Ekim's Gamer View: Blade of a Thousand Faces
Ekim, 2003-12-05

We've often discussed the uniqueness factor of mmorpgs, in which we try to pinpoint the reason why the games often end up feeling impersonal. A player in an online game can very seldom influence the game itself, and everyone on a single server often feels too much like everyone else. In trying to find a solution for that problem, why not look more closely at loot and how it can be enhanced instead of completely disregarding it?

Away with thee, filthy sword!

Some of the more recent games that have come out, or which will come out soon, seem to want to do away with loot. While this can seem like a good idea to promote the crafting careers that many players want to pursue, it also has some much less desirable effects. First on the list are the adventuring players who tend to end up wondering what it is they are adventuring for apart from the constant XP income. Loot has always had a certain impact on adventuring. Players expect to find goodies on the steaming body of their fallen foe, and there's an undeniable feeling of surprise when you end up finding something special in there. Games like SWG and the upcoming Horizons do away with that almost completely to promote crafters and their trade.

True enough, when I played DAoC in the first year there was a lot of complaining on the part of crafters that argued that players could find better loot on the field than what they crafted at higher levels, which effectively killed their trade. And because of my past experiences I guess I saw the SWG "model" as a good one since players then have to actively seek crafters for the gear they want, thus creating a nice symbiosis between the crafters and adventurers. But now I'm wondering if there couldn't be another, healthier alternative.

What if instead of eliminating it altogether there could be a special loot system in place which could serve to reward the adventuring players without infringing so much on the crafter's capacity to provide the best general gear that anyone can get? What if instead of getting rid of special loot we made it even more special, and most especially rare? Rarity is essential in what I'm proposing, because by now I feel that the common nature of special loot is what killed the loot system altogether, not the crafters themselves.

Loot that defines the adventurer

For instance, take a hypothetical special sword that could be found in a game like DAoC - let's call it the Blade of a Thousand Faces. In conventional mmorpg gaming loot terms, this sword would drop from a special mob - let's call him the Orc King. The problem in that system is that anyone who would kill the Orc King would also get the drop if he was at a certain required level. And so you would eventually end up with thousands of copies of this Blade because after the first guy told his friends about it they would all run out and get in line to grab one too! In the pure sense of heroism this system kills the feeling of adventure pretty quickly, and it also destroys a part of the crafter's business who can't even come close to producing the same type of weapon.

Now, what if we introduced a sense of uniqueness to this loot? Let's make it drop from a particularly nasty "boss" monster that would be unique too. In fact, let's use him for a challenging quest at the end of which you could get a very powerful sword. The first player to complete the quest would get the sword, and he would be the only one to get that weapon on the server in which he plays. But let's make it even more interesting. If the player chooses to get such a unique weapon, he opens himself to other players' envy, and they can now steal it, or wrestle it out of him if they have the skill. Without introducing perma-death, or a system in which the player risks losing everything from dying, let's flag these special and unique items to be dropped upon death, and open for anyone to take.

The point would be to introduce a loot system that would put back some player-made adventuring into the mix without sacrificing any of the things we already hold dear. Instead of having a thousand items that are all alike, put only a few and make them more desirable objects. Loot is not evil, but the multiplication of it is. Of course, unique items wouldn't solve every problem the genre has, but it might go a long way to provide an environment where the player would feel unique again, where it would be possible for someone to seek out fame, or pursue those that already have it and put them back in their place. Instead of having players go after impersonal keeps and stone monuments, have them seek things that they can use and that have tangible effects on their own individual gameplay. You don't need a storyline provided by an author and delivered by some monthly events to make the players create their own adventures. You simply need to provide some tools that enable them to make a name for themselves.