Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
nobody has ever claimed that it's the only social system. Nobody has either said, that it should be the only one.
The 2 opinions brought forward by myself were specifically : "no personal loot, but a variety of social loot systems" and that master loot has earned a spot in the variety of social loot systems.
Social and personal loot systems are mutually exclusive.
Master loot, N/G, RR, FFA and biding systems are not. You and your group can utilize whatever you'd like.
The only way those two would be mutually exclusive is if all dropped loot was Bind on Pickup. We already know this won’t be the case for the vast majority of gear, so personal loot drops have no impact on any group’s ability to move loot around. It does however, mean people have a choice in what to do with their share of the loot.
It works in some games because when you enter an instance, you have a fairly good idea of how many boss mobs you are going to kill. The number of total drops from all boss encounters is significantly larger than the number of players present.
In Ashes, this isn't the case. A group may only get one or two boss kills in a play session - maybe even none.
This totally alters the dynamic of how loot needs to be dealt with. If the number of items of value a group got from their time together is less than the number of players present, no automated system can ever divide that in a way players are happy with.
If a game that will often see groups get less items of value drop than they have group memers leaves the distribution of those items of value up to chance, all that will do is discourage players from joining any pick up groups. On the other hand, if it is a single player that decides they want to take all the loot, that discourages players from grouping with just that one player.
Personal loot would work well for things like certificates - as groups can all but guarantee they will get exponentially more certificates than there are players in the group.
To me, Ashes needs to have a tiered system where things like certificates and other very common drops are done either as personal loot or as round robin, and individual items of actual value are treated differently.
This clipped portion is my main concern. And I agree with you. I don’t believe everyone should be getting full gear drops because in a game like Ashes, that skews the game toward farming gear over crafting gear. but I do believe materials should be generated per-player based on their gathering skill(s). Certificates (ie gold) should always be paid equally amongst players that qualify for looting rights. And full gear should have a separate system.
I still disagree that a singular loot master is the best system for distributing truly valuable full gear drops, simply because there is always inherent bias that comes from any player-led system, and people generally profess their agreement on that statement based on if they benefit from that bias or not. Personally I think every full item drop should be based on highest bid, so the benefit of that item is not limited exclusively to the player who gets it. At some point other players will have money to outbid, and guilds that want strict and total control over loot can simply not bid besides who they want to have the item.
I disagree that it should be a singular system as well. As I said earlier, it only works in situations where there is trust between all players present.
When there is that trust, it is by far the best system.
My personal preference for a system when there is not that same level of trust is an escrow type system.
Have all drops held in escrow inventory (basically, the game holds on to them), and then at the end of the group, allow players to bid on items that dropped.
Allow the setting of a bias towards players that are able to harvest specific materials if that is desired, and set up a system by which players that leave the group early (or are booted) are given a fair portion of what is in escrow, and you have what I consider the best system for when there isn't that trust.
My issue with personal loot will always be two fold. The first is that it straight up only works when there are more drops of any given value than there are group members (as we discussed above).
The second is that it removes the need for players to work together in relation to rewards. They can still work together, but as it is not required it will happen very infrequently (as is seens in any number of other games). I am of the opinion that players should need to work together in all aspects of grouping, from forming, to killing encounters, to distributing loot. A personal loot system does not allow for that, and so to me, it is almost as bad of a system to have in a game as an LFG system is.
It should always be administered by each individual guild using it, as per how each guild wants it to be run.
Anyways, it seems the majority of people like the d100 Roll and I'm kinda OK with that but it should also be ROUND ROBIN. If you just WON an item you should have to wait until everyone else gets one before you can roll again. otherwise you will get a few lucky bastards that got all the items that you worked for and you get NOTHING.
someone lost the hand of vecna to a pug group~
I'll always feel personal loot is the best option, because from personal experience people are greedy. Rng loot distributed to everyone prevents someone from taking advantage of the system for their own gain.
I have more experience with the personal loot system than other systems, but I've even played with "friends" who will try and take advantage of other's kindness or naivety by running dungeons for drops and trying to get people to trade them the good loot, then acting like they deserve it more than others. I'd hate to play with people like that and have them be given all the power.
A bidding system will always favor the richest person in the group. Just because the other players who lose get the gold from the bet, it doesn't mean that they're actually earning as much as the item is worth. If everyone else in the party doesn't have a lot of gold to begin with, they'll be betting with chump change and the rich player won't be losing that much. Then he can just sell the item and get back more gold than he lost.
I wouldn't even trust a guild with a master loot system, unless you're in a guild that actually cares about all of their members you're not going to be earning anything by working with them. From my guild experience, they usually only care about the main group of players and all the newer members are left out. Reminds me of high school.
In a perfect world I'd choose master loot, but this world is far from perfect and the scum will make their way into AoC.
Edit: I'd prefer a personal loot system where you can choose what you want to earn from finishing the dungeon/raid/whatever. That way you don't have people mindlessly running dungeons to get the drops they want.
but what about a bidding system with a fake currency that is only earned when killing monsters as a party? that way wealthy people will have the same amount of points as everybody else
Rare and legendary items are not supposed to be something everyone gets by the end of an expansion like in wow. They actually mean what they describe themselves as in ashes of creation and should be purely up to a very low chance of dropping rather than some garbage personal loot system.
I see that many people opt for Master Loot but in all my years of playing MMOs i have never been in a guild that did Master Loot fairly. Master Loot system begs the need for broken systems like DKP where someone almost always gets screwed over. Master loot does not promote interaction it promotes favoritism and drama in guilds.
An example of a bad experience (embarrassment mostly) I had early on in WoW was accidentally winning a role on an item my class couldn't use. I felt horrible, but of course in WoW everything would soul bind, so there was no recourse.
Another example I wanted to put forth is your traveling in the wilds and come across a player who appears to be in over their head a bit with too many mobs. In GW2 for example you can help them to kills the mobs and get rewarded for your efforts without negatively affecting the loot prospects of that player. In other MMO's in the same situation you may get angry texts about kill stealing for example. This is something I would not like to see in Ashes, personally. As I enjoy being seen as a helpful passerby rather than a competitor. From what I have read and heard this doesn't seem to be the case in Ashes? You either loot the mobs or leave them it appears.
A bit of a follow up to this, will healing be rewarded in the game mechanics when it comes to looting? Or if you choose to be a complete healing class will you have to rely on the good graces of your party members for rewards / loot drops?
As far as i am aware al loot will be distributed between all party members. If you compete with another party though, it gets a bit complicated. If you initiated the fight with a boss for example, you need to do at least 40% damage on the boss to get the loot, if you want to "steal" the loot from a party, you would need to do 60% of the overall damage on the boss to get the loot.
Master looter, in my opinion, should only be used by top end guilds were every item matters to be the best of the best.
If you are a somewhat hard-core and kind of casual then DKP is much better.
My current guild uses a pretty nice version of the DKP system.
If an item drops people have the chance to bid DKP on that item. If person A bids 100dkp and person B bids 50dkp, then person A wins the item for 50dkp. With this system you bid what you are ready to pay for it, but you only pay the amount the next person was ready to pay for it.
When it comes to group content i prefer the simple /roll system
Soft res allows you to reserve 1 item from the dungeon/raid and you roll for it only with people that soft reserved the same item as you
gdkp is a bidding system that sells items to the highest bidder and the price is then distributed among the whole group/raid
I really dont like dkp systems in guilds - that system is built around scamming your guildies
Definitely I want only loot council - if the council is corrupt then you know the leadership of the guild is corrupt too - so double bonus to know if you want to get invested in a guild that has corrupt leadership
― Plato
In this discussion I think there is a bias caused by referencing games where loot drop items are far better than available crafted items. It is my understanding that AoC will have crafted items being equal to loot items. A percentage of AoC loot will be rare gatherables, which you need a guild structure to process into the best equipment.
Although this fact doesn't completely remove the discussion over rare loot drop items, it will reduce it's relevance if most of what you get as loot needs to be processed and crafted (and enchanted) by different players to achieve the best results.
That's actually a very good point! Ashes will have a big focus on craftable items, and bosses will most likely drop materials instead of gear.
I would prefer master loot over personal loot every day of the week, but how to distribute the loot is then up to the group/guild.
@3Snap Personal loot wouldn't work in AoC. See this thread if you want to understand why: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/48193/loot-drops#latest
I don't see the reason for the strawpoll. Many loot options will be available to choose from within AoC and each loot option has it's role/use within the game. I think they are all great.
It's completely acceptable. The themepark mentality of everyone wins is horrible, it's delusional and gives players a false sense of accomplishment. Time wasted is also subjective.
OT: Isn't this more in line with themepark MMO's? "Woah, I got the ____ sword, wanna roll for it?
It’s not a theme park mentality, it’s literally just a basic expectation that spending time on a challenge and being successful at it should come with a tangible reward.
There’s nothing unreasonable about that.
Need- Greed- Pass - Everything else- If two people choose need auto dice roll. If noone chooses need same applies to greed.
See, I agree with you here.
Where I disagree is that I consider my healer or my tank getting an item upgrade to be a tangable reward.
The first thing to point out (even though I have in this thread) is that you can't make the assumption that a group will get any boss encounters when they go in to a dungeon. As such, if you wanted to do personal loot, everyone would need to get a boss level item for each boss, as each boss has the potential to be the only boss that the group that kills it gets.
Without this, players could well go weeks or months in the game group of 8 players and not get a reward from a boss level encounter - which is clearly a bad situation.
If everyone got a reward, all that would mean is that the "reward" is a fraction of the materials needed to make an item. Rather than killing a boss and getting one material that can be combined with common harvested materials to make an item, you would instead have each player get a material, and any item using said material would simply need 8 of them (or similar materials) to produce.
On raids, that 8 would be multiplied by 5.
I don't see this as a preferable situation at all.
Again, the issue is people going in to a pick up situation and expecting fair loot. Pick up groups with random players is not how MMO's are supposed to be played - and in Ashes that will be a very small minority of people that actually get most of their group content in this manner.
Rather, group content (as well as raid content) is supposed to be run with people you know, people you play with often. As such, they are people that are as invested in your gear as you are, and you are as invested in their gear as they are.
Essentially, personal loot is for people that play MMO's "wrong" (in quotes because there is obviously no actual wrong).