I am the kind of person who will analyze everything. When I watched the walkthrough video I was looking at every element on the screen and comparing it to other MMOs that I have already played. The most prominent in my mind would of course be World of Warcraft which I am currently still playing. In the walkthrough video I noticed that a Jedi dropped (you guessed it) loot that a Sith could actually carry.
One of the things that always annoyed me in World of Warcraft is when you were fighting a 100 foot tall dog like Grull, kill him and he drops a mace thats big enough for a human to use. Now I do understand that there is a need to fulfill the loot for all classes and there are many ways that BioWare could work around this for their instance groups and raid content.
The most simplistic of them all would be to have these bosses that we fight drop a chest or perhaps for an added element the boss drops a key to a chest that is in the room that you fought them. This is such a simple system that could be used to give a sense of realism in looting bosses as they might keep what they looted of those they killed themselves as a sort of trophy, you are merely making use of it.
BioWare do good to make sure that the most important elements of their game are stressed to us the awaiting fans, one of the points that they have always pushed on has been the fact that the combat in which we will play the game has a heroic feel to it. Instead of a raid being say 10 vs 1 it may be 10 vs 10 (or even more) With this you could have the enemies you fight in the encounter being equal to the classes in your faction in some way, so each enemy drops a piece of loot that corresponds with their class.
However, that would be assuming that BioWare would choose to make the main system in the game be loot based and that is only one option available to them. When reading the forums I have seen many cries for player created armor to be the best in the game as opposed to raiding day and night for that one piece of loot you have waited for. This would be a great idea to get players more involved in the process of creating gear as in World of Warcraft players are all but sidetracked by the amazing gear to be had in raids. Also when you have a looting system that is entirely based on player creation then it can destroy the distinction between casual and hardcore players in the game which I am sure some hardcore players would not be happy about.
When crafting in SWG some of the items you craft had optional inclusions to the creation process, a system like this could help give players who put the hours in that feeling of distinction over other player created gear, perhaps you can only get these additional inclusions through raiding.
Lastly something that I find could be very interesting would be if loot was based loosely on the systems found in KOTOR, many of you I am sure will remember that gear that you found at significant points in the game had requirements. These requirements would have been Light side required or the dark side equivalent. That would mean if you made Sith choices through the game and you found a light side robe, you were unable to wear it no matter how good it was for your character. We already know that Dark and Light side points are in the game so it will be interesting to see if it affects what our character is able to equip also. Many people liked the idea of being a gray Jedi in KOTOR as well, instead of being autonomous it left you as a decision maker who was neither extreme that fuels the wars that plague star wars. I would also like to see a distinction for these gray Jedi, in the same way dark and light side have restrictions it would be interesting to see restrictions so gray Jedi have a reason to remain neutral. We know that Dark and Light side points can affect all classes however and all factions in different ways which I feel leaves a lot of room for expansion and interesting end-game content.
What do you think?
