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

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anubite wrote:

Yes, yes it is.

Tell me, how do I get loot you leave behind? You have to tell me you're leaving behind loot on the ground right? Because I never see it.

Do you honestly expect some random pug player to inform you when something drops he doesn't want? With the sheer amount of shit that drops in this game?

That still doesn't make it less fair.
More loot left on the ground does not equal less fair.

However, FFA loot gives unfair advantages to players with fast computers, fast internet, specific builds that can more easily skip dealing with mobs and loot instead, who care less about their party members etc. etc.

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anubite wrote:

edit: Oh god, you're bringing Communism vs Capitalism into this? What a joke. Please, take your childish simplifications of economic systems out of here. It's making you look completely uneducated.

They are just trolling I would assume.

It does. It makes it less fair. At the very least, there is limited inventory space. That guy can't take everything and if he is, just kick him out of the party! It's way more fair to see everything that drops on the ground and have you and your friend(s) discuss distribution, rather than have the computer erratically distribute loot - to the point where it makes grouping impossible for drops. If instnaced loot were forced on me, I would never publicly group or play with private friends. And if it were just merely an option, public groups would demand it, since they wouldn't trust people with FFA loot.

I don't know how FFA is going to work in open beta, but right now it's working just fine - or at least, comparatively better than instanced loot would. Instanced loot would be horrible. Instanced loot denies me loot that could be mine - but I never ever will know it! That's the cruel part. It feels fair, because you get all your dumb assigned loot, but in actuality it's NOT at all because you never see what your friend is letting fall to the wayside. It's deviously unfair and deceptive.

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iamstryker wrote:

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Chrono89 wrote:

sounds like communism to me lol

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CanHasPants wrote:

EDIT:
Also, if you really think about it.. Instanced loot is like Capitalism; you work for what you earn, and you are rewarded according to the risks you take. FFA loot is like Communism; you benefit from the labor of others, and risks are not rewarded. Please tell me, FFAer, why do you hate God so much?

no

i could stand there and still get drops with instanced.

moot point and i wasnt serious anyway.

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anubite wrote:

It does. It makes it less fair. At the very least, there is limited inventory space. That guy can't take everything and if he is, just kick him out of the party! It's way more fair to see everything that drops on the ground and have you and your friend(s) discuss distribution, rather than have the computer erratically distribute loot - to the point where it makes grouping impossible for drops. If instnaced loot were forced on me, I would never publicly group or play with private friends. And if it were just merely an option, public groups would demand it, since they wouldn't trust people with FFA loot.

I don't know how FFA is going to work in open beta, but right now it's working just fine - or at least, comparatively better than instanced loot would. Instanced loot would be horrible. Instanced loot denies me loot that could be mine - but I never ever will know it! That's the cruel part. It feels fair, because you get all your dumb assigned loot, but in actuality it's NOT at all because you never see what your friend is letting fall to the wayside. It's deviously unfair and deceptive.

My opinion: You are far too obsessed with what is dropping for your teammate. You are also assuming that you teammate is leaving a bunch of great stuff on the ground.

But regardless if looting options is put into place there would more than likely be a system where you can still see your partners loot so you would know if he is for some reason leaving a bunch of good stuff on the ground, instead of the D3 system where you don't see the loot at all.

BTW why would you and your friends stop using FFA if you like it? Wouldn't you guys still use it as a group because of your own preference to see and take each others loot? At least you would still have that option. Currently people who hate FFA have no other option to use and that certainly isn't fair.

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Chrono89 wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

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Chrono89 wrote:

sounds like communism to me lol

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CanHasPants wrote:

EDIT:
Also, if you really think about it.. Instanced loot is like Capitalism; you work for what you earn, and you are rewarded according to the risks you take. FFA loot is like Communism; you benefit from the labor of others, and risks are not rewarded. Please tell me, FFAer, why do you hate God so much?

no

i could stand there and still get drops with instanced.

moot point and i wasnt serious anyway.

You could not kill monsters and still get drops in either system but in instanced you don't have to worry about them getting your share of items which I like a lot more.

I wasn't serious either, just posted since canhaspants also had an opinion about the economic stuff that I don't care to get into.

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anubite wrote:

... instanced loot is less fair than FFA loot

That's your opinion, mine is exactly the contrary. I'll explain below.
And of course there are plenty nuances of grey situations between those 2 extremes (black and white).

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anubite wrote:

... how do I get loot you leave behind?

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anubite wrote:

... with the sheer amount of shit that drops in this game?

Everybody knows that every player picks only the good loot not the "shit" (I quote from you).
So you wouldn't pick the other player's "shit" anyway. Good items are always picked up.

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anubite wrote:

Instanced loot causes you to get less loot.

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anubite wrote:

Instanced loot arbitrarily assigns loot.

Well, ffa loot causes plenty of people to get less loot. And not just "shit" loot but the all important good loot that everybody wants so it encourages greed, stealing, game disruption etc and thus it creates frustration, nerves, anger etc. So in a ffa loot you get less important loot. The "shit" loot doesn't matter anyway.
And guess what, ffa loot with timers also arbitrarily assigns loot ;)

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anubite wrote:

He didn't want that unique - to him it's garbage.

Bullshit. Every player pick up all the good items, including all the brown uniques.
And especially all the self-proclaimed "hardcore" players who know exactly what are good yellow stats/mods so no good item is left behind.

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anubite wrote:

...you NEVER see anything that drops for him.

For my part, I dont care what drops does he get. Because I know he left behind all the shit loot.

But anyway, I understand that this is your big issue with the instanced loot system.
For me the big issue with the ffa-loot system is that it encourages frustration, stealing, greed, game disruption and I play the damn game for fun and relaxation not for all of those mentioned above.

If I were to compare those 2 major drawbacks i would always choose the instanced loot. Its advantages far outweights the disadvantages. With ffa it's exactly the opposite: its disadvantages far outweights the advantages.

And dont forget that there are plenty of other inbetween solutions, including ffa with big timers on loot. Heck, if that timer would be infinite then the "ffa with infinite timer" is exactly the same with "instanced where you could see all the drops".

But the problem with you pro-ffa guys is that you dont want options. Nooo, you act exactly like those monopolists who are afraid of the competition.
Another analogy would be of those brainwashed cultist that know the absolute truth.
It's no brainer that you could still get to party-play with other pro-ffa addicts.

You're naive if you think what I described won't happen. There are people on this forum who regularly complain about uniques being "worthless" and how they don't even pick them up anymore. I see NUMEROUS people walk by rares and not even ID them, just because they 'know' they won't be any good (which may be the case).

The fact is that it's just as unfair or worse than FFA loot. Instanced loot improves the situation by arbitrarily assigning loot and giving you a false sense of fairness.

I know I won't convince you, but I'm just saying this so the devs won't ruin my experience with grouping. I know instanced loot is sweet and tempting, but any illusion of fairness you get from with it is just that. There is nothing more fair about the system and as I have demonstrated, it is less fair. At least people with good internet connections and computers have roughly an equal chance of finding things they want in a group, identifying what drops and reacting as appropriate.

Just the other day, I got a 5L 3 of my party members walked right past. That's right. Three. They probably would have never picked it up if it had been instanced loot, because it was FFA loot I got it for myself.

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anubite wrote:

You're naive if you think what I described won't happen. There are people on this forum who regularly complain about uniques being "worthless" and how they don't even pick them up anymore. I see NUMEROUS people walk by rares and not even ID them, just because they 'know' they won't be any good (which may be the case).

The fact is that it's just as unfair or worse than FFA loot. Instanced loot improves the situation by arbitrarily assigning loot and giving you a false sense of fairness.

I know I won't convince you, but I'm just saying this so the devs won't ruin my experience with grouping. I know instanced loot is sweet and tempting, but any illusion of fairness you get from with it is just that. There is nothing more fair about the system and as I have demonstrated, it is less fair. At least people with good internet connections and computers have roughly an equal chance of finding things they want in a group, identifying what drops and reacting as appropriate.

Just the other day, I got a 5L 3 of my party members walked right past. That's right. Three. They probably would have never picked it up if it had been instanced loot, because it was FFA loot I got it for myself.

As I said before don't project your personal feelings onto other people. For us it is absolutely NOT an illusion of fairness.

You may feel vindicated in your reasoning of wanting other peoples missed items but to us that seems like a very petty reason to want to keep ANY other system out of Path of Exile that we can use besides the one that is intended for people to COMPETE for loot. FFA is far more unfair to the people who don't want to compete. There are compromises to be made for your issues with the system. But I am guessing you will shoot any of them down as an option that will keep every player away from FFA.

In a party of 6 it's hard to see a particular item with all that mess on screen (tons of monsters, figthing, special effects from all combined skills, tons of items lying on the ground etc). So prolly they didn't see it. It can happen, ofc. But on instanced system good loot will be always noticed.

And also if they see it they can do whatever they want to it, like leaving it on the ground, pick it up and destroy it on town, whatever the hell they want.

The most important thing is the fact that the important/good loot wont be left behind by no player, no matter the loot-system used. And in a ffa-system exactly this type of loot gets stolen. Nobody steals shit or mediocre gear but all compete (steal) on gcps/exl/q_gems etc. And this is the most frustrating part, this is a MAJOR drawback, no peanuts. This is why i'd always choose this.

Between a potential shit/mediocre gear loss and a potential important/good/higher gear loss of course i choose the lesser evil. And only on a variant of instanced-loot system I get to keep all my higher quality loot (or on a ffa with big long timers).

And if there really are players that deliberately live behind higher loot like uniques, good rares, 5-linked etc like you said then i'm sorry but that is just their problem. They prolly are rich enough, don't care anymore or whatever their reason/motiv is but i'm sure this i a very very very small minority of the players base.
Let's not fuck 95% of the player base because 5% (probably less) elitist-hardcore-dudes deliberately live good loot behind.

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anubite wrote:

... I'm just saying this so the devs won't ruin my experience with grouping.

You seem to not understand.
We're here advocating for LOOT-OPTIONS.
This means options for every party leader to choose one of the following loot systems:
-ffa
-instanced
-mixed
-or whatever
How this will "ruin your grouping experience" ???
You can still group using ffa while others will choose their preferred system.
What's wrong in that? What's wrong in having options? Why are you opposing such a system if no harm is done to you?
Can you see how illogical and irrational your position on this matter is?

@mobutu
You can't join random group and snatch all the loot if there are options.