0.9.10 Information and News

"

Langly wrote:

FFA
Timer - Basically the way the announced it here
Locked - would just be a timer with infinite time
Random - Every item picked up by someone is given randomly to one player that is within a certain range (including himself of course).
Merry Round - One after another gets items based on the order they are picked up.


That are the most used loot orders in other games as far as I can see and frankly I don't see the problem in implementing at least the locked mode. With that most people should happy.

The point is options. Each one of those notions, if made the only way, is going to piss someone off. How to piss off as few people as possible?

There have been some good suggestions in here, but a lot of them have been people very strongly on one side or the other. It's be nice if people wouldn't "steal" loot, but man, some of the people here are really uptight about it and I think they're letting it spoil their fun.

I don't like the idea of the game arbitrarily deciding what I can get or not.

But when it comes down to it, am I going to let it DESTROY the entire game for me?


Well, I hope not. Hopefully I can just understand (a concept some people have seemed to forget) that playing in a party means I'm not going to get first dibs on all the loot.


No matter what they do, you are never going to get all the loot. You're going to have to share. We can discus what we think to be the best systems of these things, but we're never going to get it all if we're in a party.

Some people can't get to it all if they're ranged. Well I'm ranged and I get to it just fine, so I don't know what they're doing. But if that perfect item for my build popped up ... and I didn't even get the CHANCE because the game randomly assigned it to somebody else?

Man ... really, there has to be a better way. I can just go play solo for those kinds of things. But all you guys saying how it HAS to be one way or another to play in a group should consider that maybe each way has a drawback?


Maybe just keep that in mind? LOL

Yeah, I agree on that. The only way to make all people happy is giving them the options. Both sides can easily make up situations where their favored loot system is the better one but in the end none is perfect so the player should be able to use the one he likes most.

In a game like this the item hunt is extremely important and with it the loot system. I'm convinced that GGG will lose players should they leave it as it is, how many I don't know but I'm sure they will.

I'm also thinking about what it will do to word-of-mouth advertising. It wont be nearly as damaging as a pay to win CS but I can see it coming up when you tell somebody about the game, I see that on myself. I don't have a key and can only judge it by what I saw on videos and know from other games and my experience tells me that I'm going to loathe it. I'm sure the game be successful either way but I think it would do even better if they would give players the ability to chose here.

"

Langly wrote:

...I simply wont play in a party if they can steal my loot.

This is a misconception that alters the discussion heavily. It's not your loot, it's the party's loot. You can't steal something that already belongs to you, and the loot belongs to everyone equally until someone picks it up. In a FFA environment, you can't steal loot. People may take a disproportionate amount, but it was available to everyone in the party. It's up to the party to police the actions of the greedy by kicking them out.

Personally, I like FFA loot. It has a major advantage over personalized loot in that everyone has a chance at getting the best items. If the ultra-rare Mirror of Kalandra drops, wouldn't everyone in the party want to have a chance at picking it up? Well, tough luck for 5 people who never even got to see it. It only showed up for the 1 guy because loot was personalized. Maybe you'll have another one drop in your party sometime in the next 2 or 3 years, and maybe it will go to you that time.

Cases like this are what FFA is all about: the rush of excitement when something awesome drops, and you have to actually put effort into securing it for yourself instead of the game literally handing it to you. You get the item as well as the glory of a small victory. People worth partying with will congratulate you, others will show their colors by complaining. It's just a game, a competitive game, so what's wrong with friendly competition?

People who don't want to compete don't have to. They can play solo, party with trustworthy friends, or make loot-sharing agreements in public parties.

I'm also against the idea of party-based options. I dread the thought of going to the message board and sifting through parties based on loot options... Finding a public party should be about quickly joining a group with a common goal, not the leader's preference of loot distribution. Options on paid leagues would be fine, because no one has to filter league choices regularly.

More directly on topic:
I just read the patch notes, and it looks like 0.9.10 is full of feedback-based balance changes and bug fixes!

Possibility to adjust a mode of party game looks interesting, thus on a board of announcements it is possible to present different modes of party game - FFA and other., all will be happy.

I have a question for the dev's.

How does the added code affect the actual game-play? Surely anything beyond FFA MUST add some extra processing therefore slower performance. Which in my mind should be excluded at ALL costs.

I am not a huge fan of instanced loot. My reasoning for this can be seen by comparing loot from soloing and comparing while partying. If you use instanced loot in a party, to balance loot properly you would actually have to 'decrease' the quantity of loot dropped per player. This would make it seems like you are getting less loot than normal, and will be quite noticeable as well.
Many of the items you may have wanted will be invisible to you, and will ultimately lead to an increased wastage of useful items for people playing in parties.

When I consider this, I cant see how instanced loot will encourage people to party more than FFA loot does. (This applies to both serious and casual gamers)

Casual gamers because (if they aren't playing with friends at that point in time): They will notice considerably less loot dropped overall compared to solo, making the game less exciting
Serious gamers because (if they aren't instantly communicating drops with other party members): They will be able to do the math on drop rates and realise that wastage of items is inevitable using instanced loot, thus soloing will provide consistently better results.

"

WhiteBoy88 wrote:

I'm also against the idea of party-based options. I dread the thought of going to the message board and sifting through parties based on loot options... Finding a public party should be about quickly joining a group with a common goal, not the leader's preference of loot distribution.

I could construct dozens of situations where FFA is the worse loot system in response to your example but I'm sure there enough of that in the threat already so I wont bother with that.

But this point is really interesting, I know that a single system is never going to satisfy all players but I never saw someone being against having the options that would make the majority happy because he would have to look a little longer for a party ...

Seriously you want the loot system you like and don't want any other because of such a minor inconvenience ? That's pretty selfish :/


I don't see a problem with more or less loot either. If something really good drops its going to be picked up either way. If the system gives it to someone else ask him for it. It's really not different to what would happen with the small timer that was announced, the timer could give your whatever to another player and you would have to ask too.


I find that the whole discussion is pretty strange to me, I cant really follow the thoughts of the developers when they say there will only be this one system and I don't really understand why everyone is advocating his system instead of just giving the players the choice based on what they want at the time they join/create a party. There will never be a single system that satiety's everyone. Frankly I cant remember ever playing a game that didn't gave me that choice, it the most basic in my opinion when joining a party.

"

Metronomy wrote:

I am not a huge fan of instanced loot. My reasoning for this can be seen by comparing loot from soloing and comparing while partying. If you use instanced loot in a party, to balance loot properly you would actually have to 'decrease' the quantity of loot dropped per player. This would make it seems like you are getting less loot than normal, and will be quite noticeable as well.
Many of the items you may have wanted will be invisible to you, and will ultimately lead to an increased wastage of useful items for people playing in parties.

When I consider this, I cant see how instanced loot will encourage people to party more than FFA loot does. (This applies to both serious and casual gamers)

Casual gamers because (if they aren't playing with friends at that point in time): They will notice considerably less loot dropped overall compared to solo, making the game less exciting
Serious gamers because (if they aren't instantly communicating drops with other party members): They will be able to do the math on drop rates and realise that wastage of items is inevitable using instanced loot, thus soloing will provide consistently better results.

Each party member after the first adds 50% more drops and 75% more exp per monster. For a party of 6, that means each monster gives 58% as much loot and 79% as much exp per player. With D3 style instanced loot, you'd have to kill almost twice as fast while grouping to come out ahead in drops (you only have to kill a bit faster than solo to be ahead in exp gain). For a group of 2, There's 75% as much loot per player (almost 90% as much exp), so you only have to clear areas a little faster to benefit from playing with a friend. If you kill noticeably faster, you'll both come out ahead in exp.

What if it worked like this:

White items - FFA, everyone gets an equal chance to look for good socket links and snatch it up. This will also help make sure a satisfying amount of loot shows up for everyone.

Magic/rare/etc. items - something like a 3-5 second timer + travel time, where everyone can see it but only one person can pick it up for a few seconds, would work for me - same as the current plan, except an extra 2-4 seconds to make it a bit less disruptive to the flow of combat.

Currency items - these drop for a specific player with no time limit. Everybody wants these. If it's okay to let players enforce looting rules to kick out greedy loot ninjas, why not reverse it and kick anyone who's not pulling their weight? Everybody you decide to continue partying with gets an equal share of currency drops when they're nearby.



The extra couple seconds padding on the allocation timer seems like a good compromise. That gives you enough time to quickly assess the drops while still fighting, and only dart in to pick stuff up if there's something you want. An extra couple seconds waiting to grab an item someone else didn't pick up isn't a big deal; most of the items will still be FFA lootable before the rest of the pack is dead, so it'll only cause a slight delay if something you need drops for someone else in the last second or two of combat.

GGG could always use Torchlight 2's system of dividing up loot between players:

It doesn't!

Basically, every player gets loot proportionate to if they were playing single-player. However, the player is only able to see the loot that belongs to him/her. To everyone else, it's invisible.

No squabbling, no "I want that unique!"

You can also easily share items between your party members through a quick trade window.

"

solistus wrote:

Each party member after the first adds 50% more drops and 75% more exp per monster. For a party of 6, that means each monster gives 58% as much loot and 79% as much exp per player. With D3 style instanced loot, you'd have to kill almost twice as fast while grouping to come out ahead in drops (you only have to kill a bit faster than solo to be ahead in exp gain). For a group of 2, There's 75% as much loot per player (almost 90% as much exp), so you only have to clear areas a little faster to benefit from playing with a friend.

This is exactly why I dont like it. I dont like seeing less items, and since people dont always know which bows/armours you are looking for, many items will be overlooked by being dropped to a different person who doesnt know how valuable it is to you.

Instancing of currency items is a different matter, because these can be easily evaluated by players because they hold similar values to all, hence the term currency. (I still want FFA for them but that is my opinion, and is much more complex to argue).

However, I still hold by my point that the benefits instanced loot provide for non-currency items is inferior to FFA loot for non-currency items. (Assuming that the instanced loot is balanced properly)