The Great Loot Debate… Deboot? Debate!
By jadegl 35 Comments
I am a sucker for loot driven games. Ever since I first installed the original Diablo, I’ve been trying to find new and fun ways to accumulate new and better gear. In Western RPGS like Oblivion or Skyrim, I end up spending hours upon hours searching every shelf and chest in every house and cave for unique weapons and armor. If it has a special name and skin, I desperately want it. It doesn’t matter if I can use it, I am content to keep it in a barrel in my home, safe in the knowledge that that thing is mine and not out there in the world somewhere. Of course, this leads to situations such me trying to jump on top of an arrangement of rocks in Oblivion for over two hours, all because I just had to have a pair of unique boots. In JRPGs, I will walk across every inch of ground, hoping to find a chest that holds some unique item or weapon. I usually end up over-leveled from all the random encounters I engage in, all while trying to get more stuff.
Of course, those games have loot, but they aren’t really about the loot grind. Diablo and its sequels are all about that grind, a feedback loop where you find something good, you use it to level up your character, all so that you can go out and fight harder monsters for better loot. Right now there are three games that I am playing that attempt to do this, and they are successful to varying degrees. They are Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, Marvel Heroes 2015 and Destiny.
I’ll get this out of the way first; Destiny is the least successful of the three when it comes to the loot… loop. The most important thing about the loot grind, to me, is to feel that the grinding is actually getting me somewhere, thereby pulling me back into the game when I otherwise may not have returned to it. At this point, at level 12, I don’t yet feel the pull to go back into the game to get better loot. I want to play to experience the gunplay and to see where the story goes, but the loot just isn’t interesting. What the guns do doesn’t change much, at least so far. The exotic weapons have unique appearances, but finding those seems to be relegated to end game content or pure luck. With new armor, there are slight changes to appearance, but nothing has really stuck out as being more aesthetically pleasing than what I started the game with. I recently got my first cape, and that’s been the most exciting thing to happen so far. Considering the cape looks like a used dishrag, you can probably gauge what my frustration level has been with the loot drops and how they reflect on my character model. When I see pictures of late game characters, I get excited because they look very interesting, with unique looking guns and gear. My assumption is that my experience will change when I reach level 20, but that’s a long time to wait for the cool stuff.
Marvel Heroes 2015 is the next on the list, and it is a bit better than Destiny. It is still somewhat lacking when it comes to the loot grind, but for a different reason altogether. In Marvel Heroes 2015, you get loot quite frequently, and it does interesting things for your character. Finding that one good piece of gear could change your whole way of playing. Adding to the positives is the fact that the game is free to play, so you can get a ton out of the game without having to put down a penny. The downside is that for all the loot and all the ways you can spec a character, it lacks one of the more important aspects of loot driven games. When you get a new piece of loot, it may change your stats, but it won’t change how your character looks. You will always appear the same. The only way to modify your appearance is by applying a visual effect, found as a bonus to certain artifacts, to your costume. You can also spend real world money to buy new costumes. So, if you liked the 1990s cartoon version of Storm, a personal favorite of mine, you will have to put down the equivalent of about 10 dollars to outfit Storm with that costume. They do sales and BOGOs for costumes, but you’ll always be spending money to change the look, no matter what. That is a big downside and degrades the fun and appeal of finding new loot. So while the amount of loot is good, and what the gear actually does for your character is good, the fact that the appearance of the character model remains static is a big problem.
The third game I mentioned, and the King (or Queen) of loot driven games, is Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. Diablo is a series that has perfected the feedback loop of finding, using and upgrading loot. With the newest installment, they have managed to make a game that has you doing similar things, over and over again, yet always coming back to get the newest and best gear. I will admit, if I had written this blog when Diablo III was first released, I would have called it a failure for someone looking for a fun loot grind. Diablo III, at launch, had a broken loot system as well as other crippling issues. I was one of the unlucky people that couldn’t play due to constant connection errors. When I could actually play the game, I didn’t get a Legendary item drop until I had invested over 6o hours of playtime. On top of that, the items that I was getting were woefully unfit for my class. As a Demon Hunter, my character needed gear that had dexterity and vitality. The first loot system didn’t take into account your class, so you ended up with various items that were completely useless. I was getting class specific gear, such as Quivers and Capes, with high strength and Intelligence rolls. There was no joy in finding gear that was never going to work. This is why so many people turned to the Auction House. To get the gear you needed, you could either grind until you got a good item or you could spend some in-game gold and get gear that was better than anything that had ever dropped in your game. It was a system that was horribly flawed and the community rightfully complained about it.
Blizzard has turned this around with patches, including one that I already mentioned called Loot 2.0. Gear drops are now more frequent and more tailored to class. With the time I invest now, I manage to get useful things all the time without expending an insane amount of effort. They have also added other things that have kept the gameplay varied, including Rifts, Greater Rifts, Season Mode and Adventure Mode. Instead of blindly playing through the story mode, which was what a player had to do in the vanilla release, they now have ways to teleport to different areas with different missions, called bounties. It is a cool system that makes the game feel fresh. The loot that drops is much more tailored to class and with each patch, more items and modes are added. If you’re looking for a loot driven experience, you really should try it. I stopped playing after I was disappointed with the initial release and came back. Now I find myself doing a few bounties or rifts per day, just to try and make my character that much better.
One more interesting thing Diablo III added, which seems kind of silly on the surface but which also adds to the fun of loot accumulation is the ability to change the appearance of items. With each level you unlock with a vendor called the Mystic, you can get access to more armor and weapon skins. As you find more Legendary gear, those unique item appearances are unlocked. So, if I like a specific helmet for the stats, but like the appearance of one that I just found a little better, I can spend some gold and make my old helmet look like the new one. It allows you to make your character much more personalized. Pair that with different dyes that you can apply to each piece or armor, and you can do a lot of creative things. Even if every wizard uses the same gear, they could all look different if they utilize the Mystic. It’s a neat system that I abuse frequently.
My main takeaway from playing these three games, all at the same time, is that Destiny needs a Loot 2.0 reboot. Reflecting on the way that Diablo III has learned from mistakes and improved their game, I believe that Destiny can, and should, do the same thing. I am sure that the content for Destiny is on the way, the recent Vault of Glass being an example of new things added to the game after launch. With new strikes and raids being folded into the game, I could also see them patching in new patrol mission types over time. The loot is what really needs to be shaken up. Gear should be more tailored to the class you play and it should drop with more frequency. If you get a legendary engram, it should yield a legendary item with a small chance at an exotic. It shouldn’t regress to uncommon or rare. I also wish that the shader system would allow for more choice in where to apply the colors, but that’s a pipe dream and I am not expecting that to ever be a possibility. What I really want Destiny to do, and it may never happen, is to be more exciting with it’s loot and the grind to get that loot. The running and gunning is fantastic and the worlds are beautiful to behold, but the missions become repetitive with little variation in what you do from moment to moment.
I will always be on a quest to find the newest and best loot game. I will try any of them at least once, whether it’s an MMO or a first person shooter with different gear and guns. Destiny could be that game if it takes lessons learned from the other big names in the industry and applies them smartly and quickly to their own game. Time will tell if they can adapt and improve, instead of withering on the vine.
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