A detailed look at Looting and Respecs

"

TehHammer wrote:

"

Sickness wrote:

No. If you play with instanced loot you have a disadvantage compared to FFA loot.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/45121/page/9#p903086

"

Zakaluka wrote:

I did explain it.

You get +250% quant in a full party. That is, you get 3.5x more white items.
It's very unlikely that others in your party will give a second glance to the same 3- and 4-link white items you'll be interested in.
In a full party with FFA loot, you're way more likely to get the craftable whites you want, with good socket configurations.

You will progress faster item-wise in a FFA party.

There are other factors to note, which zak doesn't mention in this quote (although he may have in his original post), which is fine, as his point is very much true. FFA gives you a bigger opportunity for finding the items you want to craft. You will also see 3.5x more magic/rare/unique items, which in a friendly party where gear is split up by need, this is a HUGE advantage.

BUT, you'll also see 3.5x the orbs, which get split 6 ways. So in order to craft those white items you'll see so much more of, you'll need orbs that you get far less often because you're sharing more than your solo share.

BUT, things will die faster as the effective HP of mobs is lower per party member compared to the dps of an individual. An average DPS user in a full party has to do ~58.3% of the damage to bring down the same mob as he would solo, assuming all of the party members are hitting that same mob. He'll see more loot and see it more quickly, but he'll also get assigned less loot per mob, the two work in a bit of a balance, but ultimately it's a punishment having FFA loot.

I'd love to see loot options. Let my party be FFA and work out items/orbs on our own. I'd also love to see loot drop assignments (including in instanced loot) being biased based on how much damage a user does to a particular mob. If you're not doing damage, you're not getting items.

Those are my thoughts.

"

Worldbreaker wrote:

Looting

Most players that are against the FFA style of play and want an instanced environment are ignoring the fact that instanced loot puts them at an advantage over other players, not just FFA players but people that like the solo game experience as well. If player A is grinding solo as a DPS, forced to kite/dodge/port away, he is playing a harder game; If player B is grinding solo as a soft hitting tank he will farm much slower than player C who has tanks to tank damage and DPS cannons annihilating mobs at an increasingly easier rate as party member size increases.

"

Solutions to looting

1. Keep the timer for lag/fps/reaction issues, but remove names from drops. No one can pick up an item until 1-2 seconds has passed.

"

2. Add the option to increase the timer with a significant loss to item quantity, balanced around the current 1-2 second timer being 300%. Every 1 second increase removes %25 of the group quantity.
-ex. a: Party of 6 with a 10 second timer receive a total bonus of +50% quantity for the whole group, instead of 300%.

"

TehHammer wrote:

"

Sickness wrote:

No. If you play with instanced loot you have a disadvantage compared to FFA loot.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/45121/page/9#p903086

"

Zakaluka wrote:

I did explain it.

You get +250% quant in a full party. That is, you get 3.5x more white items.
It's very unlikely that others in your party will give a second glance to the same 3- and 4-link white items you'll be interested in.
In a full party with FFA loot, you're way more likely to get the craftable whites you want, with good socket configurations.

You will progress faster item-wise in a FFA party.

There are other factors to note, which zak doesn't mention in this quote (although he may have in his original post), which is fine, as his point is very much true. FFA gives you a bigger opportunity for finding the items you want to craft. You will also see 3.5x more magic/rare/unique items, which in a friendly party where gear is split up by need, this is a HUGE advantage.

BUT, you'll also see 3.5x the orbs, which get split 6 ways. So in order to craft those white items you'll see so much more of, you'll need orbs that you get far less often because you're sharing more than your solo share.

BUT, things will die faster as the effective HP of mobs is lower per party member compared to the dps of an individual. An average DPS user in a full party has to do ~58.3% of the damage to bring down the same mob as he would solo, assuming all of the party members are hitting that same mob. He'll see more loot and see it more quickly, but he'll also get assigned less loot per mob, the two work in a bit of a balance, but ultimately it's a punishment having FFA loot.

Along the lines of that punishment, white items are the most common drop in the game. Anything you can do to bump up rarity/orbs will progress your gear faster. Playing in a party *may* bump up your chance to get the item you need in the rarity you want it, if your teammates are friendly and share the drop you need with you, but nearly every member of every party values the currency you'll need to craft that gear (alchemy, chaos, jeweler's, fusings) and splitting 3.5x more currency 6 ways is a punishment, no matter how you look at it.

I'd love to see loot options. Let my party be FFA and work out items/orbs on our own. I'd also love to see loot drop assignments (including in instanced loot) being biased based on how much damage a user does to a particular mob. If you're not doing damage, you're not getting items.

Those are my thoughts.

"

Sickness wrote:

Based on your faulty assumption that instanced loot is an advantage over FFA.\\ What part of "The risk of getting less loot is out-weighed by the chance of getting more loot" don't you understand?

"

Sickness wrote:

Ofcourse you can. They are balanced by default. It's only a playstyle difference, except a slight advantage to FFA (read my first post).

"

Sickness wrote:

If they are penalised for playing alone when there is instanced loot for multiplayer then they are penalised for playing alone when there is only FFA.

FFA only vs instanced (loot options), all else equal.

"

Worldbreaker wrote:

The problem is PAX, the system wasn't meant to name your loot and make it yours. If that was the intention no one else would be able to pick it up after the timer runs out. If GGG truely believed that was yours there would be no timer at all, you would just be able to snag it.

Yes, some players are greedy and that is a risk you take in a FFA party.

I 100% agree with removing the name as a temporary fix, but the underlying problem remains of people snagging everything and would still lead to the same complaints.

The only way to remove the greedy players aspect in a public party would be instanced looting. Which as I said would have to be balanced with solo players.

"

Tuune wrote:

"

Worldbreaker wrote:

The problem is PAX, the system wasn't meant to name your loot and make it yours. If that was the intention no one else would be able to pick it up after the timer runs out. If GGG truely believed that was yours there would be no timer at all, you would just be able to snag it.

Yes, some players are greedy and that is a risk you take in a FFA party.

I 100% agree with removing the name as a temporary fix, but the underlying problem remains of people snagging everything and would still lead to the same complaints.

The only way to remove the greedy players aspect in a public party would be instanced looting. Which as I said would have to be balanced with solo players.

I see what you're saying, but your argument in the OP is a very slight misrepresentation of how the system is balanced. Very slight.

Suppose I'm solo and I have my plain ole loot drops. For all intents and purposes, I'm at 100% because only I can loot any of the stuff dropped. So if 2 items will drop in my solo game, I have the opportunity to get 2 pieces of loot.

Now I bring in a friend so now there's 2 of us. If those same 2 items drop we both now have only 50% loot on average. This means it's more advantageous to solo. In order for GGG to balance this, they must increase the quantity of loot dropped for parties so that parties have AT LEAST the same amount of opportunities as soloing.

In other words, the game currently has ~300% item quantity increase in drops to compensate for the number of players in the group. This isn't some wicked crazy amount of loot putting parties at great advantage over the single player. It's every player having the same opportunity to loot the same amount of items as they would solo. Again, if 5 items drop for me when I'm solo then AT LEAST 5 must drop for me while in a group in order for the group to not have an advantage/disadvantage in loot opportunities.

So the balance is just compensating for the amount of people in the group. It's not really a "bonus" in the sense that there's extra.

This seems to be part of the philosophy behind why your name is on loot that drops in groups. It's that evening out of opportunity as you would get if you were solo. The loot *is* yours ...for a limited time. If I looted every piece of loot with my name on it 100% of the time, on average I'd collect the same amount of items I would if I were solo. The advantage is in the fact that with more loot dropping for a group, your chances increase in seeing a greater variety of items and sockets (especially if grouped with different classes. THIS is the advantage of grouping; not more loot but a greater variety of it.

"

faerwin wrote:

You aren't factoring it correctly.

It's not how much loot per person that's important. It's how much loot per hour for a person that is. And this isn't even touching the difficulty of obtaining such loot.