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

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Sorry, but you're wrong.

This game was DESIGNED to fill the large void that so many "old school, hardcore, etc." miss in this genre.

And where are you getting your facts to say "if majority of players"? Did GGG take a poll?

Some one analysed this thread. Less than 20% want FFA, Peratos principle gets you there without counting. Hardcore has always been used as an excuse for poor mechanics. What next? spells damage friendlies, looting player corpses, forced downtime etc.

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Secondfiddle wrote:

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Machida wrote:

But I'm sure if you really wanted to find out, you could count all the unique users actually voicing their dissatifaction with the current system.

I know these threads can go on for pages of two guys going back and forth, but on the topic of looting it's more than just a handful of people ;)

I did this on a thread of the same topic that was 56 pages long at the time, and had 166 total unique votes cast. So a lot of repeats.

Also, 59% of people wanted a change, but people all wanted a different solution. So LESS people would have been happy to change the loot system to any one of the other options.

That's some serious work if you're not just throwing out numbers ;)

I wonder how many would be satisfied/more happy with being able to choose when joining a group.

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CommodoX wrote:

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st0rmie wrote:

I don't intend to play multiplayer, due to this loot system.

Playing solo for that reason ...... sadly, it's a bit boring over time.

My ranged characters are. I'm going to roll a 'ninja looter' for multiplayer.

I completely fail to see how the current looting system is anything other than detrimental to the experience of playing in groups.

So it's a GOOD thing if players are at each other's throats all the time because of ninja looting?

It's a GOOD thing if people outright refuse to join public games because of this issue?

It's a GOOD thing if people stop contributing to fights just to pick shit up?

It honestly boggles my mind that you would include a system like this but then refuse to allow PKing, despite the reasoning for not allowing either being exactly the same. I can't figure this out!

It's the one black mark on an otherwise stellar title for me. It wouldn't even take much to fix it, either, just a second longer on the timer would be enough for me! As it is, I'm completely discouraged from joining any public parties in the near future. Rather irritating, too, as that's the only way I'm likely to find new people to put on the friends list... but like hell I'm going to risk losing another unique because of ninja loot whores again!

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Zyrusticae wrote:

As it is, I'm completely discouraged from joining any public parties in the near future. Rather irritating, too, as that's the only way I'm likely to find new people to put on the friends list... but like hell I'm going to risk losing another unique because of ninja loot whores again!

That's the saddest part about the whole affair. I see plenty of people saying "only play with people you trust, if you don't want randoms ninja'ing your loot". But how am I supposed to meet good people to play with if playing in random groups is so unappealing?

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st0rmie wrote:

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Zyrusticae wrote:

As it is, I'm completely discouraged from joining any public parties in the near future. Rather irritating, too, as that's the only way I'm likely to find new people to put on the friends list... but like hell I'm going to risk losing another unique because of ninja loot whores again!

That's the saddest part about the whole affair. I see plenty of people saying "only play with people you trust, if you don't want randoms ninja'ing your loot". But how am I supposed to meet good people to play with if playing in random groups is so unappealing?

Retention: to retain a player after its explorative sessions.
Conversion: to convert a free player into a player.

One of the biggest factors involved?

To have the player make in game acquaintances.

Instanced Loot will result in a party of 3 players experiencing a 300% chance of receiving loot per monster killed while Free For All Loot will result in 200% chance of receiving loot. With 6 players there is 600% chance of receiving loot with Instanced Loot Vs. 400% in FFA.

Instanced Loot also opens up a slippery slope towards enabling each players Loot Quantity and Loot Quality stats to affect each players loot spawns regardless of who dealt the final blow.

I am in favour of FFA loot and just felt like listing some of the differences between FFA and IL.

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

Instanced Loot will result in a party of 3 players experiencing a 300% chance of receiving loot per monster killed while Free For All Loot will result in 200% chance of receiving loot. With 6 players there is 600% chance of receiving loot with Instanced Loot Vs. 400% in FFA.

Instanced Loot also opens up a slippery slope towards enabling each players Loot Quantity and Loot Quality stats to affect each players loot spawns regardless of who dealt the final blow.

I am in favour of FFA loot and just felt like listing some of the differences between FFA and IL.

They could surely program it in a way where the same amount of loot would drop. Quantity/Quality is a more legitimate point and something I'm sure people will disagree on, but as (I think) it is at the moment it could just be shared between all group members.

Not a fan of FFA loot myself; the only appeal I can see in it is in the added chaos in the middle of a fight where stuff is dropping and you have to pick it up before someone else does, and the ''competitive'' element it adds.

Some players might enjoy it; for me this sort of chaos breaks the pace, immersion and takes my attention away from the pleasure of breaking apart legions of enemies and towards reading a massive wall of text on my screen, and the added ''competition'' with other players only serves to make me want to avoid cooperating with them to complete content - I don't quite view it as so much of a competition anyways, so much as a more or less random clickfest in hopes that your mouse was at the right spot at the right time and that nobody, intently or not, was blocking your way towards the loot. Of course there's also the obvious appeal for griefers, but I'm kind of ignoring that; I tend to think of these people more like parasites than anything else.

I would advocate for a more personal loot system. I'm sure not sure I see a reason for not having both possibilities in one way or another, since there's obviously interest in a FFA system. Having a league with FFA and a league with personal loot would be an option but I guess it might fragment the community in a bad way - although not quite as bad as having a horde of people pissed off about a fairly important part of the game (loot distribution), in my opinion.

Giving a party option to set up either FFA or personal loot seems to me like the best option: those who want FFA can get FFA, those who want their own little phat lewtz can get them, and if either of the systems ever fall out of favor and end up unused, then it becomes fairly obvious that it was unwanted. The community is not fragmented as drastically as it would be with seperate leagues.

That being said, I think the current system is about as bad as it could get. Mainly because, by putting a name on an item for a short amount of time, the player sees it, instantly feels like it belongs to them, and might still have it stolen from them before they could react, inducing more rage than if they'd never felt this particular item belonged to them because their name was on it for a second.

And to the FFA loot people: loot is obviously a concern (unless this thread is just an exchange between 6-7 people that's been going on for over 320 pages and doesn't involve many posters at all) and rightfully so: it's a core element of the game. The game is still in beta, which would lead to think that it's more flexible to drastic changes than it otherwise would be, so you see a bunch of people trying to change it to improve their experience. They don't want to go to Diablo 3 or Torchlight 2 for all kinds of reasons: this game has other features which are very interesting, and having our experience undermined by a single feature is unfortunate.



TL;DR more options ftw.

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

Instanced Loot will result in a party of 3 players experiencing a 300% chance of receiving loot per monster killed while Free For All Loot will result in 200% chance of receiving loot. With 6 players there is 600% chance of receiving loot with Instanced Loot Vs. 400% in FFA.

Instanced Loot also opens up a slippery slope towards enabling each players Loot Quantity and Loot Quality stats to affect each players loot spawns regardless of who dealt the final blow.

I am in favour of FFA loot and just felt like listing some of the differences between FFA and IL.

It would be trivial to have instanced loot match the amount of FFA loot.

Not to mention your percentages are bollocks since you obviously do not have access to the algos the game uses.