Are the Devs still making the game they want to play?

I think it's perfect now. The party leader can choose how they want to loot - and you can make your own party and choose how looting is done. I much prefer PA - I want to kill mobs not race to loot. And I like knowing what is mine I can take my time to pick up.

No changes needed really - the game already gives the choice - not much better than that. Thankfully, PA seems much more popular among the players.

The old FFA was completely indefensible from a game design standpoint. It's a system that encourages defection from co-operative group play, and did so without any meaningful PvP interactions. The player closest to the monster gets the loot first. In PoE, you can't move and attack at the same time. So you have to consciously decide to stop pulling your weight in the party in order to have a better chance at scrapping for the drops. There's a reason no pubs do it--the simple implementation of PA prevents the prisoner's dilemma situation where everyone is incentivized to clear slower. Under FFA, everyone gets less loot overall because you have to spend time defending your share of it.

If there were some sort of strategy involved, if the game had more ways of manipulating party members besides Frost Wall, then maybe I could understand the lament.

EDIT: And the argument was always ridiculous on another level, because Permanent Allocation already effectively existed before the changes. If people didn't like that you picked up "their" item after the temp allocation wore off, they could kick you from the party easily. Didn't follow M2M or stick with the group? Kicked. Possibly called out in global chat. PA was a social system before it was officially instantiated, because players always had the choice of disengaging from their current party.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

As a member of a rather large guild, I understand how you can "transcend" the status quo of public parties and instead rely on more stable connections with actual friends. I only party with guildies, so in terms of my own personal play experience, the state of pubs doesn't effect me at all.

It's not so much about "transcending" the "status quo" of public parties as them just not being part of how I'd want to experience the game. They aren't the status quo for me. I'll play with friends, to socialise and hang out with them, and enjoy the game. I'll play solo, to enjoy the game at my own pace and sometimes to play hardcore without worrying about one of the group dying and not being able to keep playing together. If I didn't have my friends online, I'd play solo or not play - public parties aren't a thing I would do, because I would not gain from them anything I want from the game. I realise I am not like other people, but the OP asked for devs to give their opinions, and that's mine.

By "status quo" I mean the way which most players play; in this case, by "transcending" I meant finding ways around the standard and the typical. It is my belief that public parties are more widely used than partying among friends, by a considerable margin; I'll admit this is an assumption, and possibly a false one, but the status quo is the type of thing which is easily determined if one has the appropriate population metrics. It's a popularity contest. The idea that whatever one happens to do is immediately status quo is a corruption of the term, even if it is a somewhat charming corruption — it is predicated on the concept of a popularity contest in which only one person has a vote.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Nevertheless, saying loot tension and public parties "have no overlap" is an utter cop-out.

I never said anything of the sort.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

you've (perhaps) shown that it's at least mostly absent from public parties, but those aren't "the game", and if we were to limit the game to only what I, as a dev, want to play, public parties would be just as gone as permanent item allocation - I have no interest in either

If I was to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'd say "you probably meant that those aren't the entire game," but the main thing you're communicating here is the unnaturalness of concerning yourself with how fixed or broken public games happen to be. (This is a slightly separate topic from whether or not you are actually concerned or not.)

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

However, as far as public parties are concerned, loot tension is utterly broken, and although you explicitly state that your opinion is not necessarily yours of GGG as a whole, we can see that at least one dev has very little interest in actually fixing the problem.

I'm assuming you missed the last paragraph of my post, so I'll paraphrase it for you:
I acknowledged there's quite possibly a problem.
I stated that I hope that problem can be fixed.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

you may well be right that there's an issue with people who want to play in public parties, with short allocation so they can enjoy loot tension, being unable to find accommodating parties. I suspect you are, and while I don't have any solutions to offer right now, I do hope that can change.

I originally read this statement with the "hope that can change" modifying the "you are," not the "solutions to offer." In such a case, the "solutions" would be about working around the problem as a player, rather than helping to fix the problem on the development end. I'll acknowledge that may be a fairly harsh interpretation and probably an incorrect one, but given the preceding explanation of how you find it difficult to put yourself in the shoes of those experiencing problems, it seemed like a natural conclusion to draw at the time.

Overall: Mark, at first I thought your initial post in this thread was spurred by temporary insanity/jerkiness; now, I think it was simply some really poor phrasing which was bound to be misinterpreted as much harsher than you actually meant.

I still only play in groups with SA. I refuse to play PA. It's fun. Win or lose, it's a game.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Overall: Mark, at first I thought your initial post in this thread was spurred by temporary insanity/jerkiness; now, I think it was simply some really poor phrasing which was bound to be misinterpreted as much harsher than you actually meant.

I didn't read any of the stuff you mentioned in your post.

You are sure that you are not reading too much between the lines? After all Mark really opened with this is how he plays the game and concluded that there might be a problem he has no idea about.

FFA is ONLY usuable when you're playing friends. Public parties are ONLY PA, end of story. I can't quite see the point of FFA in public parties, where everyone will focus on getting loot, instead of actually fighting the mobs.

In fact, I don't understand why SA is default setting for parties. Public parties are the ones you switch between very frequently - thus PA should be default setting, so you don't have set it every time.

Having "Choice" is most important, it serve solo/public/private/guild/friends/turd/greedybodyblocker/melee/ranged/totem-loot-freeguy/etc... play perfectly.

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Perq wrote:

FFA is ONLY usuable when you're playing friends. Public parties are ONLY PA, end of story. I can't quite see the point of FFA in public parties, where everyone will focus on getting loot, instead of actually fighting the mobs.

In fact, I don't understand why SA is default setting for parties. Public parties are the ones you switch between very frequently - thus PA should be default setting, so you don't have set it every time.

While the vast majority of public games are PA, I don't think they all need to be or should be.

The following has been my experience in public games, YMMV:

With a good team of players in an SA game, the focus is on the killing and players seem to know what they are looking for. Some ignore most armor drops except for a few types, some are just after jewelry and belts (not sure why boots aren't nabbed that often, they tend to be a low percentage drop for me when trying for chaos recipes). I've seen many lower tier unique items left, and occasionally higher level ones. With a good team, players generally expect the others to pick up a nice unique drop, and only move in if the player who dropped it seems to be ignoring it.

In the past week or so, I've seen Windripper, Lioneye's Glare, Heartbreaker, Carcass Jack, Ming's Heart and Marylene's Fallacy drop in public SA games without a single other player darting over to try and grab them.

I've also seen Sunblast, Magnate, Blood Dance, Geofri's Crest, Hrimnor's Resolve and a slew of other uniques left on the ground by the allocated player who just didn't want them. In a few cases, other players pointed it out, and the "allocated" player usually replied they didn't need them.

In couple of games, I've seen nice uniques where the person about to pick it up, checks if anyone needs it before they do.

This isn't to say all such public SA games are this way, but at least currently, they aren't as bad as some might think.

One thing I do notice, is that more players are contributing, or trying to contribute to the killing in the SA games.

I think the option is nice, and having the option might mean an improved chance of a better quality of player in many public SA games. I could be wrong on this - it's just been my impression.

I do wish there was some incentive so that there were more SA and FFA games. Maybe a 'medium" allocation?

Why dont you find like minded people who *enjoy* loot tension and party with them instead of doing public parties?