Looter Shooter Devs Still Don't Understand Loot | Design Delve
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- Опубликовано: 15 фев 2024
- This episode of Design Delve is brought to you by Last Epoch. Releasing out of Early Access on February 21st, 2024. store.steampowered.com/app/89...
Looter-shooter games are all the rage, but devs still don't seem to get the real appeal of loot.
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Really hope you enjoyed this episode gang :D Most looter-shooters get this wrong but SOME have got it right.. can you guess which ones I'm talking about? ;)
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Skyrim did pretty well.
@@tidalgrunt6549 Ah yes, classic looter-shooter Skyrim
@@neetenshi You shoot things with magic and bows, or with melee like many looter shooters have. You loot weapons, some of which can be incrementally better via a lucky roll, but most of which is useless.
It didn't feel like you offered as much in the way of suggestions on how to improve in this episode; you highlighted what one recent failure did wrong compared to what successes of the past and present have done right, but it didn't feel like there was as much direction in regard to lessons that might be taken from the latter that could apply to the former and those like it. Hope that made any kind of sense.
Borderlands has a glimpse of a clue. They still focus too much on numbers, but legendary effects are just so much more fun because of their nonsense effects. Elden Ring has the best clue because all the weapons are viable when upgraded and they're all unique.
I like the Borderlands series, but getting those build necessary legendaries by killing the same mob dozens of times burns me out really fast. I really wish they would loosen their loot pool so there's a moderate chance that thing could drop at any time.
Elden Ring weapons arent really all unique, imo, but they are all... deliberate. Bloodborne, for example, actually has each weapon as unique.
@@Invus1 I mean there's many different movesets in Elden Ring and even among weapons with the same moveset, they still come with different ashes of war. They're all unique still.
Yeah for Elden Ring the weapons are distinct (some more than others), but there can be some overlap in functionality, e.g. the longsword and it's similar cousins.
Elden ring has the problem though that 90% of dropped weapons will be unusable for your build as is. If you're a strength build, no int, dex, arc, etc weapons will be useful for you. And if it's a super cool weapon, you can't even try it out to see if you like the feel unless you respec. It's the reason my first playthrough was entirely with the great axe I got in limgrave, despite earning tons of cool weapons later in the game. I'd already put so much into strength, and I was used to the timings that swapping didn't make sense.
My second build was an int build, so I could do different staffs, but even then I used meteorite staff for the first 75% of the game because it's objectively the best for that long
There's also one overlooked but non-trivial factor: fun. I enjoy grinding for better gear in Monster Hunter because engaging in the gameplay is itself a reward. It doesn't feel like a grind because the core game design is so satisfying, the path to the reward feels good the whole time. It ultimately doesn't matter how well the gears of the loot machine mesh together if the gameplay fills the space in between with unpleasant grit.
100% agree. It's funny how so many design faux pas can be overlooked by just making a Good Game. Not saying monster hunter is doing anything wrong specifically, but I'm not even searching for what it might be because instead I'm just hunting the biggest, craziest bosses with the coolest, most unique weapons. Add the cool armor, the neat locations, and they can get away with a lot.
Fun is everything. I have seen games praised and criticized for the exact same mechanics because one of them was fun and the other one wasn't.
The other side of this problem is also often seen in Monster Hunter. Many games have a handful of things that are absolutely unfun to grind for or probably shouldn't even need to be grinded for (why can't I just craft this Dx) and it's by far the worst part of the game due to excessive or unnecessary RNG alongside no gameplay value.
I think Monster Hunter is a game series that has rewards that combines substantive and reflective aspects - every gear is a reminder of the monster you had to hunt to gather the materials you needed to craft it, and is also a way to become stronger to fight bigger and tougher monsters.
Indeed. Plus, Monster Hunter's loot is very much build-defining loot as the weapons and armour sets are very distinct, not only in damage/defense numbers, but in damage types and abilities, so it isn't just numbers going up; there's an aspect of picking and choosing which ones best suit your playstyle and/or are best-suited for fighting particular monsters.
Plus, a lot of loot-based games use the loot to distract from the combat not being worth it in-of-itself, but the combat in Monster Hunter is very fun all on its own and would be fun even without the loot.
I think Monster Hunter does it well. It's a game all about preparation for hunting. You hunt down that specific monster to get its specific materials to make that specific armour you wanted. Now that you have this stronger gear, you can go after that next big challenge.
With games like Suicide Squad, I can fully imagine that you can just blam your way through the content with no real difficulty and just sort through the mountain of guns and underwear and equip the best ones. It's meaningless.
One thing Monster Hunter does well is that you get to choose your reward. Monster drops parts and it’s up to you to decide what to do with them.
It helps that you can come by the substantive progression in any number of ways. Maybe you didn't get enough drops from this monster to build that bit of armor but this other one dropped something you can use to upgrade a weapon, it rarely feels like there's no reason to hunt something. You are always getting rewards (something the looter shooters do) but it's never just trash.
Monster Hunter is even better because you CHOOSE what loot to obtain by crafting it so it feels even more like you're in control. Unlike in other games (and most ARPGs) where you are showered with useless garbage that you can't use or don't even bother picking up. Monster Hunter also does this abstractly in that showers you in "loot" you might not actually use but you don't really think of the materials as loot so it doesn't feel bad.
In X-COM (2011 one and its sequel), your soldiers don't get a nickname as recruits. They need to survive at least a couple encounters, then they get one assigned automatically after ranking up - and you can THEN change it. Similar for visual armor decorations, i believe (mods fog memory).
Under occasionally brutal conditions of higher difficulty levels of those games on Ironman, the substantive rewards of ranking up make your top soldiers and their combinations extremely valuable. So you're forced to use your best guys as much as possible, risking to lose them every mission. And every mission, when you pick your guys, you see their rank, nickname and number of missions they survived. It's a constant combination of substantive and reflective reinforcement. Sequel also added teammate bonding (which, if the bonded soldier has been killed, still always shows on the other one's character, along with a debuff from psychological trauma) and medals mechanics. While the nature of mission combat means the chance to lose someone KIA is always there.
All of which is to say, the whole game is designed around you growing attached to your soldiers. And that nickname you only optionally give them yourself - that gets real emotional value over time. Only game where I've actually sat there cheering "yeea, you show 'em, Skeeter!" and full-on taking a break to process Maj. Skeeter demise. It's a small thing, the nickname mechanic, but it has the weight of all other substantive mechanics behind it.
RIP Skeeter, you were a beast with that shotgun.
Yo I JUST started replaying XCOM 2 yesterday. Such a fun game. I still remember my main grenadier, Stanislav Zinchenko, from my first ever playthrough in 2017, lmao.
Yeah, this was a fantastic choice by developers who understood what they were making. I remember one of my Chosens at the end of XCOM:EW quite fondly: He got his first kill in the first mission with a grenade, ranked up and randomly generated the nickname 'Fastball', was psionically gifted, and led the squad through the Temple Ship as the sacrifice to end the invasion.
That's a hell of an emergent narrative. It didn't just make that run fun, either, but stuff like that kept the game fun even as I played it into oblivion, even as I installed Long War and got my backside handed to me on a platter.
Yeah they really nailed the game, and the best bit is because you can't usually get away with just one squad with no backups there are those times you have to leave 'Skeeter' behind even though they are mission ready sometimes, as that rookie desperately needs to become competent enough that you actually have a team while some of 'The Squad' are in the infirmary (or the ground). I've always tried to keep 3 full squads worth at least to the middling ranks, especially in the EnemyWithin/Unknown - don't know who is going to be receptive to those square, circle and triangle waves (Psi power) later so having a slightly wider pool of trained folks is very handy. Though still never seems to be enough... And once you get further in you have that 'I'm desperate for more plasma rifles' do I risk 'Skeeter' my much relied upon Run and Gun lunatic in the hopes we can stun that alien and so claim their weapon, the risk to reward and the satisfaction of pulling it off, or frustration of missing that 90% success really makes it engaging.
I’ll never forget when my female sniping specialist got nicknamed ‘cookie’
@@thagomizer8485 That's why *that* move in the final fight simply blew my mind
"...you mean to tell me *I* have to select who *has* to die? NO PLEASE NO!" hahaha... ha... :')
If you are not engendering the feeling that something awesome may drop at any moment, but instead "you have to do this annoying, repetitive task and you have a 1/8000 chance of getting something your build NEEDS", you have f***ked your loot system.
This is why WoW Legion expansion had 1 terrible mechanic that everyone hated despite being one of the better expansions: legion legendaries (or Leegondaries).
Completely random pieces of gear that would drop from completely RANDOM activities (no joke, killing no name mobs would drop these). The legendaries had huge effects on your damage, survival, or healing and where absolutely necessary in most high endgame content like raiding.
But they were completely random drop and would be completely random what legendary would drop. You had no way to know other than you couldn’t get the same drop twice.
It was an absolute nightmare until like towards the end of the expansion where they just let you trade in any legendary obtained for any legendary you wanted/were missing.
But getting the absolute best weapons after defeating a random mob just isnt rewarding one bit and completely ruins the whole aspect of feeling like you earned your loot.
Whats actually key is making the repetive thing you need to do fun and engaging throughout multiple playthroughs… And thats extremely hard to do well.
@@markedone494 yeah, but it isn't fun, is it? It something more akin to something diagnosable than it is a pastime. You realize you've spent an inordinate amount of time chasing an increasingly rarified dopamine hit and are not even really playing a game so much anymore as turning your one precious life into a series of increasingly depressing scratch off ticket attempts. I'd prefer to play a game as they were originally structured, not itching like a crackhead and playing Groundhog Day: The Home Game.
@@rorysimpson8716 If the grind is so hard that youre no longer having fun playing the game then it becomes an issue of too much grind, fun and grind need to balance each other.
Repeatable content can also be engaging, roguelike games for example are all about repeatable content, yet if designed well and varied enough they can be really fun for hours.
@@markedone494 it's not hard. It's boring. You can use terms like 'the grind' like you are doing something hypermasculine and productive like it adds inches to your dick, but you are being a dupe.
There's no misunderstanding. From a corporate level.
Micro changes and exclusivity keeps people grinding and paying for tiny things. It's akin to a gambling addiction for many and is cash on tap.
The devs likely know these issues, they are told to make the game for a business model.
Yep, they hire literal psychologists to determine the best way to zombify their playerbase
This exactly.
I do agree with you and think think this is a valid point to consider, but I would argue this applies to those greedy corporate overlords as well. A well-designed system that keeps the player feeling rewarded, instead of cheated or burnt out, would "increase the odds" of keeping players playing. In turn, this increases the chances of generating revenue. More players = more people willing to pay. (Anecdotally speaking; I'm willing to pay to pay for additional content if the base-system is designed with the player/consumer enjoyment as the target. If it's clear the design is pushing you towards paying? I won't even consider spending extra. Even for things I know I want.)
In the AAA industry (or at least in one company, I don't know if it's widespread) it's known as "engagement-based design". Engagement based design isn't inherently bad - surely a game that's designed in such a way that you want to keep playing, that's good, right?
But designing based on 'engagement' is not necessarily the same thing as designing based on 'fun' - and when the game's 'engagement' is battering at the gates of your patience in the hopes of prying open your wallet, the two are completely at odds with each other.
The problem that the corporate suits have with a well designed reward system is that they want to shove all of their games into subscription models. With those, as soon as the player gets the loot they need from a particular piece of content, they'll stop interacting with that piece of content and move on. This causes the overall playtime of players who are already at the endgame content to drop as they get what they need and then just wait for new content to come out. During that wait, they likely aren't going to be engaging with any microtransactions, causing the games profits to drop, not to mention all of the players who might just drop their subscriptions in between content updates.
You can't tell Ludo to leave the gun without giving him a cannoli.
I like what BG3 did.
Simple item in a shop, a spear that returns to you when thrown. A moment of thought and “Wait I found like three items that buff throwing and also saw a Feat that does too when I leveled up.”
Lightbulb moment, followed by “What else can I throw” and “What other item combos are there?”
Suddenly loot isn’t numbers or buffing what you’re doing, its entirely new gameplay being unlocked as you hold onto stuff and look for synergies later.
You just described my Lazael build :)
Combined with the fact that there is no such thing as a "+10 whatever". When numerical bonuses cap out at +3, a single digit increase is a huge deal. I was basically frothing at the mouth the first time I found a +1 shield.
They got loot right in BG3.
My Wyll build with Duelist’s prerogative, the buff that buffs one hand + free hand, as well as him being a bard to allow him to increase his defenses as he attacks. As well as having an item that allows him to deal more damage as he concentrates (primarily on hex).
The fact that you can reclass easily makes the loot game even better when you find something nice you couldn’t plan for on a blind run.
Unless you're an idiot like me who sold pretty much every magic item I couldn't find an immediate use for, and didn't think that somewhere down the line in this 150+ hour game that it might come in handy later!
Starting my 2nd play through today. Going to treat magic items... differently.
Going to add: I have played a ton of 5e. Not only did BG3 do great with the characters, the writing, the interactivity, the choices and consequences, the acting, etc etc etc... they also made 5e much more palatable to a video game experience with all the magic items that you can obtain.
5e doesn't work this way at a table top. But it as genius to change loot and magic items in the video game, because all the fun parts of table top are gone! They didn't slavishly conform to every rule of 5e TT gaming, they added to it with items that really shape the way you can play, and keep the rewards feeling good.
Only complaint is I hit lvl 12 about 1/3 into the very long act 3. So there was no more sense of progression. I kept finding stuff I did not need at all, and by then I had fallen into a rhythm of the game where adding a +1 here and there didn't feel appealing, I didn't want ore-make characters I have invested 130 hours into.
But: agreed... BG3 did loot the exact right way for the game that they made.
>no Kitchen Gun
Dropped. Devs fix this.
All of the kitchen gun! I love that video, it's ageless.
See, that’s a substantive reward because it cleans your kitchen in record time, but ALSO a reflective reward because you get to reflect on all the bullet holes left behind from the cleaning.
only Toilet Grenades I'm afraid
*BANG BANG BANG*
I LOVE YOU KITCHEN GUN
This and "me like tings" guy behind the chest?
Loving the Peter Serafinowicz effect around here!
The Bigoron Sword from Zelda OOT. You can buy one, but it keeps breaking, so gives you a taste of its strength but you are gutted when it breaks. You then go on an adventure with the better bigoron giant blacksmith to make you a true bigoron sword that doesn't break. Stuck with me for 20+ years
Items in classic Zelda games generally did a great job being both reflective and substantive. The items generally open new opportunities rather than being strict upgrades, making them very substantive (in the case of the Biggoron Sword, it's a powerful sword that can't be used with the shield, making it a trade-off compared to using the Master Sword), and they are generally reflective since they're obtained either from a dungeon or from a well-crafted side quest.
One thing that really shows this is that a common criticism of Twilight Princess is that the dungeon items in the latter half of the game (the spinner, the dominion rod, etc.) don't see much use outside their dungeons.
@@matthewmuir8884 TP suffered from grand scope, it's one of the Zelda titles that very nearly didn't make release due to how large it was.
They had an even grander scope originally for TP, IIRC they wanted you to travel a map as large as BOTW on the original Gamecube, but downsized the game constantly until they ended up with what we had.
There were whole dungeons that got cut that would have made that game amazing, eg; the dark forest you needed a lamp to navigate, what we got in the game is a far cry from what was intended in concept planning.
@@Rexhunterj I have never heard anything about Twilight Princess having been scaled back. What I do know is that it tried too hard to emulate Ocarina of Time instead of being its own game, leaving a lot of its more unique elements like the lantern, Wolf Link, and the later dungeon items sorely underutilized.
It was created at a time where a very vocal subset of fans was complaining that Majora's Mask and especially Wind Waker were too different from Ocarina of Time and demanding essentially an Ocarina of Time 2, and Nintendo obliged. Twilight Princess was the result.
I kind-of doubt that dungeons were cut, given that one of Twilight Princess' dungeons: the Goron Mines, was a recycling of a scrapped dungeon from Wind Waker. Seriously, Wind Waker was supposed to have a steampunk volcano island inhabited by people with steam coming out of their backs (much like Twilight Princess' version of Gorons), and this island was going to have a dungeon. It was cut to meet the December 2003 deadline.
Warframe has an interesting reward system where the central progression (a player's Mastery Rank) is increased by leveling up new weapons and classes. Literally any of them, as long as the player hasn't gotten them to Level 30 before. Every new weapon, even extremely weird ones, grant this progression. The result is that players are encouraged to find and try EVERYTHING, rather than simply seek the most powerful gear. Sometimes, they'll find that they really liked one of the weirder options and keep it, investing resources into powering it up. But even if they didn't appreciate the weapon at all, the time they spent experimenting with it wasn't a waste, because they still got progression XP out of it.
This also allows the designers to create weapons that play and function differently rather than feeling forced to just put bigger numbers on.
The problem that Warframe has with loot is the way that it handles the primes, crafted, weapons, lich weapons, faction weapons, etc. Instead of being sidegrades to the originals, they're almost always strict upgrades, which means that the baseline weapons are just obsolete steps that you end up getting rid of. And you can still make crafted weapons that are better than the vast majority of baseline weapons, which means that unless there's a gimmick to a mainline weapon that makes it worthwhile, it is just going to be obsolete. Goes for the frames as well, which are obsolete the moment a prime variant drops.
They had a chance to fix that issue a number of years ago when they did the massive weapon overhaul, but they didn't do the sidegrade option and most of the updated weapons just ended up power-creeped a little while later. That situation wasn't made any better when most of the melee weapons and pistols got power-creeped by the custom crafted weapons either. So there's a great variety of weapons in Warframe, a lot of fun ideas, but they' just haven't been managed properly.
@@kotharianlightning i mean, primes aren't really an issue if you don't want to go out for them, sure they're upgrades, but it's nothing unachievable with mods, especially now that incarnons are a thing. For example, I'm using regular Latron and I honestly don't see the point when it's performing so well that the bonus the prime variant would give is just unnecessary.
I think Warframe's loot system is leagues better than most other looter shooters not just because of MR, but also because each weapon and each frame generally does something different. They offer different experiences and mini variations on the gameplay loop instead of just being "number go up". Switching from the musket-cane with explosive ammunition that's a shotgun when you hipfire but a sniper when you ADS to a semi-auto rifle that uses headshots to charge up its alt-fire which is a energy wave that explodes on contact with enemies and ricochets off of surfaces is much more interesting than switching form semi-auto rifle to semi-auto rifle but slightly more damage.
i think the rhing with primes and all of the higher tier forms of weapons works because always, getting those higher tier ones is a lot harder and a lot more effort. so when you find something you really like to play with, you have that desire to put in the work to get up to that level effort that you normally wouldn't be inclined to give
@@ghost_rouge My point is that instead of the prime/upgrade just being the same thing with boosted stats, or the only one that gets a unique gimmick, it would be better if they functioned in different ways that would justify using both. If the prime has better stats, there's no point in using the original. And if the prime has a unique gimmick with no downsides, that also makes it more interesting than the original to use. The Zhuge/Zhuge Prime are examples of weapons that function differently due to the prime's exploding ammo. But people were so used to primes being direct upgrades that they didn't like the Zhuge Prime being a sidegrade.
Yes, you can do a lot of content with mods, but from a design perspective, what's the point in just giving the prime +15% damage, -0.1 second reload speed, a new skin, and calling it a day? That just adds a slightly/significantly better version of a weapon that already exists, which only succeeds in bloating the game sandbox rather than introducing fundamentally new ideas.
To give an example of a weapon being outclassed to the point of uselessness. The Pyrana Prime has that neat gimmick where it summons a second pistol once you do enough damage and fires more rapidly. That's a really neat idea. But we now no longer need the original Pyrana because it's outclassed in stats, is less fun without that cool gimmick, and thus has no actual place in the sandbox, except as a stepping stone.
Anyways, this isn't something that's gonna get fixed. This is just how I look at the way the game is designed and what I'd mentally tweak about it to make things better. And if you ever find yourself designing a game/mod, making everything have a unique point to use is a good way of thinking.
The reflective reward that has stuck with me comes from Chrono Trigger: at the Millennium Fair there's a shop where you can buy weapons, and one is way out of your price range, like more than ten times what you have at the time. I remember when I found that same item in a chest in a later part of the game and just marveled at how far I had come (it wasn't that far in the game, but it felt like a huge progression from). I felt like Chrono, remembering that time not so long ago when he was so much less experienced, more innocent even.
Is it the sword in Medina Village that's wildly expensive and has a unique effect, that can be unlocked later through exploration? Or are you talking about an early game sword that you unlock through the first exploration areas to teach you gear can be found outside of shops?
If there are 12 levels of wepons in the game i think this one would be #4 or 5@@derpfluidvariant0916
I just grinded in the nearby forest until I could buy it... lol
Incredibly accurate. People want build defining loot not incremental increases you dont notice.
If argue that incremental increases are fine once you get to end game.
However the end game that you do to get those incremental gains needs to be varied enough that you don't feel like you're a mindless drone waiting for the 2% "inevitable" increase.
This is a difference between vertical and horizontal progression. Which i am a bit shocked he didn't bring up in this video. Vertical being number go up horizontal being an augmentation of playstyle, horizontal also includes anything that doesn't just grant raw power like cosmetics or mounts.
Diablo(can't say about 4 haven't played it) implements both vertical and horizontal progression. For most of the game it really is just a vertical stat go up, but when you hit end game it is much more important to find gear that augments an ability. Like boots that give your barbarian leap 3 charges instead of 1, you may want this over boots that have better flat stats. Then it does hit back to vertical as you want the boots that give you the 3 leaps and also have the best stats but you will keep the 3 leap boots until you find a better 3 leap boots.
My personal opinion is an ideal loot based game has a bit of both. You do want to feel more powerful numerically as you progress but just stat go up is not very interesting in the long run which is where horizontal comes in to play.
This is actually why I got sick of borderlands so quickly. Yes at first loot explosions were entertaining but after realizing 99.99% of guns were just vendor trash it eventually got annoying.
@@ferinzz as long as its needed to progress, sometimes number go up is rewarding. In WoW, getting out of Naxx gear and into Ulduar gear so you can challenge the new content is simple yet enjoyable. The changes to tier set bonuses help give some variety, but don't exactly redefine a build. Games like Diablo 4 feel like they miss this because I'm never sure for what reason I want to get more powerful. I'm just going to be doing the same thing against identical but more numerically gifted enemies. We could just drop the whole illusion of progression and stay at level 1.
@@Shade7x I agree! I never really understood people who want to grind for hours and hours just to get the best number on their gear, even though they've long finished the hardest bit of content anyway.
Though, I do see the appeal of a simple "number go up" system, as I enjoy many incremental games. The key to enjoying many of those for me personally though is that the speed of progression changes over time. Just as the game is about to get too grindy, suddenly you get something that lets you launch ahead a bunch before slowing back down again. I know most people don't like Diablo 3 but personally I had way more fun in that than Diablo 4 precisely because it had certain legendary combos and set bonuses that were bonkers broken, which then let me farm more legendaries quicker, which led to more broken bonuses, etc. I get the same feeling playing something like Vampire Survivors, where finally getting that one decent combo weapon can make you invincible.
One additional point that's quite important to satisfaction is the _type_ of reward. A reward that gives your character a new mechanic or a new way of playing is substantially more engaging than a reward that is just, say, +2 damage, even when +2 damage might arguably be objectively better. In TTRPGs for instance, I've noticed for most players that picking up an axe with a unique enchantment or ability is much more engaging than getting a '+1 axe', even though, if they were in a shop, they'd probably buy the +1 axe over the unique one just because it's bonus is more consistently useful. Over a game, or a TTRPG campaign, gradually building up a suite of equipment that creates a highly unique and personalised playstyle is very engaging.
It also allows upgrades to be dispersed among side-grade loot that gives the player an engaging decision (whether to pick up and change their playstyle, or sell and keep what they have) rather than immediately being dismissed it as vendor trash.
Finally there's also giving players an emotional and story-driven attachment to their loot. The axe they prised from the bandit queen's cold dead fingers - having just been on the receiving end of the full force of its power - is always going to be more loved than one they found in a box after she was dead.
Needless to say, the Souls games are a masterclass in both of these techniques.
It is possible to take this to an extreme to the point where it isn't fun anymore, though- Diablo 4 is proof of this. Most attributes on a typical item in D4 are some form of unique conditional ability- instead of increased Strength, Intelligence, etc., it will instead have attributes like increased damage against enemies at close range, reduced damage from distant enemies, reduced damage from enemies afflicted by damage-over-time skills. And the sheer volume of different attributes like this is staggering.
And each item can have up to 6 attributes like this, without any standard attributes on it at all; and furthermore, sometimes an item like that is used in meta builds. With the end result that itemization is deeply confusing at best (Figuring out whether or not an item is an upgrade is maddening) and actively hinders the core gameplay at worst (Every item you equip may require you to wildly change up your playstyle, even if that playstyle isn't fun).
Worth noting that Pathfinder experimented with the "automatic bonus progression" rules option specifically because of that "well the +1 weapon is more useful" thing. Like almost all of the alternate rules in unchained it needs additional work, but the foundation is solid. It gives the DM, especially, a lot more freedom in "assigning" loot without having to worry about making sure players have the necessary numerical bonuses that the game's math will expect them to have by certain levels.
at least in the case of DnD i heavily disagree. interesting effects and bonuses are cool, but only really satisfying if the effects are actually useful and good. So i would always prefer a +1 weapon which is "boring" than a silly but useless weapon. In the same vein, if a vendor only sells sidegrades to my gear that is indeed also vendor trash for me, because why would i want something that isnt better? I do recognize that i very much min max, but especially if we translate this back to video games, people playing looter shooters, most likely min max as well.
I once in my game had basically a +2 axe in a time when we only had +0 weapons. But it radiated radiation when unsheathed (I was the only radiation immune team member) and it took so much hassle to get it in an abandoned spaceship.
@@dragonslair951167 nah, i looked at some diablo 4 statblocks and i honestly think the """""""unique""""""" effects are just poorly fleshed out
"What do you mean? You don’t like doing 20% more damage when you’re 57 feet away from the enemy, at a 39.7 degree angle when it’s snowing outside?" -redditor
lemme whip up something
Bow of Epicness
+50% damage on faraway targets
Lockdown: Inflict a effect on hit enemies that reduces their status effect durations by 25% if the target is you and you're far away from them
Firestorm: After killing 5 enemies, your next attack shoots 7 piercing fire arrows with 10% damage in a spread pattern
Conflagration: After killing an enemy, increase the duration of burning on nearby enemies by 2 seconds and instantly deal 1 second worth of burn of damage to them
Warmth: Burning enemies restore mana to anyone they attack
Phoenix Rebirth: When you die, if there are at least 12 burning enemies near you, revive and clear the burn effects off all nearby enemies
2d games seem like they can get away with simpler items
One of the most infuriating quest chains versus reward was what used to happen in Destiny 2 (it may still do, but I don't play it anymore). For certain legendary/exotic weapons, you'd have to complete an array of challenges for which the weapon you were in pursuit of would've been by far the most optimal to achieve them. Of course, once you gained the weapon, the challenges were no longer available to you and would then often feel perfunctory as a result
God yes. I hate this kind of thing. Alternatively, I enjoy it when I'm tasked with proving I can make optimal use of the new equipment/ability in an isolated trial before it's rewarded to me permanently - which combines tutorial, showcase and challenge into one.
One of many MANY reasons I stopped playing that gambling simulator.
I've been playing for like two and a half years and can't name anything like that. There were a few Shadowkeep quests like that, I think? But that was before my time. It's got a very different loot problem these days, which is that they've made too many weapons that are so generally applicable to a lot of challenges that it's hard to justify grinding out newer niche ones.
@@life-destiny1196 I only played when Destiny 1 came out, but yeah it was a thing. They actually marketed it as this grand personal story of you going through these specific activities to finally earn that Exotic. Finish this questline for a chance for this loot drop, clear this raid while having these items with you, win the crucible with these items.
On paper it was great. But in reality it was a painful grind, and for many people who play the game a certain way (e.g. I played the game for the PvE,) some of the objectives are not fun to do at all. Then add in the issues of weapon balance, level scaling, loot RNG, etc. and instead of a grand story, it's more of a reminder of how much time you wasted on this useless thing...
This definitely isn't a thing anymore and hasn't been for a few years now, even though I've played since launch I struggle to find any examples of this, and even if this was a thing the game did occasionally, I would prefer it because it would show the player what exotic is intended to be used for, which is something I often ask the devs as they add more nonsensical exotics that will never see the light of day
So many games only have an equipment system in the first place because they can't think of something more interesting to put in it's place.
Yes, it all feels very copy and pasted. Less an artistic decision and more a corporate box ticking exercise.
Indeed. Every time I see a loot system in a game, I ask myself, "Is the combat fun on its own, or the loot here to distract from the combat being boring." Most of the time, it's the latter.
It can be incredibly refreshing to play a game where the gameplay is simply it's own reward. Whenever someone feels the need to constantly dangle the carrot on a stick I can't help but question whether the game could possibly seem like it was any good without it. It's all been done to death at this point and collecting loot just makes me feel like some of unpaid cleaner, it's really not fun at all.
In all honesty I would much rather play a game than have it be the other way around.
AAA games in general have huge problems with design discipline; so many mechanics and features are clearly there just because they need to check a box, not because of any thought over what it adds to the game. Yahtzee about had it right comparing it to hoarders, both mechanically and often visually they're filled with meaningless clutter that detracts from the whole. Most acclaimed games are very simple in design.
@@shroomologist Indeed. Monster Hunter is probably the only loot-based game I've enjoyed, specifically because the gameplay is simply its own reward.
Terraria is a great example of that reset of juxtaposition gratification - right when you start feeling like you could take on anywhere on the map pretty easily it hits you with that hard mode reset.
@@hariman7727golem
and even with top tier loot, the final fights are still difficult and interesting
Hands down my favourite Second Wind series, always watch as soon as I get the notification!
The best example of a reward that's both reflective and substantive that I can think of actually came from a modded survival playthrough of Fallout 4. I couldn't fast travel, so the early game was a slog of running to each place I needed to go and trying to survive. Then once I hit midgame, I got access to the Brotherhood's vertibirds. Suddenly, I could fly wherever I needed! Progressing the story actually gave me a reward that reminded me of how much I had needed to hoof it, and gave me tangible benefits by having an easy ride to places I had previously been. Then... the Institute. Once I accessed them, I could now teleport to them and use them as a relay to then teleport to my actual destination (which required a mod to do, as vanilla survival would only allow you to teleport out to the ruins of CIT, not anywhere on the map). I finally had access to...! Vanilla fast travel. And it felt AMAZING.
The only question remaining was, do I side with another faction and lose fast travel? Or do I stick with the institute, despite what I might otherwise think? Losing access to that relay suddenly made siding against (arguably) the most evil faction a much more difficult choice.
I have another from a long time ago, and I'm not sure how well it was balanced, but it was definitely both reflective and substantive for me, personally. It was back in Star Wars Galaxies, an MMO, where it was possible trough arduous trials to become a jedi, a class that was otherwise locked from the start. It involved completing quests at very set times and dates, and even following a schedule, would take a couple of months. Once completed, you basically re-roll your character to start with nothing, but you're now a class that only very few has access to, and you can start levelling your new jedi character. So there's a reflection of your achievements and a promise for the future.
The issue was of course, balance. It only works because you get to be something that very few else get to be in an online environment because otherwise the radical decrease in strength would feel awful, but over enough time more and more people would get access to the class, making it less meaningful. If this could in any way be replicated in a modern MMO(which I think would have to follow a different formula than standard WoW leveling) I'd be very curious to see how that'd play out. Simply being able to starkly differentiate yourself from other players in ways that aren't purely cosmetic is what I've always felt was lacking in MMOs.
I have another from a long time ago, and I'm not sure how well it was balanced, but it was definitely both reflective and substantive for me, personally. It was back in Star Wars Galaxies, an MMO, where it was possible trough arduous trials to become a jedi, a class that was otherwise locked from the start. It involved completing quests at very set times and dates, and even following a schedule, would take a couple of months. Once completed, you basically re-roll your character to start with nothing, but you're now a class that only very few has access to, and you can start levelling your new jedi character. So there's a reflection of your achievements and a promise for the future.
The issue was of course, balance. It only works because you get to be something that very few else get to be in an online environment because otherwise the radical decrease in strength would feel awful, but over enough time more and more people would get access to the class, making it less meaningful. If this could in any way be replicated in a modern MMO(which I think would have to follow a different formula than standard WoW leveling) I'd be very curious to see how that'd play out. Simply being able to starkly differentiate yourself from other players in ways that aren't purely cosmetic is what I've always felt was lacking in MMOs.
Feels like Death Stranding
@gwen9939 2 things, 1. ya accidentally double commented, and 2. I remember hearing the devs behind that star wars game actually made it significantly easier to become jedi in later updates, so not only did it become more common because of time, there's that factor of dev meddling too. I've never played galaxies, but its original jedi system sounds incredible, even if I wouldn't have gotten it myself
@@gwen9939 That's one of the strengths of Single Player games, that there can be secret and tangible rewards hidden off the beaten path. I also see that pop up in 'video game-esque' anime, where a character gets something 'rare' or 'unique' that no one else has. I think we'll only see that kind of thing if we develop better AI, and use them as a form of GM for online games to customize the expirience.
On the note of rare mounts etc gained in WoW dungeons or challenges. FFXIV does a neat thing where you are guaranteed to receive the prize if you throw enough attempts at it, they aren't in the business of letting the cruel reality of chance take all your time. Making your grind have a fixed max duration (i.e 50 attempts at a 1% chance item before getting it regardless) makes it far more interesting to give it a shot as you at least know how bad it can get if you repeatedly miss the goal.
Makes it a bit awkward when you get most of the way towards the pity then get the drop normally (or in my case, through moogle tomestones), and now you're like "What do I do with all these Shinryu totems?" but that's a very minor complaint.
@@squee30000 tbh, I'm not deep enough into the game to truly see the shortcomings. Just recently hit max lvl and aren't even done with MSQ. Though I do agree that there are several items in my inventory I have no use for because I dunno where to cash them in.
@@squee30000 At least with extreme totems you can exchange them for weapons and desynth them when that becomes available (after they increase desynth cap) for a chance to get crafting material that you can sell or use.
Why bother making it a 1% chance if in the end it’s arbitrary?
@@FrankDux-uo7ig you can still get it early thought the 1% chance, and I did have a friend who got it on our third run. But with the pity mechanic, you avoid the scenario of an unlucky player with literally hundreds of runs through the same dungeon/boss with nothing to show for it.
I do think the first borderlands found a nice balance with their legendary drops. I actually came into the series with the second game. And actually finding out that the drop rate were higher in Borderlands 1 made me appreciate it more. Then again i can flip the coin and say that when you actually get a legendary in borderlands 2 its more rewarding. Its not easy pleasing us gamers.
I briefly saw Warframe in the "looter shooter scroll" but I want to point out that its mechanic is different than this:
1. For the most part, gun 1 isnt directly comparable to gun 2 because they might have different elemental break downs, firing patterns, alt fire mechanics, or more. Even after 10 years they haven't really done a 1:1 reskin where there aren't some other factors that apply.
2. The grind isn't for the items themselves usually, it's for their blueprints. So you'll see farms for Warframe parts, weapon pieces, etc. and each farm is identical to any other, IE if I'm farming for Protea from Granum Void, my brand new unmodded Protea is identical to your old unmodded Protea.
3. Most of the time you aren't farming for 1 thing only. It's usually something like "I'm going to get this Narmer bounty done for Caliban parts, but I need to get more Isoplasts to craft anything anyways, so if I don't get it, that's fine" it's subtly different than the one mentioned because they're both prerequisites for the thing, not having either prevents getting the item, but it does look similarish.
The only truely RNG Loot Drops are Liches & Sister weapons because they'll have unique elements dependent on the Warframe that spawned them, and with a random elemental chance percentage up to 60% (but thats resolved amicably through Valence Fusion where you can combine two of the same weapon to determine what element of the two it's using and boost that percentage up to 60%) and Riven Mods (Which beyond what Weapon they are tied to, what Polarity type they use, and what the Mastery Rank requirement is, can be randomized forever by adding Kuva)
In short, it is a looter shooter but it's the weird exception that doesn't follow the Rare colors better experience talked about here.
Yeah, Warframe's system is weird and different and I love it. It also makes it so that once you are well on your way into the power curve, it takes less and less time to get a new weapon viable for use, and makes experimenting with new builds a joy to tinker with.
The focus on mastery and collection over "here's a billion garbage guns, chuck 'em the second you find something with +1 damage" is refreshing.
Warframe is peculiar in that, periodically, the developer will release a new system to boost the decrepit gear of half a decade ago: Rivens, then alternates like vandal, wraith or kuva/tenet variants, and just recently incarnons. A very possible long-term project for someone who's dumped thousands of hours into WF could be shoving a thousand forma into an MK-1 Braton juiced to current endgame leves.
Glad I wasn't the only one who noticed this. It's definitely an example of the journey.
I want to add that I think Warframe used to fit so well the description of having to "feel weak before you can feel powerful." My gaming partner and I still tell stories of our many "firsts" in the game and how harrowing the content felt when armed with just the base Lato and broken mods on your starter Frame. We still remember when we realized you could pin an enemy to a door with a Boltor, and how scary it was to run from Lech Krill or hear "you maggots."
It was very satisfying to eventually turn into machines that could delete an entire room and then fly through that room at the speed of light, but I feel like we lost something along the way, and resetting our power level by adding resistances or forcing us to play as [spoiler] just didn't feel the same.
Playing Warframe was the best and longest lasting experience I've ever had in any kind of "live service" but it also drove home to me that ultimately I think they NEED to end at some point. I'd give a fingernail to be able to play a "Warframe 2" that wasn't just restarting on a new account, because I can't enjoy it the way it is anymore. Maybe Soulframe is the answer. Maybe these games would be better served by reinventing themselves every 5 years instead of planning on 10 year (or indefinite) cycles.
Agreed. Waframe really allows you to make any warframe or weapon that you collect feel like it is truly uniquely yours. Like there is a reason why people joke/say that the true end game of Warframe is fashionframe.
My favorite rewards in games would have to be like the named magic weapons from the old Icewindale and Baldur's Gate games. They came with a short written backstory for the weapon.
Even when they became obsolete as better equipment came along I was always loath to get rid of them and would keep as many with me as I could.
Yeah, more often than not those felt like the attached stories were the reward as opposed to the item itself. To this day; I still remember the tale of Sophia's Flight, and the eternally-unlucky wizard Delnar and his myriad of failed enchantments.
The alternate guns in Ultrakill are perhaps a good example of Substantive/Reflective rewards. Each one requires the player to undergo an optional, hidden non-combat challenge of some sort, and after the initial satisfaction of acquiring the weapon in the first place wears off, you're left with a new tool in your arsenal to experiment with moving forward.
A couple of week ago I returned to Warframe so it feels appropriate to name examples there. Hunting for Prime Warframes or weapons with the relic system is a curious case. Relics behave a bit like lootboxes only that all relics have a unique code like "Lith O2" or "Axi A3" which indicate the six possible items that can come out of them. The interesting thing is that the unwanted loot can be traded for a currency which a specific vendor uses for powerful or cosmetic items. Also you can sell the relics to other players if you don't want them for platinum (the game's premium currency). So even if you get unwanted items, you can still find a use for them.
Also more substantially, the vast, vast majority of loot in Warframe is /different/ (and increasingly so as the game has gone on) to other loot in the same category you could get elsewhere. Basically the only things which are essentially +1 gear are primes and nemesis weapons, and even with them, the mechanics of valence fusion make getting to 60% less punishing, and gear only gets Primed once, so you're less likely to be grinding for "the same thing but slightly better". The biggest thing here is that on top of designing gear to feel and act different, stats have a big impact, especially on weapons.
Also the chance for getting exactly what you want isnt even that low. Additionally, because you can also decide to take the loot that your party members got from their "lootbox". So if you just team up with peopl that have equipped the same "lootbox", its actually pretty easy to get exactly the item that you want. Getting the "lootboxes" themselfs though, that can be a little grindy from time to time.
To add on to this, you can also trade prime parts and platinum, so if you're just wanting that one piece to build that item you've been chasing, you can pay plat to another player who already has it if you're absolutely done with the chase.
@@Conviter you can get relics easly from your syndicates and their standing can be passivly maxed by putting their sigils on your frame.
@@FrancisYorkMorganFBI They patched out the sigils system. Now you just need to pledge to a syndicate in the syndicate console and you're building rep for them
Design Delve is fantastic. Keep it up
My favourite example is the Legendary Gear from Guild Wars 2. They have a huge list of hoops to jump through that can take months but once you have one it becomes an account item that any other character on the account can use, a very flashy e-peen and has multiple QoL advantages like free transmogging and respeccing.
I think that despite being grindy Monster Hunter handles this reward/progression system really well. I still remember how good it felt to finally obtain the Immortal Reactor after struggling with Raging Brachydios for hours and hours.
The thing is: i don't know WHY it works, it just seems so frustrating and repetitive on the surface. Is it the combat? The hunt? I really don't know
Now, I'm not an expert (far from it) so I might be totally wrong here. IMO what really makes Monster Hunter work in that regard is that the monsters aren't dropping the gear itself. They drop the parts you need to craft the gear. So it might just be that one *tiny* degree of separation that prevents our brains from going full *angy* mode.
Unalive Group: Kill Your Childhood and Cursed With Knowledge debuff? A+++++
The sponsorship right at the end, after the formal outro even?! Subscribed! And off to make a patreon account.
Metro exodus it introduces new weapons an gear as well as lots of attachments for each weapon. encouring you to explore every nook an cranny of its separate mini open worlds and actively rewards you for just listening to npcs have conversations. There's a mini narrative reason you find the extended magazine or scope at the end of the offshoot path.
Its not a looter shooter but I do enjoy the reward system of TES IV: Oblivion. The reward being that as you increase your major and minor skills you start to gain additional (and usually passive) secondary skills tailored to that skill type. Like being able to zoom while using a bow or gain a knock down chance with your target. Its not the type of bow you have, it's your character's skill that is applied to all bow use. You only get those abilities by using the bow more and more. I really love that system.
Another Bethesda game, but Fallout 4's legendary weapon system. It plays like a looter shooter in the sense that every time you see a legendary enemy, you're willing to put up with the trash-tier legendary effects in hopes of getting that game-breaking Two-Shot Gauss Rifle or Acrobat leg (which, like getting Park Place and hoping for Boardwalk, puts you one step closer to being permanently immune to fall damage without having to use power armor.)
I think monster hunter constantly combines substantive and reflective rewards all the time in it's gameplay. You build equipment from hunting monsters, using drops which have a % attatched to them. At the same time that they carry the notion that you had to endure hell to get them, they also provide stats and abilities that will propel you through your game. My favorite reward of all time was when I got the final drop to build "Shell Gunbird", in MHGU.
Indeed. Moreover, the combat in Monster Hunter is fun all on its own; a lot of loot-based games use the loot to distract from the fact that the combat is boring.
Favorite reflective reward, the skins you get from the Sekiro boss gauntlets. Shura skin is sick and by the time you are able to clear the gauntlets you really feel like A Man Without Equal.
Good example of reflective and substantive reward combined that comes to mind, hero memories in Darkest Dungeon 2. Characters can die permanently, and you usually start a run with fresh heroes that have rng quirks. But if you clear a chapter, you can "lock" characters that survived with memories. Memories give them a buff and they keep their quirks, so you do wanna lock heroes with good quirks. And having a 5 memory hero who's seen it all and lived to tell the tale, that's a good time for some Reflection.
I know we're talking about Looter Shooters but in terms of how rewards feel good I think a fascinating example is The Outer Wilds. Through just information and the discovery of it is both reflective in that each peace encourages or sometimes forces you to reconsider what you had learned before but also built up anticipation for lrarning more in the future or sometimes be the information that clicked everything into placed and indirectly told you what you should do next. So both Reflective *and* Substantive
I remember playing Borderlands 1 and loving how a super powerful gun could fall into my hands at any moment, and dry spells of bad RNG being supplemented by side quest rewards. Borderlands 3 by comparison was mostly grinding specific mobs for specific loot you'd need to stand a chance at the max level endgame content, which rewarded slightly better gear. I got bored SO fast.
Skyrim has a good example for me. I was playing as my first character and ended up killing a giant (was probably in the mid 20s in terms of level). Among the loot I got was a Glass Sword...and I instantly switched to it. The sword I had was good, but the look of the Glass Sword was what made me switch.
In fact, I ended up looking into Glass Armor and then began raising my Smithing skill to unlock the Glass perk. Not just to raise the stats of the Glass Sword, but to craft the Glass Armor. And I was so proud of myself once I got it, to the point that I thought of a backstory where my character was a blacksmith before coming to Skyrim.
All of this because I found a Glass Sword on a giant.
It's been a little while since I last played Skyrim, but I always had to plug a lot of points into smithing, because I wanted my characters to have specific looks, and to maintain the effectiveness of that (very often suboptimal) outfit.
I wish there were more options for players who are interested almost exclusively in their character's aesthetics.
@@AnotherCraig I'm right there with you. My video game avatars are me playing doll dress up lol.
It's why I think most games need a secondary equipment slot just for appearance sake so we can look how we like without having to compromise functional gear.
@@AnotherCraig I'm the total opposite. I go by Number Go Up and wind up looking like a crackhead. It might be nice to be powerful and look powerful though.
I love hwo JM8 keeps re-using the "me like tings" joke. I remember it from his Hades video and it cracks me up every time
My favorite reflective rewards are the literal hats in SteamWorld Heist. It's a turn based tactics game where you have to manually aim firearms, so being off on your accuracy can cost you the mission. But being _slightly_ off on your accuracy will shoot the hat off an enemy robot, which can then be retrieved from the ground as an unlockable cosmetic if you're quick. While there are some hats that rarely show up on random enemies, the unique hats - like the crown of the Red Queen - require intentionally wasting turns in the game's hardest shootouts, then jumping out of cover and running _directly past the boss_ to obtain. At that point, its presence in the mission rewards screen is more satisfying than any new equipment could be!
LOVE THAT GAME!
I remember that I wanted the cosmetic value of an outfit but a different connected ability in the spider man games and that getting the resources for the outfit I wanted and the ability I wanted meant that I would have to play through most of the game before getting access to being able to collect the required resources for them and that the challenges to get them were so inconvenient that it was almost impossible to get them both without unlocking other things first, which meant even more grinding, but once I got to use the outfit with the ability I was very happy, but by then there was very little gameplay left to use it in.
Yeah, I had the same experience playing through the first Insomniac Spider-Man. I *adore* the concept of making the suit independent of abilities, but having to grind a bunch of side content (that's kinda repetitive let's be real) just to get the suit+power combo you wanted was a chore. I'd have been much happier if the suit and powers could be unlocked independently.
I feel the exact same dude.
All loot in the Remnant games is Reflective, but can also be considered substantive. It's reflective in that there are no reskinned guns or armor, only new gear and classes that do new and different things each with unique ways to acquire. However, this can also be substantive in that you now need to level up the gear and classes in order to make them viable, meaning they were the goal, and are now the goal again. Once they catch up with your previous gear and classes, they open up new possibilities in gameplay.
WoW did this with class specific quest chains back in "the old days" with Warlock and paladin mounts, druid flight form, etc. And now they just give it to everyone.
One of the best experiences with loot grinding was in the super post game of Xenoblade Chronicles X and I think it comes down to two big reasons. The first is that my willingness to grind only came about from my fully extrinsic desire to defeat the fully optional super bosses of the game. It needs to be stated that there was no intrinsic reward for defeating them, the only reward was my own sense of accomplishment. The second notable thing was how the player has to go about performing the grind involved a lot of variance. There was no grind the level 30 mobs to get the loot you need to grind the level 40 mobs treadmill bs. Drop tables were based on both the mobs level and what class( race, species, idk) the mob was. A decent amount of the grind was spent doing research to find which mobs could even give the drops you need and then develop strategies to optimize the act of grinding them. I specifically remember that one drop could only be gotten by killing a specific mob that spawned basically just outside of the aggro range of one of the strongest super bosses in the entire game. And because you could only loot the mob outside of combat and you lose any potential loot if you die, there was a constant tension while farming, kill the bug but don't wake the dragon. There's never really been any other game I've played that managed to make the act of grinding gear this varied and engaging.
One thing that comes to mind that comes sort of close is unlocking flying mounts in Warlords of Draenor.
I don’t remember all of the details, but I saw it summed up as “in order to gain the ability to fly, you need to complete all the tasks that you want flying for in the first place”
It's an interesting dynamic. I personally feel that the ideal design, there, is one where you have to have done a LOT of the stuff that made you wish you could just fly, but not yet done ALL of it.
They stuck with it for every new expansion - you can fly in outdated content, but the freshest one you have to fully complete before you unlock it. I believe the rationale behind it is that flying nullifies too much of the content design space (as you can fly over obstacles and enemies) to allow. When flying you are removed from most ways of interacting with the world, so in some sense they can't just design it differently without changing core gameplay.
Yeah this was one of the things that ran me off. It all got down to blizzard giving into what their players demanded (flying) but did so via punishing them for asking for it (terrible, tedious rep grinds.) Thankfully they are in a different place as designers now, best examples with them embracing that players want to fly and making it easy, accessible, and the whole damn expansion theme.
One reward I do remember getting was my god roll parcel of stardust in Destiny 2. It's just a legendary shotgun, but I remember the hours playing and enjoying Gambit both by myself and with my clanmates at the time. It also made me look ahead because it was a substantive increase in PVP and PVE, and it's just a great looking and feeling shotgun to use in general.
I’m just happy to see GW2’s mystic forge/mythwright gambit at 2:23
One of my most favourite rewards in a videogame was the Zelda quest in WoW. A long quest-line across the entire world (back then) that rewarded you with easter egg items like a boomerang and the Master Sword. Mere trinkets in the game, but every time I open my vault and see those ancient, useless items they still remind me of the journey they took me on.
When it comes to extrinsic rewards, the instance that stands out the most to me occured in FFXIV. I like to try and solo some of the difficult end game bosses. The penultimate fight of the Stormblood expansion was one I attempted to receive the mount that has a chance of dropping.
It was a process of learning the fight and perfecting your damage. After days of grinding and perfecting the fight, I finally had a run where I hit all of the very close DPS checks. I finally got the clear, so I was hyped, and that was only added upon by the mount dropping that run. The combination of getting the perfect run and having the low chance mount drop happen at the same time was extremely satisfying.
I had an odd version of this in Star Trek Online just recently. There are certain weapon types in the game that are advanced versions of existing types that do not drop as loot. The specific one I'd been looking at was a Wide Arc Heavy-Dual Cannon. The "Wide Arc" version was the key here, and I'd seen it in the Exchange (their auction house) and really wanted one. I'd been saving and planning and working through how to get one until I realized that I can just craft it myself. The months of build up to the realization I could make it instead of buying it, then to hours of crafting components to the 20 hour wait for the actual thing to be crafted. It's similar to the way WoW works, but time gates content to drag out the suspense. You can't craft those kinds of weapons until you've basically maxed out one branch in the crafting system. You can't make the item unless you've got the components to do so. You can't even craft them without also spending Dilithium, a semi-premium currency. But once you get past all those time gates, the item is yours... with randomized bonuses, and multiple craftable rarities. Thus getting "The Best One" requires going through this process multiple times and potential months of grind that's all handled in the background while you just otherwise play the game normally.
This is the most criminally under viewed game design series on youtube. Keep up the great work!
An example for me for reflective rewards is the skyscale mount from guild wars 2. Always think back on the grind/quests to get it
Borderlands 2 and Pre-sequel did really good. They barraged you with new incremental increases, but when a legendary dropped you were always excited. Borderlands 3 screwed it up by making legendarys drop from every boss and every tough enemy. But in 3 they're so damn cool. The Speedloading Hellwalker is one of my favorite video game weapons. It's a shout-out to Doom's super shotgun. It's a double barrel shotgun that shoots flaming rounds that make the spread shaped like a demonic pentagon and when it fires instead of a BANG, it plays a heavy metal guitar riff.
God yeah, they're too generous now with legendaries, you're practically spoiled even if most of said legendaries are fun.
"Woah, they finally dropped a legendary!" Just turns into "does this guy drop any other legendaries or just this one?"
Not to be that guy, but that mindset is literally what ultimately ruined the Borderland series. The shit drop rate is what made those games a chore, and not fun. Who cares if it drops easier? What bearing does that ultimately have on the game if I get the same damn thing in 2-3 kills versus 50 to 100? It's a pointless mindset. NOTHING has changed other then time wasted. I'm excited for a legendary REGARDLESS because it has a chance of completely changing the gameplay. It may not, but you won't know until then.
You don't you know HAVE to pick them up, you know that right? This idea that something is only special if it has to be a chore like a second job is just not a viable one, hell if anything it works into the corporate mindset of all these microtransations. Cause you are purposely asking for something to be MORE of grind for LITERALLY no reason other then to what make yourself feel more special?
Seriously what do you ultimately get out of that other then making YOURSELF feel more special cause you wasted your time doing the same thing over and OVER again for the same exact results as it would be as killing it a few times. it boggles the mind why you need to insist on punishing the players and wasting every ones INLCUDING YOUR OWN time on something that is ultimately an NFT?
Hell even more so if the legendary is something that is a joke weapon or has no stats worth using.
The hellwalker ruined my playthrough, once i picked that up, no other gun ever came close to supplant it, barring only a higher level hellwalker.
@@Zignoff did you uh... watch the video?
@@Neros1111 yup
My favorite reflective rewards are ones tied to moments in the story of the game I'm playing. The Broken Blade of a friend lost to war, Armor crafted with the remnants of a great enemy, that kind of thing.
such a good vid you really hit the nail on the head, cheers
You gave me both nostalgia for and PTSD from WoW. Reminding me of the time i had some random we were helping "Need" an incredibly low drop Enchantment that was the only one my character was missing.
But also the jubilation and awe from the first time our guild took down Illidan. The banter, Barrens chat, getting a Swift Nether Drake. God damn that was the best and worst of times.
Wow, while watching this I remember so clearly how much of an upgrade the upgrades in NFS Underground 2 and Most Wanted (2005) were when you got them. I also remembered that the exploration carrot was dangled in Front of me like in the metroid-vanias when I played StarFox Adventures (though not a metroid-vania at all).
Thank you for this episode, it was very enjoyable
I remember getting the exotic pulse rifle Outbreak Perfected in Destiny 2, and feeling so happy about it.
Completing the catalyst (which is basically the gun's final form), even more so.
This was before you could just buy the gun at the social hub kiosk and then let RNG give you the catalyst.
Kids these days don't know how lucky they have it.
You had to go on a quest for that gun, starting by wandering the in-game worlds following riddles. Easy enough.
But when that was done, you had to do one of the hardest missions in the game at the time: Zero Hour.
A 20 minute time limit, ridiculous parkour and a claustrophobic section with an unkillable enemy straight out of a survival horror game, culminating in a boss fight that wasn't over until every single enemy in the vicinity was dead.
And if you hit the time limit, you had to do it all over again.
It took me multiple attempts, but with the help of a friend I did it and got the gun.
But the catalyst was even more difficult, because you had to do the harder version of Zero Hour-with tougher enemies, even harder parkour, and a section of puzzle solving the regular version didn't have-5 times.
And you couldn't grind it out, you had to wait until the weekly reset before doing it.
I have never forgotten the hell I put myself through to get that catalyst done, or the relief I felt when I saw the beautiful words "Masterwork Objective Complete".
God, that quest was so damn good! And the demon lawnmower was such AMAZING horror XD
Well, with Zero Hour returning to the game, this either aged like wine or like milk. Not quite sure which XD
one MMORPG mechanic i LOVED was the titles system in mabinogi. every player can equip one title, obtained from random accomplishments. eg. (player) who slayed a bear with his bear hands, (player) the saviour of the goddess [from completing story quests], (player) the dextrous [for getting x stats]
these both showed off your accomplishments AND gave a small stat bonus. plus there were unique ones that only a small number (or even one) player on each server could get. none of them were game breaking but you got to balance between your accomplishments and the stats they gave. awesome system
I think warframe is an interesting example. Specifically, the kuva/tenet weapons.
Under certain, easy to get criteria, you get the option togenerate a boss that is unique to you, with a powerful late game weapon. Kill this boss and you get said weapon. The weapon is random, but is visible at a point in creation and, if declined it is removed from the pool, you can keep doing this until the weapon you want comes up as it's only reset whem a weapon is chosen.
This makes the weapons feel a little more personal, the boss unique to you got you this weapon and it's name is still on it.
Not to mention that you get to choose the bonus elemental damage by bringing a specific warframe to create the Lich/Sister and that even when you get a weapon you have to level it up to get it at its strongest, not to mention that you can get the maximum elemental bonus by getting new copies of the weapon. The journey is clear and there's a definite maximum amount of tries it gets to get what you want, with RNG dictating how early you get it.
Getting new weapons and warframes has been really good lately. Getting the tome and tennokai mods though... It's literally faster to just grind for plat and buy the bundles from the market.
@@eduardobarreto5555 i'd say warframe in general is pretty good for sidestepping the loot overload because there are very rarely times that there is overlap between things you want, and things you don't.
Bounties are probably the worst for it, with a lot of chaff that, while often useful is rarely best way to get it, so you are they are small consolation. Relics are the same, but at least then you can turn them into ducats or plat, both rare and useful currencies.
Eagerly awaiting the Hello Kitty Online video
I always found "number go up" loot just more trouble than its worth, outside of gaining enough power to be allowed into tough content. The min/maxers are just going to ruin things.
But I do recall one piece of loot I'm particularly fond of: Red Death. It was an exotic pulse rifle in Destiny 1, which healed you when you killed things. This allowed my aggressive playstyle to flourish as I took out mooks with well placed bursts of bullets, keeping my health up as long as I wielded it effectively.
That's just it. In Destiny, Exotics were not simple improvements, they added twists or variations on some abilities, or occasionally gave you entirely new ones to play with. And once you have one you like, you'll do everything you can not to replace it with yet another piece of commodity gear.
@@watchm4ker Its a real shame the exotics became DPS focused. Gjallahorn and Whisper of the Worm were too good for boss DPS, limiting what was 'acceptable' to bring to raids or allowing other members of the team to melt Strike bosses so fast, you didn't get to feel like you actually fought them.
Best example I can think of is Earth Defense Force.
Weapons are exclusively obtained through random drops, which are based on which mission and which difficulty you're playing. Higher difficulties drop better weapons, in a similar fashion to Diablo.
However, despite the huge amount of weapons in the game, there's no procedural generation here. Each weapon is actually designed, and they feel unique and special despite there being well over 1000 in the game.
Weapons are generally organized into categories based on function, i.e., Assault Rifles, Shotguns, etc., and then within each category there are distinct families that follow a shared naming convention and have similar behavior.
So, within Assault Rifles, you have a family focused on raw damage at the expense of fire rate, a family that fires obscenely fast with low accuracy, a family that fires semi-auto with the ability to pierce enemies, and those differences make almost every weapon feel powerful, but unique in a way that incremental stat upgrades don't really.
Within each family you do ALSO get the straight upgrades, which are a mostly linear progression, but on occasion you get outliers that take a family's concept to the extreme, or tweak things with unique gimmicks. For instance, a shotgun variant that spreads pellets in a vertical line instead of the standard circle.
And then on top of all of that, you get changes to things like bullet color and size, the controller vibration pattern when you fire, that just gives every weapon its own identity beyond a stat spreadsheet.
So basically every new weapon you find is exciting, whether its an upgrade to one of your favorites, a new niche that's been filled, or a wacky new gimmick to try out. And despite being random drops, the odds don't ever get ridiculous, and the way the drop tables shift as you progress through the game keeps a mostly steady flow of new stuff going and keeps you equipped for what you're facing as long as you don't play out of order.
It all just works really well and keeps the game fresh way longer than you'd think the concept would last
In WoW Classic there was an epic mail chest piece which dropped from an arena event in Blackrock Depths (Level 50-60 Dungeon or something close to that bracket), it required not only to get the right boss to spawn in the Arena but then you had to see that % chance on the item dropping. Then you needed to win the /roll off assuming you had competition on it, and even classes that could not equip mail would roll on this and attempt to sell the item off afterwards, it was ridiculously rare to get but every warrior wanted their hands on it as it would last for almost three phases of the game. This had an extra benefit to the game that with so many level 60 warriors wanting it, they would go back and do old content to acquire this, creating opportunities for people still leveling to get dungeon groups.
I believe dark souls 1s short cuts was amazing reflective rewards.
And they were not really present later on, which left out some amazing feels, when the reward was bypassing that immense difficulty with a shortcut, especially since the game, don't always become easy just because you level up!
It's interesting that you say that, because my first instinct would be to consider them as substantive rewards, because I always felt a sense of "oh neat, getting between A and B will be much easier in future!".
I agree with you though, part of the awesomeness of the shortcuts is in the reflective aspect, especially because the Dark Souls gameplay loop is, in general, quite forward thinking (when I die, for example, I'm immediately thinking forward again, because I want my souls back). Shortcuts (and bonfires) are a brief moment to reflect.
Are Dark Souls shortcuts a rare example of a well executed reward that is both reflective and substantive? I think so! I wouldn't have considered it this way if not for your comment.
Halo 3 Hayabusa armor you get after getting every achievement is my favorite reflective reward I have ever gotten. That was peak flexing on people when I was like 12.
Speaking reflective.. My MMO wasn't WoW, it was Guild Wars, and in GW, there were achievements. They offered little per se in progression but it was utterly long term goal territory. The maps of GW were huge, and heavily instanced. You were on your own tackling your own instance of a map unless you brought friends along (or trained henchmen). One of the most challenging acheivements, both from a game perspective, you needed a party capable of handling anything in the game, as well as mechanically, raw environment interaction... was the Grandmaster Cartographer. See, as you removed fog from the map, you got a % completion to 'seeing' the respective campaign's map.
The % started with Explorer at like 60% or something, and that was acheivable with a bit of atention and dedication while playing normally. But the higher you wanted to go, the harder and harder it was. Even if the % actually was a bit skewed, and you could get to 102% or 103% in some campaign areas due to various reasons, like temporary arenas, or tutorial areas, they all counted but weren't required, getting to 100% was INSANE. We're talking visiting areas which had no quests and some had no spawns, we're talking areas which were timed and you needed to repeat the mission multiple times. We're talking WATCHING SPECIFIC CUTSCENES IN FULL as they 'counted' the view as unfogging the map.. We're talking SCRAPING your character at a 45 degree angle (square box view radius) on edge of map boundaries to "see" further. 95%, Master acheivement, could be done without any of these, but if one wanted to get Grandmaster per a continent/campaign... especially with a character that WASN'T made in that campaign, thus had different tutorial/etc... it could be grueling. You got to the point of print screening your map and using Photoshop difference blending with 100% maps to "see" what you needed to scrape more, or what section you missed.
... And then there's Legendary Cartographer. That achivement requires you to do that 100% process... over ALL of the 3 continents/campaigns in the game.
... I have Legendary Cartographer on my main character and that's probably my proudest gaming acheivement. I saw so much of the unseen world of the game, did some of the most remote and oddly placed quests in the game that most people never even find. I clipped outside of the map in weird ways, seeing lands unseen by almost any other player. It was exciting, fun, thrilling, and when i look back, i don't remember the hundreds and hundreds of hours spent scraping level edges. I remember the good times i had and the fun sights i got to see. I actually was a Legendary Cartographer of Guild Wars.
Meanwhile I'm just appreciating the use of the Mystic Forge entrance (GW2) as illustration of a point :D
Borderlands (specifically 2 for me) sides steps this problem a little bit. While it also vomits guns at you, the shear variety and the need to keep getting new gear helps a lot with the loot fatigue. Elemental ammo types, manufacture bonuses, mods, not to mention most gun types (pistol, shotgun, rocket launcher ect.) have at least 5 or more base body types. The rare boss/unique loot doesn't feel required and usually becomes obsolete just as quickly as any other gun but still feels great to get because of the crazy stuff it does. I kept a shotgun for way to long just because the bullets shot in a wave pattern. More games need that kind of variety in loot. Stuff that can actively change how you play the game from one area to the next by requiring the loot switch.
The reason they succeeded in that regard compared to most looter shooters is because their loot model is Diablo-esque instead of MMORPG-esque. Each of the randomizable parts of the gun acts like an affix that modifies the base gun stats, so there's a difficulty in finding an optimal gun, but you can find similar enough and make it work for a while. This works well with the "loot pinata" style of drops, because you're randomizing a bunch of affixes every time. Once you get to the endgame, where loot variety would normally start to wear thin, the addition of an ascension system pops up and you're given motivation to fine tune and optimize things, speed grind, and attempt the most difficult content in a variety of ways. It's at its best when approaches itself as a sandbox for player expression, where every grain of sand is a wacky combination of gun parts. The albatross around its neck isn't the gameplay itself, nor the systems interacting with one another, but Borderlands itself. It constantly takes its players out of the loop with "wait here while we unlock a door for you" or "come back to the quest hub for defacto cutscenes," robbing players of time spent in the strength of the series to instead wallow in an overstuffed script of flanderizations, lolrandumb, pop culture references, and "that just happened"-isms.
Reasons that I stand by the Ocean King's temple in Phantom Hourglass. Say what you want about having a timed, stealth-only, constantly reoccurring level; the sheer catharsis of speed running the place, slashing the impossible to kill phantoms down in a single blow, is more than worth it for me.
I'm with you, I always liked the feeling of finding new ways of speeding through it with gadgets. My propensity for bullshit though was probably higher like 15 years ago though. I also went through the dungeon far too many times trying to find like 1 tear that I missed somewhere in the game.
I will say that temple was probably done as well as the concept could've been done. It got a bit monotonous, but like you said it's fun to experience blazing through the place, wrecking everything in your path at the end. It wouldn't have been the same without the repeated visits building it up.
A reflective reward that I remember was getting the Magister's Boots (Dungeon set 1 boots for mages) in World of Warcraft before patch 1.10 when they still dropped from the postman in Stratholme. I did many runs to gather the keys I needed to open the post boxes and had to communicate with players through each of them to get what I needed. Once I had the keys I had to find a good group and convince them that we should do the Postman boss, which everyone skipped for various reasons.
Getting the boots were the last piece of the set I needed to have 8/8. This felt reflective, as I looked back at all of my gear to see how it lead me to this moment. Furthermore it also felt substantive as I now felt like the world had opened up and I was ready for raiding and could take the next step in my journey.
I really like crafting loops in games for your big, mega, death weapons. Going on missions to collect necessary resources gives you a meaningful sense of progress towards your goal over random number generators, and when you finally finish it you've really done something to look back on.
There are a few items in Terraria that your comment reminded me of. The Terra Blade, for example, is an endgame sword that requires many different parts.
Path of Exile is the golden standard for loot. There are lots of interesting gear/weapons that are "build enabling" and some are extremely rare. Another important thing is that everything is tradable... so there is "real value" determined by the market.
Lots of stuff here that I've heard Josh Stride Hayes say before, but collated into a more succinct video with a slightly different point.
I'm always impressed by succint these Design Delve videos are.
Experiencing a satisfying story is a great type of reward to me. Speaking of WoW myself, some of my favorite moments in that game are story-related. The Scepter of the Sands questline, the Wrathgate, and the Liberation of Undercity still being among my favorite moments in that game with the quest rewards being reminders of what it was like to experience them firsthand.
fast becoming my fav series on second wind
The Borderlands series arguably manages to make numbers fun by sheer variety. In a normal playthrough, it's never about getting a specific piece of loot, it's about seeing what you get next. While they flood you with useless commons and each gun is just an incremental increase in numbers, they all handle differently. The combination of possible features keeps it fresh.
Well, until you get to endgame and want to do raid bosses and TVH mode. Then you need to grind for specific legendaries that make your build work. But for people who are into that, it works. In the same way ARPG fans are all about those loot grinds. I never understood it, myself, but they seem to enjoy it.
My biggest issues with a lot of modern looter shooters is the gradual move away from loot fountains. Loot fountains from Diablo I think are fairly integral to the genre, as a dopamine delivering visual, where you don't know what you're gonna get, and one of the glowy beams might be something extraordinary. Now games like Destiny have made loot boring. You get like maybe 1 thing at the end of an activity, and not exploding out of a box, usually just put into your inventory. And usually that thing is predictably boring and pointless since most of the "good" items are locked behind seasonal rewards you might have missed, raids, or exotics. There's no tangibility to the grind, its just mindlessly wandering until the thing you want spontaneously lands in your inventory.
How do you feel this idea of Juxtaposition Gratification (specifically the starting out weak then getting strong) plays against the beginning of games (say 'Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) that have you be strong through the beginning, then strip you of your power and abilities, only to regain your strength? Would this be considered another layer of Juxtaposition or would we classify it as something else? Thank you for your insights and time!
couldn't believe the Peter Serafinowicz show quote with ME LIKE TINGS
Who wants a sequel called "Looter Shooter Devs Don't Get Shoot Either"?
It could be about how RPG mechanics are not really suited for shooter gameplay
The thing is you are looking at it from the perspective of the gamers while the people who are in charge of what the developers work on are looking at it from the perspective of the corporation and the shareholders. Making the customer as happy as possible does not immediately correlate to increased positive metrics that the Executive Suite need to get their bonuses.
I've seen Monster Hunter brought up a couple of times and wanted to give a specific example of one that does it both well and poorly: Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak. It has the standard loop of fight monsters for parts to craft new gear for the whole game, but once you've beaten the final boss of the story, it suddenly becomes a way bigger grind. You unlock the ability to fight powered-up versions of monsters from the whole game, but they've all been powered up in the exact same way by giving them the ability to inflict the Bloodblight status effect and probably increasing their stats. They drop special parts that you can use for incremental upgrades of the gear you already have but it's just so much less satisfying than the big upgrades you get for an upgrade to a new Rarity or an entirely new thing. And you have to do these Afflicted monsters to get access to the Risen versions of the Elder Dragons once you hit a certain level, but it just takes *forever* to get there compared to the progression speed of the rest of the game. The grind got more grind-y and the rewards for doing it less satisfying.
on the topic of combining substantive and reflective, La Mulana one and two are excellent examples of combining both. You have the gear progression of Metroid style games and the incredibly difficult puzzles that are so satisfying to overcome.
Small critique here, and this in no way should be taken as a slight against JM8 himself. But he needs to warm up his voice and work on diaphragm/breath control before doing these. His breath gets in the way of him completing words (see @3:39) and breaks up sentences. I love everything he's saying, but vocally his delivery can muddy the meanings or be distracting
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I would love to see a full Delve on your criticisms of DBD, even if its just a bit of a gag on the show. As a player id really value the perspective.
You just defined how i feel when i think back on Crota's End, gaining the Nechrochasm. Had to run that raid like 45 times, and i only wanted it for its low drop rate. Reflecting on that, i do miss some aspects of playing Destiny but not the loot table.
Destiny is truly the abusive ex-lover of the gaming world. You remember all of the good parts and wonder... should I go back? Were Destiny's flaws really such deal-breakers?
Yes. Yes they were.
I probably would've been sucked back in at some point if I wasn't witness to how it continues to abuse my cousins, who frequently try to get me back in.
Interesting, even though I've been binging Palworld content on RUclips for weeks the algorithm suggested me this video of yours (substantively useful to confirming my intentions for a game I'm developing) rather than your PalWorld videos. Look forward to watching those too.
Design Delve solidifying its place as my personal favourite second wind segment once again.
For me the perfect reflective-substantive-combo is when I solve a well designed knowledge/story puzzle. Best example is here Outer Wilds (or Obra Dinn) where I had many instance of the "lit up bulb in my head", which allowed me to progress further and also reflect on the events that already happened and the knowledge I already had, to explain things previously not understandable to me. Don't know if this is 100% fitting for reflective as it's only really in the moment and not something you always "remember" like the WoW example given.
I saw a lot of Guild Wars 2 footage in the video, but no discussion of their radically different take on MMO loot and horizontal progression. It's worth looking at.
This is such a good lil series and I enjoy watching it!
2:22 Really nice use of the Mystic Forge from GW2. xD
Deep Rock Galactic endgame is far and away my favorite grind I have ever done, probably the only grind for loot I have ever done. You are searching for "overclocks" for all the weapons in the game. These overclocks range from small stat increases to being fully transformative to the weapons you are using. Often these overclocks come with upsides and downsides which dramatically change weapon feel, responsiveness and function. Even the purely positive small stat buffs are not always boring, they can massively impact what is viable to take when making a loadout. There is no official drop chance for OCs, if something in the game gives you an overclock you are guaranteed to get an overclock. The rub is that the pool of what oversclosks you can can get everything you are missing for all classes. So as you start finding OCs the odds of getting the one thing you really want are low, though as you continue the odds increase dramatically. I love this system as it heavily incentivizes players to experiment with new classes, guns, or loadouts. The variety of builds pre vs post overclock unlocks is astounding and creates an amazing feedback loop of exploration for these drops, experimentation with new guns or classes, and the rush when you get that ONE overclock you really want. For me it is the OC system that makes deeprock galactic feel special and why it is the only game I spent hundreds of hours grinding.
That whole thing of "you only see the loot upon exiting the room" is done often in LEGO games. Typically a collectable is hidden under the camera where you start a level, so approach the screen and there it is. There's also the tactic of hiding it behind scenery.
I played a ton of Borderlands 1 and 2 but i eventually stopped after spending nearly all my in-game cash on the slot machines found in the hub town. It was then I came to the sudden realization that the whole game was basically a slot machine, getting me hooked on constantly cranking at a random number generator in hopes of getting a slightly bigger number. After that i realized i wasn't really having fun anymore and put the game down for good.
on rewards, one that I think works well is in palworld, when you start you see that huge mammoth that's almost level 40, when you first manage to beat it it feels so good.
I always liked the loot in Borderlands. I thought the gun brands were an awesome shorthand for the style of gun and despite being randomly generated, a lot of the guns felt different because of the combination of clip size, fire rate, projectile type, etc. Its the only loot game I've ever played where I would get loot with better numbers and go back to what I was using before before because the numbers weren't the only thing that mattered. A burst rocket never felt as good as a helix rocket even if the damage was higher.
Most of those games are examples of "semi-permanent loot" where, once you have it, you pretty much keep it in perpetuity, other than if you trade/sell/drop it; its your choice. On the other side, there is "temporary loot" games, mostly extraction games like Escape From Tarkov or Dark And Darker, where you have a good chance of completely losing your loot; you can get the "best item in the game" and lose it forever 5 minutes later due to events that may have been out of your control! I feel like the dynamic and rewards tap into different parts of my brain. I have a chance of finding the God weapon with almost very little effort, but I can also lose it forever with the same amount of effort.
the difference between Borderlands 2 and Borderlands 3 is staggering. In my own experience, I didn't get a Legendary drop in BL2 until my 3rd playthrough, the Fastball. It turned my grenade into a single hit, well, fastball, that instantly obliterated health bars. It felt great to use, and made an actual difference to my gameplay, and actually felt worthy of the Legendary status. My first legendary in BL3 dropped from a dumpster (I shit you not) and was an SMG with better stats. It lasted all of 3 levels, then was unusable due to poor scaling.