Looting -- The official thread for discussing the loot system. Updated 18th March, 2013.

@Lichalfred
A lot of those options were really complex. One of the things many people like about arpgs over mmos is that the combat is a lot faster and simpler. Some of those options would really kill that aspect. People would spend more time bickering over who deserves what loot than actually playing.

I'm not sure if this was mentioned previously, but I personally found it exhilarating to try and be the first to pick up any cool boss-drops in D2. Of course, pick-up hacks would ruin this mode. As long as such hacks do not appear or become widespread, I wouldn't be averse to simply first come first serve.

I hate FFA loot systems, that said, one of my all time favorite games was Anarchy Online. They employed a FFA loot system with 2 caveats (1) you had to be on the team that did damage to the mob or (2) you had to wait a certain amount of time until the item was able to be looted by anyone.

To stop Ninja's, the player base simply made up their own rules. For example, one of the end game boss's Ian Warr required players to first: clear an entire area of mobs, and then pull one of the boss's out of their area into the cleared zone. Once this happened (there were 2 factions in the game Clan and Omni) both sides would be notified in-game of the situation. Both sides would show up, and both sides would try to out DPS the other until one side clearly had aggro (and thus did the most dps) then that side would get the kill. Note: PVP was open world, so every pull could have degenerated into a gank fest, but the player base decided to ignore that option for the good of all.

After the boss dropped, one person was allowed to go up and survey the loot. That person would then notify everyone what dropped. If you were interested you would bid points (based off a system, that, again, the player base established) and the loot would be distributed by whoever bid the most.

My point? No matter what system the developers decide to introduce. If the player base wants to, they can change the system to their liking. Since this game will be heavily online, and built around leagues, I see no reason why this can't happen (if we want it to) in PoE as well.

What happened with those who didn't decide to follow through with the system?

hate d2 clickwars tbh

I like the idea of allocation, it could be even mixed with death penalty like less chance to be allocated for next xx monsters killed etc.
I hope it will turn out to be smooth inaction not slowing gameplay significantly.

The only problem which may surface are drops of most powerful items. Ppl might think game is favoring others/don't like them (I know it sounds silly but that how psyche works :P) if they won't be chosen to pick it up.
Some kind of active betting could ease their pain imho :F
It should work the same way since betting = random, but instead of blaming the game when not getting 'rights' to claim stuff, probably ppl would blame themselves for choosing wrong digit.
And keep playig to choose another next time :>

@resira,

Those who didn't conform weren't allowed access to the boss fight any longer. Also, you have to be level 180-200 in order to even get to the location where the fight was held, so that limited the chances of ninja'ing quite a bit.

In my four years with that game I only saw one item get stolen, that person was kicked from their guild and basically shunned by the community at large. Was pretty awesome.

What would be wrong with making a league for each type of loot system?

@tpapp157
You are probably right, but really competitive drops will be rare, so the average time yield of loot bitching will still be small.

My main point was to introduce a multiple CHOICE to see what statistically satisfies players a most - at least at closed/open beta. Introducing a separate league for any loot system like Bartuc suggests will (I believe) make player unable to try other models, since you cant swap leagues, except for a transfer to a parent and only once.

"

Bartuc wrote:

What would be wrong with making a league for each type of loot system?

Wouldn't this separate the community too much? I assume people would stay in the league with the loot system they prefer.

Well, I was thinking of this for beta mainly, should have specified. Theoretically, if there are no limits to the number of characters one can create, or at least a large limit, then each player could create a charater to try out each loot system.

But thinking more about it, Lichalfred's multiple choice system would be better, at least for beta purposes. Then the players can vote on which they prefer.