Good evening everybody! This is Aifos coming to you alive from Shibuya, where I guess I'm taking part in something called 'The Reaper's Game', which- *phone buzzes* Phone: "Write a game design essay about TWEWY. You have 60:00 minutes. Fail and face erasure. -The Reapers". Hey, I can do that! [i]The World Ends With You[/i] is--in a sentence--an amazing game. It does a lot right, and very little wrong... As long as you can put up with pointer controls, anyway. And with the animation having released just a few weeks ago, I've been in a little bit of a TWEWY kick, and have been hopping on every now and then to fight some Noise. And every time I do, I'm reminded of just how clever TWEWY was with its loot system. Disclaimer: My experience with TWEWY stems solely from the Switch Final Remix version. I can't speak for the other versions. Now, before I begin, let's make sure we're all on the same page before I start throwing lingo like "pins" and "Noise" at you. In TWEWY, our edgy anime protagonist Neku fights creatures called "Noise" using magical pins. You can have up to 6 pins equipped at any one time, and each pin you have equipped lets you use a different ability, such as summon a sword, or shoot of blasts of fire. Or, in a sentence; pins are your weapons, and Noise are your monsters. Now, some of your loot is gained through rather mundane methods; you just buy them in shops with money dropped from enemies. How exciting. Even the loot that is a part of the amazing system I'm about to explain, actually seems rather average to a regular player, too; you kill an enemy, and they have a chance to drop an item. I know, I know, quite genius indeed. However, taking a closer peek, and you'll quickly find that this loot system isn't quite as standard as it appears, and that is what I'm going to do in this thread. So let's get started! Every enemy in TWEWY can drop 4 pins. This applies to everything from the very first enemies you encounter, all the way up to and including the final boss (and the post-game & DLC enemies, too!), which is all recorded in your bestiary, alongside their drop percentages. Though the names of the specific items in question won't be revealed until said items drop, this by itself is nice because you'll always know what you're getting into when heading in to grind something out. But, these 4 items can't just drop at any time. No, each of them is associated with one of the game's four difficulty settings; Easy, Normal, Hard, and Insane. The difficulties themselves don't do anything particularly interesting; just the regular stuff like boosting enemy HP, and attack power, but they also switch the item that any given enemy can drop. So, for example, take the lowly Orchefrog enemy; On Easy it has a 7% chance to drop a Rare Metal, on Normal it has a .7% chance to drop an Aqua Monster pin, on hard a 7.5% chance to drop a 5,000 Yen pin, and on Ultimate a 9.5% chance to drop a 10,000 Yen pin. However, there's one other factor that affects what they can drop, too, and that is player level. Now, player level won't change the items that are able to drop, but rather their percentages. The basics of this is that the higher the player's level, the lower chance an item will drop. This might not seem to spectacular, until you factor in the fact that at any time, the player can lower their level all the way down to level 1 if they wish. For my run, I mostly kept my level at 50% of whatever my actual level was, and as a result that same Orchefrog's drop chances are actually more like: Easy: Rare Metal 100% Normal: Aqua Monster 35.7% Hard: 5,000 Yen 100% Ultimate: 10,000 Yen 100% In short, by making the game harder for themselves, the player can get a better shot at rare loot. On their own, each of these systems is pretty clever, but the real cleverness comes from the way they interact; even players who aren't that great at the game can still get a shot at the rarest loot by raising their level, while still rewarding players who keep their levels low by giving them those items faster. However, there's one final system TWEWY also adds to its loot that also makes it a blast to go collector crazy.. At least, in theory, but we'll get to that part. See, the pins you get aren't stagnant. They can change form, and power by leveling up, similar to a Pokémon evolution. For some, this is pretty self explanatory; beat enemies, get XP, pin evolves. But, the thing is, there are actually 3 different types of XP in the game, and pins will only evolve when the majority of their XP comes from the correct source. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't sound fun to a lot of y'all ("Just let me fight my monsters to level up my pins, jamblasted!"), but I personally have a ton of fun digging through charts to see what pins level up how, and then cross referencing that with where I get the original pins! Unfortunately, though, this is actually one of the few places where the game messes up, because only one of those XP sources is actually fun, being fighting enemies. The other one is literally not playing the game (and the third one was only in the original version). If they changed to something like, one type of XP from basic Noise, one from Taboo Noise, and one from Dissonance Noise, or just some other source of XP that was, y'know, actually in the game, it'd be a great system. All in all, The World Ends With you has a very elegant loot system, making it easy to get exactly the item you're looking for, while adding just enough depth to have it be engaging, but not so complex that it's overwhelming. Players who want to challenge themselves are rewarded with getting rare items faster, while players who can't, or simply don't want to fight super tough enemies at harder difficulties have the option to make the battles easier at the cost of needing to run them more times. The different types of XP to get different pin evolutions is a really fun idea, but unfortunately one that needs better ways to get different kinds of XP. It all makes for a really fun system, that can appeal to both hardcore pin collectors, and people who just want to dig around to get their favorite attacks. Hopefully, the upcoming sequel [i]Neo: The World Ends With You[/i] brings the system back, while fixing its aforementioned flaws. [b][u]Tl;dr? Here's my point![/b][/u] I don't know why you came into a thread about game design expecting it to be short, but to summarize: [i]The World Ends With You[/i] has a rather brilliantly designed loot system. I'd highly recommend playing it! It [i]doesn't[/i] have a loot system, on account of being a TV show, but I'd also recommend watching [i]The World Ends With You: The Animation[/i], as well! (And I already know I'm going to regret asking this question on this forum, but...) What about y'all? What are some of your favorite loot systems in video games? Why do you like them? What parts do you think they could do better? That's all for now folks! Jambuhbye!