FFA Loot and the Prisoners Dilemma

(Disclaimer: This thread is NOT a critizism of FFA loot - although i will describe problems it causes i don't suggest to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I want to build a water fun park for it)

There are many, many topics on FFA in this forum, and generally i see two opposing opinions, which in my opinion are both correct:

1) FFA will kill random partying for about anybody who cares about loot.

2) FFA is awesome because it promotes a competitive cutthroat atmosphere.

While i totally agree with #2, i also agree with #1 - because in the current implementation, it is always more beneficial to betray your party members - see the Prisoners Dilemma.

One might argue, the thing one stands to lose by chosing the path of betrayal is the chance to make new friends. But generally, the people who support the second opinion also voice general desinterest to cooperate with players outside their circle of friends or guild members - a circle of trust that often has been formed outside the game, in real life, another game, or on the forums.

This, in my opinion, circumvents a very intriguing aspect of virtual worlds - making new friends and, equally importand, new enemies. Interacting with people you have never met, trying to judge them, and being rewarded for making the right call, punished for making the wrong.

At the moment, the punishment/reward ratio is skewed. The best possible outcome for a person being trusted is always achieved by betraying said trust, and there is no risk involved for doing so.The worst that can happen is that the person you betrayed will never group with you again. While this has been a deterrent in MUDs due to their limited userbase (one day there will be noone left to rip off and everybody is hostile), in a game like PoE with its (hopefuly) large userbase, this is hardly a factor. And the damage is done and irreversible - the item is in your pocket, "end of story".

Thus, trusting someone will become a luxury, only done by those who feel they can afford being betrayed. They are not taking a risk, because they have already accepted the loss the second they invite you to their group.

I don't think this is the setting we, and GGG, envisioned for this game. It should be a harsh world, with many shady people fighting for power and survival, that offers the opportunity to leap ahead of others both by trusting the right people (to a certain degree), and taking advantage of others. Both should be optional, and a concious choice each player makes for each individual person he encounters. Noone should ever feel too secure. And, in my opinion, in the case of conflict, the prevailing motto should be "might makes right" - not, "first one to be an *** makes right".

In order to solve this dilemma, i propose to indtroduce risk for betraying your party. The person who is betrayed must be able to retaliate, and make things right (or fail to do so, and suffer an even bigger loss).

One possible implementation (the easiest would be to let us murder our party for every drop, but that's maybe too cutthroat for default league):

A legendary/currency item with their cute little timer drops. It has your name on it, but you can't make it there in time. The timer runs out, and i grab the item. You see a little "thief" icon appear next to my portrait in the party window. You click it, and "challenge" me for the item. A popup appears for me (maybe immobilizing us both, certainly with a short timer), presenting me with 2 options: surrender the item (clicking this option just transfers it to your backpack, and everything is normal again), or fight.

In the second case, we would turn hostile, portals disabled for the thief, and i would either try to kill you, or try make a run for a map transition. In case one of us dies, the other can loot the whole backpack (not equiped items, unless it is the one i was challenged for).

All party members should also have the option to join either of the parties in enforcing their perceived ownership rights, or stay neutral. There should be an option to disable all conflict prompts and stay neutral by default, for those who don't wont to be bothered.


I think this would lead to countless fun scenarios, and encourage partying with other people, while keeping the spirit of competitiveness alive and improving on it. Players who feel very powerful will be more inclined to "trust" other characters. And hubris goes before a fall.

PS: Give the party leader the option to set party ownership mode to "all mine". Players are informed on joining the party. Of course, they can still chose to violate this agreement and have it resolved as described above. Pulling a group of lowbies, who agreed you can have all the loot, through the pyramid and killing the vaal oversoul for them, only to have them gang up on you at the end and kill you for the boss loot... that should be PoE :D

Sorry all forum regulars if this suggestion / thought approach has already been discussed to death.

tl;dr party loot stays. qq less to everyone who opposes

can i have the last 3 minutes back it took me to read this post?

You will have to fight me for those.

The prisoner's dilemma can be summarized in two words: No trust.

Yes, if you're playing with total strangers, there is no trust. You will steal that other guy's loot the moment you can.

This is why the current loot system is best for people who can trust each other.

And it's this element of trust that GGG I believe likes, which is why the loot system is what it is.

I've found what works in the past is to just be upfront with randoms. This works especially well if you already have friends in your group (thus making the random a minority)

usually something like "Hello, welcome to the group. We emphasize need before greed and failure to adhere to this will result in being kicked, cheers."

This causes some people to leave right away. Others get booted when they fail to share. This weeds out the problem people rather quickly and allows us to fill up with a good group.

No automated system will ever do the job of a Group Leader/Moderator. As you said a big part of MMOs is meeting other people. A big part of meeting other people is communicatingwith them. We only hit the field with people we can trust. Why leave that question until it's too late?

Personally, I'm someone who loves options and toggles. Why not let group leaders have the option to toggle either FFA loot, shared loot (instead of a countdown timer where a person's item eventually turns FFA, it stays there for only that person to pick up), or instanced loot.

And so people know what groups to join, these toggles would appear in the group list when you're looking for a group to join.

anubite and Encryptedprinter, Thans you for those replies, and i wholeheartedly agree with both of you. This has also been my experience, and how i normally behave in games.

I guess the aim of my suggestion is to encourage as many people as possible to acutally try grouping with randoms in an FFA setting, who otherwise wouldn't. If a system like i described was implemented, i suspect it would actually be very rarely used, and that there are actually quite a lot of trustworthy people around. That, and making the rare events when someone lied about being cooperative, a potentially fun incident instead of a (minor) disappointment. It's not a replacement for comunicating ingame, just an enhancement.

Also, in my opinion, it would actually encourage people to be dishonorable from time to time. I know i could justify it easier for myself if there was an ingame system to counter it.

considering that grouping greatly increases your total loot drops, i really dont see how its beneficial in any way to steal loot and therefore decrease your pool of potential grouping partners.

since stealing will quickly lead to being removed from group and labelled a thief on forums/chat, you will be forced into single player and i hope you ninja'd loot helps!

I see what you're saying.

Here's some ways I would tweak it:

-Contested items are put into phase space so the taker does not have the item in their possession. If they log-out / leave. The item reverts to the original person tagged for ownership.

-Fights should be to 10% health

-Healing flasks disabled, Mana flasks ok.

-One can gamble barter items (GCS, Etc) to "Bluff" the other player and dissuade them from fighting. Sure you'd fight me for that awesome Unique item. But what if you also had to risk 3 GCS and 10 Alchemy Orbs? You stand to win those items, but if you lose you're in an even WORSE position because now you've lost all those nifty barter items.