Loot is too good in co-op RPG Fellowship, so its devs are trying to convince players why making it worse is better

I don't envy the developers of early access co-op RPG Fellowship for having to convince its loyal players that the thing they liked was too good and needs to be made worse for the health of the game.

Although many players have enjoyed running its MMO-like dungeons without all the busywork of an actual MMO, the developers believe its loot system is holding back its true potential as an action RPG.

"We want to make sure that opening the chests at the end of every dungeon feels exciting all the time," game director Axel Lindberg explained in a recent video. "We want to also make sure that a lot of items have potential and are useful in the game."

Basically, items are too simplistic to foster creativity in the ways players approach Fellowship's World of Warcraft-like combat. You play the game, get your upgrades, and stop paying attention to loot once you've filled every slot with the best stuff you can find.

Part of the problem is that there's nothing else to do in Fellowship but run dungeons, so the time it takes to perfect a character is much shorter than something like WoW. Developer Chief Rebel wants items to expand the definition of what a character build can be and to give players more to chew on when it comes to picking their upgrades and setting up their characters.

Fellowship's "Loot 2.0" update will give items a couple bonus random stats whenever they drop. Basic stats, like health and armor, will always be there, but there will be a pool of secondary stats that won't be guaranteed. In addition to those, items will also randomly have ranks to traits in each character's skill tree, incentivizing you to chase after items with the same traits to increase their power.

I also understand the people who see this as a ploy to extend the amount of time it takes to reach the same goals as before. When a piece of gear that would normally have guaranteed useful stats on it suddenly has a few that suck, it's going to be a bummer. And if Chief Rebel doesn't nail it, the change will just turn the game into a grind for the items with perfect RNG. WoW players still complain about a now-removed system it had where items would randomly upgrade when you found them. But if there's just enough consistency in the drops and the value of the items, the game could support far more playstyles than it does now.

Linderberg said the goal is to also give players the ability to overcome threatening dungeon modifiers through their gear. A dungeon with tougher monsters might require stacking as much survivability as you can, but a dungeon where speed is king could push you towards prioritizing raw damage output.

"There's always going to be [best-in-slot items] but we want to try to open that up more," Lindberg said.

I look at all of this and get excited that the game is leaning into being an action RPG with the build variety of Diablo, or at least something closer to it. If you're going to have loot in the first place, it should meaningfully change how your character functions, and that seems to be exactly where Fellowship is headed. I also think it's a smart way to add some depth to the game's core loop of running the same dungeons over and over, and to open the door for players to find unexpected gear combinations that shift each season's meta.

Early access is exactly when you want to test these kinds of changes and find a solution that doesn't ruin the appeal of the game. To do this, Chief Rebel will be holding a playtest for all of these changes on May 20. Then, the big loot rework will go live for season 3 sometime in June.