Loot tables, raid bosses...

This interview with Richard Garriott has me worried. There are raid bosses who have loot from a loot table? Is this WoW?

http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/0...and-long-talk-shroud-of-the-avatar/#continued

So if you sell a weapon to a merchant, some boss in a dungeon at the other side of the continent does magically have this weapon? How and why? So much for a realistic world...
How is this going to be handled in single player offline mode? Will there be "raid bosses", too? Where do they get their loot from? Will they respawn constantly so that have I to kill them over and over in order to "browse through the bank"?
Sorry, but this whole concept steps so far away from SotA also wanting to be a single player game as well as from the realistically simulated world... Loot from a loot table? So I kill the big ogre lord who attacks me with a big club but when I loot him he magically has the sword of player l337mastercool, who forged it a day ago at the other side of Novia and then sold it to a merchant?
Wow what a disappointment...

 

Because they're really concerned about having a player driven economy, moreso than I think is necessary ( I don't' think a fully player driven economy is necessary ).

Regardless, I don't see a problem with this as long as the items that the enemy has are also appropriate to what you would expect him to be carrying -- and, if there's are no player-created items that are appropriate, it generates a dev-created item instead.

I am worried about the idea of "bosses"; I'm not sure what that means, whether it just means a tough monster you would expect to have loot, or something else. I'm always skeptical of the idea of bosses, since its a term that comes from platformers and usually means the dungeon is structured like a platformer level.

 

I see your point. However, how will a solo player ever get a truly great weapon? Every player is playing to have fun and forcing them all to become an expert craftsman, enchanter, hunter and gatherer is a fun sucking proposition. I like the proposed idea because is stays true to the rule that craftsmen are the center of production and bosses will not have drops that will be better than those crafted. With this virtual hidden bank idea, it means that the drops will never be the same. It is not a perfect solution, but I genuinely like it.

 

Exactly. This means crafted items are the source for everything in the game, top to bottom back to top again.

 

Especially raid bosses... Players camping at the respawn of the 20-person raid waiting for the dragon overlord to reappear again...

But how do those "bosses" get hold of the items?

 

There aren't raids. This isn't WoW.

The single player offline game won't have an online player economy to populate loot tables, so this won't effect single player offline at all.

For the online portion, they're trying to go the exact opposite of WoW, where you repeat a raid constantly to get the best gear for everyone over time. SotA is going for a model where the best gear is player made, not dropped from bosses. The other problem is that in crafting, you make tons of items to grind your crafting skills and all those items you crafted become throw-away items.

If a boss has a sword on them, why not make it a sword that I crafted to make it feel like players are impacting and populating the world with their items?

Edit: I know all your posts are how you feel that online is hurting the single player game, but please do not jump to needless false conclusions.

The term "loot tables" is not something that belongs solely to WoW or online games. A truly single player game like Skyrim has loot tables for bosses as well. Those loot tables are pre-populated with a random list that is altered dynamically based on player level. Single player offline games work that way as well.

For the online portion of the game, they're allowing the loot of mobs in the game to pull from players are adding. This is a brilliant idea and does not affect single player in any way.

 

remember Item Affinity comes into play here, so you might be able to loot something like "the sword of spider slaying" or "Roosterkiller, the bane of chickens slayer"

 

Champ Spawns from UO are Bosses. I don't see any issue with them, so much fun. : )
I do understand what your saying tho.

 

In the article it clearly states "raid boss".
Also the question is still there. How do those bosses get hold of those weapons? Do they go to the city, browsing through the merchants stock, looking for new items? "Hey, I am the evil Lichlord and I need cool new weapons to terrorize you. Show me your wares!"

 

A writer wrote raid boss because they don't know any better. That does not change the fact the devs have said there are no raids, this won't be anything like WoW, they hate the WoW model, etc.

I can't tell you how often Chris, Starr and Richard have said this will have nothing to do with the WoW model of tiers of gear you can only get through bosses. What the article is describing is literally the exact opposite of that. Bosses only drop gear as well as you can craft meaning you can get the best gear purely through players without touching a boss.

 

They pop down to the local graveyard and dig our bodies up while they're still fresh, then loot all the bits and bobs we had on our person at the time. Maybe also run off with a legbone or so as a chewtoy for their new baby. If you ever respawn with a limp, this is why.

 

Two other options.

Richard said one possibility is that if a player dies to a mob/boss, he's considered that the mob/boss loots an item from your inventory in the way you can lose an item in PvP to another player. But this is just an idea thrown around and I haven't seen it implemented or confirmed.

The other possibility that makes more sense is that one you sold your crafted items to a merchant, it is presumed someone (NPC or otherwise) purchased your item and it went into circulation somewhere in the world. Who knows how it went from someone buying it and it ending up in a dungeon. What matters is that they're emphasizing player items over the gear treadmill that is WoW.

 

Yeah I was just being silly.

I read they do things like when something is sold to an NPC it might then "get shipped off" to another island, then "pirates might take the ship down" and the sold item is lost into the system at that point. Maybe it got sold to some guy who got himself murdered by a flock of bloodthirsty killer sheep, and then our local mobs ran off down to the local graveyard to chew on some bones and rifle through the last earthly possessions of the recently buried, as above. And things like that.

When these items next get to us there might still be a few chew marks on the hilt of that once awesome sword, and we'll now have to repair it.

Point we take from this is there is a system, and things will circulate. And it all starts with the crafter.

 

How do these bosses get weapons in a single player game? Who crafted them? Do get just magically appear? So much for a realistic single player experience.

 

The OP does have a point in regards to loot tables....

We are taking a lot of things for granted so far since we haven't actually been given any concrete answers on how it will work for offline.

Loot tables are used even in pnp rpgs...not a huge deal...

Raids on the other hand....

 

We do have a concrete answer for offline. I've seen Starr mention in hangouts that offline doesn't have online data, so it can't use this feature and loot tables have to be manually pre-populated for offline.

And the devs have never said this game will have raids. One MMO reporter who doesn't know any better used the word because he writes for an MMO site and he assumed every new game follows the WoW model.

 

Ok Ender....yes yes....they did say it wouldn't use them...however, we don't know how they will populate them to make it interesting.

 

Well I don't think this game will be a boss driven game. It will be a game of choices the player makes and player driven. If there are some boss like creatures in the game I believe they will have a purpose. As to
them having a loot table, it could be very well that they will provide usable craftable items such as liver, heart, bones, blood etc. Also perhaps the creature could have swallowed up in killing someone an item
such as sword or perhaps there will be a story line that you need the creatures heart that has certain healing properties to cure a curse and only obtainable if you have the quest and only then, not after the
quest is done.. Also perhaps the experiences the creature has ingame will determine what he has or doesn't have not. I don't think the creature should have any items better than in game if he does though.

 

Loot table:

 

For an item circulation to work, sold items would need to take a while before showing up somewhere else. If I craft a cool axe, sell it to an NPC merchant and an hour later I find it as loot from a "boss" this will be very strange...

Also an enemy should always use the items he carries with him.