Sicario said:I definitely agree about not implementing a system where someone is rewarded for looting first, that is a system guaranteed to screw over tanks/healers especially.
I completely agree. There needs to be zero benefit to being the person who initiates looting. Doing otherwise is just building in a system to screw over tanks and healers and will add toxicity by incentivising bad behavior. Furthermore, any loot timer needs to not start until everyone is out of combat, so healers and tanks don't have to chose between what they should be doing and evaluating the loot.
FatedEmperor said:I think that the best system I've ever engaged with is EverQuest's current system. It has the ability to be a good solution for both extremes of the spectrum.
I played EQ last in 2019 (or somewhere around then). And unless the system changed significantly since then, I can only agree, it is one of the best looting systems I've seen. Lots of flexibility to adapt it to your group's requirements, options to set stuff to auto need/greed etc. There's some bad points with it too, like the loot window popping up automatically (which can be annoying if you are still fighting other mobs), but I think that can be configured as well.
Really, it's 2022. I don't want to have to manually click on corpses to loot them, and thereby overlook/forget some mobs, or lose others because they're stuck in the wall or whatever.
I think a system where some group member clicks the body, but everyone gets a window that shows a list of the loot on that body (Each body needs to be clicked), and it could even be a descending order record of all loot during an adventure, with newest items highlighted, and a record of who got what in older items, or if an item was left behind.
Nothing overly fancy, but like a dedicated chat window with this basic information.
The only thing i didn't like about the EQ system was that only if you clicked the corpse did you know what was on it, or check the loot messages to see if someone else looted something while you were sill in combat.
But being able to see what is available with a click option, to see what it's stats are without ever group member having to check the corspe or 1 person having to manually add item links to the group chat, would be a QoL improvement.
I don't like auto-loot, as it fills inventory with garbage, and if there is auto-coin distribution, it would be nice to toggle which coins you would (like turning off copper and silver), thereby leaving your share behind on the corpse for a random passer-by or another group member to take.
Since I will main a healer, I'd definitely like to SEE everything that gets looted. I agree that too often the tank or dps is in a more favorable physical place to loot. In so many pugs I see the tank grab everything. If I see what is looted I can vote on what I might want. Also, it allows my to trust pugs more. I understand this will slow down the game. I think that's a good thing. There are plenty of swarm pull/kill/loot games. Please not Pantheon. As a healer I have been loot poor. I'd just like to even the playing field.
Loot is one of my pillars for adventure, and not every adventure should result in an individual prize.
I like seeing the Loot that I'll get on the mob or he better have a bag or a stomach, an expectation of looting.
I think looting should be an area loot. Keep the busy work out of games, if the experience cost me the time it should be fun.
Weight should always be a deterrent to greed with the ability to roll Need. Sometimes the story is about losing the dice roll and gives another reason for a return adventure.
It's almost an objective, not subjective, thing. There is an element of preference, but also a large amount of realism and game mechanic complexity/interest/fun/fear involved.
The main case involves looting while in combat, I think. It basically doesn't 'feel' right - a 'gamification' of something fundamental - but more important it would reduce the meaningfulness and challenge of the encounter to allow instant stripping of a corpse its friend is still fighting over.
Even while not fighting, if corpses can be easily/instantly looted it greatly reduces how dangerous the area/environment is. It greatly enhances the risk/reward/danger of an area if the looting takes 'some' time and 'some' decisions/process to complete. The game mechanic of 'opening' and drag-dropping items is an analog for the tricky and dangerous process of assessing/prioritising and taking/stowing or leaving loot when more monsters may turn up any second.
There are tweaks, of course. Different inventory systems and UIs can make this better or worse, too tricky or too convenient. But fundamentally I think to 'lose' the process using an autoloot of some kind is to lose an awful lot of immersion and interest.
Some tweaks come to mind: Dragging corpses so they can be more safely looted? 'Auto' looting that is less fiddly, but still takes times to complete and will 'fail' if interrupted? Restricted assaying/identifying of items on a corpse, but a looting 'skill' that improves that assaying ability/speed? Etc.
There are, I think, lots of possibilities for looting to be a *greater* challenge and interesting activity and I think it would be a great shame to go the other way and simplify/trivialise it.
Now, re. *fairness* of looting, I agree that loot is so fundamental to the game that it probably shouldn't be left to 'realistic' mechanics that may see the big strong tank with proximity advantage grabbing and carrying everything away.
Maybe coin could be auto-shared. Maybe anything but simple items could be held in a group 'escrow' that all have to vote upon allocation once not fighting? Maybe it should be as simple as having a separate loot window that displays everything looted, so allowing for the greedy to be greedy, but not allowing them to get away with it without consequence?
If I kill an enemy with an arrow in a dangerous place, I should have to go to their body. I should have to sneak or fight to the corpse. And if I plan poorly and they fall off a cliff then I have to figure out how to get to their body. And once at the body, I need to take the time to search every pocket and location.
That builds immersion.
If I zap a mob from across the valley with a fireball and *POOF*, eleven items land in my backpack.....well, the game might as well play itself for me and tell me how I did, since it's doing the work for me. And while at it, the game should tell me how immersive it felt and if I enjoyed myself.
After reading the last two posts by @disposalist and @fazool, I'm in favor of a slower, more consequential loot process. Make dragging corpses (if light enough) a tactical decision. Make looting an actual skill (better skill = diminished time) so the group needs to decide if it's even safe to loot or if they need to drag the corpse or clear the area. Multiple people looting the same corpse will speed up loot time, and it could be set that large items are looted right away (like swords) but smaller items (like rings, hidden valuables) take time.
One new feature I'd like to see is an option to trade items / coin to individuals or the whole group in the loot window. This creates interesting new options:
Counterfleche said:After reading the last two posts by @disposalist and @fazool, I'm in favor of a slower, more consequential loot process. Make dragging corpses (if light enough) a tactical decision. Make looting an actual skill (better skill = diminished time) so the group needs to decide if it's even safe to loot or if they need to drag the corpse or clear the area. Multiple people looting the same corpse will speed up loot time, and it could be set that large items are looted right away (like swords) but smaller items (like rings, hidden valuables) take time.
One new feature I'd like to see is an option to trade items / coin to individuals or the whole group in the loot window. This creates interesting new options:
- Greed rolls require you offer up the item you will be upgrading from as replacement loot that someone else can win with a greed roll.
- Players can choose negotiate for loot and offer gear / coin in exchange for claiming the item.
Maybe a PvE mechanic / "Feature" that all manner of invis drops when looting a corpse?
I am in agreement with slow looting, combined with a well done loot interface.
I am also interested in corpse dragging. Since harvesting will be an important skill area, we ought to be able to drag an entire corpse to someone who is better able to harvest it. Or several someones: butcher for meat, skinner for hides, taxidermist for parts, etc.
Dragging a corpse back to town feels more adventurous to me. Maybe I have to cut the head off a creature and present it to the quest giver to prove I have done the deed.
But I don't want healers to get screwed out of their fair share because of fast looting. If it takes more time to loot, then the user interface for looting should make up for that extra time.
In order to appease the gamer in all of us, maybe not all the experience is awarded upon the kill, but a significant portion of it is awarded when looted. That way the time spent is more worth it.
After all, in original Dungeons and Dragons, 1 gold piece equals one experience point.
Counterfleche said:After reading the last two posts by @disposalist and @fazool, I'm in favor of a slower, more consequential loot process. Make dragging corpses (if light enough) a tactical decision. Make looting an actual skill (better skill = diminished time) so the group needs to decide if it's even safe to loot or if they need to drag the corpse or clear the area. Multiple people looting the same corpse will speed up loot time, and it could be set that large items are looted right away (like swords) but smaller items (like rings, hidden valuables) take time.
One new feature I'd like to see is an option to trade items / coin to individuals or the whole group in the loot window. This creates interesting new options:
- Greed rolls require you offer up the item you will be upgrading from as replacement loot that someone else can win with a greed roll.
- Players can choose negotiate for loot and offer gear / coin in exchange for claiming the item.
Some excellent concepts. I would love to see some innovation/evolution in this area. Surely some of this could be done without too much effort and upset about 'scope creep'?...
This topic has been promoted for my CM content, please continue the discussion and have fun! :)
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I know that this probably won’t be a popular opinion, but I would like to see mobs have realistic drops. What I mean by this is, why would a wolf have gold? Why is a 3-foot-tall goblin that was fighting with a dagger dropping a plate armor? Why does a bunny drop a dagger? I also think that it would be cool if when you loot there is a progress bar for searching the corpse. This would help stop ninja looters. I understand that I am in the minority, but its something that I would like to see.
In the interests of accessability, I would like to minimize having to click click click just to move the big bunch of grey vendor-trash items to my inventory. I'm old, and my parts are old, and repeated clicking for something like that is maybe something we can do without?
I like the idea of hitting a button and opening up all the bodies near you (within a radius) that you are eligible to loot. You get windows that tell you the mob, and the loot on that mob. Then you can choose to loot all, or sacrifice your tendons and joints to click individually.
But that brings us to the issue of whether loot will be individual or shared. And I feel like that kind of a system doesn't work as well with shared loot. I'm on the fence about individualized loot, I think there are ways to make it work, but I'm not sure individual loot fits the game and its tenants.
One thing I don't want is autoloot. Absolutely unnecessary in a game like this.
I might be an outlier. Consider old school EQ. You're a young toon and are trying to make some money. So one way of doing that is to farm the Stein of Moggok quest. One step of that involves farming honeycomb, which drops of Bixies in Mistyvale, or whatever the zone is called.
To get Bixies to spawn, you basically clear-cut the zone, killing everthing. You're a young toon, so you want those coppers, and you really want the honeycomb, and maybe anything that stacks. But your kill rate is going to drop through the floor if you have to click and loot. So all you bother with are the bixies.
I'd rather be able to set autoloot rules with some high level filters. "Yes" to things that stack. And I can white/blacklist everything else.
In group mode, of course, the rules would be different. No ninja-looting.
WolfySins said:To get Bixies to spawn, you basically clear-cut the zone, killing everthing. You're a young toon, so you want those coppers, and you really want the honeycomb, and maybe anything that stacks. But your kill rate is going to drop through the floor if you have to click and loot. So all you bother with are the bixies.
Such an amazing example of choices mattering! Awesome. I'd also add to that, the loot you choose to pick up should matter, and the choice to take the time to even look at what loot exists should matter.
WolfySins said:I'd rather be able to set autoloot rules with some high level filters. "Yes" to things that stack. And I can white/blacklist everything else.
In group mode, of course, the rules would be different. No ninja-looting.
Now THIS is the kind of autolooting I am 100% behind. When I said no autolooting, I was thinking, like, Lost Ark style or whatever Diablo-Clone games are out there where you just vacuum up loot at the drop of a pin. But setting filters? Yes, please please. If that's not in the game, someone is just going to make a mod that does it anyway (assuming we have modding capabilities).
What about a loot mule? A NPC pack mule that follows the party and has lots of storage. It would hold all items placed in it in escrow and would automatically sell them all when returning to town (assuming you manage to keep it alive). Each item placed in it has the names of all the group members when the item was obtained and when the pack mule returns to town, all group members get their share of the money (minus the pack mule rental fee).
The mule will have large storage and allow for large quantities to be stacked. Player characters won't have nearly as much storage and are much more limited in stacks. Groups will need to decide between being fast and mobile with limited carrying capacity vs slow and limited with great storage for loot and collected harvesting items.
The mule can't be ninja looted by one player and it is intended for bulk and vendor trash. It can't climb cliffs and it must be kept alive, but it can serve as a base camp and all junk loot can be looted directly into the mule.
Various creatures can be used for mules and possibly even mounts could be used (so long as they are programmed to have group storage that can only be removed by selling in town).
What is with all the automation talk? Is looting not fun for people? If we start automating things that aren't fun for each sub-group of people I will be so sad.
My hope, regarding loot, is that there will not be a huge influx of loot in every play session like some of these other games you are referencing. Diablo had tons of loot, constantly flowing in, and the rate of killing mobs was what, 100x as fast (depending on the situation?). I suppose if there was as much loot as those types of games have then I might be annoyed too. But in the streams we've seen so far that show gameplay how much of the play time is actually used up on looting? And when that loot window does pop up with a nice item, isn't that moment exciting?
I prefer manual loot, right-click to send to bag is fine with a button on the loot window to loot all. And a group message that shows who looted what, with a tool tip link.
Killing the mob shouldn't just award you loot, you should also have to be able to loot and if it's not safe to do so, then so be it, make it safe, or risk losing that loot.
As someone suggested, dragging mob corpses would be a cool addition, in the spirit of making it safe to loot.
That said, I know many have an aversion to some people being in the optimal place to loot (melee) vs casters that are usually regaining mana or are standing farther away. While I feel your pain and have experienced it myself, this plays into the concept of "Reputation Matters" - so if the game protects you from this - it also strips at least this aspect of reputation matters.
If the game eliminates the possibilities of your actions affecting others either positively or negatively, then it also will remove social interaction, reputation matters, and the need to actually converse with your group members.
A social experience is not always positive and IMO should not be forced into being positive either.
my 2cp
-Az
People need to fully understand economics to understand that NBG isn't real.
Excluding no-drop items, if an item can be traded/sold then it has the exact same *VALUE* to every player regardless if they can use it or not.
Group Scenario:
A warrior who has a +7 sword
A wizard who has +1 wand
A tradeable +8 sword drops. NBG claims the warrior automatically gets it. But the wizard needs it more. The wizard can sell it and buy a +8 wand. At the very least they both should have an exactly equal chance of winning the item.
*VALUE* to a player cannot be defined by usability - those are two completely different terms.
fazool said:A tradeable +8 sword drops. NBG claims the warrior automatically gets it. But the wizard needs it more. The wizard can sell it and buy a +8 wand. At the very least they both should have an exactly equal chance of winning the item.
*VALUE* to a player cannot be defined by usability - those are two completely different terms.
NBG is simply an emergent behavior that got turned into a looting mode in games that implement loot automation.
Whether or not NBG is real, it is up to a specific group to use or not and is fully supported by manual looting.