Permanent Loot Allocation ... for .. why?

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Ten_of_Swords wrote:

Whats with this dude? I'm practically a fucking charity, I give away lots of good gear to strangers and avoid picking up loot to make friends. Don't accuse me of spending all my free time on this forum arguing so I can take advantage of new players! its insulting as hell. If I was greedy I would have throw that 1k for a diamond pack at buying RMT items instead of giving it to GGG to help make this game better.

My problem with PA is that it IS in fact a "easy button" for newbs to avoid competition, and that's fine. NOT GOOD but acceptable. Just give us a place where there is no easy button and let me play with/against people who play by the same damn rules.

I just want to say thank you for supporting the game. Your generosity is appreciated and it could not have gone to more deserving devs than GGG. That being said, look at your previous posts. You have basically said straight out that you don't like competitive looting versus other competitive looters. I understand that this may not actually be your mentality (taking advantage of slower players), but it is how your argument comes across.

You can play with people who play by the same rules. That is why there are options, so everyone can play how they prefer to play. There is no need to segregate them as separate leagues.

This is what he said:

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I am sorry, I just do not agree that the only point of playing an arpg is to sit at max level with the best gear in game. I get that is what the nu-diablo fans desire. But they have forsaken pretty much the entire game, to sit at the very end and play pixel-stock broker, buying low and selling high, feeding RMT sites for real money or forum gold.

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they are very much connected. permanent allocation strongly buffs the most efficient road to end game. To say the desire for the two things are not correlated is just ignorant, blind, and/or misleading.

It's just laughable. "I don't agree that the only point of playing an arpg is to sit at max level with the best gear in game and play pixel-stock broker and feed RMT sites and therefor I am against PA". It's completely irrelvant and illogical!
He is clearly convinced that PA will make the game endgame-only focused and trading focused. But there is ABSOLUTELY no reason for that. The loot system doen't have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with that. A prefect example is TL2. You can have one without the other. Drawing those connections is nonsenical and just show that he has a completely distored view of the other side of the discussion.


And wow! You are really exaggerating alot. PA is Party Play For Dummies? Get a grip man. Your posts atleast used to resemble sense.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

There are far too many unfair interpretations of why each side wants what they want. Because of that its rare to see a real discussion between two people that actually learn about the other person.

FFA people can't get off assuming that everyone who doesn't like FFA is only in it for an easier game to get items quicker. This is probably the most common accusation.

Permanent people usually accuse FFA people of wanting easier players to ninja loot from or that FFA people just want to feel superior to other players.

So close to being a decent post... but what about SA people?

And no, I don't think that everyone who goes PA is only in it for an easier game. I think that some of them are, and there is no check or balance on those people. I also think that some SA and FFA people are in it for an easier game, and that there are insufficient checks and balances on those people. However, insufficient > zero, and adding better checks and balances to SA is the best path to a situation where party bonus is strong and encourages group play, while balancing it by requiring additional work.

I lump SA in with FFA because SA was never an adequate compromise to the people like myself that represent a need for non competitive PVM.

I believe the devs confused their player base on what they were willing to do at the beginning. People thought that partying would always be competitive but the timers kind of tipped me off right away that they were willing to change the game based on feedback. I am sorry the game is not what you wanted but thats where it is.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'm not going to hold it against you, because any discussion of this was several pages back, but I believe that the correct move for GGG was not to implement loot choices, but instead to add systems that allowed party leaders to make informed choices about potential ninjas; for example, SA with a system that actually tracks how often a character ninjas items, displayed for all to see. I agree that being forced to make decisions in the blind about strangers is an unfair situation, and thus I concede that the old SA system was insufficient. Thus, my argument is not that SA was somehow perfect, but that the proper course was to improve it rather than render it utterly moot by adding loot options.

I actually did comment on it on page 6 in this thread after someone quoted it.

But in general I just want to emphasize, that I think you are right when it comes to "what is the problem?", but I think not having the PA option is neither a solution, nor any kind of bandaid...

I mean if I play with 3 people and SA, what do you think what % of the items do I get? Somewhere from 15-35% doesn't seem unreasonable.
I fail to see how 10% more or less items per play session makes this game a facerole or in any way easier/harder or whatever.

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iamstryker wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

There are far too many unfair interpretations of why each side wants what they want. Because of that its rare to see a real discussion between two people that actually learn about the other person.

FFA people can't get off assuming that everyone who doesn't like FFA is only in it for an easier game to get items quicker. This is probably the most common accusation.

Permanent people usually accuse FFA people of wanting easier players to ninja loot from or that FFA people just want to feel superior to other players.

So close to being a decent post... but what about SA people?

And no, I don't think that everyone who goes PA is only in it for an easier game. I think that some of them are, and there is no check or balance on those people. I also think that some SA and FFA people are in it for an easier game, and that there are insufficient checks and balances on those people. However, insufficient > zero, and adding better checks and balances to SA is the best path to a situation where party bonus is strong and encourages group play, while balancing it by requiring additional work.

I lump SA in with FFA because SA was never an adequate compromise to the people like myself that represent a need for non competitive PVM.

I believe the devs confused their player base on what they were willing to do at the beginning. People thought that partying would always be competitive but the timers kind of tipped me off right away that they were willing to change the game based on feedback. I am sorry the game is not what you wanted but thats where it is.

I would say the a few sound recourses then would be to reduce the benefits of party play, or keep permanent allocation out of competitive parts of the game. There is literally no competition with a permanent allocation loot system in place, the minor constraints on allowing such huge benefits from group play is you had to compete for the loot, or form a trust with other players. In a game touting competition, this seems pretty askew to the promoted play styles.

You said it yourself, you were after a system of non-competition, why is this included in competitive aspects of the game would be my question.

One of these three futures shall occur:

• PA continues to be a thing, and eventually people get wise to the advantages of party play. Solo advocates catch onto this and start pushing for balance changes in the form of reducing party bonuses. Gimped by their belief that solo and multiplayer should be essentially identical, the PA advocates don't put up a very good fight. The solo advocates win, and the party bonus is nerfed to a true equal point with solo. With the party bonus gone and party play feeling very much like solo, the incentive to party is destroyed. Everyone plays solo like in D3.
• Like above, except that instead of solo advocates trying to nerf party bonuses, they lobby for a self-found mode or league with increased item quantity. They get their wish, effectively segregating the singleplayer and multiplayer modes of PoE. The end state is that a lot of players still strongly prefer solo, but there's a niche dedicated partying community, and players have to choose precisely one or the other.
• PA is defeated and removed from the game entirely. Massive numbers of current party players quit, and QQ runs rampant in the forums. Responding to said QQ (and perhaps listening to suggestions), GGG implements new features to make SA (or maybe FFA, but that's unlikely) more bearable for the general populace, and maybe even just flat-out increases party bonuses. Solo lobbyists are ironically thwarted by the old ninja QQers; the idea that party bonuses are OP is crushed by the idea that playing in a party just means someone else steals all your stuff (regardless of whether it's true or not). The end state is that a lot of players still strongly prefer solo, but there's a niche dedicated partying community, and people can experiment from time to time.

Maybe I'm being melodramatic, but that's how I see things playing out.

Writing that out also helped me identify the real key principles (so I can reduce my rambling in the future):

• Multiplayer needs something special to attract people to it. Thus, perfectly balancing solo vs multiplayer makes multiplayer boring/undesirable to the point that no one plays it. This means you cannot perfectly balance multiplayer exclusively with differences in scale while retaining playability.
• Thus the only options for a playable multiplayer are to deliberately make it imbalanced in terms of differences in scale, or to institute differences in kind to make it feel fundamentally different, or splitting into two different games.
• Making it imbalanced in terms of differences in scale is clearly unfair to solo, which means it is not an acceptable solution. Thus the two solutions are differences in kind, and splitting.

Loot tension without any means to retaliate against ninjas/grabbers other than kicking them out of the party doesn't make any sense. If there would be a hostile button, FFA & SA might be fun though :)
Allowing PA was the rational choice for the moment, and don't forget: it's optional.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

One of these three futures shall occur:

• PA continues to be a thing, and eventually people get wise to the advantages of party play. Solo advocates catch onto this and start pushing for balance changes in the form of reducing party bonuses. Gimped by their belief that solo and multiplayer should be essentially identical, the PA advocates don't put up a very good fight. The solo advocates win, and the party bonus is nerfed to a true equal point with solo. With the party bonus gone and party play feeling very much like solo, the incentive to party is destroyed. Everyone plays solo like in D3.
• Like above, except that instead of solo advocates trying to nerf party bonuses, they lobby for a self-found mode or league with increased item quantity. They get their wish, effectively segregating the singleplayer and multiplayer modes of PoE. The end state is that a lot of players still strongly prefer solo, but there's a niche dedicated partying community, and players have to choose precisely one or the other.
• PA is defeated and removed from the game entirely. Massive numbers of current party players quit, and QQ runs rampant in the forums. Responding to said QQ (and perhaps listening to suggestions), GGG implements new features to make SA (or maybe FFA, but that's unlikely) more bearable for the general populace, and maybe even just flat-out increases party bonuses. Solo lobbyists are ironically thwarted by the old ninja QQers; the idea that party bonuses are OP is crushed by the idea that playing in a party just means someone else steals all your stuff (regardless of whether it's true or not). The end state is that a lot of players still strongly prefer solo, but there's a niche dedicated partying community, and people can experiment from time to time.

Maybe I'm being melodramatic, but that's how I see things playing out.

Writing that out also helped me identify the real key principles (so I can reduce my rambling in the future):

• Multiplayer needs something special to attract people to it. Thus, perfectly balancing solo vs multiplayer makes multiplayer boring/undesirable to the point that no one plays it. This means you cannot perfectly balance multiplayer exclusively with differences in scale while retaining playability.
• Thus the only options for a playable multiplayer are to deliberately make it imbalanced in terms of differences in scale, or to institute differences in kind to make it feel fundamentally different, or splitting into two different games.
• Making it imbalanced in terms of differences in scale is clearly unfair to solo, which means it is not an acceptable solution. Thus the two solutions are differences in kind, and splitting.

People are aware that party play is way overpowered and it already was in CB. PA has nothing to do with the actual problem.
Btw. I'm what you call a PA and Solo advocate... and while I do believe that SP and MP should be close to identical in terms of rewards, the way loot is distributed has nothing to do with it.
The real solution to this problem is (and was since CB) to make MP harder, not only by raising health, but by being a little creative for once. Give monsters new abilities, light AoE-damage skills, AoE-CC spells..

And to continue: I don't agree that MP needs something special... it already has something special, you're playing with your friends for god's sake... it should be more fun. MP doesn't need some magical bonus to make people play the game, it should simply be at least as much fun as SP.
I would argue that giving monsters new abilities would not only make MP more interesting, solve the faceroll issue, but is also shitloads of fun.

All in all: as I described in page 6 I don't think your karma system would work too well, also the loot-system has not all that much to do with the underlying problem: MP being too strong. Trying to create a "loot tension" is one of worst ways to make MP less attractive.

i love it

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Asphael wrote:

And to continue: I don't agree that MP needs something special... it already has something special, you're playing with your friends for god's sake... it should be more fun. MP doesn't need some magical bonus to make people play the game, it should simply be at least as much fun as SP.

If it were really true that people play multiplayer with their friends, PA's core appeal -- the elimination of ninja looting -- wouldn't even be a factor.

Only rarely do people play multiplayer with their friends; generally speaking, they want to play in random pub games.