Brian's Feedback to Looting (quote from reddit)

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fevgatos wrote:

I am waiting for cutthroat league to go play there, cause here we have a non consequence based driven game which only promotes one way griefers that think they are hardcore while being protected by game mechanics.

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dirtpoorchris wrote:

Way to throw the baby out with the bathwater via "cutthroat/hardcore". Your post is extremely condescending while hiding behind good behavior. Way to passive aggressive bro.

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Alendac wrote:

ITS GRIEFING TO STOP FIGHTING 20% INTO A FIGHT WHERE MOBS ARE STRONGER THEN USUAL TO GET THE LOOT OTHER PEOPLE FOUGHT FOR YOU TO GET.

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AzraelX wrote:

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fevgatos wrote:

I am waiting for cutthroat league to go play there, cause here we have a non consequence based driven game which only promotes one way griefers that think they are hardcore while being protected by game mechanics.

I wouldn't call the current people picking up loot "griefers", since they're playing the game the way it was intended. In fact, the developers preferred the full FFA system, but added distanced-based timers as a compromise for ranged characters who wanted a better chance of getting rare items.

That being said, I'm also looking forward to the permanent Cut-throat league. However, the way it worked last time, someone could simply take your unique drop and then disconnect, and you'd only have five seconds to realize they were disconnecting, close the distance on them, and kill them, which isn't likely to happen.

If they fix the logout/disconnect timer in Cut-throat so it will refresh every time your character takes damage, then it'll work really well. If someone takes your loot, you'll have the ability to potentially get it back.

Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't use loot timers in permanent Cut-throat at all. I guess we'll see.

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dirtpoorchris wrote:

Way to throw the baby out with the bathwater via "cutthroat/hardcore". Your post is extremely condescending while hiding behind good behavior. Way to passive aggressive bro.

Your post literally makes no sense, and isn't applicable to anything I said. It seems you were intent on trying to sound insulting, however I find the hypocrisy and lack of substance in your post to only reflect poorly on yourself. In the future, please try harder to organize your thoughts before making a post that embarrasses you.

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AzraelX wrote:

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Alendac wrote:

ITS GRIEFING TO STOP FIGHTING 20% INTO A FIGHT WHERE MOBS ARE STRONGER THEN USUAL TO GET THE LOOT OTHER PEOPLE FOUGHT FOR YOU TO GET.

No, it isn't. I would suggest looking up the term "griefing" to understand its meaning.

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Alendac wrote:

using aspects of the game in unintended ways

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AzraelX wrote:

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Alendac wrote:

using aspects of the game in unintended ways

This is the critical part of the definition which you missed, and which I explained in the post you attempted to disagree with. Please read this excerpt carefully until you're satisfied that you've understood it.

If everyone who caused anyone a problem was a griefer, then literally every person who has ever killed anyone in a PvP environment would be labelled a griefer, because the person who died didn't want to be killed. This obviously isn't the case.

Then again, that should be common sense.

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MesostelZe wrote:

I'm surprised that there have been so many cries for something stricter than the loot timers, and none for a return to purer FFA loot like we actually had in the earlier days of PoE. If you're playing in a group of people who you know and trust to share things in an effective way, the current loot timers are usually sort of okay, and yeah, they help to somewhat equally divide currencies, but every once in a while you hit one that drags on when a piece of loot drops for someone who is a bit far away. In this case, even if you just want to bring the loot to them, or if they just want to give it to you, you have to wait for the timer to run out, and it slows things down. In a party such as a tight-knit one-week race party where resources are mostly being pooled and shared, the timers serve even less purpose.

Moreover, if names weren't ever attached to loot, people in random parties wouldn't have quite so strong a sense that any given piece of loot a-priori belonged to them. The social problems arising from the division of loot would be more squarely placed on the shoulders of the players, rather than divided between the game and players (and the network lag) in a way that leaves some people feeling cheated by the game (rather than simply cheated by a guy who was picking up more than his fair share).

There's also the fact that in hardcore at least, if you have people that are consistently running into packs of mobs to grab things before anyone else can reach them, eventually the mobs start hitting hard enough that this sort of character ends up moving to default league. Maybe some would disagree with me that melee is eventually more dangerous (don't get me wrong, there have been successful hardcore melee characters), and maybe a lot of people feel that it should be more fairly balanced as far as risk goes with ranged abilities, but as it stands I believe the people trying to get more "danger pay" are indeed putting themselves in more danger.

I think eventually it may be nice to add some options to the loot system for people creating parties to have the sort of group mechanics that they're looking for, but if that happens, let's make sure that one of them (perhaps even the default!) is full FFA, no timers.

I can understand the difficulty for people with no friends who play the game to find a group and be able to take advantage of the group mechanics. Between the chaos of global chat and the lottery of groups that is the noticeboard, it can be hard to find a group of people with the right incentives to trust each other and share loot in a way that makes the party effective. But most of the systems for dividing loot automatically also do so in a way which is very suboptimal, and often even gets in the way of parties who want things to go to the people who need them most.

Diablo 3 style split loot is very much like that -- maybe you'll trade some of the more valuable things to the people who they're obviously good for, but talking through the white items used for crafting would feel like an epic waste of everyone's time, and so likely nobody would do it. On the other hand, if you have a random group of people of varying personality types (some greedy, some not) who aren't going to see each other again and so are not incentivised to communicate well, it's likely the fairest solution under those conditions. It also, as Brian says, feels like you're playing in a vacuum.

As soon as you add in the possibility of communication and a relationship between players that extends outside of the competition and cooperation inherent in the game, all of the issues with FFA loot more or less sort themselves out, but I think more could be done for the folks who *really* insist on playing in random parties of people they don't know and don't care to know. After all, if we're going to have this big noticeboard in town inviting people to join such parties, perhaps there ought to be some options to make it more pleasant for people who actually try to use the damn thing.

In fact, now that I've said it, it's quite possible that the noticeboard as much as the loot timers has been responsible for a lot of the negative reaction to FFA loot. It helps people to form poorly organised parties without so much as saying hello to each other, and in that way cuts out all the interaction which would otherwise remind people that there are real players behind each character.

Spoiler

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iamstryker wrote:

Anyone who uses the term "carebear" thinks way too highly of himself in regards to video games. If you don't want to discuss the issues then don't post.