LogFAQs > #973366025

wpot posted...

Could armors be fun enough to find? Maybe, but without some sort of armor durability...I rather doubt it. There are only so many gimmicks that could be added to keep them interesting, or it would be the Dark Souls result like you said.

The easiest solution to that problem would be to randomize them to a certain extent, dividing them into a few different tiers to allow them to scale as you progress through the game (similar to how enemies and the weapons they drop scale with your character already in BotW). Armours would probably need to have multiple effects for that to work, along with a pity system and/or guaranteed spawns for certain effects that are particularly essential for game progress (like cold/heat resistance, though with the option to use food to work around that it's not the end of the world if you don't have the armour). That way, beelining the drop location for the "best" armour isn't an option, you get rewarded for exploring by getting something potentially useful, and that reward remains relevant through the whole game. That does potentially hurt speedrunning, though, since it creates a chance that you simply won't find something build-enabling quickly enough to have a competitive run. But nothing's perfect.

Of course, the Dark Souls "problem" isn't necessarily that much of a problem. I usually go into Soulslikes with a definite build in mind and rarely make any gear changes once I complete that build, but I still enjoy exploring every corner of the world and finding everything I can, often for the sake of learning what's there and experimenting with it so I can get some ideas of new builds I might like to try for future runs. Even if it's not something that's immediately useful, finding things when I explore is still fun enough to make that exploration feel worthwhile. As such, trying to artificially forcing those things to be useful by making the things I already have run out isn't really necessary and honestly just makes the exploration feel less rewarding. Whatever I find will run out in the not-too-distant future, my inventory is too limited for hoarding it indefinitely to be a real option, and in virtually every case it's just another copy of a weapon I can already get (or will soon be able to get) somewhere else. It only has value because the game's been designed to give it value, which is technically true of all in-game rewards, but in this case it's really obviously contrived in a way that just feels "gamey," for lack of a better word.