Loot

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Aarcana wrote:

How's this for an idea - the loot could spill out randomly fresh from the corpse towards any of the party members that contributed to the kill... this would give ranged chars a fair go at the items.

Lootsplosions, that's what I was trying to describe back in that post.

You wouldn't want it to apply to every drop, but perhaps code it to occur more often with valuable items or something.

It could even be coded to spill the loot approximately in the middle of the party contributing to the kill (i.e. everyone has a similar distance to run for it).

Edit: Oops, didn't realise the entire thread was old... what's the latest stance on Loot anyway?

Lootsplosions, that's something I can get behind.

"Lootsplosions", actually give an advantage to the players fighting at a range, well at least much of the time. Let me explain, if items fly to the center of the players, the players at the vanguard will still be fighting the units that are accompanying the boss, leaving those to the rear the greater chance to scoop up the items whilst the others are keeping the enemies at bay.

Sure, that might work if you kill every unit besides the boss, but we do not know how often that will be possible as we have not played yet... It may be that you want to kill the boss off as quickly as possible as it is the most dangerous force on the battle field, but even after the boss' death you would still not want to leave the remaining forces alone, at least not long enough to make any decisions about which items you would like to go after...

Haha lootsplosions would look funny.

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Tertium_Quid wrote:

"Lootsplosions", actually give an advantage to the players fighting at a range, well at least much of the time. Let me explain, if items fly to the center of the players, the players at the vanguard will still be fighting the units that are accompanying the boss, leaving those to the rear the greater chance to scoop up the items whilst the others are keeping the enemies at bay.

I guess I'm seeing these "lootplosions" differently in my mind. What I see happening is that when an enemy is killed, the distance between each player and that monster is calculated, and the largest distance is taken. Call this distance D. Then a some number between 0 and D is randomly chosen (it could be a whole number or even a rational (fraction or decimal form), depending on the value of D so as to give more variety in the distances). This is the distance a particular item will be thrown from the monster being killed. There is also another number generated that determines the angle the item is throw out at. Call this number A. Then another number is randomly chosen between 0 and 360 (or 0 and 60, if you like minutes instead of degrees, or 0 and 2*pi if you like radians, but you get the point). Then the item is thrown out at this angle A to the distance D. This would be how each item is randomly thrown. If a monster is going to drop multiple items, this calculation is ran for each item.

This would really give a great variety as to where the items are thrown. They could be thrown towards the players, back into another crowd of monsters, off a cliff, etc. Since it's just as likely that the item will be thrown back towards the back half of the circle, the back semicircle (better for ranged players to get to first) as into the crowd (the front half of the circle, the front semicircle), each player has the same chance or getting items.

There are other ways to deal with "lootplosions" too (finding points that would be equidistant from each player (for 2 players, the perpendicular bisector of the segments between the players. for 3 players, the circumcenter of the triangle formed between the 3 players, 4+ players are eluding me right now) and thrown loot to those points, cut up the areas of the semicircle that players would be fighting in and doing a variation of what I wrote about above, or other things). The point I'm really trying to hit is there are definitely ways to get around the issue of loot being thrown in a fashion that favors ranged or melee characters.

Thoughts?

Well that sounds awfully complicated for simple loot drops. I say the loot explodes off the dead monster/boss and the items drop randomly between the closest and farthest players.

There will always be an element of chance in loot drops, anyway.

Meh, perhaps a little complicated, but for programming it, that sounds about right. It might sound a little complicated reading through it here, but I know from having to do some programming, that's about how you have to think about tackling a problem like this.

...and for the mathematicians in the audience, this sounds perfectly straightforward.

Attempt at translating for non-mathematicians/non-programmers:

"I imagine lootsplosions to be centered on the monster, rather than the players. The maximum size of the lootsplosion will depend on how far away the players are, but will be random. The directions items are thrown in will also be random."

My thoughts on it are, this would be fun for bosses that can drop multiple pieces of gear at once, but for your everyday minion-in-the-horde, dropping the item where they fell would probably suffice.

Although, come to think of it, it'd be hilarious to have an overkill mechanic where items fly out and away from a character dealing an excessive killing blow.
After all, if you're doing that much overkill, you can probably survive the new pack you knocked your items into.
(I'd expect that to be more of a microtransaction than a regular game feature, though - would be hideously inconvenient for your average gamer)

I really like kungfooes idea. However i would add a maximum distance because if items fly over more then one screen it would be just to much i think!

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Skivverus wrote:

...and for the mathematicians in the audience, this sounds perfectly straightforward.

Attempt at translating for non-mathematicians/non-programmers:

"I imagine lootsplosions to be centered on the monster, rather than the players. The maximum size of the lootsplosion will depend on how far away the players are, but will be random. The directions items are thrown in will also be random."

My thoughts on it are, this would be fun for bosses that can drop multiple pieces of gear at once, but for your everyday minion-in-the-horde, dropping the item where they fell would probably suffice.

Although, come to think of it, it'd be hilarious to have an overkill mechanic where items fly out and away from a character dealing an excessive killing blow.
After all, if you're doing that much overkill, you can probably survive the new pack you knocked your items into.
(I'd expect that to be more of a microtransaction than a regular game feature, though - would be hideously inconvenient for your average gamer)

Yeah, when I came back to the forums this morning I realized how horrible of a job I did explaining it in plain language. My mind was just about shut down when I posed that last night. Thanks Skivverus.

I also like the idea of that overkill mechanic. I could see things getting interesting there...........

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Rhesos wrote:

I really like kungfooes idea. However i would add a maximum distance because if items fly over more then one screen it would be just to much i think!

Yes, when I was looking at finding which players was the furthest away, I was thinking about the group of players engaging the monsters.