Let's talk about the drop rate

I know they have a discussion already but I would like to discuss more.
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/rare-enemies-drop-chances.48698/

Today, I am working on the enemies' drop items rate and I have no idea of how to approach this in a balanced way. If anyone could share his/her way to tackle the enemies item rate (plugins, switches, or viable ?), I would be appreciated.

General Idea of what I think:
Items Database: common: 1/3 or 33.33% chance
middle: 1/5 or 20% chance
rare: 1/12 or 8.33% chance
Weapons Database: common: 1/4 or 25% chance
middle: 1/9 or 11.11% chance
rare: 1/16 or 6.25% chance
Armors Database: common: 1/4 or 25% chance
middle:1/9 or 11.11% chance
rare:1/16 or 6.25% chance
If I am not clear enough, please tell me so.

What I did in my game was this:

All bosses: 100% drop rate
All regular enemies: Nothing at all drops except for money, with very few exceptions (the one exception is when you fight an army, and there I gave the enemies a 50% chance to drop armor/weapons/potions).

I personally hate random drops myself, as all it does is make most gamers hit reset if they don't get the drop and try again and again and again until they either get it or give up and decide they don't care anymore.

Personally, I hate the default drop table and formulas in the engine. I've started using Death Common Events and created loot tables for enemies. Though, by default it doesn't show the loot at the end of the battle (at least how I set it up, which is fine for how my game works). It just adds them to your inventory.

Yanfly and SRDs enemy drop plugins just don't have quite enough functionality for multiple drops of the same item, etc.

I think it deppends on the enemy.
If my enemy is a monster i'll loot body parts most of time and just a few times i'll find humanoid's loot (gold, armor, etc)
If it's a humanoid i'll find equipment pieces most of time (bad ones) and just a few times i'll find something good (good equip, chunks of gold, potions, etc)

It may look weird to make bad equipment, low quality jewels or even bad potions just to justify your earn but it's more organic than finding gold non stop. You sell it as junk so there's no worries here and it may even lead you to fun moments during your design process.

I’ve read a number of articles stating that many professional game developers typically balance loot tables based on how many common, uncommon, rare, etc. items they intend for players to find per hour of gameplay, instead of starting with the drop percentages. Then you can calculate backwards based on the average frequency and length of battles in your game and the number of enemies in your troops to figure out what percentages are roughly appropriate. Once you’ve got the rough baseline percentages worked out, then you can fine-tune based on the specific items and enemies you’re working with.

It’s tough to offer feedback on the numbers you’ve given here because without playing your game, we don’t have proper context for how much more powerful each higher tier of items is than the one before it, and what the difference in strength is worth in the context of your combat. How important is consumable item usage? Does the majority of a character’s offensive/defensive power come from their base stats, class, abilities, or equipment? Or is it balanced amongst some/all of these? How much incoming damage is a player intended to mitigate, and does having the rarest tier of armor available at any given point in the game provide a significant advantage in this compared to having the lower tiers?

The answers to these questions are going to vary so drastically between games that offering specific details about your own drop rates probably won’t help much here. Without knowing and thoroughly analyzing all the intimate details of your game systems, no one here is going to really be able to tell you how close you are to where you want to be.

what defines rarity?

before defining *drop* tables, shouldn't you define *tables*, period?
if the drop is generated procedurally,.... where does the procedure take it's parameters from?

from there and that logic, you should have a clear idea how to balance the drop table.

(I just thought back to my design of a drop system, and man, I'd love to share it because it's probably the simplest, most elegant solution anyone could come up with, ever..... but I'd rather have you understand why that should be the case, first, and then show you the thing)

I just decided "how many of this enemy do I want the player to kill before it drops this?". Simple enough. Balance in your game is whatever you decide to make it.

Bosses do tend to have "Unique Drops", but they're not really "rare", per say. For example, I have a Werewolf Boss, it can drop a "Dagger" or some "Leather Armor". I made both a 1 in 3 chance of dropping. They are strictly "side grades", so it doesn't matter if they don't drop for the player. They're a "pleasant surprise" for players. You could get nothing... you could get one of the items... you could get both of the items. Is it worth "Savescumming" for a player to get both items by beating the bosses repeatedly? I dunno, maybe. But, they both have 0 Gold Cost, so they can't really be sold anyway. Their value is "temporary".

I've also got enemies that exist for a "drop quest". Kill an enemy, hope it drops something for your Quest, rinse and repeat until you finish. I use the 3 menus to all drop the same item. There's a 100% drop rate for a single of these items. So, every kill, you get one of these items. Then, there's a 20% chance to get the second drop of the same item. Finally, there's a 10% chance to get another of that item. So, on super rare occasions, you'll get 3 of this item you need for a quest. Sometimes, you get two. But, you'll always get at least one.

It honestly just depends on how often you want a player to see something. How many kills before it plops into their inventory.

@bgillisp, thank you for providing me with some guidelines. Good idea on the boss drop rate. Do you think 50% of the normal enemies drop rates is ok for you, personally? Since you dislike the chance of random drop rate, so would you agree that I should just make a drop rate 100% altogether.

@JGreene, I do not understand what or where you do loot tables for enemies and you are referring to sorry about that.

@kovak, thank you for the advice. Do you think I should put the drop rate to 50% or 100% drop rate? @bgillisp give me some valid reason that I should just give the item to the player because they could repeatedly reload the save until they get that booty.

@gstv87 Do you think I am lying that I have no idea of how to balance the drop rate? I defined rarity as the worst to the best items, weapons, or armors that player could get in a game. I do not understand where or what are tables you refer to? I understand that before you could give me a clear answer; you need to see my demo, but I need to put something on the drop items for right now.

I'd set to 20% for each junk item.
If i'm not wrong there are plugins that allows you to get some item drops only after some levels.

Personally, I hate the RNG with a passion. If I want the player to be able to farm things from enemies, I will make them reliably drop that item. And it depends on the game mechanics.

Well for common enemies, meaning those you'll find in battles in dungeons, I have put a 20% drops rate for regular items, 10% for not common but not rare, and 5% for rare. However this is taking into consideration 3 things:
1) Many of those enemies are present more than once in a battle.
2) It depends on the number of encounters in the dungeon. A dungeon where the player will get 20 encounters in average should have lower drop rate than a dungeon with 5 encounters in average.
3) In my game, enemies almost always only drop materials to be used in crafting, so the drop rate isn't the same if it dropped a potion or any other regular item.

As for bosses, like @bgillisp said, having a 100% is a lot better than random drops. You don't want the player to save, kill the boss, and reset and repeat. Well, unless it's a semi-boss enemy that can be encountered more than once and can be farmed, I expect 100% drop rate for bosses.

@Kupotepo It's just something I've made for my current project. I could show you how if you're interested in that approach. Other people in this thread have some good suggestions as well.

Personally, the 50% felt ok in testing. Then again, the zone that uses that what they drop is extra potions or an extra suit of armor that you can sell, or equip if you still needed it. Just felt more realistic than having them always drop G.

@Tai_MT, thank you for helping me. Good ideas on giving the enemies the same items of 3 slots on the collecting item quest.

@kovak, thank you very much for answering my question.

@Eschaton, thank you for your feedbacks

@MushroomCake28, thank you for your insight and your expertise.

@JGreene, could you please show me on your way of approach, thank you.

@bgillisp, thank you so much for helping me and answer my question.

@Soryuju, could you show the logic of your first paragraph, please. I understand that you need to see a demo of my game before you could help me, but I have to put something in the drop items probability for now. What is your suggestion for a temporary solution?

I'm probably going to make a tutorial on it sometime tomorrow.

I personally think drop tables is a redundant feature, as I only think that something appropriate to drop is just gold. Making them to drop item to sell is might as well just drop gold. Making them to drop rare item / equipment makes your player might want to grind for it and pray to RNG (which personally I don't like). So before proceeding of making drop tables, you might want to think why you need drops in the first place.

One reason to implement to item drop is to have crafting where you grind the material and feel rewarded after gathering the material together. If you want the enemy to drop weapon, you can try to make item durability so that your weapon might break and you switch to whatever weapon you picked up. Consumable item drop might be alright, but setting them too high that would render shop useless unless you don't have shop.

In short, I hate the idea of rare drops. I prefer grind gold or whatever to buy in shop.

A little surprised at the disdain for standard enemy drops. I personally find earning an assortment of items to be a lot more fun than simply getting gold or nothing from slaying foes.

Certainly, it can be frustrating and un-fun if large numbers of drops are required to obtain something you need or want and the drop rate is less than 100%. And drops can also be frustrating if you have limited inventory space (hint: usually a bad idea in narrative-focused RPGs) because it brings you out of exploration and combat to do un-fun inventory management. Besides those two situations, though, I love enemy drops, especially when they drop Consumables.

Taking it back to your original question about what is a fair, balanced rate at which to drop items - I fully agree with @Soryuju. Figure out how often you want your player to receive certain types of items (in terms of per-hour or per-100-battles), and work backwards from there to set drop rates so that players will receive those items.

• As far as Consumables, if drops (rather than shops) are the main source of consumables, you can figure out how many potions, revives, etc. the player should need in a dungeon run if they play with "average" level and skill, and try to adjust the drop rates to about 150% of that amount (150% to compensate for unlucky RNG drop rates, as well as being a bit of a buffer in case you slightly underestimate the challenge of a dungeon). If shops are the main source of consumables, then just give consumables out occasionally (generally 15-20% rates for very common consumables like basic potions, and 5-10% for rarer consumables, is enough to feel good).
• For armor and weapons - there's a strong case to be made for never having enemies drop these, and having players purchase (or craft) their equipment in town. Weapons and armor that are worth getting excited about are ones that can significantly increase your power or abilities - and if it can do that, then making it a random drop is giving the RNG a lot of control over your player's power level. Weapons and armor are also a good gold sink (but only if the player hasn't already found said equipment). If you want to make them drops, and you want to feel confident that players will get them, aim to have each one drop an average of at least 2 times during the game (e.g. if it only drops from Giant Slimes, and you expect the player to fight a total of 25 Giant Slimes over the course of the game, then have it drop at 8%, with 25 * 8% = 2.00).
• For crafting items, if you don't want your player to have to go out and specifically "grind" monsters for the drops, drop them often enough (based on the backwards calculations that @Soryuju mentioned) that as soon as they can craft them item, they'll have enough crafting items to do so. If you do want your players to grind, usually you want them gaining about a third of what they need through the course of normal play. If you have special "grinding areas" where the player can quickly find and hunt down monsters, you may also want to increase drop rates in these areas.
• For quest items - especially mandatory quests - I generally recommend having them drop from enemies at 100%. Even for optional quests, it's a good idea to make the player feel that they are not at the mercy of the RNG. Kill a wolf, get a wolf fang. Kill 10 wolves, get the 10 fangs you need to turn in the quest. That feels good.
• For items from bosses, I also recommend having item drops be fixed at 100%, unless you have both a way to prevent save-scumming and a compelling reason to randomize loot drops that can't be grinded.

Normally I just use 100% drop rate for now since my game is small and having random stuff like randomized drops won't really add anything good to it.

If I'd do randomized drop rates in my next projects, I will probably make item tables for different sets of enemies.

But TBH I'm not a fan of too much randomized drops unless it's a hack and slash game or an MMO.

no, I don't need to see the finished product, what I want to know is what aspect of the design defines "rarity"
is it the amount of bonuses to an item? is it the rate of drop? is it it's sheer power? what is it?
how do you establish which item is which rarity? is rarity defined by the game or is it built into the item?
if it is defined by the game, then it's procedural content, so you need to store the bonuses you'll later apply to base items somewhere.
if it is not defined by the game, then it's baked into the items, so you must have the total possible combinations of items with bonuses declared in the database.
the more items you have, the larger the final table you come up with.
(and if you've done that same thing already, then it would be much easier for me to explain)

when I see "rarity" what I think of is for instance the Diablo system, where you have a number of base items which can be given bonuses.
these bonuses are very specific parameters, each one having a number of tiered magnitudes: "Attack damage, +2/+5/+7/+12/etc", no +3 or +4 at all. "Moving speed, +12%/+20%/+33%", no +100% at all.
out of the inclusion, or not, of bonuses, and out of the possible combinations of included bonuses, comes rarity.
and, uniqueness, and legendary-ness.

in my game, there is no rarity.
there is, however, widely available items, craftable items, and unique items.
unique items can only be obtained through quests... and only one is ever received.
craftable items are sold in shops (sometimes) at very expensive prices, but they are much better than the widely available items.
you can, through quests and leveling, get the crafting recipes for those items, and get the ability to craft them yourself, saving some coin at the shop.
the trick there, is balancing the ability to obtain the materials to craft those items, which is the thing I balanced with the system I mention.

Hey there, I just want to add to that, that I'm not sure how good idea that is. For example how rare is a rare weapon and for how long? Will it still be as powerful in the next dungeon or will a different rare weapon be better?

By the looks of what you're writing here I think too many enemies could end up carrying too many rare weapons, and if you change it to resolve that problem then the rate may be too low.

Though, I can be good to have item drops with monsters. For example if an enemy can cast poison it might be nice to have an antidote drop with defeating it.