Enemy Drops

[nobody]

Currently there isn't really any reason to kill most monsters. Just out of self defense (killing them so they will stop attacking you/they are in your way) or because you need health, as thats the only way to get health. but other then that there is no real reason to kill 95% of the monsters. No experience to be earned, nothing (aside from even more challenging enemies) to be unlocked. So I just run past most enemies that are in my way.

Then there is the enemy unlocks. I kill X amount of a certain type and now I fight even stronger enemies. Yet I don't get anything from doing that, except a harder time. It isn't like the tier system where unlocking the next tier makes the enemies stronger, but also allows you access to better stuff. The game is essentially penalizing you for killing enemies.

These are probably the 2 biggest issues I have with the game. They aren't major issues, but they are still the biggest IMO. Adding item drops from monsters can fix both of these issues. There are 2 main ways that have crossed my mind.

1) The first is a fairly quick and easy adjustment. Just have the enemies drop one of the items in the area they are in. It would essentially be like having another tree or ore vein in the level. Except random and it would have a chance to not drop anything. The stronger monsters would have a better chance of dropping better items and more frequently.

2) The second would take a fair degree more work. You could have each monster have its own drop tables. This is where unlocking stronger monsters would come into play. For example the basic bat might only drop Cedar Wood and Granite, but then you unlock the fire bat, and it has a chance of dropping Cherries or Opals in addition to or instead of the stuff the regular bat dropped.

Neither of these really changes the way the game is played. You'd still need to go to certain areas to get the items you want. Personally I think the drop rates should be very low So that the focus is still on obtaining items the way we currently do. What is important is the illusion of purpose. There is a major difference between not having any (long term) reason to kill any monsters, and having even a  small chance of getting something out of it. even if it is insignificant it changes the mindset of the player, and gives them a greater purpose to go out and kill things, as well as incentives to go out and try to unlock the stronger monsters.



thoughts?

[EtherealOne]

Personally I quite like it the way it works at the moment, it means that if i'm on full health I can sprint past monsters and not feel like I have missed anything.

[snow2.0]

I'm not far into the game, and maybe my oppinion will change if i unlock some more content.

At the moment, my only gripe are the green fairies i unlocked by killing some of the flying black cloud things (i think there's bats in there?) because they were too annoying to avoid at their speed.
When i first ran into the new fairies, i found them impossible to defeat. They resisted the AoE spells i brought with me, and spewed out clouds of 4 little fairies per attack... times 5. Never saw 5 bosses at once either. Welp. Could only run away.

Some balancing aside, i like the resemblance to AI war, where you're (generally) sneaky and quick about conquering the galaxy, rather than bruteforcing your way through all enemies you can find.

[nobody]

Personally I quite like it the way it works at the moment, it means that if i'm on full health I can sprint past monsters and not feel like I have missed anything.

it would be no different then running past trees or ore veins, or all the buildings full of stuff. I assume you don't feel the need to get all of those right?

[khadgar]

I'm divided on this. On the one hand, yes, monsters aren't something you feel like you need to kill. And you're also right when you say that unlocking more monster types is not necessarily a good thing. However, having them drop world resources would feel kinda odd. I think they could just have a low chance to drop upgrade stones, or some other fluff like that. Bosses already do, so why not the little guys? Like you said, a low %, but just a reason to kill them rather than jump overhead.

That being said, I would still ignore them, because I lose more health fighting than ignoring them.

[Huaojozu]

I suppose this stems from the blending of genres that AVWW does. On one hand you have some sort of character progression with unlockable spells and so on, which is often connected with enemies dropping loot, currency or some other incentive to go and kill them.

On the other hand you have a sort of platforming feel, where enemies are mainly an obstacle, not a source of power. Remember old platformers like Crash Bandicoot? You didn't get anything from killing enemies - if you could avoid them good for you.

These two groups will always fundamentally disagree on monster drops. Personally, even if you make them drop something interesting at low enough percentage, I will still skip them. I am not going to kill 50 bats on average just so that I get some little thing (and probably die in the process).

[zebramatt]

I say if they're too easy to avoid, then that's what needs addressing.

Not across the board, mind you, but if it's easy to avoid everything then there's something a little awry there!

[nobody]

I'm divided on this. On the one hand, yes, monsters aren't something you feel like you need to kill. And you're also right when you say that unlocking more monster types is not necessarily a good thing. However, having them drop world resources would feel kinda odd. I think they could just have a low chance to drop upgrade stones, or some other fluff like that. Bosses already do, so why not the little guys? Like you said, a low %, but just a reason to kill them rather than jump overhead.

That being said, I would still ignore them, because I lose more health fighting than ignoring them.

consciousness would make sense for them to drop

[Professor Paul1290]

Personally I'm against the idea of enemies having useful drops.

Most common sense or logical applications of "enemies" run on the idea that they are obstacles that try to prevent you from completing your objectives. Most common sense uses for enemies are as challenge to overcome to get to the reward they are trying to prevent you from reaching.

When you provide a direct "reward" for killing enemies, you've turned them into challenges with rewards already built in. This sounds good by itself, but it makes some assumptions as to how the player should play the game. It makes fighting them better, but that's the only thing it makes better.
The downside to this is that it reduces the effectiveness of the enemies as an obstacle or deterrent. It also runs on the assumption that destroying enemies is the only way towards your goal, and ignores other possibilities.

Yes, it is true that not having a reward for killing enemies turns them into purely obstacles that keep you from getting to where you want, but if you think about what enemies are supposed to be in the game's universe, this makes sense. They're "enemies", that's what they do!

They're "bad guys", and to me it makes sense that running into "bad guys" should be, well, "bad" for you! 

In some games, rewarding players directly for killing enemies makes sense because those games are purely about combat. If combat is the only thing you do and is in fact your primary objective when playing the game then yes, in those cases I believe it would make sense. However, in the case of A Valley Without Wind, doing this would be bad for a lot of the other possibilities available in the game.

Again, this is just my opinion, obviously other people believe otherwise. It wouldn't kill the game for me if enemies started dropping useful things, but it certainly wouldn't be a positive to me.

I say if they're too easy to avoid, then that's what needs addressing.

Not across the board, mind you, but if it's easy to avoid everything then there's something a little awry there!

I believe this as well to some extent.

If you're dodging most of the enemies on your way to where you want to go, then I think that's a perfectly legitimate way to play the game. In fact, you might want to even get some cloaking enchants and optimize your character for that style of play if that's how you prefer to do it. 

I tend to kill a lot of the enemies that get in my way, but I still dodge maybe half of them and that still feels right to me.

If it gets to the point where too many people are all dodging the enemies rather than killing them at all, then I think it's the difficulty or effectiveness of said enemies which would need changing rather than trying to reward people for killing them.

[Quaix]

We can have monster drop loot without unbalancing the game or changing it in more than a marginal way. The thing about loot is it doesn't have to be valuable, it doesn't even have to drop often. What if each enemy had 50% chance to drop consciousness shard, or 10% chance to drop an upgrade stone. Suddenly the player perception of mobs changes from "that trash you try to run from" to "hey maybe i'll kill it and it drops an upgrade stone". On average, each enemy being worth 0.1 of an upgrade stone is tiny, insignificant, and doesn't affect gameplay at all. But it hugely affects player perception of those enemies, and that's largely what all the complaints are about.

[KDR_11k]

It's a deliberate choice that trash mobs don't drop anything of value.

[nobody]

Everyone seems to be focusing on the 1st point which is giving regular enemies drops, and that is fine and all, but I feel like the bigger issue is the unlocking of stronger enemies. The game is essentially penalizing you for killing enemies. I mean yes as the game progresses is should get more and more difficult. but it seems like a bad way to go about doing it. The tier system is great. It is all about increasing enemy strength while giving you a chance to get better stuff. but the enemy unlocking mechanic is just the bad without the good. and if they are going to keep it that way where you get stronger enemies then having them unlocked by killing enemies is the wrong way to go about doing it. it should be tied to the tier instead. Otherwise you are directly penalizing the player for doing a good job.

[Bluddy]

Everyone seems to be focusing on the 1st point which is giving regular enemies drops, and that is fine and all, but I feel like the bigger issue is the unlocking of stronger enemies. The game is essentially penalizing you for killing enemies. I mean yes as the game progresses is should get more and more difficult. but it seems like a bad way to go about doing it. The tier system is great. It is all about increasing enemy strength while giving you a chance to get better stuff. but the enemy unlocking mechanic is just the bad without the good. and if they are going to keep it that way where you get stronger enemies then having them unlocked by killing enemies is the wrong way to go about doing it. it should be tied to the tier instead. Otherwise you are directly penalizing the player for doing a good job.

I completely agree. Unlocking advanced monsters after killing regular monsters is the wrong incentive to give the player. Actually I'm confused. I thought we already discussed enemy unlocks (on mantis as well) and decided they weren't good. And yet they're still in the game.

I think it makes sense to unlock advanced enemies when the player shows he's a badass. But you can't create a negative incentive while doing that. So I think a mechanism for enemy unlocks when you reach a certain tier + continent is good. And you could have a shortcut to get to that enemy -- for example, if you reach depth 7 of any cave, or fight in a very difficult stormy area. But punishing the player for fighting enemies simply doesn't make sense.

[Martyn van Buren]

Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about this a while back, and the goal was to make enemies a problem that has a lot of equally valid solutions --- killing them and sneaking past being about the same.  Specifically, I think Arcen (and me) wanted to avoid the RPG situation where you're allowed to sneak past an enemy but then you wind up being weaker as a result.  I think the current system does this quite well.  There are certainly a number of times when killing enemies is the best way to deal with the situation --- either because you need health drops or because it's in the way of something you want to get to --- but the game doesn't really favor any of the possible choices.

I also think the unlock system makes sense.  To some extent, AVWW is still a sandbox game --- there's a world, and you go into it with your characters and you try to accomplish whatever appeals to you however you want to.  So it makes sense to me that the game looks at what you do and gives you more of it; most likely, it's what you enjoy doing.  This happens with missions as well, where many types become harder (and I think more common?) as you do more of them.

That said, I realize that the game doesn't notice players doing stealth, and doesn't do anything to "punish" us, so I wonder if this could be changed?  Would it feel more fair to you if there was a mechanic whereby if you avoided a lot of enemies (I assume this would mean raising CP a good deal without doing getting a lot of enemy unlocks), instead of unlock tougher enemies the existing creatures would get boosts to detection range and become more aggressive about chasing you?  I think I might like that as a stealth player, and I wonder if that would feel more fair to more combaty players?  In that case it wouldn't be so much being "punished" for killing enemies as the game taking note of your playstyle and upping the challenge for you.

[Bluddy]

I think the assumption that you're unlocking the stuff the player wants because he's killed a bunch of creatures is assuming too much. Many creatures exist in several different areas, so their death count goes higher faster. Also, many creatures are killed by the player rather than avoided just because they're difficult to shake (bats for example). A player also goes to areas not for the enemies but for the resources, and it's possible he doesn't like particular enemies but simply happens to be in areas where they exist. A player might also like having the particular enemy and not want it upgraded.

Worst of all though, you're giving the player an incentive to avoid fighting enemies because he'll be punished with a tougher enemy, and this is really really bad. It's a good idea for a mechanic that just doesn't work out in reality.

I think what *could* make sense is that after the player beats a continent, the game looks at the number of enemies killed, adjusting  for the distribution of each enemy, and upgrading the ones that the player seemed to like fighting. But even then -- don't try reading the player's mind. If you want, give him other challenges he can choose to do to get those bonus enemies. That way he's telling you explicitly what he wants.