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

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SL4Y3R wrote:

We are exiles. We can screw each other over, or become friends. It's up to you (the player) to decide which side of the fence you wish to be on.

What about this:
- "Crunch"* leagues with longer loot timers for people who came to PoE to play a game.
- "Fluff"* leagues for people who came to PoE to roleplay living like exiles.

Everyone's happy?

*These terms aren't meant to be dismissive, it's just what tabletop hobbyists tend to use when discussing gameplay rules versus background themes.

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Boonce wrote:

The time to pick up loot for ranged heroes is ridiculously low. It discourages partying in a game so reliant on it in the later stages. The end result is if a desirable item drops the whole (public) party stops doing meaningful tasks, pops their granite flask and jumps on it.

Why do you want the game to have such a cheap mechanic to be “cut-throat”? If you want to game to be engaging, deadly and challenging then do it. Make monsters strong, make it hard to tank high hitting monsters, but don’t add a meaningless mechanic which disadvantages team play.
I would suggest the time range should be something like 5 to 8 seconds depending on distance.

!!!I want the game to be hard not cheap!!!

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moikpei wrote:

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SL4Y3R wrote:

We are exiles. We can screw each other over, or become friends. It's up to you (the player) to decide which side of the fence you wish to be on.

What about this:
- "Crunch"* leagues with longer loot timers for people who came to PoE to play a game.
- "Fluff"* leagues for people who came to PoE to roleplay living like exiles.

Everyone's happy?

*These terms aren't meant to be dismissive, it's just what tabletop hobbyists tend to use when discussing gameplay rules versus background themes.

Splitting up leagues "permanently" is a bad idea. Already HC and SC. When leagues, whether paid or run by GGG end, you go to one or the other. Splitting up the player base again is not the best way to go about things.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

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moikpei wrote:

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SL4Y3R wrote:

We are exiles. We can screw each other over, or become friends. It's up to you (the player) to decide which side of the fence you wish to be on.

What about this:
- "Crunch"* leagues with longer loot timers for people who came to PoE to play a game.
- "Fluff"* leagues for people who came to PoE to roleplay living like exiles.

Everyone's happy?

*These terms aren't meant to be dismissive, it's just what tabletop hobbyists tend to use when discussing gameplay rules versus background themes.

Splitting up leagues "permanently" is a bad idea. Already HC and SC. When leagues, whether paid or run by GGG end, you go to one or the other. Splitting up the player base again is not the best way to go about things.

Replace the word leagues with "party leader being able to extend the timer" and his statement is just as relevant.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

On.point 1. You know why. It's the very basis of the meta game. We are exiles. We can screw each other over, or become friends. It's up to you (the player) to decide which side of the fence you wish to be on. Further, is it really so much of a trouble for people to form an alliance with others? This is the definitive basis for guilds. Those people which share a common goal group together, and perform much better in the long run than those who don't.

Those short sighted "ninjas". Can end up in pubs with ninjas if many of those not looking for that type of play, play with others that have the same goal.

Grouping with friends will never be an adquate solution for the issue that public games suck for many players. I know because I am one of those players and you are not.

Nope.

It's not. And we've gone over this before.

243 pages, nice.

I get why people would want a loot system with public games, since it would remove all the qq from 'stealing.' I remember seeing alot of qq in Global about it.

Only thing i can think of, is keeping the current system with a timer on all 'good/rare' loot for around 10 seconds. The game will roll the dice for whoever clicked on it and gives it to the winner.

Atm it has a type of system, but people dont seem to be happy with it? If public loot isnt made fair then people will end up avoiding it - so it's GGG decision to do something about it or not. Although it's still useful for bad players to skip bosses, and grind for xp - just not 100% fair in terms of loot it seems.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Nope.

It's not. And we've gone over this before.

Some people like to play a fun game and relax, and some people would rather role play that game. It’s a play style choice which can be resolved through simply system changes that do not split the player base.

I was thinking today about this discussion and I think GGG’s stance would make more sense to myself and everyone else if this game was seriously only made for the hardcore crowd. Like if the default game mode was only cutthroat, then you would get the vibe ok this game is so very niche, if I’m not in this hardcore group I should just move on to another game. But instead default mode uses a looting system that tries to please both sides and instead angers many on both. The hardcore people complain about having names on items with timers and soft core people complain that the timers aren’t long enough. The few responses that the devs have given lead me to believe that they do not intend nor do they want to ever change the system or add to it. If this is true then I wish they would tell us and/or shut this thread down as it is a waste of time. If they really want a cutthroat feel to the game then seriously just make it pure FFA. Don’t confuse the playerbase by trying to please the softcore people when your not.

The original feedback that they received from FFA in Path of Exile was “Ranged players are at a disadvantage and people with better connections are favored”, so as a result GGG added the timers to try to make it more fair. The problem is this system still isn’t fair much of the time. Ranged players are STILL at a disadvantage, and so are people with bad connections. GGG added the timers pretty fast as a result of the feedback. So why is it that they are still getting negative feedback but are instead ignoring it? If they wanted to ignore negative feedback then why the heck didn’t they just ignore everyone the first time they complained? They could have just said “Well this is a niche hardcore game, why don’t you group with some friends so that the system doesn’t bother you.”

Yeah no timer is fine... until someone develops a program to automatically pick up desirable items and then it'll be just like D2: whoever has the least lag wins.

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Alesana wrote:

Yeah no timer is fine... until someone develops a program to automatically pick up desirable items and then it'll be just like D2: whoever has the least lag wins.

What people wouldn't like it melee based toons being closer to the loot then range -__-

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SL4Y3R wrote:

It's the very basis of the meta game. We are exiles.

It's not.
It's just a made-up childish story with artificially set up boundaries. While we are on it, if you're allowed to ninja all loot why the other "exiles" cannot crack your skull open, own-balls-throat you and take all that previous loot from you? Why can't exiles just kill Eramir or whoever because he is a old hoax? Why exiles can't kill the crap out of eachother in towns? etc
If one action is available then it's only fair for the counter-action to be available too. It's called balancing.
So you see, what have you just said as an argument is in fact a puerile attempt to explain a real grownup problem.
As a conclusion: stop using it, it's below the minimal rationale threshold.

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Chris wrote:

We're currently at record levels of party engagement in the game...

With the growing popularity of the game and the consequent inflow of new players it's only obvious (aka no brainer) that the "party engadgement" hit record after record levels.
What he fails to say and we all know this is that he actually talks about the private parties aka parties between friends. Regarding the public parties - mum's the word. Those have probably grown too (because of the continuous (for now) growing player base) but minuscule and the original base was very low anyway.

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Chris wrote:

...the game is designed around being played solo.

Coming from the lead-developer, i just can't comment on it. It's absolutely mind blowing.
Still, "we are at record levels of party engagement". And we have bonuses from playing in a party.

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Chris wrote:

Adding more options to games is generally a bad thing.

Coming from the lead-developer, i just can't comment on it. It's absolutely mind blowing.

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Chris wrote:

I understand if allocated looting seems like a good idea when it hasn't been tested, but we have done extensive testing and have also seen how badly it hurt other games that implemented it.

I've been in this beta for more than a year already and don't remember testing allocated looting. Maybe those in alpha thou ...
And the part with other games is mind blowing, again.

Anyway, if the devs are so pro-pure-ffa inclined/stubborn then please make the game pure-ffa.
Announce this. No looting compromises or options. We would all be happier this way.