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

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Things are that simple. There are a couple of real issues that are getting confused. Latency is a factor that the developers are trying to remove from the game, and is therefore something they're trying to weed out. A cut throat environment where you need to properly establish looting rules with your party ahead of time and have a community based punishment for abusing them seems to be what they're going for. If we start out grouping together and we say we'll "random" for any special drops regardless of the allocation after combat, we'll probably work out better than the people who are jumping all over each other to get to items. There's still a question of how much you trust people, but that is what makes a cut-throat game cut-throat, you have to work together but you need to balance that with looking out for yourself.

As for the idea that ranged combat users are less likely to be able to get to an item in a cut-throat environment, they're also less likely to be the ones to die and pay the consequences in a team environment. I don't think that a healer is much going to appreciate the tank looting up an item he shouldn't have, and suddenly being in the thick of things without backup doesn't seem like such an advantage.

I had thought about that after I wrote it. It would be abused to a certain extent.

The biggest problem is lag. Dealing with that might be the hardest problem with a short timer. I hope they find a way to minimize the associated loot problems.

As far as community based punishment. That has been touted around in so many games over the years and it has never been a real deterrent to being a dick. Unless GGG can provide a way to prevent users from having multiple accounts and also limit each account to 1 character, then there will never be any real deterrent. As long as the loot can move from one character to another, there is nothing to fear from anyone. I am not saying they should make such limits. Just pointing out that being completely cutthroat mean sacrificing community trust.

I think ranged characters have a much higher chance of gaining loot since they are not getting the crap beat out of them during battle. Same goes for anyone not in direct contact with a mob. Its kinda hard to click spam a mob and loot at the same time. I guess the only way to deal with it is to just boot people from the party that don't play nice and then train mobs on them. Speaking of which, there should be a log off timer. if you "log off" during play your character should stay in game for 10 seconds or more.

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herflik wrote:

Make everyone have own drops on the screen based on own quantity and rarity % of drops no matter who kills the mob ,its party afterall.
If you pick up the item from ground and drop it back ,it should appear to everyone in party.

Simple as that ,no fighting over lucky drops ,no ninja stealing ,no bots problem. If you wanna give items from your "view" just trade them or pick them up and redrop.

Did you even read Chris' post?

They said that they specifically do not want to do that

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Chris wrote:

It's important to us that Path of Exile has a cut-throat feel where players are not only competing against monsters, but also their fellow players. We do not feel it is an option to arbitrarily hide items from players who have not been allocated them.

This may sound stupid, but I just came up with an idea whether its good or not i havnt thought about it :P

When you kill a boss with say, 5 others, and then you go to loot. Everyone can see the loot but no one can loot it yet. A message comes up on the screen saying something like, the first person to run over to that rock or whatever, gets it..

Of course I dont mean having it exactly like that, im talking about the general thinking of it. After the boss is down, a random message will come up, the first one to do what the message says, gets that item of loot.

However it should only be really short things as you dont want to waste 15 minutes on getting all the loot :P

Now I will go and think about it and probably think its rubbish, but its the contribution that counts :P

Leave it Free for all in my opinion. This was not an issue in Diablo 2, in any way what-so-ever, and this wouldn't be an issue here from what I can tell.

I have not played this beta, but I have watched all available footage of it and I personally think the issue of "ranged characters" not having a fair chance at loot is nit-picky and borderline pouting.

If you're using a bow while someone melees a boss down and you're sitting at a safe distance firing while the melee guys take all the hits...you don't deserve a fair chance at what drops. Get in the fight up close and personal if you want loot.

Risk Vs. reward.

Leave it free for all so nobody can leech.

That's just my two cents.

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Smasherface wrote:

Leave it Free for all in my opinion. This was not an issue in Diablo 2, in any way what-so-ever, and this wouldn't be an issue here from what I can tell.

I hated D2 running with pick-up group on Hell diffculty because of the free for all drop. People would run to anything that look like a set or unique like a homeless that is raining money on him. That was not fun, at all, for me at least

FFA with friend, no problem

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Mangouste wrote:

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Smasherface wrote:

Leave it Free for all in my opinion. This was not an issue in Diablo 2, in any way what-so-ever, and this wouldn't be an issue here from what I can tell.

I hated D2 running with pick-up group on Hell diffculty because of the free for all drop. People would run to anything that look like a set or unique like a homeless that is raining money on him. That was not fun, at all, for me at least

FFA with friend, no problem

I loved it.

It was exciting and made your heart pound. A free for all loot system is an entire game in itself on top of the base layer. When you see something potentially awesome drop, hell yea! Round 1 complete. Round Two: Now you have less than 2 seconds to pick it up. Go!!

amazing stuff...anything else is handholding and belongs in Diablo 3.

:)

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Smasherface wrote:

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Mangouste wrote:

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Smasherface wrote:

Leave it Free for all in my opinion. This was not an issue in Diablo 2, in any way what-so-ever, and this wouldn't be an issue here from what I can tell.

I hated D2 running with pick-up group on Hell diffculty because of the free for all drop. People would run to anything that look like a set or unique like a homeless that is raining money on him. That was not fun, at all, for me at least

FFA with friend, no problem

I loved it.

It was exciting and made your heart pound. A free for all loot system is an entire game in itself on top of the base layer. When you see something potentially awesome drop, hell yea! Round 1 complete. Round Two: Now you have less than 2 seconds to pick it up. Go!!

amazing stuff...anything else is handholding and belongs in Diablo 3.

:)

I say keep it Free for ALL, its never been an issue before. And its an adrenaline rush trying to get the item.

My thinking is, how does this help ranged characters? To me all this means is this

*boss dies*

*melee classes grab all their loots*

*ranged classes run in and now have to compete with melee for their loot*

Also, what if a witch gets the unique 2 handed axe that the melee otherwise would have gotten but the ranged wont trade it? I dunno. Just saying I personally prefer free for all.

Not knowing how the game's core systems are programmed (insert standard code rant here), I would tie looting rules to the Leagues, and then set up a few different options that players can choose when setting up a custom League.

Standard = Allocated Loot
Hardcore = Proposed Time-Delayed Loot
Cut-Throat = FFA


One change I would propose for the Time Delayed loot as stated in the OP, somehow add a delay to all loot timers if combat is still active. The main reason I say this is to cover instances where the boss/superunique is defeated, but there are still a number of enemies on a screen. The issue I can see happening is that some players will stop fighting and focus on the loot, not the 15 enemies on the screen, while other players will continue to fight through what remains and then focus on the loot, at which point they have actually forfeited their opportunity because they were, unfortunately, playing the game.

With the proposed looting system, I know that for me personally, unless I am playing in an Attrition or Cut-Throat game, I will most likely only be grouping with friends. Granted, I'll jump into groups from time to time, but not with the expectation of gaining loot. I like to focus on playing the game and killing things, not looking at text pop-ups. ;)

I'm not sure if this has been suggested before, but the really easy and completely equitable solution is to simply increase the lootable field to between 1/2 and 3/4ths standard view distance.

The stated goal is to level the playing field between ranged and melee classes, so making everyone able to loot at range does that while still keeping the supposed adrenaline rush on. Yes, you lose the question of whether or not you're able to survive long enough to reach the loot, but as tanks will generally say 'yes' much more often than ranged, it wasn't a fair question to begin with.

And it's no more strange than full suits of armor popping out of death lizards. People should adapt quickly and most will probably prefer it.

That said, Time-Delayed Loot will be a bit more flexible proposition. You can potentially just leave it to a flat .75 - 1 second for everyone.

I like the time-delay option, but as has been mentioned a ton in this thread already, that alone is not enough to truly fix the biggest issues.

What players want:
1) A fair chance at getting a reasonable portion of loot.
2) The ability to get more loot than the reasonable portion.
3) The ability to see all drops.

Obstacles to overcome:
a) Melee vs ranged
b) Latency

So, here is my proposal:

Start with the proposed Time-Delay system. Each League has a default delay (I'd suggest 1.5-2 seconds).
Make all allocated items drop 50% (or more) of the way to the target character, instead of on top of the monster.
Increase the timer by .5-1 second if the chosen player is in combat.
Allow the party leader to increase or decrease the allocation timer (or disable it entirely).
Put a simple party window into the game (can throw in cool stuff like looking at their stats and such too) that displays info about party rules.
If there are parts of the game where non-partied players can fight a monster together, the system uses the League defaults.