Ryan Shwayder says it’s fun. Brian Green says it’s a waste of time. I say the data management makes it harder than you think.
We’re all talking about whether or not mobs should drop their equipment. I agree that it’s a neat little feature, and I think neat little realism features can add a lot to a game world, even if nobody consciously notices them. (My pet peeve: worlds with no female mobs. Little thing, nobody’s going to really notice, would make the world feel more organic.) This isn’t a game design blog, though. This is a game data blog.
I worked on a game where humanoid mobs dropped their equipment. When the worldbuilder assigned equipment to a mob, he could specify a drop rate (e.g. “Generic Sword, 25%”). There were a couple of problems with this system:
- When combat formula are extremely complex and mob stat values are different than characters’, it’s already hard enough to predict mob performance without adding equipment on top of it. (We eventually redid the way mob stats were calculated, making all mob equipment cosmetic. This is probably the way that most MMOs should handle mob performance.)
- The treasure system wasn’t smart enough to compensate for the humanoid mobs’ extra loot. The treasure system was balanced to drop stuff worth a certain amount, and mobs with equipment would drop that stuff plus their equipment. Score!
Solution A: Extra Tables for Everyone. Most RPGs have dumb treasure systems. The worldbuilder assigns a treasure table to a mob, and every time that mob spawns, it rolls some random numbers and drops the resulting crap.
You could build a second set of treasure tables and assign them to all the humanoid mobs, but that’s a pain in the ass. (Especially when the treasure system is stupid in addition to dumb, and looking at the tables makes your eyes bleed.) This is what we did. It really, really sucked.
Solution B: We Love Overengineering.You could build a smart treasure system, where you just let the mob know the actual value of the crap it’s supposed to drop. It’d have to take into account the equipment they drop, then add enough extra random crap to meet that desired amount. If a mob without equipment died, it’d get extra crap.
Loot would be more predictable — all mobs of the same level would be equally good choices to kill, reducing the explorers’ joy in finding new camps to exploit for cash. You could engineer the system around that — the worldbuilder could say “these guys drop 25% more stuff than other mobs of their level” or whatever — but then the system is even more complicated. (Also, then the worldbuilders would able to fuck up your careful economic balance. Worldbuilders!)
Solution C: Waste Your Time. Ryan says that you can avoid all these problems by making mob equipment worthless. “Waah!” Right, let’s overburden the item database with totally worthless shit that nobody wants. They might as well just drop melons.
I’m considerate. I don’t want to waste your time. I also don’t want to overengineer the hell out of a system unless there’s a damn good reason, and letting you kill a guy to take his stuff isn’t good enough. And finally, I don’t want to duplicate data and make new treasure tables unless there’s an even better reason, because that work just sucks.
Sorry.