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

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exit_zero wrote:

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glockenrock wrote:

Because it makes for better party play and faster XP. People are actually focused on NOT DYING and KILLING MONSTERS, not staying on top of the uniques and blues and madly clicking on that alch orb, hoping to be the first to grab it when the timer is up.

It makes for a better gameplay experience, and you don't have to worry about others not pulling their weight.

I have noticed the exact opposite. A lot of players are just lazily dragging along behind the party members who are actually doing something, and scooping up loot when it pops up. They pay very little attention to anything that's happening on the battlefield since they don't really have to anymore, and the overall gameplay gets extremely boring for the entire party.

After the map is done, of course, everyone takes 5 minutes to go through the entire map all over again to see if anyone missed anything, prolonging the map clear time even further.

The very dynamic of PA encourages even the players who would otherwise play more competently and pay attention if it was SA to do what I described above. Lack of need to focus on the loot leads to losing focus on the game itself.

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derbefrier wrote:

what i find funny is after all the bitching and moaning about not having permanent allocation of loot 8 out of 10 parties I see on the board use the default loot allocation, one is FFA and the other is permanent allocation. I wonder if this was a little blown out of proportion by a few vocal community members or do people just not realize its there?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Copy & paste from my nice long thread about the state of narrative in PoE:

6. Dishonour Among Thieves

Last but not least, the controversial bit.

All of these story and lore points are nice, but how can we tell the story of being an exile through mechanics alone? What kind of mechanics require no writing whatsoever, but directly convey a lack of trust, a little too much paranoia, a tenable hold on order?

Well, we had it. At least until the 0.11.0 announcement. The answer to that question was: free-for-all loot.

Ninjas: Actually a Good Thing

FFA loot was actually a brilliant mechanic for forging a lack of trust between players. Sure, that made everyone QQ all over the forums, but the point is that it did it's job. Much like communism, party rules could work in theory; the game even temporarily allocates the loot, so that you're given a hint on how you could distribute said loot fairly. However, FFA loot required you to actually trust the players in your party instead of depending on arbitrary, game-enforced enforcement -- because that enforcement was exactly what the game denied you. Trust issues, paranoia, greed... all told through a simple mechanic.

Yes, I understand that FFA loot is something that almost no ARPG does. But try to imagine the game if it didn't drop the ball on ostracizing you once you opened the door to Lioneye's Watch. Imagine that, without flogging you with exposition pieces, it kept you remembering that you're just a petty criminal, and your friends are, too. The mechanic definitely served a strong narrative purpose, in an environment otherwise devoid of narrative mechanics.

Yet FFA loot was hated. With a fervor.

Was there a problem there? Absolutely; that many angry forum-goers can't be that far off. However, how did the problem come to be, and what was its nature? The members of a fair and equitable group fear the greed of the possible ninja, and the ninja fears... nothing. Deficiency detected. In order to have a legitimate fear, there needs to be a legitimate threat. So how could we threaten ninjas, without prohibiting their behavior?

Now there are many different mechanics that could have been used. I don't think enabling PvP would have been good, as it just would have allowed more PK griefing like with bandits (which I actually really like as a mechanic, but let's not overdo it). So instead, let's look at how players actually tried to fix the problem: they tried to go to the forums and create threads saying "Player X is a ninja, don't trust him."

Now think about this for a second. The whole mechanic is supposed to promote the feeling of being ostracized. Can you really think of any better consequence than being ostracized in real life? I sure can't.

If you ask me, GGG's failure with FFA loot was its policy against name and shame. Name and shame could have been left completely in the hands of the players. By now, at the very least we should have had third-party sites that rate players by their trustworthiness in parties.

If they were really clever, GGG would have embraced the concept and worked the mechanic directly into the game, giving each player a "reputation" score that could be upvoted or downvoted, Reddit-style, and when trying to join a party the party leader would get a pop-up showing name, class, level, and reputation, along with an option to allow or disallow. Could you be a jerk? Sure, at any time. Would anything stop a player with a solid rep of suddenly turning to the dark side? Not really. But there would be a consequence for ninja behavior.

With a system like that in place, the mechanic could have been pushed to its limit. Name timers could have their duration shortened. Map to maker would be enforced by the players, not an artificial system.

GGG, if you care at all about giving Path of Exile a cohesive narrative, please remove the loot options in a later patch, along with some kind of system that makes it easy for us, as a community, to actually monitor the reputability of players. I strongly believe you made the wrong choices by making a mechanic with such a strong narrative purpose merely optional, and by forbidding all forms of name-and-shame.

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Yxalitis wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Copy & paste from my nice long thread about the state of narrative in PoE:

6. Dishonour Among Thieves

Last but not least, the controversial bit.

All of these story and lore points are nice, but how can we tell the story of being an exile through mechanics alone? What kind of mechanics require no writing whatsoever, but directly convey a lack of trust, a little too much paranoia, a tenable hold on order?

Well, we had it. At least until the 0.11.0 announcement. The answer to that question was: free-for-all loot.

Ninjas: Actually a Good Thing

FFA loot was actually a brilliant mechanic for forging a lack of trust between players. Sure, that made everyone QQ all over the forums, but the point is that it did it's job. Much like communism, party rules could work in theory; the game even temporarily allocates the loot, so that you're given a hint on how you could distribute said loot fairly. However, FFA loot required you to actually trust the players in your party instead of depending on arbitrary, game-enforced enforcement -- because that enforcement was exactly what the game denied you. Trust issues, paranoia, greed... all told through a simple mechanic.

Yes, I understand that FFA loot is something that almost no ARPG does. But try to imagine the game if it didn't drop the ball on ostracizing you once you opened the door to Lioneye's Watch. Imagine that, without flogging you with exposition pieces, it kept you remembering that you're just a petty criminal, and your friends are, too. The mechanic definitely served a strong narrative purpose, in an environment otherwise devoid of narrative mechanics.

Yet FFA loot was hated. With a fervor.

Was there a problem there? Absolutely; that many angry forum-goers can't be that far off. However, how did the problem come to be, and what was its nature? The members of a fair and equitable group fear the greed of the possible ninja, and the ninja fears... nothing. Deficiency detected. In order to have a legitimate fear, there needs to be a legitimate threat. So how could we threaten ninjas, without prohibiting their behavior?

Now there are many different mechanics that could have been used. I don't think enabling PvP would have been good, as it just would have allowed more PK griefing like with bandits (which I actually really like as a mechanic, but let's not overdo it). So instead, let's look at how players actually tried to fix the problem: they tried to go to the forums and create threads saying "Player X is a ninja, don't trust him."

Now think about this for a second. The whole mechanic is supposed to promote the feeling of being ostracized. Can you really think of any better consequence than being ostracized in real life? I sure can't.

If you ask me, GGG's failure with FFA loot was its policy against name and shame. Name and shame could have been left completely in the hands of the players. By now, at the very least we should have had third-party sites that rate players by their trustworthiness in parties.

If they were really clever, GGG would have embraced the concept and worked the mechanic directly into the game, giving each player a "reputation" score that could be upvoted or downvoted, Reddit-style, and when trying to join a party the party leader would get a pop-up showing name, class, level, and reputation, along with an option to allow or disallow. Could you be a jerk? Sure, at any time. Would anything stop a player with a solid rep of suddenly turning to the dark side? Not really. But there would be a consequence for ninja behavior.

With a system like that in place, the mechanic could have been pushed to its limit. Name timers could have their duration shortened. Map to maker would be enforced by the players, not an artificial system.

GGG, if you care at all about giving Path of Exile a cohesive narrative, please remove the loot options in a later patch, along with some kind of system that makes it easy for us, as a community, to actually monitor the reputability of players. I strongly believe you made the wrong choices by making a mechanic with such a strong narrative purpose merely optional, and by forbidding all forms of name-and-shame.

Loot choices are an option, if you don't like allocated loot, don't use it!
But don't dictate YOUR idea as the ONE TRUE SACRED version, and force all other to comply.

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Ten_of_Swords wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

In the end it doesn't really matter what any of us think. The devs make the call and it looks like options is the way that looting went.

/thread.

I'm seeing very poor distribution of games and for the most part, just about exactly what I predicted: 0-5% FFA games and often ONLY permanent allocation games on the lists already.

Is GGG happy with that? There is plenty of things they can do to balance it out more.

"

derbefrier wrote:

what i find funny is after all the bitching and moaning about not having permanent allocation of loot 8 out of 10 parties I see on the board use the default loot allocation, one is FFA and the other is permanent allocation. I wonder if this was a little blown out of proportion by a few vocal community members or do people just not realize its there?

"

Ten_of_Swords wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

In the end it doesn't really matter what any of us think. The devs make the call and it looks like options is the way that looting went.

/thread.

Stop trying to shut down the discussion with this "its all over go home" B.S.

I'm seeing very poor distribution of games and for the most part, just about exactly what I predicted: 0-5% FFA games and often ONLY permanent allocation games on the lists already.

Is GGG happy with that? There is plenty of things they can do to balance it out more.

[edit]

I did get a private reply from Chris stating that "If us changing looting timers/rules results in a system that we don't like, we'll definitely change it back again. It's not a one-way process, and I hope we find a good compromise in the end."