Let’s find out why and how we did that:
The Old Mission Reward System
The mission reward system, which will most likely still be in the demo, was rather simple. After each mission, the player would be confronted with a choice of two random items and had to pick one. These items were pulled from certain loot pools and scaled with item rarity that was increased over the course of the game, but could also be influenced by mission difficulty and other factors.
There was a generic loot pool as well as faction-specific loot pools, so that mission rewards from pirate missions will have a chance to reward the player with pirate-specific items.
The entire system was heavily inspired by Dawn of War 2, from which MENACE draws a significant amount of inspiration.
One of the main advantages of this system is the freedom to design enemies that do not necessarily employ armor and weapons that the player can use. Alien creatures or the Constructs, the game's main enemies, will usually not use items that humans can use. In the same vein, we could design and balance enemies without having to think about the player using the same items.
For example, changing the stats of an enemy would not affect the player, as the player does not use the same items. Also, handing out enemy equipment to the player would make the player units look just like the enemies, making the player units lose their characteristic looks.
Another advantage was the ability to hand out higher-rarity items to the player as rewards for especially difficult missions with maximum freedom. This provides designers with a powerful tool to guide player progression.
Finally, the mission rewards were teased during mission selection so that players could base their operation progression path on what kind of items they expected to get from certain missions. This makes the mission selection more impactful and offers meaningful choices to the player.
The Old Loot System
Flaws of the Old Reward System
The old system does have its merits, but it also has a lot of flaws. The two most important aspects are immersion and player expectations. During early test sessions with press and influencers, we quickly realized that players expect a similar loot system to Battle Brothers, in which you can loot the items of destroyed enemies. What you see is what you get, and destroying a chaingun team will give you a chance to loot their chaingun.
The expectations during testing did not match what was in the game, and a mismatch between the two always creates a negative feeling.
Similarly, the old system was not very immersive. When judging how captivating a game is we always feel that immersion plays a crucial role, especially in games like ours that gravitate towards simulation and realism. When destroying enemy assets, it makes sense within the game world to loot and reuse whatever you can get your hands on. Especially when being stranded in a distant star system with no way to resupply.
Another issue with the old system was the amount of loot; it was just not enough. The upgrades were big but few. This led to a large discrepancy in gear quality across squads, where squads would mostly have either very low or high power items, but there was little general increase in player gear quality.
Lastly, the trade value of the offered reward items was sometimes substantially different. This led to a situation in which players were forced to pick items they did not really want to pick because they were essentially missing out on big trade values.
The New “Real Loot” System
We implemented the new loot system very straightforwardly: Each enemy entity on the battlefield has its own loot table containing all items it can drop on death. These items are mostly 100% the ones the unit is actually using, but dividing this into a separate table gives us a little wiggle room to sprinkle some extra loot drops in or have the enemies drop armors that come with a different look when used by the player. This way, we can make sure players use the same items as the enemies, but also retain their distinct looks.
Each item in the loot table has an X% chance to drop on the unit's death. The exact percentage will be tweaked during testing, but it currently sits at 20%. Each item in the list is rolled separately, so a unit with more items has a chance to also drop more items on death.
Items from destroyed enemies will not show up on the battlemap itself but are instead shown on the mission result screen. As there is no actual inventory system in the game, there is no way to pick up or change items during combat.
To compensate for the significantly larger loot pools, we have increased the trader prices on the black market substantially. With the new loot system, players will struggle to loot substantial upgrades to their equipment, especially when fighting enemies like pirates who use a lot of makeshift weaponry.
However, the black market offers a decent variety of factory-new gear that can be traded for.
The amount of loot now makes it much more feasible to trade for needed upgrades while still having constant, smaller upgrades to the player's arsenal. It feels much more rewarding and immersive, and matches player expectations much better.
Here is a sample of the post-battle loot when fighting pirates:
Alright, that's it for now until next Friday.
Engage, Explore, and Stay Informed
[p]That's it for now! We'll see you next Friday.
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