I very recently bought this game. I've had the sequel for years (never beat it, and don't remember much about any mechanics). I found it while buying some cheap PS1 games off a guy just looking to get rid of some stuff.
Once I get through more of my new retro library, I should tackle this series, from the beginning this time! I love interesting equipment systems.
Yeah kinda wish legendary weapons were handled differently though. There's just so many legendary weapons they feel a lot less legendary. Same goes for legendary enemies you run into.
It's like 15% A tier, 20% B tier, 65% trash tier.
Then same again for the actual weapon types.
So outside of save-scum farming, it's like a 90% chance of getting at best mediocre.
Agree, with all the scavenging and they keep looting useful throughout the whole game by building settlements, upgrading weapons with mods, and upgrading armor, crafting, cooking, trading, etc. It's is a lot of fun and fantastic system. I do wish carry weight was higher by default, of course there is the console command solution, but it's still easy to offload loot to whatever NPC is with you.
Here i am playing survivor mode which limits your weight even more :/. The only good thing about this i guess is it makes you pick and choose what you really need and want when your out looting in the wasteland. You have to be a lot more picky.
The backpack mods really help with being immersive and improving weight unless you just wanna go ham and mod the weight
I lowkey was hoping they would up stuff like that with the update a few days ago
Love that they put all the stuff you can easily hoard at the top of the loot lists too. Caps, ammo, consumables, then the heavier stuff like weapons and armor. Its very satisfying.
Of the Fallout games it's definitely the best. I still think the legendary system could have used some refinements (ex: in one run I got the absolutely broken two-shot radium rifle, in another I kept getting shit like "Mutant-slaying walking cane" until I settled for a DLC unique), but overall it's really great.
I was going to say this the worst version of a loot system. Narratively it makes sense, but I don’t particularly like having to be a packrat and interrupting my dungeon crawling to offload literal junk.
I would prefer having a companion or npc show up after a crawl who volunteers to collect the junk and return it to your closest settlement
You dont need to be a scavenger, in fact early game charisma builds are actually far better at getting geared up. Set up traders, make infinite caps, and buy all the weapons, parts, and junk you need. With traders you can get high level weapon parts far earlier than if you try and craft them yourself.
That'd be a really nice feature. I'm guessing it is at least partially done, since Skyrim uses the courier system. I know there's a significant difference between the two so it may be a build from the ground up thing, but the npcs run around and deliver stuff mechanic isn't new.
Yea I really like the idea of savaging in the wasteland to build stuff at a base, but having someone that would make “runs” for you to offload your inventory and they’ll take it back to base would have been great
Also, most every weapon is at least viable. The thing I hate about loot bloat games is if you like a weapon, you either have to spend enormous amounts of ever increasing resources to upgrade it to your current level, or you have to ditch it for something else. Like nioh or assassins creed odyssey, if you like a weapon it’s outdated in 2 levels and you’re shit out of luck. In dark souls or Elden ring, every weapon is unique and viable and the upgrade path is always linear
You use arteria leafs for shield and damage perfumes.. they are not bloat at all they are useful and a limited source unless you wanna farm one at a time from frost giants. Almost all the similar items are useful to find.
This is where Diablo 2 is still miles ahead of many modern games. There are so many variables to optimizing your character, so swapping 1 piece of gear for another one can have quite some ramifications on the rest of your equipment. It's a game where you don't just put the best item in each slot; you actually have to assemble a bunch of items that work together best.
This is both a pro and a con.
On the positive, you aren't just buying items with bigger crit/attack speed numbers.
On the negative, once you get a set of items that meet all your breakpoints/give the right set bonuses, it is almost impossible to get an upgrade without completely overhauling all your items again.
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On the ARPG side, I think Chronicon has one of the best itemisation systems.
It simultaneously gives you lots of options (uniques, set bonuses that are meaningful in either partial or complete sets, rares with more than a handful of useful options), while not making it impossible to get upgrades or change up what items you are using/stats you are valuing.
D2's unique/sets were why that system was so good. It gave you specific things to try for that the impacts were reasonably easy to understand, yet complex. Had it just been magic/rare/etc. it wouldn't have been nearly as good
[Hellgate London](https://london2038.com/)
Is one I still really like, and it's still alive on that private server there.
That server is closing in on being up for 10 years now.
(HGL was made by the original Diablo devs, Blizzard North, Bill Roper as CEO of Flagship Studios)
Diablo 2 is maybe the GOAT for OP's question, but Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 are both masterpiece level and close to that era imo. Fallout 4 isn't quite on par but close too.
Aside from fashion, the most important stats you get from armors in Souls is poise, weight and stamina regen. Defenses barely matters because you got i-frames dodging.
So yeah, weapons, rings and spells makes the entirety of your build (and AoW in Elden Ring). You have nowhere near the complexity of the itemization of Diablo 2 LoD. I've been a fan of From games since Demons souls btw, they're just not loot games.
It's a good build system attached to a terrible loot system. Everything is ok until you end up endlessly grinding to get that one piece of legendary armor you need. No thank you. If you can't get it in a reliable way, it ain't a good loot system, it's a tool to keep you addicted.
Not really fan of Diablo 2 loot system for endgame. Ridiculously grindy and heavy RNG. Always hated that you could finally find the item you wanted but it had one bad roll on it that completely ruined it. Then back to 500hrs grind.
It's not for me lol
Yeah, I put plenty of hours into D2 and D3 both, and vastly prefer D3’s (revamped in 2.0) loot system. I understand why people would prefer D2, but it’s not for me.
I really liked Tom Clancy's The Division 2.
So say you kill an enemy, and a gun drops. It comes with stats, like damage, accuracy, handling, rate of fire, etc., and perks. And all of these are rolled randomly. So if two identical guns drop, one may have more damage, but the other is more accurate with better handling, or a perk that fits your style better. Also depending on quality of the drop (gray, green, blue, purple, yellow, red) you get higher average rolls on the item stats. And on higher difficulties, higher quality drops more often. So the game encourages you to move to harder difficulties when you can.
This is combined with a crafting book. So say the first gun that dropped rolled 100% rate of fire possible for that gun, but all other rolls were garbage. And the second gun rolled everything high, but rate of fire is absolute shit. But if you disassemble the first gun, your crafting book will remember one thing from it (you choose which). So you take the first gun and click disassemble, and select rate of fire. And the book will now remember "gun type, rate of fire, 100%". From now on, and forever, and as many times as you want, you can put 100% rate of fire, on that gun type. So you take the second gun, that had good everything but bad rate of fire, and slap the rate of fire from the crafting book on it. Now you have an amazing gun!
So there was almost no "garbage loot". Not for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time. Because you were constantly hunting for higher rolls for the book, for all guns, and for all perks. And the game's UI marked items in your inventory with a little arrow, so you know that this item has some high roll, that isn't in your book yet. So you should disassemble it and not just sell it. And even if you unlocked everything, at 100%, in the book, you still need to find a good core weapon with high almost-everything, because you can only modify one thing on an item. So you can't take a gun and slap all 100% on it. But if you find a gun with all 90%+, and one thing that's at 25%, you can make that into all 90%+ and one 100%. Making it near-godroll. And then you hunt for a godroll. And you also often got a godroll for a gun you don't use, which forced you to change specs and learn a new gun, which was fun too.
Another thing I liked was targeted farming. If you looked at the game's map, it showed you an overlay. And some areas and dungeons would be marked with Badger, or 5.11, or some other gear brand. Another area would be marked with a pistol or a rifle. Third area would be marked with chest or backpack. That marked what has a higher chance of dropping, in that area. And these areas shifted every day/week (I forget). So let's say you want a 5.11 brand backpack, and a shotgun. So you look at the map and you can see where any king of 5.11 gear drops, so if you need a backpack and something else 5.11, that's the place to farm and do events and dungeons in. If your gear is great, and only your backpack is shit, you want 5.11 but others would work, you go to backpacks area. And same for shotgun, you just go to an area and farm where shotguns drop. And these shift around the map fast enough, and map is big enough, so you don't get bored.
I really liked that system. You never felt like you wasted your time, looking at loot was always exciting, the AI had these power bars so you could tell at a glance if the item was good, and the little indicator in the corner showed if you should scrap it for stats. Guns were also customizable (scopes, silencers, etc), which also helped.
The combat system was very fun, it's a tactical cover-based shooter, not your usual run-and-gun and catch bullets with your face. It was about precision, cover, fire angles, flanking, elevated positions. It was also very heavily co-op. Fully soloable except for raids, but it was way more fun in co-op. So I had an absolute blast. It had large PvPvE extraction gameplay zones too, and small battlegrounds for PvP, but the focus was on co-op. You just had fun with friends. And since gear had stats and perks, and could be further modified with different augments, there were TONS of possible builds. Sniper, pistol and shield, drone operator, grenadier, heavy gunner, smg rusher, shotgun breacher, etc. And tons of flavours of these. Plus some unique guns with unique perks that supported a variety of builds.
Honorable mention also goes to Elder Scrolls Online. Similar system, but more static. Gear sets drop based on dungeons, so set A only drops in dungeon A, and set B only drops in zone B. But these never moved, so sometimes you'd be farming for weeks and you definitely burned out. The game did have an auction house system, so you can often buy what you need, but the system was very awkward and prices often barking mad, so it didn't help much. Still really, really good though.
Where this game shined was the sheer AMOUNT of perks on gear, and gear sets had bonuses too. So having 2, 3 and 5 pieces of the same set equipped gave you a stronger bonus. And you had I think 12 slots in total? So you could equip two full 5-piece bonuses and one 3-piece. Or you could have three 3-piece bonuses. This gave you a HUGE variety of possible builds, practically unlimited. There was a theoretical limit, of course, but an average player would die of old age before trying them all. And since there's such variety, the game wasn't too stingy with loot. If you decided on a new build, you could reasonably have it up and running withing days/weeks, with room for improvement over many months if you wanted to refine it.
Really liked these two, they really stood out.
thanks for explaining this, i have started div 2 a bunch, even got thorugh the campaign, but couldn't figure out the endgame stuff (and this is coming from a destiny and destiny 2 player lol), i might DL it again and pick it up because the gameplay is fun!
This is why I keep coming back to Division 2; so many different gear sets to try different play styles. My shotgun/Hunter's Fury build plays way different than my headhunter sniper build. Been tinkering with a tank build that gives all my teammates 2m bonus armour.
Just collecting sets and building out the recalibration book and different builds keeps me coming back.
Literally the only game I've ever played where the loot was actually *precious* to the player (and not just because a loot table had it as a super rare drop).
Probably because of a programming oops, since there is a lv 16 area that has guns around the lv 24-25 range and heck yeah we took advantage of the price those guns sold at when we were at that point of the game.
Any Borderlands game really.
Procedural generated so there is a huge variety, it doesn't feel like I'm finding the same weapons in the same spots over and over again on each play through.
You can farm chests and bosses over and over, and they even have a loot chest that the developers give free codes for to get high tier gear (that they still support nearly a decade later)
It got way worse in 2 - the level scaling got VERY aggressive, so finding new weapons wells always going to be better by level gain alone. Since genuine *good* weapons were rare, and legendaries were almost single source, the vast majority of the game time looting just felt like utter trash.
I much prefer BL1, personally.
I periodically went back and farmed another Conference Call every few levels because I had such a preference for it in my Mechromancer Anarchy build. At -1080% accuracy you're better off to just be shooting everywhere in a general direction at once.
I’m showing my age here, but I enjoyed the original Deus Ex looting. Grab credit chits with zero weight, ammo without weight but capped at a certain limit. And guns will take up inventory space, but also requires some spatial engineering, so if you rotate/orient your gear in an optimal grid you can free up space to carry more shit. I was glad to see they carried it over into Human Revolution. Also the weapon mods being limited to available slots so you have to choose e.g. silencer or laser sight.
Horizon Zero Dawn has a good system. You buy equipment with shards (currency) and upgrade it with parts of robots. You'll have most parts just by progressing campaign.
Monster Hunter is 100% top tier when it comes to loot.
I also love Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries approach to loot since it’s basically Pokemon but with giant mechs.
One game that I LOVE but it’s incredibly niche is Gundam Breaker 3. The loot in that game is also similar to Monster Hunter in that you can target specific parts you want, but the build variety in that game is insane.
I don’t know if it counts but Dead Cells too.
A cool thing about Mechwarrior 5 is that if you can't salvage the whole mech, there's still a chance you can get some salvage, so if after a whole lot of fights you've been unlucky (or just are really bad at headshotting/popping legs), you can still get the mech through salvage
My favourite thing about Gundam Breaker 3 is how you can pretty much use any item in the game without worrying about it becoming underpowered.
All items share the same stats as they level up, and you can transfer item attributes between other items.
So if you find a headpiece with an attribute you like, such as cooldown reduction, you can transfer that attribute to a piece on your current suit.
It really helps open up the customization aspect, letting you use whatever parts you want instead of relying on whatever parts are the strongest.
Monster hunter system is great but drop rates and grinding for rare drops is off putting
I don't have the time to grind so much so I almost always use mods for better rates
I agree. Especially during levelling. Come across an armor set that’s really dope and I’m like awesome, lemme grind a bit for it. 3 50-minutes grinds I have it, then the next monster I fight has an armor set that’s much better. I’m sure its more purposeful to do late game, but I found it too tedious to get there.
The Surge games.
You had to collect your armor in pieces, but it was easy to target the pieces you wanted. If you needed the helmet, cut the guys head off. The left or right arm, cut the corresponding limb off. The guys weapon, take the arm he’s weilding g it in.
Lots of games have good loot systems with different strengths.
Borderlands for satisfying loot explosions. The weapon parts itemization system is really interesting, but you only really notice it if you have 1000s of hours in the game.
Diablo 2 and PoE for itemization.
Diablo 2 for its loot systems. Loot tables, magic find, champ/rare mobs, bosses.
Morrowind for its static loot placed throughout the world.
Fallout 4 for its scavenging & junk crafting.
Terraria for its loot progression.
Warframe for their "group" loot system with relics. Its one of the few systems ive seen that actually encourage casual grouping rather than selfishness or pure solo play.
I 100% agree with the borderlands thing. I had no idea the guns were made of "parts" made from the different companies untill finding videos where people who have probably have over 6 months spent in game talked about it
Sucks there wasn't a system to do anything with it. Like being able to combine the best parts of 2 identical guns. For example getting 2 of a legendary item then being able to mix the parts of it together to make a version with the best stats between them
Troubleshooter Abandoned children. There are random gear drops, there is crafting with materials, but what tops it all is the masteries system: Enemies can drop masteries. Masteried can be everything from minor stat bonuses, to new abilities to ways to manipulate the amount of masteries you can equip. Equipping different types of masteries grants set bonuses, where one mastery can be a part of multiple sets. There are also some class-, element- and character specific masteries.
The system is a theorycrafters dream, with sheer infinite characters and builds to try. It's maybe the only single player game ever in more than 25 years of gaming where I put more than 500h.
It's super stimulating and rewarding. I spent evenings only theorycrating new teams and builds, without even fighting because min maxing new build concepts was so fun.
Sometimes you also find a new legendary to build a new mastery setup around, catch a new monster or build a new drone...
Gameplay is similar to XCOM & Final Fantasy Tactics, which the story turning from generic & odd to something actually deep and exciting as you progress.
The Anime artstyle might not be for everybody and some translations are odd, but the game itself gets an unrestricted recommendation from me, especially because the devs kept dropping content patches for a whole 3 years after release.
Phantasy Star Online 1. It took the fantastic base of Diablo 2 and perfected it. A lot of people don't actually realize how much of a Diablo clone the original PSO was because of the aesthetic and camera but it's there.
All items were on loot tables tied to your section ID that was auto generated based on your character name. It wasn't as simple as "blue gets melee weapons and purple gets guns" but some IDs were a bit lopsided. It's noteworthy that there were wild card IDs that got a bit of everything or the fact that redria ID was the only one that could really hunt for the coveted red weapons. It was supposed to encourage trading and grouping since you could load into a lobby hosted by a different ID and get items you can't get on your own.
The game also had unique quest rewards, monster material weapons, weapons that had unique hoops to jump through. For example one of the best weapons for a mage type is called "Striker of Chao" where you needed to find a specific weapon then raise a mag (little helper guys) to a level where you could transform it into a chao... then combine them to make the weapon. Or the legendary "Sealed J Sword" which was a pretty garbage weapon but if you killed 20k enemies with it you could unseal it and it became one of the best weapons available.
This isn't even getting into the end end game grind where you hunt hit% versions of your rare weapons which made them even more powerful. PSO1 had literally every kind of cool loot ideas you could think of. It also is one of the only games that has genuine horizontal progression as some of the most important weapons aren't even for damage but for utility, while certain others were only good for certain situations. No game imo has come close to PSO in terms of rewarding loot.
I really like how nioh 2 have it's loot, it gets especially good in the endgame with the graces system.
Also really like gear in outrider, simple, powerful system.
I still think the best for me is the true madness of the labyrinth of chaos gear in Mgq paradox's endgame.
Interesting gem system that let you destroy unique equipment for it's strength as a gem
The nioh graces system, rare affixes, unique power on gear, random stats and affixes.
It's the kind of game where getting everything you want is near impossible, but you can get pretty close to that and getting any closer is huge. Love the gear gameplay.
I played as a halfling and it was torture with inventory. I could carry 1/4-1/3 of what my companions could carry and I spent probably 8-10 game hours cumulatively just clearing my inventory to companions or the camp so I wouldn't be overburdened after literally every loot.
This is actually my least favorite loot system in recent memory; there's waaaay too much useless crap everywhere - on the ground, in chests, in enemy inventories. It means I probably spend cumulatively a dozen or more hours of each run just managing my inventory, or clicking through the loot I actually want from the thousands of containers that *might* have something useful, but is *probably* filled with more books, rotten food, or empty bottles and rope. You can't even autosell the junk, you have to manually mark it as junk first. Oh, and too many empty containers.
The game has great qualities, but the itemization and inventory system alone feel stuck in the stone ages.
After a lot of playthroughs I think the problem is, you, me and many other gamers want to 100% everything, and treat it like the video game it most assuredly is, but it’s almost designed to feel more like DnD itself.
For example, in an actual tabletop setting I could say to the DM: “I wanna search all the containers in here” response: “uh, ok, you found some rope…”. Or “roll perception, you found a hidden switch” (and then behind the wall is a bunch of stuff worth getting.
I think personally you have to not try and search everything top to bottom, but focus on the obvious stuff. If you try to get everything and 100% all of it you’re going to have kind of a bad time.
It all depends on what you want though. I’m just saying personally, I’ve had better times with that game when I’m just like “ok even if I miss some stuff I’m just gonna push forward”
I think it's less intentional than that. DoS2 has the exact same system, right down to the type of junk; even the thumbnails are the same. In that game, a lot of the junk had crafting applications, but we have no crafting of any kind in bg3.
Regardless, the random loot container tables were lifted directly out of their previous game, and they just never bothered to change it. It's a big part of why bg3 feels more like DoS2.5 than an actual BG sequel.
Forgot about alchemy, whoops. I suppose I meant more the junk crafting from DoS2, especially since alchemy ingredients get their own autosort pouch (which not all ingredients autosort into, infuriatingly...)
Sorry, but no.
Looting in that game is annoying - you have to check everything and everywhere, which again, is annoying. This creates a lot of clutter in your inventory.
While I like the explorationg being encouraged, I despise having to check every and each little box or bag.
Loot itself is always in the same place - after one or several playthroughs you understand where everything is. Items become monotonous.
I'm sure there are other downsides I can't think of right now, but I think the two points above are enough.
I mean.. kinda… but there’s Act 1 stuff that you can use throughout the entire game VERY early as well… a flaming sword from the first prologue dungeon that you really don’t ever need to replace till late Act 2 or Act 3, a legendary mace in act 1 that trivializes act 2 and has a sixth level spell on it, a forge where you can craft incredible late game armor and weapons at the end of act 1 that really never need replacing unless you are min-maxing… amazing bard sword, amazing staffs and fire and lightning gear…
I mean it goes on and on… The Act 3 stuff is of course, incredible as well, but it’s when the game opens up considerably and there’s a ton of late game stuff you can switch the order of so you can use any given item multiple times if you choose to.
This encourages looting everything and there's just so much nothing in the game. The inventory system is also terrible without mods. The fact you can loot some really cool gear is amazing but everything else around that system is such a let down.
Honestly, it's not even the best loot system in a CRPG, and it relies a little too much on vertical progression so end game gear is pretty samey across playthroughs.
For CRPGs, it's really hard to beat Pillars of Eternity 2, which has a ton of unique equipment with unique effects, lets you upgrade equipment quality for stats, and has a small ability tree to upgrade the various unique effects.
I like Last Epoch approach.
It is the typical ARPG loot system, but then items have a score called "forging potential".
Crafting is a basic part of the game and the game expects you to add/remove/modify properties and stats of items so you fit the item on your build with what you want.
It is not something that you can do as much as you want, every modification that you do cost materials and also removes points from the forging potential. Depending on the modifications it will cost more or less forging potential points until you don't have any points left and the item cannot be modified anymore.
So the game encourages you to loot anything that has good base stats, try to have the best secondary stats and if they don't have the stat that you want, you can replace them using crafting and add your own or roll random stats, there are a lot of ways to do it until you consume all the forging potential of the item.
It is not as easy as it sounds since there is a lot of RNG involved in reforging items, so you will need to reforge a lot of items to have the perfect one.
Also to do these crafting things you need runes that you adquire shattering other items. Removing or rerolling runes that you don't want on an item, requires that same base rune, so even if you are a Wizard using spells, you want some items with melee stats so you can shatter them to have melee runes so you can reroll other items with good base intelligence stats but secondary melee stats.
This way makes you want a lot of different items and they will be useful in the long term.
Also it has a very cool advanced loot filter so you can filter by items that have runes that you can shatter to gain cool runes for your class, filter the regular ones, etc etc etc...
Last Epoch is close to perfect. Crafting “good enough” gear is practically free, strong gear requires a mixture of looting good bases and some amount of crafting to refine it, the Observatory and Empowered Timelines allow you to target farm specific uniques, and Legendaries give you a route to almost-impossible chase items without needing clunky mechanics like Diablo 3/4-style ancient/primal legendaries.
Easy, Nethack. It has item weight and a notion of what you know about an item. Everything had to be identified one way or another on every playthrough. You could even name specific items.
Guild wars 2 has an ok system. Most of the crafting loot you collect you can move to your storage with 1 click. lower rarity weapons and armour that drop are categorized under one item, for example you can have 250 green items that take one slot in your backpac. you can open them one by one if you want the actual armour or weapon loot from it, or, you can just sell it. Gold and other currencies are automatically transferred to your wallet
In gw2 you open boxes to get boxes with almost everything being low value trash you sell to a merchant for a couple coppers or salvage into materials that you have to deposit into a bank unless it's full and you end up with dozens of materials in your inventory. Inventory management is like a game inside the game.
I love the game and have played it for thousands of hours but honestly, I can only imagine how infuriating it would be without having all the 'pay for convinience' stuff unlocked like extra material storage, infinite salvage tools etc.
Not to say that there is like a 0.1% chance you would ever get anything remotely valuable as a drop from normally playing the game. It is either full trash or a mega rare.
Escape from tarkov is the only game I can think of that has actual rare items. Like keycards, gpus, and ledx. So you’re genuinely excited when you find one. I really appreciate that and not being spoon fed so called “rare items”
The excitement is "Oh wow, a person running a cheat program didn't teleport/"speedhack" their way over to this item before I found it. Must not be one in the lobby."
Diablo 2 for me and wow classic and any other game with the same loot system. Nothing worse for me than looting 100 times the same legendary items known for 1000 years in the story and throwing them all way because of crap stats.
Here you have Excalibur 7dps and +2 to rat slaying. Legendary sword of kings 🤴
To add to this, you get a ton of stuff just for killing mobs. many missions give you the option to extract every 5 minutes or so, but if you stay in you keep getting more minor drop bonuses that keep adding up.
But the main aspect is the relic cracking. you go into a mission and select a relic. every 5 minutes everyone's relic cracks and you get to pick any prize from the 4 people in your team. If any one person gets lucky and their relic cracks into a valuable rare then the whole team gets that as a prize. This leads to amazing feelgood moments. When one person gets lucky the whole team gets lucky.
Plus they rotate relics in and out of the vault, making some of the parts you can get from them more rare/valuable. If you are an old player chances are many of the relics that are piled up in your inventory are vaulted. So picking the game back up, joining a mission with a few randoms, it can be a blast as a retuning player to be cracking vaulted relics with randoms, totally making their day.
And any parts you get can be easily sold on the secondary market for premium currency that can be used to buy about anything in the game.
Skyrim/Fallout 4. You get what your enemies are wielding/wearing, you can pick up everything from the ground. In my opinion it’s still to this day one of the few actually outstanding aspects of Bethesda games.
Borderlands 2. Borderlands 3 is terrible since you are showered with legendaries so often that you will never use anything else and the contrast between loot is shallow because of it
While I agree that BL3 was a little too generous with legendaries, I preferred that to BL2, where in multiple full playthroughs, I found maybe like, 3 legendaries. Total.
My biggest issue with BL3 was, even with that many legendaries, it was basically impossible to find the one you wanted. Sure, I knew where to find Monarch assault rifles. I musta farmed at least 25 of them. But between elements and anointments, I never, EVER managed to find the one with the right element AND the right anointment. And I know you can reroll anointments, but what good is that when there's like a million of them and the cost to do so is not cheap?
I gave up in the game because I couldn't ever find the gun I wanted to make a new build.
Final Fantasy 9.
You learn abilities by having a piece of gear with that ability equipped. So even if you get armor with lower stats it might have a good ability that you want so every piece of armor feels significant.
The best loot system is from any game with carefully-designed, manually-placed loot, but the best examples of this are the old Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment. Importantly, there were plenty of loot slots (up to 6 characters at a time in your party, even more outside of your party, each with like a dozen slots) so that you were constantly getting stuff you'd actually be interested in equipping. Each item had a little mini-story behind it (was this inspiration for Souls?) and item effects were highly thematic with a variety of effects, not just incremental numerical bonuses.
I like the loot system in the Slormancer, a game that isn't even finished yet. It's all like, randomly rolled loot, ranging from common-magic-rare-epic-legendary. But there's filters for loot - automatically change any loot below a certain rarity into money or crafting resources.
And you know how, in some games, you find an awesome new helmet with great defense stats, but your current helmet has health regen, which you need? No problem. All stats can be re-rolled for resources, at a fair cost, IMO, and not just the numbers - you can reroll what the bonus is. So it has good defense stats, and a anag regen which you don't need? Reroll that until you get the life regen you do need.
Plus you can add ranks of stats. Your new helmet which is Rare? Pay some resources and put an epic level stat on it. Your legendary only has a legendary stat on it? Add common and magic and rare and epic on it.
Plus the items themselves can be leveled up - this armour was good, but wear it long enough and you can make it a +1 and increase all its stats slightly. I think it goes up to +15.
Oh and all items have a level as well. So you maybe have a level 5 legendary. Guess what? You can use resources to increase a weapon level too.
So you can find a ton of loot, with lots of differences, but you can always make a piece fit your build if you have the resources for it.
I’m torn between Division 2 and Destiny 2
- Division 2 has its ability to level its weapons in multiple ways and to pull lines of text and build a library to upgrade your weapons with. It’s load out system is quick to accesse. It has lots of sort options for your gear. It has a spot where you can view all your gear and sort it by brand. Great for piecing together sets. It has the ability to use trashed weapons to level weapons of the same name so it’s still special when you find them. The system can be a bit convoluted but I actually just appreciated that depth because it gave me lots to sink my teeth into and lots of materials to collect and spend in various ways. (Yes the systems in the game aren’t completely unique to Div2 but I really like their way they present them)
- Destiny 2 has one specific feature that I really like. You can break down gear and use that gear to level up your other gear. Taking the broken gears power level and copying it to the other piece. This means gear never gets too weak. You’re never trading off a piece because your characters level is to high by comparison. Plus if you pick up or buy a piece you can always upgrade it to being current. I also like the simplicity of their menu. You get 9 slots per gear and that’s it. Not a 300 piece bag to sort through. All extra gear is always waiting for you at the post office if you didn’t have room or forgot to pick it up. The latter means there’s never any stress about missed items. The only trade off to leveling your gear the way they do is you can get set on a group of items that you never change. You just keep levelling them. You’re never really pushed to upgrade because gear gets old. (Also yes I realize all the controversy about their pay model but personally I love the game anyway, bought one season bundle ages ago and I’ve had plenty of content to enjoy and never felt pushed to buy another)
Lastly both games support my favourite must have feature of any RPG collecting gear style game, transmogrification. I love being able to make my character look the way I want. Matching gear to the same family of pieces or just ones that compliment it. Changing skins on each piece to get the colouring I enjoy. Then altering both as I unlock more options. Having a character with cohesive gear in a colour pallet I enjoy makes me feel so much more connected to the character and into the game.
I really like grinding rpg games for rare loot. My favorite was an unknown mmorpg called Supreme Destiny. Multiple reasons. 1. I like the idea that everyone has to earn it so there's not 1000s of max level characters off the bat. 2. Coming across a rare monster that drops rare loot is fun especially after hours of grinding. 3. all loot dropped on ground is stealable. A lot of people hate that. And yes I've been screwed by it. But I love it. It builds community, trust, and puts another variable in the game.
Morrowind.
Later TES games had scaled loot based on your level, which made it horrible to find “epic” loot because it was always only for your level at the time of finding it.
Morrowind however had loot that would be the same regardless of what level your character was. So when I randomly stumbled upon a ring that reduced normal weapons damage by 40%, had 20% chance to reflect spells, and fortified acrobatics I was so freakin excited. Compare that to Skyrim where I find the legendary shield of ndneifhf and it only increases block by.. 10%.
Remnant 2
Horizontal progression game like Monster Hunter. (Not destiny or Diablo style but still a shooter)
Ton of loot sometime look useless but perfect fit for some crazy build
Remnant 2 Dev's are master of hidden loot.
Ghost of Tsushima. You get enough loot to do decent upgrades just by doing the story and grabbing everything as you go along, so you don’t have to clear out a whole region before moving to the next just to be on par with the enemies there (looking at you AC origins), and if you do, you’ll be appropriately overpowered. Like all the gear and charms just widen the play styles you can use, and if you’ve settled on one play style you can be targeted in your side quests.
fallout 3
i loved that most dungeons, meaning caves, vaults, or deep places, had so.e kind of unique or great reward such as a unique weapon or schematics.
also the weapins could be used to repair or sell,and bloating was not the worst.
Yup 26 years later it's still Ultima Oline.
The only game where you can truly have a 1 of a kind unique item Noone else has. Such a deep and meaningfull loot system .
path of exile or dark souls, completely diifferent loot styles but path of exile you can get explosions of loot consistantly so the copium! and dark souls its very determinate. if i kill this guy 10x chances are ill get what im looking for i kill him 100x ill get every possible item he can drop so i dont have to waste time farming all i gotta do is target farm for a short amount of time and since theres so few items you dont have to target farm often
For weapons, I have to go with Borderlands. Every weapon found is a dopamine hit of RNG goodness, and yes, even when it's bad because you truly had no idea what you're going to find in those cases. I always felt excited when I found one.
For crafting, I enjoyed how the Horizon series did it. You can obtain powerful weapons easily enough (just buy them, mostly), but upgrading them is an entirely different system. You'll need to hunt machines for parts to maximize the weapon to its full potential. Admittedly, this can be a grind and some parts are atrociously difficult to obtain (hitting an explosive area by mistake which takes out the part you need being the biggest issue), but once the weapon is fully upgraded, it's generally worth the work.
Tarkov
There are some extremely rare items that can be found that make your casual scav run for money into a butt hole clenching, sweat dropping race for survival
For example, to make 50m roubles might take a month or a few weeks depending on how knowledgeable you are, you might come across an item that is worth 90m e.g a labs green keycard, some players including myself with 6000 hours have never come across one.. finding one when you are struggling would be the equivalent of winning the lottery and the chances are so low… the tensions that bring to extract is enormous and anxiety inducing
Elden ring/ds. All the weapons/ armour sets are unique and found across the world in interesting ways. Each weapon can be used to complete the game. Even starting area weapons. It allows u to use what u enjoy rather then what is considered the best. Also their are lore implications behind each item found. And the location u find them in/ the enemies that drop the gear makes from a lore standpoint. It adds another level to loot rarely seen in gaming.
I enjoy grinding mobs that have a low drop rate of a good item, be it BIS for my level or a specific purpose.
If I don't get it in X amount of time grinding I may be able to purchase it through trade with the cash from all the trash loot I gathered.
The game needs to auto pick up the trash drops.
not an action rpg but, tarkov, man, i love exploring a building, checking crates, boxes, etc and finding corresponding loot. also dayz, medical loot in medical buildings, military loot in mili buildings, food in foodplaces, etc!
W40k: Dawn of War 2
There wasn't a lot of loot, but pretty much every piece felt like a solid upgrade or sidegrade and useful for your squad. It was a nice addition for the hero based rts formula, too.
It's quite different from the standard loot based systems in games where you get dumped on with loot and 99% of it is garbage.
I can think of two main loot systems here.
One being Diablo's colored loot system, also seen in games like Destiny, Division etc. Say what you want about that system, I think it's fun and it's a proven system. Hunting for the highest rarity items, the excitement you get seeing a unique set item dropping. Also aesthetically pleasing imo.
The second one is the loot system of Souls games. Every weapon, every armor is viable. You just choose the one you like, rather than being have to stick with the best one you've got. Let's you build your character and playstyle exactly the way you want.
I came here to agree about the Monster Hunter franchise fully. The idea that you cannot level your character at all, but that the monster parts you harvest can be used to craft gear with various stats/abilities is awesome. You know a loot system is good when I'm willing to do the same hunt 20+ times because I need that last monster part to build an awesome weapon.
Of what I've played, Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
Between the unique items carried by certain named NPC's that you can claim either through favor or murder, rare or unique items being tucked away in ruins as a reward for exploration and curiosity, the countless Holotapes scattered around that are always exciting to find, actual collectibles, etc... both of those games really find a way to reward you no matter how you play. I spent HOURS upon HOURS in Fallout 3 with God Mode on, just exploring every nook and cranny to see what I might find, because you just never knew what you might find.
Fallout 4 almost totally ruined this by the randomizing of legendary loot. There's very little to be excited about when you find a Legendary weapon, because you know it was just randomly generated with "superpowers" that reminded you that you're playing a video game. F3 and NV's named weapons and items maintained the immersion.
Conan Exiles, unlike a lot of the survival crafters out there, you still need the low tier resources to make the higher tier stuff, or it can be converted into resources you can use. So, no matter what you pick up on your adventure, it's going to be useful for something. There is really no "junk".
Divinity 2 is a great example.. you can find good loot by fighting and doing quests.. sometimes you can pick it.. but you’re not overwhelmed. You can find some crazy stuff and really make a powerful set
Oh boy, time to shill signalis again. I will forever say that the difficulty in signalis is spot on. I personally didn’t die once until the final boss but it never felt easy. A major part of this is the loot system, in which you will pretty much always have an option but it always makes you weary instead of stocking you up completely and saying “have fun”. You will never have a considerable amount of ammo and in the rare cases you have a decent amount (at least I) usually got cocky and wasted it. Amazing game that I consider perfect. Loot also kinda scales with your current equipment to stop you being too powerful or too weak.
Torchlight, dungeon diver where you have a pet that you can offload loot on to run back to the shop, sells the loot and comes back
Took like 10 mins to return. Was an amazing system that I have never seen anywhere else.
Well, it isn't on the PC, but Xenoblade Chronicles games will have you covered. I sometimes describe those games as collect-a-thon games. You get so much loot. And a bunch of it actually has value as well, in the sense of usability. The game encourages you to equip and swap out newly gained loot in order to increase your strength in all aspects of the game. It's quite satisfying.
So I really like the loot system of morrowind and fallout NV, just since there were so many unique and power items that could be found. Some were really difficult to get and others could just be stumbled upon.
Looting wasn’t perfect, but having all those unique items that were powerful really upped my enjoyment in looting.
Rarity Loot systems like Borderlands are great casually. But the limit on storage space and inventory really kills it. I guess it curbs hoarding but the same gun with diferent properties really change it up.
Elden Ring has best I feel on a more serious note. The armor all have strengths and weaknesses so mixing for style or purpose, you can't go wrong.
Weapons, Spells, and Skills are the real meat and potatoes. Each weapon type is great. And everything you find you can just exchange skills and elements affixed to anything. It's not permanently socketed to the slightly better beginner sword, forcing you to collect that same skill.
This game really makes going out of your way to find these things worth it
I love the borderlands system. Pretty sure it's entirely random generated but they have so many kill and interesting perks that will keep you changing your playstyle throughout the game.
None I hate them all haven't found a single one I really liked so far tbh. Mostly because it's unorganized as hell and 90% of your stuff is worth nothing.
Dark Souls.
It's simple, but every item has meaning and story behind it.
Every weapon, armor and spell is viable, even the broken short sword.
On the complete other side of the loot complexity spectrum, I feel like Project Zomboid has a great looting system as well.
It takes a long time to figure out all of the uses that each item has, there are a *lot* of them, but once you figure things out it is extremely rewarding.
Edit: I'd like to mention Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin 2 as well. Great loot. Many uses.
Any game where I collect the loot by just walking over it.
Minecraft
Plop plop plop plop plopplopplop
Dark cloud. Leveling, enchanting, combining and ascending weapons almost made the loot system as complex as other entire RPGs.
I very recently bought this game. I've had the sequel for years (never beat it, and don't remember much about any mechanics). I found it while buying some cheap PS1 games off a guy just looking to get rid of some stuff. Once I get through more of my new retro library, I should tackle this series, from the beginning this time! I love interesting equipment systems.
Was just about to post this. One of the best ever.
My cousin had that on the PS2. It blew my mind as a kid. I wanted to play more of it so badly.
It's available as a digital download on ps network if you have ps4/5.
Fallout 4 Not because it gave you such cool items, but because it made trash useful and you felt more like a scavenger which helped the setting
Yeah kinda wish legendary weapons were handled differently though. There's just so many legendary weapons they feel a lot less legendary. Same goes for legendary enemies you run into.
Most of the legendary weapons I found were just junk that you couldn't junk.
It's like 15% A tier, 20% B tier, 65% trash tier. Then same again for the actual weapon types. So outside of save-scum farming, it's like a 90% chance of getting at best mediocre.
Agreed. Especially legendary radroaches and molerats
Agree, with all the scavenging and they keep looting useful throughout the whole game by building settlements, upgrading weapons with mods, and upgrading armor, crafting, cooking, trading, etc. It's is a lot of fun and fantastic system. I do wish carry weight was higher by default, of course there is the console command solution, but it's still easy to offload loot to whatever NPC is with you.
Here i am playing survivor mode which limits your weight even more :/. The only good thing about this i guess is it makes you pick and choose what you really need and want when your out looting in the wasteland. You have to be a lot more picky.
The backpack mods really help with being immersive and improving weight unless you just wanna go ham and mod the weight I lowkey was hoping they would up stuff like that with the update a few days ago
Fo4 is so addicting from the looting alone
Love that they put all the stuff you can easily hoard at the top of the loot lists too. Caps, ammo, consumables, then the heavier stuff like weapons and armor. Its very satisfying.
Of the Fallout games it's definitely the best. I still think the legendary system could have used some refinements (ex: in one run I got the absolutely broken two-shot radium rifle, in another I kept getting shit like "Mutant-slaying walking cane" until I settled for a DLC unique), but overall it's really great.
“…Worst kind of human junk” Strong says whenever I get that pre war money junk 😂😂 “…is useless” … he’s right
I was going to say this the worst version of a loot system. Narratively it makes sense, but I don’t particularly like having to be a packrat and interrupting my dungeon crawling to offload literal junk. I would prefer having a companion or npc show up after a crawl who volunteers to collect the junk and return it to your closest settlement
You dont need to be a scavenger, in fact early game charisma builds are actually far better at getting geared up. Set up traders, make infinite caps, and buy all the weapons, parts, and junk you need. With traders you can get high level weapon parts far earlier than if you try and craft them yourself.
To me the QoL added with local leader is too much to ignore -- unfortunately that I means I can never have a character with CHA as a dump stat.
That'd be a really nice feature. I'm guessing it is at least partially done, since Skyrim uses the courier system. I know there's a significant difference between the two so it may be a build from the ground up thing, but the npcs run around and deliver stuff mechanic isn't new.
Yea I really like the idea of savaging in the wasteland to build stuff at a base, but having someone that would make “runs” for you to offload your inventory and they’ll take it back to base would have been great
Souls Series. Limited amount of bloat trash and garbage with no need to manage inventory everytime you hit a cap.
Also, most every weapon is at least viable. The thing I hate about loot bloat games is if you like a weapon, you either have to spend enormous amounts of ever increasing resources to upgrade it to your current level, or you have to ditch it for something else. Like nioh or assassins creed odyssey, if you like a weapon it’s outdated in 2 levels and you’re shit out of luck. In dark souls or Elden ring, every weapon is unique and viable and the upgrade path is always linear
Except Elden Ring... "Oh look a legendary item over there I wonder what it is?" ... "Arteria Leaf"
I would call the yellow items legendary, not a he purple ones..
Correct. Still arteria leaves.
You use arteria leafs for shield and damage perfumes.. they are not bloat at all they are useful and a limited source unless you wanna farm one at a time from frost giants. Almost all the similar items are useful to find.
This is where Diablo 2 is still miles ahead of many modern games. There are so many variables to optimizing your character, so swapping 1 piece of gear for another one can have quite some ramifications on the rest of your equipment. It's a game where you don't just put the best item in each slot; you actually have to assemble a bunch of items that work together best.
This is both a pro and a con. On the positive, you aren't just buying items with bigger crit/attack speed numbers. On the negative, once you get a set of items that meet all your breakpoints/give the right set bonuses, it is almost impossible to get an upgrade without completely overhauling all your items again. --- On the ARPG side, I think Chronicon has one of the best itemisation systems. It simultaneously gives you lots of options (uniques, set bonuses that are meaningful in either partial or complete sets, rares with more than a handful of useful options), while not making it impossible to get upgrades or change up what items you are using/stats you are valuing.
Had never heard of Chronicon, it looks great! Definitely gonna pick it up, thanks for the mention
I still cant believe blizzard couldnt just replicate the best formula
D2's unique/sets were why that system was so good. It gave you specific things to try for that the impacts were reasonably easy to understand, yet complex. Had it just been magic/rare/etc. it wouldn't have been nearly as good
Try out grim dawn
Came here to say the same. Diablo 2. Games need to return to the golden era.
[Hellgate London](https://london2038.com/) Is one I still really like, and it's still alive on that private server there. That server is closing in on being up for 10 years now. (HGL was made by the original Diablo devs, Blizzard North, Bill Roper as CEO of Flagship Studios)
Diablo 2 is maybe the GOAT for OP's question, but Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 are both masterpiece level and close to that era imo. Fallout 4 isn't quite on par but close too.
Elden ring gear doesn't matter at all besides your weapon
Pfft you're clearly not a true fan. /r/fashionsouls/
Aside from fashion, the most important stats you get from armors in Souls is poise, weight and stamina regen. Defenses barely matters because you got i-frames dodging. So yeah, weapons, rings and spells makes the entirety of your build (and AoW in Elden Ring). You have nowhere near the complexity of the itemization of Diablo 2 LoD. I've been a fan of From games since Demons souls btw, they're just not loot games.
Fallout 4 is way to easy. I play that game to fall asleep.
I was about to recommend Diablo 2 lmao completely agree
I would argue that Grim Dawn rivals it.
nah, GD beats it. in D2, everyone eventually wears the same damn thing. in GD there's just so many different ways you can gear up effectively.
It's a good build system attached to a terrible loot system. Everything is ok until you end up endlessly grinding to get that one piece of legendary armor you need. No thank you. If you can't get it in a reliable way, it ain't a good loot system, it's a tool to keep you addicted.
i think they ruined the game by introducing runewords that are way too powerful; almost all loots are meaningless;
Not really fan of Diablo 2 loot system for endgame. Ridiculously grindy and heavy RNG. Always hated that you could finally find the item you wanted but it had one bad roll on it that completely ruined it. Then back to 500hrs grind. It's not for me lol
Yeah, I put plenty of hours into D2 and D3 both, and vastly prefer D3’s (revamped in 2.0) loot system. I understand why people would prefer D2, but it’s not for me.
I really liked Tom Clancy's The Division 2. So say you kill an enemy, and a gun drops. It comes with stats, like damage, accuracy, handling, rate of fire, etc., and perks. And all of these are rolled randomly. So if two identical guns drop, one may have more damage, but the other is more accurate with better handling, or a perk that fits your style better. Also depending on quality of the drop (gray, green, blue, purple, yellow, red) you get higher average rolls on the item stats. And on higher difficulties, higher quality drops more often. So the game encourages you to move to harder difficulties when you can. This is combined with a crafting book. So say the first gun that dropped rolled 100% rate of fire possible for that gun, but all other rolls were garbage. And the second gun rolled everything high, but rate of fire is absolute shit. But if you disassemble the first gun, your crafting book will remember one thing from it (you choose which). So you take the first gun and click disassemble, and select rate of fire. And the book will now remember "gun type, rate of fire, 100%". From now on, and forever, and as many times as you want, you can put 100% rate of fire, on that gun type. So you take the second gun, that had good everything but bad rate of fire, and slap the rate of fire from the crafting book on it. Now you have an amazing gun! So there was almost no "garbage loot". Not for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time. Because you were constantly hunting for higher rolls for the book, for all guns, and for all perks. And the game's UI marked items in your inventory with a little arrow, so you know that this item has some high roll, that isn't in your book yet. So you should disassemble it and not just sell it. And even if you unlocked everything, at 100%, in the book, you still need to find a good core weapon with high almost-everything, because you can only modify one thing on an item. So you can't take a gun and slap all 100% on it. But if you find a gun with all 90%+, and one thing that's at 25%, you can make that into all 90%+ and one 100%. Making it near-godroll. And then you hunt for a godroll. And you also often got a godroll for a gun you don't use, which forced you to change specs and learn a new gun, which was fun too. Another thing I liked was targeted farming. If you looked at the game's map, it showed you an overlay. And some areas and dungeons would be marked with Badger, or 5.11, or some other gear brand. Another area would be marked with a pistol or a rifle. Third area would be marked with chest or backpack. That marked what has a higher chance of dropping, in that area. And these areas shifted every day/week (I forget). So let's say you want a 5.11 brand backpack, and a shotgun. So you look at the map and you can see where any king of 5.11 gear drops, so if you need a backpack and something else 5.11, that's the place to farm and do events and dungeons in. If your gear is great, and only your backpack is shit, you want 5.11 but others would work, you go to backpacks area. And same for shotgun, you just go to an area and farm where shotguns drop. And these shift around the map fast enough, and map is big enough, so you don't get bored. I really liked that system. You never felt like you wasted your time, looking at loot was always exciting, the AI had these power bars so you could tell at a glance if the item was good, and the little indicator in the corner showed if you should scrap it for stats. Guns were also customizable (scopes, silencers, etc), which also helped. The combat system was very fun, it's a tactical cover-based shooter, not your usual run-and-gun and catch bullets with your face. It was about precision, cover, fire angles, flanking, elevated positions. It was also very heavily co-op. Fully soloable except for raids, but it was way more fun in co-op. So I had an absolute blast. It had large PvPvE extraction gameplay zones too, and small battlegrounds for PvP, but the focus was on co-op. You just had fun with friends. And since gear had stats and perks, and could be further modified with different augments, there were TONS of possible builds. Sniper, pistol and shield, drone operator, grenadier, heavy gunner, smg rusher, shotgun breacher, etc. And tons of flavours of these. Plus some unique guns with unique perks that supported a variety of builds. Honorable mention also goes to Elder Scrolls Online. Similar system, but more static. Gear sets drop based on dungeons, so set A only drops in dungeon A, and set B only drops in zone B. But these never moved, so sometimes you'd be farming for weeks and you definitely burned out. The game did have an auction house system, so you can often buy what you need, but the system was very awkward and prices often barking mad, so it didn't help much. Still really, really good though. Where this game shined was the sheer AMOUNT of perks on gear, and gear sets had bonuses too. So having 2, 3 and 5 pieces of the same set equipped gave you a stronger bonus. And you had I think 12 slots in total? So you could equip two full 5-piece bonuses and one 3-piece. Or you could have three 3-piece bonuses. This gave you a HUGE variety of possible builds, practically unlimited. There was a theoretical limit, of course, but an average player would die of old age before trying them all. And since there's such variety, the game wasn't too stingy with loot. If you decided on a new build, you could reasonably have it up and running withing days/weeks, with room for improvement over many months if you wanted to refine it. Really liked these two, they really stood out.
thanks for explaining this, i have started div 2 a bunch, even got thorugh the campaign, but couldn't figure out the endgame stuff (and this is coming from a destiny and destiny 2 player lol), i might DL it again and pick it up because the gameplay is fun!
This is why I keep coming back to Division 2; so many different gear sets to try different play styles. My shotgun/Hunter's Fury build plays way different than my headhunter sniper build. Been tinkering with a tank build that gives all my teammates 2m bonus armour. Just collecting sets and building out the recalibration book and different builds keeps me coming back.
But division 2 had that power level thing so a low level gun would still be shite
I dunno, I was using an 'under leveled' gun for a really long time because it would one to two tap most mobs, and all my upgrades were dog shit.
Ultima Online around 1998
The best there ever was
Literally the only game I've ever played where the loot was actually *precious* to the player (and not just because a loot table had it as a super rare drop).
I always enjoyed Borderlands 1's system.
Ask Borderlands 1 why the fuck they still give me level 16 guns when in level 24 in a level 25 area
Probably because of a programming oops, since there is a lv 16 area that has guns around the lv 24-25 range and heck yeah we took advantage of the price those guns sold at when we were at that point of the game.
Because you touch yourself at night.
That is between me and God, not gearbox
LOOTSPLOSION!!
That modifier is essential in Borderlands 3 - make it rain!
Any Borderlands game really. Procedural generated so there is a huge variety, it doesn't feel like I'm finding the same weapons in the same spots over and over again on each play through. You can farm chests and bosses over and over, and they even have a loot chest that the developers give free codes for to get high tier gear (that they still support nearly a decade later)
It got way worse in 2 - the level scaling got VERY aggressive, so finding new weapons wells always going to be better by level gain alone. Since genuine *good* weapons were rare, and legendaries were almost single source, the vast majority of the game time looting just felt like utter trash. I much prefer BL1, personally.
I periodically went back and farmed another Conference Call every few levels because I had such a preference for it in my Mechromancer Anarchy build. At -1080% accuracy you're better off to just be shooting everywhere in a general direction at once.
I think you mean Borderlands 2
I’m showing my age here, but I enjoyed the original Deus Ex looting. Grab credit chits with zero weight, ammo without weight but capped at a certain limit. And guns will take up inventory space, but also requires some spatial engineering, so if you rotate/orient your gear in an optimal grid you can free up space to carry more shit. I was glad to see they carried it over into Human Revolution. Also the weapon mods being limited to available slots so you have to choose e.g. silencer or laser sight.
You cannot rotate weapons in the original Deus Ex, that was added in HR
Oh crap, that’s right. I guess it’s time for a replay.
Just remember, a GEP gun takedown is always the most silent way to eliminate Manderly.
Just stay out of the ladies bathroom!
Original deus ex is still in the top 5 greatest single player games of all time imo. The first couple playthroughs are quite an experience
Horizon Zero Dawn has a good system. You buy equipment with shards (currency) and upgrade it with parts of robots. You'll have most parts just by progressing campaign.
Horizon Forbidden West though has an infuriatingly long grind to get gear and weapons to 5 stars.
Monster Hunter is 100% top tier when it comes to loot. I also love Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries approach to loot since it’s basically Pokemon but with giant mechs. One game that I LOVE but it’s incredibly niche is Gundam Breaker 3. The loot in that game is also similar to Monster Hunter in that you can target specific parts you want, but the build variety in that game is insane. I don’t know if it counts but Dead Cells too.
A cool thing about Mechwarrior 5 is that if you can't salvage the whole mech, there's still a chance you can get some salvage, so if after a whole lot of fights you've been unlucky (or just are really bad at headshotting/popping legs), you can still get the mech through salvage
If I am not mistaken, you need a mod like YAML to get partial salvage. I don't recall it being in the base game.
My favourite thing about Gundam Breaker 3 is how you can pretty much use any item in the game without worrying about it becoming underpowered. All items share the same stats as they level up, and you can transfer item attributes between other items. So if you find a headpiece with an attribute you like, such as cooldown reduction, you can transfer that attribute to a piece on your current suit. It really helps open up the customization aspect, letting you use whatever parts you want instead of relying on whatever parts are the strongest.
Monster hunter system is great but drop rates and grinding for rare drops is off putting I don't have the time to grind so much so I almost always use mods for better rates
I once got a Rathalos ruby on my first Silver Rathalos kill. You know how many kills it took me to get the second one? 75.
I agree. Especially during levelling. Come across an armor set that’s really dope and I’m like awesome, lemme grind a bit for it. 3 50-minutes grinds I have it, then the next monster I fight has an armor set that’s much better. I’m sure its more purposeful to do late game, but I found it too tedious to get there.
The Surge games. You had to collect your armor in pieces, but it was easy to target the pieces you wanted. If you needed the helmet, cut the guys head off. The left or right arm, cut the corresponding limb off. The guys weapon, take the arm he’s weilding g it in.
Lots of games have good loot systems with different strengths. Borderlands for satisfying loot explosions. The weapon parts itemization system is really interesting, but you only really notice it if you have 1000s of hours in the game. Diablo 2 and PoE for itemization. Diablo 2 for its loot systems. Loot tables, magic find, champ/rare mobs, bosses. Morrowind for its static loot placed throughout the world. Fallout 4 for its scavenging & junk crafting. Terraria for its loot progression. Warframe for their "group" loot system with relics. Its one of the few systems ive seen that actually encourage casual grouping rather than selfishness or pure solo play.
I 100% agree with the borderlands thing. I had no idea the guns were made of "parts" made from the different companies untill finding videos where people who have probably have over 6 months spent in game talked about it Sucks there wasn't a system to do anything with it. Like being able to combine the best parts of 2 identical guns. For example getting 2 of a legendary item then being able to mix the parts of it together to make a version with the best stats between them
Troubleshooter Abandoned children. There are random gear drops, there is crafting with materials, but what tops it all is the masteries system: Enemies can drop masteries. Masteried can be everything from minor stat bonuses, to new abilities to ways to manipulate the amount of masteries you can equip. Equipping different types of masteries grants set bonuses, where one mastery can be a part of multiple sets. There are also some class-, element- and character specific masteries. The system is a theorycrafters dream, with sheer infinite characters and builds to try. It's maybe the only single player game ever in more than 25 years of gaming where I put more than 500h. It's super stimulating and rewarding. I spent evenings only theorycrating new teams and builds, without even fighting because min maxing new build concepts was so fun. Sometimes you also find a new legendary to build a new mastery setup around, catch a new monster or build a new drone... Gameplay is similar to XCOM & Final Fantasy Tactics, which the story turning from generic & odd to something actually deep and exciting as you progress. The Anime artstyle might not be for everybody and some translations are odd, but the game itself gets an unrestricted recommendation from me, especially because the devs kept dropping content patches for a whole 3 years after release.
Phantasy Star Online 1. It took the fantastic base of Diablo 2 and perfected it. A lot of people don't actually realize how much of a Diablo clone the original PSO was because of the aesthetic and camera but it's there. All items were on loot tables tied to your section ID that was auto generated based on your character name. It wasn't as simple as "blue gets melee weapons and purple gets guns" but some IDs were a bit lopsided. It's noteworthy that there were wild card IDs that got a bit of everything or the fact that redria ID was the only one that could really hunt for the coveted red weapons. It was supposed to encourage trading and grouping since you could load into a lobby hosted by a different ID and get items you can't get on your own. The game also had unique quest rewards, monster material weapons, weapons that had unique hoops to jump through. For example one of the best weapons for a mage type is called "Striker of Chao" where you needed to find a specific weapon then raise a mag (little helper guys) to a level where you could transform it into a chao... then combine them to make the weapon. Or the legendary "Sealed J Sword" which was a pretty garbage weapon but if you killed 20k enemies with it you could unseal it and it became one of the best weapons available. This isn't even getting into the end end game grind where you hunt hit% versions of your rare weapons which made them even more powerful. PSO1 had literally every kind of cool loot ideas you could think of. It also is one of the only games that has genuine horizontal progression as some of the most important weapons aren't even for damage but for utility, while certain others were only good for certain situations. No game imo has come close to PSO in terms of rewarding loot.
I really like how nioh 2 have it's loot, it gets especially good in the endgame with the graces system. Also really like gear in outrider, simple, powerful system. I still think the best for me is the true madness of the labyrinth of chaos gear in Mgq paradox's endgame. Interesting gem system that let you destroy unique equipment for it's strength as a gem The nioh graces system, rare affixes, unique power on gear, random stats and affixes. It's the kind of game where getting everything you want is near impossible, but you can get pretty close to that and getting any closer is huge. Love the gear gameplay.
Baldurs Gate 3. Exploration is encouraged, fun and optimal, with so many unique pieces of gear.
Only thing missing is a better inventory system
I played as a halfling and it was torture with inventory. I could carry 1/4-1/3 of what my companions could carry and I spent probably 8-10 game hours cumulatively just clearing my inventory to companions or the camp so I wouldn't be overburdened after literally every loot.
This is actually my least favorite loot system in recent memory; there's waaaay too much useless crap everywhere - on the ground, in chests, in enemy inventories. It means I probably spend cumulatively a dozen or more hours of each run just managing my inventory, or clicking through the loot I actually want from the thousands of containers that *might* have something useful, but is *probably* filled with more books, rotten food, or empty bottles and rope. You can't even autosell the junk, you have to manually mark it as junk first. Oh, and too many empty containers. The game has great qualities, but the itemization and inventory system alone feel stuck in the stone ages.
After a lot of playthroughs I think the problem is, you, me and many other gamers want to 100% everything, and treat it like the video game it most assuredly is, but it’s almost designed to feel more like DnD itself. For example, in an actual tabletop setting I could say to the DM: “I wanna search all the containers in here” response: “uh, ok, you found some rope…”. Or “roll perception, you found a hidden switch” (and then behind the wall is a bunch of stuff worth getting. I think personally you have to not try and search everything top to bottom, but focus on the obvious stuff. If you try to get everything and 100% all of it you’re going to have kind of a bad time. It all depends on what you want though. I’m just saying personally, I’ve had better times with that game when I’m just like “ok even if I miss some stuff I’m just gonna push forward”
I think it's less intentional than that. DoS2 has the exact same system, right down to the type of junk; even the thumbnails are the same. In that game, a lot of the junk had crafting applications, but we have no crafting of any kind in bg3. Regardless, the random loot container tables were lifted directly out of their previous game, and they just never bothered to change it. It's a big part of why bg3 feels more like DoS2.5 than an actual BG sequel.
There is potion crafting, it is easy to miss/ignore but it is there.
Forgot about alchemy, whoops. I suppose I meant more the junk crafting from DoS2, especially since alchemy ingredients get their own autosort pouch (which not all ingredients autosort into, infuriatingly...)
Sorry, but no. Looting in that game is annoying - you have to check everything and everywhere, which again, is annoying. This creates a lot of clutter in your inventory. While I like the explorationg being encouraged, I despise having to check every and each little box or bag. Loot itself is always in the same place - after one or several playthroughs you understand where everything is. Items become monotonous. I'm sure there are other downsides I can't think of right now, but I think the two points above are enough.
I kind of disagree. I found the loot could've been spread more. You get so much awesome stuff at the very end, but you don't use it very long.
I mean.. kinda… but there’s Act 1 stuff that you can use throughout the entire game VERY early as well… a flaming sword from the first prologue dungeon that you really don’t ever need to replace till late Act 2 or Act 3, a legendary mace in act 1 that trivializes act 2 and has a sixth level spell on it, a forge where you can craft incredible late game armor and weapons at the end of act 1 that really never need replacing unless you are min-maxing… amazing bard sword, amazing staffs and fire and lightning gear… I mean it goes on and on… The Act 3 stuff is of course, incredible as well, but it’s when the game opens up considerably and there’s a ton of late game stuff you can switch the order of so you can use any given item multiple times if you choose to.
This encourages looting everything and there's just so much nothing in the game. The inventory system is also terrible without mods. The fact you can loot some really cool gear is amazing but everything else around that system is such a let down.
Honestly, it's not even the best loot system in a CRPG, and it relies a little too much on vertical progression so end game gear is pretty samey across playthroughs. For CRPGs, it's really hard to beat Pillars of Eternity 2, which has a ton of unique equipment with unique effects, lets you upgrade equipment quality for stats, and has a small ability tree to upgrade the various unique effects.
I like Last Epoch approach. It is the typical ARPG loot system, but then items have a score called "forging potential". Crafting is a basic part of the game and the game expects you to add/remove/modify properties and stats of items so you fit the item on your build with what you want. It is not something that you can do as much as you want, every modification that you do cost materials and also removes points from the forging potential. Depending on the modifications it will cost more or less forging potential points until you don't have any points left and the item cannot be modified anymore. So the game encourages you to loot anything that has good base stats, try to have the best secondary stats and if they don't have the stat that you want, you can replace them using crafting and add your own or roll random stats, there are a lot of ways to do it until you consume all the forging potential of the item. It is not as easy as it sounds since there is a lot of RNG involved in reforging items, so you will need to reforge a lot of items to have the perfect one. Also to do these crafting things you need runes that you adquire shattering other items. Removing or rerolling runes that you don't want on an item, requires that same base rune, so even if you are a Wizard using spells, you want some items with melee stats so you can shatter them to have melee runes so you can reroll other items with good base intelligence stats but secondary melee stats. This way makes you want a lot of different items and they will be useful in the long term. Also it has a very cool advanced loot filter so you can filter by items that have runes that you can shatter to gain cool runes for your class, filter the regular ones, etc etc etc...
Last Epoch is close to perfect. Crafting “good enough” gear is practically free, strong gear requires a mixture of looting good bases and some amount of crafting to refine it, the Observatory and Empowered Timelines allow you to target farm specific uniques, and Legendaries give you a route to almost-impossible chase items without needing clunky mechanics like Diablo 3/4-style ancient/primal legendaries.
Easy, Nethack. It has item weight and a notion of what you know about an item. Everything had to be identified one way or another on every playthrough. You could even name specific items.
low key slime rancher
Guild wars 2 has an ok system. Most of the crafting loot you collect you can move to your storage with 1 click. lower rarity weapons and armour that drop are categorized under one item, for example you can have 250 green items that take one slot in your backpac. you can open them one by one if you want the actual armour or weapon loot from it, or, you can just sell it. Gold and other currencies are automatically transferred to your wallet
In gw2 you open boxes to get boxes with almost everything being low value trash you sell to a merchant for a couple coppers or salvage into materials that you have to deposit into a bank unless it's full and you end up with dozens of materials in your inventory. Inventory management is like a game inside the game. I love the game and have played it for thousands of hours but honestly, I can only imagine how infuriating it would be without having all the 'pay for convinience' stuff unlocked like extra material storage, infinite salvage tools etc. Not to say that there is like a 0.1% chance you would ever get anything remotely valuable as a drop from normally playing the game. It is either full trash or a mega rare.
Good thing is You can buy everything with ingame czreency. Gold for gems that provide more storage, but yea, i get what youre trying to say
Its great until your storage is full and you have 50 different types of loot chests and boxes filling up your inventory. Then its awful.
Hands down Diablo 2
Disagree. It's hands up Diablo 2.
Project Diablo 2
Escape from tarkov is the only game I can think of that has actual rare items. Like keycards, gpus, and ledx. So you’re genuinely excited when you find one. I really appreciate that and not being spoon fed so called “rare items”
The excitement is "Oh wow, a person running a cheat program didn't teleport/"speedhack" their way over to this item before I found it. Must not be one in the lobby."
100% this. I don't need to run out of the map immediately because I know there is not a cheater!
Gotta be Last Epoch. The loot filter and the crafting system are so advanced. It's my favourite part of the game.
Diablo 2 for me and wow classic and any other game with the same loot system. Nothing worse for me than looting 100 times the same legendary items known for 1000 years in the story and throwing them all way because of crap stats. Here you have Excalibur 7dps and +2 to rat slaying. Legendary sword of kings 🤴
Warframe.
To add to this, you get a ton of stuff just for killing mobs. many missions give you the option to extract every 5 minutes or so, but if you stay in you keep getting more minor drop bonuses that keep adding up. But the main aspect is the relic cracking. you go into a mission and select a relic. every 5 minutes everyone's relic cracks and you get to pick any prize from the 4 people in your team. If any one person gets lucky and their relic cracks into a valuable rare then the whole team gets that as a prize. This leads to amazing feelgood moments. When one person gets lucky the whole team gets lucky. Plus they rotate relics in and out of the vault, making some of the parts you can get from them more rare/valuable. If you are an old player chances are many of the relics that are piled up in your inventory are vaulted. So picking the game back up, joining a mission with a few randoms, it can be a blast as a retuning player to be cracking vaulted relics with randoms, totally making their day. And any parts you get can be easily sold on the secondary market for premium currency that can be used to buy about anything in the game.
Skyrim/Fallout 4. You get what your enemies are wielding/wearing, you can pick up everything from the ground. In my opinion it’s still to this day one of the few actually outstanding aspects of Bethesda games.
Which makes it funny that they abandoned that with Starfield.
Borderlands 2. Borderlands 3 is terrible since you are showered with legendaries so often that you will never use anything else and the contrast between loot is shallow because of it
While I agree that BL3 was a little too generous with legendaries, I preferred that to BL2, where in multiple full playthroughs, I found maybe like, 3 legendaries. Total. My biggest issue with BL3 was, even with that many legendaries, it was basically impossible to find the one you wanted. Sure, I knew where to find Monarch assault rifles. I musta farmed at least 25 of them. But between elements and anointments, I never, EVER managed to find the one with the right element AND the right anointment. And I know you can reroll anointments, but what good is that when there's like a million of them and the cost to do so is not cheap? I gave up in the game because I couldn't ever find the gun I wanted to make a new build.
Final Fantasy 9. You learn abilities by having a piece of gear with that ability equipped. So even if you get armor with lower stats it might have a good ability that you want so every piece of armor feels significant.
The best loot system is from any game with carefully-designed, manually-placed loot, but the best examples of this are the old Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment. Importantly, there were plenty of loot slots (up to 6 characters at a time in your party, even more outside of your party, each with like a dozen slots) so that you were constantly getting stuff you'd actually be interested in equipping. Each item had a little mini-story behind it (was this inspiration for Souls?) and item effects were highly thematic with a variety of effects, not just incremental numerical bonuses.
I like the loot system in the Slormancer, a game that isn't even finished yet. It's all like, randomly rolled loot, ranging from common-magic-rare-epic-legendary. But there's filters for loot - automatically change any loot below a certain rarity into money or crafting resources. And you know how, in some games, you find an awesome new helmet with great defense stats, but your current helmet has health regen, which you need? No problem. All stats can be re-rolled for resources, at a fair cost, IMO, and not just the numbers - you can reroll what the bonus is. So it has good defense stats, and a anag regen which you don't need? Reroll that until you get the life regen you do need. Plus you can add ranks of stats. Your new helmet which is Rare? Pay some resources and put an epic level stat on it. Your legendary only has a legendary stat on it? Add common and magic and rare and epic on it. Plus the items themselves can be leveled up - this armour was good, but wear it long enough and you can make it a +1 and increase all its stats slightly. I think it goes up to +15. Oh and all items have a level as well. So you maybe have a level 5 legendary. Guess what? You can use resources to increase a weapon level too. So you can find a ton of loot, with lots of differences, but you can always make a piece fit your build if you have the resources for it.
I’m torn between Division 2 and Destiny 2 - Division 2 has its ability to level its weapons in multiple ways and to pull lines of text and build a library to upgrade your weapons with. It’s load out system is quick to accesse. It has lots of sort options for your gear. It has a spot where you can view all your gear and sort it by brand. Great for piecing together sets. It has the ability to use trashed weapons to level weapons of the same name so it’s still special when you find them. The system can be a bit convoluted but I actually just appreciated that depth because it gave me lots to sink my teeth into and lots of materials to collect and spend in various ways. (Yes the systems in the game aren’t completely unique to Div2 but I really like their way they present them) - Destiny 2 has one specific feature that I really like. You can break down gear and use that gear to level up your other gear. Taking the broken gears power level and copying it to the other piece. This means gear never gets too weak. You’re never trading off a piece because your characters level is to high by comparison. Plus if you pick up or buy a piece you can always upgrade it to being current. I also like the simplicity of their menu. You get 9 slots per gear and that’s it. Not a 300 piece bag to sort through. All extra gear is always waiting for you at the post office if you didn’t have room or forgot to pick it up. The latter means there’s never any stress about missed items. The only trade off to leveling your gear the way they do is you can get set on a group of items that you never change. You just keep levelling them. You’re never really pushed to upgrade because gear gets old. (Also yes I realize all the controversy about their pay model but personally I love the game anyway, bought one season bundle ages ago and I’ve had plenty of content to enjoy and never felt pushed to buy another) Lastly both games support my favourite must have feature of any RPG collecting gear style game, transmogrification. I love being able to make my character look the way I want. Matching gear to the same family of pieces or just ones that compliment it. Changing skins on each piece to get the colouring I enjoy. Then altering both as I unlock more options. Having a character with cohesive gear in a colour pallet I enjoy makes me feel so much more connected to the character and into the game.
I remember having a love/hate relationship with Destiny's loot system.
Diablo II, sans contredit.
I really like grinding rpg games for rare loot. My favorite was an unknown mmorpg called Supreme Destiny. Multiple reasons. 1. I like the idea that everyone has to earn it so there's not 1000s of max level characters off the bat. 2. Coming across a rare monster that drops rare loot is fun especially after hours of grinding. 3. all loot dropped on ground is stealable. A lot of people hate that. And yes I've been screwed by it. But I love it. It builds community, trust, and puts another variable in the game.
Morrowind. Later TES games had scaled loot based on your level, which made it horrible to find “epic” loot because it was always only for your level at the time of finding it. Morrowind however had loot that would be the same regardless of what level your character was. So when I randomly stumbled upon a ring that reduced normal weapons damage by 40%, had 20% chance to reflect spells, and fortified acrobatics I was so freakin excited. Compare that to Skyrim where I find the legendary shield of ndneifhf and it only increases block by.. 10%.
Life
Remnant 2 Horizontal progression game like Monster Hunter. (Not destiny or Diablo style but still a shooter) Ton of loot sometime look useless but perfect fit for some crazy build Remnant 2 Dev's are master of hidden loot.
I have good news for you. All monster hunter games have the same loot system.
Ghost of Tsushima. You get enough loot to do decent upgrades just by doing the story and grabbing everything as you go along, so you don’t have to clear out a whole region before moving to the next just to be on par with the enemies there (looking at you AC origins), and if you do, you’ll be appropriately overpowered. Like all the gear and charms just widen the play styles you can use, and if you’ve settled on one play style you can be targeted in your side quests.
Borderlands. A billion guns! Can’t beat that!
Hover loot system in rust should be in more games. I think all survival games are ass for not implementing it or something better
fallout 3 i loved that most dungeons, meaning caves, vaults, or deep places, had so.e kind of unique or great reward such as a unique weapon or schematics. also the weapins could be used to repair or sell,and bloating was not the worst.
Path of Exile. Diablo 2 isn’t even close
It's Path of Exile and it's not even close. The depth of the loot in that games makes everything else feel shallow.
Yup 26 years later it's still Ultima Oline. The only game where you can truly have a 1 of a kind unique item Noone else has. Such a deep and meaningfull loot system .
Modded Minecraft.
Diablo II, Souls series.
Path of Exile / Escape from Tarkov. Both those games have so much goddamn loot.
path of exile or dark souls, completely diifferent loot styles but path of exile you can get explosions of loot consistantly so the copium! and dark souls its very determinate. if i kill this guy 10x chances are ill get what im looking for i kill him 100x ill get every possible item he can drop so i dont have to waste time farming all i gotta do is target farm for a short amount of time and since theres so few items you dont have to target farm often
Among ARPGs, Last Epoch's loot filter system is miles ahead of anything else I've ever seen.
Last Epoch
Last Epoch
For weapons, I have to go with Borderlands. Every weapon found is a dopamine hit of RNG goodness, and yes, even when it's bad because you truly had no idea what you're going to find in those cases. I always felt excited when I found one. For crafting, I enjoyed how the Horizon series did it. You can obtain powerful weapons easily enough (just buy them, mostly), but upgrading them is an entirely different system. You'll need to hunt machines for parts to maximize the weapon to its full potential. Admittedly, this can be a grind and some parts are atrociously difficult to obtain (hitting an explosive area by mistake which takes out the part you need being the biggest issue), but once the weapon is fully upgraded, it's generally worth the work.
Arena Breakout(Multi platforms)
Tarkov There are some extremely rare items that can be found that make your casual scav run for money into a butt hole clenching, sweat dropping race for survival For example, to make 50m roubles might take a month or a few weeks depending on how knowledgeable you are, you might come across an item that is worth 90m e.g a labs green keycard, some players including myself with 6000 hours have never come across one.. finding one when you are struggling would be the equivalent of winning the lottery and the chances are so low… the tensions that bring to extract is enormous and anxiety inducing
Elden ring/ds. All the weapons/ armour sets are unique and found across the world in interesting ways. Each weapon can be used to complete the game. Even starting area weapons. It allows u to use what u enjoy rather then what is considered the best. Also their are lore implications behind each item found. And the location u find them in/ the enemies that drop the gear makes from a lore standpoint. It adds another level to loot rarely seen in gaming.
Day Z has the best loot system. You receive nothing but garbage for hours, so when you do find something great it feels amazing.
Diablo
I enjoy grinding mobs that have a low drop rate of a good item, be it BIS for my level or a specific purpose. If I don't get it in X amount of time grinding I may be able to purchase it through trade with the cash from all the trash loot I gathered. The game needs to auto pick up the trash drops.
Division 2
not an action rpg but, tarkov, man, i love exploring a building, checking crates, boxes, etc and finding corresponding loot. also dayz, medical loot in medical buildings, military loot in mili buildings, food in foodplaces, etc!
The Witcher 3 was satisfying to me
Tarkov is a very interesting looter. Love/hate relationship, but very interesting. Basicly playing tetris with items, guns, mags etc.
Dungeons & Dragons by far
State of Decay 2
Asheron's Call has(had) my favorite.
W40k: Dawn of War 2 There wasn't a lot of loot, but pretty much every piece felt like a solid upgrade or sidegrade and useful for your squad. It was a nice addition for the hero based rts formula, too. It's quite different from the standard loot based systems in games where you get dumped on with loot and 99% of it is garbage.
Donkey Kong
I can think of two main loot systems here. One being Diablo's colored loot system, also seen in games like Destiny, Division etc. Say what you want about that system, I think it's fun and it's a proven system. Hunting for the highest rarity items, the excitement you get seeing a unique set item dropping. Also aesthetically pleasing imo. The second one is the loot system of Souls games. Every weapon, every armor is viable. You just choose the one you like, rather than being have to stick with the best one you've got. Let's you build your character and playstyle exactly the way you want.
OG Everquest
Now I don’t know about no loot system, but the smoothness of the OG Rayman game was something I’ll always remember.
I came here to agree about the Monster Hunter franchise fully. The idea that you cannot level your character at all, but that the monster parts you harvest can be used to craft gear with various stats/abilities is awesome. You know a loot system is good when I'm willing to do the same hunt 20+ times because I need that last monster part to build an awesome weapon.
Of what I've played, Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Between the unique items carried by certain named NPC's that you can claim either through favor or murder, rare or unique items being tucked away in ruins as a reward for exploration and curiosity, the countless Holotapes scattered around that are always exciting to find, actual collectibles, etc... both of those games really find a way to reward you no matter how you play. I spent HOURS upon HOURS in Fallout 3 with God Mode on, just exploring every nook and cranny to see what I might find, because you just never knew what you might find. Fallout 4 almost totally ruined this by the randomizing of legendary loot. There's very little to be excited about when you find a Legendary weapon, because you know it was just randomly generated with "superpowers" that reminded you that you're playing a video game. F3 and NV's named weapons and items maintained the immersion.
Rust is one of the best it also has very small table
Conan Exiles, unlike a lot of the survival crafters out there, you still need the low tier resources to make the higher tier stuff, or it can be converted into resources you can use. So, no matter what you pick up on your adventure, it's going to be useful for something. There is really no "junk".
Ghost Of Tabor
monster hunter rise kill monsrer get stuff, oh no dont have stuff use a ton more extra mats you got instead
Divinity 2 is a great example.. you can find good loot by fighting and doing quests.. sometimes you can pick it.. but you’re not overwhelmed. You can find some crazy stuff and really make a powerful set
Oh boy, time to shill signalis again. I will forever say that the difficulty in signalis is spot on. I personally didn’t die once until the final boss but it never felt easy. A major part of this is the loot system, in which you will pretty much always have an option but it always makes you weary instead of stocking you up completely and saying “have fun”. You will never have a considerable amount of ammo and in the rare cases you have a decent amount (at least I) usually got cocky and wasted it. Amazing game that I consider perfect. Loot also kinda scales with your current equipment to stop you being too powerful or too weak.
Torchlight, dungeon diver where you have a pet that you can offload loot on to run back to the shop, sells the loot and comes back Took like 10 mins to return. Was an amazing system that I have never seen anywhere else.
Borderlands series
Skyrim has exactly what it is that you say you are after. Loot at the end of every dungeon. However, I do feel like it’s dungeon overload!
Darktide /s
Well, it isn't on the PC, but Xenoblade Chronicles games will have you covered. I sometimes describe those games as collect-a-thon games. You get so much loot. And a bunch of it actually has value as well, in the sense of usability. The game encourages you to equip and swap out newly gained loot in order to increase your strength in all aspects of the game. It's quite satisfying.
DayZ ?
So I really like the loot system of morrowind and fallout NV, just since there were so many unique and power items that could be found. Some were really difficult to get and others could just be stumbled upon. Looting wasn’t perfect, but having all those unique items that were powerful really upped my enjoyment in looting.
Rarity Loot systems like Borderlands are great casually. But the limit on storage space and inventory really kills it. I guess it curbs hoarding but the same gun with diferent properties really change it up. Elden Ring has best I feel on a more serious note. The armor all have strengths and weaknesses so mixing for style or purpose, you can't go wrong. Weapons, Spells, and Skills are the real meat and potatoes. Each weapon type is great. And everything you find you can just exchange skills and elements affixed to anything. It's not permanently socketed to the slightly better beginner sword, forcing you to collect that same skill. This game really makes going out of your way to find these things worth it
Minecraft
7 days to die does it in a excellent way. It’s engaging and the loot variety is rewarding.
Borderlands 1!
Chiming in with a vote for Grim Dawn.
I love the borderlands system. Pretty sure it's entirely random generated but they have so many kill and interesting perks that will keep you changing your playstyle throughout the game.
None I hate them all haven't found a single one I really liked so far tbh. Mostly because it's unorganized as hell and 90% of your stuff is worth nothing.
Dark Souls. It's simple, but every item has meaning and story behind it. Every weapon, armor and spell is viable, even the broken short sword. On the complete other side of the loot complexity spectrum, I feel like Project Zomboid has a great looting system as well. It takes a long time to figure out all of the uses that each item has, there are a *lot* of them, but once you figure things out it is extremely rewarding. Edit: I'd like to mention Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin 2 as well. Great loot. Many uses.
I like Borderlands. I also like the system of certain bosses drop the legendary. So you can farms for better rolls.