Sunday, December 11, 2011

An open letter on treasure hunting

Dear game companies!

I think we had a misunderstanding about my wishes as a customer with regards to treasure hunting in role-playing games. I appreciate your efforts to fill the virtual worlds I'm playing through with treasure, I really do. But I think you've gone too far, especially with recent games like Fallout 3 or Skyrim. I said I wanted treasure, not 270 pounds of brooms.

I think treasure is a lot more interesting when there are significant amounts of it at a few, hard to reach locations, so that the treasure feels like a reward. Having minor loot items everywhere, having 3 gold pieces hidden in every urn and barrel, having every monster drop a common weapon worth 10 gold, and having all dungeons filled up with lootable household items is not adding to my enjoyment of your games.

Instead these games start feeling like a chore, because I need to mouse-over or click on everything to check whether there are important or valuable things hidden among all that stuff. Or I end up walking back and forth between adventure areas and towns, just to haul all that medium value stuff and sell it. I'd much rather get the same amount of gold in one big pile at the end of the dungeon. As much as I like to watch Pawn Stars, I would like to play a heroic adventurer, not somebody searching heaps of junk for valuable bits and pieces.

Regards,

Tobold

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