Why Goblins Drop Onions
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Played a little more of the Eternal Tombs playtest and this came back up. It's a thought I had while playing TL, about 'how to convey to NCSoft that if you add cooking, then Goblins 'need' to drop onions or similar.
Turns out NCSoft were already on point though, and Goblins there drop Garlic, so I too, dropped the thought, but I haven't got the equivalent drop in Tombs yet. Figured I'd rando-share since Tombs is also in dev state but not under NDA so it's a good snapshot.
Goblins drop garlic/onions for 3 reasons, Immersion, Economy, and Leveling Phase Enjoyability. The three are connected, ofc.
Immersion
This is pretty obvious I hope. Goblins are the type to eat onions the way we eat apples, in most lore, but generally don't have agriculture, so they're just digging up wild onions and stuff when they find them. Or, in other games, they are stealing crops from nearby farms, or both (and you don't have to explain it anyway).
Economy
For new players in a slow-leveling game, saving money is equivalent to getting money drops in a game focused around crafting that takes a long time. For established players, it's the opposite. Saving time is equivalent to getting money. If the game's food system benefits people decently, then someone needs that drop, even if it can just be bought from a Merchant or grown by a farmer. But, whereas money doesn't have any economic 'constraint', onions, in a proper food system, do. They go straight back into character development, and you can justify them having a minimal sale price. So they have a clear value, just not to NPCs, yet not worth tossing.
Leveling Phase Enjoyability
Which brings us to something in Tombs itself that is easily 'fixed'. That game is EQ-like, they claim. That means it's slow and probably parallels decently to Ashes in these specific aspects. Like, you stop getting exp from things when you're 3 levels over them. No combat exp from gathering 10% exp loss on death and deleveling. Oldschool.
But this means you spend a lot of time killing mobs in very repetitive ways, taking risks, but with normal droprates (like 1/10 or 1/20 for Lore Items, which are tradeable but you can't hold more than one in your own inv). You do get money, but the problem is always the same. By the time you've figured out how to skillfully fight (or cheese) some enemy that gives good exp, you stop thinking about buying the armor needed to do it. If you're unlucky, you get minimal drops. Designing a proper enemy strength vs player balance becomes very difficult because once they have good gear, they're on their way, and when they don't, it's super harsh.
Let's ignore the 'push to be social' in this, and the fact that, oldschool style, any money drops have to also be factored around party size. Just onions.
Onions and meat, + some gatherable, is food. Food is a temporary buff to your stats or status. This allows you to smooth out some things even in really early stages of development.
1. You can give players less armor or less powerful armor via drops, constraining them to crafting/shopping and therefore choices. Agency drives players to play more, 'grinding and hoping' seems to make many play less.
2. You can assume that even players who don't play that much will still feel like they can do something when fed, if you make the food buffs decent, but you can also make those buffs just be small amounts of HP and MP at low levels, where those stats decide outcomes far more than waterfall stats or attack.
3. You can somewhat encourage players to grind more as a result. This is because of the loop of 'kill things, get food, use food as powerup, kill different things for more exp, food wears off, go back to killing things that drop food'. Killing 60 Goblins to level and just having the bad luck that only one of them drops some random single ring is a turnoff for many, but most importantly it's unnecessary for them to drop so little.
There are obviously other solutions to this, and the Onions don't work well in every game. But they help in heavy-econ, slow-leveling games.
It's more of a principle than a specific thing, ofc, you can ask yourself, for any given mob or area, 'Does it have an Onion?' and 'Should it have an Onion?'
Turns out NCSoft were already on point though, and Goblins there drop Garlic, so I too, dropped the thought, but I haven't got the equivalent drop in Tombs yet. Figured I'd rando-share since Tombs is also in dev state but not under NDA so it's a good snapshot.
Goblins drop garlic/onions for 3 reasons, Immersion, Economy, and Leveling Phase Enjoyability. The three are connected, ofc.
Immersion
This is pretty obvious I hope. Goblins are the type to eat onions the way we eat apples, in most lore, but generally don't have agriculture, so they're just digging up wild onions and stuff when they find them. Or, in other games, they are stealing crops from nearby farms, or both (and you don't have to explain it anyway).
Economy
For new players in a slow-leveling game, saving money is equivalent to getting money drops in a game focused around crafting that takes a long time. For established players, it's the opposite. Saving time is equivalent to getting money. If the game's food system benefits people decently, then someone needs that drop, even if it can just be bought from a Merchant or grown by a farmer. But, whereas money doesn't have any economic 'constraint', onions, in a proper food system, do. They go straight back into character development, and you can justify them having a minimal sale price. So they have a clear value, just not to NPCs, yet not worth tossing.
Leveling Phase Enjoyability
Which brings us to something in Tombs itself that is easily 'fixed'. That game is EQ-like, they claim. That means it's slow and probably parallels decently to Ashes in these specific aspects. Like, you stop getting exp from things when you're 3 levels over them. No combat exp from gathering 10% exp loss on death and deleveling. Oldschool.
But this means you spend a lot of time killing mobs in very repetitive ways, taking risks, but with normal droprates (like 1/10 or 1/20 for Lore Items, which are tradeable but you can't hold more than one in your own inv). You do get money, but the problem is always the same. By the time you've figured out how to skillfully fight (or cheese) some enemy that gives good exp, you stop thinking about buying the armor needed to do it. If you're unlucky, you get minimal drops. Designing a proper enemy strength vs player balance becomes very difficult because once they have good gear, they're on their way, and when they don't, it's super harsh.
Let's ignore the 'push to be social' in this, and the fact that, oldschool style, any money drops have to also be factored around party size. Just onions.
Onions and meat, + some gatherable, is food. Food is a temporary buff to your stats or status. This allows you to smooth out some things even in really early stages of development.
1. You can give players less armor or less powerful armor via drops, constraining them to crafting/shopping and therefore choices. Agency drives players to play more, 'grinding and hoping' seems to make many play less.
2. You can assume that even players who don't play that much will still feel like they can do something when fed, if you make the food buffs decent, but you can also make those buffs just be small amounts of HP and MP at low levels, where those stats decide outcomes far more than waterfall stats or attack.
3. You can somewhat encourage players to grind more as a result. This is because of the loop of 'kill things, get food, use food as powerup, kill different things for more exp, food wears off, go back to killing things that drop food'. Killing 60 Goblins to level and just having the bad luck that only one of them drops some random single ring is a turnoff for many, but most importantly it's unnecessary for them to drop so little.
There are obviously other solutions to this, and the Onions don't work well in every game. But they help in heavy-econ, slow-leveling games.
It's more of a principle than a specific thing, ofc, you can ask yourself, for any given mob or area, 'Does it have an Onion?' and 'Should it have an Onion?'
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
4
Comments
In terms of crafting every monster should have drops which can be used for crafting or life skills in some way that’s actually useful to the player. If I kill a dragon then I should get dragon scales or some type or anatomy item related to that monster which can be used in a crafting blueprint for items or within the artisan system. Having this type of system adds more depth as well as makes the game more interesting and interactive.
Never!
Must’ve had some deep pockets… or maybe it was just a bit axe-tra savage.
He needed it during full moon so he found a way to keep it.
is it shiny? i like shiny things :P
Well i saw a huge Wolf with a ridiculously huge SWORD in it's Mouth in DarkSouls One, too ... ...
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Kinda starting to look for a Guild right now. (German)