they love to steal and collect shiny objects (including jewelry, eye glasses, silverware and coins), often leaving them in the same fairly-hidden location. They also can live for 30 - 60 years, so if someone comes across a particularly plundering crab's hiding place, they will have just found "a hidden treasure room", and that is in real life!

[Callan S.]

Jack, that example is hardly the same as an abandoned ship full of loot? It actually goes some way to explain how a treasure pile can be found. I mean if the player occasionally lost a ship in some way where they can't recover it, but at some point someone else might be able to salvage it, then that starts to explain how there are ships for the player to salvage. Like an explanation of how this stuff gets out there to be found. Generally, I think, with the players actions adding to the treasure pile somehow (instead of just always taking away). I mean the stuff you craft just to up your crafting skill, then sell to a vendor - that could be made as the source of wilderness treasure, as NPC traders take the goods but get waylaid or such.

It'd be interesting if players had a special slot, seperate from normal inventory. Here maybe they find some raw ingrediant (like a piece of scrap iron) and the character crafts it over time, automatically. But for this special slot (no other inventory slot), often the item gets lost in fights (along with a message to say that). Perhaps even keep an individual record of that item in the database (perhaps with the names of the last five players to have held it, which are shown) and some other player finds it latter, crafting it further/closer to it's end state. Eventually it becomes an actual treasure item (green or blue item). That way the wilderness is full of treasure because - well, you can see why! And when you play, your part of that process!

Cayle,

they want to be special.

Well, I don't feel special - I feel like someone is trying to be sycophantic in their game design, yet by an intellectually insulting trick that somehow I'd believe I'm the special chosen one to find all this loot first, rather than someone else hobbling by months or years ago and having already hoovered it up. I'm not sure I want a fine wine - just not to eat a really greasy, preservative laden burger (with no lettuce!).

[Zorber]

I assume you are referring to "Mars Effect"?
I'm not even going to bother with that game.
Whether I enjoy it or not it will ultimately just be another unneeded distraction from my studies.

Zorber

[Jackolantern]

Ok, I get what you mean now. I thought you just meant "treasure caches" in general. Of course sunken ships can have tons of treasure on them, and with a fantasy world, it could come to pass that an adventurer could come across it. But I still know what you mean. Where does all this treasure in RPGs come from? Maybe a PBBG could be one of the first games that tries to have realistic treasure flows in the game, where most items must be crafted from materials harvested from the ground and sea, and those items can be lost through adventuring and taken by monsters to be dropped for someone else.

[Callan S.]

But I still know what you mean. Where does all this treasure in RPGs come from? Maybe a PBBG could be one of the first games that tries to have realistic treasure flows in the game, where most items must be crafted from materials harvested from the ground and sea, and those items can be lost through adventuring and taken by monsters to be dropped for someone else.

Yeah, that'd be cool!

Too bad I think it's cool, but then I have a hard enough time constructing even the basic structure of a game! Let alone cool extra features like that!

Maybe one day soon! Would love if the items keep a list of prior players to hold it (like a five names or so). Gives a sense of history!