Straying away from genre conventions? (aRPG loot system)

I am currently working on a game, im in the later concept stage and early development.

My game is supposed to be a typical loot based aRPG - hack and slash for loot.

conventionally that means you have a broad selection of standardized foes which drop items from a semi-random pool.

However i just had the idea of adding a little caveat into the mix, by making foes only drop equipment they themself have equipped (that would be visually represented too). that way farming would get an extra level of depth, as it would make getting powerful items harder, since you have to fight against someone wearing the item you want to get.

from a design standpoint i really can’t decide if that’s a good idea, as it quite contradicts the nature of hack-n-slash rpgs, where selective farming is usually only done on monsters of specific kinds which drop from a more concise pool of randomized items at most. I can’t evaluate if it would affect gameplay flow negatively.

for bosses I would still go the traditional route.

what are your thoughts on this?

I suggest to study World of Warcraft.

As a player, I think I would prefer your proposed system. It makes more sense. And it means I can choose which monsters to pick on based on what I see them carrying/wearing.

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Skyrim did this. Now Skyrim isn’t the best example of finding epic loot on a random corpse, since the best items in the game were generally crafted, but I would watch some gameplay of it to see your idea in action.

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