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

i have another idea - why don't make some sort of travel chest/ vault where would be stored all things droped by killed monsters and on leaving location have looting options like roll, pass, need, greed;
that will eliminate rat rush for items instead of enjoying killing mobs and watching skills effects

No offense but making it so that a random member gets all the loot seems silly to me, that is not cut throat rules that is getting screwed via RNG. Most people will play in a mode that reduces the amount of randomness they can be subjected to, this change does not promote party play at all and opens a whole new can of worms. There will be many people who will be looking for ways to make it so they can screw over other players such as kicking players before loot etc.

Honestly if you want cut throat leave it as FFA on all drops. The people who are too far away will learn to get there ass over near the boss when he is slivered to ensure they have a chance at loot. Hell we haven't played and people already know if you want a chance get your but over to where the loot will be.

And the people with bad latency, sorry, but internets are cheap these days, why should you need to compensate for them.

lol guess I am a little too cut throat.

(Having said that I like everyone getting their own loot, but am prepared to fight for mine).

ooh thats an idea, the uber items make people fight over,last one standing gets to leave with it...

i want loot my HC boss's all

Ok, I really have issues with an FFA system in this modern era of gaming. When we started playing online RPG's 10-15 years ago a FFA system was fine because people wanted to continue that Dungeons & Dragons Table-Top RPG "feel". Then with games like Ultima Online and Everquest you saw just how terrible this system worked with random people involved. I am sure a few people here know the pain of camping a mob in EQ for 8+ hours and getting the kill only to have someone pop from out of nowhere and gank their loot. In UO I remember when the 3D client came out people using the 2D client got all the loot because it appeared prior to the 3D death animation finishing.

It's not 1996 anymore and we have moved on from those systems for the most part. If you look at Dungeons & Dragons Online for example you see a game that rewards every single member of the party at the end of a mission. A treasure chest appears and everyone gets to loot it for items assigned to their character and class. The options even has it so you can toggle off only getting class-specific items to increase what the loot tables will allow you. If you don't want an item you can choose to leave it and anyone else can loot it.

The World of Warcraft system allows FFA, Master Looter, Round Robin, Random, etc [Pre-Set by the group leader] as well as earning tokens which can be used to trade for items via NPC's to work on sets or other filler pieces. This is a very well designed system which allows groups of similar mindset to adventure together with less strife than most systems while still keeping the much loved RNG System [For the most part RNG is only actually loved by Devs since it makes DB work easier].

Guild Wars 2 is expanding on the WoW system by offering all of those same things plus the addition of instance specific tokens. These tokens can be used at NPC's to trade for an item from the specific boss that the token was looted from. This way RNG doesn't screw you over constantly when you really need that item to finish out a set or build. In WoW I have literally ran a dungeon 50+ times to get a dagger I needed for raiding that only randomly dropped off a certain boss. GW2 sees the problem with that and is fixing it.

The concept of running content because you want to and not because you have to is a very alien thing in our genre. I applaud Guild Wars 2, Dungeons & Dragons Online, World of Warcraft, and Warhammer Online for their work in that area.

As for PoE if you absolutely have your heart set on a FFA system and cannot be swayed to something more refined I'd like to offer this. Allow groups to assign a timer to when designated loot becomes FFA. You can have it base at 0 so it's true FFA or maybe allow 5s increments up to a max of 30s. That way the players have a bit more control over just how "cutthroat" they want their PUG experience to work.

I simply do not understand the desire to specifically create situations which pit players against each other when they are acting as a team for the end goal. It's a twisted concept just like playing Dirty Santa with your close family.

Alienating your playerbase is only going to force you into changes later to adjust to the masses (ala Trammel in Ultima Online) or losing people simply because you're too stubborn to change.

Just my 2c on the subject.

whatever is decided, just make it fair to all players.

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Zwingnut wrote:

No offense but making it so that a random member gets all the loot seems silly to me, that is not cut throat rules that is getting screwed via RNG. Most people will play in a mode that reduces the amount of randomness they can be subjected to, this change does not promote party play at all and opens a whole new can of worms. There will be many people who will be looking for ways to make it so they can screw over other players such as kicking players before loot etc.

not global option roll, need, greed but like this :

> item 1 [need][greed][roll][pass]
> item 2 [need][greed][roll][pass]
> item 3 [need][greed][roll][pass] etc

+ filters for item color, type

maybe global option pass all

just a proposition, if pvp then just option fight for loot or pass, if won then winner takes all

Make loot separate for each player so that when a mob dies, the game rolls loot for each player in proximity.

This way latency isn't as much an issue and it will encourage co-op a LOT more.

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Madaxe wrote:

Make loot separate for each player so that when a mob dies, the game rolls loot for each player in proximity.

This way latency isn't as much an issue and it will encourage co-op a LOT more.

I do not think they can do loot for everyone on a free to play game. Accounts are free so people will just make multiple accounts and sync them into instances and walk out with 5x the loot. This will flood the system, and ruin the trade system.

If they were charging people either to buy the game or monthly fees then I think people would be entitled to getting the loot for each paid character, and that would create co-op play.

Having free accounts does not promote co-op it creates horders.

Agreed having an open drop system when you just met someone online and started an adventure could be problematic. But that is the reason why guilds will be important. You need to be able to find people you can trust. But that comes with the free game territory. Guess it will be up to the game Dev team to decide how it plays out.

having items restricted to just 1 player for a short delay I think is fine but a group/party should have the option to increase decrease or remove the restriction as they please.
i would also suggest that to increase the backstabbing/cutthroat nature of this game letting a group select to have drops permanently restricted to a single player should not be an option and the highest the delay should be around 10 seconds and by default it should be about 3 seconds.