Wellspring said: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.
Can confirm that EQ's Advanced Loot is amazing. However, it takes up a disgusting amount of screen real estate. That's my only complaint with it.
CanadinaXegony said: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. :)
In fairness, the same thing happens with /ran 100. There's no way to police people rolling for alts unless you inspect their gear and are aware of the statistical comparisons between the item they're rolling on and what they're replacing it with.
I personally dealt with NBG in EQ2 for about 8 years and never saw significant abuse of it. Just my two cents.
I saw it elsewhere...and often. :) There needs to be a better system. Fairness for those actually present at the fight. Alt supplying on one's own time as I stated before. Drops for classes present only. Why would I go on a run to supply people's alts? People do what they do...and if they can get away with it, they do it some more. Human nature. :) Or the other winning move...advertising that piece for sale over General chat (after our group run) so they didn't NEED that piece, and the person in group that could have used that piece does without. I believe the most recent evidence of that was in Rift, but I have seen this happen in other games.
CanadinaXegony said:I saw it elsewhere...and often. :) There needs to be a better system. Fairness for those actually present at the fight. Alt supplying on one's own time as I stated before. Drops for classes present only. Why would I go on a run to supply people's alts? People do what they do...and if they can get away with it, they do it some more. Human nature. :)
Right, but I guess what I'm asking is what system? Personal loot?
Liav said:CanadinaXegony said:I saw it elsewhere...and often. :) There needs to be a better system. Fairness for those actually present at the fight. Alt supplying on one's own time as I stated before. Drops for classes present only. Why would I go on a run to supply people's alts? People do what they do...and if they can get away with it, they do it some more. Human nature. :)
Right, but I guess what I'm asking is what system? Personal loot?
Perhaps we'll have to leave that up to the Devs...and test this out for them.
daserack said:Yes Looting does rule!
What type of loot rules do you guys like in MMOs?
1. EQ. If you are in a group anyone can loot something. If someone in group wants to ninja something they can.
2. Others. Need / Greed roll options based on your class. ie: warrior only item drops and only warriors can select Need option, others can select Greed or Pass.
3. Other examples?
One innovation I would like to see in Need/Greed systems is if you select Need the game actually checks if the item is indeed better than what you are wearing. Have seen people just blindly select Need even though its not an upgrade.
To me, the loot rules depend on how the loot is set up in a game. Option 2 will not work as well in a game like EQ where a named may drop 1 piece of gear for 1 or 2 classes. If a named only drops a healer helm, why would a non healer choose to go there unless they can't find any other option. Groups were stationary and trash didnt really drop any gear of value. It worked better in VG where groups typically moved around more and trash could drop decent stuff. Named were usually related to quests until F2P came out. The ones that weren't didnt really have any must have gear either, and many had multiple spawn points so camping 1 spot was pointless.
I do prefer Option 2 though, mainly because of the bad experience my gf and I had in EQ.
Liav said:Can confirm that EQ's Advanced Loot is amazing. However, it takes up a disgusting amount of screen real estate. That's my only complaint with it.
Haha Liav, it's rare we agree on something! Seems we're on opposite ends of most topics.
And I agree, the UI of the looting system needs work, and it needs to be presented in an intuitive way that is easier to understand. But the idea and mechanics behind it I think are right on.
tachyon said:
I like autosplit coin. For items, I'd say a simple take or pass system that randoms among those that choose to take.
I never understood the need/greed distinction. In my mind there is no need or greed, just want. It really only makes sense when items are no drop, in which case you'd pass anyway if you couldn't use it.
If the item is sellable, your need for the coin or upgrade you could get in exchange for it on the market is just as great as someones need for the direct upgrade. In practice, most would pass for the player that could use it then and there, but that shouldn't be assumed as the norm.
fazool said:
The problem with this topic is that many people have really no understanding of macro-economics but love to apply emotional ideas to economic situations.
First of all, let's exclude no-drop, quest and special rare items. Let's just talk about your basic "stuff":
There is no such thing as NBG. Economically it is a ruse.
If a group is hunting together and tradeable/sellable 2-hand sword drops, NBG says the warrior automatically gets it and never the wizard. The reality is that the item is worth its cash value to both equally. The warrior can sell the item to another player and buy a new pair of gloves. But so can the wizard - the wizard can sell the item and buy a robe or a pair of gloves.
This topic has been debated so incessantly and will never be resolved. Forced looting rules, like in WoW are horrible ideas. Just leave everything free-will and let the players decide - each group can make up their own rules.
^I feel most strongly about what these guys said. If it's droppable, everyone should roll. Since the team is promising us memorable and meaningful loot again, most things would be rolled upon. That's my personal opinion, but I'm willing to work with whatever reasonable loot rules a group decides upon, generally.
Besides that, I'm fine with the original EverQuest way of clicking, kneeling, announcing what dropped, and typing '/rand 100'. I'm also fine with a UI system. I have to agree with Wellspring and Liav that the new EQ Advanced Loot System is pretty powerful when used correctly. As Liav said, though, it took up half of your screen, and as Wellspring said, it was a pita to learn. On top of that, there were a ton of people (on Ragefire, at least) that never learned how to use it for whatever reason, and you'd end up with a situation where a person like that was the leader and there was so much in the Advanced Loot window that your game would crash if you attempted to interact with it at all.
I guess if I have to choose between the two, I'd choose something like EQ's Advanced Loot, but much less unwieldy and much more intuitive. I would say coin should split automatically, but have an option to turn it off if that's desired. I agree that no changes to the group's loot rules should be possible without the entire group knowing.
toop said: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.
I think this is a hell of an idea (sorry to cut the rest of your post, Toop). When I was playing on TLPs, this is basically how I ran my groups anyway. If a new group was forming, we'd discuss loot at the start and then inform incoming members of the loot rules to make sure they were okay with it before joining. If people voiced a desire for different loot rules after new people came in, we'd vote again. Somebody else mentioned being able to flag yourself for certain loot rules in LFG and be able to see the loot rules of prospective groups. That's fine, too, but between the two, I'd rather do the vote whenever someone joins a group.
EDIT: Highlighted bits of the first two quotes.
Well one thing that could help is just clear designations on loot per role. So obviously if a Wizard wants something with str and dex an a bunch of accuracy, they obviously are trying to get loot for an alt.
@CanadinaXegony
Hmm never though about "Drops for classes present only". But I think thats a good idea too. We can keep drop rates low but still have the game only allow a random drops from a pool of classes present. Would encourage folks to show up on the main class they intend to focus on.
I can see drops for present classes being used to allow targeted farming, or distilling loot tables by only bringing relevant classes for farming purposes. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to debate.
Xxar said:I prefer group leader having multiple options.
- Need before greed
- Round robin
- Leader only or designated looter
- A setting for quality as well ie .. treasured +
This allows each group to set it up according to the situation.
This is exactly what i think, in a group centric game I would expect more players to run with their guilds instead of PUGS. That said though even in a pug, if your not ok with the Loot option chosen by the leader then bail. I would suggest though, that once chosen it should take a group vote to change the looting options.
Xxar said:I prefer group leader having multiple options.
- Need before greed
- Round robin
- Leader only or designated looter
- A setting for quality as well ie .. treasured +
This allows each group to set it up according to the situation.
Add a NBG / RR - Where you select Need, then you are dropped to the bottom of the list on any roll that someone selects need until all have triggered the NBG option.
Always ask what the current rules are for the group. If you don't like it, leave the group. If people are cheating either leave the group or kick them out. Don't group with them again. Don't group with people with bad reputations.
Building multiple other systems seems redundant.
Fulton said:Add a NBG / RR - Where you select Need, then you are dropped to the bottom of the list on any roll that someone selects need until all have triggered the NBG option.
Not a bad idea. I remember groups in EverQuest where you couldn't win a second item until everyone else had won something. You'll end up with people finding a reason to leave after they've won something, but I suppose that's unavoidable.
Liav said:I can see drops for present classes being used to allow targeted farming, or distilling loot tables by only bringing relevant classes for farming purposes. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to debate.
Im not sure either. I mean its helpful in a way, but at some point people might want to farm for alts with their mains so then what? Have to bring their alts? Because I dont have a problem with people looting for their alts provided all mains alreay have or dont need that item. But it would suck early on in the game if nobody was maining say Monk, yet Monk gear kept dropping. I remember experiencing this quite a few times in FFXI. I mean it was nice for those that had the appropraite alts, but was extremely frustrating for everyone else that was looking to gear up their mains.
Outside of this I like /casting lots, round robin, or designated looter. Also a loot filter so you dont get your inventory filled with trash could be good as well (unless you wanted it to).
I agree Amsai, which is why I don't like it. Smart loot has more cons than pros, in my opinion.
While I understand the frustrations associated with having loot that no one can use drop, it introduces enough issues that I think it's not worthit. Being unable to get loot for alts is among those issues, as well as targeting farming of specific items in a loot table by only bringing specific classes.
And if monk loot keeps dropping for your monkless group, it will be tradeable and whoever wins it can sell it or trade it to acquire an upgrade, so no big deal. I'm also hoping for less items that are specifically for one class. You didn't have a lot of those in early EverQuest...you had the quested class sets, maybe a few other items here or there, and the planar stuff that was almost all nodrop. Everything else could be used by more than one class, and I think that's another reason loot was memorable and meaningful. It was more useful and had more longevity. I definitely wouldn't want to see anything where items wouldn't drop because no one present could use it.
Manouk said:I think the auto-split of coin is a good thing to have automatically established when in a group.
But for the gear I see- and agree with- the sides of the argument that point out the tediousness of having tom loot the corpse and take the items instea of auto-filled in the looters bags.
One thing I did like was that if someone looted a corpse- it would flag in chat what Item they took. This lead to some intersting scenarios with a PuG of clearly well advanced in skil players trhat would let the corpses pile up, no one looted *fidgtes*. Even nameds *fidgtes*. Untill finally one person would loot all at once during a lull and link all the items.
But yes I think it is decided by group how item loot shoud be handled, and the need before greed concept I also see both sides.
Ifdeally if an upgrade, you take it then sell your old item after the fact. or if it is not an item you can use by class or race, then you dont roll. I mean an dark myr summoner and a human summoner ar ein a group and a item for summoners drop with myr only on it. If the myr can use it and an upgrade, it goes ot them, if they pass, then- it moves ot a greed roll and whomever was highest got it and do what they will regardless of race or class on the item.
But yes the whiole " I can use that on my alt" never left a good taste in my mouth. It is you, not the alt. - coupled with some would create a few alts and play with themselves, and skip grouping with an odd set of classes and trying hard things, opting instead for the safety of the self-alt group because they had a better slower. Just did not make sense to me.
I like a lot of what you said. So often we agree before going out on the rules.I like the idea of need before greed.I do want it to show what was looted.
I agree with having less items for specific classes. I also like the concept of being able to use different attributes for a class. For instance I recall there being dexterity warriors (this may have been early world of warcraft). The point is you can wear different equipment like a warrior wearing a piece of cloth or leather instead of chain or plate and if there are attribute increases per level you can choose to put the points into something other than whatever you might consider best for x class.
@Liav and Shucklighter
Both of you make good cases. You know sometimes I get too caught up in FFXI thinking. I completely forgot that drops in this game more often than not will be buy/tradeable. Or that its likely drops will more often than not be good for a role and not just a specific class. So if DPS hands drop any DPS could use them, not just Monk.
On the flip side, smart loot would need to be removed from raid encounters because I can pretty much guarantee that most raid loot will not be tradeable. At least, I hope it isn't. I'd rather not see RMT queens decked out in best in slot gear, which is what will happen if raid loot is tradeable.
In EQ quite a lot of things were tradeable, especially early on, but somehow I don't think it'd go over quite as well in a more modern game. That said, I'm happy to be proven wrong. We'll see in testing.
Liav said:On the flip side, smart loot would need to be removed from raid encounters because I can pretty much guarantee that most raid loot will not be tradeable. At least, I hope it isn't. I'd rather not see RMT queens decked out in best in slot gear, which is what will happen if raid loot is tradeable.
In EQ quite a lot of things were tradeable, especially early on, but somehow I don't think it'd go over quite as well in a more modern game. That said, I'm happy to be proven wrong. We'll see in testing.
Yeah. I think raid loot needs to be almost exclusively nodrop, but I still wouldn't want any kind or smart or personal loot for raids. If they include tools for raid loot distribution, that's great as long as they are optional. I think most of the other loot in the game should be droppable, but I'm fine with some scattered quest rewards and group loot being nodrop.
The tailoring thing (crafters can tailor gear to you which improves it, but makes it nodrop) worries me because it makes me think I'm always going to do that. In that case, won't we end up with most loot effectively being bind-on-equip? And in that case, will we have the memorable and meaningful loot we've been promised?
Eh, some of it was tradeable in classic. All VP drops, ToV drops, etc. were not, though. Not unless they made it no-drop long after Kunark and Velious originally came out.
Come to think of it, planar gear from Fear and Hate were also not tradeable. It was almost always limited to a few select items. Cloak of Flames, etc.