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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.
Mob drops
Szron
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Idk I might be singled out with this thought but since we are sharing our ideas, here we go
I always enjoyed farming mobs for hours, and theres no bigger enjoyment for me and probably many other people finding the one item with 0,01% drop rate.
To further enhance the satisfaction of the drop I'v always admired the way that L2 drops appeared on the ground after the killing blow.
To have the drops literally pop out from the enemies and not having their corpses glow was very satisfying.
Or we could have these items glow for a short time depending on rarity. (blue, yellow, orange)
Share your thoughts, what kept you going for hours on end?
I always enjoyed farming mobs for hours, and theres no bigger enjoyment for me and probably many other people finding the one item with 0,01% drop rate.
To further enhance the satisfaction of the drop I'v always admired the way that L2 drops appeared on the ground after the killing blow.
To have the drops literally pop out from the enemies and not having their corpses glow was very satisfying.
Or we could have these items glow for a short time depending on rarity. (blue, yellow, orange)
Share your thoughts, what kept you going for hours on end?
6
Comments
I feel like having the item pop out on the ground and shine in a special way depending on how rare it is would cause a ton of jealous ganking.
As for items dropping on the ground. I actually don't like this in MMOs. If the game is not focused around world PvP, I would rather the loot just show up in my bag. It makes sense in ARPGs because you have the whole map to yourself and you tend to move really fast.
In world PvP focused games(which I fully expect AoC to be a world PvP focused game). I would rather you have to loot the body and pull off the things you want. I don't want even a one click auto loot. In games like Darkfall online. Looting was part of your PvP skill set as a player. You had to be able to determine what was valuable and get it into your bag as fast as possible. Threats are always around the corner.
I am not sure how player or mob loot drops will be exactly in AoC. I would like to know more. Can't seem to find it on the wiki.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I personally like the loot explosions that some ARPG's have, but if that is in Ashes, they would need to obfuscate exactly what dropped from passers-by, leaving players with just a general idea. Maybe this is not strictly needed, but it would be my preference.
I'm not keen on corpse loot in Ashes, even though it's fine in many games. To me, a corpse of a player you have killed should disappear as soon as they respawn, so is not a suitable container for loot to be contained within.
I've played some games that use chests that spawn when you kill an encounter (including EQ2 - which many long time readers will know I am a fan of). I don't like this system. It needs to die a quick death.
The only other system I am aware of is where loot is just auto-assigned when a target is killed. I am also not a fan of this, and couldn't name a single game where it is employed (though I have played a few alpha versions of games that used it).
All four of these have issues to them, in my opinion. The reason I think the ARPG style loot explosion is the best option for Ashes is because the issues it has (or I think it has) are the easiest to deal with.
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As to encounters having a very low percent chance to drop rare items, I totally agree. I personally think every encounter in the game should have a very small chance (~0.01%) to drop a rare item (crafting material). I also am of the opinion that every grouping of mobs should have a chance to spawn a mini-boss version of that same creature that has a much higher chance (~5%) of dropping that same rare item.
These two things combined just make the game more enjoyable over all, and slightly spread out the acquasition of rare materials entering the game - which is a good thing.
Don't force us to select each item we want to pick up by hand.
While I have (and still do) farm mobs for drops in games, I always thought it was highly suspect you would kill a rat and it would 'drop' 50 coppers or you kill a wolf and you get a pair of shoes, staff, etc. Did those mobs just happen to all be goats and consume them???
I'm a firm believer in the concept of having something drop APPROPRIATE to what you killed. So if you kill a bear you can expect; meat, claws, bones, innards, etc, NOT a pair of freakin' pauldrons. If you kill an Orc (NPC) you can expect Orc type apparel, not a Dwarf chestplate.
Mobs with treasure hordes are of course a different story but that should be the exception to the rule.
I don't know exactly how AoC will handle this but considering all the best gear will be crafted I have some hope for drops that match what you just killed. That means if the recipe to create that special leather armor requires a bear pelt then you go kill some bears for it.
@PlagueMonk aoc handels it exactly like you want.
Wolf drops claw, teeth pelt and trophies
Ah that's great. I seem to vaguely recall it was going to be like that but didn't know if I was getting it mixed up with CU. Thanks for the heads up.
So if I kill a few thousand rats do I get a rattling gun?
I also enjoyed tp see the gold dropping and gradually change the ground color through xping as fast as possible and only taking time to pickup every buff round.
That being said, it was laborious to pickup every single individual drop but I think spoils the drop to have en-mass pickup so somewhere between would be nice!
I also like the DV`s comment that drops will be somewhat related to what is likely to drop from them.. nothing more strange than a bow dropping from a rabbit. or a shield dropping from a bear!
This is a huge thing that lots of MMOs miss. TONS of people love searching for that one elusive item, even just for the sake of saying that they have it(whatever it is).
Mobs with large-ish drop tables which drop only X items per kill and where each item has a certain drop percentage leads to an increase in the variety of things you'll find while grinding mobs or farming bosses, which in my opinion makes the experience much more exciting/fun. The occasional rare or super rare item dropping can really make something that's typically very mundane quite fun.
In terms of items being dropped on the ground when a monster is killed/loot exploisions i think OSRS/Runescape have done this very well despite the games age. You kill an enemy then the items drop on the ground and then there is a timeframe where only you can see them and pick them up. Once the time expires anybody in the world can pick them up and after an even longer time they despawn.
Aren't we all sinners?
But it seems like that will be the case for destroyed caravans if we go off the shown caravan gameplay.
sounds right to me
and for 10k you can get one of these babies....
I already found my ratling rogue name if they ever implement skaven as one of the three races for Tulnar:
Fat-Rat