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

if an rdps wants to be a baby at range and can't man up to get in there then there should be consequences

in my humble opinion the loot should be free for all. but perhaps in the default league it could have a slight allocation time to pick up on rare items. as it would allow people whom want to have a more casual time have their fun without ruining the mood of hardcore or cut throat.

Someone posted that drops could be distributed randomly across the screen. That sounds good and pretty fair.
If you want an allocation factor, then perhaps the loot could be dropped near to the char you want to allocate it to. That way you need no timers, and you can still vary the degree of allocation via distance.

If you make looting a FFA mini game ... expect loot bots to be made.

At least make a quick-loot all button with a certain radius ... i suck at aiming, if i wanted leet aiming skills to quickly get loot, i would be playing an fps.

Even the devs themselves feel that FFA isn't allways right and fair to all players. The allocation countdown really doesn't solve anything.
1) Ranged character has to react quickly and leave his position and get in the line of fire, which is not good for smooth cooperative combat.
2) OK, so this player doesn't want the loot - it gets FFA for other players and again the melee players are heavily favoritized.

I have seen the idea of big random popout of the drop across the screen. - Well again, if it is an even random distribution, melee player standing in the center of drop circle has closer distance to most of the items...

The only system I could see working is having option for party leaders to set the drops from party kills between FFA and automatically assigned (to nearby players). Also I think - if they are automatically assigned they should not be seen by other players... Only rage will emerge if they are seen.

One idea of mine (which might need polishing) is that automatic assigned drop favors the player based on their stats. For example character with higher intelligence would have higher chance to get staves and rings among the party memebers, character with higher strength would have higher chance to get big melee weapons and heavy armors etc. This would reward higher lvl characters (which usually do more work anyways) and add some additional bonus (usefulness) to stats (passives).

Honestly, I think it should take a note from WoW and have multiple options for the party leader.

well how i see it y not make it an option in game kinda like wow where party leader sets between the difrent loot options

anothing thiing is having items set to class only but that will run in to a problem.

a class like dualist who can use many wepons but the player has speced in to single hand stats rather then the range will be locked out of all range wepons unless thay spec more in to range.

say i have 4 ponts i can put them in to eahter ranged or one hand wep and get locked out of loot for the other but if i have 2 in each i get both

now this can be unfair to the specilized player and may end up getting you locked out of one or the other durning lvling

but you can set it up that its based on % like say i have 5 in each that means i have a 100% to get both but now say i got 4 in one and 5 in another so the 4 is 80% and 5 is 100% now say i have 13 points in one and 8 in another so the 13 is the 100% and the 8 is 62% now u can make it so you get locked out of the wep at 50%,60%,70% ect

it might be a good way to set up who can pick up lootbut at first you only get attack speed then it splits in to the choice so at the start its free for all untell you get higher lvls where u are specing in to wepons

now i have not seen all the spec trees just that part of the dualist so this might not work then again it might

I really enjoy what you have done with the standard Loot System. We saw in early games like diablo where lotting was cutthroat and it truly added to the focus of the game. This is truly a "fix" to what old loot systems had and I hope everything works well with it.

Cant wait to get into beta!

The devs clearly understand the issue with a pure FFA system, but a system that is very short allocation and then FFA is nearly as bad. It will still make the focus of all fights about looting instead of playing the game / doing damage, everyone will spend all their time spamming for loot when a monster dies, on the hope that that ranged person doesn't make it in fast enough and they get the loot instead.

"Spamming for loot"?

I'm not even sure what that means.

But if my guess is correct, allocated items (the way they have things set up at the moment) aren't selectable by other players, and so frantic clicking will serve only to walk their characters forward rather than getting them a "better chance" at said loot.