Hmm... Redshrike's journey/several-vendor-outposts suggestion does seem to eliminate a lot of the problems. With proper balance, the player should fill up their inventory just about the same time they reach the next town. No trekking back to vendors, only continuing forward with the journey. Some players will seek loot and grind more than others, resulting in overfull inventories before the next outpost on the journey, but that is the player's preference I guess.
I agree re. addicting features that are not also fun and enriching are unethical.
I dislike lootris, moreso in the diablo franchise than in the might and magic franchise. I think it wasn't so bad in M&M because the inventory was nearly 4 times larger than diablo games.
I don't usually go for achievements myself, but they sometimes encourage the player to seek out the very enriching features they might have otherwise missed.
New Game+ I can't see a problem with. If the player liked the game so much that they want to try it from a new perspective, newgame+ gives them that opportunity. The alternative is nothing. no additional playing. I agree than newgame+ is not as good as more real content, but I don't agree that newgame+ is worse than nothing. :)
wasting player's time is wrong. At least wasting it unneccessarily. A faraway place that is exotic and a challenge to reach is utterly ruined if you the designer decide that all that intervening distance, with monsters and challenges, is just wasting player time so you cut it from the game or add instant-teleport-to-wherever-you-want-to-go features. Once they reach it, sure, offer some quicker travel options.
By all means, trim the fat... just be sure you aren't trimming all the challenge along with it.
"If a gamer has to stop and consider whether to instantly sell or hold onto an unusable item, I'd feel like I failed as a game designer."
Really? ...I... Do you feel like you failed in any of the other places that the player has to stop and consider some decision? I don't mean that snarkily. I'm truly curous how producing a situation where the player has to make a gameplay decision could be seen as a design failure.
Is it because holding on to an unusable item is clearly a bad decision? It will only take one mistake for the player to never hesitate on that decision again. Same as any other obvious bad game decision.
I wasn't arguing for hoarding and dragging. I was arguing for a player's ability to weight the benifits and drawbacks of two options. If you can insta-sell at a reduced rate like MoikMellah was suggesting(convenience fee) that is a choice. Stingy players have the choice of trekking, lazy players have the choice of selling at penalty rates.
If you can insta-sell at the same great rates as the vendor, why have a vendor at all? I guess to buy stuff from them... but no one is ever going to sell stuff to them, so that feature is then unneccessary.
Edit: "that feature" = the feature of being able to sell to a vendor, not the sell-anywhere feature.
With items that have more than one stat, "better" is to be determined by the player. They have to weigh the bonuses and drawbacks of any given piece of equipment.
We could replace "better than the item the player is already using" in that condition with "an item the player can use at all". So equipment that is, say, only usable by a specific class (not the player character's class either) is never going to be used by the player, therefore the game shouldn't bother dropping it and should instead drop gold.
However, you could argue "What if the player wants to trade that item to an allie who IS able to use it". I think my point is that there is a tradeoff between convenience vs. choice. The more convenient you make it, the less choice the player has. Some choices are just not worth it and convenience is better, but some players draw the line at drastically different places than others.
"If the game decides what you should wear, you might as well remove equipment alltogether..." This is an excellent (albeit extreme) demonstration of what I am talking about. Makes it REALLY convenient for the player, but eliminates all choices relating to equipment.
Having no ability to covert items to gold, on the other hand, presents the player with even more choices: Is this big bulky peice of armor worth the money you'll get from dragging it back to town to sell it? No? then don't pick it up. Inventory space vs. sale value is an equivalent sacrifice to "Maybe I'm willing to sacrifice damage for some spell effect?"
I'm not neccessarily saying everything must be dragged all the way back to the merchant if the player wants gold for it, just that the level of convenience vs. choice that the player may want should be considered. I feel that making things convenient without any drawbacks means it isn't a choice. Who the heck would NOT take advantage of a convenience with zero drawbacks? A game with fewer choices is more like... a choose-your-own-adventure book where you don't really get to choose your own adventure.
I'm with MoikMellah on this one. I think there should at least be some convenience penalty for that. Sometimes the trekking back to town is part of the gameplay. If not, why not just incorporate the following condition:
If item is better than the item player is already using then
drop item for player to pick up
else
drop gold instead.
even more convenient! No need to hassle with that annoying "convert it to gold" button on all the items the player is never going to use.
"Unity is nice for a commercial project if you have the $1500 it requires for the license, and then another $500 for the team license. We don't. It also requires a separate license for each platform."
Unity only requires $1500.00 for a PRO license and only requires $400 additional per platform for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. You can still use Unity free under the following conditions:
You only really need the features of the free version and not Pro (go to https://store.unity3d.com/ and click "read more". see attachment)
Your company doesn't earn over $100,000.00 anually. (If you start earning this much I'm guessing you can afford the pro license?)
You are releasing the game on any platform other than iPhone, iPad, Wii, Xbox, and Android. Any computer with an HTML5 compatible browser is free game.
You are willing to work without the benefits of the team license features. They're nice, but beggars can't be choosers... and by beggars I mean those who want to develop a game on a tiny budget. ..and by tiny budget I mean relative to the ~$100 million budget that skyrim had.
"Email Subject headers are not HTML code"
"subject line and content for each post are likely stored that way"
Hmm... Redshrike's journey/several-vendor-outposts suggestion does seem to eliminate a lot of the problems. With proper balance, the player should fill up their inventory just about the same time they reach the next town. No trekking back to vendors, only continuing forward with the journey. Some players will seek loot and grind more than others, resulting in overfull inventories before the next outpost on the journey, but that is the player's preference I guess.
I agree re. addicting features that are not also fun and enriching are unethical.
I dislike lootris, moreso in the diablo franchise than in the might and magic franchise. I think it wasn't so bad in M&M because the inventory was nearly 4 times larger than diablo games.
I don't usually go for achievements myself, but they sometimes encourage the player to seek out the very enriching features they might have otherwise missed.
New Game+ I can't see a problem with. If the player liked the game so much that they want to try it from a new perspective, newgame+ gives them that opportunity. The alternative is nothing. no additional playing. I agree than newgame+ is not as good as more real content, but I don't agree that newgame+ is worse than nothing. :)
wasting player's time is wrong. At least wasting it unneccessarily. A faraway place that is exotic and a challenge to reach is utterly ruined if you the designer decide that all that intervening distance, with monsters and challenges, is just wasting player time so you cut it from the game or add instant-teleport-to-wherever-you-want-to-go features. Once they reach it, sure, offer some quicker travel options.
By all means, trim the fat... just be sure you aren't trimming all the challenge along with it.
Gotcha. That makes sense... I think my confusion stemmed from the fact that I consider inventory management a component of core gameplay.
Also, great example. death penalty could be 50% gold + 50% items not equpped? Ooh... harsh. I see your point.
"If a gamer has to stop and consider whether to instantly sell or hold onto an unusable item, I'd feel like I failed as a game designer."
Really? ...I... Do you feel like you failed in any of the other places that the player has to stop and consider some decision? I don't mean that snarkily. I'm truly curous how producing a situation where the player has to make a gameplay decision could be seen as a design failure.
Is it because holding on to an unusable item is clearly a bad decision? It will only take one mistake for the player to never hesitate on that decision again. Same as any other obvious bad game decision.
@MoikMellah: Off-topic, but are you implying Link was a vocal protagonist before Ocarina? :D
I wasn't arguing for hoarding and dragging. I was arguing for a player's ability to weight the benifits and drawbacks of two options. If you can insta-sell at a reduced rate like MoikMellah was suggesting(convenience fee) that is a choice. Stingy players have the choice of trekking, lazy players have the choice of selling at penalty rates.
If you can insta-sell at the same great rates as the vendor, why have a vendor at all? I guess to buy stuff from them... but no one is ever going to sell stuff to them, so that feature is then unneccessary.
Edit: "that feature" = the feature of being able to sell to a vendor, not the sell-anywhere feature.
Good point.
With items that have more than one stat, "better" is to be determined by the player. They have to weigh the bonuses and drawbacks of any given piece of equipment.
We could replace "better than the item the player is already using" in that condition with "an item the player can use at all". So equipment that is, say, only usable by a specific class (not the player character's class either) is never going to be used by the player, therefore the game shouldn't bother dropping it and should instead drop gold.
However, you could argue "What if the player wants to trade that item to an allie who IS able to use it". I think my point is that there is a tradeoff between convenience vs. choice. The more convenient you make it, the less choice the player has. Some choices are just not worth it and convenience is better, but some players draw the line at drastically different places than others.
"If the game decides what you should wear, you might as well remove equipment alltogether..." This is an excellent (albeit extreme) demonstration of what I am talking about. Makes it REALLY convenient for the player, but eliminates all choices relating to equipment.
Having no ability to covert items to gold, on the other hand, presents the player with even more choices: Is this big bulky peice of armor worth the money you'll get from dragging it back to town to sell it? No? then don't pick it up. Inventory space vs. sale value is an equivalent sacrifice to "Maybe I'm willing to sacrifice damage for some spell effect?"
I'm not neccessarily saying everything must be dragged all the way back to the merchant if the player wants gold for it, just that the level of convenience vs. choice that the player may want should be considered. I feel that making things convenient without any drawbacks means it isn't a choice. Who the heck would NOT take advantage of a convenience with zero drawbacks? A game with fewer choices is more like... a choose-your-own-adventure book where you don't really get to choose your own adventure.
I'm with MoikMellah on this one. I think there should at least be some convenience penalty for that. Sometimes the trekking back to town is part of the gameplay. If not, why not just incorporate the following condition:
even more convenient! No need to hassle with that annoying "convert it to gold" button on all the items the player is never going to use.
"Unity is nice for a commercial project if you have the $1500 it requires for the license, and then another $500 for the team license. We don't. It also requires a separate license for each platform."
Unity only requires $1500.00 for a PRO license and only requires $400 additional per platform for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. You can still use Unity free under the following conditions:
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