I''m trying to decied on what to do about items in my game and I want some input. Is it a case of "less is more" or "bring on the items". What do people prefer a few items and pieces of equipment or 1000''s of items to choose from. If you look at movies and books usual the main character uses the same equipment for the entire movie. Take a look at highlander he used the same sword for over a thousand years. What would people think of an rpg where the main characyer sets of from home with his traveling cloak and quaterstaff and those are the only items they ever have? Thats my main question and no I just want to toss around some ideas for handling item in games and see what ideas people have. Base items with modifey tags. items have diffrent quality such as shody, poor, good, superb. Then special tags such rusty, glowing, serated, balanced. This allowing the game to have a massive amount of dynamic items. OR how about all the items being organic and living with the player in symbotic or parasitic nature. Example: Healing Slug - symbotite - attaches to a host and feeds on small quantites of blood. and produces a slime that rapidly repairs injuries. Mind Spider - parasite - attaches to a hosts head and secretes a venom that increases cognitive proccess and numbs the body to pain. Until it eggs are ready hatch at which point it injects them into the hosts brain and the baby spiders eater their way out. OR there is base items that can be customized or enchanted. What kinds of ideas for items do people have? ----------------------------------------------------- Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades Current Design project Chaos Factor Design Document

I like a large variety of items - at least when it comes to weapons. It''s always a lot of fun finding a new cool rifle (or a new magic sword).

I also find it a lot of fun when I have Gauntlets of AC+5 and then happen to find Gauntlets of AC+6. Even though there''s no real difference, you still think that "Aha! I feel a lot better now!". It''s both the joy of finding something new to use, and exchanging them for your old piece of ''crap''."

In Diablo 2, there are like a million items or something. However, for some reason I didn''t change weapons that often. I usually found weapons/armors that were a lot worse than what I had. When I found something that was better than what I had equipped, it was A LOT better. With a item generation system like that, they could have made a better game, imo.

The game Dark Cloud (just an example, I''m sure other games have done this as well) takes an interesting approach: instead of your character levelling up, your weapons get experience and level up, which you can use to make them better. There are various base types of weapons, but because you can level your weapons up you don''t want to change very often.

As for whether you want lots of items/weapons or a few, it really depends on your game and how they are implemented. If you give the items/weapons in your game a lot of worth, and perhaps make sure there is a story behind each one, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to have a fairly limited number.

On the other hand if you want to give the player an impression of a really diverse game world with tons of different objects lying around, you might want to make a huge catalog of items and not attach any specific worth to any of them.

At the end of the day, it really depends on what will fit your game the best. That said, I tend to lean somewhere in the middle. I like a few real important items which remain with me throughout the game, but a lot of selection when it comes to the rest of the items.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (PS2) worked on the limited inventory idea. Because the character''s skills lacked a curative spell, the only way to heal damage was through curative items. Curative items could stack, but only out to 10, then they required a second slot for 10 more. Then, unidentified equipment and other items all consumed one slot each. Once identified, the equipment went into a seperate list which was 15 long for each of three types(45 total) and 3 by 3 for each character (27 slots) At the start of the game, you had 10 inventory slots to work with, and by end you''d have 45 provided you found all of the Backpacks to expand the list. The gist of the inventory was you had to carefully decide what to keep and what to toss. The lack of significant curables and only knowing that rank of a weapon/shield/armor, but not knowing it''s class, made the decisions hard.

As for equipment types, each character got their own set of item classes, each at one of 10 ranks. Each item class had it''s own specifics in terms of weight and benefits, as well as slots where skills where placed. The ranks upped the benefits, so that a RangerSword+4 was better then a RangerSword+3 (and you could discard the rangersword+3). There was no item decaying (the game wasn''t long enough to warrant it).

My opinion is that this type of inventory works wonders if you want the player to strategize their items'' carry and usage. The item-only curing for example was one area where you were always short by just enough potions that you had to seriously find ways to take on the enemies that reduced the potential loss of life.

My advice is to decide to what degree you want the player strategizing in the game as a whole.

Your intended audience for your game should have a bearing on this decision as well. If you construct an elaborate system with potentially millions of items, each varying in different strengths and abilities, it can involve a lot of number-juggling and stat-computing that the casual gamer might find off-putting. Diablo 2 was a little too much for several people I know, because they were not hard-core (and barely even soft-core) RPG gamers, and were not in the habit or ability of juggling the numbers. My old roommate carried around the same set of Superior Plate Mail (non-magical) well into Act 3 Normal, throwing away many other "better" armors because they were of a lesser base type (say Chain Mail). In her mind (due to watching Discovery Channel) Plate Mail of any variety was better than any Chain Mail. She eventually caught on and now plays Diablo 2 like a friggin pro--but others might grow weary of trying to figure it out and stop playing.

If your intended audience is the hard-core variety, you could safely assume they can juggle stats in their sleep, so go right ahead.

To me, your idea of setting off with a cloak and a quarterstaff and sticking with it has a certain sense of appeal. As long as the gameplay is balanced, and elaborate enough in other areas of character development, a minimum of inventory management seems attractive. Ensuring that, when the final toe-to-toe comes, the player is good enough with that cloak and staff to whoop-ass on the Big Bad Dude(tm) is important. Instead of replacing your staff, you get better at using it. Or properties are added to the staff, opening up other avenues for action in combat situations.

I suppose the most important thing is to decide how you want character progression to be handled, and design a system to implement this plan.

Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

Check out Golem at:
My cheapass website

I really really liked the diablo 2 item system, if you havent played the game you should probably check it out, it might at least give you some ideas. www.diabloii.net.

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"yuo have it all wrong. admiralbiunary is me not the other way reorubnd poppet. just becuase hea was here first doesnt meean hes any mopre valid than me yuo rassit pigf." YodaTheCoda

One word: Upgrades.

If you have a small range of base items and a large variety (but limited supply) of upgrades then you''re going to tend to create a situation where players hang onto their favorite weapons etc - because they''re the ones they''ve invested resources into upgrading. Deus Ex, for example, has about enough mods in the game to max out two weapons. A friend of mine, on his first play through maxxed out his stealth pistol early then spent the rest of the game moaning about how it could never be as good as an upgraded assault rifle/shotgun/snipe rifle/GEP gun/flamethrower/mini-X-bow/whatever weapon he was using at the time. He never got rid of the pistol though...

i'd keep the number of standard items low (~5 types of healing/mana potions, statues-effect cures for every status, etc..)

then i'd add limited equipment for every character gained during the normal storyline - either fixed stats / fixed placement or random drops like d2... but _never_ to strong

third : secret items with fixed stats at special places / after special quests / etc


furthermore space limitation is a good thing



but it all depends on how you want your game to be played

[edited by - Pext on August 22, 2003 10:37:05 AM]