So, Im making a RCE game, and I need to develop a loot system. Every item ingame has a cash value (8 decimal points)
A little bit of scene setting.
1. Player deposits cash (say $10). For this, they get 100 ingame dollars (say, 100 INGs)
2. INGs can be used to buy items from the starter machine (trade terminal), like weapons, armour pieces, ammunition, mining finders and excavators, as well as mining probes. All these items require 0 skill to use, but 100 skill points to use efficiently.
3. Every item ingame decays when used (weapons, amps, mining equipment), or decays if hit (armour), or is used up (ammunition / mining probes).
4. Decay is the reduction of the cash value of an item (TT value - as in, the Trade Terminal). For example - hunter buys a gun for 10 ING - with each shot, it decays by 0.002 INGs. after 100 shots, the gun is now worth 8 ING less - so if he sold it to the trade terminal without repairing it he would get 8 ped.
5.Each item must have its OWN decay rate (to adjust desirability - less decay = more efficient with all other things being equal).
So, onto the loot system
Each avatar will gain skillpoints as they shoot / mine or craft. Not every attempt will result in a skillpoint, or a fraction of a skillpoint (remember, 8 decimal points). Skill gains reduce with expertise, so as skills rise, skillpoints become less and less, as well as giving less of a point for each skillpoint (so at 0 skills, one might get 1.0 skill points. At 100 skillpoints - one might get 0.0001 skillpoints each time)
Skillpoiunts will contribute to loot return over the long term.
So, I / the business / publisher / etc etc = need to make about 5% from the game, so each player, will get approximately 95% returns on their cash over the long term.
This may start with an 80% return, and as skills rise, more return to encourage play, grind and investment in the character.
Loot can comprise of pure cash INGs, components, skins, bones, oils, metal scrap or whatever with a value per item - or items like armour/weapons / equipment / amps etc. Items would only be given out by calculating how many were already ingame vs the game population
So, skillpoints (there will be 70 different skills in hunting / mining/ crafting / defence / using certain equipment etc etc), previous returns on activities, costs of the activity (so an hunter spends 1 ING killing an animal including decay costs and ammo costs - return from that should be a percentage of this cost to allow for a long term aim of a 95% return.
In addition - occasionally a multiplier is used in the loot calculation to provide a return of 300%, or 100% (and figures inbetween), to allow for the 'gambling' element.
Skills, weapon / equipment stats / blueprint stats / number of items ingame / efficiency etc etc etc. Waht is the best way to calculate loot using all these things
There is sooooo much more to it. But, where would I start with such a loot system?
Skills and stats first, then develop maybe a hash from this which is used to calculate? or a percentage based system?
I am really stuck on where to start with this.
Needs to be semi-random because players must not be able to work out a strategy to get over 100% return (costs company money).
See Project Entropia as an example of this type of loot system
First start with the skills, narrow down what all the player needs in order to succeed in game. After narrowing them down you can add extra skills that are not really needed but can act like a ease of life kind of addition. Since there is a levelling system in place you can kind of work out on how much skill points need to awarded to player every level, or work out a formula to award the points every particular level(Ex. every 5 level). Or you can do something that awards the player more skill points at the lower level and as they level up the skill point awarded decreases forcing the player to prioritize a particular build of their character. Once you work that out you will know what kind of stats every player should have by the time they hit the level cap.
After the skills have been narrowed down, you can figure out the pool of items that will be in your game. The reason why I am suggesting this after the skills is, you can make the items that play around those particular skills. Also categorizing each and every item to a rank will also be helpful, for ex. a low tier item has average stats and drops more compared to the high tier item which has better stats and drops very less. The key here will be the distribution of items per rank. Here you can use some ratio, let's say there 5 low tier items, 3 medium tier items and 1 high tier item. Making the stats for the medium and high tier items won't be that difficult since they are few and rare to begin with. The problem will be with the low tier items, since you will be making a lot of them and you still need to have a stat distribution among them that further divided them into categories where you will have some very good low tiers and some average low tiers.
The loot as you said can be semi-RNG, where you can have some loot tied to some boss or area and have a RNG on it whether it will drop or not. Then also for the loot to be meaningful you will need to have difficulty based on that. Let's say there was an area/boss that drops a high-tier item, that area/boss should be hard for the player to attempt to clear it. That will provide the players with satisfaction once they obtain that high tier and are able to have an easier time at that same encounter.
Waht is the best way to calculate loot using all these things
For the above quote the best way would be percentage based and have the players try to optimize the best possible returns for them.
As for the decay system, I would suggest having it depend on the skill/stats of the player, for ex. the player has got a good mining stat and he has a good weapon, since both the weapon and the stat of the player are good the decay should also be good for that weapon i.e. the weapon shouldn't decay faster or decay slower, just the perfect decay. Finding that sweet spot will be a lot of trial and error.
Also I haven't touched upon the consumables because that also can follow the same logic of items having them sorted into different categories and the effect of the said consumable representing it's category. Here you can then also think about having the crafting materials be sorted into different categories and have semi-RNG on whether or not they drop in certain areas or from certain entities.
I guess that is all that I could think of. If you had any trouble understanding what I was saying then I apologize, sometimes my mind processes things very quickly and my hand can't keep up with it. Feel free to ask any questions on whatever I have said above, I will try to clear the doubts.
Actually I would also like to know this.
@eliza2019 What would you like to know about it? Like anything specific? Because I have covered some points if you have some doubts or want me to cover something else then mention I will try my best to answer.