First I agree coins should always be auto-split.
Next, I’d say these looting profiles are a must :
free for all : everyone can loot and loot everything.
round-robin : each kill can be looted by only one member. Free for all after 1 or 2 minutes if the designated member does not loot or does not loot everything.
random : for each item a window appears on each member's screen in which he can select roll / pass. Then random 100 for each member that selected roll. If everybody selects pass, then free for all.
need before trade : for each item a window appears on each member's screen in which he can select need / trade / pass. Then random 100 for each member that selected need, and if nobody selected need then random 100 for each member that selected trade. If everybody selects pass, then free for all.
use before trade : for each item a window appears on each member's screen in which he can select a use / trade / pass, use option is only available for members that can use the item (based on race/class restrictions) . Then random 100 for each member that selected use, and if nobody selected use then random 100 for each member that selected trade. If everybody selects pass, then free for all.
leader’s decision : for each item a window appears on leader’s screen in which he can select to directly assign the item to a member, or select another attribution mode among random, need before trade, use before trade profiles. Can be used as Master loot if for example the leader’s name is set as default.
A loot level option is a good idea to define the min level of items that are subject to random, need before trade, use before trade or leader’s decision profiles. And for items that are no trade/drop (or equivalent) a confirmation could be required, and also maybe restrictions to the classes that can use it.
I’m not sure it is useful to integrate a DKP system in Pantheon, solutions are existing outside the game.
To conclude I’d say looting profiles are tools, they are meant to be useful and to offer players flexibility and freedom to handle loot like they want. Fairness depends on players, not on tools. No matter how a tool is designed, it can be used unfairly if players wanna use it that way. Looting profiles are useful to clearly define how the group wanna distribute loot and to help implement distribution the easiest way possible, and it should be visible in the invite panel so players that do not accept it can refuse the invite. And ideally it could be a good idea that every member of the group have to accept or refuse an update of looting profile before the new one being active.
Free for all looting is a terrible loot rule to include. I get that its a social experiment going on and the hope is that reputation is going to be the hope to deter abuse but thats a rainbow dream for today's game play. There is no need for it as if its a guild group or guild raid, people will already go need before greed or DKP for the class that can use the item and its an upgrade and greed on any items that no one needs as an upgrade. In a random pick up group it will be abused. I know I will not join a pick up group ever where the leader sets it for anything other than letting the loot roll out randomly.
I would also like to see an additional option where if the group leader wants to give an item to a person, a pop up comes up for each group member that says "Leader's name" wants to give "Item" to "Player" do you agree? and there is a yes or no answer that your response is anonimous and if anyone put "No" the item would roll out based on need and greed filters.
The Round Robin idea is interesting but its weakness is what if the item that came up on my turn was not useable by me? Can it be programmed to go round robin among the characters that could last use an item and remember the order of skipped players and go back to them? That seems really complicated to code to me.
I dont want to have spent an hour with a group that has worked itself deep in a dungeon and have some ninja looter get kicked because of free loot abuse and the group breaks because no one wants to go back to the begining of the dungeon to get replacements.
The only people that will like this Free loot rulesets are the Ninja Looters.
I've been in some bad PUG with FFA rules. There's usually that one person who starts looting mid-fight.
Even had a time when someone looted a premium item mid-fight, and had not done so up until that point, and then bailed on the group. Not only did we miss out on a roll-for-item, but we also wiped thanks to that person bailing.
Loot window should be a single window for all loot and show all items from all corpses (minus whatever you've filtered out). It should be small enough that it can be left open. Busier players can thus keep it open and quickly skim the list without dealing with constant pop-ups. There should be a hotkey to clear all. Items should stay in the list for a set time and the clock should not count down if the group is in combat. One window we periodically skim is far less cumbersome than constantly dealing with pop-ups.
Vandraad said:Nearly every NPC would need to be naked as to prevent a flood of gear entering the market. Even too much of the cheap, early level stuff can adversely affect the overall economy.
IMO:
Correct, provided loot has value and can be sold to NPCs. (which has, so far, been confirmed as true.)
As Pantheon is, after 10 yaers of design effort, going down that route, I would recommend (instead of a well designed economy that prevents runaway inflation) the following:
Two loot pools for every mob.
1) personal loot pool where all items are Bind-on-pickup, (untradable) and have exactly zero sellback value to any NPC.
2) a competitive shared loot pool that you can apply personal want/pass rules, persistently, for any item(s). These all have traditional sellback values to NPCs.
and
Automatic autosplit coin for the 2nd loot pool.
That way, you can add as much personal loot as you want and it has exactly zero consequence to the economy. The shared, competitive loot pool becomes a pleasant bonus, rather than the stab your friends in the face to get something you need system. :)
You could, if desired, make all personal loot flagged as non-decon, too, or not, depending on design goals and how well designed the crafting system is going to be.
Why does this matter? Because if personal loot flagged items can be deconstructed, and deconstructed outputs can be sold to NPCs, you may want to prevent that.
But personally, I would just design it right from the start so nothing has any NPC sellback value, and no mob drops currency, and all equipment has to be fixed, uncursed, adjusted, or modified in some way before being equippable. Solves all the inflation issues and allows designers the most flexibility in loot/resource generation.
Deathwish said:Free for all looting is a terrible loot rule to include. I get that its a social experiment going on and the hope is that reputation is going to be the hope to deter abuse but thats a rainbow dream for today's game play. There is no need for it as if its a guild group or guild raid, people will already go need before greed or DKP for the class that can use the item and its an upgrade and greed on any items that no one needs as an upgrade. In a random pick up group it will be abused. I know I will not join a pick up group ever where the leader sets it for anything other than letting the loot roll out randomly.
I would also like to see an additional option where if the group leader wants to give an item to a person, a pop up comes up for each group member that says "Leader's name" wants to give "Item" to "Player" do you agree? and there is a yes or no answer that your response is anonimous and if anyone put "No" the item would roll out based on need and greed filters.
The Round Robin idea is interesting but its weakness is what if the item that came up on my turn was not useable by me? Can it be programmed to go round robin among the characters that could last use an item and remember the order of skipped players and go back to them? That seems really complicated to code to me.
I dont want to have spent an hour with a group that has worked itself deep in a dungeon and have some ninja looter get kicked because of free loot abuse and the group breaks because no one wants to go back to the begining of the dungeon to get replacements.
The only people that will like this Free loot rulesets are the Ninja Looters.
Free-for-all absolutely has its place among family, friends and guildies. It's basically an honour system, but sure, if you use it with a random PUG, the chances are higher that one of the members may be too tempted. That's not guaranteed, though. There are a lot of honest people in our community that would never do that to a group.
So if you're worried about it, it's best you only use it in groups and raids where there is loyalty and consequences, but that doesn't mean we should leave it out altogether. I use it with my friends and guildies.
Deathwish said:Free for all looting is a terrible loot rule to include. ...
The only people that will like this Free loot rulesets are the Ninja Looters.
IMO:
Agreed. 25+ years of MMOs are a great teacher, and development teams can learn those lessons or ignore them. Entirely their choice.
I'll offer this personal experience from 2022. A certain MMO (not Pantheon, PM me if you want the name) had two public alpha tests, in which the FFA looting system was implemented. Coin was not autosplit by default. All loot was shared & competitive.
Sounds familiar, right? Here's how that played out:
Two types of players in that public testing pool. First type had played EQ1, second type had not. The first type waited to loot, because that's honorable. They got nothing, generally speaking, because of the reasons which I'll explain now: The second type of player looted everything, as quickly as possible. Why? Because they presumed, incorrectly, that all loot was personal, and coin was autosplit.
Now.. why would they think that? Because most MMOs in the intervening years between 1999 to 2022 removed the toxic social interactions of stealing from your friends while grouped with them. History taught the lesson that paying customers don't like the toxic social interaction of stealing from your friends to get something you need. So, those developers will be changing their looting system, based on those historical lessons and testing session feedback. They will be removing the toxic social interaction created by no-coin-autosplit. What's the consequence? Everyone will get (at least) their share of the coin dropped by creatures, so they can buy their abilities, spells, bags, torches, etc that they need. They can participate in the testing of the game.
The first type of player and the second type of player were all pug'd up together during those 2022 tests. They all had polite discussions around the looting systems, but ultimately, no-one could be persuaded to change their behavior. The second type ninja looted everything of value, and the first type got ~nothing. That's after the polite discussions and education about how the alpha loot generation system worked. The second type got their bags, spells, abilities, torches, consumables that they needed and the first type got ~nothing. The consequence of this was that a portion of the testers were unable to test, because they lacked the resources/output from the gameplay loop, despite, in some cases, participating in that loop for 2 or 3 times as much as the ninja looters.
So, there's a first hand account, shared by several hundred participants, of an old school looting/loot generation system as part of a combat loop, in a specific-demographic game espousing old-school / hardcore mechanics.
Personally, I see little value in retaining these types of toxic social interactions, if some of your public design goals involve a grouping-required social gameplay loop.
Kilsin said:
Free-for-all absolutely has its place among family, friends and guildies. It's basically an honour system, but sure, if you use it with a random PUG, the chances are higher that one of the members may be too tempted. That's not guaranteed, though. There are a lot of honest people in our community that would never do that to a group.
So if you're worried about it, it's best you only use it in groups and raids where there is loyalty and consequences, but that doesn't mean we should leave it out altogether. I use it with my friends and guildies.
Kilsin I get that it can have its safer places but I guess I personally see it as a redundant and totally unecessary introduction for tempation or abuse or hurt feelings The only pro about it that I can see is to save some time on the wait for the rolls, but this can be mitigated with a simple button that the master looter can hit that states "Roll Now" and the items roll immediatly based on everyone's filters set for need or greed.
Speaking personally I have been in many groups and on raids where an item drops and its free roll and someone either just grabs it first or says they need it and I do as well but I dont want to cause hurt feelings and say I need too and take from them, or vica versa, I hesitate to say I need the item because I dont want to appear greedy and I know alot of people share this same sentiment from talking with guildies and others after groups.
Keeping it with rolls and adding in a few QOL features like an immediate roll button that the master looter can hit and having a pop up where if the master looter wants to bypass the roll and give an item, to have a pop up where the rest of the group consents ( include a feature to disable for raids) seems to check all the boxes and keep things completely above board. I just dont see why there is a need to introduce a free for all feature at all that can be abused or cause conflict when there are easy and fair solutions available to take it out of the equation completely?
I think we do have a consensus on the point of free-for-all looting although, of course, not unanimity. There is a niche it fills so it adds some value to have it available for a group to select - but it should not be the looting system used *unless* a group chooses to select it.
How a group makes a choice of looting rules (leader selection or vote) and what notice, if any, the game gives group members of what the looting rules are for their group are different questions entirely.
dorotea said:I think we do have a consensus on the point of free-for-all looting although, of course, not unanimity. There is a niche it fills so it adds some value to have it available for a group to select - but it should not be the looting system used *unless* a group chooses to select it.
How a group makes a choice of looting rules (leader selection or vote) and what notice, if any, the game gives group members of what the looting rules are for their group are different questions entirely.
Agreed it has a small niche but I think that groups only choose free for all because the other only available options using need/greed have been slower and more clunky. If the need/greed roll system was streamlined and faster, had a roll now feature after a small delay and had a check system if the master looter wanted to hand out items to bypass roll, I think the vast majority would be using it for groups and raids because it took out all adverse subjective selections and made things as fair and unbiased as possible.
Probably be faster too in the long run because it will avoid the delays between group members talking it out. "Anyone need"..wait and pause uncomfortably for a while..another group member "well I need too but you can have it bro"..1st person.."no man you grab it"..2nd person .." no you said it first"..1st person.." no really you take it".. minute later group leader says ok you two roll on it.
IMO:
A really good point about the timing, delay, and rolls, Deathwish.
I was playing on a retro FFXI server in the past year year, and that exact reason was why the loot system was not utilized the way you would expect. It took minutes for rolls to proceed automatically, so people just ignored it. It became a point of social conflict and friction if you manually chose to roll, because people felt something was wrong when they got their loot "quickly", or had to press a button to have the rolls proceed. I was told repeatedly: Do not use the loot system. Do not press the "roll now" button. Using the loot system is 'bad'. Random quick assignment of loot while grouped is bad. /boggle
It was some bizarre emergent behavior in light of a 19+ year old broken UI & game mechanic, I gotta tell ya.
So, yes, delays in looting will create emergent player behavior and have social consequences, and if those delays are long enough, there is 19+ years of evidence in FFXI to prove it will be, if not straight up broken, definitely strange, unexpected, or negative, socially.
The really weird part? When players did get items, eventually, after many many minutes of waiting for the loot system timeouts? The other players responded and reacted like they were 'lucky' or 'had loaded dice' and so on. So.. avoiding the looting system that could have granted them the items, randomly, they felt was almost cheating? Say what now? smh.
It really doesn't have to be so bad, complicated, complex, or convoluted. Resource generation can be designed and implemented well. Iksar has had it right for many years with their mantra of: Want/Pass; that's all that's required in a rolling-for-items MMO loot system. Presuming you're not going to actually fix the root of the problem, then everything else just jumps down the rabbit hole of unnecessary complexity.
It saddens me that the value of the loot itself seems to be so much higher than the value of communication, trust, friendship, and betrayal.
NPCs wont take communication, trust or friendship as currency in exchange for items.
Junk loot spam won't be an issue if the system allows automated distribution (random or sequential) of all cash and all non-cash below a specified value. This is, of course, one of the standard options in almost all MMOs and certainly should be an option in Pantheon. Perhaps the default option. Thus, if values are set to represent common, rare and very rare a group may just see loot rolls pop-up after bosss fights if they have set the looting option to allow rolls only on very rare items. Alternatively, the system may have a filter based on timing not item value. So nothing dropping from a trash mob ever gets rolled on, just drops from a boss fight. Allows gameplay to never be interrupted by rolls.