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

Alright. I'll take that.

I still see looting as an essential part of a game like this. Creating gaps in game-play, making things overly complex, or causing frustration should never be a goal.

Fun I guess is over-used, even by me, it is much more effective to say what to avoid at this point then it is to say what to attain. The ultimate goal ought to be to create a system that is somehow fun and fair for all. Though we're taking the fair part out and leaving the fun part in. Is that even possible? Wait, Fun, there's that ambiguous term again.

So, cut-throat, what shouldn't it be? Aggravating, annoying, pointless, useless, abuse-able, a time-sink, unnecessary... stuff like that, right?

I still like my version of randomly allocated loot -

Every piece of loot that is allocated (Even white items) to you has a golden border around it, each player sees these golden borders individually. So for example an item that drops is randomly allocated to me, thus I see a golden border around it and no one else. This border slowly fades out as it becomes FFA loot.

But, the length of time on the randomly allocated loot is like 30-60 seconds. This would be enough time for anyone to decide if they want the loot. Also, the allocation disappears once the item is picked up.

Finally, please make every piece of loot allocated, white items will be more important in this game, from what I've seen. And that would just be fair.

So people need to sit around next to a piece of loot for an entire minute before they're allowed to pick it up? Sounds like disrupting game flow to me.

You're saying battles will take less than 30 seconds?

See what I did there?

As far as I know neither of us know how long a battle will take, Ideally, you'd want the timer to be 5 seconds longer than a typical battle for the system I suggested.

If all you want to do is discredit every idea, go ahead, it helps people actually develop their ideas.

5 seconds is too long. Imagine you just finished killing something in Diablo, how long did you stay in the vicinity? 1 second? half a second? I know I was pretty much running constantly and snatching stuff up very quickly.

I'm not too sure exactly how long a system of timer FFA or timer allocated should be, but it has to be REALLY short... just long enough to allow everyone to have a fair shot, but not so long that people are forced to stand around.

I've played games with 2, 3, and 5 second rounds for years... 2-5 seconds becomes extremely long once you get used to the game. i think 0.5-1 second is enough time for a player allocated the loot to have a head start knowing what it is and where it is...

I think that such an allocated system will be usurped by timer FFA to normalize loot for ranged characters. Normalization for ranged will probably be on the order of 1 second, possibly 2 seconds, basically as long or longer than a timed allocation.

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Silver wrote:

You're saying battles will take less than 30 seconds?

See what I did there?

No, what he's saying is that sticking around for thirty seconds after the last loot-dropping monster dies is a long time for this sort of game.

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Skivverus wrote:

"

Silver wrote:

You're saying battles will take less than 30 seconds?

See what I did there?

No, what he's saying is that sticking around for thirty seconds after the last loot-dropping monster dies is a long time for this sort of game.

This is not what Silver meant. He was pointing out the straw man argument. Essentially he intentionally injected a false statement to show why the argument against his previous statement was invalid.. aka straw man fallacy.

Silver originally stated 30-60 seconds, which means that if the average battle is 30-60 seconds then the average loot dropped will have been deallocated during that time.

Then the rebuttal of that dealt with the final loot that people would have to wait around for, which would take an additional 30-60 seconds, which of course is unacceptable.

Then he pointed out that perhaps it should be defined as something more like 5 seconds after the creature is killed. Here we've moved away from the 'average' time to kill a group to the 'specific' time of a drop.

I then pointed out that 3-5 seconds is probably still too long.

I hope that is all more clear.

I realize at least two things about the allocated loot system that are simply unavoidable –

- People will wait to look at loot that was not allocated to them (This slows down the pace of the game a bit)

- It still can cause too much distraction during battles.

One of the sticking points of loot that is essentially free for all, or allocated for a time that’s too short, is that it simply causes players to focus more on grabbing loot, does it not?

Sure, you could give the player a very small inventory, but that isn’t a great solution. This game is centralized around loot for the most part. Thus a larger inventory will generally be beneficial for game-play reasons.

If we get allocated loot with a short timer, then we’re essentially getting FFA by another name. However, it does solve two problems of FFA, which is high ping, and ranged players get a small chance at loot. But you’re still stuck with distracted players.

Hell, most people take a few seconds after most battles to look at loot anyways, from my experience.

With a short enough timer though all I can see is people worrying more about their loot and less about destroying enemies.

Also, that was a pretty good recap of the conversation Zeto, thanks.

I think this was posted before but i have an idea.
How about when an item is allocated to a player there is small bar in the corner ( only for the player that has an item allocated to him )
Saying for example:
Staff of douche will be droped to douchey's inventory after 20 seconds ,press shortcut if you dont want that item and item will be shown to all players.
I dont know if there should be shortcut to take the item and if timer passes item drops or it should be shortcut to drop the item and item is given to the player if time passes.
What do you think?
Sorry for my english im little bit drunk .lol.

So now even allocated loot is "too distracting"? Obscenerainbow makes a good point. At this rate, why not just automatically put a player's allocated into their inventory. If they want to drop it later then they can freely do so. On the other hand, I think everyone would agree that this idea is dumb and cheap and would make the game less fun. So why does the simple act of picking up your permanently allocated loot make it any more fun. Mechanically, both ideas function exactly the same except with permanently allocated loot you have the additional chore of moving around and picking everything up.

An allocation time of 2-3 seconds should be more than enough for a player to grab their item.