Tim... You'll laugh... I paused the video for an hour or so and sat back down and was trying to move the spreadsheet out of the way of your video 😆 Thanks for all of the incredible insight your channel offers! Happy you're finding such a fun new career in TH-cam for the benefit of generations of game design to come!!!
It's surprising the number of graduates coming out of design colleges that don't just not know this, but don't have any sort of critical framework or thought process to be able to work through the problem. I've had to build out an entire boot camp for training new hires, sadly there aren't even that many good design books on the market to supplement the boot camp.
They're internal training material, but I can see a good argument for open sourcing them. I'll bring it up this week, if Tim wouldn't mind and the company agrees I'll drop a link here. Don't expect it to move fast though, legal will want to review even if the team says yes, I'd say weeks best case. @@demetrip93
Sadly school isn't really about showing you have a good thought process or that you can figure out a good solution to an awkward problem that doesn't have an established solution, which is a very subjective skill. Instead it is about memorisation and recall of facts as they are taught, as those are things that can be easily tested for during an exam in a fair and objective way for all students, but this just isn't a good reflection of the kind of work people will actually be doing at a job.
I don't think one can teach good design or learn it from books. "The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance." I want to see people learn design by designing for decades. That means personal projects and passion!
I believe you need both. Practice and passion are a slow way to learn unless you're a gifted genius and few of us are, learning from others is critically important. I was lucky enough to study with some legends and they shaved YEARS off my journey. Ultimately there's no good reason why every team is just trying to reinvent the wheel on every other mechanic, that time and brain power can be much better spent on creativity and innovation. Academically game design is way behind other disciplines like Architecture in terms of rigor and codifying the common building blocks of the craft. @@0ia
In KOTOR 2, you can brute force your way into containers as an alternative to the Security skill (basically lockpicking). If you do this, you risk looting a Broken Item instead of currency, consumables, etc. You can recycle these Broken Items at a Workbench for Components to create armor, weapons, or enhancements for one of the former. If you aren’t into crafting, you can also sell the broken item for a lower amount of credits at a vendor. Obsidian would recycle this feature in Neverwinter Nights 2 a year later. Funnily enough, at least in KOTOR 2, Broken Items don’t actually replace any item on the containers given loot table if you bash it, but rather are added as a result of the method to open the container.
@@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968 swords that last forever fighting all manner of monsters but get crushed instantly when the inside of a wooden chest presses on them
This is interesting, and I haven't actively noticed this. To make item drops like this, meaning rotate their sources as level progresses, is an interesting way to encourage players to do a wide variety of activities throughout leveling, and (alternatively) create artificial gaps in which weapons get outdated in strength (which makes getting better ones more exciting).
I always think that my favourite part about game design is usually character/unit/boss ability design, but then I remember that there are loot tables too, and for some odd reason that is also really fun for me. I guess I'm getting residual dopamine hits as I imagine loot dropping for players.
Hey Tim, I know this off topic, I finally bought a book on learning C# and C++ to improve my skills in programming, object-orientation, and learn computer science topics like linked list and stacks. I bought a book on Unreal Engine 5 with coding in C++.
Also, the RPG I’ve been working on in my free time has needed a rework of the loot system for a while now. This video will be extremely helpful for moving forward with that, so thank you!
Wonderful vids, Tim. Keep em coming. Question: I'm interested in making RPGs. I'm a very experienced developer; but I've mostly written web apps. I'm trying to figure out the best way to store and retrieve data - let's say, for something as complex as Pillars of Eternity. Do RPGs like that make use of embedded databases? Or is a lot of the data hard coded (i imagine attributes, skills, and actions could be)? Are data files read in at runtime, or build time? Thanks.
Different games handle their data in different ways. For Pillars, most of the data was entered and stored by the Unity editor in the associated game files, but Obsidian has its own dialog and string tools, so that data was stored separately and read at runtime.
There are many way to store and retrieve data. The most important thing is to know who has to work on that data. Be that programmers, game designers, scripters, art, admins in an MMO, modders, or noone (where it might be hardcoded once), and what tools they access the data with (editor, database or a plain text file).
I think the peak of loot tables was likely accomplished by David Brevik's influence from D&D's random tables and Angband. Don't know if the sort of ilevel and dlevel formula he used could translate well to a more traditional rpg or if it has even been attempted but the design of Diablo 1 & 2 made loot so impactful that developers are still aping that formula to this day and having a hard time accomplishing what those games did. Very interesting to hear you're perspective Tim. Hopefully it gives upcoming devs some thoughts to chew on since this is something I see lacking in a lot of modern games.
Check out It Lurks Below if you want a feel for how good his loot is. It's the last game he's made and has the Diablo loot feel. Otherwise, I feel like PoE expanded on the similar system that Diablo 2 had. The current crutch of item power level is definitely not something I get excited about. Why do items not feel exciting? Because they have less identity than the ilvl they're attached to.
This channel has been so awesome, thanks for sharing all of this info! I imagine this also helps a lot for idea generation that fits into the story/worldbuilding too i.e. "hm I need a best weapon that comes from a boss this level, how about the bandit leader has this legendary axe he looted from a hero's grave"
Thats a really good idea to spread the loot across all the systems and ways to get it and have every part of the game relevant and meaningful and even make it change with levels adding to variety and keeping incentive to do different parts. Im not even remotely a coder but thats one thing Ive scripted - loot drops, even made a simple system myself (exactly with loot containers spawned on mob death with rng roll for items).
Just found your channel and this type of information is invaluable! I wish there was more transparency in design. Thanks for taking the time and sharing your spreadsheet.
I saw this hit my feed 10 seconds after it was uploaded, and 20 seconds after I had just watched one of your other recent videos. This video has some great insight, and will be very helpful in my current game dev cycle!
How do you address the common problems that many games suffer from? 1. Context-less loot (why am I finding ammo and healing items in a street trash can? Why does a wolf drop coins? Why are there valuables in the street?) 2. Homogeneity - everywhere I go i find the same random items and it's sooo boring
1. Most games drop realism for loot, so monsters drop money and items even though they couldn't carry it. But you can always restrict those items to certain channels, so ammo is only from stores and human (or humanoid) drops. 2. Lots and lots of loot, plus lots of loot channels, plus varying what drops where and when...all this goes a long way to prevent homogeneity.
For anyone in the comments also consider making separate charts for common and rare or legendary items. Also a varied chart could be made for each game level (town,city,place) that way it changes from time to time as you progress. Also consider there's a limited amount of things per place and they appear in different places depending where the player decides they'll go. Always a bit random but also needs to be available in some way it's important or helpful to the players prosperity in the slightest way.
1e AD&D calculated gold, and other treasure as additional experience. There was a need to lose gold, and treasure to gain a level. These levels were essentially purchased, instead of retaining that treasure for other benefits. However, it also had a method of discounting experience awarded for treasures obtained. If the challenge to recieve treasure was less of a risk. It had another factor of a character not gaining any more experience, until gold was spent on gaining that level. This may be where the term "gold sink" came into use by players. If by chance you give up a powerful magical item to continue level progression. The trade off may be lackluster, and making a consideration on how to pay by penny pinching instead.
The on kill loot table attachment is also prone to "savescumming" in singleplayer games. Although on spawn is a bit more complicated and resource hungry.
Hey tim, love the video! I was wondering if youve thought about making a video on stat distribution and modifiers? Whats youre take on flat/scaling distribution on different skills/effects? Also have you ever thought about non-traditional attributes (meaning outside of atk, hp, dex etc) to shake up the formula and if so did it feel like it got convoluted? Sorry if theres a video that already touches on this, but id love to hear your perspective!
It was great to see the spreadsheet as a tool for game design. Do you have more tools (maybe even other types of spreadsheets) that you could share? I learned a lot from this video.
Woof Tim...i remember the days of NES Pool of Radiance (i grew up on that) and my goodness my little brain got scrambled at how different each drop would be if i saved b4 a battle and reloaded....the mystique i guess wouldnt be lost if u giv a special +5 mace a 1 to 1 mil drop in a spreadsheet cause its a miracle (of randomness) u get it lol
I don't really think Tim wants to make this channel about personal recommendations, or his critique on other games. It's him sharing his experience with game dev, which is what I think it should remain.
I wonder how Tim met all these great actors and voice actors during his career, like Ron Perlman, Keith David or Richard Dean Anderson etc. That would be interesting to hear, I wonder how known they were back then compared to now too. For a game that was supposed to be a side project, there were some great people involved.
Sorry if you've made a video on this already but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on crafting systems in general. Not just your general opinion on them but some of the best/worst ways you could think of/remember them being implemented in
Absolutely excellent! Thank you for this nice intro to loot tables. I am curious whether you use procedurally generated loot for any of your games? I would imagine such methods can be very useful for generating context aware loot.. Also what are your opinions on loot that does not fit its source? Common examples include animals dropping items typically carried or used by a civilized creature or a member of a faction using wares made by or exclusive to an opposing faction? Did Arcanum had any such guard-rails? Thanks again and have a wonderful day 😊
Thanks, Tim! I have two questions: 1. Should this be divided by rarity? For instance, one sheet for common items, another for rare ones, and so on. 2. What prevents this strategy from making drop sources too homogenous? What if I don't want rare helmets from levels 1 to 5 to be obtained *only* through vendors? In other words, how can I add variety to the sources? Cheers!
1. Yes, that is a good idea to have separate sheets for item rarity, especially if you want rare or legendary items to be mostly boss or quest rewards. 2. You could easily allow more than one source per cell, so for example, you could have VE and QU as sources for helmets in levels 1 through 5. As you can see, there are a lot of ways to extend this system. Consider it to be a foundation, and extend it for your game as you see fit.
Making it literally dependent of the player level is boring. There should be ways to get powerful items earlier than you're supposed to. This makes it more interesting. Now you get rewarded by thinking outside the box (or just being lucky once in a while is great too).
Before even begining to watch, I want to say, I hate randomized loot. For example, I still remember where is some of specific loot in F, F2, NV. Putting something with hands adds soul to the game.
Randomized loot that makes sense, with some handmade / handplaced stuff sprinkled on top is the best. That being said, I played FO2 so much that once getting out of the Temple of Trials, I knew where to get endgame level stuff, so after 30 minutes of starting the runthrough I was already armed to the teeth with combat shotgun and bozar.
@@txdmsk Yet fact that you remember it allows some fantasies on how it happened there, what is the story of that loot. Now you can play with self-imposed limitations or move on to other games. Wasteland 2 was really bad example of randomization where it lost any sense. You kill a guy with ak. How on earth does he have 10% chance of droping ak? And randomization of loot in boxes made it look like they had no time and just turned it into trash lottery. New Vegas has some randomization, but it is barely noticable.
Hello everyone , from this topic i considered quite a bit time on some game which this game considred as games looting with RNG methodology ( Random Number Generator ) . In this game i kinda make a quite a basic simulation of one of the items has 1/108k ish chance to drop and this item considered as quite a unique item in that game and even few people have had that item . Soo with basic programming i made a program which generates random number ( not maybe the exactly or might not been even smilar to that game algorithm ) soo give specific number like for example the number is 100 soo program generates number between 1 to 108k , if the number is 100 there is message says you claim the item , but the funny think is like millions of runs i generated only not remember exact number but like 1 or 2 times the item dropped , soo i thought myself there might be millions of players playing this game soo players like kill 100 minions the item might be dropped on , soo technically it may be drop within few days right but even months players playing this game constantly only quite a few players claimed that item , soo i have a theory about this that might not be true but in those kinds of games in online ones could there be some specific server that have quite a good chance to drop item soo whenever player logs that server , the player can claim that item or i heard that some games using this other methology there is a system called pitty algorithm that when a player reaches certain killing point , the item magically drops :) .
I can see kills being a good threshold. The main thing is that if the item drops and it's level 5 item. What level is the player? Can he sell it and become wealthy without the need to do quests? Will he be burdened with it and risk carrying it for 4 more levels until he is finally allowed to use it and because of this he had to make hard choices too early and not have room to collect things to grind and craft something better or equally needed for the game? If it's not based on leveling, the item then a kill threshold may be fine but just consider that if players aren't good at the game and are getting killed a lot because their current items are too weak then they may not be able to advance enough to ever beat the game. If you focus the game on rewarding killing and getting the next best item then soon also the player can lose interest if it becomes easy to get the next item. They'll become too rich and powerful to care if they are very successful with this system.
Hello mate i wouldn't like to give the name of itself in order to not make conflict with anything , in this game most of the time those super rare items are only for personal satisfaction nothing more most likely , the player level itself not a important issue unless you can kill the enemies in most difficult level on this game and also in spesific monster types in order to claim that item ,soo constant killing those monsters are most likely important issue to get those items , like for example if you kill a mob in 1 minute , you probably ain't gonna get those really unique items but if you can kill it like 5 seconds , you may have chance but it takes really , really long time to claim it :D but somehow it's like seeing as playing lottery thingy some players actually find those items on earlier stages on this game :) and i just assuming or maybe have to do really need quite a good mathematical skills in order to find out how these items might be droppped :) but seems that it may be they using some kind of cheesy codes , soo in some period of time players can claim those items or maybe those items are stored in their servers so whenever the player logs in that server , the drop chance is soo much higher then usual @@CosplayZine
What would be specific considerations for static vendors. Ie restock rates /money on hand/ leveling. Do you personally use or think it is a good idea to use vendor inventory as a method of pushing players forward (they want to go to a specific town for specific vendors). Do you think specific vendors having different buy/sell prices for the same items is immersive or frustrating to a player? Is it just pointless busywork to change prices of items making somebody have to walk between vendors or do you consider that a useful factor?
I'd say the price of something should depend on the economy in that area. For example you will pay higher for something in California but you can also do a job near by that pays higher to accommodate. But if it's something in the town over id keep the same prices to make it less confusing. Unless it's a better brand of something that might benefit you differently than the previous one in the other shop. People learn best through consistently and too much variation can seem like less thought was put into it or random and less meaningful. If for example you save a princess and she gives you a locket that heals you. You might want to save that princess again the next time you play if you know you will be doing a quest after that the locket will become useful. But if you save her next time and she gives you an old shoe that can only be scrapped for a bit of leather. You'll feel like you did something wrong and will question your reasoning to do things in the game that seem helpful and might look for ways to game the system rather than doing any more quests after that. Basically thats the danger of too much random.
crafting in RPGS has a nasty habit of being grind-heavy, especially if you find a crafting item that is best-in-slot and you can make-do without it. there was a lot of this in wow, with people picking up skills and grinding up a skill solely to craft a BiS and then ditching the skill now it's useless
Regarding wolves dropping pants, I understand why that might be desirable from a game economy standpoint, but stuff like that tends to take me out of games if not given context. Have you, or can you suggest a good way to attach a reactive modifier? ie- The dropped pants are the same item type as normal pants but the item description temporary acknowledges they came from a wolf gut, or the player character responds in some way upon picking them up? Is there a good way to do that without turning loot tables into spaghetti?
If it's sellable junk, the wolf should be dropping pelts, claws, teeth, and other body parts. If you want it to drop clothing, explain that the wolves have been feeding on people and it 'dropped' the clothes before attacking.
Kind of missing the point of the question. The pants are just an example item. I'm trying to get reactivity as a modifier on items. How that might be approached in organizing it within the actual program. Another example: Player kills a space slug, a blaster falls out as a piece of loot. The blaster is an item buyable from vendors or findable on space cops. When the player has the character pick it up, having the character remark (perhaps in a text blurb) something like "Huh must have been eating some space cops". Simple idea, but how hyptothetically, would one go about attaching that when a blaster is on a loot table shared by both space cops and space slugs. Sure one could make different tables, but lets say there is one table covering multiple different low level enemies. On the table are some items that don't need a special remark to make sense, but other items which when found on certain enemies would be improved by the game remarking @@Mirokuofnite
this reminded me of toee and that hemlock quest. i completed it but it seemed kinda unsolved. was that it or is there something else that remained untold?
How do you decide on the initial arrangement of which source to have in each item type for each level? Do you just generate the chart randomly at first and design the rest of the items around that? Have you tried making this chart dynamic in a game, where a different one is generated for each playthrough (where the item type you get from a source at a given level range changes)?
My theory is if it's automatically generated then no one can look to a guide on how to do anything. Kind of kills the conversation and overly complicates things for the dev in a way that it's likely to be unbalanced gameplay at times often. Imagine finding the best helmet for the next 1-5 levels at the very beginning of the game. If you're level 1 and it's 5 you can't wear it yet so you could keep it but then it's taking up space for 4 levels of play. Or you could sell it and now you got a lot of money but possibly nothing to spend it on..or so much money that you don't need to grind or do side quests or anything. If this good fortune happens to continue your game isn't worth playing..and the opposite of you can't get anything good without side questing or crafting then the game has forced you to play and game the system and worse taken away your freedom tk strategically do the things you are interested in. Now if you want a system that allows the player to thrive based on their own choices. I'd say make a system like this but have the system change a bit based on the characters patterns they seem to do the most in the game. Just don't make it so that they are punished by not getting good results if they one day decide to craft. The main objective is to not just have the player get the best stuff by repeating the same tasks. If you want to have a balanced game you can consider putting an item in a crate and have it randomly not be there sometimes..but if it's not there perhaps put it on an enemy or at a nearby shop instead. This way there are possibilities of not allowing the player to be too powerful all at once. Maybe the shop is closed but you found the item in the crate so you don't need to buy it. Perhaps you can make an item in the game by collecting smaller items that helps you make other items at various levels so that you have a balance without relying on looting the bodies of enemies for everything required. And maybe you need gloves or some protection device to use the item so that will make you want to go to where you can buy the proper equipment and perhaps it requires you to be in the right area to use the item that helps you craft. Sure you can base something's on leveling but in the end games are suppose to be fun so the player should be able to do fun things and achieve goals early on. If it all feels like work it will narrow the fanbase and shorten the length the game is played until they move on to the next thing or rage quit.
This video just made me realize that RPG leveling is just a mechanic for gear obsolescence, essentially no different from the way weapons break in the new Zelda games.
I appreciate you sharing your way of doing loot tables. For me this looks unnecessarily complicated. To be fair I've never built an RPG, not that I didn't try but this looks weird to me. If I had to do a loot table it would be either totally random(like action RPG-s) or totally hand crafted(my preferred way) and this looks like neither. I don't see any benefit of constraining loot to a different source by level. I just don't see the point.
You can still drop loot by hand with this method. It exists primarily to prevent certain loot types from only appearing in limited channels. If you have ever played a game where crafted weapons are NEVER better than looted weapons, you've seen that happen.
are the loot stats in your games also randomized? i really like those Borderlands like loots where the game generates a name to the item and every stat between an intervall is randomized too (with a couple of named exceptions) and so if you are lucky you can have items nobody in the world has, i really really like that
Yeah, that's a popular system, suitable for the kind of game Borderlands (or Diablo) is. But I personally don't feel anything at all for items that have just been randomly generated. I want designed items.
What is considered "best"? As an example, both Dragon Age and Mass Effect have weapons that have various different stats but those stats can be considered best for one class but not for another.
Now that I see this kind of chart explained, it explains so much of the why behind the seemingly arbitrary drops I get in probably most MMORPGs I've played. Once you have played enough games, you will probably start to notice this kind of pattern used all over.
I'm genuinely confused. Is there supposed to be a best source for a given item type in a game? I've never even caught a hint of a pattern like that. What kind of game are we talking about?
I have seen this in many RPGs and MMORPGs. The best weapons drops are from bosses or from dungeons, the best crafting ingredients are harvested, the best spell scrolls are on vendors, etc.
seeing this, i realize this is exactly what i dislike about games. Why do i have to kill 20 wolfs to get 10 fangs? cus he have 50% drop chance despite having mouthfull of fangs. I understand why this is how it worked 30 years ago, i didnt mind this 20 years ago... but nowadays? When your machine can make multiple calculations in a millisecond? Thats just being lazy I appreciate Tim explaining all these things of what and why, but its been done like this way too long, innovation is dead and it pains me that the only change will probably be me when i make the system i want to see in my future game. The only game that comes to mind rn, with smart and believable looting, was Kingdom Come... every other RPG is copy pasting 30 years old mechanics
I'm confused. My loot tables explained the SOURCES of loot drops, not the RATE of loot drops. Combined with hand-placed loot, nothing would stop you from having wolves always drop fangs and hides, and sometimes having money and/or pants.
I know, my rant was mostly about enemy humanoids not being fully lootable. In many games you kill full kitted full plate enemy and all they drop is rusty sword, used pregnancy test and 3 coins. Why not have enemy use the same system player uses? What they have they will use and subsequently can be looted
@@Drakuba I tried making a game like this before, and it was a mess to balance TBH. It sounds cool at first to have a system where other creatures are just like the player and have their own inventory of exactly what they have equipped, but it just lead to there being a flood of items (and materials if you can break items down into components) and made most items seem kind of worthless as there was an abundance of whatever items are used by creatures that players can just go and kill, with duplicate items of what you already have basically only being good for selling to vendors, which makes other money sources pointless when you can just farm high level mobs for some guaranteed high-tier loot they are using, and you can just buy your way through the rest of the game. Unless you plan on being very restrictive with the amount and quality of the items that creatures are given and how their gear can be converted into other things. You could just not have vendor shops, but then what do you do with all of these extra full plate armors that you have picked up when you only need one of them to wear yourself? They can so easily go from being an OP money source to useless junk depending on if they can be sold. Another problem is things like bosses that are deliberately meant to be tough encounters, but if this is as a result of having exceptionally good gear, then you could just help yourself to that same gear when you beat them and you basically are now on the same power level of that boss and it throws off the power scale of everything else you might have designed combat encounters around. In other words, in this naive pursuit of realism, other areas of the game were under-designed and it showed in terms of how some things were just an objectively better way of progressing in the game faster and lead to there being just a few spots in the game that were the best farming spots and most other content was irrelevant in comparison. Also a big thing to think about is the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to design all of this and decide where everything should go. When you have many dozens of creatures and maybe hundreds of different items, having a simple framework like this to just plug item sources into makes the decision making process so much faster, even if from a player perspective it does make drops seem kind of arbitrary and nonsensical. Not saying this realistic approach isn't doable, but you end up running into all kinds of other problems and needing to put a lot of countermeasures in place to make sure other systems don't just become irrelevant, which is a huge amount of work. And these kinds of problems are really hard to predict and quantify the amount of work needed to fix, which doesn't fit the real-world working constraints of needing to provide (somewhat) accurate time estimates for your work as a designer to your project managers. This was the thing I made that really made me realise that the job of a designer isn't just to have ideas or to think "Oh wouldn't it be cool if XYZ", but is to think about the overall scope of their decisions and the ripple effects that those have throughout development. :/
@@arcan762 if its a game that just spawns mobs, yes, i can see that being a problem. Imho problem with a lot of games is the world itself, it all revolves around player and player action and thats how it is balanced. Games that have functional world is so few, only dwarf fortress comes to mind rn... And im tired of games where player works on different mechanics and NPCs have their own mechanics as well Im not saying its easy, but because its hard does not mean we cant inovate and let some fresh air in
@@DrakubaTim makes these videos in part to inspire others to make games. Obviously I'm not suggesting you suddenly build a full RPG or anything but maybe try make a small game that uses the features YOU want to see. Then you can see if you can come up with solutions to stuff. It doesn't have to be something that other people will even play. Just something for you to mess around with and enjoy doing.
Tim... You'll laugh... I paused the video for an hour or so and sat back down and was trying to move the spreadsheet out of the way of your video 😆
Thanks for all of the incredible insight your channel offers! Happy you're finding such a fun new career in TH-cam for the benefit of generations of game design to come!!!
Hhahaha
"Some containers can be locked" reminded me of the locked dung piles in starfield :)
How does that even -
Actually, I'm not sure I want to ask.
Just sounds like crap.
Getting a wolf to eat a guy’s best pants is the real trick. Most of them just go for the meat.
Wolves near Rivervale (the halfling starting town in EverQuest) frequently dropped "halfling parts". I think you could cook with them...
It's surprising the number of graduates coming out of design colleges that don't just not know this, but don't have any sort of critical framework or thought process to be able to work through the problem. I've had to build out an entire boot camp for training new hires, sadly there aren't even that many good design books on the market to supplement the boot camp.
Do you have a website for your boot camp you'd be willing to share ?
They're internal training material, but I can see a good argument for open sourcing them. I'll bring it up this week, if Tim wouldn't mind and the company agrees I'll drop a link here. Don't expect it to move fast though, legal will want to review even if the team says yes, I'd say weeks best case. @@demetrip93
Sadly school isn't really about showing you have a good thought process or that you can figure out a good solution to an awkward problem that doesn't have an established solution, which is a very subjective skill. Instead it is about memorisation and recall of facts as they are taught, as those are things that can be easily tested for during an exam in a fair and objective way for all students, but this just isn't a good reflection of the kind of work people will actually be doing at a job.
I don't think one can teach good design or learn it from books. "The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance."
I want to see people learn design by designing for decades. That means personal projects and passion!
I believe you need both. Practice and passion are a slow way to learn unless you're a gifted genius and few of us are, learning from others is critically important. I was lucky enough to study with some legends and they shaved YEARS off my journey. Ultimately there's no good reason why every team is just trying to reinvent the wheel on every other mechanic, that time and brain power can be much better spent on creativity and innovation. Academically game design is way behind other disciplines like Architecture in terms of rigor and codifying the common building blocks of the craft. @@0ia
In KOTOR 2, you can brute force your way into containers as an alternative to the Security skill (basically lockpicking). If you do this, you risk looting a Broken Item instead of currency, consumables, etc. You can recycle these Broken Items at a Workbench for Components to create armor, weapons, or enhancements for one of the former. If you aren’t into crafting, you can also sell the broken item for a lower amount of credits at a vendor. Obsidian would recycle this feature in Neverwinter Nights 2 a year later.
Funnily enough, at least in KOTOR 2, Broken Items don’t actually replace any item on the containers given loot table if you bash it, but rather are added as a result of the method to open the container.
7DTD does this as well. It seems like such an insignificant thing,, but adds so much to the dynamity (
You caan break items in locked chests by bashng the chest instead of lockpicking in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 as well.
wait how does 7D2D have this mechanic? @@lrinfi
@@cmdr.jabozerstorer3968 swords that last forever fighting all manner of monsters but get crushed instantly when the inside of a wooden chest presses on them
Dynamism@@lrinfi
i have absolutely no experience/future plans* in game development, but i still watch every video. thanks for uploading :-)
Same!
This is interesting, and I haven't actively noticed this. To make item drops like this, meaning rotate their sources as level progresses, is an interesting way to encourage players to do a wide variety of activities throughout leveling, and (alternatively) create artificial gaps in which weapons get outdated in strength (which makes getting better ones more exciting).
This methodology is amazing.
I always think that my favourite part about game design is usually character/unit/boss ability design, but then I remember that there are loot tables too, and for some odd reason that is also really fun for me. I guess I'm getting residual dopamine hits as I imagine loot dropping for players.
Perfect timing! I'm starting to implement simple loot tables! Very excited to check this video out!
Hey Tim, I know this off topic, I finally bought a book on learning C# and C++ to improve my skills in programming, object-orientation, and learn computer science topics like linked list and stacks. I bought a book on Unreal Engine 5 with coding in C++.
Also, the RPG I’ve been working on in my free time has needed a rework of the loot system for a while now. This video will be extremely helpful for moving forward with that, so thank you!
Wonderful vids, Tim. Keep em coming.
Question: I'm interested in making RPGs. I'm a very experienced developer; but I've mostly written web apps. I'm trying to figure out the best way to store and retrieve data - let's say, for something as complex as Pillars of Eternity. Do RPGs like that make use of embedded databases? Or is a lot of the data hard coded (i imagine attributes, skills, and actions could be)? Are data files read in at runtime, or build time?
Thanks.
Different games handle their data in different ways. For Pillars, most of the data was entered and stored by the Unity editor in the associated game files, but Obsidian has its own dialog and string tools, so that data was stored separately and read at runtime.
There are many way to store and retrieve data. The most important thing is to know who has to work on that data. Be that programmers, game designers, scripters, art, admins in an MMO, modders, or noone (where it might be hardcoded once), and what tools they access the data with (editor, database or a plain text file).
I think the peak of loot tables was likely accomplished by David Brevik's influence from D&D's random tables and Angband. Don't know if the sort of ilevel and dlevel formula he used could translate well to a more traditional rpg or if it has even been attempted but the design of Diablo 1 & 2 made loot so impactful that developers are still aping that formula to this day and having a hard time accomplishing what those games did. Very interesting to hear you're perspective Tim. Hopefully it gives upcoming devs some thoughts to chew on since this is something I see lacking in a lot of modern games.
Check out It Lurks Below if you want a feel for how good his loot is. It's the last game he's made and has the Diablo loot feel.
Otherwise, I feel like PoE expanded on the similar system that Diablo 2 had.
The current crutch of item power level is definitely not something I get excited about. Why do items not feel exciting? Because they have less identity than the ilvl they're attached to.
"What's high quality junk?" -- Ah, most of what I make. But that's why I'm here, to get a little better each day.
This channel has been so awesome, thanks for sharing all of this info! I imagine this also helps a lot for idea generation that fits into the story/worldbuilding too i.e. "hm I need a best weapon that comes from a boss this level, how about the bandit leader has this legendary axe he looted from a hero's grave"
Thats a really good idea to spread the loot across all the systems and ways to get it and have every part of the game relevant and meaningful and even make it change with levels adding to variety and keeping incentive to do different parts.
Im not even remotely a coder but thats one thing Ive scripted - loot drops, even made a simple system myself (exactly with loot containers spawned on mob death with rng roll for items).
Ooo, finally got to class on time. Hey, donuts!
Btw, thats a really cool perspective on how to keep an eye on the diversity of content in a game overall via loot distribution. Awesome
Just found your channel and this type of information is invaluable! I wish there was more transparency in design. Thanks for taking the time and sharing your spreadsheet.
Items are my favorite thing, i don't like loot spam but i like to have a variety of clutter with very specific utilities.
I saw this hit my feed 10 seconds after it was uploaded, and 20 seconds after I had just watched one of your other recent videos. This video has some great insight, and will be very helpful in my current game dev cycle!
How do you address the common problems that many games suffer from?
1. Context-less loot (why am I finding ammo and healing items in a street trash can? Why does a wolf drop coins? Why are there valuables in the street?)
2. Homogeneity - everywhere I go i find the same random items and it's sooo boring
1. Most games drop realism for loot, so monsters drop money and items even though they couldn't carry it. But you can always restrict those items to certain channels, so ammo is only from stores and human (or humanoid) drops.
2. Lots and lots of loot, plus lots of loot channels, plus varying what drops where and when...all this goes a long way to prevent homogeneity.
Well apreciated the idiology of loot tables and the whole theory.
This is a really great idea. I wish I had seen this video 3 years ago when I started my game LOL
For anyone in the comments also consider making separate charts for common and rare or legendary items. Also a varied chart could be made for each game level (town,city,place) that way it changes from time to time as you progress. Also consider there's a limited amount of things per place and they appear in different places depending where the player decides they'll go. Always a bit random but also needs to be available in some way it's important or helpful to the players prosperity in the slightest way.
1e AD&D calculated gold, and other treasure as additional experience. There was a need to lose gold, and treasure to gain a level. These levels were essentially purchased, instead of retaining that treasure for other benefits. However, it also had a method of discounting experience awarded for treasures obtained. If the challenge to recieve treasure was less of a risk. It had another factor of a character not gaining any more experience, until gold was spent on gaining that level.
This may be where the term "gold sink" came into use by players. If by chance you give up a powerful magical item to continue level progression. The trade off may be lackluster, and making a consideration on how to pay by penny pinching instead.
The on kill loot table attachment is also prone to "savescumming" in singleplayer games.
Although on spawn is a bit more complicated and resource hungry.
Nice and creative way to balance loot vs level vs sources. I can imagine how this works. I might use the idea of this table to balance something else.
Hey tim, love the video! I was wondering if youve thought about making a video on stat distribution and modifiers? Whats youre take on flat/scaling distribution on different skills/effects? Also have you ever thought about non-traditional attributes (meaning outside of atk, hp, dex etc) to shake up the formula and if so did it feel like it got convoluted? Sorry if theres a video that already touches on this, but id love to hear your perspective!
I'd also love to hear this
It was great to see the spreadsheet as a tool for game design. Do you have more tools (maybe even other types of spreadsheets) that you could share? I learned a lot from this video.
Thats very insightful, thank you :)
Woof Tim...i remember the days of NES Pool of Radiance (i grew up on that) and my goodness my little brain got scrambled at how different each drop would be if i saved b4 a battle and reloaded....the mystique i guess wouldnt be lost if u giv a special +5 mace a 1 to 1 mil drop in a spreadsheet cause its a miracle (of randomness) u get it lol
I'd love to see a favourite indie games list or something from Tim some day.
I don't really think Tim wants to make this channel about personal recommendations, or his critique on other games. It's him sharing his experience with game dev, which is what I think it should remain.
Tim has specifically said he's not going to do that on this channel.
I wonder how Tim met all these great actors and voice actors during his career, like Ron Perlman, Keith David or Richard Dean Anderson etc.
That would be interesting to hear, I wonder how known they were back then compared to now too. For a game that was supposed to be a side project, there were some great people involved.
Sorry if you've made a video on this already but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on crafting systems in general. Not just your general opinion on them but some of the best/worst ways you could think of/remember them being implemented in
ESO designers should watch this.
Absolutely excellent! Thank you for this nice intro to loot tables.
I am curious whether you use procedurally generated loot for any of your games? I would imagine such methods can be very useful for generating context aware loot..
Also what are your opinions on loot that does not fit its source? Common examples include animals dropping items typically carried or used by a civilized creature or a member of a faction using wares made by or exclusive to an opposing faction? Did Arcanum had any such guard-rails?
Thanks again and have a wonderful day 😊
Okay, this is really helpful information.
Never in a million years would it have occurred to me to deliberately tie item type + item source + player level together this way.
Thanks, Tim!
I have two questions:
1. Should this be divided by rarity? For instance, one sheet for common items, another for rare ones, and so on.
2. What prevents this strategy from making drop sources too homogenous? What if I don't want rare helmets from levels 1 to 5 to be obtained *only* through vendors? In other words, how can I add variety to the sources?
Cheers!
1. Yes, that is a good idea to have separate sheets for item rarity, especially if you want rare or legendary items to be mostly boss or quest rewards.
2. You could easily allow more than one source per cell, so for example, you could have VE and QU as sources for helmets in levels 1 through 5.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways to extend this system. Consider it to be a foundation, and extend it for your game as you see fit.
@@CainOnGames Awesome! Thanks a lot, have a great day!
When the loot table accesses the lute table
Do you have any stories about times where you had to get creative to fit within memory constraints as a programmer?
this is brilliant! :D
Best way to learn it is to make a bunch of games and a bunch of loot systems
love a good table!
Making it literally dependent of the player level is boring.
There should be ways to get powerful items earlier than you're supposed to.
This makes it more interesting. Now you get rewarded by thinking outside the box (or just being lucky once in a while is great too).
At 3:44 ghost callibg Tim.
Hi!
I don't know if I can ask this here, but could you take a look at fictional video game designs (like sword art online or free guy)?
Before even begining to watch, I want to say, I hate randomized loot. For example, I still remember where is some of specific loot in F, F2, NV. Putting something with hands adds soul to the game.
It also allows for a narrative element, and incentivices exploration.
Randomized loot that makes sense, with some handmade / handplaced stuff sprinkled on top is the best.
That being said, I played FO2 so much that once getting out of the Temple of Trials, I knew where to get endgame level stuff, so after 30 minutes of starting the runthrough I was already armed to the teeth with combat shotgun and bozar.
@@txdmsk Yet fact that you remember it allows some fantasies on how it happened there, what is the story of that loot. Now you can play with self-imposed limitations or move on to other games.
Wasteland 2 was really bad example of randomization where it lost any sense. You kill a guy with ak. How on earth does he have 10% chance of droping ak? And randomization of loot in boxes made it look like they had no time and just turned it into trash lottery. New Vegas has some randomization, but it is barely noticable.
Hey Tim! In case you will read this: I am curious how version control worked in pre-git times. How did you guys collaborate / merge your changes?
I’ll organize my notes and put up a video on source control in a couple of weeks.
oo neat, thanku! Looking forward to it
Hello everyone , from this topic i considered quite a bit time on some game which this game considred as games looting with RNG methodology ( Random Number Generator ) . In this game i kinda make a quite a basic simulation of one of the items has 1/108k ish chance to drop and this item considered as quite a unique item in that game and even few people have had that item . Soo with basic programming i made a program which generates random number ( not maybe the exactly or might not been even smilar to that game algorithm ) soo give specific number like for example the number is 100 soo program generates number between 1 to 108k , if the number is 100 there is message says you claim the item , but the funny think is like millions of runs i generated only not remember exact number but like 1 or 2 times the item dropped , soo i thought myself there might be millions of players playing this game soo players like kill 100 minions the item might be dropped on , soo technically it may be drop within few days right but even months players playing this game constantly only quite a few players claimed that item , soo i have a theory about this that might not be true but in those kinds of games in online ones could there be some specific server that have quite a good chance to drop item soo whenever player logs that server , the player can claim that item or i heard that some games using this other methology there is a system called pitty algorithm that when a player reaches certain killing point , the item magically drops :) .
I can see kills being a good threshold. The main thing is that if the item drops and it's level 5 item. What level is the player? Can he sell it and become wealthy without the need to do quests? Will he be burdened with it and risk carrying it for 4 more levels until he is finally allowed to use it and because of this he had to make hard choices too early and not have room to collect things to grind and craft something better or equally needed for the game? If it's not based on leveling, the item then a kill threshold may be fine but just consider that if players aren't good at the game and are getting killed a lot because their current items are too weak then they may not be able to advance enough to ever beat the game. If you focus the game on rewarding killing and getting the next best item then soon also the player can lose interest if it becomes easy to get the next item. They'll become too rich and powerful to care if they are very successful with this system.
Hello mate i wouldn't like to give the name of itself in order to not make conflict with anything , in this game most of the time those super rare items are only for personal satisfaction nothing more most likely , the player level itself not a important issue unless you can kill the enemies in most difficult level on this game and also in spesific monster types in order to claim that item ,soo constant killing those monsters are most likely important issue to get those items , like for example if you kill a mob in 1 minute , you probably ain't gonna get those really unique items but if you can kill it like 5 seconds , you may have chance but it takes really , really long time to claim it :D but somehow it's like seeing as playing lottery thingy some players actually find those items on earlier stages on this game :) and i just assuming or maybe have to do really need quite a good mathematical skills in order to find out how these items might be droppped :) but seems that it may be they using some kind of cheesy codes , soo in some period of time players can claim those items or maybe those items are stored in their servers so whenever the player logs in that server , the drop chance is soo much higher then usual @@CosplayZine
What would be specific considerations for static vendors. Ie restock rates /money on hand/ leveling. Do you personally use or think it is a good idea to use vendor inventory as a method of pushing players forward (they want to go to a specific town for specific vendors). Do you think specific vendors having different buy/sell prices for the same items is immersive or frustrating to a player? Is it just pointless busywork to change prices of items making somebody have to walk between vendors or do you consider that a useful factor?
I'd say the price of something should depend on the economy in that area. For example you will pay higher for something in California but you can also do a job near by that pays higher to accommodate. But if it's something in the town over id keep the same prices to make it less confusing. Unless it's a better brand of something that might benefit you differently than the previous one in the other shop. People learn best through consistently and too much variation can seem like less thought was put into it or random and less meaningful. If for example you save a princess and she gives you a locket that heals you. You might want to save that princess again the next time you play if you know you will be doing a quest after that the locket will become useful. But if you save her next time and she gives you an old shoe that can only be scrapped for a bit of leather. You'll feel like you did something wrong and will question your reasoning to do things in the game that seem helpful and might look for ways to game the system rather than doing any more quests after that. Basically thats the danger of too much random.
crafting in RPGS has a nasty habit of being grind-heavy, especially if you find a crafting item that is best-in-slot and you can make-do without it. there was a lot of this in wow, with people picking up skills and grinding up a skill solely to craft a BiS and then ditching the skill now it's useless
Crafting could have ingredients coming from other sources. ^^
Regarding wolves dropping pants, I understand why that might be desirable from a game economy standpoint, but stuff like that tends to take me out of games if not given context.
Have you, or can you suggest a good way to attach a reactive modifier? ie- The dropped pants are the same item type as normal pants but the item description temporary acknowledges they came from a wolf gut, or the player character responds in some way upon picking them up?
Is there a good way to do that without turning loot tables into spaghetti?
If it's sellable junk, the wolf should be dropping pelts, claws, teeth, and other body parts. If you want it to drop clothing, explain that the wolves have been feeding on people and it 'dropped' the clothes before attacking.
Kind of missing the point of the question. The pants are just an example item. I'm trying to get reactivity as a modifier on items. How that might be approached in organizing it within the actual program. Another example: Player kills a space slug, a blaster falls out as a piece of loot. The blaster is an item buyable from vendors or findable on space cops. When the player has the character pick it up, having the character remark (perhaps in a text blurb) something like "Huh must have been eating some space cops". Simple idea, but how hyptothetically, would one go about attaching that when a blaster is on a loot table shared by both space cops and space slugs. Sure one could make different tables, but lets say there is one table covering multiple different low level enemies. On the table are some items that don't need a special remark to make sense, but other items which when found on certain enemies would be improved by the game remarking @@Mirokuofnite
this reminded me of toee and that hemlock quest. i completed it but it seemed kinda unsolved. was that it or is there something else that remained untold?
How do you decide on the initial arrangement of which source to have in each item type for each level? Do you just generate the chart randomly at first and design the rest of the items around that?
Have you tried making this chart dynamic in a game, where a different one is generated for each playthrough (where the item type you get from a source at a given level range changes)?
My theory is if it's automatically generated then no one can look to a guide on how to do anything. Kind of kills the conversation and overly complicates things for the dev in a way that it's likely to be unbalanced gameplay at times often. Imagine finding the best helmet for the next 1-5 levels at the very beginning of the game. If you're level 1 and it's 5 you can't wear it yet so you could keep it but then it's taking up space for 4 levels of play. Or you could sell it and now you got a lot of money but possibly nothing to spend it on..or so much money that you don't need to grind or do side quests or anything. If this good fortune happens to continue your game isn't worth playing..and the opposite of you can't get anything good without side questing or crafting then the game has forced you to play and game the system and worse taken away your freedom tk strategically do the things you are interested in. Now if you want a system that allows the player to thrive based on their own choices. I'd say make a system like this but have the system change a bit based on the characters patterns they seem to do the most in the game. Just don't make it so that they are punished by not getting good results if they one day decide to craft. The main objective is to not just have the player get the best stuff by repeating the same tasks. If you want to have a balanced game you can consider putting an item in a crate and have it randomly not be there sometimes..but if it's not there perhaps put it on an enemy or at a nearby shop instead. This way there are possibilities of not allowing the player to be too powerful all at once. Maybe the shop is closed but you found the item in the crate so you don't need to buy it. Perhaps you can make an item in the game by collecting smaller items that helps you make other items at various levels so that you have a balance without relying on looting the bodies of enemies for everything required. And maybe you need gloves or some protection device to use the item so that will make you want to go to where you can buy the proper equipment and perhaps it requires you to be in the right area to use the item that helps you craft. Sure you can base something's on leveling but in the end games are suppose to be fun so the player should be able to do fun things and achieve goals early on. If it all feels like work it will narrow the fanbase and shorten the length the game is played until they move on to the next thing or rage quit.
This video just made me realize that RPG leveling is just a mechanic for gear obsolescence, essentially no different from the way weapons break in the new Zelda games.
I appreciate you sharing your way of doing loot tables. For me this looks unnecessarily complicated. To be fair I've never built an RPG, not that I didn't try but this looks weird to me. If I had to do a loot table it would be either totally random(like action RPG-s) or totally hand crafted(my preferred way) and this looks like neither. I don't see any benefit of constraining loot to a different source by level. I just don't see the point.
You can still drop loot by hand with this method. It exists primarily to prevent certain loot types from only appearing in limited channels. If you have ever played a game where crafted weapons are NEVER better than looted weapons, you've seen that happen.
Hi Tim
are the loot stats in your games also randomized? i really like those Borderlands like loots where the game generates a name to the item and every stat between an intervall is randomized too (with a couple of named exceptions) and so if you are lucky you can have items nobody in the world has, i really really like that
Yeah, that's a popular system, suitable for the kind of game Borderlands (or Diablo) is. But I personally don't feel anything at all for items that have just been randomly generated. I want designed items.
What is considered "best"?
As an example, both Dragon Age and Mass Effect have weapons that have various different stats but those stats can be considered best for one class but not for another.
Loot Tables suck for people who always have bad luck 🙃😅
There is no such thing as bad luck. Only rookie hours poured into farming.
Now stop idling around, GET BACK TO WORK AND FARM THAT SHIT, SON!
Make sure that you don't find jewellery on a dead wolf
What games actually folllow this method?
Rpg
Now that I see this kind of chart explained, it explains so much of the why behind the seemingly arbitrary drops I get in probably most MMORPGs I've played. Once you have played enough games, you will probably start to notice this kind of pattern used all over.
@@arcan762 i suppose you're right. Im gonna have to pay attention to that
I'm genuinely confused. Is there supposed to be a best source for a given item type in a game? I've never even caught a hint of a pattern like that.
What kind of game are we talking about?
I have seen this in many RPGs and MMORPGs. The best weapons drops are from bosses or from dungeons, the best crafting ingredients are harvested, the best spell scrolls are on vendors, etc.
@@CainOnGames Hey, thanks for your answer. Should players be aware of the distribution or is it more of a dev side tool?
@r.rodriguez4991 I consider this a dev side tool, but I expect clever players will pick up on it
@@CainOnGames Guess that explains why I never noticed it.
seeing this, i realize this is exactly what i dislike about games. Why do i have to kill 20 wolfs to get 10 fangs? cus he have 50% drop chance despite having mouthfull of fangs.
I understand why this is how it worked 30 years ago, i didnt mind this 20 years ago... but nowadays? When your machine can make multiple calculations in a millisecond? Thats just being lazy
I appreciate Tim explaining all these things of what and why, but its been done like this way too long, innovation is dead and it pains me that the only change will probably be me when i make the system i want to see in my future game. The only game that comes to mind rn, with smart and believable looting, was Kingdom Come... every other RPG is copy pasting 30 years old mechanics
I'm confused. My loot tables explained the SOURCES of loot drops, not the RATE of loot drops. Combined with hand-placed loot, nothing would stop you from having wolves always drop fangs and hides, and sometimes having money and/or pants.
I know, my rant was mostly about enemy humanoids not being fully lootable. In many games you kill full kitted full plate enemy and all they drop is rusty sword, used pregnancy test and 3 coins.
Why not have enemy use the same system player uses? What they have they will use and subsequently can be looted
@@Drakuba I tried making a game like this before, and it was a mess to balance TBH. It sounds cool at first to have a system where other creatures are just like the player and have their own inventory of exactly what they have equipped, but it just lead to there being a flood of items (and materials if you can break items down into components) and made most items seem kind of worthless as there was an abundance of whatever items are used by creatures that players can just go and kill, with duplicate items of what you already have basically only being good for selling to vendors, which makes other money sources pointless when you can just farm high level mobs for some guaranteed high-tier loot they are using, and you can just buy your way through the rest of the game. Unless you plan on being very restrictive with the amount and quality of the items that creatures are given and how their gear can be converted into other things. You could just not have vendor shops, but then what do you do with all of these extra full plate armors that you have picked up when you only need one of them to wear yourself? They can so easily go from being an OP money source to useless junk depending on if they can be sold.
Another problem is things like bosses that are deliberately meant to be tough encounters, but if this is as a result of having exceptionally good gear, then you could just help yourself to that same gear when you beat them and you basically are now on the same power level of that boss and it throws off the power scale of everything else you might have designed combat encounters around.
In other words, in this naive pursuit of realism, other areas of the game were under-designed and it showed in terms of how some things were just an objectively better way of progressing in the game faster and lead to there being just a few spots in the game that were the best farming spots and most other content was irrelevant in comparison.
Also a big thing to think about is the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to design all of this and decide where everything should go. When you have many dozens of creatures and maybe hundreds of different items, having a simple framework like this to just plug item sources into makes the decision making process so much faster, even if from a player perspective it does make drops seem kind of arbitrary and nonsensical.
Not saying this realistic approach isn't doable, but you end up running into all kinds of other problems and needing to put a lot of countermeasures in place to make sure other systems don't just become irrelevant, which is a huge amount of work. And these kinds of problems are really hard to predict and quantify the amount of work needed to fix, which doesn't fit the real-world working constraints of needing to provide (somewhat) accurate time estimates for your work as a designer to your project managers.
This was the thing I made that really made me realise that the job of a designer isn't just to have ideas or to think "Oh wouldn't it be cool if XYZ", but is to think about the overall scope of their decisions and the ripple effects that those have throughout development. :/
@@arcan762 if its a game that just spawns mobs, yes, i can see that being a problem. Imho problem with a lot of games is the world itself, it all revolves around player and player action and thats how it is balanced. Games that have functional world is so few, only dwarf fortress comes to mind rn... And im tired of games where player works on different mechanics and NPCs have their own mechanics as well
Im not saying its easy, but because its hard does not mean we cant inovate and let some fresh air in
@@DrakubaTim makes these videos in part to inspire others to make games. Obviously I'm not suggesting you suddenly build a full RPG or anything but maybe try make a small game that uses the features YOU want to see. Then you can see if you can come up with solutions to stuff. It doesn't have to be something that other people will even play. Just something for you to mess around with and enjoy doing.