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

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Rustychops wrote:

another thing on the grouping gets you faster levels thing. You generally had a player that was round 40 levels over everyone that could rush you through these levels. This made it very fast : P You know this already though.Personally I like this system xD.Thats just because im not really a fan of leveling. Im more about doing runs for gear and killing people.

Hey free for all lootings alot nicer than what id have picked.

You want the item you duel to the death for it fk yeah! PoM : Path of Manlyness!

Haha. Wow. As far as I'm concerned, that's pretty much the most boring way to play. You skip right to the endgame and go right into the grinding, which I generally find boring.

EDIT:
On further consideration, Diablo 2's skill tree design was a mess on a number of levels. For playing around with builds in Path of Exile, that might be fun and useful, because all builds hopefully won't merge into one or two main variants per class by level 60 or so.

This is meant to be a multiplayer game. Is it not? The game is also meant to be soloed if the desire is there.

The reason for incentives is just that – to give people more reasons to play a game a certain way. Like with strangers, in a multiplayer game.

You changed your stance from giving players ‘fair incentives’ to forcing players into multiplayer.

Again, why add multiplayer to the game if you don’t support it? By support it, I mean give incentives to play it.

Also, no one is forced in either scenario you’ve mentioned because again, the game can be played solo by anyone.

Just like in your argument that ‘multiplayer has intrinsic incentives’ so does solo play. While playing solo you don’t have to worry about people stealing your loot, you can go through the game at your own pace, you don’t have to worried about being backstabbed in PvP.

The point I’m making is that if you keep solo play and party play the same, with no difference, then people will gravitate towards solo play. Even though the game supports multiplayer, the benefits of solo play will be much greater because you’ll have the same loot / experience gain and people won’t be stealing anything.

Anyways, if the game supports multiplayer with strangers, there ought to be incentives to spur that sort of game-play. Otherwise you’ll have a great game that supports multiplayer but that few people actually play multiplayer in. Or people partying with friends, which isn't the same type of goal.

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Silver wrote:

The point I’m making is that if you keep solo play and party play the same, with no difference, then people will gravitate towards solo play. Even though the game supports multiplayer, the benefits of solo play will be much greater because you’ll have the same loot / experience gain and people won’t be stealing anything.

Maybe for you but that's just your opinion. I imagine that for the majority of people it will be quite the opposite.

It's not my opinion it's basic psychology.

If the rewards for being in a group are the same as playing solo, then people will gravitate towards what is the least risky Vs the most reward.

I.E. : Players will gravitate towards the path of least resistance. Most of the time.

Having loot get stolen is pretty high resistance. Thus risky to the player, whom want to be rewarded for their actions.

Party play will be inherently risky because loot has a chance to get stolen, and enemies may be a lot tougher.

Solo play would thus have less risk and the same reward.

That alone tells me that strangers have even less reason to party together.

In any multiplayer game with enough people you’ll always have people who group together, all I’m saying is that if it’s going to be a multiplayer game then there needs to be more reasons to party given the extra risk involved.

Why else support multiplayer with strangers? Just to have it? That's cutting out a lot of potential.

Silver is right. There must be an overall incentive to partying.

Usually such advantage comes in the form of the bosses with the best loot not being solo-able, or such feats are so inefficiently slow or dangerous that being in a party is a better alternative.

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zeto wrote:

Usually such advantage comes in the form of the bosses with the best loot not being solo-able, or such feats are so inefficiently slow or dangerous that being in a party is a better alternative.

This isn't an MMO. That sort of thing is not an option. You can't just lock solo players out of playing the game.

Bosses are essentially universally easier with a party and having bosses actually easier solo would literally put the nail in the coffin for party play.

So while I don't think it'll be impossible, it'll be effectively mandated to be slow going solo at the harder difficulties without a party, to give purpose to the party structure over solo play. You aren't locking out solo play at that point, but you are making party play look appealing.

Bosses are almost exclusively for items though, and the system would have to crap out either Ni the items or be doable in 1/Nt time over solo play to be worthwhile.

I cannot really think of a way that they will be providing for a benefit to party play over solo other than that... currently theory holds that solo play is the absolute best way to progress your character in the game, assuming level caps.

The overall equation must be Items/(Time*Players) or alternatively Nx/Nt > 1 | party > solo... else it's just not smart to party.

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Silver wrote:

It's not my opinion it's basic psychology.

If the rewards for being in a group are the same as playing solo, then people will gravitate towards what is the least risky Vs the most reward.

That is an interesting assertion but I don't think it is actually true. I know a lot of people that would choose to play partied even if the rewards were worse.

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Silver wrote:

I.E. : Players will gravitate towards the path of least resistance. Most of the time.

Having loot get stolen is pretty high resistance. Thus risky to the player, whom want to be rewarded for their actions.

This might be true for you, but it isn't true for everybody. Just look at the amount of support for free for all looting in this thread.


I don't really understand the whole "need incentives for people to party" angle. People who want to party will, and people who don't want to party won't. If the xp/loot rate is the same both partied and solo, then people don't feel pressured to do either. Why would you encourage people to play partied if they would prefer to play solo, or vice versa?

I mean, I'll probably play solo a lot of the time, not because of looting rules or xp or anything like that. Just because I like to be able to go afk for a few hours in the middle of an instance, and come back and finish it off later. Or even a few minutes if the phone rings, or whatever. Also I tend to meticulously comb over every square inch of every area, especially on a first playthrough. Whereas groups tend to want to just advance as fast as humanly possible, and skip all unnessecary quests/areas.
On the other hand I know people who flat out refuse to do anything solo. The must always be in a group or they just won't play, they find it boring.

Basically, there are many many factors besides loot and xp that cause people to choose group or solo play.

I must add that I play solo games in general. If the bosses would be unbeatable solo, that would be a problem for me. I agree completely with Malice. I have never liked the party mentality of "get...area...done...now".

I will play with a party when I feel like it, but that is just it. When I feel like it may not be when the game tells me to.

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Kyadytim wrote:

On the subject of advancement speed, I think I'm going to have to bow to the majority here. It's more likely that there are some factors that aren't explicitly calculable that cause groups to advance faster than it is that player bias is causing everyone to perceive that they are advancing faster when playing in groups.
I'm going to hold out on the difference not being tremendous, though.

I assume you're talking about D2 here. The thing is, monster health only increased by 50% per player, and yet player damage increased exponentially.

For instance, imagine a melee paladin fighting monsters with 50% physical resistance. Now a skeleton necromancer joins the party and casts amplify damage. Now you've got the necromancer's damage, plus the fact that the melee's damage has increased three-fold, and the paladin's aura increasing damage from the necro's skeletons. So it's not like two players do twice as much damage as one player, in this example it's more like two players do as much damage as four or five solo players. But only +50% monster HP.