I guess at a fundamental level it depends on what kind of game you want to make/play. To me the allure of RPG-style games is that they can be story vehicles. Run-of-the-mill animals dropping weapons and gems has the opposite effect on me: I think it disrupts the world's integrity and as a player I always think it's a design weakness.
In any case, they do drop something - their bodies.
> You'd end up basically just trying to kill "monsters" that are humans.
Nope, at least not if we're talking standard fantasy RPGs. You could argue that all the tool-using monsters are human-like, but to me that's not very accurate. If there's a moral in-game argument in there, well, you generally don't kill Goblins because they're not human, you kill them because they're evil or they attack you first. There are generally tons of tool-using monsters in fantasy settings that aren't even humanoid. But yeah, I think it's OK to have human bad guys as well. To me, basing the distinction whether to kill some creature on whether they're human or not feels weird and questionable.
> I think that's a cool idea, but in practice it doesn't seem to lead to very fun gameplay.
Obviously, I disagree. Not every mob needs to drop riches, especially if the loot doesn't make sense within the story. Providing predictable and nonsensical short-term rewards is not a player retention strategy I'm overly fond of, I might as well just install ProgressQuest and watch that for half an hour. On the other hand, there are many games that do just that, so your view is clearly commercially viable.
> "Oh, look, the wizard dropped yet another robe."
That's only a problem if the expectation is that every lootable item is indeed loot-worthy.
> I deliberately sacrificed realism (which is of limited value in my book anyway) to get a more exciting, surprising game.
I see you're not kidding about not caring for realism. That's of course totally fine, do your thing. I'm not trying to convince you of anything. My point is that I personally think the choice between fun and realism implies a false dichotomy. Yes, dropping "realistic" loot is a bit predictable - but it's a good kind of predictability that makes the in-game world more convincing. And with just a little bit of good will and creativity you can still make them drop unique and surprising things without breaking their character.
Maybe I'm mistaken but you sound a bit defensive, which was not my intention. Once again, this is not a critique of your game. It's a very personal opinion about loot and the style of games I like to play. At the end of the day, you're the guy building something amazing and I'm just a random dude on the internet who except for the occasional abysmal LD entry never even made a real game. So: rock on :)
