Permanent Loot Allocation ... for .. why?

Generally if you think of people in a video game as your friends you really need to get out more.

This is a video game to have fun. I don't know why we are trying to treat it like some kind of big social media friendship service.

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Sickness wrote:

How about this: Every now and then a small red dot flies on to the screen, and if you click on it in time you get a reward!

Don't forget Sickness, In the world of FFA anything that adds difficulty is a good thing so if you don't click the red dot in time it should one shot kill you...

Okay, enough of this "I trust them, but we use PA anyway and it's great" malarkey.

The key issue here is friendship, trust and PA. So let's talk about friendship, trust and PA.

Let's give a real-life example, which actually happened to someone I know. You go to a smallish frat-style party with a keg, speakers playing Tool, etc. You know virtually all the people at the party; they're acquaintances of yours that you socialize with often. You have quite a bit to drink, and end up passing out on a couch. You wake up the next morning with cuss words written in Sharpie marker all over you, in your underwear, outside, on the roof of a car, because your acquaintances thought that shit would be hilarious.

If you think this kind of thing wasn't predictable, it totally was. That's what these guys were like.

Now some people go the route of calling such people "friends." But having fun together isn't really the issue; trust is the issue, and these guys were pretty open about what types of behavior they engage in.

There are really just two core attitudes in terms of dealing with this:
1) You thought these people were your friends, you trusted them, and you were betrayed. You put too much trust in them, therefore you need to limit your behavior around them and/or limit their behavior around you, or things just aren't going to work. Maybe the police need to get involved to enforce some boundaries.
2) This is all in good fun; you'd do the same to them if they went and passed out with their shoes on. It's tradition, after all. Maybe you're laughing about it because it's a great joke, maybe you're actually feeling very resentful, but that's irrelevant... the point is that you'll get them back the same way they got you. The police are not necessary.

Option #1 is what PA is really all about. It's about enforcing certain norms on everyone such that each player is essentially left alone. In the same way the police don't need to get involved unless there is or has been some kind of breach of trust, you simply don't ever need to have the game play item allocation cop unless there is or has been a lack of trust between the players.

Option #2 is what PA isn't about. If you don't have a problem with drunken pranks, then you don't have a problem with drunken pranks. Maybe you have a problem with drunken pranks on you but desire to see them done to others; that's not a problem with drunken pranks, it's a problem with the others. In the same way, if you don't have a problem with ninjas, then you don't have a problem with ninjas. And if you don't like getting your stuff ninja'd but you want to ninja other people's stuff, the problem is not with ninja-ing, the problem is with the others.

So any claim that PA is required to play with people you trust, or that PA is not about playing with players you don't trust, is just nonsense. In those cases, your fellow players police themselves; the reason to need to bring in the loot allocation cop is because your fellow players will not police themselves.

Now a much less non-delusional, and much stronger, argument for PA at this point is: "Holy shit, that dude got violated! The cops should have been there, or at least called! Do you really want to turn PoE into a drunken immature frat party!" Notice how it doesn't deny the importance of distrust; it reinforces the concept by saying that we can't trust our fellow man.

To answer that, more of the story: I was the guy who went all white knight as they were planning this prank. I actually left in anger, unwilling to be a party to such things. Later, there were pictures, and I talked to our victim. Except he wasn't really much of a victim; he thought this shit was hilarious. Go figure. So I guess the whole "violated" part is an assumption we can't always make.

But still, it's bound to happen sometime. And that's why I agree that the old SA system was not enough in itself, that there needs to be some system to determine what kind of stranger you're about to play with, to make informed decisions about what they're likely to do. We want to limit the amount of surprise people feel when someone else takes the items allocated to them.

Remember this, though: PoE is a game, it's supposed to be fun, and unlike my little story it is not real life. Despite my best attempts to ruin the party, the whole thing made for an epic story for that group, enjoyed by all. In the same way, getting ninja'd isn't always bad, and can actually make for epic tales. Putting a cop on every corner might make the game a lot more safe, but it won't make it a lot more fun. What we need instead is better tools to ensure that players match themselves with others whose idea of a fun time matches theirs.

I think that's what GGG was going for when they implemented loot options, and nothing above is an argument against them; actually, loot options meet all criteria for solving the issues presented in this post. That's because this post's focus is on debunking the PA trust delusion; the case against loot options is entirely separate and mostly hinges on party vs solo balance.

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Okay, enough of this "I trust them, but we use PA anyway and it's great" malarkey.

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So any claim that PA is required to play with people you trust, or that PA is not about playing with players you don't trust, is just nonsense. In those cases, your fellow players police themselves; the reason to need to bring in the loot allocation cop is because your fellow players will not police themselves.

You are hell bent on not understanding I see.
No one is claiming that PA is required to play with people you trust! I am claiming that IMO PA is BETTER than SA even when playing with people you trust. Policing one self and making sure that the items you pick up didn't drop for someone else etc. is just something that I'd rather not do at all, because it only detracts from the enjoyment of the game, it doesn't add ANYTHING AT ALL for me.

PA is the only way to go. I don't even considering joining random parties with SA and with friends we always play PA just because I want to not bother with remembering which item belongs to who, and of course I don't want my items looted while I am busy surviving and killing other stuff.

But hey, if you like SA and FFA - well that's great, because you have that option also! It's not out of the game. You're whining that more people prefer perma-allocation? Well that's just stupid, you're whining that others don't enjoy the same way of playing that you do. Previously the loot system was generally a clusterfuck even when leaving the trust issues outside of it (playing with real friends that would go "hey bro, your exalted dropped here") because you had to remember which item allocated to whom, and try not to pick your mates' stuff. Now everything is tidy and nice. Job well done.

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iamstryker wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

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Vooodu wrote:

No on likes FFA.

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Ten_of_Swords wrote:

When its forced on everyone equally like in D2, it DOES make the game like that MUCH more fun.

My mind is blown.

I would advise you to read some thoughts of Brother Laz, you won't be able to keep your jaw from dropping.

Just google for it, Brother Laz is a well known D2 modder, famous for his Median XL mod. He has made some really interesting remarks about D3 when it was still in development, and after the game was released (like the one here). You might also want to check the main page for his Median XL mod here. He also helped designing legendaries here, in PoE.

When everything is smooth with no drama involved, and there you have it - absolutely dull gameplay, that you do have fun with for several hours, then stop and never look back. Why do you think casino slot machines are so addictive, have you ever tried that? If not, I hope You never will. The gameplay is almost completely absent there, still they have so many clients, there are additional measures that need to be taken at government level to control the whole process!

TLDR: Most of the time it is exactly the thing that annoys the most is literally best, as it leads to very addictive gameplay.

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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.

Party play doesnt need to be balanced against solo play imo. There just needs to be a competitive aspect in the game still during competitions. Everybody mowing through content with no downsides just doesn't bode well for party play competitions. There should be an advantage to having a "team" of players that work together. There should be the necessity to have a modicum of trust in your party. Are the bandit quests enough tension to want to put together your party competition 'team'? I think public permanent allocation parties need a downside compared to gathering a group of players that work out issues to progress faster than a group struggling with trust issues.

I dont think solo vs party play needs to be balanced at all. But I do think there needs to be incentives to work together, and permanent allocation loot options throw 'team' concepts out the window, just join public parties, nothing bad can happen (outside of bandit quests).

I think I would be more comfortable with PKing than stealing items from each other. Collecting ears like back in D1.

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Sickness wrote:

You are hell bent on not understanding I see.
No one is claiming that PA is required to play with people you trust! I am claiming that IMO PA is BETTER than SA even when playing with people you trust. Policing one self and making sure that the items you pick up didn't drop for someone else etc. is just something that I'd rather not do at all, because it only detracts from the enjoyment of the game, it doesn't add ANYTHING AT ALL for me.

If it doesn't matter enough to you to put any effort into it, how does it matter to you enough to fight for it in this thread?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Sickness wrote:

You are hell bent on not understanding I see.
No one is claiming that PA is required to play with people you trust! I am claiming that IMO PA is BETTER than SA even when playing with people you trust. Policing one self and making sure that the items you pick up didn't drop for someone else etc. is just something that I'd rather not do at all, because it only detracts from the enjoyment of the game, it doesn't add ANYTHING AT ALL for me.

If it doesn't matter enough to you to put any effort into it, how does it matter to you enough to fight for it in this thread?

And with that nonsense I can only assume that you ran out of steam!