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

So since I think we've both reached an agreeable stopping point to this discussion. Which was better than most I've had in this thread. I would like to ask:

What is your definition of astronomical?

P.S. Please ditch the Green from your Sig. I just find it incredibly simple minded, and not at all important to the topic. State what you want to state. Using "colors" to designate groups of people seems..... Like a bad idea.

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Xaxyx wrote:

I would give my left kidney to walk into the room at the precise moment that some public scumbag scoops up a Mirror that had your name on it, while you're careening toward it between monsters, only to reach it juuuuust after the timer expires. Then we'd see how you felt about bullying.

I played D2 for years and never whined, cried, and smashed my stuff because I missed out on an item. It's part of the game and them's the breaks: sometimes you're lucky and sometimes you're not. Perhaps a few of you will play PoE and learn that you can't always cry and complain until you get what you want. Just because some players don't want ANY competition on ANY level of the gameplay doesn't mean the devs have to do anything to cater to those players. This is about the time when many of you would ask "but why shouldn't they?!" and the answer is "because they don't want to". Just because you want to play their game a certain way doesn't mean they're obligated to indulge you.

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Xaxyx wrote:

Love those people who don't bother to read the thread before posting. We've been quoting the devs directly, expressly analyzing their vision therein, for pages now.

I think my first post in this thread was around page 133...perhaps you should read the thread, since I don't recall seeing you post other than the past day or two, in which you've written post after post basically calling the devs idiots for their design choices. These guys have invested their time and capital for years making this game, yet they're supposed to just cave and change their game the moment some of you can't handle something?

You guys with your doom-and-gloom "you gotta cater to casuals or it'll be a ghost town!" professional MMO advice are just funny. This game was designed from the get-go as a hardcore ARPG, something the devs themselves would love to play; nobody should be surprised that they don't want to stray far from their vision. Some of you seem to be surprised that the devs even have a vision for their game and that they're somehow foolish for sticking to it.

Perhaps you should go find a big corporate studio to make your ideal game: you can lobby their PR department, who will pass that on to a developer, who will perhaps take that to a project manager, who will weigh the suggestion based on dollars and cents. Truly inspired.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Stryker, basing your disagreement on solo, than bringing up PvE (which would.be solo) and PvP which isn't.

Doesn't work.

Planetside: .doubt they will EVER do permanent leagues. Unless of course it would be impossible to win a race, than have said winning item, like a demigod go there.

The price would be astronomical as GGG said they.plan on a 10 year game cycle.

But by all means, if they allow it, go for it. As this is not changing default (the actual game) in any way.

Here, Let me seperate them for you and maybe it will be more clear...


My first argument

-Looting Options has little impact especially since it wouldn't effect single player at all.

-Single player is also what this game was apparently built for.

My second argument

-Full respecs is far more impactful since it has a big impact on BOTH single player and multiplayer people (including pvp).


Edit: Maybe we should define the word "cater". I don't see Pro instanced people asking to make the enemies do less damage, give free full respecs, remove stats, make the passive tree smaller, remove all death penalties etc etc...

Again, everyone ignores the huge problem being bots.

Why are you not playing D2 right now? You can get the game and expansion for $5 and the servers are still up. The game still plays great and has aged pretty well.

Its simply because every single public game is populated with bots or people using bots to assist in looting. That is simply because of the loot system being FFA.

GGG only has 5 programmers and 1 system admin and you really think they are going to be able to stop pick-it bots? Its going to end up the same thing for every public game, either you use a script/bot to parse and grab loot or you massively lose out to people that do.

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Dinin wrote:

Again, everyone ignores the huge problem being bots.

I'm ignoring it because, as a retired programmer/analyst who is very familiar with the problem domain, I'm fervently praying that both you and I are wrong. If you and I are correct in our judgements, FFA loot will be the least of the problems (though a very big problem in its own right as you correctly point out).

Here's to hoping the GGG devs pull an equivalent of a John Carmack & co, revolutionizing multiplayer game anti-hacking and counter automation techniques equivalent to what that Carmack's crew did in the graphics field.

Cheers!

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Planetsurvival wrote:

As i typed in a previous post and ill clarify:


What can I Spend Points on?
As a test of our microtransaction system, we’re initially offering two small purchases:

Extra Stash Tab (30 Points): Your quota of stash tabs is increased in all leagues. The number of stash tabs is not reset when we enter Open Beta.
Extra Character Slot (30 Points)


At Open Beta, we will have a range of different microtransactions for sale, including many of the following:

Public stash tabs (viewable to other players for trade purposes)
Cosmetic pets
Alternate skill effects
Special animations (for example, taunts or PvP victory animations)
Special paid leagues (with custom game rules)
Guild storage
Alternate item skins and visual effects
Special cosmetic item properties such as “extra gore”
Item dyes

(this is from the PoE website, copy pasted)

Except you missed the part where separate paid leagues are only to make the game harder and not easier.

I have played games with instanced and FFA loot, and I much prefer the FFA loot. With instanced you kill less stuff if you are slow because people can't see your items and in FFA someone else takes it. Instanced loot would make it easier, and be bad for the game. Too many games these days are going down the slippery slope of instanced loot.

About the timer though, the problem isn't that it needs to be longer, but that if you click on an item 1-2 seconds before the timer ends, you can pick it up before the timer ends. Fix this issue and it will act as though the timer is 1-2 seconds longer.

Oh And I usually play ranged and still am able to grab most of my loot in public games. and for my pieces I miss, I can get some other people's stuff to compensate.

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Dinin wrote:

Again, everyone ignores the huge problem being bots.

Why are you not playing D2 right now? You can get the game and expansion for $5 and the servers are still up. The game still plays great and has aged pretty well.

Its simply because every single public game is populated with bots or people using bots to assist in looting. That is simply because of the loot system being FFA.

GGG only has 5 programmers and 1 system admin and you really think they are going to be able to stop pick-it bots? Its going to end up the same thing for every public game, either you use a script/bot to parse and grab loot or you massively lose out to people that do.

Why bother playing with others (as a bot).

Merely have 6 bots playing together..... None of this has anything to do with loot.

As far as pickit bots or scripts are concerned. Boot em (from your party).

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Faerie_Storm wrote:

Except you missed the part where separate paid leagues are only to make the game harder and not easier.

Out of all of the Pro FFA arguments this one annoys me the most. I don't remember one Anti-FFA player in this entire thread that wants a change in order to make the game easier. We argue to make the game less terrible for us, less frustrating, less UNfun. It has nothing at all to do with game difficulty. If this is the issue then I will PM Chris right now and ask him to let us make a MUCH more difficult league with long timers or instanced loot.

Maybe this league will have twice as many necromancers, or double the health of all necromancers. I dunno stuff like that.

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for me its only a reason to avoid to play with guys like slayer...

lolz

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Jackel6672 wrote:

You have the right to play solo, but the game itself is not a solo game.

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Chris wrote:

...the game is designed around being played solo.

The lead-developer of this game contradicts you, so go tell that to him (first post on page 235).
It appears that this game was designed as a solo playing game with the option of party playing.

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Jackel6672 wrote:

... A cut-throat action role playing game ... How do you make instanced loot cut throat? ... How do you suggest they keep the feel of the game they would like to have, and have instanced?

Easy, not instanced where each player can only see his allocated loot, but with the current system slightly changed: make the timer infinite, then get rid of it and replace it with the name of the player that the RNG decides the item is allocated to. This way all players see all loot.

And don't fool yourself thinking that the current system gives you "cut-throat" feel because with the current loot system the RNG decides randomly which item theoretically belongs to which player by specifying his name on the item.

I repeat myself, this is not cut-throat, where you can't randomly attack/kill players just for the pleasure of it and taking their items in the process. Cut-throat is where loot is pure-FFA (no timers, no naming specified, no nothing) and everyone can take everything AND everyone can kill anyone they want, for the pleasure of it or for the loot.
That would be real cut-throat, even the name cut-throat means that i can cut your throat whenever i please and i want.
Not this fake, artificially pompous named "cut-throat" that you flap arround in here.

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Jackel6672 wrote:

...no one wants to argue balance in instanced and how it changes the core game to one the devs don't want.

The system i explained above doesn't change the core game.
Plus, you can have all kinds of leagues with all kind of rules. We already have softcore, hardcore, that cut-throat etc. No biggie.

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Jackel6672 wrote:

You also make it so the only excitement of the game is bosses and maps.

Guess what, especially the end game is bosses and maps, with the current state that this game is in right now. Loot options would not affect this in any way, as you wrongfully imply.

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Jackel6672 wrote:

They'll lose a lot of FFA'ers if they put in instanced.

Well, all of you ffaers would still be able to play ffa, so why would you leave?
Because there are loot-options? Out of spite? Why?

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Jackel6672 wrote:

...this game is not targeted for casuals but for gamers of the ARPG genre. That is the target market.

Guess what, the "gamers of the ARPG genre" are a lot, including casuals (consumers), pro-sumers and pros.
We all know that you really wanted to say pros/hardcore/elite but you realized it's a nonsense and you change it in "gamers of the ARPG genre". Funny indeed.
The question is: Are pros/hardcore/elitist enough to keep this game alive? Do the game needs also the pro-sumers and the consumers? Or maybe the devs have a money printing machine in which case yeah, I guess you can make a very small niche game and self sustain it.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Suggestion:
Since you all seem to enjoy comparing Solo:Party.
How about this, instanced loot option in party = no loot bonus for the party, but the drops are divided like they are now.
100%/6 for instanced gameplay.
Enjoy

OK.
With the current system a party of 6 gets, lets say, 100 items form 1 cleared instance.
With a full instanced system that party of 6 would still get in the end the same 100 items after 1 cleared instance, but it would be divided (equally or not, those are details) between the 6 players. No inflation, no bulshit, no nothing.

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JoannaDark wrote:

But the timer, well, it adds a level of insult to injury.

I agree with this.

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Jackel6672 wrote:

It is highly unlikely the devs want to split the population of their game.

Heh, it's been already announce a multitude of leagues. That's spliting the population. Already. Keep up.

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Jackel6672 wrote:

Hardcore league feeds default.

True, but until death the leagues are split. Plus most of the hardcorers will start a new hardcore character instead of playing default. Or they play default for a few days then (re)start hardcore again.
Split is split, not together. Don't twist the words to reach to a wrong conclusion.

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wisdorin wrote:

And the real FFA QQ will start with OB.

So true, it'll be carnage.

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Jackel6672 wrote:

How would instanced be connected to default as to not split the player base?

They are connected already, we're talking about loot options here. Inside default you'd have party loot option: full-ffa or the system explained above. Easy peasy.

Oh, and please stop relating the succes of d2 or the insucces of d3 to the loot system used (ffa in the first case and instanced in the second case). It has absolutely nothing to do with it.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

I tend to play pubs for fun/entertainment. I usually dont care about the loot at all.

Exactly, because you have a team that focuses on being the best, toping the ladder, showing off with uber-6linked-gear and stuff like that. You already play the game, probably 95% of the time with your team, acting like one, focused on your purpose. You play pub-games just for a laugh. So you're not exactly in the position of giving advices about this.
You do that because you want to top the ladder, be competitive and all that bulshit.

It's easy for you to talk so relaxed about loot because inside your focused team you have rigorous rules about the loot that drops. In there nobody steals your loot etc. And this is exactly why you want and stick to the ffa system: because it gives you (and your team) an advantage.

Whatever.
On the contrary, the casuals and some of the prosumers dont give a shit about ladders and competitive playing. They want fan and relaxation. They have enough competition in real life. They don't want loot competitivity. They dont have nor want nor need a team that is focused on laurels and glory.
Sticky this to your trollish head.