Scaling Loot Rewards to effort in acquiring

[Brian Boru]

Do you get annoyed, after a mini-epic side quest, to end up getting just some run-of-the-mill trinket?

Spend 15-30 minutes after reaching the location navigating cliffs and caves, solving puzzles, fighting predators and guardians—and all for the same reward as the previous one, where you took a 30-second detour to jump on a roof for the goodie.

Tough quests should give better rewards. What do you think?

 

[Zloth]

Do you get annoyed, after a mini-epic side quest, to end up getting just some run-of-the-mill trinket?

Yep. I just had one in Mass Effect 2, actually. I scanned a planet and found a distress signal. When I landed, I found a spaceship that had crash landed because a bunch of androids went nuts. After blasting those androids, I traced back to a space station they stopped at. Everyone was dead, but there were some puzzles to solve. After solving them I was awarded with... nothing. I got a little cash by taking it from the dead crew members' lockers and a thimble full of Element 0, but that was pretty much it. What a waste.

There is a contradiction in these things, though. The rewards for these things are typically something that will make the rest of the game easier. Sometimes it will be a cosmetic thing, but mostly it's a +5 sword of donkey kicking or +10 armor of EZTanking. The problem is that, by completing the quest, you just proved that you don't need the game to be easier! If anything, they should be giving you items to make the game a little harder!

 

[Lutfij]

Dungeon Siege II and Diablo II reminded me of exactly what you said in your opening... @Brian Boru ,

 

[Pifanjr]

It depends on the game and the presentation. For example, I play Mass Effect primarily for the story and world-building, so I wouldn't feel too bad getting a minor reward for an interesting side quest. However, in games where you have to manage limited resources, it sucks if you end up losing more than you get out of the quest. The reward should feel proportional to the risk you took.

As for presentation: it sucks when you fight some powerful guardians and finally get to the chest they were guarding only to find a minor trinket, but it feels a lot less bad if, after defeating the side quest, the peasant who asked for your help offers you a minor trinket because it's the only thing he has.

 

[mainer]

Do you get annoyed, after a mini-epic side quest, to end up getting just some run-of-the-mill trinket?

It depends on the game and the presentation. For example, I play Mass Effect primarily for the story and world-building, so I wouldn't feel too bad getting a minor reward for an interesting side quest. However, in games where you have to manage limited resources, it sucks if you end up losing more than you get out of the quest. The reward should feel proportional to the risk you took.

It can be annoying, but as @Pifanjr said, it really depends on what game you're playing. From an RPG player's perspective (me), some games are more story focused than loot focused, such as the Mass Effect games. It's not about finding some BFG in a chest at the end of a side quest, but how you solve the mission and the reactions or results of your decisions, many of which can be done through conversation choices.

But I know what you mean, I've had some side quests in my current game of The Witcher 3, that when completed I only found some odds & ends crafting materials and a sword that's several levels than my current sword and does much less damage, even though it's labeled a "relic". I'll often say (profanity redacted), "Seriously? That's it?"

I've had the same happen to me in Skyrim & Fallout 4, where the "loot" found at the end of a quest was useless to me. But in those two games crafting my own weapons & armor was more important, and yielded far better equipment than anything I found. For me, gathering crafting resources in those games was far more important than finding a unique piece of equipment. A good crafting mechanic can sometimes mitigate finding subpar loot.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are ARPGs like Diablo 2 & Grimdawn, where your characters success is going to depend upon what kind of loot drops you get (that and how you build your character's skills). Bad loot equals dead character. Just ask @Colif who is the king of ARPGs, or look at his Grimdawn thread.

 

[ZedClampet]

In loot games, the loot is rarely immediately rewarding. You just keep incrementally getting more and more powerful stuff, and it has to be that way. But in RPG's it's different because loot is more rare (even though often abundant), and you expect more out of difficult quests. For instance, in The Division, you often expect, and then are happy to get, a gun that you like that barely does more damage than the one you already had. Whereas in an RPG, I might expect a difficult quest to come with more benefits than just a loot item, like going up a level, gaining skill points, etc.

In Warframe, lord only knows how many weapons there are, and you often were rewarded with weapons that you would never want to actually use, but you needed them anyway to level your character, which you mostly accomplished by leveling items (weapons primarily),