Brian's Feedback to Looting (quote from reddit)

After reading almost a hundred pages I came up to this conclusion...WOW

How close minded can this community be?

First of all, there is a 5second time window for you to grab your loot. There is not a single excuse that you couldn't make it. NOT a single one. Being squishy doesn't mean shit, my 50 level witch has 108 hp and I ninja pick up everything. The whole ninjaing is throwed out of the window if actually people CLICKED their loot. I ninja a lot too, but probably because someone is sleeping on his keyboard or something.

Now, that doesn't mean by any way that FFA is ok. It's not, it's horrible. The current implementation is even worse than a real free FFA would be. The problems are, with the current system, instead of people FIGHTING mobs, they stop and drool for 5 seconds over gear. Yesterday in a docks run I had 3 people (THREE) camping a scroll of wisdom for god's sake. This is NOT giving a cutthroat feeling at all. It slows down the game CONSIDERABLY. Try to party with friends and tell them to disregard all loot, you'll clear instances at least twice as fast. It's not a hardcore game mechanic, not giving a fuck about your team or the enemies heading your way is NOT by any means hardcore. A hardcore mechanic would be something difficult, involving skill. Camping loot while your teammate kills things that are trying to kill YOU is neither difficult nor skill based. It's just retarded. It even takes away the atmosphere. You are supposed to be a group of exiles trying to survive, I get that. How is that scroll of wisdom going to promote your survivability when there are tons of brain eating zombies heading your way while you are waiting for the timer of the scroll to expire? IT DOESNT. So all in all, current FFA is UNREALISTIC, slows down the pacing and promotes loot camping instead of fighting.

Now you may say, then a real free FFA would be better. Conceptually, yes. But again, ranged classes have an inherent disadvantage and you wouldn't avoid the "stop hitting mobs and rush to pick up" mentality, which as said before, is unrealistic and takes away any atmosphere.

So what do I propose? I propose the same system as now BUT with an increased timer, like 10 or 15 seconds, but allow ANYONE to pick it up during those seconds. If someone does pick up my item before the timer runs off, give me the option to cut his head off (show the Help / Kill vote as in OAK for the party, that would be awesome), and whoever wins, takes the princess back to castle. Or the item. Or a random drop from the enemies inventory or something. Couple that with the xp loss, someone would think TWICE before picking up loot.

Now that DOES up to the atmosphere. How so? Again, you are a group of exiles doing everything to survive. It's only reasonable that there WILL be fights within the group over ninja looting. It doesn't take away the "do anything to survive" griefing part of picking someone else's items, but you need BALLS to pull it off. So, if you grief people, expect to be griefed back, and be prepared cause I'm coming for you. That way a hardcore gamer would truely point out that he indeed is hardcore and not hiding behind the game mechanics griefing people.

Cause that's what's happening now. You can yell all you want that "THIS IS HARDCORE" but currently, it's not. It's carebearism at its FINEST. You can one way grief people protected by the game mechanics and you claim you are hardcore. Hurr durr, I got flash news for you. You are not!! And it's actually hillarious people calling other people casuals for disliking the FFA system. Everyone, and I mean everyone, no matter how unskilled he is, can literally stop hitting mobs and grab ALL the loot. I can even teach my dog how to spam click shiny items. So those people claiming they are hardcore indeed are the BIGGEST carebears in here, since they grief other people while being protected by game mechanics. If someone IS indeed hardcore, he would maniacally grief EVERYONE, but ONLY when there are consequences for that. No one self called hardcore gamer would "exploit" game mechanics for griefing and that's what this community does and then proclaims themselves hardcore gamers. Please, give me a break

I'll start with a real life analogy. You spot a wallet, you walk towards it and then someone spots it too and runs to grab it. That's sort of "griefing" and that's what happens in POE. Now you may ask, is griefing bad? Well technically it is, since in a game it removes fun out of other people. But then on the other hand, it IS a hardcore mechanic, and for a game that catters to the hardcore crowd, it should definetely be part of it, since that crowd will learn to adapt. Personally, I LOVE games that allow me to grief / being griefed, as long as there are consequences for it.

A truely (and I really mean TRUELY) hardcore game was Lineage 2, back on c1 / c2 / c3 eras. What was actually going on is, it had an FFA loot, BUT, dying cost you xp (equivalent to a week's grinding in higher levels), with a chance of dropping a random item from your inventory. Combine that with an open PVP (literally anyone could just walk up and kill you) and you had a HARDCORE game. BUT, in order to prevent one way griefing (meaning, high level players just kill the shit out of newbies) there was a PK system, meaning the player that killed you is flagged RED, anyone can kill him and he has bigger chances of dropping his whole gear. So, you (as a newbie), grief him by stealing his loot, he kills you for that, and then someone else walks by and kills him too and gets his gear. For every grief in this instance there were dire consequences. I once griefed someone into trading a high cost item for a piece of trash that I gaved him (pretending I would sell him something else). You know what happened? I rerolled my toon cause my name was put on the killboard of a big alliance. Everyone was killing me on sight and there was no way for me to farm. So I griefed someone, he paid me back the same coin.

Now, in case you haven't yet noticed where this is going...POE's FFA loot promotes ONE WAY GRIEFING. It is not hardcore by any means of the imagination. What it does is, rewards players for being INactive. The less you concentrate on killing mobs, the more loot you'll grab.That would be awesome, if someone could you rip your head off for and looting your corpse for beign a douche, but he cant. You can as well join a party, ninja pick up that unique high level item and say bbQ to all chat. Nothing the players can do about it. You have your own personal instances to join and farm and you can find a million of other players to party with, in other UNIQUE instances. The offended player that you just stole from can't possibly meet you again in an instance as long as you dont want to.

Personally, im the biggest ninja looter in this server. I don't even care if FFA is changed or not, since surely im getting more loot than I would in a normal sane loot system. But that doesnt change my opinion, which is, the current implementation of FFA SUCKS. It's like giving xp for each mob kill only to the person who last hitted it. EVERYONE would wait till it got to 50 hp and shoot it. That's NOT hardcore, its just dumb.
I frequently join parties, being semi afk and I'm still rewarded with FULL xp and rare drops (shooting the occasional lighting once in a while so I dont get booted). Im just griefing everyone and they cant do anything about it. Yeah, they could kick me, but then I'll find someone else to grief. My current playstyle is THE definition of casual (im playing POE while watching TV) cause frankly, there is no reason to go hardcore mode, since I get more benefits out of a party by NOT doing so.


So please, be so kind and at least ADMIT that you dont want an OPTIONAL non-FFA loot system cause you like griefing people WITHOUT paying any consequence. You ARE the definition of carebearism, since you support a one-way griefing system and thinking that makes you "hardcore". No, it doesn't. The game mechanic is NOT hardcore and YOU are not hardcore for supporting such a mechanic. Hardcore game mechanics DO allow griefing, BUT with consequences. You choose to grab my loot, that's fine. Now be prepared, cause im going to take it back from your corpse. THAT'S a hardcore mechanic. Letting your partymates die cause you went to drool 5 seconds over someone else's loot so you can pick it up does in NO fucking way make you hardcore. It makes you retarded.

And yes, I'm doing the same thing, but thing is, im taking advantage of the system. But I'm NOT support it as some people here do. There is not a SINGLE good reason for FFA in this game, there are a fuckload of cons though. Most of the party XP runs come down to 2-3 people (me being one of them) drooling 5 seconds over rare / unique, not giving a fuck about their party or the xp. And that's frankly the only way to actually "succeed" in this game, camping the loot (while the rest of your party tries to stay alive) and clicking it 55 times per second so you can pick it up before another camper does. Which , as I said before, WOULD be fine and fitting in the "exile" them if someone could cut your head off. Since they can't, there is no reason for FFA

The thing is fucking simple. When people are actually using OUT OF THE GAME THINGS to circumvent some of the game's mechanisms then it's pretty obvious that some things are broken. Calling no AH hardcore when there is an AH in the game's forum is fucking insane!!! Calling FFA hardcore when everyone find's ways to work around it is again BAD DESIGN.

My problem is, as I mentioned again and again, FFA has no place in a PVE game. Considering the fact that someone is gonna play ONLY with friends or solo, he totally goes around and spits into FFA's face. Which some might say "well, there is your solution" but that's fucking horrible. FFA wasn't put into the game so actually players can work around it (by blacklisting / going solo or whatever) but because it was supposed to be funnier. Well, it's not. Even in party with friends its a fucking boredom

FFA in a PVE game has no place. FFA should ALWAYS come with consequences on the "I pick everything up" players. Currently, it puts them in a protective bubble, aka. carebearing. It's exactly like throwing rocks to a caged lion, no more no less.

With the current timer, FFA is actually instanced, cause everyone without brain damage can pick his gear during those 5 seconds. Problem is, that's exactly what sucking away any form of enjoyment. Instead of focusing on the fun parts we must stop doing those fun things and start clicking the ground for loot. It's not a skill based mechanic, so it doesn't warrant a grow some skills and do it yourself hardcore mentality. It doesnt come with any consequence (someone killing your for the gear you just looted) so again, it doesnt have any form of hardcore into it. Anyone can do it, and if everyone actually does it, the loot becames instanced, but with the added "feature" of everyone camping the items with the timer. That's a burden, it slows down the game, it frustrates the fuck out of everyone, it removes any kind of atmosphere while it is supposed to be in place exactly for the opposite reason. So, instead of FFA OR instanced, we currently have a system that takes the WORSE out of both mechanisms and puts them together.

Btw, I don't promote instanced. I promote a true cutthroat feeling consequenced based multiplayer game. Since this is not it, and it's clearly PVE, im proposing a loot method that allows me to pick my loot AFTER I'm done killing mobs. Be it timer only after every enemy is dead or whatever else any one can come up with. Though that wouldn't prevent loot campers from camping your loot in case you dont manage to pick it up in time, but at least it would give me an enjoyable PVE experience

How is this any better than an xp mechanism that only rewards players that last hit the mobs? It would be fucking awful in a PVE game, since NO ONE WOULD BE PVEing, they would afk till the mob gets in 10% hp. It would drive everyone to solo or friends party. And no, that's NOT a solution. Actually, it SHOULDN'T be a solution. If the dev's want you to play in a particular fashion (ffa for example) then it would be forbidden to either solo or have friends party. It's exactly the same as "no respecs in this game, only orbs of regret" but as long as you are ONLY playing solo or with friends you can respec your hero! WOW BRILLIANCE.

I disagree. A 5 seconds timer is WAY more than enough to actually pick your loot up, considering you want to let your party fight on their own (and note here that everyone else will do the same). Mechanics wise, it did its job, everyone picks "their" loot with 90% success rate. But gameplay wise it did it even worse, since everyone focuses on loot. This is a lose lose situation. You dont get more loot by focusing on it cause everyone does the same. Actually, you get even less loot and xp exactly because instead of focusing on what gives you loot and xp (killing mobs) you focus on harvesting that loot. At the same time you are sucking the fun out of everyone who doesnt want to focus on picking loot, since he HAS to or become undergeared and unable to proceed to the game any further. That would be awesome if picking loot was a skill based mechanic. Currently its not. My dog can pick loot as efficinetly as I do, it doesn't take einstein to do it.

So all in all, yes you dont have a better alternative. I do. Its blatantly obvious that in a PVE game anything outside instanced loot is retarded.

And its actually funny how every second post someone accuses me of being casual and a carebear. I'm seriously NOT siding with the "free respecs, instanced loot" crowd. I want this game to be as hard as a game can be. I want to lose XP even AFTER the 0% so you drop a whole fucking level. I want no respec point freely given to you with quests. I want orbs of regret to become MUCH harder to acquire (currently its a walk in the park). But FFA in no pvp DOESNT make the game any harder (nor easier either). It just sucks out any fun out of a random party. That's all it does and its toxic

Ill try to make it even more easy for you. Let's disregard people with bad connections and bad PC's, cause they are not in a position to talk about balance, no game company should have to balance a game based on bad computers. So, we are left with people with 100fps and 50 pings. ( lets disregard people with broken mouses as well). With the current system, EVERYONE, NO MATTER WHAT, can fucking click at least ONCE his loot in a 5 second time window. If he can't, he shouldn't playing videogames, so let's keep those people out of this discussion too. So all in all, we can safely conclude that right now the system IS instanced. But it's a BAD instance, cause again, instead of fighting mobs, you run around like a retard picking loot, while everyone else runs around and waits for timers to pick everyone else's loot. If everyone has an FFA mentality, NO ONE WOULD BE HITTING MOBS AT ALL. So, even though the loot is divided like it would in an instanced loot system (so no gains for the "wannabe" hardcore community) it makes the gameplay majorly suck ass for those who DON'T want to run around like retards, who want to have a game where the atmosphere that the game trys to create (surviving at all costs) doesn't get destroyed by people camping scrolls of wisdom for 5 seconds when a horde of brain eating zombies are approaching. It slows down the game, destroys any realism, destroys any atmosphere, forces people to play in a way that they dont want to or be punished otherwise, promotes ONE way griefing (throwing rocks at a caged lion) when in reality the loot is divided in an instanced manner!!

As I said before, if FFA would reward skill then by all means, lets hang onto it. If it promoted reactions / consequences, then by so be it, lets keep it. Currently, it does neither. Even an untrained dog could be taught to click loot with his name on it, it doesn't take even the slitghest bit of skill. And it doesn't promote hardcore play, since there's no consequences for freely picking up loot.
So it doesn't serve ANYTHING right now. Loot is distributed instanced but with an added "feature" that destroys what ever good this game has on it.

10 minutes ago I realized yet another bad thing about FFA

I joined a "no ninja" party. I was about 10 levels lower than anyone else. Suddenly, a unique Bow dropped. Obviously, I ninjaed it instantly. Know why? Cause im the biggest griefer in the universe. I LOVE griefing people. I love to make them feel frustrated over a game. I love making them want to kill me but knowing that hey can't do cause they are a bunch of noobs. Then, the player who's bow "belonged" to said

-hm,, kissofdeathh, the bow you picked up...

And suddenly it struck me how much of an idiot I am. No, I didn't have a sudden revelation. I still love to grief people. BUT, it struck me how much of a carebear I am for picking up his loot. This poor fella, even though he was 10 levels ahead of me could do absolutely nothing about me griefing him. In a real hardcore enviroment he would kill me and put my name on his alliance killboard. I would be forced to reroll a new character. But NO, I was protected in a big bubble by the game mechanics that are supposed to catter for the hardcores. I was as far away from being a hardcore as I could. I felt like the biggest carebear to ever walk this planet.

I was doing what I swore to never do in my life, either in a game or in real life. Griefing people that can in no means fight me back because the mechanics protect me. It's like going to a zoo and throwing rocks to a caged lion. How hardcore would that make you? Would you continue to feel hardcore and throw rocks to that lion if he wasnt in a cage? I bet my ass not.

Obviously, I gave him back his bow, apologizing, saying it was a missclick.

Then another thing struck me.
Someone that ninja loots everything is either in a win or a tie situation. There are either other ninja looters in his party, so he ties, or there are no other ninja looters and he wins.
A non ninjaer is either in a lose situation if pitted against other ninja looters or in a tie situation when pitted with other non ninjas.
And the funny thing is, he can do nothing about it because the game mechanics of this so called hardcored game protect the people that non stop grief him. Hillarious

Now go in front of mirror and ask yourself :
Dumping my whole party, not giving a fuck if they live or die, stop attacking enemies, camping for 5 seconds on top of a scroll of wisdom and then right clicking it in a game that PROTECTS me in every possible way while doing so make me hardcore? If you come up with a yes you are a moron.

Attention : I'm not saying yes to instanced loot. I dont like instance loot either way. I like the CURRENT system, but with a pvp implementation. You took a loot that had my name on it? I'll remove the head from your body you, get my loot back and then a possible drop out of your inventory. Then I rape your dead corpse and feed the sperm loaded carcass to your dog. And then a video on POE's youtube channel of me raping your mum. That's hardcore...I like that

Currently there is nothing competitive about looting. You can teach a dog to click shiny things on the ground. Given the fact taht you have a timer on top of it, that's laughable. Competitive my ass!! But the fact still remains, its not a problem to actually grab the gear with your name (and whoever complains about that, JESUS ITS 5 fuckign seconds, if you cant pick it up go play backgamon), the problem is everyone stops fighting and camps your loot in case they could ninja it. It slows down the pace, it removes ANY kind of atmosphere (yes, who cares about the horde of brain eating zombies approaching, I'm gonna camp that scroll of wisdom, even though a magical barrier doesnt allow me to pick it up) and its only a headdache, instead of focusing on whats fun in the game (farming) you have to constantly click items on the ground cause someone is gonna pick it up if you dont. It doesnt require skill, it doesnt require patience, it requires a single click in a timespan of 5 seconds and the item is yours, which means EVERYONE can do it, so the only thing that it adds in the game is a nuisance

Other than that, the game is NOT difficult. I repeat, its NOT difficult. There is absolutely nothing difficult about it. In 2 days you are EXACTLY as good as the best player in here, considering you have an IQ over ~80. There is no skill involved and the only differentation that makes you better than other players is the gear you are wearing, which, is 100% luck based, be it via drops or the craft system. So how the fuck is it a hard game???!! Being lucky and dropping the best gear is somehow hard?

The FFA is the cherry on top of it. It's the most carebearism mechanism I have ever seen and people still claim its HARDCORE. For god's sake, it is fucking NOT.HARDCORE.AT.ALL. The system PROTECTS you while you "grief" other players. Need I say more???

FFA doesnt make the game harder at ALL. It just takes away the FUN things out of it. Based on the fact that it is a PVE game currently, since PVP is not fully implemented, killing mobs is fun, trading items without having to spam or read lengths and lengths of trade chat is FUN. CAMPING LOOT IS NOT FUN, NOT HARD (my dog could do it), BREAKS THE ATMOSPHERE, SLOWS DOWN THE GAME AND MAKES YOU FOCUS ON A THOUSAND ITEMS ON THE GROUND INSTEAD OF WHAT'S GOING ON.

A hardcore game is FINE as long as it is FUN. This game is certainly not hardcore, and it has some things that are NOT fun. And whoever says its fine spam clicking items on the ground is a facking retard.

I'm not trying to casualise it any more than it is. Im all against any respecs at all (and no orbs of regret either). I'm all into having a -1 level for every death in merciless. I'm all into open pvp and corpse looting. Those things ARE hardcore and I love them. But current FFA and no AH ARE NOT HARDCORE AND NOT FUN. They are a nuisance, derailing you from having fun