PixlBit

Scrooge McDuck and his hoarded loot. Do you think he'll ever use it?

Shits about to get real guys. Let's talk loot.

Mechanics that engage players in acts of loot gathering or resource management have long been closely tied to role-playing games (RPG) and real-time-strategy games (RTS), but those mechanics and systems can be found in just about every other genre in their own unique ways and to different depth or prominance. Collecting minerals and gas in Starcraft and figuring out what I want to do with them, on a very basic level, isn't much different than collecting ammo and grenades in Halo and figuring out what to do with them in a battle. Very different genres, perspectives, and mechanics, but I still need to collect resources, manage them to some extent, and ultimately use them to help me win an encounter. There's balance, there's give & take, strategy, tactics, and choices.

So, how do all of you manage your resources?

Do you hoard minerals, gas, tiberium, gold, credits, weapons, armor, potions, grenades, ammo? Do you blow through resources like they're going out of style? Or are you somewhere in between? Does it work for you, does it break the game sometimes in certain games? There's no wrong answer to any of these questions. I'll start it off by telling you a little about how I play my games and what experiences I have with the designs the games use, and after that what's most important to me is I want to know how you play your games and what experiences you have.

At the beginning of the blog is a picture of Scrooge diving into his sweet piles of loot. Scrooge and I have a bit in common because I'm a habitual hoarder, in my games at least. I love collecting loot and managing resources, except my execution of resource management sometimes means I'm more or less managing an ever expanding inventory and I don't often get around to using much of it. There's not much balance, not a lot of output to match the input. Like a dragon rubbing his belly and rolling around happily on piles of gold, I find myself with lots of cool stuff I never use, but I find great comfort in gathering it and having it.

In real life I'm very minimalist, clean, organized, I aquire emotional attachments to very few objects, and I don't try to make myself rich the way I do in games. I'm like a Vulcan or Jedi, except I can't mind meld, I don't know hand-to-hand combat, I don't have a lightsaber, and I'm not cool or dangerous at all. When I own something I don't need, or something that is broken, terribly inefficient, or does a job I don't require, I get rid of it and feel nothing. However in my games I often have opposite behaviors. You will see me gathering anything and everything, as well as taking great joy in managing my piles of everything. All this gathering and managing makes me very happy and sometimes it works out perfectly, but it sometimes keeps me from experiencing all a game has to offer, and sometimes it will even break the game.

If tiberium wasn't deadly I'd cuddle up to it like a Pikachu plush pillow. Don't ask me if I have a Pikachu plush pillow. I might

I love Command & Conquer but because of the way I play it, you will probably ask yourself, "Does Mike even want to win?". I don't play C&C competitively or online much so I'm not necessarily a part of the C&C community. I'm not good at the games. I need to stop beating around the bush, I'm scared of getting rolled over and made a fool of. I usually just hop into a quick match against the AI and to me it's like comfort food. My "quick" matches usually go over an hour long, and during the match I will spend the whole time mining tiberium fields, building a massive base with as many units and structures as the game will allow, amassing fields of Mammoth tanks, setting sniper units in strategic buildings to kill enemies as they approach my base, and setting up various turrets to defend my base as I search for more tiberium and stuff to build. I use a pure turtle strategy and I don't ever actually get around to deploying many units to battle. I will build an expansive base, harvest multiple tiberium fields till they're dry, let them regrow, rinse and repeat. Not because it will help me win, but because it's a ton of fun.

Mammoth tank assembled! Armor superiority! Mammoths have the best one-liners ever. Hearing their voices and seeing a field of these guys protecting my base makes me jovial. Rock & fucking Roll!

The only time I really start getting aggressive is when my enemy builds a super weapon like GDI's Ion Cannon, Nod's nuke, or the Scrin's Rift Generator. I'm perfectly fine with being attacked because I get attacked all throughout a match and seeing as I turtle up and play pure defense, I just let my turrets, troops, and tanks deal with protecting the base. But when superweapons get added to the mix it puts my whole base at risk, all my loot gets threatened, and I get a jolt of motivation to send huge waves of Mammoth tanks to pound on the enemy's door and flocks of jets to drop bombs on the facilities that are creating the enemy superweapon. For a short amount of time I use brute force, sacrifice practically all my units, and blow through an epic amount of tiberium to keep the superweapon from ending my match. All that excitement lasts for 5 minutes (the time I have until the superweapon goes online), and it happens several times in a match, and it's the only time I actually feel like fighting.

After I succeed in saving my base, I go straight back to mining all the sexy tiberium around me, and gathering fields of units that will sit around till trouble stirs again. I love the mechanics of RTS games, but the way I play is all about gathering and protecting, not about attacking and winning. It's intensely satisfying and luckily it doesn't break the game. The way I play C&C has me constantly gathering stuff, eventually using it, and gathering more stuff to replace what was lost. I hoard, the game lets me, there's a circle of life, and it works very well.

...Planet scanning. That should be neat, right?

In Mass Effect 2 the way you upgrade your ship and weapons requires you to gather resources by scanning planets, looking for spikes in the mineral readings, and launching a probe at the areas where resources are abundant. This mini-game divided fans, some liked it, some hated it. I'm very patient so I didn't really have a problem with the mini-game itself. I watch a lot of Star Trek so I like the idea of scanning stuff. At the beginning of the game it's painfully slow due to your scanning reticle being very small and slow, but it isn't long before you have the opportunity to upgrade to a faster bigger reticle making mining the planets a bit faster. Even with the uprade, scanning and mining the planets is still pretty slow, but I didn't have a huge problem with it by itself. However the bigger economic system in the series doesn't work well for me sometimes.

In Mass Effect 1 I gathered lots of loot and awesome equipment, but by my second playthrough I had already maxed out my wallet with nearly 10 million credits. With that kind of money you absolutely never have to worry about affording something again. In Mass Effect 2 I was happy because money is more scarce and I always found myself planning how best to use my money instead of just laughing because I have too much. The money system was fine but the resources you mine from planets were in excess. By the time I beat ME2 I had hundreds of thousands of units of each mineral and I had nothing to use them on. By the time you beat ME2 you can have every upgrade in the game easily, and be left with a wealth of minerals you will never need. That means I wasted a ton of time probing planets I never needed to probe, was left with useless stuff, no more upgrades to look forward to, etc. In the Mass Effect series I hoard quite a bit and use my money conservatively, but I still end up owning everything the game has to offer, I reach a peak, and there's nowhere to go from there. Not a good balance, no circle of life.

 Lionhead hasn't nailed their vision yet, but I love them and want them to keep trying. I'll be there for them every step of the way

In my previous blog I explained how my 360 died and I'm finding other games to play while I save up for a new one. Before my Xbox went south for the winter I had just bought Fable 3 and was excited to play it, but never got the chance. Once I get around to it I'm hoping it addresses some of the problems I had with Fable 2's economy.

In Fable 2 I was having the time of my life, playing all night as is standard for me when I get a new Fable, and in my dreams I was hearing adorable English accents and NPC banter. While I did math homework at school and described equations out loud to myself I noticed myself talking with a fake English accent because I was spending too much time in Albion and developing some temporary Echolalia (the involuntary act of repeating vocalizations made by another person) lol. While the game played and dialogue would run I would echo it and repeat it trying to sound the way NPCs sound.

Anyway, my sexy heroine started the game out poor as dirt, being raised by Gypsies, living in dirty little shacks, skinny, short, and wanted to move on up in Albion society and get stronger. So in between questing I spent time working hard as a blacksmith, woodcutter, and bartender to put together some cash and hopefully be able to buy some nice things. At the beginning of my journey I couldn't even afford the fancy celery I wanted. One day I was stuck figuring out whether I wanted to go buy a semi-fancy bed for my new house or if I wanted to get a couple average priced gifts for my character's mate. The next day I was buying up a few shops to manage. The next day I owned half of Albion. The day after that I had all of Albion in the plam of my hand and the game was broken. Let me explain. Halfway through Fable 2 I found that I had 6 million in gold, new amounts of gold were flowing in every 5 minutes, I had every awesome thing you could buy in the game, and there was nothing left to aspire to.

Who knew a little blacksmithing could make you a millionare?

The funny thing about my warp-nine (equivalent to "ludicrous speed") trip to riches is that I didn't have to be greedy or evil to achieve it. I was as moral and pure as can be in the game's eyes. I set up the system so that nobody in Albion paid rent at all, all businesses charged the lowest prices possible, my family got the highest possible daily allowance, and I bought up every expensive item in the game. I literally couldn't spend enough money to create a balance. I found myself banging concubines like it was going out of style and they only charge 10 gold! Where are the high-end concubines?

I would use the "give gold as gift" feature to toss hundreds of thousands of gold pieces at whores left and right. I'd buy up diamonds and collect dozens of them to give to my heroine's husband as gifts. My children would get diamonds and expensive-ass tofu for breakfast daily. I'd go get piss drunk at the pub drinking thousands of dollars worth of Hoptimus Prime and Yellow Fairy while handing out thousands of dollars to everybody I could get my hands on and I could never make a dent in my pile of loot. The only way to get rid of all the money (temporarily, because eventually I'll make it all back) was to donate millions to the Temple of Light. When I say the game was broken I don't mean it was unplayable, it's perfectly playable, charming, and I went on to finish it, but it wasn't fun anymore. When you have tons of money and not enough ways to loose it or use it, it takes all the drama out of the game. Monsters aren't scary when I have 6 million gold pieces.

Any problem I came across could be solved by my wallet. Physique not strong enough? Buy strength potions that give me strength XP to spend. Afraid of dying? Buy unlimited health potions. Family not happy? Give them 10,000 gold a day and bang your husband once in a while. Tired of banging said husband? Pay a concubine. Husband wants a divorce? "Buy" a new husband. I still love Fable 2 and I would like to play through it again, but next time I will force myself to make less money and be less of an overnight tycoon. In Fable 2 I hoarded for a short amount of time and became rich enough to buy the whole universe Albion is in. I was playing an RPG and I could easily buy my progression and skills instead of fighting for them and earning them through violence. By the end of the game I was selling back some of my character's skills to make her less big and strong.

Cyrodiil sure has a lot of shit for me to hoard. Praise Talos!

Oblivion seemed to work out pretty well for me. My character was a hot Nord lady that loved to sneak around and murder people. Too bad she didn't have a high mercantile skill because it kept me from selling my loot at good prices (I don't know what "good prices" are, it's just an excuse I use. I have problems). As a result I was always telling myself, "Save all this junk till later, maybe I'll sell it someday and make a killing." As it stands my murderous Nord still has huge deposits of loot in a chest at the Blades mountain-top sanctuary as well as another huge deposit of stuff laying around at the Dark Brotherhood hideout where I plan my murders. Magical armor, swords, maces, axes, warhammers, scrolls, potions, equipment for crafting and alchemy, arrows, bows, harvested plants, etc. I've hid away enough shit to supply an army, I never sold any of it, and my character never got rich or anything. Sneaking and murdering were always a good time though, and I hoarded tons of cool stuff on my journeys and made a sweet collection, I wasn't poor, I wasn't rich, so it wasn't too bad. It worked out okay for the most part.

I found him! He snuck into another of my blogs! Mr. McSneak himself, Sam Fisher

At the start of this blog I noted that concepts of loot gathering and resource management can be observed in many other genres with mechanics very different than RPGs and RTS games. I've been playing a lot of Splinter Cell lately (shouldn't be a shock) and I noticed that I even hoard in a stealth-action game like Splinter Cell. In the SC games, they always give me more ammo and equipment than I ever use. There's always a dozen or more enemies in any given level and they always give Sam 30 or more bullets for both his rifle and pistol. In the old SC games I shoot folks in the face now and then but every time I finish a level I have just about 30 bullets remaining in each weapon, plus grenades, sticky cameras, and all the other goodies they leave at your disposal.

I always look at my equipment (loot) and tell myself, "I might need this sticky camera later in some odd encounter space, I should save it till then." However I never end up using it. I break necks all the way till the end and before I know it I'm victorious and piles of bodies stacked in the shadows show proof of it. I'm way too patient and take too much satisfaction in stalking enemies, staying silent, saving resources, and breaking necks. Ubisoft has clearly always wanted a strong action element in their Splinter Cell games, but thankfully the design has always allowed me to choose the alternate route and go pure stealth when I wanted to. I hoard all those gadgets, goodies, and ammo, never use them, but that's okay. I'm still glad I have all that stuff at my disposal, and the fact that my hoarding behavior doesn't break the game makes it perfect for me. I don't get punished for not using everything, and I do get rewarded for playing the game the way I want.

So, how do all of you manage your resources? Do your games let you play them the way you want? Do your behaviors break a game, or make it more fun? Tell me about your loot gathering and resource management experiences with your games.