Mob Kill Credit for XP & Loot Drops

ArchivedUser

Hi All,

Game looks very interesting.

Wondering about the mechanics for Mob Kill Credit for XP & Loot Drops. The usual 2 mechanics for regular mobs, is first to tag gets all the rewards or the highest damage overall get the goodies. Seen many games with open world group "quests" have hybrid systems but the norm is as mentioned one or the other. Both have many advantages or disadvantages depending on personal play style or even "class" of toon.

What can we expect for AoC?

ArchivedUser

Excellent question, I have also seen it where if you get a hit on the mob you get quest credit and loot. Hopefully something along that line would be good.

ArchivedUser

Has no-one as yet discovered the intended mechanics?

ArchivedUser

[quote quote=10712]Excellent question, I have also seen it where if you get a hit on the mob you get quest credit and loot. Hopefully something along that line would be good.[/quote]

This is my preference in general to keep high DPS classes from running around stealing all the mobs from support/tank/healer classes.

ArchivedUser

+1

ArchivedUser

hypothetical:

a tank/rogue and a mage/fighter and a cleric/cleric party take on a boss

just to survive the battle, the cleric has to keep the other two alive, not allowing time for any offensive attacks

boss dies

so does the cleric miss out on loot?

side note: cleric looks like the least or one of the least picked classes

ArchivedUser

[quote quote=11710]hypothetical:

a tank/rogue and a mage/fighter and a cleric/cleric party take on a boss

just to survive the battle, the cleric has to keep the other two alive, not allowing time for any offensive attacks

boss dies

so does the cleric miss out on loot?

side note: cleric looks like the least or one of the least picked classes

[/quote]

Aren't they supposed to roll the dice on the loots if they're in a group? O_o

ArchivedUser

[quote quote=11791]<blockquote>
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/mob-kill-credit-for-xp-loot-drops/#post-11710" rel="nofollow">coach wrote:</a></div>
hypothetical:

a tank/rogue and a mage/fighter and a cleric/cleric party take on a boss

just to survive the battle, the cleric has to keep the other two alive, not allowing time for any offensive attacks

boss dies

so does the cleric miss out on loot?

side note: cleric looks like the least or one of the least picked classes

</blockquote>
Aren’t they supposed to roll the dice on the loots if they’re in a group? O_o

[/quote]

i think he is talking about world boss's

ArchivedUser

I've played many games where in open events or mission objectives then any support class (or even just a low dps class) that contributes also gains XP and share of loot & drops. That's standard these days, otherwise healers or control classes are very disadvantaged.

For world bosses I think the biggest damage overall should get the spoils. Imagine an organised guild, that spends time and resources (potions etc,,) to successfully drop a boss, then only to share or even loose altogether the drop because a random player or two joined the fight and they got to roll on an epic item...

ArchivedUser

I am thinking that for regular mobs that who ever tags it should get credit. I also think that when in party, drops that are rare automatically go to a rolling for need/greed system. The difficult decision will be how to distribute loot from world bosses given that there will be multiple parties and groups attacking it at once.

ArchivedUser

Good Question.
I think the first group that tag's the boss gets the drops. If it is a world boss, there shouldn't be multiple parties, there should be an organized raid. The thing with newer games is that they have made things like world bosses to easy.. Take WoW for example, Vanilla WoW you had to organize your raid or dungeon group. Now it's click a button and almost any group can complete anything in that game. Guild Wars 2, anyone can run up to the big bosses and hit it a few times and get loot. Games are IMO streamlined way too much.

ArchivedUser

I think kill credit should be a combination of these Factors:


Damage Dealt
Amount of Hits/Abilities Cast On Mob
Healing Done To Players That Are Doing Damage
Extra Damage Done To Mob Due To Buffs/Debuffs
How long you were there(Of course this should count only as active time spent attacking




These 5 factors I personally think would count for a good examination of how much you actually contributed, while being fair to support classes as well.

ArchivedUser

Seems to me that AoC will not have a "first to tag" system.
The nodes are monitoring everything we do.
Thus the nodes should be tracking how each player contributes to each encounter.

My hope would be that formal grouping is irrelevant.
If a dragon attacks the city, it's all hands on deck. Not whoever tagged the dragon first.
Everyone who participates in the encounter should be rewarded for their participation.

Disarming traps and blocking damage with magic shields also contribute to encounters, so we should expect more factors than we've typically found in previous MMORPGs.

ArchivedUser

[quote quote=15630]Seems to me that AoC will not have a “first to tag” system.
The nodes are monitoring everything we do.
Thus the nodes should be tracking how each player contributes to each encounter.

My hope would be that formal grouping is irrelevant.
If a dragon attacks the city, it’s all hands on deck. Not whoever tagged the dragon first.
Everyone who participates in the encounter should be rewarded for their participation.

Disarming traps and blocking damage with magic shields also contribute to encounters, so we should expect more factors than we’ve typically found in previous MMORPGs.

[/quote]

This is what appeals to me more, a 'public encounter' system for world events etc. If it's group tag only the game will turn into EQ camping the spawn location for ages until it pops then a frantic rush to get first hit. Then probably some PVP from the groups that didn't vs the group that did and it's an absolute mess catering solely to hardcore guilds *yawn*

A Public system would reward more based on player contribution, healing needs to be important in this also else you can't blame people for a general lack of healing.

Normal mobs should just probably be tag only like most games, I like a little competition while questing.

ArchivedUser

I expect it's not going to be a tag system - rather it's going to be a contribution system.

ArchivedUser

I dont like system need/greed/pass because it is not rewarding for everyone. For example Lord of the rings online have bad loot system. To get 1 item(armor, weapon, jewelry) from raid boss you need months of farming with guild/clan because 1 item drop for all party members...

The best and rewarding loot system for me is in Guild Wars 2. Simple as that what you see is yours. Everybody have their own loot chest after killing boss in dungeon/raid.

ArchivedUser

I started back in the day when healers had little chance to pick up loot because they were usually in the back and too busy healing even at the end of a battle when many needed to be rezzed. Often I said to my friend, why should I even bother.  It was that way in most party groups also as the tank or melee people would be right there as the baddie went down an loot before anyone else got near.  Over time most games  came up with a system where the exp was shared and loot was dropped for everyone or turn based, depending on time spent and involvement. not just how hard you hit the bad guy.

Intrepid stated that there will be big guild instanced raids as well as open world bosses.  We just have to wait and see what type system they come up with and test it well in beta.  

ArchivedUser

One thing that has always bothered me as a healer, even in games that do "very well" with regards to healing and support classes is the disparity of HP pools between mobs and players.

For example, a player avatar might have 25 or 30,000 HP.  That player might be fighting a mob with 5 million, or far more HP.  So the healer might contribute by keeping the tank and the rest of the party alive, but his healing will in no way come near to what these DPS players will contribute.  The disparity in size between HP pools makes it very challenging for the player to contribute in similar numbers.  I am hoping that the folks at Intrepid recognize this disparity and address it in some way.

ArchivedUser

Well, one player shouldn't be fighting a mob with 5 million HP.
That's more like a raid boss.
But, I would prefer encounters to be raid v raid rather than raid v boss... precisely in order to avoid HP bloat.

ArchivedUser

I think you misunderstood what I was saying.  I never said one person was fighting it.

ArchivedUser

You also didn't state that the aggregate amount of HP based on the number of attackers matches the mob with 5 million HP.
Which is the design expectation.

ArchivedUser

@Banditman Healer number vs DPS number vs Tank mitigation numbers in their visual form to us don't necessarily mean anything though, the backend mechanics that we never truly see will run an algorithm to create an output which can relate easily to the design difference in numbers between npc hp and pc hp.
A very simplistic example not taking into account mitigation etc, only straight DPS and HEALS, where design sees 1,000,000 boss health per 100,000 intended party size health could be:
Effort Score =  (1*DPS)+(10*Heals)

Of course real algorithms are often much more complicated than this and would not likely be as directly linear as this, for example a "tag" value could be added giving everyone a larger minimum % than just straight dps and the numeric multiplier values would be shifted to better reflect the level of difficulty of an npc (eg. whether you are likely to need to heal a lot or not).

If done right the numbers we see in games and the differences between them should not have any negative effect.

ArchivedUser

Unisol said:

@Banditman Healer number vs DPS number vs Tank mitigation numbers in their visual form to us don't necessarily mean anything though, the backend mechanics that we never truly see will run an algorithm to create an output which can relate easily to the design difference in numbers between npc hp and pc hp.
A very simplistic example not taking into account mitigation etc, only straight DPS and HEALS, where design sees 1,000,000 boss health per 100,000 intended party size health could be:
Effort Score =  (1*DPS)+(10*Heals)

Of course real algorithms are often much more complicated than this and would not likely be as directly linear as this, for example a "tag" value could be added giving everyone a larger minimum % than just straight dps and the numeric multiplier values would be shifted to better reflect the level of difficulty of an npc (eg. whether you are likely to need to heal a lot or not).

If done right the numbers we see in games and the differences between them should not have any negative effect.

You sir/madam know far too much

ArchivedUser

lexmax said:

You sir/madam know far too much

What would a guild be without a spreadsheet whore, that and the fact I enjoy programming just a little less than gaming

ArchivedUser

I understand what should be and what could be.  The problem I've seen in . . . well, too many games to count, is that it doesn't work out that way.  Instead of waiting until the end of the process, I hope that by bringing this to light now, the coulda, woulda, shoulda turns into "Yea, we did that."

ArchivedUser

I hope they have a priority looting system - like if a bard weapon drops, the bard should have elevated chances of getting it as opposed to a rogue. However if the bard has one, or has gotten a lot of the rare drops previously it'd be cool if they could weight it so that others can share in the rare loot.

ArchivedUser

Unisol said:

@Banditman Healer number vs DPS number vs Tank mitigation numbers in their visual form to us don't necessarily mean anything though, the backend mechanics that we never truly see will run an algorithm to create an output which can relate easily to the design difference in numbers between npc hp and pc hp.
A very simplistic example not taking into account mitigation etc, only straight DPS and HEALS, where design sees 1,000,000 boss health per 100,000 intended party size health could be:
Effort Score =  (1*DPS)+(10*Heals)

Of course real algorithms are often much more complicated than this and would not likely be as directly linear as this, for example a "tag" value could be added giving everyone a larger minimum % than just straight dps and the numeric multiplier values would be shifted to better reflect the level of difficulty of an npc (eg. whether you are likely to need to heal a lot or not).

If done right the numbers we see in games and the differences between them should not have any negative effect.

You know, I'm one of those people for whom mathematical stuff of this sort leaves me reeling with confusion - and slight awe. 
But it's actually still sort of strangely comforting to know that some people can understand the minutiae of the game to this degree!

ArchivedUser

I really liked the way WoW have done it. Do enough damage to contribute and you share the kill.

ArchivedUser

What it comes to open world mobs and bosses, i have understood that there wont be tag system and i dont think its actually needed. Maybe several groups or invidual players could have chance to get loot from the table, but the chance should scale with the contribution percentage to that specific fight.   

ArchivedUser

Eso has a similar system in place and it is gamed by people all the time. Those in groups have a higher chance of getting loot off of open world bosses because the system counts the group as having done damage and not the individual. Those who are lower level and not pumping out as much dps often do not get loot at all. If you are at one of the farm spots and there is a group of higher level toons grinding the same mobs over and over you get nothing. We will have to wait and see what they come up with, but going to be many irritated low dps people if they have no chance at loot because they were busy buffing people to keep them alive.

ArchivedUser

@UnknownSystemError So maybe improvement ESO system could work? Lets say that if assits could be taken account to contribution equally than damage it would be more fair. And i have got that impression, supports, healers and tanks can land a decent amount of damage and are not just lock their supporting role. Also if players can create more dps focus builds with weapon and skill choises, i think solo mob killing can be nicely balanced with all classes.