fazool said:I want ninja looting, selling and splitting, running to merchants, arguing and fighting over it....I want FREE WILL.
I agree with fazool. The idea that free will is too dangerous is insulting to me.
Want to save time and money VR? Use the tried-and-true EQ1 style of looting. Group gets the kill, any group member can loot. Simple, easy, clean. /random 100
No to any mechanics to take human interaction out of the game please. It takes time to decide who loots. It takes time to kneel down and manually click through and loot a corpse. Time for adds, pvp, buffs, conversations or whatever. A sleek streamlined loot-dividing system will cut time from the game and eliminate alot of player interaction and danger from the environment.
vjek said:Heheh. I'll take no drama over "ninja looting, selling and splitting, ... , arguing and fighting over it", for my entertainment dollar. ;)
A prison, in theory and on paper is as safe and sanitary as you can get because free will or "drama" is engineered out of the environment.
The vote will be split on this as many players enjoy having freedom to ninja loot, while others do not want to be bothered and prefer a 'fair' method of item distribution. Ultimately all decisions should be made by the players votes.
When a group is formed, or a member joins a group, they should have an interface where they can select the preferred loot system, and the majority of the group's decision wins. If players do not like the majority vote they can leave and form another group, this will save a lot of time and headache, and prevent customer service from having to deal with item / camp disputes.
This should also be true for guilds as many players who go on raids will want a 'fair' chance at any loot they participate in generating. In the history of MMO's many guild leaders and their officers can become the dragons which hoard the valuable assets, dole them out to their friends or closest political allies, or have them end up in a guild bank... which in turn is ultimately raided and the time invested by guild members is squandered. If a guilds raid members are split on the idea of what loot system should be used on a raid, they should likely reconsider their membership - this can lead to like minded individuals forming the guilds with the systems they prefer, and again cut down on customer service involvement.
The key factor in the determination to add a majority wins loot system is tolerance:
Can all players tolerate a free loot system only? No
Can all players tolerate a need before greed loot system only? No
Preventing conflict is important for many players and they should be able to do so by vote. Those who disregard conflict in favor of freedom must understand that not all players will tolerate conflict and this can negatively effect gameplay and cause individuals to reduce the amount of time they spend playing a game (not in the interest of VR or investors).
TLDR: add loot voting system to groups and raid groups where majority selection wins.
vjek said:Aradune said:So is there any MMO already out that, regardless of how you feel about it in other areas, has really nailed a solid loot options interface and mechanics? ...
Any MMO that has personal loot instead of shared loot, solves this problem. And in addition, any that have procedurally generated loot, rather than static loot.
So, I'll explain those terms so everyone knows what I'm talking about. (and I should note, these are what these terms mean to me, YMMV)
Shared loot is EQ on launch day. 6+ people kill one thing. It drops one item. You now compete against your group, guild, or raid members to obtain said object.
Static loot is when the Ogre Chef always drops one of two items, or just a single item. It drops either the flowing black silk scarf (haste +5%) or the giant nose-slicer 2h sword. If you kill it, you get either one of those, at whatever percentages are defined in the loot tables. Or it always just drops the scarf. Kill the Chef, get the scarf, repeat as desired.
Personal loot is, if i remember correctly, how Guild Wars 2 does it (both loot and harvest nodes). In a group, 6 people kill something, everyone gets their own loot. In fact, I think by default, you don't even see what other people get. Everyones loot is simply their own. You don't compete against your group, guild, or raid members, everyone gets a reward for thier time & effort.
Procedural loot is generated for you and you alone. It has less or no value to anyone else. This type of mechanic can be tuned to the point where the loot you get is only of value to someone with your currently memorized skills or your currently equipped gear, or both. Including both customized skills/spells and customized gear.
Dynamic loot is slightly different than both personal loot and procedural loot, but can be implemented with those two mechanics. It's simply not static. It means, in a region, area, dungeon or zone, items of a certain type will drop there, but you don't always get the exact same item from the exact same creature. The biggest difference between static and dynamic is the source of the loot, rather than the loot itself, but it can also include the loot itself.
---
Arguments againts dynamic, procedural and/or personal loot typically are:
It generates too much loot. Nope, it doesn't have to, in fact, with appropriate percentages, it can generate LESS loot than static & shared systems. Of course, if you provide drops on every kill, you have to balance that against their value, and consumption rates of consumables and require mats for crafting and a bunch of other systems and mechanics, but resource production isn't always a bad thing. Just becuase you're getting salvagable material from humanoids and body parts from animals doesn't mean the economy is broken. If all drops have zero value to NPC's, but must be salvaged, refined, repaired, or modified in some way before they have value, then giving players a cornucopia of items can drive very desirable money-sink behavior.
It removes competition. Yes, yes it does. From between you and your group, guild, or raid members. If you prefer to compete against them, rather than just help them, then you won't like these solutions. Speaking only for myself, I'm more of a helper and less of a "stab my helpers in the back" kind of player. :)
"You can't farm for drops" Well, yes and no. You can't walk into a dungeon, superior invis to a static mob, kill him in one mana burn loot his static drop, and gate out while the group that's working towards him curses you. You'll have to kill in a region, zone or area to have a chance to obtain the items you're looking for, just like everyone else. So, yes, you can farm, but you have to invest the time.
---
Given the above, my preferences have been outlined in a previous post. I think allowing players to temporarily and permanently customize all their slots/gear and all their spells and skills in their Ability Arsenal, as well as their Iconic Ability, with appropriate caps & limits, makes sense if a design goal is to move the MMO genre forward, and offer truly innovative mechanics. If those aren't design goals, then static loot and static spawns are all you need. I think it would be an enormously missed opportunity, yet again, to use such a simple and crude system, by today's standards.
I like The Personal, Procedure system, makes it fair, and you dont have to worry about if someone is going to get something you wanted, because you'll have your own loot from that particular monster/named. Plus this would help a ton towards tradeskills if you so happened to have rogue doing poisonmaking or anything like that. This could honestly be the fairest way of solving all problems might cuase a few new ones. can't really think of any, other than maybe someone saying they didn't get anything but actually got a 2 handed sword you wanted, but honestly it would be worse if you saw it drop and they needed on it and got it in front of you and saying they need money, so i mean i like this idea
Of course there would be "less drama" with personal loot. But there would be also less interaction with other players. Don't take that out please. The community will stay impersonal longer if every chance of misbehaving is taken out of the game. Of course i am also near nuclear fusion if someone ninjas something he or she can't even use, but this kind of drama in a MMO actually crystallize the decent people out of the indecent. I'd like to know the former from the latter and drama is an important part of that.
I personally put personal loot on the same side as personal spawns. Personal spawns are also something that takes the competition and player interaction out. How to tell if someone is a rotten kill stealer? With personal spawns you can't. How to tell if someone is an abominable loot stealer? With personal loot you can't.
Duffy said: ... How to tell if someone is (1) a rotten kill stealer? With personal spawns you can't. How to tell if someone is an (2) abominable loot stealer? With personal loot you can't.
Correct. Because 1) they can't be and 2) you don't care because you get your own loot. It's not like I can't deal with static and shared loot. There's just vastly superior options available that eliminate the completely negative social impact of such design.
I would prefer these systems because they elminate a social problem and let me focus on gameplay that is challenging and rewarding. Fighting against my group, guild or raid members isn't fun to me. Arguing with my group, guild or raid members isn't fun to me. Having to need everything just to cover consumable costs because my group, guild or raid members are all needing everything is ridiculous.
Not all systems implemented between 1999 and 2016 are bad and evil. Some are quite innovative and have moved the genre forward so that players can focus on core gameplay rather than bickering over database entries.
If VR has no plans for procedural or personal loot, then we'll be stuck with static and shared. And bickering. Huzzah? I just don't see how such a negative thing will attract more customers or make the game more fun. I don't find any aspect of static and shared looting fun, nor do I know anyone personally who plays any MMO launched since 2004 that finds those social problems fun.
I'll put this another way, just so my perspective is clear; If what distinguishes a new MMO title are social problems that have been solved, you're doing it wrong. I understand the desire for social gaming, and driving people together in a team effort. Bickering over static and shared loot, to me, is not social gaming, it's just petty arguing and bickering to no purpose. Seeing groups break up because one person needs on static loot for an alt? How's that fun? I don't need a looting sytem to show me if someone is unpleasant or not. I can make that determination all on my own. :)
There is also something else to consider here.. I have personally seen with my own two eyes someone ninja loot everything from an open public raid. They did it (presumably) with a throwaway account they bought for the purpose. They didn't care in the slightest about the hours of time they just burned for 50+ people. They took everything, logged out, and either transferred to another server or changed their character name. That character never logged in again on that server. CS did nothing, because it was perfectly legal. As time goes on, this type of behavior becomes more commonplace and is entirely negative for everyone involved. I have no desire to witness a repeat performance of such things in Pantheon. Personal loot, at a minimum, would completely eliminate such behavior.
Yet, there's a huge missed opportunity here, as I've mentioned before. Just a few innovative mechanics, and Pantheon could be Great instead of just "good enough". I hope VR siezes the opportunity to make it Great. To me, static and shared loot is "good enough" while personal & procedural loot, along with temp/permanent customized gear/slots & skills/spells would be Great. These types of mechanics are deep and require time investment, consideration, meaningful choice and result in tangible personal progress that keeps players playing for years.
Finally, giving a player yet another reason to logout (even just early, one more time, or forever) isn't ideal. There's dozens or hundreds of games available competing for customer play time. You need to give customers a positive reason to login, and bickering, arguing, and competing with group, guild or raid members doesn't encourage that. I understand the idea of making a niche title. I've seen two niche titles fail in the past 2 years, and I would be deeply saddened to see Pantheon (eyes wide open, with planning and forethought) fall into the same category.
X
Every loot system has the same problem: it's wrong. Hehehe. The fact is that no loot system can eliminate drama because there will always be some drawbacks and some people will complain.
My preference is against personal loot because it violates players' rational autonomy by taking away their liberty to choose. It makes me feel like I am being treated like a child on top of removing part of the risk and the adventure I would expect from an immersive environment and replacing it with an experience that seems mechanical.
Respectfully, I have to ask: is there a reason why parties shouldn't have the right to choose between looting systems? Maybe there can be a feature that allows players to flag themselves with certain (or no) preferences in order to make it easier to find appropriate groupings. That way everyone wins.
vjek said:I would prefer these systems because they elminate a social problem and let me focus on gameplay that is challenging and rewarding. Fighting against my group, guild or raid members isn't fun to me. Arguing with my group, guild or raid members isn't fun to me. Having to need everything just to cover consumable costs because my group, guild or raid members are all needing everything is ridiculous.
I understand your argumentation, I really do. It's probably that we both have formed our opinion on our observations. Either my memory is really clouded or I just didn't encounter fighting over loot in pickup-, guild- or raidgroups *very* much. Not that there are occasional people who get really possessive over loot, there are. And yet, it was never so that I felt the need to need on everything in return. Maybe I am overly naive, but I have really high expectations that Pantheon's community will largely constist of people who will need only on items which they intend to wear because it was an improvement over what they had before.
I don't want forced sanitization of loot rules. It should be a groups choice.
But I also don't want to deal with drama and conflict over drops. Allow that if people want it.
Design a system for the group to decide the method of looting be it total ninja or NBG or something else.
I am in the no loot system camp - ninja looters will be chastized serverwide. Hey here's an idea VR, will there be an option to post messages on town message boards for others to view for the next month? And - some more thought should be put into this idea, or it could be abused very easily - the nearest town's guards be on the lookout for the ninja looter after so many complaints?
Further, I also don't want money to automatically split with each drop. It is more immersive either for the leader to manually split money when the group breaks up rather than the Pantheon server doing some behind the scenes magic.
It amazes me that "personal loot" is even an option. Talk about killing social interaction.
Personal mobs, personal loots, personal content is just code for inserting your coin in to a vending machine and receiving your personal item. Theres no need to interact with or be botherd by other players in a personalized gaming experience. Its the ultimate hand holding mechanic. The less choices, the better/safer, am I right?
This would probably be a deal breaker for me. I came here for the archaic, brutal world where people have the personal freedom to express themselves though their choices and behavior.
I do not endorse ninjalooting or bad behavior. I dont endorse murder in the real world, however I am not prepared to isolate myself in to solitary confinement to remove the possibility of others murdering me.
There are countless scenarios where loot systems fail and cause perfectly good loots to rot because the group leader didnt give permission before he emergency afk'ed or died or whatever. No single group member should control the group's loot because of hard wired mechanics. Dont take the control or the responsibility away from the players pertaining to looting. Let outlaws sacrafice their reputations for a single loot. Let top players be charitable and give out rots or sell loot rights.
Greattaste said:It amazes me that "personal loot" is even an option. Talk about killing social interaction.
Personal mobs, personal loots, personal content is just code for inserting your coin in to a vending machine and receiving your personal item. Theres no need to interact with or be botherd by other players in a personalized gaming experience. Its the ultimate hand holding mechanic. ...
Personal loot can be used with the most difficult shared group/raid content you could imagine. There's no implication in what I was describing ( if you're referring to the personal loot I described ) for personal mobs or personal content. (if you mean solo, when you say personal, in those two contexts)
What I'm describing? Take EQ1, remove the ninja looting and eliminate the social cancer/toxicity fueled by greedy loot wh***s. That's where personal loot can be a solution. That's it, nothing more required. Procedural loot isn't even required unless you want to add some deeper meaningful mechanics that utilize it.
Now, if you want to talk about locked encounters, that's a different topic than looting rules. ;)
fazool said:To Aradune's question: I don't know if any MMO out there has a hard-coded looting system that's worth a darn.I want ninja looting, selling and splitting, running to merchants, arguing and fighting over it....I want FREE WILL.
There's free will and then there's allowing people to be a-holes when you could easily stop it.
Auto-personal loot is perhaps too far, but arguing and ninja looting is RL grief, not RPG freedom.
There are signs in banks that say "queue here" and even little ropes sometimes. Is this because they like to stifle your free will? Or because people pushing past each other is not a fun social interaction?
Aradune said:So is there any MMO already out that, regardless of how you feel about it in other areas, has really nailed a solid loot options interface and mechanics? I was hoping that by 2016 this would be pretty figured out -- an interface with a set of different rules on how loot distribution works. You join a group and that group can set up and even later change the rules. If you don't like how they do it you find other players who view loot distribution more similarly to how you do....
I just figured by now all of the different rules/setups that players would want to use were pretty fleshed out. Obivously I don't have time to really dig into every MMO, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Not really, every system has it's problems.
Old EQ had it's unfairness issues and open exploitation (ninja looters, inconsistent rounding splits, and kill stealing). On top of that looting every corpse just gets tedious.
NBG (Need before Greed) systems create an unfair balance in that people will 'Need' on an item just to sell it because they can and others can't. Likewise opening up a window to hit the things can again be a bit 'bleh'
Individual loot, it's easy to have auto loot and you don't have to worry about ninja looting/kill stealing. But, you create an exponential amount of loot which means either less valuable regular loot or just much more rare of drops to balance things out.
That's just a quick overview, there are more pros and cons to each, but personally I like the old EQ or the individual loot, the NBG to me just seems the most abuseable with a rationalized excuse to get your unfair amount of loot ('I'm the only one who can use it so I deserve it!').
Greattaste said:EQ, 2003. I was a group-geared, level 59 ranger (max was 65). My friends (end game geared 65 bard, group/raid geared 65sk) and I, along with a 65 pick up shaman headed to the newly released zone of "SolC". At this point in time, there wasnt much information available about the mobs or drops of this zone. I felt like a trailblazer as we tracked to unfamiliar red-con named.
It took us atleast 30 minutes of steady clearing yellow-con (to 59) mobs to reach the named. "Spiritmaster Heili" I believe. We engauged him, it should have been a trivial encounter for my max-level friends, but it wasnt. In this zone, mobs were around every corner, in places you couldnt see, all piled up on top of eachother. During the fight, we got an add, a roamer who was a healer. Right as the add was going down it managed to cast "Gate". There was an ominous lull in the action as it was just us and the named again. Then it began, a trickle of mobs started flowing in from around the bend. By the time the named was at 25% we had a full group of six mobs plus the named beating on us. Named at 10% , shaman down, bard down. Tank at 50, 35, 20% now. He now has low-hp aggro, all the mobs are focused on him now. We can see it coming, the wipe is immenent. As the tank was going down, he unleashed Harm touch and slayed the named. As he died the last thing he uttered as he was being struck down was "LOOT IT!". It was now or never because the named's corpse would easily rot by the time we cleared our way back down to our corpses. Now as the mobs killed my friend I knelt down upon the corpse to see the spoils of victory, only for a brief second before I die. I saw a 2 handed sword, no-drop, ranger usable, as I see my chatbox spam red. I click loot at the same time as my screen turns to the overhead view of my corpse. I was bound in the bazaar so thats where my gearless hafling spawned. I rifled through my chat spam to see if I had looted it in time. I did! It was an upgrade that I used for a long time.
That wall of text was one of my favorite experiences from EQ. I felt like a explorer who was conquering the new world.
This would have been a much different experience had I needed permission from the group-leader to loot.
TLDR: I like old EQs loot system.
Love the story. That's the exact kind of stuff I miss from EQ as well. No other game has ever been able to elicit those same feelings of hope, desperation, despair, and elation as EQ did.
I had no issues with EQ1 system. The only thing I would change (Which I think eventully did), was loot locked to the group to avoid ninja looting (This was based on 50%+ damage IIRC, so KSing and looting was still a factor, so as to avoid total sanitization.)
And I would like to see the loot list when the looter clicks and kneels, so the whole group knows what was dropped and negotiations and claims could begin without the extra typing and linking by the looter. (This also helps eliminate in-group ninjas, as the group is notified by tghe list tht the corspe is being inspected and possibly looted)
vjek said:My personal preference is both procedural loot and personal loot. That removes the need for "looting systems" entirely. You get what you get and that's that.
---However, if pantheon sticks with the rather antiquated notion of shared loot only, then I would prefer:
You can't need roll on an item unless it matches your race/class combination, if it's race/class restricted. Otherwise, everyone needs everything, and the system is stupidly broken . Why have the option if people can ignore it. No, I don't care about my alts, and I don't care about your alts. :)
I would prefer the ability to set it to "greed everything" rather than have to choose need/greed for each item, as an option. I just don't want to care about loot while I'm fighting and someone decides they want to loot in combat. Just hide it from me and let me fight. Loot is not so important than I want to be distracted in combat by it. I'm more interested in being effective in combat.
As far as when/if solo'ing? Let me hoover everything. Don't even show me, just take it all, all the time, as an option.
When raiding? Put it all into the guild bank directly (with messages to the officers/leaders), then let the officers/leaders sort it out after the raid (in-zone quest items/flags exempt, of course, if applicable)
I can see this one happening. If the auto loot systems are the route VR takes I would be ok with it. Expereinced way to many idiots in the past so I want my time spent having fun not dealing with the dirt bags.
Ox
We all have the stories from past experiences (hell I just deleted one to save people from reading it). Good and Bad memories, it's usually the polar extremes that stick with us most over the years. And it's that reminder that I'd add to the discussion, you need the potential conflicts/negatives/frustrations - in order to have those highs as well.
To have the positive light parts, the truly blinding and blazing joyful moments we can all remember, you need that contrast of the dark parts.
Yes, some streamlining and/or options can be very useful. But I'd think it would be a mistake for a game that wants reputation to matter - to remove one more defining thing that allows people to show who they are.
I'm fine with people having options, I'd consider making it a confirmation window when changing loot options or when accepting the group invite.
At least I can say I've never felt condescended to by a loot system.
I'd much rather see intuitive built-in loot distribution as opposed to archaic commands. As a matter of fact, limiting the number of interactions with the game through /commands as much as possible seems pretty desirable to me.
Having a built-in UI piece to handle randoms instead of manually typing /ran 100 seems pretty desirable to me. Having a built-in UI with several loot distribution methods also seems pretty desirable to me. Round robin, NBG, pure RNG, etc. all have their place in a casual setting.
Aradune said:So is there any MMO already out that, regardless of how you feel about it in other areas, has really nailed a solid loot options interface and mechanics? I was hoping that by 2016 this would be pretty figured out -- an interface with a set of different rules on how loot distribution works. You join a group and that group can set up and even later change the rules. If you don't like how they do it you find other players who view loot distribution more similarly to how you do....
I just figured by now all of the different rules/setups that players would want to use were pretty fleshed out. Obivously I don't have time to really dig into every MMO, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm probably in the minority, but EQ1's new advanced loot system I think is pretty good.
https://www.everquest.com/news/advanced-looting-system
It was a real bugger learning how it worked initially, but after you got the hang of it, it saved you so much time. With the advanced loot system, you could set it and forget it. Killing stuff solo, it would automatically loot the items you wanted from corpses. In groups, it acted as a traditional NBG system and it remembered your loot preferences so you didn't have to see a popup loot window after every single kill. I wouldn't ever go back to the traditional loot method in EQ1 now.
Aradune said:So is there any MMO already out that, regardless of how you feel about it in other areas, has really nailed a solid loot options interface and mechanics? I was hoping that by 2016 this would be pretty figured out -- an interface with a set of different rules on how loot distribution works. You join a group and that group can set up and even later change the rules. If you don't like how they do it you find other players who view loot distribution more similarly to how you do....
I just figured by now all of the different rules/setups that players would want to use were pretty fleshed out. Obivously I don't have time to really dig into every MMO, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Need vs Greed doesn't work...there were ALWAYS people stating NEED..when they were supplying for their alts. I felt that was unfair to the players involved in the dungeon run, supply your alts on your own time. :)