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

Melee players are at the advantage when it comes to loot collection, period. Every player simply handles enemies differently.

However, you’re trying to make two different situations look the same.

In one situation the player is engaged completely and could lose loot because he isn’t ‘paying attention.’

The other situation is as I’ve described, the player is trying to grab loot and to kill enemies at the same time.

A third situation exists where the player is only focused on grabbing loot.

Essentially, it depends on the player, if for example, they are a melee player, they could be missing out on loot by focusing on killing enemies.

However, In any of those situations the melee player is still at an advantage, but if they choose to focus on killing enemies they are still being punished.

This is getting convoluted now. Too many conditionals.

I think part of the psychology necessary to play games like these is that loot drops and sometimes you get it, and sometimes you don't.

That's not necessarily mandated, however I've yet to hear a good system. I do not believe that everyone should get their own loot that only they can see or interact with.

The fact you didn't grab the loot does not equate to the fact you weren't rewarded or that your effort was worthless. It's a variable interval reinforcement schedule combine with competition for resources... which is totally fine really. It will work, however I can definitely see the co-op problem it presents.

However... we have no viable solutions imo.

It’s a pretty tough topic as it is, but I’ll simplify it.

Melee players have nothing to do with whether or not a player is more or less focused on loot.

"paying attention" is the only condition that the dev's have mentioned. Which I feel is not a great condition to allow people to take loot not allocated to them.

Loot is not just a resource, which would be an oversimplification, it's also a reward for killing enemies.

Why is it hard to pay attention while playing a game >.>

This is facebook game type of thought here.

Haha, a facebook game is nothing but paying attention. It's impossible not to.

No, in an ARPG, the action is fast and varied. Things drop that you may not see because it's not on your screen yet.

Basically, what is the player supposed to pay attention to, killing enemies, loot, or both, and if the answer is both, why punish those that pay attention to killing enemies?

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Silver wrote:

Haha, a facebook game is nothing but paying attention. It's impossible not to.

No, in an ARPG, the action is fast and varied. Things drop that you may not see because it's not on your screen yet.

Basically, what is the player supposed to pay attention to, killing enemies, loot, or both, and if the answer is both, why punish those that pay attention to killing enemies?

They clearly need to pay attention to everything. You punish those that don't because that's the game. In football if your job is to intercept the ball, they don't just do that and then stop... they run for the goal because that's another part of the game.

If the loot system ends up being too distracting from gameplay I'm sure it'll be changed. We've already experienced such loot systems in many other games and it worked out ok... I think a better version is a timed version, and I think it'll work out fine.

In order to fix the distraction you'd have to split killing and looting phases... literally meaning that loot would have to drop only when all the enemies in an area are dead... which is not going to happen. Totally allocated loot isn't going to happen either.

I understand that.

They want to make grabbing the loot as part of the game-play, that’s absolutely clear.

My only issue with that, even if I disregard all the potential co-op issues and behaviors, is that it still punishes people who want to focus on efficiently killing enemies.

Punishing those for not paying attention to everything is a little masochistic, especially for an ARPG.

Edit:

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zeto wrote:

In football if your job is to intercept the ball, they don't just do that and then stop... they run for the goal because that's another part of the game.

However, notice that those are two separate phases of the game. In one phase the player is looking for a way to intercept the ball and then doing so, the second phase is him running to the goal.

In the proposed timed allocation system two phases are being meshed together - looting and killing enemies. Even when the players are done killing enemies they will still examine their loot for a minute.

I think we're going into extremes here though, and extreme examples should typically be avoided.

The chance of a player completely ignoring loot drops and optimizing for xp is possible, but I just don't see anyone being totally oblivious to loot drops and then expecting to go back and collect. If you completely optimize for xp gain and completely ignore loot... then your behavior is saying that you don't particularly care about it.

I don't really see why such behavioral choices should be viewed as being 'punished' as compared to people who aren't playing in such extreme modes.

I also fail to see why juggling multiple modes is a bad thing... it requires players to do more stuff and will keep them more engaged with the frenzy.

i dont think that silver is talking about going through a complete zone befor looting.
Izs more about looting after u killed a pack of 10-20 mobs instead of doing it while ur still killing them.