I'll give you a moment to collect yourself after witnessing such a sad sight.
...
Let us move on.
The good news is that bananas can easily be obtained either by a monkey skillful enough to climb up and get them, or by going to the store and buying them.
The bad news is that this abominable concept has long ago infiltrated even the best of our games in the form of Random Loot Drops. Most common in RPG games, and the very backbone of MMOs like World of Warcraft, but not unknown outside of other game types as well.
For the unfamiliar, the Random Loot Drop mechanic means that no matter how many times or how quickly and easily you defeat an enemy, there will only be a certain (and usually very small) percentage chance that it will drop a given item. Why is this so? Many people have been over the idea of the Skinner Box in numerous articles, so I won't be going in depth on it here. Random Drops are a way to condition people to keep playing long after it stops being fun.
Let's look at an example you non-jungle dwellers can probably relate to a bit more.
Let's say you go to work all week. You work hard and do your job diligently. Friday rolls around and your paycheck is nearly there.
Only it turns out that the boss rolled some dice to see which days you'd get paid for and how much. Instead of getting paid for five long days of hard work, you'll be getting paid for two days. Now, its not always like that. Sometimes you get nothing at all. Sometimes you get all you earned. And if you're really lucky, then once every couple of years, you'll get a little bonus too. But by and large you'll see little to no pay for your efforts.
Would you stay in this kind of job? No. So why are we killing the same enemies over and over for hours on end, hoping that the next one hits the 1% and the item you've been searching for drops, and calling it "Fun"? Skinner Box.
That's not to say that the idea of Random Drops has no place in gaming. It just needs to be an "Icing on the cake" type of thing, not a goal in itself. Here's a game that implements Random Drops well.
For those of you too busy staring at Karin to actually read, the title of the game is Shadow Hearts: Covenant. This may not have been the first game to do something like this, but it is the first one I've seen.
In this game, the randomly dropped items were never things you couldn't get elsewhere. They were always simple healing items, or extra accessories on rare occasion. But what sets it apart more is that you can earn items by playing skillfully. There were numerous conditions you could satisfy during a battle to get additional items.
Take no damage.
Perfectly execute your attacks.
Perform an impressive combo.
Not letting the enemy get a turn.
Etc.
Each of those done during a fight added to the money, items, and such that you would get after a fight. None of them were required, nor were the items you could obtain usually unique. In fact, doing well most often just got you to the next tier of equipment a bit sooner. Icing on the cake.
What got me thinking about this was a bit of conversation about Dark Souls, the upcoming spiritual successor to Demon's Souls, that I read on a message board. A simple statement that I agree with wholeheartedly. "It doesn't take skill to farm for hours." Demon's Souls was an excellent game by itself, but if I had to pick one flaw in it, it would be that a several of its trophies were earned for forging weapons with randomly dropped items to create better weapons. Do you really deserve a trophy for being lucky? This especially stands out in a title like this, one that's built almost entirely around player skill. If you have enough skill, then even the most difficult boss in the game can be taken out with the weakest weapons and armor. Despite having completed the game a couple times, it took me forever to get the platinum simply because the items I needed to forge would not drop. I eventually had to resort to trading online to get them. Not something I should have to do in a single player game, and if even one had been placed in a hard to access area of the map somewhere instead of relying on a random drop, then I wouldn't have had to.
That's when my thoughts drifted back to Shadow Hearts. What if such a system as that could be used in other types of games? Random Drops would be replaced with Skill Drops. That is, killing certain enemies in certain ways gets you particular rewards. This way a game would actually reward you for being good at a particularly skillful challenge.
Examples:
Kill an enemy with a backstab
Kill an enemy after parrying
Kill an enemy with a certain weapon or spell combination
Or maybe not just kills.
Maybe something like Kill an enemy after landing a three hit combo that finishes with a fireball, etc.
Each enemy could have several different possible drops, and you get the ones for which you've satisfied the conditions. So, using the above examples, let's say after you land your three hit fireball combo, you backstab them as they're getting up. You'd get both rewards.
This would still extend game time (which is the one and only goal of Random Drops), but through encouragement of expanding both the player's and character's skills.
Like this idea? Hate it? Got a better one? Let us know in the comments.
