Looting -- The official thread for discussing the loot system. Updated 18th March, 2013.

Didn't read all 143 pages, just last two to know how the discussion is going on.

I can understand GGG wants to make people rush to the items to the adrenaline of it and so, but there is many flaws in this, and in my opinion some are these:

-As people said if your inventory is full you are doomed, and you are not going to reallocate items in inventory whole time while trying to kill mobs to have space, it would spoil the fun and would be more an annoyance than "adrenaline thing".

-If you are ranged it could kill you, therefore melee have huge advantage in terms of distance and survavility.

-Lag issues could also be a problem (I don't know if the timer takes this into consideration) and well about disconnects I wouldn't care much since there are low chances to happen when a good item drops.

Having said that, I am against instanced loot. Everyone should be able to see everything that dropped and well some people say economy would be x6 bigger and weird things but that can be fixed easily by giving less loot so that's nonsense hehe.

Finally, as a solution to this I find it a nice to customize the time to loot (within a limit, let's say 1 minute max, since I can already imagine a Witch not looting a bow for the ranger just for fun and the ranger waiting 999999 seconds to get it) by the party leader. If the timer annoys the other you can just make it so that the text of the item is red until there is 5 seconds left or something like that, even though that would still annoy the looter since he will see the timer (fix some other way? can't think of everything haha).

Last thing. This solution would be against that adrenaline rush GGG likes but with the flaws I said before in my opinion there is kinda no way to make it even for everyone and not annoying.

What about a loot "pool" that gear would fall into. You could pre-determine the drops to be a "pass or lot" system or set up a quartemaster to pass out loots based on party requests.

New Random Idea:

Items -> Are Seperated loot

Currency/Maps -> FFA/Timed Loot


The problem is, without Seperated Loot there are too many item drops on your screen if u do Maps with Groups. 80% of the screen is full of items.... not funny.

I do not enjoy FFA loot. A faster connection appears to be such a big advantage which is bull to be honest. Other players can pick up my loot before the timer even appears to run out for me, what??

I would prefer it if item drops stay the same, but there is no timer for allocated loot. Rather, you could right click on gear allocated to you to make it open for the party if someone else wants it.

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Rilakai wrote:

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With a 9999999999 limit, items with a timer would stay on the ground forever if you didn't pick them up, cluttering up the screens of all the other players in the game (especially as more and more stuff dropped). That'd be lousy.

This doesn't really make sense to me. How long do you plan on sticking around where the loot dropped and the monsters are dead? 2 seconds? I don't see how screens could get so cluttered that it would be an issue. Do you have any examples where this is applicable? In my games, we leave 90% of the loot on the ground anyways, no difference really.

Extending the timers forever would keep the timers on your screen forever if the items were not picked up. It was just an example of why I wouldn't want to take the current system and add "extend the timers forever" as an option.

I just want to throw this in as avid ARPG fan since days of D1. I really hope devs steer away from current very short time window FFA loot system as it was pretty much one of the biggest flaws at least in my opinion and experience at my younger days when played D2 (as it was released up to some years after it along the LOD).

Luckily back in those days thanks to LAN support and generally playing with friends was able to go around the issue with the FFA loot and loot frenzy after every boss kill. But soon as switching to playing with random people the system simply only caused grief and pretty much lead to following. As D2 had long leveling curve you could skip the loot (assuming you had farmed already good gear) and simply focus on playing public games for fast diablo (during original) or fast baal runs on LOD just for the sake of EXP. But looking at this game much more complex loot system since days of D2 and honest opinion FFA loot was never fun to begin with, not to mention i would think designers hope people have fun and flock to play with random people and not just huddle into safe zone with friends who they can easily agree with who gets what.

I hope devs consider fact a lot of the older players for example might be less prone to be able to play with friends as people age and tastes diversify. So for example my same age real life friends dont really care about gaming in same sense as i do or they cant even put the same time as when school age. So im often forced to choose public game option to enjoy group play. What i have to say in D3's favor is that they actually broadened the player base wise with the invidual loot system aside of many short comings of the game it was thing they did right and often than not people still trade or share the loot they get invidually during the games, if they assume for example quiver could be upgrade for the ranger. People can actually be very nice to each other and we shouldnt be forced to fight like piranhas for the loot, it can be sorted in civilized manner in case need arises. Its hell a lot more satisfying to work for same goal and not end with broken rags as other players were faster to loot the stuff and whole combined effort comes crashing down.

So i hope devs dont step onto anti-social trap and assume people cant be nice to each other without forcing all loot to be visible to everyone. As it only leads to this double edged sword that same time promotes very bad anti-social acts, so hopely you consider the balance for this and take into account many perspective players you have lurking around. ;)

At very least give us ample time to look at the loot specially in case of bosses (like 20 - 30 sec timer, even thou that might still hurt people that die during the fight)

Can't tell if this has been mentioned or not, but what if..

When starting/looking for a party you had 2 options for the group/loot type:

Free for All - Mass hysteria every man for himself! Everyone sees everything.

Instanced Loot - Only you see your loot drop for Rares or Higher. Once dropped after looting anyone can see and pickup. (basically Diablo 3 style)

This way people could pick the style they enjoy most. Every body wins, but the programmers sort of deal..

Or if that is just to crazy, back to the Dev's idea of "Timers". Added the game actually takes your latency into account and possibly your class or radius from the Mob.

So if you were a range class or 10 yards from the Mob you get +1 second on your "Timer".
If you are in the range of Medium latency 300-600 you get +1 second, and High latency 601-999 you gain +2 seconds on your "Timer".

This should remove the worry people have from being to far or having bad latency.

My apologies if this has already been mentioned

Not a fan of the current loot system to be honest. After playing several public games it quickly became apparent that as soon as loot dropped(especially a rare), the entire group stopped what they were doing and fixated on any rare timers, waiting to loot faster than anyone else if it became open, even while mobs were still there killing people.

The immersion & flow of the game completely breaks down & stops as soon as any loot is dropped(especially rares). This is not a good thing imo, and is just another way for Devs to punish people who want to group with others they don't know and play together.

I thought the point of multi-player was to work together towards a common goal, not try & screw each other out of loot or other things. Theres enough games out there where you actually get screwed for playing together(I'm talking to you D3, as well as others). I don't understand the mentality of making a multiplayer-capable game and then inserting mechanics to make people not want to play together. It's a waste of Dev time to be honest.

If you must have timers for whatever reason, then allow players to set the timers(and display that loot timer in the game list) so they don't feel so pressured to drop everything they are doing and fixate on not letting some other person take something that was designated for them at first. Obviously, you would need to set a ceiling on what that timer could be(9999999 seconds would not work of course).

I actually lost loot to others in some multi-player games I joined, and to say the least, it left a bad taste in my mouth about grouping with others in PoE. I actually stopped grouping after that.

Multi-player should be about grouping up and meeting others and enjoying the experience, not about backstabbing someone you just met because the Dev's implemented a mechanic that makes it ok.

In fact, there's only 2 things I don't like about PoE. One is the way loot is done in multi-player currently, and the other is how close the point of view is to your character. If you could make it so we can choose how we do loot perhaps, as well as allow us to pull the view farther out around our character, this game would be perfect for me. Both of these things I listed are rather big deals to me, and hopefully will be changed.

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Malice wrote:

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Silver wrote:

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Chris wrote:

- The allocation times can be lower or non-existent in hardcore or cut-throat leagues.

This is fine, actually they should simply have the FFA loot scheme period.

I don't know, I'd still ike to be able to play a ranged/squishy hardcore character for fear of death, without being at a massive loot disadvantage. FFA in cut-throat makes perfect sense, since there will already be fierce competition between players, and if you can just (try to) kill someone for their loot.

FFA loot and parties are sort of at odds with each other. Parties promote concentrating on cooperation and teamwork in combat. FFA loot promotes competition and griefing your party members while ingnoring combat.

Very good points.

Separate loot for default league / hardcore, and FFA for cut throat covers the spectrum of players and would be an ideal solution.

Choice.
This game is about choice, isn't it ?

Skill choices, build choices, passive choices...

Let the players choose however they want.

Give us the options in party creation.

- Free for all
- Everybody sees the loot, but the items are reserved for certain players (no timer).
- Instanced loot
- Timer setting options
- ...