> It means a large swath of monsters: jellies, giant insects, wolves, bears, spiders, serpents, etc. wouldn't drop anything.
I guess at a fundamental level it depends on what kind of game you want to make/play. To me the allure of RPG-style games is that they can be story vehicles. Run-of-the-mill animals dropping weapons and gems has the opposite effect on me: I think it disrupts the world's integrity and as a player I always think it's a design weakness.
In any case, they do drop something - their bodies.
> You'd end up basically just trying to kill "monsters" that are humans.
Nope, at least not if we're talking standard fantasy RPGs. You could argue that all the tool-using monsters are human-like, but to me that's not very accurate. If there's a moral in-game argument in there, well, you generally don't kill Goblins because they're not human, you kill them because they're evil or they attack you first. There are generally tons of tool-using monsters in fantasy settings that aren't even humanoid. But yeah, I think it's OK to have human bad guys as well. To me, basing the distinction whether to kill some creature on whether they're human or not feels weird and questionable.
> I think that's a cool idea, but in practice it doesn't seem to lead to very fun gameplay.
Obviously, I disagree. Not every mob needs to drop riches, especially if the loot doesn't make sense within the story. Providing predictable and nonsensical short-term rewards is not a player retention strategy I'm overly fond of, I might as well just install ProgressQuest and watch that for half an hour. On the other hand, there are many games that do just that, so your view is clearly commercially viable.
> "Oh, look, the wizard dropped yet another robe."
That's only a problem if the expectation is that every lootable item is indeed loot-worthy.
> I deliberately sacrificed realism (which is of limited value in my book anyway) to get a more exciting, surprising game.
I see you're not kidding about not caring for realism. That's of course totally fine, do your thing. I'm not trying to convince you of anything. My point is that I personally think the choice between fun and realism implies a false dichotomy. Yes, dropping "realistic" loot is a bit predictable - but it's a good kind of predictability that makes the in-game world more convincing. And with just a little bit of good will and creativity you can still make them drop unique and surprising things without breaking their character.
Maybe I'm mistaken but you sound a bit defensive, which was not my intention. Once again, this is not a critique of your game. It's a very personal opinion about loot and the style of games I like to play. At the end of the day, you're the guy building something amazing and I'm just a random dude on the internet who except for the occasional abysmal LD entry never even made a real game. So: rock on :)
Sure, but this is exactly how Titan Quest (not a roguelike, but an action-RPG) works. Animals will never drop spears, but if you see an enemy with a bow, you will most likely find a bow on its corpse (or nothing).
It's also worth pointing out that all sorts of realistic history has all sorts of random stuff being carried by combatants. Organised raiding parties that are returning will be carrying loads of valuable odds and ends. Stories abound of the stuff that was initially being carried on the retreat from Moscow for instance e.g. milking stools!
In the non-humanoid space you have nesting/crow like behaviour - i.e. "shiny" things, the most famous being dragons and gold. So it's entirely possible for whole classes of creatures to generically carry certain things.
> To me the allure of RPG-style games is that they can be story vehicles.
For my game, I'm not using it as a narrative vehicle. (Or, I am, but I want the narrative to be the player's experience, and not a story the game immerses them in.)
> There are generally tons of tool-using monsters in fantasy settings that aren't even humanoid.
Sure, but if you're going for realism, that still founders on the "how come my seven foot barbarian always fits perfectly in goblin armor?" problem.
Personally, I love the general fantasy environment. Dragons, trolls, swords, wizards. I dig the whole trope. But I'm not hung up on making a detailed, coherent fantasy world. Ultimately, I'm trying to make a fun game. The fantasy stuff is just trappings on top of abstract pieces. They are hugely important because they give the player some intuition about gameplay, but if I have to pick between a fun mechanic and a realistic one, I'll pick the fun one.
Real-life members of the clergy are perfectly capable of walking due north, but no one hates on chess for being unrealistic because bishops only go diagonally.
> Not every mob needs to drop riches, especially if the loot doesn't make sense within the story.
Sure, but the rarity of loot is orthogonal to how you pick loot for the mobs that do drop something.
> so your view is clearly commercially viable
I'm not trying to make a commercial game. I'll be open sourcing it. I'm just trying to make a game that's fun for me to play.
I don't have a lot of free time now that I have kids, so huge immersive detailed games with big stories aren't that appealing to me. I don't have time for that kind of commitment anyway. I want a game where I can drop into the dungeon for ten minutes, get a guaranteed sense of accomplishment from getting some XP and maybe get some great rare loot or kill something cool.
(Of course, the irony of spending an insane amount of time creating a game that is intended to not take much of my time to play isn't lost on me... Maybe I just like coding more than playing.)
> My point is that I personally think the choice between fun and realism implies a false dichotomy.
Absolutely right. Where I can make it more realistic I do. I think realism is really important for usability. To the degree that the game world is consistent, users can predict the effects of their actions.
For example, if you get hit with a cold attack in my game, you get "frozen" and your speed is lowered until it wears off. If you take fire damage after that, it will warm you up and cancel out the cold status. I think that's a nice little bit of edge case behavior that may delight a user when they see the game world following (sort of) the real world's rules.
I guess at a fundamental level it depends on what kind of game you want to make/play. To me the allure of RPG-style games is that they can be story vehicles. Run-of-the-mill animals dropping weapons and gems has the opposite effect on me: I think it disrupts the world's integrity and as a player I always think it's a design weakness.
In any case, they do drop something - their bodies.
> You'd end up basically just trying to kill "monsters" that are humans.
Nope, at least not if we're talking standard fantasy RPGs. You could argue that all the tool-using monsters are human-like, but to me that's not very accurate. If there's a moral in-game argument in there, well, you generally don't kill Goblins because they're not human, you kill them because they're evil or they attack you first. There are generally tons of tool-using monsters in fantasy settings that aren't even humanoid. But yeah, I think it's OK to have human bad guys as well. To me, basing the distinction whether to kill some creature on whether they're human or not feels weird and questionable.
> I think that's a cool idea, but in practice it doesn't seem to lead to very fun gameplay.
Obviously, I disagree. Not every mob needs to drop riches, especially if the loot doesn't make sense within the story. Providing predictable and nonsensical short-term rewards is not a player retention strategy I'm overly fond of, I might as well just install ProgressQuest and watch that for half an hour. On the other hand, there are many games that do just that, so your view is clearly commercially viable.
> "Oh, look, the wizard dropped yet another robe."
That's only a problem if the expectation is that every lootable item is indeed loot-worthy.
> I deliberately sacrificed realism (which is of limited value in my book anyway) to get a more exciting, surprising game.
I see you're not kidding about not caring for realism. That's of course totally fine, do your thing. I'm not trying to convince you of anything. My point is that I personally think the choice between fun and realism implies a false dichotomy. Yes, dropping "realistic" loot is a bit predictable - but it's a good kind of predictability that makes the in-game world more convincing. And with just a little bit of good will and creativity you can still make them drop unique and surprising things without breaking their character.
Maybe I'm mistaken but you sound a bit defensive, which was not my intention. Once again, this is not a critique of your game. It's a very personal opinion about loot and the style of games I like to play. At the end of the day, you're the guy building something amazing and I'm just a random dude on the internet who except for the occasional abysmal LD entry never even made a real game. So: rock on :)